13. William Hassett Diary, April 1, 1945; David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1933–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 832–834; The Oxford Companion to World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 836.
14. William Hassett Diary, April 2 and 3, 1945; Anna Roosevelt Halsted, Oral History, Columbia University Library.
15. Stephen Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (New York: Westview Press, 2003), 70; Edward R. Stettinius Calendar Notes, April 1, 1945, University of Virginia.
16. Eisenhower to Marshall, April 7, 1945, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 2401; Warren F. Kimball, Churchill and Roosevelt: Their Complete Correspondence, Vol. III, Alliance Declining (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 602–603.
17. Churchill to Roosevelt, April 1, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
18. Roosevelt to Churchill, April 4, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL. General Omar Bradley was even more blunt, asking at one point whether casualties as high as one hundred thousand were “not a pretty stiff price to pay for a prestige objective, especially when we’ve got to fall back and let the other fellow take over” (Eisenhower to Churchill, April 7, 1945, Eisenhower Papers, 2401).
19. Roosevelt to Stalin, March 24 and 29, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
20. Stalin to Roosevelt, March 29, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
21. Roosevelt to Stalin, March 31, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
22. Stalin to Roosevelt, April 3, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL; correspondence between J. V. Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt in the Years of the Great Patriotic War, Vol. 2, edited by V. O. Pechativov and I. E. Magadeev (Moscow: OLMA Publishing Group, 2015), 478–479.
23. Roosevelt to Stalin, April 4, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL. Wolff also claimed “joint action by Kesselring himself would have a vital repurcussion on… the Western Front, since many Generals are only waiting for someone to take the lead.” OSS Memo to the President, March 10, 1945, Declassified Holdings, FDRL.
24. Stalin to Roosevelt, April 7, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
25. Churchill to Roosevelt, April 5, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
26. Churchill to Roosevelt, Text of Message to Stalin, April 5, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
27. Churchill to Roosevelt, April 11, 1945, Text of Message from Stalin, April 7, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
28. Churchill to Roosevelt, April, 11, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
29. Kimball, Alliance Declining, 609. Stalin had additional information from other sources in the UK, most likely from Anthony Blunt, a member of the Cambridge Five. For more on this, see S. M. Plokhy, Yalta: The Price of Peace (New York: Viking, 2010), 363–364.
30. Plokhy, Yalta, 360.
31. Richard Breitman, “U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis,” Journal of American History, January 30, 2015.
32. William Leahy, I Was There (New York: Whittlesey House, 1950), 334.
18. Off the Record
1. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 5, 1945, and April 4, 1945, FDRL.
2. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 4, 1945.
3. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, January 22, 1945.
4. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 343.
5. Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 361; Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closet Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 20–21.
6. Lucy Rutherfurd to Daisy Suckley, February 9, 1945, Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Papers, FDRL.
7. Osmena to Roosevelt, March 31, 1945, President’s Secretary’s Files (PSF) Philippines, 1944–1945, FDRL.
8. William Hassett Diary, April 5, 1945; List of Matters to Be Taken up by the President; Osmena to Roosevelt, March 31, 1945, PSF Philippines, 1944–1945.
9. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Press Conference, April 5, 1945, Complete Press Conferences, FDRL.
10. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 6, 1945.
11. Ibid.
12. Interview with Dr. Howard Bruenn conducted by Jan K. Herman, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Riverdale, New York, January 31, 1990, 22; Howard G. Bruenn, M.D., “Clinical Notes on the Illness and Death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Annals of Internal Medicine 72 (April 1970): 579–591.
13. Churchill to Roosevelt, April 5, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
14. “Manpower Action Hints FDR, Like Wilson, May Lose Congress Control,” Washington Post, April 8, 1945, B5.
15. Eleanor Roosevelt to Maude Gray, April 1, 1945; it was also in this letter that Eleanor alluded to Henry Wallace as the one person able to carry on.
16. Eleanor Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 8, 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL.
17. Lucy Rutherfurd to Grace Tully, April 5, 1945, Grace Tully Papers, FDRL; White House Telephone Logs, April 5, 1945, FDRL.
18. Ibid.
19. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 8, 1945.
20. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 9, 1945.
21. William Hassett Diary, April 9, 1945.
22. Ibid.
23. Elizabeth (Madame) Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait: A Memoir (Pittsburgh: Pittsburg University Press, 1991), 101.
24. William Hassett Diary, April 10, 1945.
25. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 10, 1945; Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 107.
26. Hugh Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception: The Moving Story of Roosevelt’s Massive Disability and the Intense Efforts to Keep It from the Public (St. Petersburg, FL: Vandamere Press, 1999), 208.
27. Roosevelt to Stalin, March 31, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
28. Churchill to Roosevelt, April 11, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
29. Ibid.
30. Roosevelt to Churchill, April 11, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
31. Ibid.
32. Churchill to Roosevelt, April 9, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
33. Roosevelt to Churchill, April 11, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL. The president would not live long enough to see how Allied policy with respect to the Netherlands would play out, but in keeping with the assurances he made to Queen Wilhelmina three weeks before, Eisenhower would eventually negotiate a truce with the German Command in Holland that would allow the British, Canadian, and American air forces to drop in the final weeks of the war over 11,000 tons of much-needed food to the anguished Dutch population.
