FDR had already received information about the crisis in the Netherlands from earlier correspondence with the queen, the Dutch foreign minister, and Stanley Hornbeck, the newly appointed American ambassador to the Dutch government-in-exile in London. Indeed, in a February letter Hornbeck warned FDR that unless food could be sent into Western Holland “not only soon, but more than soon… the Dutch nation… is in danger of being decimated.”5
In response, FDR proposed a reduction in the domestic rations of certain commodities, a move that brought strong protests from Congress on the charge that the Roosevelt administration was “depriving Americans of necessary nourishment to feed the world.”6 But in the press conference that FDR held the day before his anniversary, he scoffed at such a notion, insisting that “he could not bring himself to believe” that the American people had suffered very greatly in this war when compared to other countries—“for instance… Holland, which is a very bad case.”7
A 10 percent reduction in Americans’ consumption of certain items, FDR went on, could save the lives of large numbers of starving people, a trade-off he believed the vast majority of Americans would support as a matter of “national decency.”8 FDR also sent a personal letter to Queen Wilhelmina, thanking her for a telegram of congratulations she had sent on his anniversary and expressing his conviction to do everything he could to alleviate the food crisis. “You can be certain,” he assured her, that “I shall not forget the country of my origin.”9
Two weeks earlier, the queen—whom Winston Churchill once described as “the only real man among the Governments-in-Exile in London”—had made her first visit to Dutch soil, to the southern province of Zeeland, after nearly five years of exile in London. In his letter, FDR expressed the wish that he could have been there that day. He could not have known that later genealogical studies would determine that the Roosevelt family had in fact immigrated to America from the tiny hamlet of Tholen in the same province.
Zeeland was also one of the most devastated regions in the Netherlands, owing in part to the Allied decision in the fall of 1944 to bomb the dikes and flood the island of Walcheren in an attempt to dislodge the heavily fortified German positions that lined the north shore of the river Scheldt. During her visit, the queen spent six hours traversing nearly fifty miles of the island in an amphibious “duck boat,” taking in miles of forlorn and dying farmland as the sun glinted off the salt water. In the medieval capital city of Middelburg, “disfigured by enemy bombing and now besieged by sea water,” she spent a few moments talking to members of the resistance, while hundreds of Dutch men, women, and children greeted her, crying and singing the Dutch National Anthem as they waved tricolor flags topped by orange streamers.10
Juliana left the White House early on Monday, March 19. Before doing so, she elicited a promise from FDR that he and Eleanor would visit The Hague during their planned visit to Europe in June—even if it was necessary for them to camp there in a tent! She also promised to adhere to FDR’s admonition that she not return to Holland with her children too soon. “It must be an absolutely safe date,” FDR told her, preferably timed to the next major military offensive; even so, she and her family should take great care.11
PERHAPS IT WAS THE WARM SPRING WEATHER, BUT AS MARCH WORE on, the mood in Washington and in much of the rest of the country improved. As New York Times columnist Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote, there was something special about the approach of Holy Week 1945. The American people’s long-standing “belief in victory” had shifted to “a feeling of victory,” as Allied triumph on the European battlefield was becoming “an emotional reality.” Still, she was careful to point out that the end of war is not necessarily peace. The crucial question now was whether or not the partnership among the Big Three—a partnership that had made the victory possible—would continue after the war.12
With something similar in mind, FDR had scheduled a rather unusual meeting at the start of his final full week in the White House. The caller was not a statesman, politician, military officer, or even one of the president’s many “personal envoys” sent out to report back to him on the domestic or international scene. Instead, this visitor was portrait artist Douglas Chandor, for whom FDR had a very specific and important task in mind.
Born and raised in England, Chandor had moved to the United States in the mid-1920s. After a successful debut in New York in 1927, he received an invitation to paint President Herbert Hoover and a number of his cabinet members. Chandor’s portrait of Hoover, combined with his earlier works depicting various members of the British ruling elite, established his reputation as a painter of the world’s political leaders.
Chandor had indicated an interest in doing FDR’s portrait, and the president felt it was time to grant his wish. During the early afternoon of March 19, 1945, Chandor spent a full two hours or more with FDR in his study. As Chandor sketched and FDR talked, he described an idea for a painting depicting the “Big Three” at Yalta, which could be hung in the nation’s Capitol to mark for posterity this all-important moment in history. FDR did not want a posed portrait but, rather, a work that depicted the three leaders at the discussion table, supported by their aides, working together to create the “structure of peace” that FDR felt was so vital to establish as the war drew to a close.
FDR thought it would be a good idea to have two copies made, “one for London and one for Moscow,” and since Chandor refused to paint solely from photographs, the president agreed to send a message to Ambassador Harriman the following day to ask Marshal Stalin to sit for Chandor himself. FDR planned to send a similar message to Churchill once the arrangements with Stalin had been made.13
As Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. reflected two years later, his father was keen on this project and would have ensured its completion had he lived. He felt the work would have immense symbolic value that would “graphically portray the unity of the war… which must extend through the years to come if we are to maintain peace.”14
In keeping with FDR’s wishes, the initial study that Chandor painted in March 1945 included a full portrait of FDR and, in the lower-left corner, a smaller sketch of the three leaders at the conference table, surrounded by a series of depictions of FDR’s hands—one of which holds a pen in the process of writing “O.K., FDR.” In the upper-right corner, the artist left a small inscription in Latin: Ad familium gentium comem contendit, “Toward a friendly family of nations.”
