Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Fry’s article was widely circulated in December, but there were many others. Finally, on 17 December 1942 a United Nations Declaration on the Persecution of the Jews was issued simultaneously in London, Moscow, and Washington. FDR and Stalin had agreed in principle to join the War Crimes Commission. The declaration was presented formally to the House of Commons: Samuel Silverman, MP, asked Anthony Eden if he had “any statement to make regarding the plan of the German Government to deport all Jews from the occupied countries to Eastern Europe and there put them to death before the end of the year?”

  Eden replied,

  Yes, Sir, I regret to have to inform the House that reliable reports have recently reached His Majesty’s Government regarding the barbarous and inhuman treatment to which Jews are being subjected in German-occupied Europe.

  From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe. . . . The ghettoes . . . are being systematically emptied . . . . None of those taken away are ever heard of again. [The Allied governments] and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. . . . They re-affirm their resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution.

  After Eden’s speech, all Members of Parliament arose for a moment of silence to honor the dead.

  While no similar congressional event occurred, FDR publicly announced his decision to join the effort to create the UN War Crimes Commission and declared it “official U.S. policy to punish racial and political murder”—after the war ended. It was a first step, with no reference to rescue or specific plans for asylum.

  On New Year’s Eve, ER applauded FDR’s action as “we gathered at midnight in the President’s study and drank the usual toasts,” adding to them the United Nations. She considered it “a very significant toast,” heralding “a permanent bond . . . in war and peace” that will gradually extend to involve all nations “into a circle of friendship.” According to Sam Rosenman, FDR made another, even more notable toast with words he had never used before: “To the person who makes it possible for the President to carry on.” And he raised his glass to ER.

  FDR’s renewed interest in her work since her return from Britain, as well as this significant toast, marked a new stage in their relationship—one of mutual respect and shared commitments even if their goals were not always the same. She concluded her New Year’s column with her own toast “to the women of the country, with whom I feel a very special bond. We have the same anxieties and the same sense of frustration very often, because we feel we cannot do enough in the great war effort.”

  ER wrote Anna about the grandchildren in and out for the holidays, “I’m sure the kids were happy, they don’t anticipate disasters.” As for herself, “I wake up in the night & imagine every horror & cannot go to sleep again.” But her friends were a great comfort. Joe and Trude, Tommy and Hick, Elinor Morgenthau and Isabella Greenway, all kept her company and socially busy.

  ER reserved special holiday evenings for Earl and for Hick, who continued to live in the White House. Although she no longer occupied the center of ER’s heart, she remained a close confidante. Some of her happiest times were with Trude and Joe, whose very company lightened her burdens by bringing her joy.

  I don’t know if I can put in words what I want to say of gratitude & love to you and to Trude. . . . I’ve come of late years to dread . . . the formal impersonal things I have to do. I’m always with so many people & always so alone inside except with a very few people, so—I thank you—both—for sharing precious hours with me & giving me so much happiness.

  ER was devoted to Joe and Trude in part because of their shared political vision and activism. That they had transcended the limitations of ethnicity and religion gave her hope for the future.

  ER and FDR continued to live in peace within their two distinct courts. The president never asked Hick to move out of the White House, and he continued to meet and welcome ER’s friends and allies. Nevertheless, upon his return from the Casablanca Conference, ER and FDR would face a new difficulty in their relationship.

  • • •

  In preparation for the conference, FDR met with Milton Eisenhower, whom he had sent to North Africa in December to investigate the reasons for the political upheaval over the Darlan Deal. Eisenhower presented his full report to FDR regarding Algiers. They also discussed the need for a new propaganda offensive and the expansion of the work of the Office of War Information (OWI), which subsequently would be headed by C. D. Jackson, an expert on psychological warfare.

  As Eisenhower rose to leave, FDR “motioned for me to sit down again. He was in a pensive mood.” First he asked about agriculture in Algeria and Morocco, and they discussed the ravages of war on fertile lands “between the sea and the Atlas Mountains.” In climate and topography, “the coastal region was similar to the San Joaquin, Sacramento, and Salinas valleys.” Before the war, French North Africa exported surpluses of fruits, vegetables, wool, olive oil, and “very good wine” to most of Europe. Nazi seizures disrupted everything; now scarcity dominated.

