By the time Rosenberg arrived at the White House, FDR had already learned that his latest attempt to convince Stalin to allow American aircrews into Poland—which included the argument that such a move was needed above all else to get the “considerable number of sick and injured” out as soon as possible—had been rejected. FDR was also aware that Ambassador Harriman was in receipt of a highly inflammatory message from Molotov that accused the Western Allies of carrying on the so-called Bern negotiations behind the backs of the Soviet government. More distressing still was what the Bern incident meant for Soviet participation in the San Francisco conference. Claiming that the Soviets had been wronged, Molotov decided he could not lead the Soviet delegation, as he was needed in Moscow to attend “a budget meeting of the Supreme Soviet.” Apparently Molotov had come down with the Soviet equivalent of a “diplomatic cold.” At the same time, he demanded that representatives from the Lublin Poles be allowed to participate—even though the Moscow talks that were supposed to facilitate the planned reorganization of the Lublin regime had deadlocked over Moscow’s insistence that the Lublin government had the right to veto any of the potential candidates brought forward by the three powers.6
The joint Anglo-American memorandum that FDR and Churchill had presented to Stalin less than a week earlier—reminding him that no such veto was agreed to at Yalta—was supposed to correct that. It was the telegram indicating Stalin’s rejection of this assertion that finally set Roosevelt off.7 A stunned Anna Rosenberg looked on as FDR, unable to contain his rage, “became quite angry, banged his fists on the arms of his chair,” and said, “Averell is right; we can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of his promises at Yalta.”8
Clearly distressed, FDR devoted much of the rest of that afternoon editing two messages, drafted by Leahy, that went off to Stalin that evening. The first expressed his deep disappointment over Foreign Minister Molotov’s withdrawal from the San Francisco conference. FDR feared this decision “will be construed all over the world as a lack of comparable interest on the part of the Soviet Government in the great objectives of this conference.”9
The second message attempted to assuage Soviet fears over the nature of the “discussions” that had taken place in Switzerland, which FDR insisted were launched “to ascertain the accuracy” of a report that “some German officers” were considering the possible surrender of German forces in Italy. He also insisted (disingenuously, as FDR was well aware that a meeting between Wolff and Dulles had already taken place) that all attempts to arrange a meeting with German officers have “met with no success up to the present time.” Confident that Stalin, as a military man, would understand the need for prompt action, the president maintained that the efforts in Italy, which had the potential to save American lives, must proceed apace. But, he went on, “I cannot agree to suspend investigation of the possibility because of objection on the part of Mr. Molotov for some reason completely beyond my understanding.”10
FDR refrained, however, from sending Stalin an immediate response to the latter’s refusal to agree that the Lublin Poles—in concert with the Soviets—had any right to obstruct the three powers’ efforts to reconstitute the existing provisional government. Given that the last message FDR sent to Stalin on this matter had been in the form of a joint communiqué from both the president and the prime minister, FDR concluded that it would be best to consult with Churchill before doing so.
With the afternoon wearing on into evening, FDR went back to work on his still-unfinished correspondence in a strenuous effort to clear his desk before his departure for Hyde Park. Much to William Hassett’s regret, this task kept a weary FDR in his office until well past 6:00 p.m. Then it was time for what would be his last dinner in the White House. The guests on this occasion included Crown Prince Olaf and Crown Princess Martha of Norway—the third time in a week that FDR and Eleanor had entertained royalty.11
We do not know if FDR and his guests discussed the Norwegian resistance’s recent move—reported as “one of the greatest single acts of sabotage” of the war—to cut the rail lines leading out of their country, so that the 200,000 German troops still occupying Norway would be unable to leave in time to bolster Hitler’s final bloody defense of the Reich. Nor do we know if they discussed Norway’s upcoming participation in the United Nations conference, another likely topic of conversation. But FDR’s decision to host the royal couple kept him occupied until the moment it was time for him to leave for the train that was waiting for him at the Bureau of Engraving and the chance for a well-deserved rest at Springwood, away from the confines of the White House and the pressures of the war.12
PALM SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 1945, BROKE SUNNY AND WARM IN HYDE Park, the sort of spring morning that might draw more than just the faithful to St. James, the small, white stucco church that stands beneath the tall pines gracing the Albany Post Road as it winds its way north of the village. Across the road, just to the west of the church and high above the Hudson, the magnificent sculpted grounds that surround the Vanderbilt Mansion offer striking views of the river, as it flows from the north past the Catskills, rising in the distance.
