Chapter 2
Atlantic Sojourn
THE SPRAWLING AMERICAN NAVAL FACILITIES IN NEWPORT NEWS, Virginia, lie just to the southeast of the historic settlement of Jamestown. Possessed of an almost tactile sense of history and geography, FDR had long accorded Jamestown deep significance. He first visited on July 4, 1936, roughly a year after the passage of the act that made the preservation of historic sites, buildings, and objects a national priority, and approximately four years before Jamestown itself would receive federal protection under the new law. As with Plymouth Rock and Monticello, FDR saw Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the new world, as one of the cornerstones of American democracy, so it is perhaps not surprising that he referred to it in one of the most powerful addresses he made to the American people in the year prior to the nation’s entry into the war.
The date was June 10, 1940. The occasion was a speech to the graduating class of the University of Virginia. Across the Atlantic the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, had just declared war on France, which was rapidly collapsing under the advance of the German army. Warning of the dangers that would ensue from abandoning “with deliberate contempt” the moral values to which the descendants of Jamestown and Plymouth Rock had been dedicated for more than three hundred years, FDR insisted that it was impossible for Americans to remain indifferent to “the destruction of freedom in their ancestral lands across the sea.” To do so was to hold to “the now obvious delusion” that we can safely permit “the United States to become a lone island, a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force… lodged in prison, handcuffed, hungry, and fed through the bars from day to day by the contemptuous, unpitying masters of other continents.” Those “who still talk and vote as isolationists” were fatally misguided, he said. The intuitions of democracy could not survive in the United States if the wider world was dominated by “the gods of force and hate.”1
In the months and years that followed his University of Virginia address, FDR labored hard to counter the forces of isolationism, which even after Pearl Harbor did not entirely disappear from the American political landscape. Certainly, Congress’s passage in 1943 of the Fulbright and Connelly resolutions, which favored the creation of an “international authority with power to prevent aggression,” indicated that the national legislature had come a long way from its forceful assertion of neutrality in the 1930s and its rejection of the League of Nations roughly a decade before that. But FDR still had his doubts. As he said to Robert Sherwood in October 1944, “Anyone who thinks isolationism is dead in this country is crazy. As soon as this war is over, it may well be stronger than ever.”2
FDR’s fear that the country might once again turn its back on the rest of the world grew more intense as the end of the war in Europe drew near. His fear stemmed in part from personal experience. Having served as assistant secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, FDR was an eyewitness to the rejection of US participation in the League. His anxiety was compounded by the reactions of the American people and press to actions by the British and Soviets in Greece and Poland—reactions strong enough to lead many officials in the British Foreign Office to speak of a “crisis” in Anglo-American relations.3
IT WAS WITH ALL THIS IN MIND THAT ON MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 1945, FDR boarded the special overnight train that would take him to Virginia. This would be the first leg of his final overseas journey, during which he would travel nearly fourteen thousand miles—more than half the circumference of the earth. He’d first take a ship across the Atlantic and through the still treacherous Mediterranean. Then he’d fly from Malta, his first port of call, to the Saki airfield on the western edge of the Crimean peninsula. His final destination, Yalta, summer home of the tsars, could be reached only by driving over the largely unpaved roads that snaked from the steppe-like terrain surrounding the airport at Saki, up past the craggy 5,000-foot summit of Mount Roman-Kosh and down the steep, southern-facing slopes of the remote yet beautiful Crimean range that borders the Black Sea to the Livadia Palace, his home for the duration of the conference. It was there, in that distant corner of territory that lay astride the vast Eurasian continent Hitler had so desperately tried to conquer, that the critical mission of securing the future of the United Nations—and FDR’s place in history—would be made or broken.4
The task of transporting a frail paraplegic halfway around the world fell to FDR’s family and staff. Both Dr. Ross McIntire and Dr. Howard Bruenn expressed concern about the physical toll the trip would take. So, too, did Eleanor Roosevelt, who noted that her husband appeared “far from well” in the days following his inauguration. Yet there were those, including FDR himself, who professed that a long sea voyage might be just what the president needed to restore his characteristic vitality. In his quieter moments, however, including several conversations with Daisy, FDR admitted that the thought of the trip wearied him.5
Accompanying the president on his journey were Admiral William D. Leahy, James F. Byrnes, Edward J. Flynn, FDR’s naval aide Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, General Edwin “Pa” Watson, Drs. McIntire and Bruenn, FDR’s valet Arthur Prettyman, twenty members of the Secret Service, and the entire contingent of the much-loved “Potomac Stewards.” These were the Filipino naval chefs and stewards of the Presidential Yacht, who had such a knack for anticipating FDR’s needs that he insisted on bringing them with him whenever he traveled. General George Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with Harry Hopkins, Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Charles Bohlen, and other representatives from the State Department would rendezvous with the presidential party at Malta. Perhaps the most important passenger besides the president was Anna, whose charge was to protect FDR’s privacy and to help him through the more stressful times.6
