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The Last 100 Days

Page 36

by David B. Woolner


  IN THE CENTER OF THE SMALL TOWN OF HYDE PARK, ABOUT A MILE from the Rose Garden, stands a bronze plaque that lists the names of all those from the community who served in World War II. At the top of the plaque, a separate smaller list denotes the names of those “who gave the supreme sacrifice,” among which is included, in alphabetical order, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Over the last few months of his life FDR often referred to those who had made “the supreme sacrifice” and, in reference to the United Nations, frequently insisted, as he did in his final State of the Union address, that “this organization must be the fulfillment of the promise for which men have fought and died in this war. It must be the justification of all the sacrifices that have been made—of all the dreadful misery that this world has endured.”22 He also cautioned the American people not to forget that “in our disillusionment after the last war, we preferred international anarchy to international cooperation with Nations which did not see and think exactly as we did. We gave up the hope of gradually achieving a better peace because we had not the courage to fulfill our responsibilities in an admittedly imperfect world. We must not let that happen again,” he said, “or we shall follow the same tragic road again—the road to a third world war.”

  The world we live in today is certainly not perfect. But as the American people retreat into xenophobia and nationalism and demonstrate less willingness to engage with other nations and peoples, we should reflect on the price that Franklin Roosevelt and so many hundreds of thousands of other Americans paid to secure global peace. We should remember FDR’s vision, faith, and idealism—his conviction that the world’s problems are America’s problems—and ask ourselves if, in the face of the challenges confronting us today, we will exhibit the same courage to live up to our responsibilities.

  Acknowledgments

  AS ANY HISTORIAN WORTH HIS OR HER SALT WILL READILY ADMIT, getting to know Franklin Roosevelt is not easy. It takes years of patient prodding to peel away the many outer layers of his personality before the essence of the man starts to emerge—and even then, one is never quite sure. This task becomes all the more daunting for the biographer—a fact in which the mysterious and inscrutable FDR would no doubt take delight. Given FDR’s complex nature, it is impossible for me to conceive how I might have been able to complete this work without the help and support of a number of friends and colleagues who have also sought to fathom the depths of this multifaceted “juggler.” Sharing ideas and friendship with them has enriched me and this book.

  Much of the inspiration for this work stems from a series of conversations held with Richard Aldous and Mark Lytle, of Bard College, whose friendship, astute analysis, and deep fascination for the enigmatic FDR helped shape the contours of this project from day one. For their willingness to listen to—and critique—my ideas, as well as read and evaluate the first draft of the manuscript, I remain profoundly grateful. I owe an equal debt of gratitude to David Reynolds of Christ’s College, Cambridge—another friend, colleague, and mentor, whose fascination for the man he frequently refers to as “the wheelchair president” also helped shape the contours of this work. David’s willingness to take time to review the entire manuscript and engage in a number of spirited electronic conversations about its strengths and weaknesses is deeply appreciated. William Leuchtenburg—the dean of American historians, a Roosevelt biographer, and one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever chanced to meet—also read the entire work and offered the type of sage advice and criticism that could only come from a man who lived through these tumultuous years. My thanks also go to Warren Kimball, another great friend and teacher, for his input on the work, as well as to Richard Breitman, Geoffrey Ward, and John B. Hattendorff, all of whom took the time to read and discuss various aspects of the manuscript. I would like to thank David Douglas and Joan Murray for providing me with access to the unpublished version of the diary of Henry A. Wallace; Vladimir Petchatnov for his help in obtaining documentary material from the Foreign Ministry Archives in Moscow; Norman J. W. Goda for pointing me toward an important new source concerning FDR’s visit to the Great Bitter Lake; Richard Grinnell for his poetic counsel; Natalia Garrity for some last-minute Russian translation; Kenneth Moody for some long-distance research; and the late Curtis Roosevelt for his willingness to allow me to interview him about his memories of his grandparents. Special thanks also go to Jonathan Alter and Robert Dallek for the important advice and encouragement they provided at the inception of this effort. I want to thank my friend Peter Shaw, the cartographer, for his excellent illustrations, as well as Neil and Annie Mozer for their kind hospitality during my many research trips to Washington.

  I am also grateful for the support I received from a number of institutions and archives. First and foremost, I want to extend my appreciation to Marist College, especially to Dr. Dennis Murray, the visionary who served as president of Marist for nearly forty years, and who today, as president emeritus, continues to strive to make Marist one of the foremost educational institutions in the United States. It was thanks to a chance meeting on the steps of St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House on the first of May 1997 that Dr. Murray and I began the conversation that would eventually lead to my employment at Marist and residence in Rhinebeck, New York, less than ten miles up the Albany Post Road from Hyde Park. I also owe a heartfelt thanks to my fast friends and colleagues in the History Department at Marist, especially chairs Nicholas Marshall, Robyn Rosen, and Sally Dwyer-McNulty, for their unwavering support and for their patience with all of my various endeavors over the years.

