The Last 100 Days

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The Last 100 Days Page 35

by David B. Woolner


  Stalin was not alone in expressing the view that President Roosevelt’s “cause must live on.” Countless editorials, press pieces, and radio commentaries made the same argument. As Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote ten days after the president died in an article titled “His ‘Unfinished Business’—and Ours” that was based on the remarkable interview she held with FDR on March 23, FDR “may not be present at the conclave he called, but in the most literal sense he will be conspicuous by his absence. His voice will be the loudest there… [his] vacant seat will overshadow all of the occupied chairs. It may well be,” she concluded, “that the speech he does not deliver—the speech his mind was full of when he fell—will be far more effective in carrying his dream toward reality than anything he could say in person.”5

  In the emotional tribute Churchill delivered to the House of Commons a few days earlier, he arrived at a similar insight: the timing and circumstances of FDR’s death may well have contributed to the fulfillment of his legacy. While the president’s passing represented a “bitter loss to humanity,” he had died what Churchill considered “an enviable death.” He had brought his country “through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of it toils” and had “died in harness… battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen,” at the very moment when “victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him.”6

  In many respects Churchill’s and McCormick’s observations were accurate. FDR had died at an opportune moment, and had not, as he himself feared he might, lingered on to fight the battle over the creation of the United Nations and the establishment of the peace in an incapacitated state, as had Woodrow Wilson decades earlier.7 The former “Brains Truster” and long-standing Roosevelt associate Benjamin Cohen certainly would have agreed with this assessment. Of all the officials within the Roosevelt administration, Cohen was the one individual who had the wisdom—or temerity—to argue in the spring of 1944 that FDR’s running for a fourth term would be a mistake. It would, Cohen feared, lead to a kind of apathy or intellectual and political fatigue among the American public that risked leaving “Rooseveltian ideas, like Wilsonian ideas… discredited for a considerable period, not because they are basically unsound but because political conditions will not permit them to be accepted or even understood.” If, on the other hand, FDR were to end his career in 1944 on what could only be described as a high point, the influence of his ideas “may be greater,” as the people will always remember that at no moment and in no crisis did Roosevelt ever let them down. Thus, whoever succeeds FDR will be under great pressure to follow his example in fighting for and watching out for the common people’s interests.8

  Viewed from a short-term—and even a long-term—political perspective, Cohen’s reasoning, much like Churchill and McCormick’s, certainly carries a good deal of weight. Yet we should not let these observations about the timing and circumstances of FDR’s death overshadow the very real and long-lasting consequence his leadership had on the history of the twentieth—and twenty-first—centuries. The first and most dramatic manifestation of this impact can be seen in the transformative nature of his presidency. The America that huddled around radios or gathered on the Washington Mall to listen to FDR proclaim March 4, 1933, “a day of national consecration” was nothing like the America he left behind twelve years later. FDR took “watching out for the common people” very seriously, and in focusing the efforts of his administration on providing for the social and economic well-being of the average American, through Social Security, unemployment insurance, workers’ rights, and the regulation of the financial sector, not to mention a massive investment in infrastructure, he fundamentally altered the relationship between the American people and their government.

  With Eleanor’s help, FDR also helped usher in an America that was far more inclusive of racial and religious minorities. This is not to say that he rid the country of racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of bigotry and religious intolerance, but FDR’s habit—as a “Protestant Patrician in a Catholic Party”—of “including the excluded” and paying attention to the needs of the marginalized helped lay the foundation for the all-important civil rights movement that followed. As Mary McLeod Bethune once noted, the Roosevelt years represented “the first time in the history” that African Americans felt that they could communicate their grievances to their government with the “expectancy of sympathetic understanding and interpretation.” By 1936, over 90 percent of African American voters—most of whom had supported the Republican Party in the past—were voting for Roosevelt and the Democrats.9

  Roosevelt’s leadership had an equally strong impact on the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world. Once again, the most transformative aspect of this change came about in the minds of the American people, who by the time of Roosevelt’s death—and despite his lingering fears to the contrary—had largely accepted the idea that the so-called isolationism of the 1930s, or what might better be defined as unilateralism, was a failed policy. To a large extent this conviction stemmed from the lessons FDR and his contemporaries gleaned from the experience of the Great Depression, which included stark recognition of the link between the global economic crisis of the 1930s and the concomitant rise of fascism in Europe and parts of Asia. Commenting on this in his famous Economic Bill of Rights speech in January 1944, FDR said, “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff with which dictatorships are made.”10