Optimistic about the future of the world organization, FDR also took the time that week to meet with Joseph Proskauer and Jacob Blaustein, two leading members of the American Jewish Committee to discuss the introduction of an international bill of human rights at the coming San Francisco conference.
According to Proskauer, the president was fully supportive of the American Jewish Committee’s intention to introduce a draft international bill of human rights to the delegates at San Francisco.15 The submission of such a program would help secure “world recognition of human rights for everyone, regardless of race or religion.”16 Moreover, even though FDR urged the two men to continue to press for liberal Jewish immigration into Palestine (despite the British government’s intransigence), his recent experience in the Middle East had led him to conclude that the establishment of a Jewish state was not possible under the present conditions—and in fact might plunge the world into another major war. Accordingly, FDR felt that the introduction of an international bill of human rights under the auspices of the world organization would be “of exceptional interest to the Jews,” who should press for recognition of their rights across the world.
Portrait of FDR by Douglas Chandor completed in the White House on March 16, 1945. To the left, below the president’s right elbow, is the sketch of the painting of the Yalta conference that FDR hoped might one day hang in Washington, London, and Moscow. Underneath the sketch, Chandor depicts FDR in the process of writing his classic sign of approval: “O.K., FDR.” In the upper-right corner is the Latin inscription rendered by the artist, Ad familium gentium com
em contendit, “Toward a friendly family of nations”—a motto similar to the one that FDR would assign to the United Nations stamp that was released on the opening day of the San Francisco conference, April 26, 1945. (Franklin D. Roosevelt, by Douglas Granville Chandor, oil on canvas, 1945. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)
Interestingly, the American Jewish Committee’s proposals centered on the establishment of three principal permanent commissions to be included in the world organization, which, in many respects, foreshadowed the process that Eleanor Roosevelt helped orchestrate in 1948: the first “to frame a world decision on human rights,” the second to deal with the migrations of peoples that will no doubt occur as a result of the war, and the third to focus on the problem of statelessness and the human rights of those who have no national status—a critical issue for the survivors of the Holocaust.17
ALTHOUGH FDR WAS CONFIDENT THAT THE AGREEMENTS STRUCK AT Yalta would lead inevitably to the establishment of a United Nations Organization, not everyone was so optimistic. US signals intelligence had already picked up some dissatisfaction among leadership of the lesser powers over the voting procedure agreed at Yalta, and just one day prior to FDR’s appointment with Chandor, a reporter for the New York Times observed that “no one expects the United Nations Security Conference that opens April 25 in San Francisco to reach final accord on the new international organization without difficulties.” It was hard enough, the Times reporter argued, to win acceptance of the charter outline framed at Dumbarton Oaks among the three big powers, “and when forty-three nations with delegates and advisors numbering more than 2,000 persons are assembled… there is certain to be widespread grounds for differences of opinion.”18
The Times article identified at least four “main storm centers” including voting power in the Security Council, an issue FDR regarded as all but settled; the operation of regional arrangements, which could threaten the universal structure of the organization; the establishment of trusteeships for certain territories; and an expected effort by some of the smaller powers to obtain guarantees of their sovereignty and territorial borders.19
The article did not mention the agreement reached at Yalta to grant the USSR’s request for three seats in the General Assembly. In one of his rare political miscalculations, FDR had decided to keep this part of the accords absolutely secret, perhaps in the hope that he could persuade the Soviets to withdraw the request in the weeks between Yalta and the start of the UN conference. Apprehensive about how this decision might be received at San Francisco, both FDR and Stettinius would have preferred that the matter not come up at all and entertained thoughts about trying to find “some way to get around it.” By March 19, Stettinius recommended to the president that he take the members of the US delegation into his confidence and solicit their advice on “how to handle the Soviets on this question.”20
Both Stettinius and Undersecretary of State Grew were also concerned about the possibility that the story might become public, which the latter feared would prove damaging if the delegates to the conference had not been informed beforehand. Grew put these concerns in a memo he sent to the White House on March 22. FDR concurred with his recommendation to inform the members of the US delegation about the decision, and a meeting for the delegation with the president was arranged for the following morning, Friday, March 23.21
In the meantime, news from Poland indicated that the work of the tripartite commission had essentially stalled over the Kremlin’s insistence that the Lublin Poles had the right to veto any candidate nominated to serve in the reorganized regime, as called for in the Yalta accords. In an effort to revive the negotiations, FDR approved the issuance of a joint Anglo-American memorandum, to be presented to Molotov, pointing out that there had been no agreement at Yalta sanctioning a veto on the matter either for the Warsaw Provisional Government or for the Soviet Union.22
