Churchill arrived at Boiling Field in Washington on June 18, and then flew to Hyde Park the next morning. “The President was on the local airfield,” Churchill recalled in his memoirs, “and saw us make the roughest bump landing I have experienced. He welcomed me with great cordiality, and, driving the car himself, took me to the majestic bluffs over the Hudson River on which Hyde Park . . . stands.”
For more than an hour, they drove together around the estate. With boyish enthusiasm, Roosevelt jerked the car forward and backward in an attempt to elude the Secret Service. “I confess,” Churchill later admitted, “that when on several occasions the car poised and backed on the grass verges of the precipices over the Hudson I hoped the mechanical devices and brakes would show no defects.” To reassure Churchill, Roosevelt invited him to “feel his biceps, saying that a famous prize-fighter had envied them.” Much to Churchill’s relief, the car finally came to a stop at the round driveway in front of the president’s house. Lunch was served, and then the two leaders ensconced themselves in Roosevelt’s study for a long talk before taking tea at the house of his cousin Laura Delano and dinner at the Big House.
In Washington, Stimson was nervous. “I can’t help feeling a little bit uneasy about the influence of the Prime Minister on him at this time. The trouble is WC and FDR are too much alike in their strong points and in their weak points. They are both penetrating in their thoughts but they lack the steadiness of balance that has got to go along with warfare.” Stimson was right to worry. Churchill lost no time in expressing his anxiety about the potential bloodbath that a direct assault on the Continent would bring. The president listened carefully, though he stood firm on the need for some action to reduce the pressure on the Russians.
Churchill awakened early Saturday morning. “He surely is an informal house guest,” Hassett noted. “He was out on the lawn barefoot and later was seen crossing the passage to Hopkins’ room, still barefoot. The President calls him Winston . . . . The Boss has a knack for entertaining guests with a minimum of strain and fussiness both to him and to them. He always pursues the even tenor of his ways whether in the White House, on the train or here at Hyde Park. Never changes his routine; meets his guests at mealtime or when mutually convenient. Otherwise they and he are free to do as they please. If he did it differently, this steady stream of visitors would wear him to a frazzle.”
In the morning, the president took the prime minister on a second tour of the estate, stopping first at the library and then at his beloved Top Cottage. After lunch, they settled down to talk in Roosevelt’s small study on the ground floor. It was at this time, with Hopkins seated in the corner, that Churchill brought up the subject of “Tube Alloys,” the English code name for the project to create an atomic bomb. “We knew what efforts the Germans were making to produce supplies of ‘heavy water,’” Churchill recalled, “a sinister term, eerie, unnatural, which began to creep into our secret papers. What if the enemy should get an atomic bomb before we did! . . . I strongly urged that we should at once pool all our information, work together on equal terms, and share the results, if any, equally between us.”
There was ample reason for concern. Three months earlier, German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had received an optimistic report about the latest developments in German science. “Research in the realm of atomic destruction,” he recorded in his diary, “has now proceeded to a point where its results may possibly be made use of in the conduct of this war. Tremendous destruction, it is claimed, can be wrought with a minimum of effort . . . . Modern technique places in the hands of human beings means of destruction that are simply incredible. German science is at its peak in this matter. It is essential that we be ahead of everybody, for whoever introduces a revolutionary novelty into this war has the greater chance of winning it.”
It was now nearly three years since the president’s first discussion with economist and biologist Alexander Sachs about atomic developments. At that momentous meeting in October 1939, Sachs had delivered to the president a letter from Albert Einstein in which the celebrated physicist reported that scientists in Berlin had achieved the fission of uranium atoms and the release of colossal amounts of energy. On the basis of additional work done by Italian émigré Enrico Fermi and Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, it was possible, Einstein predicted, to set up a nuclear chain reaction which could be harnessed into bombs so powerful that they could blow up entire ports. Though Roosevelt found the discussion interesting, he seemed to hesitate about committing government funds to such speculative research. But after Sachs reminded him of Napoleon’s rejection of Fulton when the inventor tried to interest him in the idea of a steamship, Roosevelt agreed to move forward. “Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis don’t blow us up,” Roosevelt said. “This requires action.”