  In light of this, FDR firmly believed that the security and well-being of people on distant continents was directly linked to the security and well-being of the people of the United States.11 To rid the world of the economic hardships that created the conditions that led to the rise of these anti-democratic regimes—and hence the war—FDR set his administration to work on creating a new postwar multilateral order that rejected the economic nationalism and unilateralist tenets of such organizations as the “America First” movement. In place of high tariffs and restrictive trade practices, FDR embraced the free movement of capital and freer trade. By the summer of 1944, the Roosevelt administration had tackled the first of these two major requirements—the free movement of capital—through the successful negotiation of the Bretton Woods agreements that led to the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Three years later, the successful negotiation of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) brought about much of the second requirement. Taken together, these two measures represented a profound change in the structure of the global economy that forms the basis for what we now call globalization.12

  In keeping with America’s expanding role in the world—perhaps best captured in FDR’s October 1944 comment to Stalin “that in this global war there is literally no question, military or political, in which the United States is not interested”—FDR not only helped craft the grand alliance that went on to defeat the Axis but also managed the largest buildup of military and industrial capacity the world had ever seen. By 1945, American industry, to take but one example, had produced over 300,000 military aircraft, a significant portion of which went to our Allies via the Lend Lease program, another Roosevelt invention, while the total number of American men and women in uniform—and not working in American industry—had climbed from a paltry 186,000 in 1938 to roughly 16 million. FDR also initiated the Manhattan Project, which brought about the dawn of the nuclear age.

  What makes these accomplishments all the more remarkable is that very little of this happened by accident. Much of it, in fact, was the product of Franklin Roosevelt’s highly furtive and creative mind. Indeed, FDR’s capacity for what we might refer to as Machiavellian reasoning—his ability to stay just far enough ahead of the public to subtly lay the groundwork for future policy directives—is perhaps his most remarkable quality. In this sense, Anthony Eden was surely correct when he remarked that “Roosevelt, was, ab
ove all else, a consummate politician. Few men could see more clearly their immediate objective, or show greater artistry in obtaining it.”13

  FDR’s penchant for secrecy had its downside, of course. It made the president difficult to read—and, when coupled with his ebullient personality, left him open to the charge, by some, that he lacked depth and was essentially a superficial character, and, by others, that he was a crypto-socialist, fascist, authoritarian, or dictator.14 It also left Vice President Truman in a state of profound ignorance about the details of many of FDR’s policies. The most serious aspect of FDR’s proclivity for hiding his innermost thoughts and feelings was his tendency to downplay or cover up—not the extent of his disability, which in 1930s and ’40s America was surely a political necessity—but, rather, the far more serious decline in his health that took place in the spring of 1944 and continued in his last 100 days. Benjamin Cohen, in this sense, was right in arguing that FDR should not have run for office again in 1944, but for reasons that even this relatively close confidant failed to recognize.

  And yet, given the frank admission that Eleanor Roosevelt made to Margaret Fayerweather about her husband’s health just a few weeks before his death, and FDR’s own premonitions about the possibility that he might not be around for much longer as he took his fourth oath of office, it seems clear that part of what drove FDR’s determination to press on was in fact his own sense of mortality. He knew, as he admitted to James Farley in July 1940—long before the diagnosis of heart disease that Dr. Bruenn made in the spring of 1944—that a man in his condition could “have a breakup at any time.” But with the world at war and in desperate need of American support, FDR nevertheless made the decision to break with tradition and run for an unprecedented third term, even if, as Eleanor remarked, “it must shorten his life.” FDR’s response to Cohen’s recommendation that he not run in 1944 reinforces this view. “This is a most interesting analysis,” FDR observed, “and I think a very just one. You have only left out one matter—the matter of my own feelings!”15

  FDR may have suffered from declining physical and mental energy in the final 100 days of his life, but his determination to secure what has rightfully been called “a New Deal for the World” had not waned. His decision to bring Edward Flynn to Yalta, followed by the latter’s trip to Rome to orchestrate a possible rapprochement between the Vatican and the Kremlin, was one example of this phenomenon. A second can be found in his interest in and support for the organization of a world conservation conference as one of the first major international gatherings established under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations. At home, his decision to form a committee to look into the establishment of a guaranteed annual wage as a means to help the nation make the transition “from a war economy to a peace economy” was yet another, as was his support for the inclusion of a possible drafting of an “International Bill of Human Rights” at the San Francisco conference. Finally, his efforts to effect a rapprochement between the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East as a means to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, though unsuccessful and highly frustrating, in a very real sense marked the beginning of the leading role that FDR expected the United States to play in the world once the war was over.16

  But none of these lofty goals would be possible without the continuing cooperation of the great powers, which FDR regarded as essential to the preservation of world peace. This made it necessary not only to work with the British but also to recognize that the most important element of postwar security and stability lay in cooperation with the Soviet Union, which, in FDR’s mind, could be accomplished only by securing Soviet participation in the United Nations. It was this goal, above all others, that FDR pursued in his last 100 days, and that determined many of the policy decisions he made during the Yalta conference and in the weeks and months that followed.

