The Pentagon: A History by Steve Vogel

Pennsylvania Republican.
    Representative Everett Dirksen, the flowery-speaking Republican from Illinois, broached the question that many would soon be asking: What possible use would this huge building have after the war? “Every Christian man or woman in the world hopes that somehow this great conflagration will come to an end speedily, and when it does, will we need a $35,000,000 monument on the other side of the Potomac?” he asked. August Andresen, a Minnesota Republican and part-time farmer, voiced suspicion of Roosevelt’s true intentions. “I understand that the report is quite current around here that they want these big buildings and large facilities so we can police the world after the war is over.”
    Woodrum was ready to allay such concerns. War Department officials, he said, had assured him they could use the building after the war to store their increasingly voluminous records. (General Marshall, ever the soldier, had another suggestion, telling Somervell he wanted to move in an infantry regiment after the war and use the building as a barracks.)
    Ominous global events loomed over the debate. Hitler was advancing steadily into the Soviet Union. A week earlier, Nazi aircraft had started bombing Moscow, and a spearhead of the German army was nearing Leningrad. Why was the War Department spending money on a new headquarters when money was desperately needed for American bombers, some congressmen wanted to know. “We cannot win wars with buildings,” Andresen declared. Woodrum countered by painting a dire picture of a “handicapped” American army preparing for war in badly overcrowded buildings. As for accusations that the building was a “palatial” waste, Woodrum insisted, “There are no frills or ruffles. There are no elevators, no trimmings, no gymnasiums or the like. It is to be a building designed for maximum service.”
    Hull and his supporters tried three times to kill the proposal; each time they were beaten back without recorded votes. In the end, the House sent the $8 billion defense bill to the Senate with only eleven dissenting votes and the $35 million for the building intact. Woodrum had carried the day, and in the view of many, won a grand prize for his state. “We are giving Virginia a great deal,” said Representative Adolph Sabath, Democrat of Illinois. “When this structure is built we shall have given them the greatest building ever constructed anywhere by any nation.”
    Sensitive to appearances, Woodrum put out a press release disavowing his role in launching the project: “I would like to point out…the project was wholly and entirely the idea of the War Department, of their own initiative, without any suggestions whatsoever, so far as I know, from anyone in Congress.” Technically, this was true. But it was Woodrum who had inserted the project into the appropriations bill and put his considerable clout behind building it in Virginia. Somervell and Woodrum in partnership were driving the project forward.
    Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s curmudgeonly secretary of the interior, had no illusions. “It was easy to see how this greased pig went through the hands of Congress,” Ickes recorded in his diary. “Of course, it had the support of Congressman Woodrum in the House. Woodrum is all for economy except when the State of Virginia is concerned.”
    Ickes was alarmed at the prospect of this enormous edifice along the Potomac. “Here was another example of acting before thinking,” he fumed in his diary, annoyed that Roosevelt had so blithely agreed to the project. “As is so often the case…instead of seeing how vicious the plan was and what it would do in the way of dislocating the carefully considered plan for…the protection of Washington, [the President] gave a nod of approval,” he wrote. But Ickes was encouraged by a rising tide of opposition from Roosevelt’s advisers, federal agencies and boards, the press, and the public. As opponents recovered from Somervell’s