Little progress had been made until after the fall of France, when substantial government funds were finally committed to atomic research. British scientists were also experimenting with atomic weaponry, Churchill told Roosevelt, but, with Britain under severe bombing, it was too risky to continue the research on the scale that was necessary. Churchill was delighted when the president said that the United States would assume the major responsibility for the development of the atomic bomb. Two months later, the Manhattan Project, directed by army engineer General Leslie Groves, was launched. By 1945, more than 120,000 people would be employed on the search for an atomic bomb, at a cost of $2 billion.
Atomic research would produce the most dramatic scientific development of the war, but the combined efforts of science, industry, and government would lead to a host of groundbreaking discoveries, including the large-scale production of penicillin to combat infections, the development of plasma, the use of synthetic drugs like Atabrine to substitute for scarce quinine, improved radar, proximity fuses for mines, and the jet engine.
• • •
After dinner at the Big House, where they were joined by Averell Harriman, the president and Churchill left for Highland Station to catch the overnight train to Washington. At the White House, Churchill was installed in the Rose Suite, in the family quarters. “There was something so intimate in their friendship,” Churchill’s aide Lord Ismay noted. “They used to stroll in and out of each other’s rooms in the White House, as two subalterns occupying adjacent quarters might have done. Both of them had the spirit of eternal youth.”
After an hour’s respite for breakfast and the morning papers, Churchill joined the president and Hopkins in Roosevelt’s study. They had just settled down when a secretary handed the president a telegram. It contained the devastating news that on June 21 the British garrison at Tobruk in Libya had surrendered to the Germans, with twenty-five thousand British soldiers taken prisoner. The president handed the telegram to Churchill without a word. “It was a bitter moment,” Churchill conceded. For thirty-three weeks, Tobruk had withstood the German siege; now a garrison of twenty-five thousand had laid down their arms to perhaps one-half that number of Germans. “Defeat is one thing,” Churchill wrote; “disgrace is another.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Roosevelt turned to Churchill. “What can we do to help?” “Give us as many Sherman tanks as you can spare, and ship them to the Middle East as quickly as possible,” Churchill replied. The president sent for General Marshall, and within days three hundred tanks and one hundred self-propelled guns were on their way to the Eighth Army in Alexandria. When Eleanor joined her husband and the prime minister at lunch, she was amazed at the spirits of the two men. Though they were obviously stricken by the news, their first reaction was to figure out what could be done. “To neither of those men,” she marveled, “was there such a thing as not being able to meet a new situation. I never heard either of them say that ultimately we would not win the war. This attitude was contagious, and no one around either of them would ever have dared to say, ‘I’m afraid.’”
In later years, Churchill admitted that the fall of Tobruk was “one of the heaviest blows” h
e could recall during the war. Not only was the military loss enormous, but the humiliating circumstances of the surrender had substantially damaged the reputation of the British army. Later that night, Lord Moran found him pacing his room, repeating over and over that Tobruk had fallen, crossing and recrossing the room with quick strides, a glowering look on his face. “What matters is that it should happen while I am here,” he said. “I am ashamed. I cannot understand why Tobruk gave in. More than 30,000 of our men put their hands up. If they won’t fight . . .” He stopped abruptly, fell into a chair, and seemed to pull himself together, recounting for Moran the generosity of the president’s immediate response: “What can we do to help?”
The fall of Tobruk increased the importance of the Mediterranean theater in Churchill’s mind and cemented his opposition to a cross-Channel attack in 1942. Though Marshall and Stimson continued to press their case, Roosevelt was unwilling to go ahead without the agreement of his friend and partner. The discussion turned instead to a project Roosevelt had been mulling over for weeks as an alternative to the attack on the Continent—an invasion of French North Africa. The smaller-scale invasion would pull German troops from the Eastern front, while at the same time helping to shore up the British position in the Middle East.
