The Last 100 Days

by David B. Woolner

  THE NEXT SIXTEEN DAYS WOULD PROVE TO BE THE LONGEST CONTINUOUS stretch of time FDR spent in the White House during his fourth term. During this period, Allied forces finally and decisively crossed the Rhine, which was of course welcome news, but this was also the time when the careful diplomatic web that FDR had spun at Yalta began to disintegrate.

  The first indication that the conference accords might not hold up came in the form of a telegram from Churchill that arrived on March 8, the same day FDR had returned from his short stay in Hyde Park. Churchill had become increasingly alarmed by Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe. Russian activities in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary suggested that the Soviets were intent on interpreting the Declaration of Liberated Europe in a manner that suited their own purposes. Churchill was unhappy with the growing evidence of the Soviets’ brutality in their establishing of “friendly” regimes in these states. But due to the understanding he had achieved over these territories via the October 1944 accords—which included Soviet acquiescence to British actions to put down the communist-led rebellion in Greece—he was as yet unwilling to openly challenge the Russians over their treatment of the region.

  Soviet behavior in Poland was even more disturbing, not least because the fate of the Poles aroused deep feeling in Britain.5 Churchill had based his defense of the Yalta accords in Parliament in part “on the assumption that the words of the Yalta declaration will be carried out in the letter and the spirit.” But, to date, all of the evidence showed that the Soviets were unwilling to offer even the pretense of Great Power consultation over the future of Poland, let alone adherence to any sort of democratic process.6 The expansion of the Lublin regime that was supposed to take place in Moscow, for example, had quickly degenerated into what Churchill called “a farce,” as all of the non-Lublin candidates put forward by the British and American ambassadors had been rejected by Molotov. From what little information London could retrieve from within Poland, it also appeared that the Soviets were systematically using “liquidations and deportations” to eliminate Polish political opposition to the Lublin government.7

  Although still cognizant of the need for Great Power cooperation, Churchill felt that the time had come to take a much tougher line with Moscow. But this was a complicated proposition, given the inherent contradictions in London adopting a policy condemning Soviet spheres of influence in Eastern Europe while doing its best to maintain British control over Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Middle East. Churchill thus recognized that the most effective means to pressure the Soviets was through FDR.8

  Roosevelt shared many of Churchill’s concerns about Soviet activities in Poland. As he wrote to Churchill three days later, “I am fully determined, as I know you are, not to let the good decisions we made at Crimea slip through our hands and will certainly do everything I can to hold Stalin to their honest fulfillment.” But he was not as yet convinced that they should confront Stalin. As Charles Bohlen explained to Ambassador Edward Halifax in response to Churchill’s démarche, the president wanted to avoid using “heavy artillery” at this point and preferred “to give the matter time.” Instead, FDR embraced the idea of a “political truce” designed to end the actions taken against the Lublin Poles’ political opponents—a less partisan, more even-handed approach that FDR felt would have a greater chance of success.9

  FDR was also receiving mixed news from the Pacific Theater. On the one hand, the advance of MacArthur’s forces on the island of Luzon in the Philippines and the heroic struggle of the Marines to take Iwo Jima were seen as significant developments. But the casualty reports made clear that the struggle to defeat Japan would be costly. Indeed, it would take a full month of bloody fighting—and the deaths of three of the six Marines who had so heroically hoisted the American flag over Mount Suribachi—before the Japanese garrison of twenty-one thousand men on Iwo Jima was finally annihilated.10

  On the home front, FDR faced a threatened coal strike and was frustrated by the lack of action in Congress over his manpower bill. Even more vexing—and embarrassing, given FDR’s repeated pleas for “some men and some power”—was the press’s reaction. By this point the press had relabeled “the work or fight bill” as the “work or loaf bill,” suspecting, correctly, that Congress was essentially stalling in the hope that the defeat of Germany would render the law unnecessary.