Like her mother, Anna was becoming something of a policy adviser—for instance, commenting on and helping to draft her father’s public pronouncements. One result of her increased profile within the president’s inner circle was a new tension between Anna and Eleanor—a tension that on this occasion was exacerbated by Eleanor’s disappointment over not being the one invited to join Franklin on his journey to Yalta, even after she had asked him directly if she could. FDR demurred, saying that her presence might create “difficulties,” since everyone would feel they had to pay attention to her. As an alternative, FDR suggested Anna. She was quite anxious to go, and was clearly envious of her brothers, who had accompanied their father to a number of the major wartime summit meetings. Anna was also well aware that Churchill’s daughters had often joined him on his wartime travels. Why should she be denied the same experience, especially once she learned that Sarah Churchill would be going to Yalta?7
FDR outbound from Norfolk to Yalta
On the morning the president and his party made their way up the gangplank to the deck of the USS Quincy, the weather was brisk. A strong wind from the northwest prevented the heavy cruiser from reaching full speed for about fifty minutes. As the ship made its way past Hampton Roads and out beyond the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to the open Atlantic, three escort destroyers formed an anti-submarine screen ahead of the Quincy, while the light cruiser USS Springfield sailed behind. Overhead, a squadron of P-38 fighters provided air cover.8
Despite the high seas and inclement weather, FDR spent the first hour of the voyage taking in the sights as the ship passed the busy harbor and the bay beyond. (To facilitate FDR’s movement between decks, two special elevators had been installed on the Quincy.) At approximately 1:15 p.m., the task force increased the ship’s speed to 22.5 knots and started to zigzag—a standard anti-submarine maneuver. Although it was possible for the Quincy to receive messages, the U-boat threat also made it necessary for the task force to maintain radio silence. Hence, any outbound communication with Washington, London, and Moscow was possible only when one of the escorting ships broke away from the group to send a message.9
Gloriously cut off from the world, FDR settled into a day-to-day rout
ine that included informal conversations with Admiral Leahy about the agenda for the coming conference, midday and evening meals taken in the company of the rest of his immediate party, and an after-dinner movie in Anna’s quarters. Aside from his talks with Admiral Leahy, which did not extend beyond an hour or so, and the occasional dinner conversation during which the conference was brought up, he mostly avoided lengthy discussions or formal meetings. Instead, he concentrated on getting as much rest as possible.10
Still, even in the middle of the Atlantic, it was not entirely possible to escape the exigencies of his job. On Wednesday, January 24, the president received word of a strike among the workers of the Bingham and Garfield Railroad, which served as a vital link between the massive open-pit copper mine at Bingham Canyon, Utah, and the mine’s smelters roughly twenty miles distant. Given that copper was crucial to the manufacture of ammunition and other critical war materials, a strike was out of the question. Hence, amid a driving rain and rough seas, FDR ordered the destroyer Satterlee to break formation to transmit an urgent radio message to Washington, informing the War Department of his approval of an Executive Order authorizing the US Army to take over the railroad.11
Technically speaking, it was James Byrnes, in his capacity as director of war mobilization, who conveyed the message to Washington about the president’s order—a somewhat ironic development given Byrnes’s earlier insistence that instead of accompanying the president to Yalta it would be better for him to remain in Washington to handle just such an emergency. As a man of considerable ambition and pride, Byrnes assumed that FDR would take full advantage of his time at sea to consult with him on the host of political and economic issues facing the nation after the war. But much to Byrnes’s chagrin, FDR did not avail himself of this opportunity.12
Initially, Byrnes believed the president’s tendency “to stay in his cabin most of the time” was due to a worsening cold that FDR seemed to have contracted at the moment of their departure. But the more Byrnes observed the president, the more he feared that FDR’s appearance reflected an underlying condition. Byrnes raised his concerns with Anna and Dr. McIntire, both of whom assured him that the president did have a sinus infection and a cold—but, as Anna put it, “He was not really ill.”13
Byrnes was not the only person on board who was alarmed at FDR’s poor appearance. FDR’s longtime political associate Edward J. Flynn also expressed concern, deeming the president’s physical condition “very bad.” Indeed, Flynn was “shocked at the toll that had been taken [on FDR] by years of labor.” At Yalta, his concern would be transformed into amazement when he noted FDR’s ability, through “a supreme effort of will,” to become “completely alive and alert to what was going on.”14
That FDR was completely “alive and alert” to the larger issues at stake can be seen in the fact of Flynn’s presence itself. FDR’s decision to bring Flynn—a veteran of New York City machine politics and a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee—to a conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin was a puzzle to the others in the party. The mystery surrounding Flynn’s mission was exacerbated by the secrecy FDR demanded, which included the requirement that Flynn not even fill out a passport application before their departure—a decision Flynn found more and more disconcerting as the days at sea went by. This soon became a source of great amusement for FDR; he brushed off Flynn’s concerns and took great delight in drafting an unofficial passport in the form of Letter Signed by the President, to which Flynn attached a photo of himself taken by the ship’s photographer.15