  FDR’s critics would later assert that he was too old and ill to stand up to Stalin—that during his last 100 days he sold out Poland and much of the rest of the region to the Russians. But FDR was not alone in thinking that cooperation with the Soviet Union was necessary; the US Joint Chiefs of Staff certainly shared this view and, as late as the spring of 1945, continued to insist that “the maintenance of Allied unity… must remain the cardinal and over-riding objective of our politico-military policy with Russia.”17 Moreover, when we consider the array of issues that FDR was attempting to reconcile as the war in Europe drew to a close—the tensions between his belief in fundamental human rights and the realities of geopolitics, his responsibility to guard American interests while promoting international understanding and cooperation, his aspiration to foster a world community of neighborliness and shared values in the face of the potent and often pernicious forces of nationalism—his policies at Yalta become much more understandable.18

  FDR understood that there were contradictions in his drive to establish a “family of nations.” In the same way, FDR knew that the United Nations would not be without its faults—especially given the imbalance between the powers accorded the four (and later, five) “policemen,” on the one hand, and the rest of the states that made up the international body, on the other. He never imagined that he could will a perfectly formed world government into being. His aim was to make the exclusive authority enjoyed by the Big Three during the war less exclusive after the war—the first step in what he called “the democratic organization of the world.” It was this overarching goal that he saw as the key to the prevention of another, even more cataclysmic war. If the achievement of that objective required him to temporarily compromise some of his principles, so be it; there would be time enough in the future for him, or his successors, to correct any shortcomings.

  The UN Charter that passed on June 26, 1945, stands as the purest expression of FDR’s cause. Its emphasis on human rights and on the establishment of a human rights commission would eventually lead—under the skillful leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt—to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Its call for the establishment of “international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples” echoes FDR’s 1941 call for “Freedom from Want” in his Four Freedoms address, and closely mirrors the Atlantic Charter’s appeal for the “fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security.” The new world body’s emphasis on social and economic progress would ultimately lead to the founding of UNICEF in 1946, the World Health Organization in 1948, and the World Food Program in 1961.

  The creation of the Trusteeship Council called for in the UN Charter stands as another reflection of a cause close to FDR’s heart—and of the issue that divided him and Churchill. The Council was established “to supervise the administration of Trust Territories and to ensure that Governments responsible for their administration took adequate steps to prepare them for the achievement of the Charter’s goals,” the latter of which included “the right to equal rights and self-determination.” Much as FDR had anticipated, the end of the war set in motion the decolonization of the world. On November 1, 1994, one month after the independence of Palau (the last remaining United Nations Trust Territory), the Trusteeship Council suspended its operations.

  The legacy of FDR’s globalism—which, in addition to the Bretton Woods agreements and the promotion of freer trade, includes the American-led multilateral security system that has helped prevent the outbreak of another global conflagration—also endures. While he could not have predicted every outcome of his policies, FDR was always a far-sighted politician, especially in his waning days. As Anne O’Hare McCormick noted after her March 23rd interview with the president, FDR was “looking beyond victory” toward the San Francisco conference, when the United States and the world would “project into the picture of victory the design for peace.”19

  AS HE SAT IN THE WARM GEORGIA SUN THE DAY BEFORE HE DIED, FDR was at work on his Jefferson Day ra
dio address. Contemplating the work of the nation’s third chief executive, he was struck by the fact that Jefferson, himself a distinguished scientist, once spoke of “the brotherly spirit of Science that had brought into one family all its votaries of whatever grade, and however widely dispersed throughout the different quarters of the globe.” There was a lesson in this observation, FDR thought, for “today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace.”20

  Knowing that millions of people the world over shared his resolve, FDR remained confident that a lasting peace could be achieved—that it would be possible to move “against the terrible scourge of war.” To all those who were ready to dedicate themselves to this purpose, he then wrote out in his frail hand the last words he would ever craft for the public: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”21

  Unfortunately, FDR’s unbounded optimism and faith in his own ability to carry on despite his utter exhaustion after years of toil could not revive his frail body. His final tribute to Jefferson was never delivered; there would be no address from his wheelchair to the opening of the United Nations conference; his chance to return to his beloved home upon the Hudson to live out his years in tranquility and peace, denied. But his spirit and vision endure in the institutions he helped create and in the determination of people the world over to continue to build that “permanent structure of peace” that he worked so hard to establish during his time in office, and at no time more urgently than in his last 100 days.

 

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