by Jon Meacham
“THIS GREAT NATION WILL ENDURE” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1933, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14473.
FDR HAD DRAWN ON Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York, 1952), 91. For other speculation on the origin of the phrase and its inclusion in FDR’s speech, see “First Inaugural Address,” https://fdrlibrary.org/first-inaugural-curriculum-hub.
THOREAU HAD WRITTEN “Thoreau & FDR,” Thoreau Society, https://www.thoreausociety.org/news-article/thoreau-fdr.
FDR HAD THE BOOK Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, 91.
SUITE 776 OF THE MAYFLOWER HOTEL “Mayflower Hotel,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc59.htm.
“ROOSEVELT FREQUENTLY PICKED UP” Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, 91.
“WE DO NOT DISTRUST THE FUTURE” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1933.
A FRIEND TOLD HIM Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 80.
“IF I FAIL” Ibid.
(HE CALLED IT “STUMPING”) Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 114.
“IT WAS PART OF” Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 575.
SAY THAT CIVILIZATION Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 648–49.
“FRANKLIN, DARLING, WHY IS” Ward, First-Class Temperament, 527.
“MUMMY, I THINK I KNOW” Ibid.
“YOU’LL NEVER BE” Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 94.
ROOSEVELT PARRIED A QUESTIONER Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 529.
“I HAVE NO EXPECTATION” Ibid., 531. Also in “Second Fireside Chat,” May 7, 1933, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14636.
“THE COUNTRY NEEDS” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia,” May 22, 1932, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=88410.
“AT THE TIME FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT BECAME PRESIDENT” Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 570–71.
“IT IS A GREAT THING” Ibid., 571.
“YOU AND I” Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York, 1948), 266.
“OH—HE SOMETIMES TRIES” Ibid.
“WE SHALL STRIVE” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1945.
“YOU AND I HAVE GOT” Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 880–81.
REPORTING FROM NORTH CAROLINA IN 1934 Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 572.
“MORE THAN ANY MAN” Ibid.
“THE NEW DEAL IS SIMPLY” Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect, 281.
ROOSEVELT’S INITIAL TWO YEARS Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 131–217.
THE SECOND NEW DEAL Ibid., 241–87; Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 211–424.
“I WOULD SAY” Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 189.
THE KINGFISH’S ASSASSINATION Williams, Huey Long, 848–72.
ATTEMPTED TO ALTER THE MAKEUP Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 221–39.
THE REPUBLICANS SAY OFFICIALLY Ibid., 200.
THE TELEPHONE IN THE PRESIDENT’S BEDROOM Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (New York, 1980), 190.
“WELL, BILL” Ibid.
95 PERCENT OF THOSE POLLED Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935–1941 (Chicago, 1990), 1.
“HE IS A GENTLEMAN” Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–45 (Lincoln, Neb., 1983), 24.
THE REICH’S SEARCH FOR LEBENSRAUM David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War (Chicago, 2001), 14–15.
CONSTRAINED BY NEUTRALITY LEGISLATION Ibid., 12–40.
DID THE BEST HE COULD See, for instance, Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists; Jonas, Isolationism in America; Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor; Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War Against Nazi Germany (New York, 2001).
“THE GREATEST SAFEGUARD” Jonas, Isolationism in America, 34.
CONGRESSMAN LOUIS LUDLOW OF INDIANA Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 177.
THE AMENDMENT CAME TO A VOTE Ibid.
155–56 “OUR GOVERNMENT IS CONDUCTED” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Letter to the Speaker of the House on a Proposed Referendum to Declare War,” January 6, 1938, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15616.
THE HOUSE VOTED THE MEASURE DOWN James M. Lindsay, “TWE Remembers: The Ludlow Amendment,” January 10, 2011, Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-ludlow-amendment.
“WE MUST NOT” Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 200.
ROOSEVELT’S VIEW WAS SUBTLER See, for instance, Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” January 6, 1941, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16092. “I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war,” Roosevelt said.
There is much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which to operate. But we learn much from the lessons of the past years in Europe—particularly the lesson of Norway, whose essential seaports were captured by treachery and surprise built up over a series of years. The first phase of the invasion of this hemisphere would not be the landing of regular troops. The necessary strategic points would be occupied by secret agents and their dupes—and great numbers of them are already here, and in Latin America. As long as the aggressor nations maintain the offensive, they—not we—will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack. Ibid.
IN LATE JULY 1939 THE PRESIDENT MET Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 202.
“WELL, CAPTAIN” Ibid.
“NOW THAT WAR” Charles Lindbergh, “America and European Wars,” September 15, 1939, CharlesLindbergh.com, http://www.charleslindbergh.com/pdf/9_15_39.pdf.
“PASSIONATELY THOUGH WE MAY DESIRE” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat,” September 3, 1939, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15801.