The Reverend George Anthony, rector of St. James, welcomed the throng of worshipers who had gathered outside the church for this morning’s service. But FDR, who still served as both vestryman and senior warden for the parish, was not among them. The Secret Service, as a wartime security measure, had ordered the president to keep his visits to public buildings to a minimum, and even though FDR tended to ignore this requirement when he was in Hyde Park, he had nevertheless decided to forego church that morning.
FDR, who had once described his personal philosophy by saying “I am a Christian and a democrat,” was proud of his family’s long-standing relationship with St. James. Frances Perkins saw FDR in similar terms, characterizing FDR to Eleanor as “a very simple Christian.” He had little, if any, understanding of the doctrinal basis of his religion, Perkins later wrote. “To him, man’s relation to God seemed based on nature, and the idea that religion was important to man stuck with him always.” She believed his attachment to freedom of religion arose out of this uncomplicated personal faith, in that he was able to associate himself without conflict with all expressions of religious worship. “Catholic, Protestant and Jew alike were comprehensible to him and their religious aspirations seemed natural and much the same as his own.”13
FDR also felt strongly that one’s faith was a private matter. “I can do everything in the ‘Goldfish Bowl’ of the President’s life,” he once said to Perkins, “but I’ll be hanged if I can say my prayers in it.” It bothered him “to feel like something in a zoo” when he went to church in Washington, a fact that was compounded by “his affliction,” which, as Perkins later reflected, “made him doubly conspicuous and doubly a point of curiosity.”14
It was for this reason that FDR rarely attended church services in the nation’s capital, and why on most occasions when he did, it was never announced in the press. Still, there were times when his public duties required him to go, as on one occasion in 1933 when the bishop of Washington asked the president to participate in a special service of intercession at the National Cathedral. After the service, FDR paused to offer a brief word of thanks to the bishop, who took advantage of this rare opportunity to speak with the president about an issue that was “dear to his heart.” He wondered if FDR, like President Wilson and Ambassador Kellogg before him, might not want to be buried in a crypt underneath the Cathedral. The bishop even suggested that perhaps the president should immediately draw up a memorandum indicating this wish.
Horrified, FDR repeatedly referred to the bishop under his breath on his way back to the White House as “the old body snatcher.” That evening he dictated a memorandum directing that under no circumstances should his body be buried in the National Cathedral or any other cathedral but, rather, should lie peacefully at the center of the Rose Garden in the grounds at Hyde Park.15
“That’s where I’m going to
be buried, Frances,” he later said to Perkins during one of her many visits to Springwood. “Right there—when I am dead. Don’t you ever let anybody try to bury me in any cathedral.”16
THE OSTENSIBLE REASON FDR HAD TRAVELED TO HYDE PARK AT THE start of Holy Week was to select a number of items and artifacts from his Presidential Library for use in a War Exhibition at the National Archives, to take place after V-E Day.
A more pressing aim was to regain his strength. In spite of his best efforts to clear his desk the day before, FDR had no choice but to spend part of that morning working on his correspondence, before he and Eleanor headed north along the River Road to take tea with Daisy at her home in Rhinebeck. Daisy found FDR so tired that “every word” seemed “to be an effort.” Even more unnerving, they stayed only three quarters of an hour before Eleanor insisted that it was time for them to go home for an engagement at 6:00. “More people for dinner,” Daisy worried. “He just can’t stand this strain indefinitely.”17
The next morning William Hassett, like Daisy, found FDR quite fatigued as he and Dorothy Brady worked through his papers from 9:00 a.m. until noon. But as the warm spring weather continued, FDR’s spirits improved. He was in a much better frame of mind on Tuesday, and had enough energy to spend the afternoon with Daisy in the Library, picking out items from his vast collection of artifacts for the exhibition. By this point Eleanor had already left Hyde Park for her Greenwich Village apartment, and on Wednesday, March 28, she was back in Washington, in the company of her old friend Margaret Fayerweather.