  Then there was the bitter and begrudging manner in which Henry Wallace was finally confirmed as secretary of commerce, and the hostility with which the Senate greeted FDR’s nomination of Aubrey Williams as director of the Rural Electrification Agency.11 Not willing to risk a confrontation with Congress on the eve of the San Francisco conference, FDR did his best to remain on good terms with the legislature, largely by being cautions. He did not, for instance, reappoint David Lilienthal, a prominent liberal, as head of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Eleanor Roosevelt considered this move craven, but FDR insisted it was necessary to avoid a showdown with a number of conservative southern senators who remained determined to get rid of Lilienthal no matter how hard FDR tried to protect him.12

  FDR also had to cope with the loss or absence of some of his most trusted aides. Pa Watson’s death had left a significant void, and the determination of Stephen Early (who was still on assignment in Europe) to leave his post as press secretary created a certain degree of “confusion” in the press office at a critical moment in FDR’s presidency. And with Harry Hopkins away at the Mayo Clinic, Charles Bohlen became the principal liaison between the White House and the State Department. Visiting the White House every morning to confer with Admiral Leahy and to check on what telegrams had come into the Map Room, Bohlen found himself “continually worried” by the president’s appearance. “His hand shook so,” Bohlen recalled, “that he had difficulty holding a telegram.” He was clearly a sick man. Yet despite his “weariness and general lassitude,” FDR seemed to be able “to call on reserves of strength” whenever he had to meet with congressional leaders or other public figures.13

  One notable instance took place when a group of visiting French journalists dropped in on one of the president’s regularly scheduled news conferences. Seeming to enjoy the presence of the French delegation, which included Jean-Paul Sartre, FDR invited them to stay for a time after the conference so that he could speak to them in his “Roosevelt French.”

  “Roosevelt does not look at all like his photos,” Sartre later reflected. “What is most striking is the profoundly human charm of his long face, at once sensitive and strong.” He smiled “and talked to us in his deep slow voice,” Sartre wrote, and exhibited such “bright-eyed intelligence” that Sartre came away from the encounter believing that the meeting with Roosevelt made the entire trip to the United States worthwhile.14

  After the meeting with the French journalists, FDR convened a session of his cabinet. This might have been a fairly routine affair, save that it began with a stark reminder that no American was immune from the costs of the ongoing war. At the very moment the meeting was taking place, Marine Second Lieutenant Raymond Ickes was lying gravely wounded in a hospital tent on the still-contested island of Iwo Jima, having been shot through the lungs while making his way man-to-man through a murderous barrage in an effort to rally his platoon. “Harold, I understand that your boy has been hit,” said the president as he entered the Oval Office. To which the grave-faced Secretary Ickes responded in the affirmative, while his colleagues looked on. “Do you know how bad it is?” FDR continued. Ickes had no answer.15

  Numerous general expressions of sympathy followed, but then it was time to get on with the business at hand. As Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal recorded, Ickes himself opened the discussion with a rather discouraging assessment of the status of the current negotiations between the United Mine Workers and the mine operators, along with an equally gloomy forecast of the supply of coal for the coming year. Frances Perkins broke in to insist that she was far more optimistic about the state of the negotiations. Reflecting later, Ickes acknowledged that Labor Secr
etary Perkins had a point about the state of the labor talks, but given the news that Ickes had received from the Pacific, he found himself “not too much interested in what went on at Cabinet.” Ickes was just going through the motions while he anxiously awaited word on whether or not his son would pull through, or whether, like Harry Hopkins and thousands of other Americans, he would find himself grieving for the loss of a loved one in battle.16

  WHILE BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE, FDR AGAIN LARGELY ABANDONED the “regime” Drs. Bruenn and McIntire had previously prescribed for him. He often missed his afternoon rest; turned his lunches, which were supposed to be quiet affairs, into conferences; and worked far into the night. The more he worked, the more he seemed to crave relief. Indeed, the reason he worked so hard and crammed his schedule so full of meetings was to free up time to see the few people in his life with whom he could relax.

