Now, four years later, after countless hours of strenuous effort and practice, FDR made his way to the podium during the 1928 convention using the gait the public soon became so familiar with—swinging each braced leg forward one at a time, steadied by a cane and the arm of his son, head up, smiling and laughing as if he were out for a leisurely afternoon stroll.
The truth, of course, was that this exercise in “walking” took tremendous effort and concentration, and was also highly nerve-racking, as an unexpected fall could have shattered the entire illusion—and perhaps his political career along with it. But as the Washington Post reported that day in 1928, FDR was “now sufficiently recovered from his physical disability to walk,” making his way to the podium “in a perfect thunder of cheering… supported only by the arm of his tall, slender son Elliott.”18
Having convinced the press and public that he had regained the use of his legs, and was no longer “a paraplegic” as the Chicago Daily Tribune described him in 1924, FDR went on with his career as if this was in fact true. He rarely discussed his disability, even with those closest to him, and he used his wheelchair only to get from one point to another and refused to be photographed in it. He also seems to have spent much of his life believing that somehow, someway, he might still regain the ability to stand on his own. FDR never thought of himself as disabled, and—despite his association with efforts to eradicate polio, including the famous “March of Dimes”—almost never mentioned his own encounter with the disease in public.19
For all of these reasons, perhaps the most remarkable odyssey the president took in the spring of 1945 was not his trip to Yalta but his journey down the center aisle of the US House of Representatives on the morning of March 1, where, in full view of the packed and wildly cheering chamber, he made his way in his wheelchair.20 No longer willing to use the painful and cumbersome braces that made it possible for him “to stand” at the Speaker’s Podium, FDR decided instead to deliver his speech from the Well of the House, on the actual floor, in front of the Rostrum, using a small table and chair placed there for this purpose.
Watching this remarkable scene from the gallery above, as her husband was slowly wheeled forward from the back of the House while the crowd, now standing on its feet, continued to applaud, Eleanor could not help but reflect on the many long years FDR had struggled to regain the full use of his legs: his willingness to try any number of therapies, the endless exercise and attempts to swim his way back to health, and his absolute refusal to give up hope. Now, it was as if he had finally come to accept “a certain degree of invalidism.” He was not, as he told a 1928 campaign audience, a man who had come “down with infantile paralysis,” and who, thanks to the “very best kind of care,” was now back on his feet. Instead, he was someone who had triumphed over his disability in ways that had nothing to do with the fact that he could not—and never would be able to—walk or stand on his own.21
After maneuvering himself out of his wheelchair and into the upholstered chair behind a table packed with microphones (again, in full view of the assembled), FDR asked his audience to “pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what it is I want to say.” He then made only the second direct public reference to his disability since 1928: “But I know that you will realize that it makes it a lot easier for me in not having to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs; and also because of the fact that I have just completed a fourteen-thousand-mile trip.” Frances Perkins found this “casual, debonair” reference to his disability, “made without self-pity or strain,” deeply moving. Choking up, she, like Eleanor, realized that what FDR was admitting—not only to the audience but to himself—was “You see, I am a crippled man.”22
To further applause, FDR said “that it was good to be home,” and went on to explain why he had gone to Yalta and why he had made the unprecedented decision to give a “personal report” to the members of Congress and also to the American people. There were two main purposes behind the Crimea conference: first, to bring about the defeat of Germany “with the greatest possible speed” and, second, to build “an international accord” that would bring order and security to the world after the chaos of war and “some assurance of a lasting peace among the nations of the world.” He reviewed many of the issues that had been touched upon at Yalta, stressing, as Byrnes did, the postwar treatment of “liberated areas.” This included areas where “political confusion and unrest—as in Greece or in Poland or in Yugoslavia”—had led the world’s powers toward creating “spheres of influence” that he regarded as “incompatible with the basic principles of international collaboration.”
FDR addressing Congress on the Yalta accords from a seated position, after being pushed to the front of the House of Representatives in his wheelchair, March 1, 1945. (Getty Images)
FDR refused to “place the blame” for this development on any one nation, claiming it was almost inevitable—“unless the major powers of the world continue to work together.” It was in part to secure such collaboration and “settle the matter of liberated areas” that the Big Three met in Crimea. As FDR put it, thanks to this effort the Allies now agreed that the political and economic problems of the territories freed from Nazi conquest are a “joint responsibility.”
FDR held up Poland as the prime example of how “joint action… by the three powers” in a liberated area should work—clearly linking the settlement over Poland to the principles articulated in the broader declaration. He acknowledged that coming to a final decision about a given territory required compromise. “We shall not always have ideal answers or solutions to complicated international problems, even though we are determined continuously to strive toward that ideal.” But he insisted that the three powers’ objectives regarding Poland were “to help create a strong, independent and prosperous nation.” He reiterated this point by issuing what amounted to both a warning to Russia and a reassurance to the Polish-American community. “That is the thing we must always remember,” he said, “those words, agreed to by Russia, by Britain and by the United States: the objective of making Poland a strong, independent, and prosperous nation, with a government ultimately to be selected by the Polish people themselves.”
