Churchill also informed FDR in the same message that he was scheduled to make a statement on the “Polish question” in the House of Commons the following Thursday. In keeping with the two leaders’ efforts to stay on the same page when it came to Poland, he requested the president’s views “as to how we should answer Stalin as soon as possible.” “I have the feeling,” he continued, “that they [the Russians] do not want to quarrel with us, and your telegram about CROSSWORD [the British code word for the Bern talks] may have seriously and deservedly perturbed them.”29
The prime minister might have been correct in his speculation that FDR’s recent, strongly worded telegram to Stalin regarding the Bern incident may have perturbed the Russians, but the tensions this incident caused also alarmed FDR, who was now determined to put the matter behind him. A break with the Soviet Union at this delicate time, exactly two weeks to the day before the start of the San Francisco conference, was simply out of the question. His response to Churchill’s request for his views on how the prime minister should answer Stalin in the Commons is entirely consistent with this view.
“I would minimize the Soviet problem as much as possible,” FDR said, “because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arise every day and most of them straighten out as in the case of the Bern meeting.”30
“We must be firm, however, and our course thus far is correct.”31
This communication, which represents the last word FDR sent to Churchill on Poland, is significant not only because he drafted it entirely himself but also because it is frequently perceived as a broad, overarching statement of how the Anglo-Americans should manage their relationship with Stalin. To a certain extent this observation is correct, but we must remember that the telegram was sent in answer to the specific question Churchill raised about what he should say in the House of Commons regarding Stalin’s intransigence on Poland. Accordingly, FDR’s reference to “[minimizing] the Soviet problem as much as possible” should be regarded less as an overall statement of policy than as advice about how the prime minister should frame the statement he was about to make on a specific issue.
In fact, there can be little doubt that the message was intended to manage Churchill as much as it was to placate Stalin. The last thing FDR wanted at this stage was another public explosion of Anglo-American differences with the Kremlin—better to downplay current issues in the hope that a more opportune moment to address them would present itself in the future.
That FDR was determined to avoid any major rupture with Stalin in the closing weeks of the war is also evident in the final exchange of the more than 3,100 messages Churchill and Roosevelt sent to each other during the war. At issue, interestingly enough, was Churchill’s concern over the dreadful conditions in the heavily populated areas of the Netherlands still under German occupation. Anxious about that country’s plight, and despite his own nation’s distress, Churchill suggested that he and the president issue an ultimatum to the German commander in Holland demanding that the International Red Cross be allowed to bring relief supplies into the country as soon as possible. Churchill also suggested that if this entreaty failed, the German command in the Netherlands should be branded murderers and held “responsible with their lives.”32
Roosevelt, whose profound interest in the plight of the Dutch exceeded that of the prime minister’s, agreed to this idea in principle. But in view of Stalin’s recent allegations regarding the Bern affair, the president replied that he and the prime minister should not send the ultimatum without first obtaining Stalin’s consent as to the exact wording of the document. He did not want to engage in any activity with the German government that the Kremlin might construe as “negotiations.”33
To cap his efforts to close the door on the Bern incident, FDR also took the time that Wednesday to send a succinct reply to the last message he had received from Stalin on the matter:
Thank you for your frank explanation of the Soviet point of view of the Bern incident, which now appears to have faded into the past without having accomplished any useful purpose.
