A more dramatic report emerges from Alexander Cadogan’s diaries (September 4, 1943—Washington DC—on a subsequent visit of Churchill to the White House): “He [Churchill] talks with the president till 2:00 a.m. and consequently spends a large part of the day hurling himself violently in and out of bed, bathing at unsuitable moments, and rushing up and down the corridors in his dressing gown.”3 Obviously Cadogan disapproved, a fitting response from a senior civil servant in the British Foreign Office.
But note Hassett and Ismay’s details: FDR, crippled from the hips down, never strolled anywhere. And Churchill’s padding about the family’s quarters barefoot? Even I didn’t do that! But the impression of “something intimate” is accurate. Early on in his first visit to the White House Churchill put on his “siren suit”—a one-piece coverall zipped from the crotch to the neck. Everyone else wore the usual tie and jacket.
In the morning, before Roosevelt went to the Oval Office, Churchill might walk down the long hall in his bathrobe to exchange a few words with FDR, who might still be having his breakfast in bed, or sitting in his wheelchair shaving in front of his bathroom mirror, and while that is a useful detail, what does it signify if it does not put their relationship into the context of intimacy?
But the Hassett and Ismay remarks are useful details to illustrate a personal relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill that was far more than the accepted gestures of friendliness between two heads of government.
Incidentally, Churchill did not enjoy Roosevelt’s gin martinis and quickly reverted to his usual whiskey. I have described the scene in which once, at Hyde Park, being entertained at Cousin Laura Delano’s home, Churchill was given one of her (in)famous rum cocktails. He took one sip and promptly dumped it on the stone floor of the terrace where they were sitting.
What I perhaps most fondly recall is my grandmother describing the two men sitting in the Map Room discussing the movements of their navies around the world as resembling “two little boys enjoying themselves in the bathtub with their toy boats.” In this remark she was accurately recording the atmosphere, the informal and jocular working style of two men who, while occupying their respective positions of great power as president and prime minister, were still enjoying themselves. Gossip travels fast in the White House. By the cocktail hour, my grandmother had conveyed her amused observations of the two great men to my mother, who then passed the above story to my sister and me. We all giggled.
Everyone agrees that the relationship between these two legendary figures of the twentieth century, the prime minister of Great Britain and the president of the United States, our leaders during World War II, was extraordinary. But the question remains for historians—how genuinely personal was it? Was it just a show of collegiality between two political leaders sharing the responsibilities of wartime? Or was it, as I suggest, a personal friendship, historically quite unique among political leaders.
What I know about Churchill is all secondhand. What I know about Roosevelt is firsthand. I know my grandfather longed for the kind of rapport—both socially and at work—that he and Churchill were capable of generating when together. It came naturally to both men. They did indeed closely bond. They each had a “first-class temperament.”4 Of course their style of working together inevitably influenced their two countries’ conduct of the war.
But my speculations upon the quality of the relationship between President Roosevelt of the United States and Britain’s prime minister are impossible to verify. So let me speculate further, but in a different way. What if Lord Halifax had been selected to succeed Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1940? And, in fact, this very nearly happened. Robert Blake’s short chapter, “How Winston Churchill Became Prime Minister,” in his book on Churchill written with William Roger Louis, tells the dramatic story.
At that time, 1940, when Chamberlain’s government clearly had to resign, Churchill had but a small band of loyal followers in Parliament, and even some of these mentioned Anthony Eden as the better alternative. The majority of parliament’s Conservatives plainly preferred Lord Halifax (Chamberlain’s foreign secretary) as leader of the next wartime coalition. The Labour opposition had said it would serve in a coalition government under either Halifax or Churchill, but quietly let it be known that it preferred Halifax. So did Chamberlain, and so did King George.
The only person who didn’t prefer Halifax—was Lord Halifax. That he was in the House of Lords and would have to lead the government from that position was a problem. Chamberlain proposed that it was not an insurmountable problem in wartime. But Halifax responded by saying that the thought of being prime minister in wartime gave him “a pain in the stomach.” So it was Halifax, when meeting with Chamberlain and Churchill to settle the matter, who gave Churchill the nudge. That settled it. The king was “advised” to ask Churchill to form the next government. My guess is that Lord Halifax foresaw that he would have to give the crucial Ministry of Defense portfolio to the dynamic and articulate Churchill, who would then, and to a great degree, have represented the wartime coalition government in the Commons. This would have been intolerable for any prime minister—something that Chamberlain apparently didn’t take into consideration.
What would the political dynamics have been like if Halifax had ignored the pain in his stomach and accepted Chamberlain’s nudge? Lord Halifax would have been the prime minister of the next British government, a wartime coalition. If so, he might well have begun in 1940 to communicate regularly with the president of the United States. Probably he would have done so through the British embassy in Washington. But even if Halifax had written directly to FDR, as Churchill did, would his rather “Foreign Office style” have stimulated and amused Roosevelt in the way Churchill’s letters did? Note the personal rapport that Churchill and FDR’s letters indicated well before they met as prime minister and president at Placentia Bay, in the summer of 1941. This would not be likely to have been the case between Roosevelt and Halifax.5
Consider this. After the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941 brought America into the war, would Halifax as prime minister have quickly gone to Washington to strengthen and develop Britain’s relationship with President Roosevelt now that they were formally allies? Would he have stayed at the White House, except perhaps for a brief courtesy visit? Would he have sat up half the night gossiping and exchanging stories with his host? Would Halifax have even considered it appropriate for a genuine friendship to develop between himself and Roosevelt? My guess is: not likely! Probably he was one of those who disapproved, in principle, of Prime Minister Churchill’s chummy rapport with America’s president.