  It was the presentation of the Four Freedoms Awards and unveiling of the FDR Memorial that brought me to Washington in May 1997, and for this and for my subsequent involvement in the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute I would like to thank William J. vanden Heuvel, John F. Sears, and Frederica Goodman, the three individuals who, along with Verne Newton, first introduced me to the organization. My thanks also go to Anne Roosevelt, the chair of the Roosevelt Institute’s board of directors; to my friend and colleague-at-arms Christopher Breiseth, former president and CEO of the Institute and an astute scholar on the life and times of Frances Perkins; and to the Institute’s current president, Felicia Wong, whose leadership and dedication to progressive causes has helped shape today’s US political landscape.

  None of this would have been possible, of course, without the resources of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. It has been my privilege to work in close association with the FDR Library for the past two decades and I owe much to the entire staff, especially Supervisory Archivist Kirsten Carter and her colleagues Sarah Navins, Matt Hanson, and Virginia Lewick, for their help and especially their tolerance of my all-too-frequent habit of rushing into the reading room at the last minute to request assistance in finding a particular document. I would like to thank FDR Library director Paul Sparrow for his support and encouragement and extend my appreciation as well to the former director, Lynn Bassanese, for the steady leadership she provided the Library over the years, and to former Senior Archivist Robert Clark for his help and willingness to discuss the merits of this project when I first began.

  In addition to the FDR Library, the Churchill Archives Center, at Churchill College, Cambridge, proved vitally important. For all of their cheerful assistance, I would like to thank the Center’s entire archival staff, especially its director, Allen Packwood, for facilitating my visits and always making me feel so welcome in Cambridge. My thanks also go out to the Roosevelt Study Center (RSC), in Middelburg, the Netherlands, and to its former director, Cornelius van Minnen, whose thirty-plus years of leadership turned the RSC—now reorganized into the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies—into one of the most important archives for the study of twentieth-century American history in Europe. I would be remiss if I did not also thank the RSC’s former assistant director, Hans Krabbendan, as well as Darrio Fazzi, Giles Scott-Smith and especially Leontien Joosse, who was never too busy to help me with
whatever difficulty I might bring to her attention.

  A good share of the writing and a fair amount of the research for this book took place at the RSC. This would not have been possible without the support I received from University College Roosevelt (UCR), also located in Middelburg, which granted me a Roosevelt Fellowship in the spring of 2016. This allowed me to spend five months working in and around the twelfth-century abbey at the center of this charming capital city of the Dutch province of Zeeland. Middelburg proved an ideal place to write, and my stay there—complete with frequent forays into the Dutch countryside by bicycle—was made all the more enjoyable by the friendship and support I received from my colleagues at UCR, especially Barbara Oomen, Anya Luscombe, and Sophie Krier, whose observations on Eleanor Roosevelt and the centrality of human rights helped inform my thinking. My thanks also go to Alexei Karas, whose knowledge of the Russian language and skill as an economist proved an ideal combination as I struggled to interpret various Soviet texts and decipher a number of equally perplexing economic questions. The welcome I received from the members of the Roosevelt Foundation, especially its chair and the King’s Commissioner for Zeeland, Han Polman, and his chief of cabinet, Pieter Jan Mersie, also enhanced my sojourn in Holland.

  My ability to stay focused on the writing of this work has been facilitated by the support I have received from University College Dublin (UCD), where I was awarded the Mary Ball Washington Chair in American History for the 2016–2017 academic year. I have benefited greatly from the support and friendship of a number of colleagues in UCD’s Department of History and Archives, especially Professors Maurice Bric and Tadhg O Hannrachain. My conversations about the turbulent nature of the first half of the twentieth century with Robert Gerwath, the director of UCD’s Centre for War Studies, have also proven most helpful. I first became involved in UCD through a conference on American progressivism that I helped organize with Liam Kennedy, the director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies, whose ongoing friendship and interest in my work are much appreciated. My thanks also go to Kate Breslin and Sarah Feehnan for all that they have done to make my stay in Dublin a success.

  The research for this book has taken me to a host of other archives and I am thankful to the staff of all of them. In the United States these include the National Archives and Records Administration; the Library of Congress; the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia; the Special Collections and Archives of Clemson University; the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University; the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University; the Special Collections and Archives of the Nimitz Library at the United States Naval Academy; the Manuscript Division of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins University; the Columbia Center for Oral History at Columbia University; the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study; the Houghton Library of Harvard; the Archives of the Archdiocese of New York; the Center of Jewish History at the American Jewish Historical Society of New York; and the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. In the United Kingdom, in addition to the Churchill Archives, my research took me to the National Archives, Kew; the Cadbury Research/Special Collections Library of the University of Birmingham; the Special Collections of the Cambridge University Library; and the Archives and Manuscript Collections of the Wellcome Library in London. I also wish to thank the National Archives of Canada, as well as the National Archives, the National Library, and the National War Museum of Malta.