Another issue that FDR had to deal with during this final full week in the White House concerned the treatment of postwar Germany. Owing to the opposition put forward by Hull and Stimson in the wake of the promulgation of the Morgenthau plan in September 1944, US policy toward defeated Germany was still in flux. In an intense luncheon meeting with FDR held on Tuesday, March 20, Morgenthau reiterated his earlier call to see Germany broken up and deindustrialized after the war. He soon found his ability to convince the president of the merits of his ideas undermined by the presence of John Boettiger, who was brought along to the meeting by FDR’s daughter, Anna. Furious at Boettiger’s interference, and at Anna’s tendency to back up her husband, Morgenthau expressed his dismay at the whole encounter to Undersecretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White shortly after he left the White House.23
By this point, in fact, Washington was full of rumors that control of access to the president had passed to Anna. As Life magazine reported in early March, the first indications that this was the case emanated from the photos and press releases from Malta and Yalta. And although the White House insisted that Anna had no office, official standing, or salary, and was merely there to be “a comfort to her father,” Washington insiders understood that this was a vast understatement. Anna may not have been able to fully implement the scheme she suggested to a somewhat shocked Jonathan Daniels shortly after the president’s return from Yalta, but as the meeting between Morgenthau and FDR demonstrated, Anna and her husband could and did interject themselves “in discussions of high policy.”24
Less than five minutes after finishing this acrimonious luncheon, FDR headed back to his office for his scheduled 3:00 p.m. news conference. There, he fielded questions on a host of pressing issues, mercifully none of which involved the treatment of postwar Germany. FDR then left the frenzied confines of the White House to visit former Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who was still convalescing in the quiet confines of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
FDR took special pride in the Bethesda medical facility, as it was one of the many structures in Washington, Hyde Park, and Warm Springs for which he had sketched the original design. Modeled after the Nebraska State House that FDR had dedicated in 1936, the Bethesda Naval Hospital was made up of a 250-foot tower that rose above the surrounding rural countryside—not unlike, in FDR’s view, an English manor house. FDR had always fancied himself as something of an architect, and given his fondness for the structure and the surrounding countryside, the trip to see Hull in the warm afternoon sun was a welcome change—and a sign of the respect FDR still held for Hull. As an influential southern Democrat, Hull played an important part in securing FDR’s nomination for president in 1932—something FDR never forgot—and even though FDR frequently bypassed the State Department in his execution of American foreign policy, it was Hull’s persistent focus on postwar planning that laid the foundations not only for the United Nations but also for the multilateral trading regime that helped spur the globalization of the world’s economy in the decades to follow.25
A highly principled and somewhat vain man, whose frustrations over FDR’s insistence on being his own secretary of state frequently drove him to distraction—and to outbursts of colorful Tennessee expletives—Hull was nevertheless deeply moved by the president’s visit.26 The two old colleagues talked a good while, and when FDR admitted to the bedridden Hull that “I ought to be there where you are,” the seventy-three-year-old former secretary of state admonished him about his activity level, saying that he should take more rest. Promising to heed Hull’s advice, FDR took his leave to enjoy a late-afternoon drive through the Maryland countryside in the company of Lucy Rutherfurd—their fourth encounter in the past ten days. They would see each other again the next day, Wednesday, March 21, over a long lunch in the White House. It is also likely that Lucy stayed on for dinner, as Eleanor would not return from her second March trip to North Carolina until the following morning.27
AFTER A RELATIVELY RESTFUL START TO THE WEEK, FDR’S SCHEDULE on Thursday and Friday bordered on the suicidal. On Thursday, March 22, after his usual staff review in bed, the presid
ent went on to engage in a full day of back-to-back meetings on a host of difficult issues before he and Eleanor left to meet the governor-general of Canada—the Earl of Athlone, and his wife, Princess Alice, as they arrived at Union Station at 4:00 p.m. Then it was back to the White House for formal welcoming ceremonies conducted on the South Lawn, and tea served in the diplomatic reception room, with FDR, seated between Eleanor and Princess Alice, greeting each guest as they arrived.28 At roughly 5:45, FDR managed to slip away to the Map Room and White House doctor’s office for forty minutes or so, but then it was time to get dressed and rush off to the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner with the Earl of Athlone and his private secretary in tow.
Initiated in 1920, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has become something of an annual ritual that nearly every president has endured or enjoyed, largely depending on his relationship with the press. For FDR, who thoroughly delighted in the company of reporters, these gatherings were usually lighthearted affairs. On previous occasions, as was customary, FDR had avoided making any significant public comments at the dinner. But in March 1941, with freedom of speech and expression facing extinction in Europe and Asia, FDR decided to break with this tradition and deliver a powerful address in defense of democracy.
In the speech, he warned his guests that Nazi forces were not seeking “mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries,” but the “destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent—including our own.” In answer to Hitler’s proclamation that he had established a “new order” in Europe, FDR defiantly declared as he stood at the lectern, with his braces locked, and his left hand gripping the podium:
The Last 100 Days Page 26