. . . [I]t would be one of the great tragedies of history if at the very moment of victory now within our grasp, such distrust, such lack of faith should prejudice the entire undertaking after the colossal losses of life, treasure, and materiel involved.
Frankly, I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment toward your informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentations of my actions or those of my trusted subordinates.39
Stalin’s reply was a bit more diplomatic than his earlier communication but unyielding. He was equally firm on Poland, insisting that the Russians were proceeding according to the letter of the Yalta agreements.40
Roosevelt was in no mood to prolong the argument. On April 11, he messaged Churchill:
I would minimize the general Soviet problem as much as possible because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arise every day and most of them straighten out as is the case of the Bern meeting.
We must be firm, however, and thus far our course is correct.41
By then, nothing solid had come of the Bern contacts. On the same day, the president sent a conciliatory message to Stalin, stating that Bern had “faded into the past” and admonishing that “minor misunderstandings of this character should not arise in the future.” Ambassador Harriman protested that the Bern issue struck him as a major misunderstanding. The president overruled him. No matter how difficult the Russians might be, he was determined to maintain the alliance he believed necessary to underwrite the United Nations Organization and stabilize the postwar world.42
FDR remained weary and increasingly incapable of meeting the demands of his office. Perhaps sometime in 1946, he told his companions, he might retire. Yet he seemed convinced that he could muster the energy to dominate the United Nations conference and establish an international organization that would enforce the peace. He expected to begin work with Grace Tully on his opening address at San Francisco.43
Roosevelt had sent his last message to Harriman on the morning of April 12. At about 1:00 p.m. that day, he sat at the table of the Little White House, across from its stone fireplace, reviewing papers Bill Hassett had delivered for his signature. All four ladies—Daisy, Laura, Lucy, and Madame Shoumatoff—were in the room. Suddenly, he said in a low voice, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head,” then slumped forward. Valet Arthur Prettyman, a Filipino servant, and the women managed somehow to get him to the adjacent bedroom. Dr. Bruenn rushed to the house. After two anxious hours, Lucy and Madame Shoumatoff departed for Lucy’s home in South Carolina. Soon afterward, Dr. Bruenn made the inevitable announcement.
Daisy later wrote in her diary, “3.35 p.m. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the hope of the world, is dead.”44
Condolences poured in from all over the world, but the strongest statements issued from the many thousands of people who lined the railroad tracks and crowded the stations along the way for a glimpse of the train that brought Roosevelt’s body back to Washington. They sought one last fleeting contact with the leader who had talked to them directly for twelve years, had seemed to understand them, and supported their aspirations for a better life.
When the train reached Washington on the morning of April 14, President Truman led the delegation that met it. A caisson drawn by six white horses carried the flag-draped casket in a slow one-mile procession to the White House past an estimated half million people. Automobiles conveying the new president and other notables crept along behind. Two military bands played solemn music. Truman later wrote that he would never forget the sight of so many grief-stricken people. He especially remembered “an old Negro woman with her apron to her eyes as she sat on the curb . . . crying as if she had lost her son.”45
That afternoon six hundred invited guests attended a funeral service at the White House. Harry Hopkins had flown back to Washington from the Mayo Clinic, looking, as Robert Sherwood recalled it, “like death, the skin of his face a dreadful cold white with apparently no flesh left under it.” The service, prescribed by Eleanor, was brief and in the spirit of the Roosevelt family’s Low Church Episcopalianism: two hymns, a few scripture readings, and a brief eulogy by Bishop Angus Dun, who invoked Roosevelt’s admonition that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” as a guide for the way in which the American people should face the future.46
Many of the notables who attended the funeral boarded a train late that evening for the overnight trip to Hyde Park. The next morning, local villagers, Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, West Point cadets, admirals and generals, President Truman and his family, congressmen, and other political notables gathered around a grave site that lay between the fine old family house and the unpretentious presidential library that Roosevelt had built for his papers a few years earlier. Daisy Suckley held Fala on a leash. FDR’s former chief, Josephus Daniels, a month shy of his eighty-fifth birthday, had made the trip from North Carolina. Rosy Roosevelt’s elderly widow sat in a large chair next to Eleanor, Anna, and Elliott. (Jimmy was unable to arrive in time from the West Coast. Franklin Jr. and John were on active duty in the Pacific.)
The local seventy-eight-year-old Episcopal minister—looking, a journalist thought, “like a figure from the Old Testament”—presided over the brief service, intoning, as the casket was lowered into the grave, the words to “Now the Laborer’s Task Is O’er; Now the Battle Day Is Past.” The cadets fired a twenty-one-gun salute, to which Fala responded with three loud barks.47
The men of power made their way to the railroad station and the trip back to Washington. Family members were left with complex thoughts and emotions.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had come full circle, beginning and ending in the one place in the world most important to him.