  I am fortunate in having such a dedicated and astute editor in Daniel Gerstle, whose discerning eye, patience, deep love of history, and gentle prodding not only vastly improved this book but also greatly enhanced the whole experience of bringing this work to fruition. I’ve been equally fortunate to have John Wright as my literary agent. His years of experience, wise counsel, and unflagging encouragement not only led me to the ideal publisher but also helped frame the scope of the narrative. The two of them, in short, were a wonderful team to work with.

  My final thanks go to my family, for whom I owe the greatest debt of all. None of this would have been remotely possible without the support and encouragement of my wife, Meliza, whose patience, real-world observations, and faith in my abilities have been a constant source of strength and inspiration. My deep appreciation also goes out to our three daughters, Maia, Leah, and Clara, not only for their willingness to reciprocate their father’s habit of critiquing their writing (and in Clara’s case, scanning hundreds of pages of historical material) but also for the joyful diversions they continue to bring to our lives.

  It was always my intention to dedicate this work to my father—the one person whom I have always looked up to and tried to emulate in this journey we call life. His endless curiosity, love of the English language, dedication to his wife and children, and quiet compassion for those around him never faltered for a single moment throughout his remarkable 102 years. We spoke a number of times about this book, and when we both became aware that the end was near, I thankfully told him of my intention to dedicate it to him. He died one week later—at almost exactly the same time that I was putting the final touches on the last sentence of the last paragraph. I dedicate this work now to his memory.

  DAVID B. WOOLNER

  Dublin and Rhinebeck, Spring 2017

  Photograph by Michael Benabib

  David B. Woolner is Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian at the Roosevelt Institute, Professor of History at Marist College, and Senior Fellow of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College. He is the editor or coeditor of five books, including Progressivism in America: Past, Present, and Future and FDR’s World: War, Peace, and Legacies. He lives in Rhinebeck, New York.

  More Praise for The Last 100 Days

  “In this magisterial account, David B. Woolner makes a compelling case that FDR’s last hundred days deserve to be ranked in importance with the first. Drawing on unequalled knowledge of both Roosevelt and the sources, Woolner refutes the notion of a feeble dying president who had lost his grip and was unwilling to confront difficult issues. He shows that an exhausted FDR conserved his limited energies single-mindedly to concentrate on the two most important issues facing the president—winning the war over the Axis powers and securing postwar international cooperation. A wonderfully lucid and convincing study.”

  —Anthony Badger, author of FDR: The First Hundred Days

  “At a time when a majority of Americans are so disillusioned about politics, and with a sitting president under investigation for possible impeachable offenses, Woolner’s book offers a compelling look at a great chief executive. His portrait of FDR’s last hundred days is a powerful reminder of courageous leadership and provides hope that we can return to presidential effectiveness in the not-too-distant future.”

  —Robert Dallek, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life

  “Franklin Roosevelt’s last hundred days were every bit as fascinating and consequential as his first. If you want to know how much of the modern world came to be, this is the place to begin.”

  —Geoffrey C. Ward, author of A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt

  “The Last 100 Days is an imaginative, deeply researched page-turner that is a pleasure to read. At a time when many Americans find the White House desolating, Woolner invites the reader to enjoy some time with a president who, even in his final year, radiated good cheer and hope for our country’s future.”

  —William E. Leuchtenburg, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940

  “Woolner has ‘hung around’ with FDR for over a quarter-century, and we are the beneficiaries of that special relationship. Neatly using the last hundred days as a vehicle for a broader assessment, Woolner has given us an honest, solidly researched appreciation of Roosevelt’s dreams and actions—dreams and actions that shaped the remainder of the twentieth century.”

  —Warr
en Kimball, author of Forged in War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Second World War

  Notes

  Preface

  1. On FDR’s response to the Great Depression, see David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009); and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal 1933–1935 (New York: Mariner Books, 2009).

  2. On FDR’s first 100 days as president, see Anthony Badger, FDR: The First Hundred Days (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009); Adam Cohen, Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America (New York: Penguin, 2009); and Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

  3. For more on the impact of the fall of France, see David Reynolds, “1940: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century,” International Affairs 66, no. 2 (April 1990): 325–350.

  4. On FDR’s war leadership, see Eric Larrabee, Commander-in-Chief: Franklin D. Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (New York: Bluejacket Books, 2004); Nigel Hamilton, The Mantle of Command: FDR at War 1941–1942 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2014) and Commander in Chief: FDR’s Battle with Churchill, 1943 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016); and David Kaiser, No End Save Victory: How FDR Led the Nation into War (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

 

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