  One of these intimates was Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who spent the weekend of March 10 and 11 in the White House, followed by a second shorter visit on Tuesday, March 13. FDR was a student at Harvard when he first met King. Over the years, while the two men pursued their political careers, they kept in touch, and their friendship deepened as they both tried to meet the challenges of economic depression and war as the leaders of their respective countries. King’s scheduled arrival was set for 5:00 p.m. on Friday, March 9. Due to FDR’s hectic agenda, King would spend the first half hour having tea alone with Eleanor. Perhaps anticipating the prime minister’s first question, Eleanor began the conversation by noting the president’s weariness. She also spoke about his being “pretty thin,” almost as if she were preparing King, who was seven years older than FDR, for the shock of his appearance. It was obvious, King noted, that Mrs. Roosevelt “was pretty anxious” about her husband, and when the president wheeled himself in, King immediately understood the reason. As soon as he saw his old friend, he was seized by a sense of deep compassion. “He looked much older,” he recorded in his diary, and, as Eleanor had cautioned, much thinner—particularly his face, which King noted had taken on a striking resemblance to Woodrow Wilson.17

  Over the next two days FDR regaled King with accounts of his meetings with Haile Selassie and Ibn Saud, his impressions of Churchill and Stalin, and his expectations for the San Francisco conference. The two men returned to the topic of fatigue, which FDR admitted was “one of the hardest things to overcome.” His doctors “kept advising him to take a rest before dinner,” but he found it hard to leave the office at that particular time—to which Anna, who was listening, interjected that this was her father’s “great trouble.”18

  FDR also found time for Lucy Rutherfurd. They met on the evening of Tuesday, March 13, when FDR, after devoting much of the afternoon involved in an intense discussion of German occupation policy, retired to his family quarters to enjoy a “quiet family meal” with Anna and her husband; Prime Minister King, whom FDR had invited back to the White House was also there; and, as King recorded in his diary, “another relative” with whom he was unfamiliar, a certain “Mrs. Rutherfurd.”19

  Anna had made the dinner arrangements that evening; with her mother out of town for three days on a speaking engagement in North Carolina, she understood that her father might want to seize the occasion to see his dear friend Lucy.20 As Anna would later assert, there was nothing actually “clandestine” about these visits. She welcomed them, particularly during the hectic period at the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, “because they were light-hearted and gay, affording a few hours of much needed relaxation for a loved father and world leader in a time of crises.”21 This overly sanguine view does not account for FDR’s persistent need to see Lucy. Eleanor had departed on Sunday, March 11, and the next day FDR skipped his late-afternoon rest and his usual visit to the doctor’s office and instead motored over to Georgetown to pick Lucy up from her sister’s apartment. After a short drive, the two returned to the White House for dinner in his study that evening with Anna and her husband. FDR and Lucy saw each other again not only on Tuesday but on Wednesday as well.

  Prime Minister King found Mrs. Rutherfurd “a lovely woman of great charm.” The five of them “dined in the little hall” on the second floor of the White House and had a wonderful time that Tuesday evening, reminiscing about the visit of the King and Queen in 1939, the President’s recent trip, and other happy occasions. After dinner, Anna and John delighted in opening a number of the gifts presented to the President and his party during his visit to the Middle East. It really was “a delightful family affair,” King reflected, one he thoroughly enjoyed. So too did FDR; and as King made to leave, the President asked him if he wouldn’t like to stay the night. When King begged off, saying he had to get the overnight train back to New York, FDR implored his friend to remember that he was always welcome at the White House, at Warm Springs, or in Hyde Park.22

  With the promise that they would see each other soon in San Francisco, the two friends parted. Anna and her husband walked the prime minister downstairs and out to the front entrance of the White House. Anna asked King again if he might like to stay. Her father, she said, thought of him as family and was sad to see him go. He “missed his old friends,” she confessed, and “felt the loss of McIntyre, Miss Lehand, General Watson, [and] Capt. Callaghan—all of whom had been with him in the earlier part of his life.” But still, King thought it necessary to be on his way.23

  AS DREW PEARSON OBSERVED IN THE WASHINGTON POST, THERE WAS much for the president to do to get “squared away for the toughest six months in his twelve long years” in office. Indeed, many vital matters were pending: establishing peace terms with Germany; devising the best way “to convert a two-front war into a one-front war”; determining how to secure the full employment to which FDR had alluded in his State of the Union Address; and, most important, preparing for the San Francisco conference and the coming peace.24