After Churchill became prime minister in 1940 he responded to FDR’s congratulatory letter by noting, tongue in cheek, his new address—and then, in the same letter, he asked bluntly for a long list of materiel, from guns to destroyers. At the end of his letter, practically as a postscript, Churchill threw in, “I am looking to you to keep that Japanese dog quiet in the Pacific.” Does that sound like an official exchange between two heads of government? Not at all! It was correspondence between two people who had already developed a confidence that enabled them to communicate with familiarity and humor. Such a style would have been, I believe, definitely “foreign” to a former foreign secretary!
Yet Halifax and Roosevelt, of course, would have made a point of getting along. A cordial working relationship would have, I expect, prevailed. Joseph Lash’s subtitle for his book on Roosevelt and Churchill is The Partnership That Saved the West. Yes, true enough. But might it not have been accomplished just as well with Lord Halifax in tandem with President Roosevelt? Well, who knows? As Roosevelt would tell the White House press corps, “No ‘iffy’ questions, please!”
The subtitle of Lash’s book makes a point. As far as conducting the war was concerned, FDR and Churchill did extraordinarily well. The dimension added by their very real friendship was more than a bonus; it sharpened and ignited both men. Their shared temperament was critical for directing major wartime deci
sions.
Still, the personal relationship between FDR and Churchill came under considerable strain as the war moved into its final stages. Inevitably, I suppose, differences arose between the two leaders, particularly concerning their views on the future of the British Empire and colonialism. Reviewing the Teheran and Yalta Conferences reveals this crucial disagreement becoming ever more prominent as postwar planning was discussed. During the war Churchill pushed for strategies that supported restabilizing the traditional British “spheres of influence” and had to be countered by FDR.6 His military strategies were often aimed at this diplomatic objective. Luckily for the president, the British General Staff often agreed with the American military commanders on wartime strategies and joined him on overriding Churchill.
Winston Churchill’s primary objective had always been to restore the British Empire to its prewar state. Stalin knew this, yet also assumed—not incorrectly—that the British Foreign Office would resume its prewar focus on anticommunism when the war ended. And so it was—with the new American president, Harry Truman, in agreement.
By the time of FDR and Churchill’s meeting in Cairo, in November of 1943, the issue had to be opened. Cadogan’s diary records it: “The prime minister has had to endure much with a good grace, including explanations from the president of other powers’ ‘higher morality.’” He quoted FDR: “Winston, you have four hundred years of acquisitive instinct in your blood and you just don’t understand how a country might not want to acquire land somewhere else if they can get it. A new period has opened in world history and you will have to adjust yourself to it.”7
The last sentence was Roosevelt’s point—and was also for Stalin’s ears—but neither Churchill nor his successor nor the Foreign Office ever willingly took it in, as the postwar United Nations debates clearly showed. Also, I see Cadogan as obviously offended by the candor with which the American president had addressed his prime minister. Myself, I view FDR’s bluntness as another expression of his personal relationship with Churchill.
At a very basic level, right from the gut, Roosevelt felt colonialism would be dead in a postwar world, particularly in places like India, the so-called jewel in the crown of the British Empire. FDR had not been shy about demonstrating his own view of colonialism; he sent two missions to India during the war, both unwelcomed by the British.
Also, he felt the French, for example, had ruthlessly exploited Indochina in the prewar period. See FDR’s letter of January 24, 1944, in which he wrote to his own secretary of state, Cordell Hull, a concise memo stating in extraordinarily clear terms his position on postwar Indochina. Roosevelt felt that Indochina should come under trusteeship within the new United Nations Trusteeship Council. Churchill didn’t voice an opinion but undoubtedly felt that both France and Portugal should have their colonies back, just as he insisted for Britain.
Churchill continued to be adamant that “not one inch” of the British Empire would be placed elsewhere. Trusteeship was FDR’s baby. Unfortunately, toward the war’s end Roosevelt had to retreat on this issue due to ill health, and his death ruled out his vision becoming the reality he had hoped for, a strong United Nations able to enforce its decisions. The sad fact is that none of the major Foreign Offices—American, British, or French—were eager to see a strong Security Council created. Britain’s foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, was behind the unsuccessful push to make the defeated France a full member of the UN Security Council as well as becoming the fourth partner in the occupying forces of a defeated Germany.
FDR knew that keeping the peace needed to be addressed effectively in the postwar era. This meant creating a stronger and more effective organization than the League of Nations had been. The wartime allies, in fact, were already referred to as “the United Nations.” FDR felt that including the Soviet Union in the project was essential if it was to succeed. Some senior people in both the State Department and the British Foreign Office had reservations about this, but Churchill felt compelled to agree with FDR.