There must not, in any event, be mutual mistrust and minor misunderstandings of this character should not arise in the future. I feel sure that when our armies make contact in Germany and join in a fully coordinated offensive, the Nazi Armies will disintegrate.34
As usual, FDR’s work on these communications was coordinated with Hassett in the president’s bedroom during their regular morning session on Wednesday, April 11, 1945. After finishing this work, FDR emerged from his room about noon, dressed once again in his light-gray suit and crimson tie in preparation for a formal photograph that Madame Shoumatoff had asked Mr. Robbins to take of FDR in advance of her final work on his portrait. At the request of the president, Mr. Robbins also took a formal photo of Lucy. He then retired to the sun deck to clear up some additional mail and dictate to Dorothy Brady the first draft of the Jefferson Day speech he had agreed to deliver over the radio on April 13. This was followed by lunch, more work with Brady, a rest, and then a two-hour drive with Lucy, Daisy, and Polly, before the arrival of FDR’s old friend and Hudson Valley neighbor, Henry Morgenthau.35
Photograph of Lucy Rutherfurd, by Nicholas Robbins, April 11, 1945. (Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library)
MORGENTHAU’S VISIT TO WARM SPRINGS CAME ABOUT AS A CONSEQUENCE of a short trip the treasury secretary had made to Florida, which provided Morgenthau with a convenient opportunity to stop by and see FDR on his return journey to Washington. As planned, Morgenthau arrived at the Little White House just in time for cocktails. He found the president sitting with his feet resting on a large footstool, mixing drinks over a card table that was drawn up over his legs. Like so many of FDR’s visitors during these last weeks, Morgenthau was shocked at his appearance. The president seemed very haggard, and when he offered his old friend a drink, “his hands shook so that he started to knock the glasses over”; Morgenthau had to hold each glass as FDR poured. Nor had Morgenthau ever before seen the president experience such difficulty transferring himself from his wheelchair to a regular chair when it was time for dinner. In his diary, Morgenthau described this moment as an agony to watch.36
Photograph of FDR, by Nicholas Robbins, April 11, 1945. (Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library)
Lucy, Daisy, Polly, and Madame Shoumatoff made up the rest of the dinner party. For about an hour, they engaged in pleasant conversation. FDR gave Morgenthau a rough outline of his schedule over the coming two weeks, including his trip to San Francisco, which in turn included his plan “to appear in his wheelchair,” make his speech, and then leave.37
After dinner, the four women left FDR and Morgenthau alone so that they could discuss Morgenthau’s intention to write a book on postwar German policy. The treasury secretary made it plain that he did not want to continue pursuing the book project “if it wasn’t agreeable” to the president. Still, he wanted his friend and boss to know that he was going to continue to fight to weaken Germany, because that meant the country would “not be able to start another war.”
At this point, and most likely by design, Polly entered the room to ask if the “two gentlemen were through talking.” And if not, would “another five minutes be enough?”
Having received an affirmative reply, the women returned; a short while later, Morgenthau left, but not before saying good-bye to FDR, who was now sitting in front of the fireplace, looking relaxed and happy as he laughed and chatted with his company.
Something about the atmosphere that evening inspired Madame Shoumatoff to regale the party with a Russian ghost story. Just as she had finished, Dr. Bruenn arrived to check on the president and urge him to go to bed. At first, FDR demurred, asking the physician if he could stay up a bit longer; but sensing the latter’s disapproval, he consented to retire for the evening.38 Saying goodnight to Lucy and Madame Shoumatoff, FDR assured them that he would be ready to sit for the painting tomorrow. Then, in what had become a routine procedure, Arthur
Prettyman came to wheel the president into his room and get him into bed while Dr. Bruenn took his vital signs.
Soon the cottage was quiet, at which point Daisy slipped into FDR’s room once again to feed him his gruel, and to hear him lament that even though it had been a most enjoyable day, he was very tired.39
Chapter 19
The Last Day
THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1945, PROMISED TO BE A HOT DAY IN WARM Springs, so hot that it already seemed to many of the locals as if summer had already arrived. There was a certain excitement in the air that morning. Not far from the Little White House, Mayor Allcorn and Ruth Stevens were already busy preparing for the late-afternoon barbeque in the president’s honor that they had arranged to host at the mayor’s cottage.