Epilogue
FDR and the American Century
In February 1941, as Congress debated the Lend-Lease Bill, Life magazine featured an opinion article by its publisher, Henry Luce, titled “The American Century.” Consistently skeptical of the New Deal, Luce was also an interventionist-minded Republican convinced that Britain’s war was America’s, that the isolationist movement was morally bankrupt, and that the fate of the world depended on the triumph of liberal-democratic values most fully developed in the United States.1
Isolationists, Luce declared, might see America as the sanctuary of civilized values, but they erred in denying that its destiny was to disseminate them. “The world of the 20th Century, if it is to come to life in any nobility of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American Century.” The instrument of that destiny had to be the president Luce had so often criticized. “Our job is to help in every way we can, for our sakes and our children’s sakes, to ensure that Franklin Roosevelt shall be justly hailed as America’s greatest President.”
Many self-styled liberals, including a critical mass friendly to the still neutral Soviet Union, dismissed Luce’s article as advocacy of cultural and economic imperialism. His call for support of Roosevelt outraged heartland conservative isolationists. In fact, he had stated a truth that both groups denied: American liberal democracy was the last best hope of the world, and its greatest tribune was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
From the time he was old enough to mount a pony, the boy began his day at Springwood accompanying his father as they rode around the estate, viewing their property and inspecting the work of employees or tenants. The experience was of a piece with the tutors, the foreign travel, the company of notables at home and abroad, the elite schools, and the examples of manhood he saw in his father and his revered cousin Theodore. It left him convinced of his mastery and his mission to lead others. A prominent insurgent legislator at twenty-nine, a dashing assistant secretary of the navy at thirty-two, a vice presidential candidate at thirty-eight, he achieved at an early age an international profile that developed alongside the United States’ emergence as a world power.
Roosevelt at a distance seemed to combine virtues of authority, courage, determination, a
nd above all empathy for common people, especially the underprivileged and handicapped. What president had displayed the fortitude he exhibited in his personal fight against polio? What president could begin to match his philanthropic achievements? What president had channeled so much assistance to the downtrodden or tended so strongly to the interests of the blue-collar working class? What president had so clearly made himself the voice of liberal democracy as it faced a global struggle for survival? His death shocked the world and brought special distress to ordinary people, who knew that he was great.
Yet the real, flesh-and-blood man, while always charming, was a study in moral ambiguity. His personal relationships were often at variance with the nobility of his achievements. After 1918, his marriage was based on respect more than affection and existed in form only. He possessed little interest in or time for the parenting of his children, all of whom lived lives that might charitably be described as undisciplined. He surreptitiously maintained a relationship with Lucy Mercer for a quarter century after he had promised to break contact with her. Perhaps circumstances made it unavoidable that Missy LeHand, the woman most often at his side for two decades, suffered his neglect after her health broke. But was it impossible to set aside ten minutes a day for her?
Cool calculation rather than friendship or loyalty characterized his ties to most of his aides and political supporters. Even the one for whom he reserved his greatest affection, Louis Howe, he could make the butt of abusive jokes. He summarily cut Tommy Corcoran out of his good graces after the lawyer left his service. He cynically tapped Bernard Baruch and Joseph P. Kennedy for political money and favors while denying them office and influence. They and many others existed, he seems to have believed, to serve him and became dispensable when no longer were of use.
Roosevelt’s private shortcomings existed alongside policy failures that, as often as not, remain glossed over. Historians admit, usually sotto voce, that the New Deal failed to end the Great Depression; for the most part, however, they have little to say about the appalling counterproductiveness of its attempts at a managed economy and prefer to emphasize the relief programs that provided bare sustenance for millions of the needy. These real achievements should not be devalued. Still, six years of the New Deal left the nation impoverished and deprived the world of the economic stimulus an American recovery would have provided.
In the end, Roosevelt’s great achievement was his defense of democracy in a world at war. At Yalta, Stalin rightly toasted him for taking a broad conception of his nation’s interests and providing the resources that mobilized the Grand Alliance against aggressive fascism. He had in fact taken enormous political risks that revealed a principled approach to democratic leadership and an astute understanding of the stakes of world power. Courageously committing to Britain in 1940, he saved liberal democracy as a force in the world. As a war leader after Pearl Harbor, he displayed an astute grasp of grand strategy beyond the capabilities of his generals and admirals.2
Yet he banked on a diplomatic course that attempted to combine Wilsonian idealism (the Atlantic Charter, the Four Freedoms, and a slightly revamped League of Nations) with a “Four Policemen” idea of spheres of influence. Remarkably, he seemed to believe that he could anchor it all by establishing a personal relationship with a Soviet leader committed to a totalitarian version of socialist revolution. At the same time, he pursued the dismantling of a British Empire that, for all its shortcomings, was far more benign than Stalin’s. He “gave” Stalin nothing that Stalin could not control anyway, but there is justice in the argument that those concessions weakened the principled foundations of American foreign policy. At best, perhaps there was realism in his realization that the United States could not prevent Soviet domination of eastern Europe. It is unclear how he might have reacted to Soviet ambitions for control of the rest of the continent, but he would not likely have responded as quickly and decisively as his successor, Harry Truman. His private conversation with Archbishop Spellman leaves one with the impression that he was willing to accept Soviet hegemony over all of continental Europe.