FDR then moved on to the United Nations and the upcoming San Francisco conference, stressing the need to establish what he referred to as “the structure of world peace.” This, he insisted, “cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one Nation.” Nor, as he had cautioned in his January State of the Union address, was it likely to be “a structure of complete perfection at first.” But, he went on, “it can be a peace—and it will be a peace—based on the sound and just principles of the Atlantic Charter—on the concept of the dignity of the human being—and on the guarantees of tolerance and freedom of religious worship.”
To achieve this goal, FDR urged the American people to recognize that the world was now much smaller and that “responsibility for political conditions thousands of miles away can no longer be avoided by this great Nation.” The public and Congress had the chance to embrace this new world through their support for the establishment of the United Nations. In this sense Yalta was a turning point, but only if the United States continued to work toward the goals that FDR had expressed there. “There can be no middle ground here,” he cautioned. “We shall have to take the responsibility for world collaboration, or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict.”
FDR closed on a note of both caution and hope. “Twenty-five years ago,” he said, “American fighting men looked to the statesmen of the world to finish the work of peace for which they fought and suffered. We failed them then. We cannot fail them again, and expect the world again to survive.”
At the very end of the speech he made a plea to the American people to commit themselves to “the beginnings of a permanent structure of peace upon which we can begin to build, under God, that better world in which our children and grandchildren—yours and mine,
the children and grandchildren of the whole world—must live, and can live.”23
FDR’s use of the word beginnings is telling, for it shows that FDR did not see Yalta—as later generations still do—as a final settlement for Poland and other parts of Europe. Instead, he viewed it as a starting point, as a time when the American people in collaboration—not confrontation—with their wartime Allies would inaugurate the work toward that permanent structure of peace upon which, he believed, the fate of the world now rested. To FDR, the most critical moment had not passed, but lay in the future.
SAMUEL ROSENMAN, WHO TRAVELED WITH FDR BACK TO THE WHITE House, was of course pleased with the content of the speech. But he was less pleased with FDR’s “halting, ineffective manner of delivery,” and even more upset over the many extemporaneous remarks the president had inserted into the address. “It was quite obvious that the great fighting eloquence and oratory that had distinguished him in his campaign only four months before were lacking,” he later reflected. Indeed, he could not help but feel that “the crushing effect of twelve years of the Presidency was beginning to be more and more evident.”24
Nor was Rosenman the only person to observe FDR’s fatigue. In an article titled “Armchair Speech Stirs Comment on Roosevelt’s Health,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that “for the first time since he became President, Mr. Roosevelt permitted himself to be wheeled into the house to address the joint session.” The article also quoted one senator’s approval of the president’s decision to deliver the speech while seated: he “means so much to the nation that he ought to conserve his strength anyway he can.” But others present remarked that the president seemed “noticeably tired” and that his voice “did not seem to have the resilience it once did.”25
In fact, rumors about FDR’s health had begun to circulate before his return from abroad. On February 24, the semi-official Vatican News Service reported that the president had “hurriedly left” the summit meeting “due to the fact that the condition of his health is not too good.” Other sources reported that the president was fine, but in need of a rest. To counter all of the talk, Dr. McIntire and the White House Press Office once again went on the offensive. In an article published on the same morning that FDR gave his speech, the New York Times wrote that companions of the president on his trip “were unanimous… in the view that except for a slight cold on his outward journey, his health was excellent.” Dr. McIntire was quoted as saying that “in spite of long sessions of hard work the President stood up well under the strain,” while FDR’s newly appointed press secretary, Jonathan Daniels, swore that the president was in “great shape.”26
Not everyone within the Roosevelt administration was adhering to the party line. Harold Ickes informed John Boettiger that James Byrnes, perhaps still angry that he had not been chosen to serve as FDR’s running mate in the 1944 election, had been spreading the word that “the President’s health is bad, or at least not good.” This comment led the president’s son-in-law to remark to Ickes—in keeping with Anna’s instructions—that he had received “several letters from Anna” that spoke “of her father being in good health.”27 FDR himself got into the act, mentioning, in one of his ad-libbed remarks during the Yalta address, that he had returned from his trip “refreshed and inspired” and was “not ill for a second”—that is, until he returned to Washington where he heard “all of the rumors” that had spread in his absence.
