Seeing this quiet, friendly old man burst into anger left a disturbing impression on some in the American contingent. “Rather embarrassing to see this great man who obviously was not mentally himself,” commented one of King’s staffers who watched him from the periphery. “Mentally upset, let’s put it that way.”53
But once he made himself ready for posterity, the peevish old man disappeared and the broad smile returned. He held a cigarette in his left hand and joked with Stalin and Churchill as cameramen wheeled their spools and photographers snapped, advanced film, and snapped again.
When the session was over, the group, less Roosevelt, moved on. Churchill, a black shapka covering his bald head, left with Stalin, joking together amidst a crowd of high-ranking brass. Roosevelt, momentarily left behind in his chair, waited patiently for his wheelchair and valet to arrive.
“The patio was deserted,” remembered one naval staffer. “It was very sad, and you were embarrassed for him. You knew that he was embarrassed; he realized his condition. I think all the people who were close to him did.”54
• • •
As the American warlords drifted back to Washington, they wondered whether the agreements on Poland, Soviet ports, or the United Nations organization would hold. Roosevelt could only hope that the Russian dictator was trustworthy and powerful enough to ensure that the foundations of peace laid at Yalta would carry long into the postwar years. He knew Stalin might not grant the liberated nations full democratic rights, and he foresaw resistance by Churchill to self-determination of Britain’s imperial colonies.
But, as he had told Leahy, “It’s the best I can do.”
FIFTY-ONE
“O CAPTAIN”
WHEN MARSHALL RETURNED TO HIS CLEAN MAHOGANY DESK ON THE PENtagon’s E Ring, he had not fully recovered from his three-week, 14,000-mile odyssey to Yalta and back. He was tired and felt much like Alice after a trip down the rabbit hole, but the Army’s domestic problems would not wait for him to rest.
“Making war in a democracy is not a bed of roses,” he wrote Eisenhower on March 6, after a week of fending off backseat drivers in the press and on Capitol Hill. “We are under attack of course for the inadequacy of our winter clothing and now for the charge that 75 percent of our material is inferior to that of the Germans. They grant that the jeep and the Garand rifle are all right but everything else is wrong.” Senator Robert Taft lambasted the War Department for casting eighteen-year-olds into battle with too little training, while MacArthur complained of a shortage of fit combat troops in his theater.1
Eisenhower was sympathetic. “Misery loves company,” he replied. “Sometimes when I get tired of trying to arrange the blankets smoothly over several prima donnas in the same bed I think that no one person in the world can have so many illogical problems. I read about your struggles concerning eighteen year old men in combat, and about the criticism of our equipment, and went right back to work with a grin.”2
•
The final strategic debate on Germany bubbled up in a witches’ brew of clashing visions. When General Bradley’s First Army captured the Ludendorff railroad bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen on March 9, Eisenhower decided to push Bradley’s First and Third Armies through central Germany, where they would link up with the Red Army. Montgomery would protect Bradley’s left flank, just as Bradley had guarded Montgomery’s right in earlier campaigns. Eisenhower’s plan left Germany east of the Elbe, including Berlin, to the tender mercies of the Red Army.3
As Ike saw it, Berlin was so bombed, shelled, surrounded, and gutted that it no longer held military significance. The city also lay deep within the postwar Soviet occupation zone. Berlin’s capture might cost 100,000 casualties, and Eisenhower saw no reason to spend Allied lives for a piece of real estate he would have to hand over to Stalin when the shooting stopped. The original directive from the Combined Chiefs instructed him to destroy Germany’s armed forces, not capture any particular city. That order left the question of Berlin in the supreme commander’s hands, and the supreme commander believed the German capital was not a necessary target.4
Eisenhower’s strategy also placed his old classmate, the quiet Omar Bradley, on the war’s center stage. That rubbed Churchill and Montgomery the wrong way—Churchill, because the Allies were forsaking Berlin, and Montgomery, because the Allies were forsaking Montgomery. The main thrust, both argued, should be through Germany’s northern plains, from Hamburg to the German capital.5