Fayerweather arrived at the White House at 2:30 p.m., and the two women soon got to talking about FDR’s health. Their conversation is one of the fullest on the subject that survives, and it not only belies the notion that Franklin and Eleanor failed to acknowledge the fragility of his condition but also reveals a good deal about the nature of their relationship.
Eleanor confessed that the “most painful thing is to watch the tremor in his hands” and the noticeable “loss of muscular control. He no longer wants to drive his own car at Hyde Park,” she said, but “lets me drive, which he never did before, and [he] lets me mix cocktails if Col. Boettiger is not present.” While she felt sure that “the long years of smoking” had contributed to the rapid decline in his health, “it is only a wonder that it has not come sooner, seeing how impossible it is for him, in the drive of official duties, to keep his body in shape.”
In rare acknowledgment of the frailty of a man in FDR’s condition, and of the ramifications of his fateful decision to run for reelection in 1940, let alone 1944, she said: “I think he faced the fact, five years ago, that if he had to go on in office, to accomplish his work, it must shorten his life—and he made that choice. If he can set out to accomplish what he set out to do, and then dies, it will have been worth it. I agree with him.”18
On the other hand, Eleanor did note that FDR’s heart and blood pressure were much better than last year, with his “smoking having been cut so down.” She also recounted a recent conversation with him that touched on what had become a common and half-serious refrain—namely, his expressed desire “to go and live” in the Near East. And when Eleanor demurred, and asked him somewhat mockingly “Can’t you think of anything harder to do?” FDR answered in all seriousness, “Well yes, it’s going to be awfully hard to straighten out Asia, what with India and China and Thailand and Indochina. I’d like to get into that.”
“Does that sound tired to you, Margaret?” she asked, turning toward her friend. “I’m all ready to sit back, and he’s looking forward to more work!”19
FDR ARRIVED IN WASHINGTON ON THURSDAY MORNING FOR HIS BRIEF layover as planned, “looking worn and gray,” but in time to take breakfast with Eleanor and her houseguest and to spend a last frantic eight hours in the White House before departing for Warm Springs at 4:00 that afternoon. Daisy and “Cousin Polly” were also present, but since FDR would be seeing them in Warm Springs, Eleanor insisted that Fayerweather sit next to the president at breakfast so the two might have the chance to talk.
FDR was soon entertaining her with recollections of his trip to the Crimea. They also discussed a letter Fayerweather had recently received from a friend concerned about the fate of World War I cemeteries in France. This raised the subject of death and burial. After a brief exchange about the merits of burial versus cremation, FDR was seized by one of his “impish creative impulses.”
“You know, Margaret,” he said suddenly. “You could make a lot of money out of death! You could buy a block somewhere on 7th Avenue near the Pennsylvania Station, and build a 40 story building, [with] tiers of sorts of safe deposit boxes.”
“A Roman Columbarium up-to-date,” Fayerweather interposed.
“That’s it,” he chuckled. “Why, people would just love it! Solve the whole problem, and you’d make a fortune!”
“Well, you carry out your terrible idea, if you like,” Fayerweather responded. “I think it’s a grizzly. Burial is much simpler.” Turning more serious, FDR then reiterated what he had said to Perkins about the spot in the Rose Garden where he wanted to be laid to rest—the very place where, “to his certain knowledge, have been buried an old mule, two horses, and a dozen or so of the family dogs.”20
FDR HAD HOPED TO USE THOSE EIGHT HOURS IN THE WHITE HOUSE to tie up various loose ends. But he was thrown off course by the news that broke that day about his “secret plan” to support the Soviet request for three votes in the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization. As Senator Vandenberg had predicted, the revelation did indeed “raise Hell.” It also provoked widespread suspicion, as New York Times columnist Arthur Krock reported on April 1, “that a great deal lurks in the dark behind what has been revealed” at Yalta.21
The press was also reporting that FDR’s manpower bill was very much “in doubt,” in spite of FDR’s efforts to lobby Congress, and much as Ickes had feared, on March 28, the United Mine Workers had overwhelmingly voted in favor of giving John L. Lewis the authority to call a strike.22 In the meantime, behind the scenes, and unbeknownst to the public, FDR’s relationship with Stalin was continuing to deteriorate.