In fact, FDR’s lighthearted demeanor masked the entirely serious reason he had invited Flynn to the conference: as a Catholic politician in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city, Flynn knew a good deal about how to bring a diverse group of constituents together around a common set of values. Always thinking about the future, and well aware that the issue of religious freedom was one of the key points of domestic opposition to the Roosevelt administration’s decision to recognize the “godless” Soviet Union in 1933, FDR had asked Flynn to attend the summit in the hope that he would be able to discuss this important question with both Stalin and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. FDR was also convinced, he told Flynn, that there could never be a permanent peace unless the large Catholic populations in Poland, Lithuania, and the Balkans were permitted to practice their faith freely: hence he believed that the question of religious freedom would no doubt remain an important factor in whether the American public retained its positive wartime attitude toward the Soviets—an attitude that was already fraying as Moscow’s intentions in Poland became clearer. All of this was especially disquieting to the Catholic hierarchy in America, whose bishops had sent a vigorously worded letter to FDR in December 1944 arguing that “a strong stand for justice in our relations with the Soviet Union is a postulate for our winning of the peace and for setting up an international organization which will command the support of our people.”16
Mulling all this on board the Quincy, FDR decided that Flynn should not only meet with Stalin and his foreign secretary at Yalta but continue on to Moscow for further discussions, and that he should subsequently travel to Rome in an effort to encourage Pope Pius XII to seek an improvement in relations between the Holy See and the Soviet Union. The latter would not be an easy task given the pope’s staunch anti-communism and unequivocal support of the London Polish Exile Government with whom the Soviets had broken off relations.17
AS FDR TRIED HIS BEST TO RECOVER HIS STRENGTH IN HIS CABIN, Anna made the most of this highly unusual “cruise.” Part of her delight in the voyage was the result of her being granted the admiral’s quarters, which were located next to her father’s and included a bedroom, bath, and sitting room. Given that Admiral Leahy was aboard, Anna’s lodgings represented a breach of protocol, necessitated not only by her desire to remain close to her father but also by the fact that Captain Elliott Senn thought it inappropriate to lodge her on the lower decks where the men often ran around in their skivvies!18
By the third day out, Thursday, January 25, the task force was approaching the island of Bermuda, which allowed for an exchange of escort destroyers, as the smaller vessels could not hold enough fuel to complete the crossing. The exchange of ships also afforded the Quincy the opportunity to transfer to one of its sister ships a “mail pouch” that, once it reached Bermuda, would then be flown by air to Washington. The arrival of the new escorts would also mean that for the first time since their departure from Virginia, FDR and Anna would be able to receive mail.
Curious about the means by which the mail pouch would be transferred in such high seas, Anna asked the officer in charge if she could observe the procedure. Not one to be outdone by his daughter, FDR insisted “that he would like to watch, too!” For a man in a wheelchair, though, such a request is easier said than done. The handover would take place at the stern of the nearly 700-foot-long Quincy, and knowing FDR’s sensitivity to being seen in public in his wheelchair, his naval aide, Vice Admiral Brown, cautioned Anna that he did not think “the boss would like to be watched by all the gun crews and other members of the ship’s party.”
“This was no matter,” Anna argued, “as long as we ignore this and tell him that he will not be under the gaze of the entire crew but just a few sailors manning the gun emplacements.” Equipped with this fallacious argument, she and Brown wheeled FDR to the stern. Anna immediately began to wonder if she had made a huge mistake. Her father’s wheelchair, which he himself had designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, amounted to little more than a narrow kitchen chair with wheels attached. It had no arms and no brakes to lock it into place. The Quincy, virtually dead in the water, pitched wildly while FDR clung to the wire railing “for dear life,” watching in fascination as the mail was placed into an empty torpedo canister attached to a long rope and then dropped over the stern. Meanwhile, on board the destroyer, a small group of sailors perched on the bow flung a grappling hook forward to try to catch the canister, not securing
it until the sixth attempt.19
The exchange of mail brought the first in a series of “disconcerting” messages that FDR received from Winston Churchill while crossing the Atlantic. These included a note from Harry Hopkins, who had been sent to London in advance of the Yalta conference to mollify Churchill, still fuming at Secretary Stettinius’s earlier criticism of British policy in Greece and Italy. In the letter, Hopkins reported that Churchill had expressed the opinion that “ten years of research… could not have found a worse place in the world” to hold the conference than Yalta. The prime minister nevertheless felt they could “survive” the experience “by bringing an adequate supply of whiskey,” which he understood is “good for typhus and deadly on lice which thrive in those parts.”20
The second message, a more serious one, arrived by wire on January 26. In it Churchill conveyed his “great concern” regarding the “extreme difficulty” involved in reaching Yalta via mountain roads. Indeed, he was compelled to advise that two attempts made by a combined group of British and American officers “resulted in failure to pass mountainous track in blizzard,” with one British officer describing the journey as “a most terrifying experience.”21
Churchill’s cables, coupled with the fact that the American delegation had not yet received word from the US advance team, sparked considerable discussion about what sorts of conditions they would confront once they reached the Crimea. Yet FDR remained confident that all would be well. He tended to brush off many of Churchill’s concerns out of suspicion that the prime minister was still annoyed at Stalin’s refusal to meet somewhere in the much more accessible—and warmer—Mediterranean.22
The Last 100 Days Page 5