Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Let us calmly consider all that has been done, he said, and what needs to be done. The United States now has “the largest, the best-equipped, and the best-trained peacetime military establishment in the whole history of this country.” From 1933 to 1940 the country spent almost $1.5 billion on the navy and had 215 new ships, including twelve cruisers, sixty-three destroyers, twenty-six submarines, three aircraft carriers, eight new battleships, and many more smaller craft. Modern aircraft, almost six thousand “long-range bombers and fast pursuit planes,” had been purchased; thousands of modern anti-aircraft guns, armored cars, and heavier tanks had been built. “Within the past year the productive capacity of the aviation industry . . . has been tremendously increased.” Congress and the chief executive, the military and industry, are ready to

  work in harmony, as a team. . . . I will not hesitate to ask for additional funds when they are required. In this era of swift, mechanized warfare, . . . what is modern today and up-to-date, what is efficient and practical, becomes obsolete and outworn tomorrow. . . . We are constantly improving and redesigning, testing new weapons. . . . The government of the United States itself manufactures few of the implements of war. Private industry will continue to be the source of this matériel; and private industry will have to be speeded up to produce it at the rate and efficiency called for by the needs of the times.

  But the required expansion of factories and additional personnel was beyond the scope of most private businesses.

  Therefore, the government of the United States stands ready to advance the necessary money for . . . new plants, the employment of thousands of necessary workers, the development of new sources of supply for the hundreds of raw materials required. . . . We are calling on men now engaged in private industry to help us. . . . Patriotic Americans of proven merit, of unquestioned ability in their special fields, are coming to Washington to help.

  There was to be no profiteering, price gouging, or new military-industrial pyramids by opportunists or fiscal tricksters. “No new group of war millionaires shall come into being in this nation as a result of the struggles abroad. The American people will not relish the idea of any American citizen growing rich and fat in an emergency of blood and slaughter and human suffering.” It was crucial to sustain “the spirit and morale of a free people.” There would “be no breakdown or cancellation of any of the great social gains which we have made. . . . We have carried on an offensive on a broad front against social and economic inequalities, against abuses which had made our society weak.”

  Those gains, FDR now pledged, would continue—and expand. He foresaw a situation where those presently unemployed would find employment. He promised that minimum wages would not be reduced, nor would old-age pensions or unemployment insurance be affected. He pledged to continue conservation of natural resources and consumer protection programs.

  Another challenge to American security, he said, was saboteurs, spies, traitors, Trojan horses, and fifth columnists determined to betray, weaken, and disrupt the nation. They would be exposed and “vigorously” handled. Groups dedicated to racial, political, or sectional discord, who sowed confusion and panic, would be disarmed. “Fortunately, American men and women are not easy dupes. Campaigns of group hatred or class struggle have never made much headway among us.” But the fraudulent propagandists who spewed their “undiluted poison” among us could not “be allowed.” Defeating these people required individual vigilance in every community, among every American, for the sake of our future, our survival.

  This passage seemed to many, including ER, a nod to the “anti-alien” hostility to immigrants and refugees demanded by Martin Dies and his supporters. But FDR added a note of disapproval to their call to round up and deport all recent arrivals and noncitizens: “For more than three centuries we Americans have been building on this continent a free society, a society in which the promise of the human spirit may find fulfillment. Commingled here are the blood and genius of all the peoples of the world. . . . We have built well,” and now we must defend our creation—not only for ourselves but for the future. “Ours is a high duty, a noble task.”

  FDR ended his speech in prayer that all the “suffering and starving, death and destruction may end—and that peace may return to the world. In common affection for all mankind, your prayers join with mine—that God will heal the wounds and the hearts of humanity.”

  • • •

  That Sunday ER was in New York to address the closing session of the New York Congress of the AYC at the Mecca Temple in Harlem. She told the delegates that their continued opposition to America’s defense efforts was a “tragic mistake.” “You don’t want to go to war. . . . I don’t want to go to war. But war may come to us.” Moreover she found the slogan “The Yanks are not coming” to be insulting. It slurred the brave volunteers who “went overseas” to do “for the world what you think you are doing.” The United States now faced a stark reality. The war would end with “a Nazi-dominated Europe or . . . with exhaustion of all nations involved, France and England worst of all. Whatever the outcome, the US will be affected seriously. . . . We tried to prevent this situation from arising, but now that it is here, we must admit it and do what is best.”

  The congress received her words politely, with applause and without boos. But the “temper of the delegates” was revealed by the wild cheers with which they greeted Mike Quill, head of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), who said, “The war in Europe is a war between two thieves,” and New York congressman Vito Marcantonio, who had cast the sole vote in the House against FDR’s defense appropriation. ER left before Marcantonio’s remarks because, the New York Times reported, she “wanted to listen to the President’s radio address.”

  That evening AYC leader Joseph Cadden told the Massachusetts chapter’s congress that the war “served no democratic interests” and only engorged the real “fifth column”—led by “anti-unionists, the Associated Farmers, vigilantes and the Ku Klux Klan.” Repeatedly, Cadden and other AYC leaders insisted that “we are not threatened by invasion and this is not a war for democracy.”