Perhaps this is why James Byrnes found the president “extremely nervous” that Thursday morning, speaking rapidly and hardly allowing Byrnes to get a word in edgewise. Byrnes was there to introduce the president to General Lucius Clay, whom—after months of wrangling over the merits of appointing a civilian versus a military officer—FDR had finally agreed to send to Europe to serve as Eisenhower’s deputy in charge of civil affairs for occupied Germany.23 As Clay stepped out of the room, and Stephen Early rushed in to remind the president that he was behind schedule and needed to turn his attention to his next meeting, FDR took a few private moments with Byrnes. He thanked Byrnes once again for his service and told the soon-to-be-retiring director that he would call Fred Vinson later that day to inform him that he would be Byrnes’s successor—a promise that FDR promptly forgot in the rush of activities of that “touch and go day.”24
Next in line to see the president was Secretary Stettinius, who had sped back to Washington from a vacation at his Virginia farm to help the president craft a response to the news about the General Assembly. Joining him were Undersecretary of State Grew, along with Assistant Secretaries James Dunn and William Clayton, Charles Bohlen, Admiral William Leahy, and Archibald MacLeish, who had recently left his post at the Office of War Information to join the State Department as assistant secretary of state for public affairs.25
Their first order of business was the position the administration should take regarding the furor over the news about the General Assembly. Stettinius was under tremendous pressure to answer a host of questions that had emerged in the wake of the revelation—pressure not only from the press but also from members of the US delegation who wanted to know whether “the President had agreed at Yalta that the delegates at San Francisco should unquestionably support the Russian claim.”26
FDR made it clear to Stettinius that he had “commi
tted the US Government, but not the delegates.” In light of the controversy, however, all agreed that the White House should issue a statement clarifying what had transpired at Yalta; Jonathan Daniels and Archibald MacLeish were instructed to do so at once. In the meantime, Senator Vandenberg, for his part, had already issued a press release saying he would “deeply disagree with any voting proposal… which would destroy the sovereign equality of nations.”27
Also problematic was how to answer Stalin’s unacceptable response (communicated through Molotov) to the joint démarche that Churchill and FDR had sent to the foreign minister on March 19. It was this message that had so upset FDR during his luncheon with Anna Rosenberg. Churchill had already expressed to FDR his fear that the British and American governments were being “defrauded by Russia.” He was now convinced that the only alternative to confessing total failure was “to stand by our interpretation of the Yalta declaration.”28 FDR concurred, and, with the help of Leahy and Bohlen and the other members of the State Department staff who were present at the White House, crafted a message for Stalin that was sent to Churchill for his reaction. The prime minister, who had been trying unsuccessfully for weeks to get FDR to take a harder line with Stalin, was quite pleased at this development. While Churchill and his aides were impressed by the “grave and weighty” content of the message FDR proposed to send to Stalin, Churchill still thought it could be strengthened by adding a sentence that explicitly addressed the need “to get rid of Molotov’s veto.” Churchill also wanted the two of them to make clear that the British and American governments would not enter into any arrangements with the “Lublinites” before the arrival of the other candidates. FDR agreed, and the amended message went off to Stalin on March 31.29
The exchange of cables with London regarding Poland marked an end to the lull in serious communication that had so distressed Churchill earlier that month, a change the prime minister erroneously attributed to FDR’s improved health. But this was not the view shared by Lord Halifax, FDR’s next visitor to the White House, who was there with Oliver Lyttelton to discuss British supply problems now that the war in Europe was drawing to a close. Halifax found FDR in a cheerful frame of mind, but, in sharp contrast to Churchill’s false assumptions, “far from well.” The president’s health had undergone “[q]uite a change,” he thought, in the three weeks since he had last seen him.30
The Last 100 Days Page 28