To the prime minister, the Soviets could not be permitted to take Berlin. He wrote to Roosevelt on March 30, “Will not their impression that they have been the overwhelming contributor to our common victory be unduly imprinted in their minds, and may this not lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future? I therefore consider that from a political standpoint we should march as far into Germany as possible and that should Berlin be in our grasp, we should certainly take it.”6
Eisenhower was not blind to the political significance of the German capital. Every man in his army, from private to general, had remarked at one time or other that the road home goes through Berlin. “I am the first to admit that a war is waged in pursuance of political aims,” he wrote Marshall, and he promised to adjust his plans if the Combined Chiefs ordered him to take Berlin. But in absence of new and specific orders, he would bypass Berlin and send his men to destroy the enemy wherever the enemy could be found.7
He worried that he might find them in the south, near the Bavarian Alps, the cradle of Nazism. Rumors had been making the rounds at Army intelligence of a “National Redoubt,” where hard-core Nazis would wage a guerrilla war until Hitler resurrected the Reich. Rooting them out of the mountainous region would take years, perhaps decades. Bradley, whose concerns of a redoubt coincided with his desire to give Hodges and Patton a big role in the final campaign, suggested making a major push toward Bavaria, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Eisenhower agreed, and he ordered Bradley to send Hodges east, to the Elbe River, and Patton southeast toward Prague.8
Marshall again backed Eisenhower’s strategy. While he personally doubted the existence of a “National Redoubt,” he felt there was no reason to send Americans to die for Berlin. Unlike Churchill, who even then envisioned an “iron curtain” falling across Europe, Marshall’s eye had already turned to Japan and the redeployment of divisions to the Far East. Central Germany was a logical region in which to bag the bulk of the German Army, and if that left Monty and Churchill out in the cold, he had no sympathy.9
•
While Marshall saw a strictly military problem—the task of finishing off Germany and arraying his forces against Japan—Roosevelt confronted an old political problem that was clawing its way out of the grave. Capitalists and communists had been enemies since the Bolsheviks took power in 1917. Red October begat a red scare that had permeated America from Washington to the heartland. In 1919, the United States had sent troops to aid White Russians against the Bolsheviks, and Washington had no diplomatic ties to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1933, when a first-term President Roosevelt appointed an ambassador to Moscow. It was not until Hitler turned east in 1941 that an alliance of necessity was born.
With every step toward Berlin, the necessity cementing that alliance receded. Dread of Hitler gave way to a surge of confidence, and the two sides began to wonder how far either could trust the other.
Minor mistakes could start brushfires. A cable Marshall sent to General Antonov advising of a German counterattack forming near Lodz, for instance, turned out to be a false alarm. A red-faced Marshall received a condescending reply from Antonov telling him that his report was probably German misinformation “to bluff both Anglo-American and Soviet Headquarters and divert the attention of the Soviet High Command from the area where the Germans were mounting their main offensive.”10
Peace feelers in the Mediterranean stirred a simmering pot of distrust. In March,
SS General Karl Wolff, an alleged representative of Field Marshal Kesselring, contacted the western Allies through Swiss intermediaries to discuss an armistice. Before any agreement could be explored, the Allies informed the Swiss that talks in Bern would be needed to verify Wolff’s credentials as a peace emissary, which looked pretty thin in light of his Schutzstaffel affiliation.11
Stalin was not about to let peace break out in Italy—a peace freeing Germany to throw men at the Russian front. When FDR and Churchill informed him of the overtures, Molotov, replying for Stalin, demanded the presence of a Soviet at any discussions. Molotov’s reply, wrote Stimson, “bodes evil in the coming difficulties of the postwar scene.”12
To assuage Stalin’s concerns, on April 1 FDR penned a letter intended to reassure the dictator. “No negotiations of surrender have been entered into,” he wrote. “If there should be any negotiations, they will be conducted at Caserta with your representatives present throughout.” The meeting in Bern, he emphasized, was simply to establish who was authorized to conduct negotiations on behalf of the Wehrmacht. 13