  The excitement generated by the upcoming gathering of delegations from around the world to craft the UN charter led to an unprecedented number of requests—often channeled through Eleanor—from organizations and individuals who wished to be included in the American delegation or otherwise represented at the conference. FDR remained adamant, however, that the delegation should remain small, and not be expanded beyond the eight representatives he had chosen.25

  The president also had to ensure the bipartisan makeup of the delegation. Many of the key Republican nominees, including such leading figures as Senator Arthur Vandenberg, had initially withheld their agreement to serve. As Vandenberg wrote to John Foster Dulles shortly after receiving the president’s invitation, he could “not go to this conference as a stooge,” and if his instructions were to bind him to the Dumbarton Oaks proposals “as is,” he would have preferred not to have been named at all.26

  Most alarming to Vandenberg was the Polish settlement achieved at Yalta, which he assumed was only temporary and would be subject to review once the world body had been established. Given his skepticism over the agreement on Poland, Vandenberg wanted to know “what specific commitments, if any,” would be implicit in his acceptance of the president’s invitation. “May I understand that it will not violate your commission,” he wrote to the president in late February, “if I feel free to present my own views to my American colleagues… and if I reserve my final right of judgment upon the ultimate results?”27 FDR assured Vandenberg that he expected the senator to express his views freely not only to his fellow delegates but also to the American people—indeed, he was counting on Vandenberg to do so. Having secured his “right to free action,” as the senator put it in a statement issued to the press on March 5, he accepted the president’s invitation.

  But by the time Vandenberg arrived at the White House on March 13 for his first meeting with the president to discuss the conference, he had already begun to have second thoughts. The senator had taken FDR at his word concerning his right to express his views freely and, in response to the mounting criticism of Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe emanating
from London and elsewhere, had warned the Senate that there was “no escaping the fact that the treatment accorded Poland… will have a large effect upon the success of our ultimate plans for collective security and organized peace.”

  Vandenberg’s comments brought a sharp rebuke from Moscow, and fearing that he had now become a target for Soviet propaganda, the senator told the president that he would be quite willing to resign from the delegation if FDR felt it would be better for him to do so. “We are going to have to deal with Russia,” the senator said, “and I don’t want to make it difficult. I can conveniently arrange to break a leg—if you wish.” To that FDR replied, in a revealing comment, “Just between us, Arthur, I am coming to know Russia better and if I could name only one delegate to the San Francisco Conference, you would be that delegate.”28

  Indeed, by this point the Anglo-Americans’ difficulties with Stalin were becoming more and more frequent. Poland remained an issue of deep concern, and FDR had still not received a satisfactory answer to another item of tension with Moscow: his repeated requests for permission to extract liberated American POWs from behind Red Army lines in Poland. Moreover, it was around this time that a new, highly confidential matter arose, one that would ultimately lead to the most heated exchange between Roosevelt and Stalin in the entire war.

  At issue was a report from Allen Dulles, the OSS station chief in Bern, Switzerland, indicating that General Karl Wolff, the ranking SS officer in Italy, had sent a message to the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, Field Marshal Harold Alexander, stating that he wanted to go to Switzerland to negotiate the possible capitulation of German forces operating in that theater. Both Admiral Leahy and Secretary Stimson had arranged to see the president to inform him about this potential breakthrough. FDR fully approved of moving forward with Wolff, but as he regarded the negotiations as a purely military affair to be handled by the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the military authorities on the ground, he saw no reason to involve the Russians. The American Chiefs of Staff concurred, as they felt strongly that any Russian involvement, particularly in the delicate early stage of the talks, would bring the whole process to an immediate halt. The United States decided—backed by both the British Chiefs of Staff and Ambassador Harriman in Moscow—to inform the Kremlin merely that the negotiations were taking place. Churchill, however, felt it was important not only to inform the Russians but also to seek their approval and, without notifying FDR, overruled his own military commanders and on March 11 sent a cable to Moscow seeking the Kremlin’s assent.29