Georgia Hall was no less busy. There Hazel Stephens, a physical therapist and the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation’s recreational director, and her assistant Betty Brown were getting ready for a minstrel show—a relatively common thing in Georgia in the 1940s—to be performed by the patients. Mrs. Stephens had been working on the production and costumes for the past two weeks and was pleased that Graham Jackson, a gifted African American musician of whom FDR was fond, had agreed to serve as the accompanist. The show was scheduled for Friday, April 13, but the president, always interested in the patients’ activities, asked if they could put on a special performance for him on Thursday at 5:30 p.m., just after the barbeque.1
Mrs. Stephens was delighted to accommodate this request, and as she and Betty Brown got to work setting up the stage that Thursday morning, Michael Reilly came by the Foundation’s playhouse to check on the placement of the chair that the president was to sit in for the show. Reilly also let Mrs. Stephens know that the Secret Service was going to park a radio car in front of the hall so that when the president left the barbeque, the agents with him would be able to alert her of the president’s impending arrival.2
In the meantime, back at the Little White House, FDR sat resting in bed and reading yesterday’s papers. (The pouch from Washington had been delayed by bad weather.) Because he had woken up with a stiff neck that morning, Dr. Bruenn had ordered a hot-water bottle and spent a few minutes massaging him before Bruenn left to take a swim in the pool. Daisy was also present, sitting off to one corner reading, while “Sister,” Polly’s Irish setter, slept under the president’s small desk and Charlie Fredericks repaired the venetian blinds in the living room.3
At about 10:30 a.m., Daisy left the cottage to deliver the morning “bulletin” to Lucy. The pouch was not expected until well past 11:00, so it was determined that FDR would get dressed earlier than usual; thus he was expected to be ready by noon for Madame Shoumatoff to start painting.
The only other major item on the agenda for April 12 besides his correspondence was the speech for the United Nations conference. Since Dorothy Brady, Grace Tully’s assistant, had taken dictation from the president the day before, it was Grace’s turn to do so today. On most occasions, she or Dorothy would start working with the president in the hour or so before lunch. But because everything was delayed, it was decided that Grace would not start with the president until after he had finished his midday meal, which was invariably served at 1:00 p.m.4
Free until mid-afternoon, Grace decided to join Dorothy, “Hacky” (Louise Hachmeister), and Toinette “Toi” Bachelder, another Warm Springs regular, for a refreshing morning swim. Visiting the pool was one of the favorite activities of the president’s staff when they were in Georgia, especially for Toi. Stricken with polio as a child, she was one of the Foundation’s first “test patients,” only fourteen years old when she arrived at the facility in 1925. In the social activities arranged for her first night, to help make her feel comfortable in her new surroundings, she unexpectedly found herself playing bridge with FDR, who developed an immediate attachment to her. From that point on, FDR kept track of her progress from year to year, and in 1933 invited her to join his White House staff as secretary to Marvin McIntyre. She accepted, and became one of the first disabled employees in the federal government.
While Toi, Grace, and the others enjoyed their swim, FDR was wheeled out of his bedroom at noon, dressed once again in his gray suit and crimson tie, ready to sit for the artist who was busily setting up her easel in front of him. Knowing that the president had a full schedule that day, and somewhat anxious and distracted by the fact that her brother had just suffered a mild heart attack, Madame Shoumatoff offered to postpone the sitting until the next day. But FDR insisted that they proceed.5
Daisy and Polly helped place FDR in his favorite chair, which they had turned to face toward the windows at exactly the angle that would allow the best light. Just as Madame Shoumatoff was starting her work, William Hassett entered the cottage with a very “heavy pouch.”
Hassett had found the president in good spirits earlier that morning when he dropped by to tell him the mail would be late. Perhaps he was encouraged by the laugh that FDR had shared at breakfast with White House maid Lizzie McDuffie, an African American woman of well over two hundred pounds. The subject of reincarnation came up in their conversation about the previous evening’s ghost stories, and McDuffie told the president, when asked, that if reincarnated, she would like to come back as a canary, which left them both in stitches.6
Still, in spite of FDR’s good humor, Hassett thought the president’s color was poor and his mien weary. Finding the president looking even more fatigued when he finally arrived with the pouch, Hassett suggested that since they were so late with the mail, perhaps the president “might want to leave it until after lunch.”