  “President Roosevelt was deeply interested. I knew from previous discussions . . . that he had an amazing knowledge of world food and fiber production. He seemed to know a great deal about every major river system and drainage basin in the world.” Now he pondered the future: “You know, Milton, when the war is over it would be wonderful to go to North Africa and trap the waters that now flow from the Atlas Mountains into the ocean. We could build dams and create one of the finest irrigation systems in the world.” Although Eisenhower agreed with FDR “on questions of human values and programs,” he was a fiscal conservative who knew FDR was “needling” him when he added, “‘Of course, it would cost a lot of money but who cares about cost?’” In the end “we enjoyed a good laugh together.”

  While Eisenhower was not disturbed by FDR’s fantasies, others found FDR’s attitude regarding North Africa—indeed the entire globe—imperial. His opposition to empire was well known, yet he often spoke as if he intended to dominate if not control the geopolitical future, as if he alone might make decisions. As journalist John Gunther observed, FDR spoke about “the French empire as if it were his personal possession and would say things like ‘I haven’t quite decided what to do about Tunis.’” And ER continually urged a democratic structure in which all nations participated.

  British foreign secretary Anthony Eden wrote in his memoirs:

  Roosevelt was familiar with the history and geography of Europe . . . but the sweeping opinions which he built upon it were alarming in their cheerful fecklessness. He seemed to see himself disposing of the fate of many lands, allied no less than enemy. He did all this with so much grace that it was not easy to dissent. Yet it was too like a conjurer, skillfully juggling with balls of dynamite, whose nature he failed to understand.

  On 9 January, as FDR departed for the Casablanca Conference to meet with Churchill, ER imagined that he would act on behalf of rescue and a humane geopolitical future. But in fact FDR’s goal was to achieve Vichy and Free French cooperation in North Africa, as well as a new and expanded U.S. economic presence there. From 15 to 25 January FDR and Churchill tried to heal the Allied fright engendered by FDR’s opposition to de Gaulle and his continued insistence on his preferred French general, Henri Giraud, in North Africa. They arranged a shotgun wedding between de Gaulle and Giraud, who shook hands and were photographed together. There was reason to believe they would work in harmony for a free France.

  Then on 19 January Giraud announced the appointment of a Vichy administrator, Marcel Peyrouton, as governor general of Algeria on the grounds that he was “the only man” fully knowledgeable about Arab issues in French North Africa. His appointment sent shock waves through all Free French and progressive circles and was immediately opposed by liberals within FDR’s own administration and thr
oughout the United States.

  FDR’s sons Elliott and Frank were present, and when FDR discussed empire with him, Elliott took notes. Churchill supported de Gaulle, FDR said, because their colonial interests coincided. They “mean to maintain their hold on their colonies. . . . That’s why Winston is so anxious to keep de Gaulle in his corner.” And de Gaulle was as eager to maintain France’s colonial empire. FDR believed de Gaulle sought “to achieve one-man government in France. I can’t imagine a man I would distrust more.” Although FDR did not confide his own commitment to replace Anglo-French interests in oil-rich territories, he concluded that the “colonial system means war. Exploit the resources of an India, a Burma, a Java; take all the wealth out of those countries, but never put anything back into them . . . education, decent standards of living, minimum health requirements—all you are doing is storing up the kind of trouble that leads to war.” FDR told his sons that he and Churchill did not agree. India required a measure of freedom “at once.” The United Nations at war’s end would change the world. It was three-thirty in the morning when their discussion ended.

  Also at Casablanca, FDR and Churchill agreed to postpone yet again the much-promised cross-Channel invasion. Instead, they would open the second front on Churchill’s preferred target—Europe’s “soft underbelly,” across the Mediterranean into Sicily. Harry Hopkins, George Marshall, and General Eisenhower were surprised and disappointed.

  FDR did refer to Jews at Casablanca, but not in a way that had anything to do with rescue. Secretly, and not for attribution, he proposed that North African resettlement projects restrict the number of Jews who were allowed to become professionals. Evidently in agreement with geographer Isaiah Bowman’s fantastical M Project, to spread Jews as thinly as possible across the world, FDR proposed a quota system whereby Jews might still be attorneys and physicians but would no longer be permitted “to overcrowd the professions.” It would ensure Jews “full rights” but eliminate “understandable complaints” such as Germans had towards Jews, “namely that while they represented a small part of the population, over 50% of the lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, college professors, etc., in Germany were Jews.”