HIS SPEECH OVER, FDR HEADED BACK TO THE OVAL OFFICE. IN ADDITION to the enormous backlog of paperwork, there were many visitors all pressing to see him. In the absence of General Watson, the task of setting FDR’s appointments calendar now fell to William Hassett, assisted by Jonathan Daniels, and especially Anna, who, shortly after FDR’s return, pulled Daniels aside to inform him that Dr. Bruenn was insisting that her father “greatly restrict his activities.” Anna asserted that “the President should see very few people” and suggested that Daniels should talk to those who wished to see FDR, and then pass on any relevant messages to Anna and her husband for decision. They hoped not to burden the president “with anything but the greatest matters.”28
An experienced Washington insider, Daniels was highly skeptical of Anna’s “plan,” which in his view amounted to something akin to the “regency” that Mrs. Wilson and Dr. Cary Grayson had assumed after President Wilson’s debilitating stroke in 1918. But it was a strong indication that the president’s health was far more precarious than many people had previously thought. Nor did the plan work. As FDR reported to Daisy in a telephone call on Saturday, March 3, “he has had and is having, an exhausting time seeing people”—fixing things that have gotten out of hand during his absence, with everyone waiting around “for him to lead & guide.” Worse still, he had not been able to slip away to Hyde Park the night before as he had originally planned. He was now scheduled to leave on an overnight train later that evening.29
Given his love for his home on the Hudson, and the schedule he had maintained over the last two days—including a press conference and a cabinet meeting; separate conferences with acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew, Henry Stimson, Harold Ickes, Bernard Baruch, and James Byrnes; a luncheon with Eleanor and Colonel Harold Hoskins to review FDR’s discussions with Ibn Saud over Palestine; and a dinner with Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway—FDR could hardly wait to get away. His departure that Saturday night would place him in Hyde Park on the morning of Sunday, March 4, 1945, exactly twelve years to the day since he had first taken the oath of office.
Chapter 14
March Days
IT WAS A COLD AND CRISP MORNING WHEN THE CAR THAT WOULD take Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt from the train station at Highland, New York, crossed the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Standing majestically 135 feet above the Hudson River, with its elegant granite spires and stunning views of the valley that FDR loved, this magnificent structure was at the time the sixth-longest suspension bridge in the world. Casting an eye in the late winter light upon this all-important waterway that had done so much to shape the history of New York and the nation, FDR could see that the Hudson was still frozen. In years past, long before he had lost the use of his legs, he might well have been out on “the river” that day, “flying” across the frozen surface in the Hawk, his much-cherished ice-yacht—the Christmas gift his mother had lavished upon him when he was but a nineteen-year-old student at Harvard.1
Perhaps too, FDR might have cast his mind back to a warm summer’s day twenty-five years before, when FDR, as governor, had joined former Governor Al Smith in a dedication ceremony to open the span that was witnessed by a crowd of twenty-five thousand people. The lead architect-engineer was the much-celebrated Ralph Modjeski, who, as the principal designer of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in California and the Delaware River Bridge in Philadelphia, was known as “America’s bridge builder.” As a Polish-American immigrant, Modjeski embodied the “smaller world” that FDR had referred to in his speech to Congress. He was born and raised in Krakow, the official “capital” of the Nazis’ murderous “General Government”—a city liberated by the Red Army a mere six weeks earlier. Modjeski was also a close associate of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the distinguished Polish musician, composer, and diplomat, who played a key role in convincing Woodrow Wilson to call for the creation of a free and independent Polish state in his January 1918 Fourteen Points—the very state whose fate FDR and Churchill were now struggling to secure.2
After breakfast in his study, FDR began replying to the mail that had accumulated since well before his departure for Yalta. He planned to use the next three or four days in Hyde Park to rest and put all of this correspondence behind him. This required both morning and afternoon sessions with his principal secretaries, broken up by lunch, an occasional drive to visit local sites and people, and, when time allowed, a late-afternoon rest.
Daisy was of course thrilled to see FDR back in the Hudson Valley. The following morning, March 5, she left her home in Rhinebeck early to make sure she would be at Spr
ingwood in time to serve FDR his breakfast. Elated, as she recorded in her diary, that “F looks so much better than anyone could expect,” and happy to hear him report that “he was fine throughout the trip—not sick a day,” Daisy indicated that she had arranged for FDR to receive another “treatment” from Lenny Setaro (the masseuse she believed could help restore FDR’s health) that evening. Daisy also learned, much to her delight, that FDR was already planning a trip to Warm Springs at the end of the month and that he would like her and “Cousin Polly” to accompany him, not only to Georgia but also to the San Francisco conference in late April.3
While in Hyde Park, FDR also took the time to meet with the director of the municipal library, which his family had helped found and which was named for his father.4 By this point, Eleanor had left for her apartment in New York, and, as was often the case, it seemed to take FDR a day or two to fully relax. But in spite of the simple routine and the extra rest, Daisy often found him “tired and listless.” Perhaps, she surmised, he was thinking of the “long list of callers” that awaited him in Washington; then there was the endless correspondence as well. By Wednesday, March 7, FDR had made great progress. But then a heavy mail pouch arrived, so heavy that it would require not only work in the morning and early afternoon, but also some additional work late that evening, between Daisy’s departure after dinner at 9:00 and the moment FDR’s train pulled out of the Highland Station at 11:00 for the slow overnight trip back to the Oval Office.
The Last 100 Days Page 23