  Since the AYC’s position seemed increasingly at odds with ER’s, her closest friends wondered why she continued to speak at its meetings. Indeed, she had her own doubts about whether her ongoing involvement had any influence, and Joe Lash thought “her sensible words” no longer “convinced anyone” in that group. But she would not give up. It was her responsibility to teach and to try, especially when her husband rejected her entreaties to help refugees.

  Her efforts to raise awareness aroused a storm of abuse in Time, which editorialized that she had “addressed the brattish assembly, with kindly reproof.” Such “coddling” of the “Communist-saturated” AYC seemed “sentimental” and “extraordinary.” But she ignored it all and continued to support her AYC friends—especially Cadden and his fiancée, Vivian Liebman. Indeed, she planned and hosted their June wedding reception—which Vivian remembered as the last “united front” party.

  • • •

  The news from Europe worsened daily. Hitler’s triumphs across Europe were simply astonishing. It had taken only twenty-eight days for Poland to collapse in September 1939. When he mobilized after the “phony war,” or Sitzkrieg, in April 1940, nations crumbled or succumbed within hours. Luxembourg was crushed in a day, the Netherlands in five. Calais fell on 26 May, cutting Britain off from the Continent.

  On 28 May, Belgium’s King Leopold, without consulting his government, “quit” the Allies and personally surrendered to the Nazis, shocking his nation. The Belgian government repudiated the king’s decision, but it was already in exile in Paris, and the Belgian army, which had resisted relentless tank and plane bombardments for eighteen days, “no longer existed; it had been broken to pieces,” in the words of historian Martin Gilbert. Entire towns and villages were destroyed, with countless civilian casualties. The king’s decision stunned ER: “It seems incredible to hear of the surrender
of the Belgian King. Yet, I suppose there comes a point where human endurance can bear up no longer. One more country is now officially under Nazi domination.”

  On every front German planes and tanks continued almost unimpeded. Between 27 May and 3 June, British, French, and other troops evacuated the blood-soaked beaches of Dunkirk, including Polish and Czech troops who had been eager to fight Hitler. “The miracle of Dunkirk” was a cooperative cross-Channel success that involved naval vessels, passenger ships and destroyers, and every kind of civilian carrier—even private yachts and fishing boats. The great historian Marc Bloch was transported to Dover with sixteen hundred of his French compatriots aboard a ferry steamer wondrously named the Royal Daffodil, “which came from an Indian fairy tale.”

  But, as Churchill noted, an evacuation is not a victory. That tormented spring, Clare Boothe Luce, who witnessed the bombing of Belgium, was aghast at Europe’s unpreparedness for Hitler’s sweep through Western civilization.

  As the battle for France intensified, Bullitt cabled FDR that the French had nothing to fight with “but their courage. In all forms of matériel they were now desperately outclassed.” The president promised Prime Ministers Reynaud and Churchill that substantial American assistance was on the way. The British purchased matériel to replace equipment lost at Dunkirk. That week 105 U.S. Army and Navy planes were flown to Quebec, where they were immediately transferred to a French aircraft carrier.

  A certainty of doom defined most White House conversations, and ER was gloomy. “What a life I have been leading!” she wrote to Anna on 17 May 1940. “It really isn’t decent to work so hard but the civilized world is crumbling round one so it is well to be busy! . . . Pa is gloom personified about Europe. . . . Hitler says he will win in 7 days and Pa murmurs 30 days!” There were no conversations about peace goals, and no reason for discussion since “I don’t think there will be anyone left in Europe by way of a government with whom to cooperate. Just the US & Hitler!”

  In these weeks of torment, ER sought to arouse public opinion to the plight of dying Europe. On 26 May, in an impassioned radio address, she joined an all-star Red Cross gala to benefit war refugees. The stars broadcasting from New York and Hollywood included Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Jimmy Durante, Gertrude Lawrence, Judy Garland, and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. In her speech, ER described the unbearable impact of war on the devastated cities Hitler attacked. Millions of people were in flight, she said in an emotional call for aid: “Today there are more people suffering and homeless and in need of the care which only the Red Cross can give . . . than in any other period of recent history.” She concluded, “If we turn away from the needs of others we align ourselves with those forces which are bringing about this suffering.”

  The next day her friend and ally Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the respected editor of Foreign Affairs, filed a dispatch in the New York Times from Paris. There was nothing to analyze, he wrote; there were only immediate needs for “Planes, Food, Medicine.” Five million refugees were fleeing the Nazis, he estimated, and civilians were “flooding down across the country, making every crossroads, every village and every railway junction a station of misery.” The Red Cross was doing what it could, but food, medicine, and blankets were desperately needed.

  He appealed to the generosity of his countrymen. “If there is a single reserve American Army plane to be spared, it ought to be flown or shipped across the Atlantic tomorrow.” And as American ships sailed to Europe to bring home Americans, he wanted those vessels packed with lifesaving supplies.