“You affirm that so far no negotiations have been entered into. Apparently you are not fully informed,” Stalin replied two days later. He said his sources “do not have any doubts that the negotiations have taken place and that they have ended in an agreement with the Germans, on the basis of which the German commander on the Western Front, Marshal Kesselring, has agreed to open the front and permit the Anglo-American troops to advance to the East, and the Anglo-Americans have promised in return to ease for the Germans the peace terms.” This treaty, Stalin warned, “can in no way serve the cause of preservation or the strengthening of trust between our countries.” Splashing gasoline on the fire, he added, “What we have at the moment is that the Germans on the Western Front have in fact ceased the war against Britain and America. At the same time they continue the war against Russia.”14
Roosevelt passed Stalin’s letter to Leahy, who forwarded it to Marshall to draft a reply. Marshall prepared an appropriately indignant letter that concluded, “It would be one of the great tragedies of history if at the very moment of the victory, now within our grasp, such distrust, such lack of faith should prejudice the entire undertaking after the colossal losses of life, materiel and treasure involved. Frankly, I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment toward your informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentations of my actions or those of my trusted subordinates.”15
Marshall sent the draft to Stimson and Leahy. From Leahy it went to Roosevelt, who read it amid the loblolly pines of Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt approved the letter and sent it to Stalin through his ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman.16
Stalin’s reply was softer, but still cutting. He assured FDR that his informants were reliable, and to Marshall’s embarrassment, he contrasted his information to General Marshall’s letter to General Antonov warning of the phantom counterattack toward Lodz.17
More than anything else, Roosevelt wanted to keep the momentum building toward a United Nations charter meeting, and he was not about to let a squabble in Italy derail the consensus he had forged at Yalta. He prepared a conciliatory missive to Stalin, thanking him for a frank exchange of views and concluding, “There must not be mutual distrust, and minor misunderstandings of this character should not arise in the future.” He sent the message to Harriman in Moscow, with instructions to pass it on to Stalin.
Like most Americans in Moscow, Harriman had grown frustrated by Soviet arrogance, to say nothing of the ingratitude toward the fortune America was spending to supply the Red Army. When he received the president’s conciliatory cable, Harriman asked Roosevelt to edit it. He requested that the president eliminate the word “minor” before “misunderstandings,” so as not to downplay the seriousness of Stalin’s charges. He remarked to Roosevelt, “I must confess that the misunderstanding appeared to me to be of a major character.”
Harriman sent his message to the Map Room, which forwarded it to Roosevelt at Warm Springs in the early-morning hours of April 12. Admiral Leahy, in Washington, knew Roosevelt wanted to keep bad blood from poisoning the United Nations conference, and drafted a suggested reply from the president to Harriman that concluded, “I do not wish to delete the word ‘minor’ as it is my desire to consider the Bern misunderstanding a minor incident.”18
Roosevelt’s approval of Leahy’s message, downplaying the disagreement among friends, arrived at the White House at 1:06 p.m.
•
As March gave way to April, a battered Franklin Roosevelt parsed out his fading energies on the postwar peace. He had spent seven years managing the clinic of Dr. New Deal, and another five in the office of Dr. Win-the-War. Having served longer than any of his predecessors, he was willing to push the old body one more time, to get the United Nations off the ground before hanging up his spurs.
The political doctor took immense satisfaction in the clinical signs of his patient’s robust health: unemployment was nil, inflation had not mushroomed, returning veterans would enjoy unprecedented educational and housing benefits, and America had displaced Europe as the world’s manufacturing center. Negro soldiers fought alongside white soldiers in a few places, many factories had opened their doors to women and blacks, and the fundamental reforms of the New Deal had survived the draft, the war, and rationing. And the crown jewel of his foreign ambitions, the United Nations conference, would open in San Francisco on April 25.