However—and this is practically a contradiction of his agreeing with FDR—Churchill wanted the emphasis of a world organization to be at the regional level. FDR wanted a truly international organization with a strong Security Council, one dominated by the major powers. He thought it totally unrealistic to have the USSR sitting outside. And it was FDR, almost single-handedly, who obtained Stalin’s agreement at Yalta.
Toward the end, however, there was one unfortunate incident that marred the two men’s personal relationship: In his effort to win over Stalin and persuade him to support the Soviet Union becoming a member of the new United Nations organization, FDR exploited Churchill’s well-known feelings about the preservation of “the empire” and his own opposite view. Churchill was deeply hurt, wounded even, to find his friend using him to make points with Stalin on a personal level, even if it was in a jocular fashion.8 It saddens me to know that FDR died before he could make amends to Churchill for this expediency.
Although it was but a few months before the war ended when Truman and Atlee assumed the leadership of their respective governments, did we not all miss the flamboyant style of FDR and Churchill? Both the British and American people thought it natural for Roosevelt and Churchill to work well together, and to work as friends. For us they were not just our heads of government, they were leaders we can never forget.
After her husband’s death, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, “Besides the respect he [Churchill] had for my husband, which made it possible for them to work together even when they differed, he also had a real affection for him as a human being, just as my husband had for him.” She concluded that it was a “fortunate friendship.”
But the sentiment that I think says the most is one my grandfather wrote to Churchill: “It is fun to be in the same decade with you.”
16
The Effect of FDR’s Death on the Roosevelt Family
When Franklin D. Roosevelt died, what happened to my uncles, the president’s well-known sons, his daughter, my mother, and my stepfather, the president’s son-in-law? What happened to my grandmother? What happened to me? What happened to “Sistie and Buzzie”?
These are all questions I’d like to address. I can only report what I observed, or from conversations within the family. Occasionally outsiders would comment, with some of the most critical remarks coming from them—although some of the letters between my grandmother and mother were equally critical of my uncles, her brothers.
There can be no generalities except to describe the problem we all faced. The sun in our lives disappeared over the horizon. There was an afterglow for a while, but even that didn’t radiate the easy recognition we had taken for granted when FDR was president. My uncles were used to being instantly recognized as the president’s sons and my mother continued to be very conscious of how she behaved as the president’s daughter. My grandmother was “Mrs. Roosevelt,” and that was it!
My mother and stepfather’s saga will be told in detail in chapter 17 because my sister and I were interwoven into that unfolding.
What happened to my grandmother can be put into one sentence. Having made her own reputation and renown in the White House, she simply agreed to President Truman’s request that she represent the United States at the United Nations and extended her reach farther onto the world stage. It was like a second successful book built upon a previous best seller.
But what happens when the family’s most famous person dies and one is no longer automatically in their reflected light? I have described it in my book Too Close to the Sun. It is the meaning of the book’s title but not well understood.
So I begin with my uncles—what happened to them—because the forces they were exposed to, and their responses, were similar to mine. But being of an older generation, their stories, the conflicts created for them by their father’s death, are more vivid, more illuminating, than my own.
There were certainly supporters standing by to hop aboard what they perceived would be the political bandwagons for both Jam
es Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. In contrast, Elliott had less personal attention but he did gain from the reflected recognition of joining with my grandmother in her Val-Kill enterprise at Hyde Park. John was left pretty much on his own, having made it plain that he had no public service ambitions. He was “in retailing,” he insisted, not politics.
Quietly a group of informal advisers clustered around both James and Franklin Jr. Their purpose was plain; to devise the best path, which is to say, the quickest, to take their man into the White House as the successor to FDR—along with them, too, of course.
They were young, engaging, intelligent, and had outgoing personalities. And just as FDR had enjoyed being president, James, Elliott, Franklin, and John had equally enjoyed the limelight of being his sons. To a great extent that’s who they were—FDR’s sons. For James and Franklin Jr. this looked to be a good launching pad for their future national political careers.
Uncle Jimmy was the first to move in that direction, becoming elected to Congress from California in 1954. Earlier, in 1946, he had served as chair of the California State Democratic Central Committee, and in 1950 he had run for the governorship of the state but lost. The twenty-sixth district, however, was a safely Democratic one and he served not quite six full terms.
Uncle Franklin followed suit shortly afterward. I thus had two uncles in the House of Representatives. James had a good reputation for working hard and not throwing his weight around. Franklin’s reputation focused on his excessive absenteeism. (I was told that the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, was not impressed with either of them.)
My uncle Franklin, for his part, had entered electoral politics in 1949, winning a New York seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election. He ran then as a member of the Liberal Party of New York. He then kept his seat—but as a Democrat—through three more elections. In 1960, he campaigned strongly for John F. Kennedy’s nomination, and when Kennedy was elected president, he appointed Franklin as undersecretary of commerce. Afterward, leaving Washington, my uncle retired to manage his farm located not far from Hyde Park.
Upstairs at the Roosevelts' Page 19