RUNNING AGAINST THE REPUBLICAN WENDELL WILLKIE See, for instance, Charles Peters, Five Days in Philadelphia: The Amazing “We Want Willkie!” Convention of 1940 and How It Freed FDR to Save the Western World (New York, 2005).
“AND WHILE I AM TALKING” Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect, 312.
LISTENING ON THE RADIO Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 355.
“THAT HYPOCRITICAL SON OF A BITCH!” Ibid.
WON REPEAL OF THE EMBARGO Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, 66.
TO EXCHANGE OLD AMERICAN DESTROYERS Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 333–36; 351–52.
HE WAGED AN UNDECLARED NAVAL WAR Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939–1941: The Partnership That Saved the West (New York, 1976), 415–30.
A BROAD PLAN, CALLED LEND-LEASE Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 358–63.
THE IDEA HAD COME TO HIM Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 229–30.
A SEAPLANE HAD BROUGHT Ibid.
“ALTHOUGH THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT” Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 62.
“WE SHALL GO ON” Ibid., 57. For an incisive account of Churchill’s early war leadership, see John Lukacs, Five Days in London: May 1940 (New Haven, Conn., 1999).
“UNLESS WE CAN ESTABLISH” Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 78.
THE PRESIDENT PROP
OSED Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, 104–8.
“TODAY, THINKING OF” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union.”
CHARLES LINDBERGH STEPPED Justus E. Doenecke, ed., In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-Interventionist Movement of 1940–41 as Revealed in the Papers of the America First Committee (Stanford, Calif., 1990), 37–38.
FOUNDED BY LAW STUDENTS Ibid., 7.
“AMERICAN DEMOCRACY CAN BE PRESERVED” Ibid., 9.
IN LATE 1940 Ibid., 12.
BY ONE ESTIMATE SIXTY THOUSAND Ibid.
FOR “THAT SILENT MAJORITY” Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 220.
“IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND” Doenecke, In Danger Undaunted, 37–38.
“IF I SHOULD DIE TOMORROW” Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939–1941 (New York, 2013), 103.
“LINDBERGH’S ANTI-JEWISH SPEECH” Ibid., 38.
NORMAN THOMAS, THE SOCIALIST LEADER Ibid.
“IT SEEMS INCREDIBLE” Ibid., 395.
HENRY FORD’S DEARBORN INDEPENDENT Ibid., 237.
“WHEN WE GET THROUGH” Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 176.
THE GERMAN-AMERICAN BUND Olson, Those Angry Days, 124.
“THE PRINCIPLES OF” MacLean, Behind the Mask, 180.
A BUND LEADER Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 323.
THE THIRD REICH HAD SOUGHT Olson, Those Angry Days, 182–83.
GERALD L. K. SMITH, A FORMER ALLY Gerald L. K. Smith, “This Is Christian Nationalism,” The Cross and Flag, http://www.thecrossandflag.com/articles/christian_nationalism.html.
“THE CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST CRUSADE” Ibid.
WOULD “RATHER DIE ON OUR FEET” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to the Special Convocation of the University of Oxford,” June 19, 1941, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16131.
AFTER NEWS OF THE JUNE 1940 LYNCHING Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 237–39.
“THERE IS SOMETHING DEFINITELY WRONG” Ibid.
“MY IMPRESSION OF” Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 587–88.
AS A YOUNGER WOMAN Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, Mass., 2013), 17.
WHEN THE NEW YORK TIMES PUBLISHED A DISPATCH Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s Private Papers (New York, 1971), 512.
“THE PERSONAL TOUCH” Ibid., 532.
THERE HAD BEEN 3,500 SUCH ATTACKS Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 196.
ONLY 67 INDICTMENTS AND 12 CONVICTIONS Ibid.
“WE KNOW THAT IT IS MURDER” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address Before the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America,” December 6, 1933, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14574.
MRS. ROOSEVELT AND THE NAACP PRESSED THE PRESIDENT Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 515–16. On Mrs. Roosevelt and the lynching issue, see also Melissa Cooper, “Reframing Eleanor Roosevelt’s Influence in the 1930s Anti-Lynching Movement Around a ‘New Philosophy of Government,’ ” European Journal of American Studies 12, no. 1 (Spring 2017), https://ejas.revues.org/11914.
“IF I COME OUT” Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 515–16. See also Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 246.
“YOU CAN SAY ANYTHING” Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 246.
FDR SUPPORTED Ibid., 247.
“I AM SO SORRY” Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 518.
WHEN A YOUNG AIDE, WILL ALEXANDER Ibid., 528.
“WILL, DON’T YOU THINK” Ibid.
MRS. ROOSEVELT RESIGNED Ibid., 525–26.
WAS “IN LINE WITH” Ibid., 526.
ANDERSON WAS INSTEAD INVITED Ibid., 527. For details of the program, including her opening song, see “The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial,” https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2014/04/the-sound-of-freedom-marian-anderson-at-the-lincoln-memorial/.