The Great Depression and World War II produced numerous “great” leaders. Greatness is not identical with humane virtue. Its characteristics in practice are often unattractive. Among Roosevelt’s contemporaries, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung were all great men in one fashion or another. Churchill could rival Roosevelt as an inspirational rhetorician and undaunted fighter, but Churchill was also an unapologetic imperialist at a time when the sun was setting on imperialism. De Gaulle was vainglorious and in the end petulant. Churchill at Yalta accurately praised Stalin as an indomitable leader who refused to accept defeat and galvanized the mighty Soviet effort against Hitler’s war machine. Yet Stalin was a totalitarian sociopath. So were Hitler and Mao. All three possessed enormous egos, experienced and overcame failure, used subordinates callously, sent untold millions to their deaths, impressed their personalities on their times, and changed the course of history.3
Roosevelt was a match for them. An American aristocrat born to privilege, he learned the habit of command from his father and combined it with a magnetic charm. From his father’s visionary Central American canal project and from Theodore Roosevelt’s exploits, he inherited a sense of his destiny to lead and strive for great goals, first as a socially conscious reformer, then as a world statesman. For all his self-indulgence, he displayed courage and determination, whether in coping with the handicap of polio, facing the challenges of the Depression, or dealing with the terrible urgencies of global war.
No one fully understood the causes of the Great Depression or the means by which to end it. But Roosevelt took unprecedented measures to ameliorate widespread suffering and won the devotion of millions of Americans. He excelled in pursuing the national interest against the Nazi juggernaut and a brutal Japanese imperialism. To millions all over the globe, he exemplified the promise of a world governed by a respect for freedom, democracy, and individual opportunity. He left behind a United States that was the greatest power on the planet and disposed to use its might in the pursuit of liberal democratic principles.
We can debate whether Franklin Roosevelt was the greatest of the great men of his time. It is fair to say that, for all his imperfections, he left the most generous and appealing legacy.
Acknowledgments
It is hard to imagine writing this book without the existence of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. I am indebted to Robert Clark and his fine archival staff for their invaluable assistance, rendered both on-site and via an excellent online presence. Nor would this study have been possible without the support and facilities of Ohio University, my professional home for nearly five decades. I especially thank my friend and valued colleague, Steven Miner, director of the Contemporary History Institute, for providing office facilities and sharing with me the fruits of his research for his forthcoming major study of the Soviet Union in World War II. Warren F. Kimball, editor of the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, generously responded to numerous queries. Mark Stoler helped me develop my thoughts about Roosevelt as commander in chief. I would be remiss if I did not mention my good fortune in three mentors who long ago introduced me to the study of Roosevelt and the New Deal: the late John A. Garraty, William E. Leuchtenburg, and Richard S. Kirkendall. Few students have been more fortunate in their choice of teachers and role models.
Lara Heimert commissioned this book and valiantly critiqued the manuscript. Roger Labrie performed an invaluable line edit, and Jennifer Kelland followed with a thorough and constructive copy edit. My good friend, literary agent, and fellow martini connoisseur, Donald Lamm, provided editorial commentary, moral support, and advice well beyond the essential duties of his profession. I value my connection with him enormously. My wife, Joyce Litton Hamby, took time from her own interests to help with the archival research. She has been a source of aid and comfort in ways at which my dedicatio
n can only hint.
Notes
Chapter 1: “The Best People”
1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt [hereafter FDR] to Sara Delano Roosevelt [hereafter SDR], spring, 1888, in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, Early Years [hereafter Personal Letters, I], ed. Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947), 7.
2. Roosevelt’s birth is perhaps most fully described in Kenneth S. Davis, F.D.R.: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882–1928 [hereafter FDR, I] (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 51–52.
3. See, e.g., John Sproat, The Best Men: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).
4. This and the following paragraphs about the early Roosevelts draw on, among other sources, Davis, FDR, I, ch. 1; Geoffrey Ward, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882–1905 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 16–21; David B. Roosevelt, Grandmere: A Personal History of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Warner Books, 2002), 34–35. See also “Franklin Roosevelt’s Paternal Ancestry,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum [hereafter FDRL], http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/resources/genealogy.html#fdrpaternal.
5. Rita Halle Kleeman, Gracious Lady: The Life of Sara Delano Roosevelt (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1935), is a standard source for the early Delanos. On the Leyden of the Pilgrims, see Joke Kardux and Eduard van de Bilt, Newcomers in an Old City: The American Pilgrims in Leiden, 1609–1620, 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden: Uitgeverij Burgersdijk & Niermans, 2001), 70–71, 80n55. On the Delanos, in addition to the sources cited above, the following genealogical Web pages have been useful: http://experts.about.com/e/d/de/Delano_family.htm, http://chrisman.org/pedigree/out25.htm, and http://gordonrosalynd.com/green/d181.htm.
6. SDR, as told to Isabel Leighton and Gabrielle Forbush, in My Boy Franklin (New York: Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, 1933), 21. This and subsequent paragraphs draw extensively on Ward, Before the Trumpet, ch. 2, and Davis, FDR, I, 36–44.
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