  ER was profoundly moved by Armstrong’s eloquence and resolved to assist in every way she could and also to help FDR focus on the humanitarian needs of the war and on the young, whose future seemed increasingly bleak.

  In early June at the World’s Fair in New York, she was surrounded by friends and in that celebratory atmosphere, felt hope for the future. She opened the Fashion Building, celebrating women’s works and costumes. She dedicated the “People’s Common,” a new meeting square and band shell, pronouncing it a symbol of American respect and tolerance. It would feature international music, folk dances, pageantry: “the common,” she said, was to celebrate the gifts “all people in this country had in common.” After the first lady’s dedication speech, young girls from the Hudson Guild Neighborhood House, representing more than forty nationalities, filed past her to shake her hand and drop flowers into a basket held by Tachawin Seymour, granddaughter of Chief Yellow Robe of the Sioux nation. ER was deeply moved by the ceremony of “little girls of all nationalities which make up our great country.” Brilliantly costumed, nation by nation, they placed flowers in the basket of an Indian girl, “acknowledging thereby that she was the one whose race originally owned this country.”

  From the fair, ER returned to Manhattan to attend an exhibit of Persian art, which she urged her readers to see “at once.” Every room was spectacular, filled with “an art which has survived through 6,000 years of invasion, war, tyranny, prosperity and power. Here is the real proof that the spirit as expressed through the arts transcends all material things. These priceless treasures from the Iranian civilization are gathered from collections all over . . . and may never again be seen by the public, so do not miss this opportunity.”

  Afterward ER met with a group who worked to find jobs for youth released from New York State reformatories. This pioneering reentry program, to help young boys “get a new start in life,” was precisely the kind of project that guaranteed hope needed across the nation. ER ended her day with an “experience I shall never forget”: she attended a play that dramatized the impact of the Soviet invasion of Finland. Robert Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night, starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, transported her “through every experience in that Finnish family’s existence, which tragically enough, is now part of the life of so many other people.”

  The next day, with Tommy and Joe Lash, ER returned to the fair to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Senator Robert Wagner gave a speech to the crowd of 75,000 gathered in the Court of Peace, appealing to them to keep FDR’s great leadership talents in office until “we have absolute assurances that Mein Kampf will never be rewritten to include American continents.” But labor unionists had a responsibility as well, Wagner said. To face Hitler and the domestic “shock troops of reaction,” workers must unite and “halt the war” between the AFL and the CIO.

  ER praised Wagner’s “grand speech.” In her column, she expressed gratitude to labor leaders who had taught her so much:

  Some of us forget occasionally that this cooperation for the good of all of us is the basis of our strength. A meeting such as [this] reminds us how great is our power when we work together. Our citizens come from many lands where sacrifice and oppression and resistance are nothing new. They have met these conditions with determination through generations, and this generation will find strength to meet whatever comes to us. I get such a sense of power and solidarity from a meeting like yesterday’s that I can face the uncertainty of the future with far more strength and courage.

  This was a special day for her friendship with Joe Lash. Europe was never for her an abstraction, a remote or distant shore “over there.” Much of her life, much of her heart, was built, shaped, healed, and restored by her experiences in Paris, London, Edinburgh, Rome, Venice, Florence, Berlin, and Vienna. That day at the fair, she confided to Joe the story of her childhood, and her endless inner struggle to feel secure, even worthy.

  Germany, Austria, Italy, and France, she told him, were places where her beloved father, Elliott, had sought relief from his advanced alcoholism. He had gone from spa to spa, with his hopeful wife and sorrowful daughter, on an endless quest for a cure. Wherever they went, his daughter was tutored and spoke German and French quite fluently. In Paris in 1891, ER was sent to a convent school while her parents searched for a cure in Neuilly.
But six-year-old Eleanor, sullen and rebellious, was expelled for tantrums and lies, disgracing her mother. That summer her father was left alone in Paris, institutionalized and isolated. Part of her heart remained always with him, in exile.

  Forever hurt by her mother’s cold disdain, Eleanor’s spirits were uplifted by memories of happy days she had shared with her father. One enchanted day in Venice, on the beach at the Lido and on the canals, Elliott had acted as a gondolier and sung “with the other boatmen, to my intense joy.” She loved her father’s voice and “the way he treated me. He called me ‘Little Nell’ . . . and I never doubted that I stood first in his heart.”

  ER told Lash that her “very miserable childhood” determined her reaction to the many people who showered her with appreciation and love. Meanwhile everywhere they went, Joe noted, crowds surrounded her, hugged her, and took photographs with her, and she “responded to this loving acclaim with obvious warmth and affection.” She “did not wish to disappoint and hurt people by not acknowledging their love,” she told him, but also “drew strength, sustenance, and satisfaction from it even as she protested that it had nothing to do with her personally. In her childhood she had been given the feeling of being the unwanted, the ugly duckling.” That feeling prevented her from ever believing she was really loved for herself. Yet “I wanted to be loved so badly,” she told him, “and most of all I wanted to be loved by my father.” Now, she never quite believed that the public “outpourings of affectionate homage were for Eleanor Roosevelt, the person, rather than for Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the wife of the President.”