Twelve years at the helm had taken a ghastly toll, for Franklin Roosevelt had emerged from nearly three and a half years of war gaunt, tired, and thin. He had lost twenty-five pounds in recent months, and his clothes sagged on his wiry frame. In meetings, his eyes would glaze and his jaw would droop. He lost interest in driving his Ford or mixing drinks during Children’s Hour, his evening cocktail time. After his doctors recorded his blood pressure at 260 over 150, they banned him from swimming, which removed him another step from the vibrant, active yachtsman who had nothing to fear but fear itself.
His mind still carried a bright flame that blazed with intensity from time to time, but the flame now flickered. In late March Bill Hassett, Roosevelt’s secretary, told Dr. Bruenn, “He is slipping away from us, and no earthly powers can keep him here.”19
But FDR had no intention of slipping away, and he knew of places that could restore his body. Perhaps, he thought, a short vacation to Warm Springs would do him some good.
• • •
“Come right in,” Roosevelt said, nodding to the dark-haired woman cradling a palette, paintbrushes, and pad.
Lucy Mercer Rutherford and Elizabeth Shoumatoff stepped inside Roosevelt’s rustic cottage amid the pines of Warm Springs. The two women—Roosevelt’s former lover and her artist friend—waited with FDR in the small living room as he finished his paperwork. His head was bent, and he sat in a leather-backed chair over a paper-strewn card table, his feet casually propped on a short wicker stool.
Shoumatoff set up her easel and watched the president intently as he tended his paper garden: a reply to Ambassador Harriman, edits to his United Nations speech, a bill to extend the Commodity Credit Corporation, appointments of small-time postmasters. He signed his name on official documents with a heavy stroke of a fountain pen that was air-dried, never blotted. Seeing the artist waiting, he quipped with an apologetic grin, “I have to stay here until my laundry dries.”20
His secretary, Bill Hassett, removed the laundry and spread the papers on nearby tables to dry. Hassett would check the signatures and ensure that all documents were properly dated: April 12, 1945.
In his gray suit and crimson tie, Roosevelt looked surprisingly well to Shoumatoff. His color was good—a feature she drew out in her painting—and he was looking forward to a hot bowl of Brunswick stew at an afternoon barbecue to be thrown for him by the mayor of Warm Springs.
But Shoumatoff had an odd feeling. She offered to come back later, as the president was obvi
ously busy, but Roosevelt wouldn’t hear of it. He’d had a slight headache that morning and a stiff neck, but otherwise he felt fine.21
She began painting, asking him to turn his head this way and that to capture different angles of the long, famous face. In her portrait, the business suit would be cloaked with a Navy cape, the kind he had worn at Yalta, so she concentrated her brushstrokes on his face. The room grew quiet as everyone drifted off to lunch except Shoumatoff, cousin Daisy Suckley, who crocheted on the sofa, Laura “Polly” Delano, Lucy, and Fala.22
As Shoumatoff worked through her outline—the high cheekbones, broad shoulders, thick fingers holding a roll of papers—she chatted with Roosevelt, hoping her eye would catch some interesting aspect of his face. About one o’clock, he glanced at his watch and remarked, “We’ve got fifteen minutes more.”23
She managed to complete a rough outline of the suit and a more detailed rendition of the blue eyes, the dark eyebrows, the somber, almost haunting expression. A picture of a figure staring up from a hazy dream, a man determined to walk to the end of some predestined line.24
Roosevelt returned to his work while Shoumatoff’s brush flicked over the paper. Their cook, Irineo Esperancilla, known to the family as Joe the Filipino, set the table for lunch.
About 1:15 Roosevelt’s head craned forward and his hands fumbled in his lap. Daisy walked over from the sofa and stooped below his face. When she asked him if he had dropped his cigarette, he put his left hand to the back of his skull and said, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.”25
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