Relieved, Churchill threw his weight behind the operation, code-named Gymnast. “I am sure myself that Gymnast is by far the best chance for effective relief to the Russian front in 42,” he told Roosevelt. “This has all along been in harmony with your idea. In fact it is your commanding idea. Here is the true second front in 42. Here is the safest and most fruitful stroke that can be delivered this autumn.” There remained the unpleasant task of communicating the Gymnast decision to Stalin, who believed, on the basis of the fateful Molotov communiqué, that something much larger was in the works. Churchill volunteered to go to Moscow himself to break the news.
Marshall and Eisenhower remained adamant in their opposition to the president’s “secret baby,” as Stimson dubbed the plan to invade North Africa, in late October. To use up men and resources in a peripheral action when victory could only be won by a direct assault on the Continent seemed to their minds a fatal mistake. What is more, the operation itself seemed to them more risky than the president realized. Instead of an orderly buildup over many months, “we now had only weeks,” Eisenhower wrote. “Instead of a massed attack across narrow waters, the proposed expedition would require movement across open ocean areas where enemy submarines would constitute a real menace. Our target was no longer a restricted front where we knew accurately terrain, facilities and people as they affected military operations, but the rim of a continent where no major military campaign had been conducted for centuries.” Still, Roosevelt persisted in going forward, prompting Eisenhower to predict that the day the invasion order was signed would go down as “the blackest day in history.”
When he issued the order, against the robust opposition of his advisers, Roosevelt was thinking not only of the negative effect on the Russians if another year were to pass without substantial action on the part of Anglo-American forces; he was also thinking of the negative effect on the American soldiers and the American people if there were no opportunity for U.S. ground troops to be brought into action against Germany in 1942. He had recently received a discouraged letter from FDR, Jr., written from an army base in Hawaii. The most depressing thing, his son had written, was the lack of action. “A lot of these guys aren’t having any fun,” he wrote, “just tenseness and waiting our turn.”
As the leader of a democracy, Roosevelt had to be concerned with the question of morale; the constant challenge he faced, through speeches and actions alike, was to figure out ways to sustain and strengthen the spirit of the people, without which the war could not be won. “We failed to see,” George Marshall observed after the war, commenting on the army’s opposition to the president’s plan for North Africa, “that the leader in a democracy has to keep the people entertained. That may sound like the wrong word but it conveys the thought.”
• • •
While Roosevelt and Churchill were together for these June meetings, Hopkins confided in them that he was engaged to be married to Louise Macy, the former Paris editor of Harper’s Bazaar, a beautiful woman with dark hair worn in a long bob, bright-blue eyes, and a little gap between her two front teeth. She had graduated from the Madeira School in Washington, attended Smith College, and married and divorced a wealthy attorney. “In smart sets from Santa Barbara to Long Island, ‘Louie’ Macy is popular,” Time reported. “She radiates good spirits, talks well, laughs easily.” From the day Hopkins met her at the home of Averell and Marie Harriman, he seemed reborn emotionally and physically. “Looking better than he has for three or four years,” William Hassett noted. “He’s gained ten pounds,” Eleanor told Anna, “and seems very perky.”
There was still a great physical attractiveness in Hopkins—remarkable vitality came through his thinness and his pallor, conveying an image of a far younger, healthier man. Bill Hassett’s diaries that spring are filled with references to the passion of Hopkins’ romance. “Harry head over heels in love—52—and doesn’t care who knows it,” Hassett wrote after spending a long weekend with Harry and Louise at Hyde Park. A week later, Hassett noted that Louise had come again to Hyde Park for dinner, “to happiness of HH who languishes in love.”