34. Roosevelt to Stalin, April 11, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
35. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 11, 1945; Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 110.
36. Henry Morgenthau Diary, April 11, 1945, HMD, FDRL.
37. Henry Morgenthau Diary, April 11, 1945.
38. Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 114.
39. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945.
19. The Last Day
1. Margret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 5, 1945; letter from Hazel Stephens to William MacKay Davis, April 15, 1945, reprinted in William Warrens Rogers, Jr., “The Death of a President, April 12, 1945: An Account from Warm Springs,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Spring 1991), 114–115.
2. Ibid.
3. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945, FDRL; Roosevelt Medical Information, Howard Bruenn Papers, 1944–1946, FDRL.
4. Grace Tully, FDR: My Boss (Chicago: People’s Book Club, 1949), 361.
5. Ibid.; “Toinette Marya Bachelder,” Obituary, Washington Post, October 5, 1995, B4; Elizabeth Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait: A Memoir (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1991), 117.
6. William Hassett Diary, April 12, 1945, FDRL; Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 120.
7. William Hassett Diary, April 12, 1945.
8. Ibid.
9. Map Room Files, April 12, 1945, Map Room Files, FDRL.
&nbs
p; 10. Ibid.
11. William Hassett Diary, April 12, 1945; Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 6, 1945.
12. Map Room Log Sheet, April 12, 1945, FDRL.
13. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945; Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 117.
14. Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 118; Michael Reilly and Robert Slocum, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1947), 230.
15. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945.
16. Tully, FDR: My Boss, 361–362.
17. Reilly and Slocum, Reilly of the White House, 231.
18. William Hassett Diary, April 12, 1945.
19. Roosevelt, Medical Information, Howard G. Bruenn Papers, 1944–1946, FDRL.
20. Roosevelt, Medical Information, Howard G. Bruenn Papers, 1944–1946, FDRL; Howard G. Bruenn, M.D., “Clinical Notes on the Illness and Death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Annals of Internal Medicine 72 (April 1970): 579–591.
21. Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 118–119.
22. Vice Admiral (Dr.) Ross T. McIntire, White House Physician (New York: Putnam & Sons, 1946), 241.
23. Joseph Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 720–721; Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945.
24. Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992).
25. Wilson Brown, “Four Presidents,” unpublished manuscript, Wilson Brown Papers, Annapolis, Maryland; Linda Lotridge Levin, The Making of FDR: The Story of Stephen T. Early, America’s First Modern Press Secretary (New York: Prometheus Books, 2008), 77–78.
26. William Hassett Diary, April 12, 1945.
27. Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 119.
28. William Hassett Diary, April 12, 1945.
29. Roosevelt Medical Information, Howard G. Bruenn Papers, 1944–1946, FDRL.
30. William Hassett Diary, April 12, 1945.
31. Clinical Notes on the Illness and Death of the President, and Roosevelt Medical Information, Howard G. Bruenn Papers, 1944–1946, FDRL.
32. Dr. James Paullin to Dr. McIntire, June 24, 1946, Box 12, Ross T. McIntire Papers, FDR; McIntire, White House Physician, 242–243.
33. Clinical Notes on the Illness and Death of the President, and Roosevelt Medical Information. Howard G. Bruenn Papers, 1944–1946, FDRL.
34. McIntire, White House Physician, 275; Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945.
35. Levin, The Making of FDR, 427.
36. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945.
37. Tully, FDR: My Boss, 362–363.
38. A. Merriman Smith, Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976), 220–221.
39. Ibid., 223.
40. Hazel Stephens and Betty Brown to Mr. Mackey, April 15, 1945, in Rogers, “The Death of a President,” 115–116.
41. Ibid.
42. Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, 276.
43. Ibid.
44. Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL.
45. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 340–341.
46. Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, 275.
47. James Roosevelt, My Parents: A Differing View (New York: Playboy Press, 1976), 285–286.
48. “James Roosevelt Delayed in Flight,” New York Times, April 16, 1945, 3.
49. Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait, 120.
50. William D. Leahy Diary, April 12, 1945, Library of Congress.
51. Stephen Early Papers, Box 34, FDRL.
52. Ibid.; Kirstin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal (New York: Anchor Books, 2009), 341.
53. “Mrs. Roosevelt Flies to Georgia; Was at Benefit When News Came: SHE CARRIES BRAVELY ON,” New York Times, April 13, 1945, 4.
54. Tully, FDR: My Boss, 366.
55. Bernard Asbell, Mother and Daughter: The Letters of Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt (New York: Fromm International, 1988), 186.
56. Tully, FDR: My Boss, 366.
57. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley Diary, April 12, 1945.
58. Eleanor Roosevelt, Autobiography, 279.
59. James Roosevelt, My Parents, 286.
Epilogue: Looking Beyond Victory
1. Frank L. Kluckhohn, “Grave Is in Garden: As the Nation Paid Homage to Its Departed Commander in Chief,” New York Times, April 16, 1945, 1; Henry A. Wallace, Unpublished Diary of Henry Wallace, April 15, 1945.