HE HAD “NEVER HEARD” Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 527.
“ONE OF THE MOST” Ibid.
THE NAACP, AMONG OTHERS See Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, for a thorough and engaging account of the civil rights group’s decades of work.
IN EARLY 1941, A. PHILIP RANDOLPH Ibid., 254. See also Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 244.
RANDOLPH ARGUED THAT “SOMETHING DRAMATIC” Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 254.
THE FIRST LADY WAS ALSO URGING Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 532.
“MRS. ROOSEVELT’S INTRUSIVE” Ibid.
ROOSEVELT DISPATCHED HIS WIFE Ibid., 534.
“YOU KNOW WHERE” Ibid.
THE REWARD FOR CALLING OFF Ibid., 534–35. See also Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 244. Randolph understood the magnitude of the moment. “There never has been issued in America an executive order affecting Negroes in this country since the Proclamation of Emancipation,” he told an NAACP convention in Houston. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 255.
“I HOPE FROM” Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 535.
BEGINNING IN 1942, ABOUT 117,000 “Japanese Relocation During World War II,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation. See also Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 297, and Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 748–60.
“JAPS LIVE LIKE RATS” Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 298.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA Walker, In Defense of American Liberties, 136–37.
WHILE HE UNDERSTOOD “THE UNWILLINGNESS” Walter Lippmann, “The Fifth Column on the Coast,” The Washington Post, February 12, 1942.
“THE PACIFIC COAST” Ibid. See also Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 299.
ROOSEVELT ISSUED EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 753; Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 297–302.
“ENFORCING THIS ON” Walker, In Defense of American Liberties, 138. Seeing no alternative short of a favorable legal ruling, which would doubtless take a great deal of time, the Japanese-American Citizens League stoically accepted the outrages. “We are going into exile,” the group wrote, “as our duty to our country.” Ibid.
A MAJORITY OF THE SUPREME COURT Ibid., 144–49.
“HARDSHIPS ARE PART” Ibid., 147–48.
THE MILITARY DID ALLOW Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 301–2.
ON THE PORCH Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on Signing the Bill Providing Restitution for the Wartime Internment of Japanese-American Civilians,” August 10, 1988, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=36240.
THERE WERE SOME Ibid.
“BLOOD THAT HAS SOAKED” Ibid.
ELOQUENT WORDS, AND RONALD REAGAN Ibid.
“FOR HERE,” REAGAN SAID Ibid.
SCHOLARS CONTINUE TO ARGUE Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, is a recent—and comprehensive—treatment of the subject. See also, for instance, Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York, 1998); Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and American Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington, Ind., 1987); David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York, 1998); Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, eds., The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined (Bloomington, Ind., 1998); Robert H. Abzug, ed., America Views the Holocaust, 1933–1945: A Brief Documentary History (Boston, 1999); Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945 (New York, 2002); William D. Rubinstein, The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (New York, 1997); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Did FDR Betray the Jews? Or Did He Do More Than Anyone Else to Save Them?” in FDR and the Holocaust, ed. Verne W. Newton (New York, 1996), 159–61; Schlesin
ger, A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (Boston, 2000), 306–12; William J. Vanden Heuvel, “America and the Holocaust,” American Heritage, July-August 1999, 34–52; Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 189–92; 418–19.
EDWARD R. MURROW OF CBS I drew on my account of this scene in my Franklin and Winston, 355–56, for the section on Murrow and Buchenwald.
THE PRISONERS MURROW SAW Ibid., 355.
INMATES SHOWED MURROW Ibid.
“THERE WERE TWO ROWS” Ibid., 355–56. He was visiting on the day FDR died in Warm Springs. “If I’ve offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry,” Murrow said. “I was there on Thursday, and many men in many tongues blessed the name of Roosevelt. For long years his name had meant the full measure of their hope. These men who had kept close company with death for many years did not know that Mr. Roosevelt would, within hours, join their comrades who had laid their lives on the scales of freedom.”
Murrow recalled a moment, early in the war, when an emotional Churchill had told him: “One day the world and history will recognize and acknowledge what it owes to your President.” From the concentration camp, Murrow added, “I saw and heard the first installment of that at Buchenwald on Thursday. It came from men from all over Europe. Their faces, with more flesh on them, might have been found anywhere at home. To them the name ‘Roosevelt’ was a symbol, a code word from a lot of guys named ‘Joe’ who are somewhere out in blue with the armor heading east.” Ibid., 355–56.
“THE THINGS I SAW” “Ohrdruf,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006131.
“FOR US, IT IS A PROBLEM” The quotation is from an August 1920 speech of Hitler’s. “Statements by Hitler and Senior Nazis Concerning Jews and Judaism,” Pratique de l’Histoire et Dévoiements Négationnistes, www.phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/statements.htm.