When Hopkins picked July for the wedding, the president suggested that the ceremony be held at the White House. Hopkins was delighted. “It is going to be done very quietly,” he wrote Missy, apologizing for not having told her earlier, “and I only wish you could be here. Of all the people I know I should like to have you. When I see you I will tell you how nice she is.”
To all outward appearances, the president was happy with the marriage. Louise was exactly the kind of woman he liked; she was gregarious and funny and she relished good-natured gossip. She was a gay addition to the White House “family.” Still, Roosevelt must have feared that Hopkins’ romance would make him less accessible for cocktails, meals, and conversation. It is unlikely that the president ever voiced these fears to his old friend. It was not his style to be open about his needs. Nor was it necessary, for Hopkins was equally impelled to make sure that his romance did not in any way undercut his friendship with Roosevelt. When the president asked him to continue living in the White House after the marriage, Hopkins never hesitated for a moment.
Plans were made, against Eleanor’s better judgment, to rearrange Hopkins’ suite to accommodate a wife. Eleanor’s chief concern was for Harry’s motherless daughter, ten-year-old Diana. “I’m worried about Harry’s marriage & Diana’s adjustment if they live at the White House,” Eleanor admitted to Hick, “but F.D.R. & Harry seem to think it the only way out.” In a letter to Esther Lape, Tommy recorded Eleanor’s aggravation. “I imagine Mrs. Roosevelt told you about her reaction to the Hopkins family moving into the White House—bag and baggage,” Tommy wrote. “This is with no consultation with Mrs. Roosevelt—just a statement of [Hopkins’] plans.”
For more than four years, Eleanor had religiously kept the commitment she had made to Harry when his wife died that she would give Diana a home in the White House. “She did everything that you would normally do with a child as a mother,” Diana gratefully recalled. “Everything—the manners, the clothes, the exposing one to literature, being sure the homework got done, the reading aloud, having the friends over, the laying on of the birthday party, the ‘let your friends use my bathing suit’—and boy you should’ve seen some of those little 4th grade kids running around in ER’s bathing suit—everything, everything except the arms around the body.
“I was a little kid,” Diana went on. “I was dying for a mommy and if she had opened her arms and said, ‘Come and hop on my lap,’ I would’ve been there in a minute, hugging her around the neck.” But Eleanor had told Harry at the start, Diana remembered, that she didn’t want to become too close to Diana in a motherly way, because she felt that “someday he would r
emarry and she didn’t want to step into this affection place where a new mother would come along one day and be able to fill it.”
Though Eleanor’s relationship with Harry had cooled as a consequence of his absorption with the war, she knew she could count on his idealism at critical junctures. But now she feared the influence of Louise’s lighter nature, her fascination with wealth and power, her delight in society. “Mrs. Roosevelt and Louise were polar opposites,” Diana observed. “Mrs. Roosevelt was the most civic-minded person I have ever known. Politics and idealism controlled her life and everything she did. In contrast, Louie was absolutely apolitical. She was a more feminine, fluffy type of person. She didn’t have a political cell in her body.” Eleanor’s fears were confirmed by the newspaper stories that accompanied Hopkins’ engagement. Somewhere along the way, Time magazine reported, Hopkins had doffed the reformer’s sackcloth and donned a sports jacket. “Hopkins is equally at home now in a relief office or at Newport, at a faculty dinner or in a rich friend’s box at the races, with high minded old ladies or with glamour girls.”
• • •
Nothing would prove more damaging to Eleanor and Harry’s already troubled relationship than the tangled controversy surrounding Odell Waller, a young black sharecropper in Virginia who was convicted of killing his white landlord and sentenced to die at the end of June in the electric chair. Throughout his trial, Waller resolutely maintained that the killing was in self-defense. An all-white jury deliberated only twenty minutes before finding him guilty of first-degree murder. The defense argued that Waller had not received a fair trial since all the men on the jury were selected from a list of citizens who paid a yearly poll tax, a list that excluded almost without exception the poor white and the Negro sharecropper.
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