2. David B. Woolner, Warren Kimball, and David Reynolds, eds., FDR’s World: War, Peace, and Legacies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 227–228; “Two Hemispheres Honor Roosevelt,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1945, 6; “Soviet Flags Show Mourning Border,” New York Times, April 15, 1945, 4.
3. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 1291–1292; Churchill to King George VI, April 13, 1945, Winston S. Churchill Papers, CHAR 20/193B/185–186, Churchill Archives, Cambridge.
4. W. Averell Harriman, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 441–442; Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Diplomatic Papers, Europe, 1945, Vol. V (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1967), 826–827; Vladimir Pechatnov, “Stalin and Roosevelt: Allies in War/The Great Victory,” in multivolume series, edited by S. Naryshkin and A. Torkunov, Vol. IX, (in Russian), (Moscow: MGIMO-University Publishing: 2013). Stalin was also anxious to know if U.S. foreign policy would remain consistent under President Truman. On April 22, 1945, Ambassador Gromyko telegraphed the Kremlin with word that that there was a great deal of unease in Washington in the days following FDR’s death. He also indicated that Truman’s speech to Congress on April 16, helped calm things down, although “the address was framed in rather sharp expressions, and there was a lack of original thought that one could see in Roosevelt’s speeches.” Nevertheless, Gromyko thought it was unlikely that Truman would return to a policy of isolationism, but would continue on the path of cooperation with the Soviet Union and Great Britain—”at least for the time being.” (Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, Moscow, fond .059, folder. 15, folder. 46, file. 370, L .23, 218, 17).
5. Anne O’Hare McCormick, “His ‘Unfinished Business’—and Ours,” New York Times, April 22, 1945, SM3.
6. “Churchill Eulogizes Roosevelt As Best U.S. Friend to Britain,” New York Times, April 18, 1945, 5.
7. One further telling example of this resolve can be found in FDR’s reaction to the 1944 film Wilson, which he viewed while attending the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944, just a few days following his conversation with Mackenzie King about the election. As recorded by Dr. Bruenn, FDR—while watching the scenes of President Wilson fighting in vain for US participation in the League of Nations, and collapsing from a stroke in the process—muttered under his breath, “By God that’s not going to happen to me!” (interview with Dr. Bruenn, conducted by Jan K. Herman, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Riverdale, New York, January 31, 1990).
8. Benjamin Cohen, “Confidential Memorandum Concerning a Fourth Term,” sent to FDR, March 8, 1944, Benjamin V. Cohen Papers, Box 12, Library of Congress.
9. Michael Barone, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Protestant Patrician in a Catholic Party,” in David B. Woolner and Richard Kurial, eds., FDR, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America, 1933–1945, 3–10: Mary McLeod Bethune, quoted in Alan Brinkley and David B. Woolner, “Franklin Roosevelt and the Progressive Tradition,” in David B. Woolner and John M. Thompson, eds., Progressivism in America: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 21.
10. Franklin D. Roosevelt, State of the Union Address (including Economic Bill of Rights speech), January 11, 1944, Master Speech File, FDRL.
11. For more on this, see Alan K. Henrikson, “FDR and the World-Wide Arena,” in David B. Woolner, Warren F. Kimball, and David Reynolds, eds., FDR’s World: War, Peace and Legacies (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 35–62. As FDR remarked to Harry Hopkins when the latter commented that it would be hard to get the American people to be interested in Java as implied by the global scope of FDR’s Four Freedoms Address, “I’m afraid they will have to be some day, Harry. The world is getting smaller and even the people of Java are going to be our neighbors, now” (Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948], 231).
12. David B. Woolner, “Epilogue: Reflections on Legacy and Leadership—the View from 2008,” in Woolner et al., FDR’s World, 234–235.
13. Charles Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–1969 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 182–183; Anthony Eden, The Memoirs of Anthony Eden: The Reckoning (London: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 513.
14. Franklin Roosevelt, Fireside Chat to the Nation, June 30, 1934, Master Speech Files, FDRL.
15. John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life of Henry Wallace (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 210; Roosevelt to Cohen, March 16, 1944, Box 12, Benjamin Cohen Papers, Library of Congress.
16. Elizabeth Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights (New York: Belknap Press, 2005); Woolner et. al., FDR’s World, 230
17. Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 232; “Problems and Objectives of United States Policy,” April 2, 1945, Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office File, Box 67, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia.
18. Woolner et al., FDR’s World, 228.
19. Anne O’Hare McCormick, “His ‘Unfinished Business’—and Ours: A Final Interview with Franklin Roosevelt,” New York Times, April 22, 1945, SM3.
20. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jefferson Day Address, April 1945, Master Speech File, FDRL.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
Index
Abyssinia attack, by Italy (1935), 153–154
Advisory Committee on Uranium, 171
African Americans, 294
El Alamein, Egypt, 170
Alanbrooke, Lord, 171
Alexander, Harold, 60, 203
Alexandria, Egypt, 45, 167, 169, 170, 173
The Last 100 Days Page 42