“No,” FDR replied, “let’s get started at once.”
And so the two men yet again plunged into the task, while Daisy and Polly sat crocheting on the couch and Lucy looked on admiringly. As Hassett and the president worked their way through FDR’s correspondence, the secretary increasingly found Madame Shoumatoff “entirely too aggressive.” She interrupted their paperwork constantly, took facial measurements, and moved the president “this way and that,” prompting Hassett to resolve that once they were through he would speak to Dr. Bruenn and ask him “to put an end to this unnecessary hounding of a sick man.”7
Yet the president had enough verve to laugh and make an occasional wisecrack. When it came time to sign a measure to extend the Commodity Credit Corporation, for example, he turned to Polly and said, “Here’s where I make a law,” at which point he wrote “approved” at the bottom of the bill along with his name and date. As Hassett later recorded, this anodyne law turned out to be the last bill FDR ever signed.8
Back in Washington, Admiral Leahy was busy preparing a draft response to a cable that had reached the White House’s Map Room in the early hours of the morning. The cable was from Ambassador Harriman in Moscow, who was not happy with the message on the Bern affair that the president had sent him the day before for delivery to Marshal Stalin. Harriman disagreed with the president’s characterization of the matter as a “minor incident” that had “faded into the past.” Before forwarding the message to Stalin, the ambassador respectfully suggested that the word minor be deleted because, as Harriman put it, “the misunderstanding appears to me to be of a major character.” He also wanted to delay the message long enough to give Churchill the chance to weigh in.9
Convinced that the president would not agree with Harriman’s suggestions, Leahy drafted an appropriate reply, which he sent to Warm Springs for the president’s consideration as “MR-OUT-411” at 10:50 a.m. But given that Hassett and FDR had started working later than usual, it was well past noon before the president saw Leahy’s draft, which, first, articulated that Churchill was fully briefed and hence there was no need to delay the message to Stalin and, second, informed Harriman that “I do not wish to delete the word minor as it is my desire to consider the Bern misunderstanding a minor incident.”10 Leahy was correct in his conviction that the president wanted to do everything he could to minimize and move beyond the Bern affair. FDR read the text carefully, O.K
.’d it, and passed it back to Hassett.
It was now close to one o’clock, and having finished with his correspondence for the day, FDR turned to other matters. He asked Hassett if he might pick up Leighton McCarthy in his car and give him a ride to the barbeque, where the president would meet them at 4:30; after this, he and McCarthy would attend the minstrel show being put on at Georgia Hall. And then, as Hassett turned to leave, carrying with him the various dispatches, the president gave him what turned out to be his last official directive: to inform Frank Walker, the postmaster general, that the president would indeed, as Walker had suggested, purchase the first stamp of the special issue commemorating the opening of the United Nations conference in San Francisco. As FDR had said to Daisy a few days before, what better way to remind the American people of the significance of the conference than to issue the very stamp whose design he had selected the prior evening, with its laurel branch etched on a blue background, below the simple phrase “Towards a United Nations, April 25, 1945.”11
HASSETT MADE HIS WAY DOWN PINE HILL TO CARVER COTTAGE BY 1:00 p.m. His first order of business was to see that the necessary orders and dispatches the president had signed went out. Included among these, of course, was the message that Admiral Leahy was waiting for in the White House. It wasn’t long before the teletype in the Map Room clicked into life and, at precisely 1:06 p.m. Warm Springs time, spit out the words Leahy expected: “Reference MR-OUT-411 Approved.” Thus the last message to go out of the Map Room under FDR’s name concerned Joseph Stalin.12
The Last 100 Days Page 32