  When he returned home to Washington, ER was pleased to see her husband fully relaxed and asked him about the shotgun wedding. FDR explained that General de Gaulle, while a patriotic soldier, was also “a politician and a fanatic and there are, I think, in him almost the makings of a dictator.” In her memoir, ER reported that her husband never “changed his mind” about de Gaulle, “and I do not think that between them there was any real understanding.” FDR insisted that under Vichy rule in North Africa, “97% of the political prisoners are freed.” Liberal protest against the regime irritated FDR but otherwise failed to impress him. “The President is so obviously annoyed at anyone who dares question the arrangements in Africa,” Trude wrote Joe.

  Although unable to understand her husband’s intransigence, ER never publicly criticized his position, nor did she refer to his misrepresentation of facts about Vichy North Africa. Privately, however, she continued to pressure him. In mid-February, Henry Morgenthau confirmed for her that her “fears about North African civil affairs are justified,” as she told Lash, and asked her “to go on prodding FDR because he feels everyone except myself will give up.”

  • • •

  China was key to FDR’s vision for a future of world peace—and despite all rumblings of civil war tensions between the Communist movement and reactionary warlords, ongoing since 1911, efforts to maintain a united front alliance against the Japanese invaders continued. The three Soong sisters, all in their forties, among themselves represented the forever tense spectrum of China’s politics and key to the future. Ching-ling was the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the founder and first president of the Republic of China. Ayling was married to H. H. Kung, the republic’s finance minister. And Wellesley-educated Mayling was the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, the republic’s current Nationalist leader.

  In 1941 Madame Chiang, as Mayling Soong Chiang was usually known, had provided James Roosevelt with gracious hospitality when FDR sent him, along with his military mentor Major Evans Carlson, to “trouble spots.” The trip had been “difficult” after recent ulcer surgery, and “when he visited the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang . . . she immediately understood [James’s needs] and with her own hands had prepared the proper kind of food for him. . . . You can understand that from that time on Madame Chiang had a special place in my heart,” ER recalled.

  In mid-November 1942 Madame Chiang traveled to New York to demand more aid for China, and undergo ulcer surgery herself. In advance she sent ER a magnificent tapestry as a gift with these words: “The world of war and woe is but a passing thing, however necessary it may be. For over the edge of the horizon lies a path leading to universal harmony and world brotherhood.” ER was charmed by her rhetoric. China scholar Owen Lattimore, whom FDR had appointed in October 1941 to be Chiang’s adviser, was sympathetic to Madame Chiang. So was Major Carlson, who supported Chinese cooperatives and the end of racial bigotries, in accord with ER’s beliefs. ER was therefore initially inclined to believe Chiang’s democratic rhetoric.

  When she met Madame Chiang, ER was moved: she “seemed so small and delicate as she lay in her hospital bed that I had a desire to help her and take care of her as I would have if she had been my own daughter.” FDR had asked her to inform Madame Chiang that he and Churchill had agreed on additional aid for China. He knew she wanted more aid for China’s war effort against Japan as well as Chinese equality in the United Nations.

  When ER delivered the message, however, she witnessed another aspect of Mayling Soong Chiang. Furious to have been excluded from the decision-making Casablanca Conference, she held forth with a torrent of bitter resentment that “mingled fire and ice.” China was one of the United Nations and considered itself one of the world’s four primary nations. “Global strategy could only be made by all . . . and if nations did not cooperate as equals during the war, no good peace was possible. China subscribed to the Atlantic Charter and was fighting for the Four Freedoms, not for herself alone, but for all peoples.”

  According to Joe Lash, ER, who was always “sensitive to the global nature of ‘white supremacy,’” listened to Madame’s outburst “with sympathy.” In fact she admired China’s independent, eloquent first lady and invited her to Hyde Park to convalesce, then to stay at the White House for as long as she liked.

  FDR continued to negotiate for significant military and financial support for China, and in preparation for the creation of the United Nations, he made plans to meet personally with Chiang Kai-shek and to formally recognize China as an equal among the four great powers. Churchill and Stalin strenuously objected, as did the president’s own advisers, who considered Chiang’s regime brutal and corrupt and resented his failure actually to fight the Japanese. But FDR agreed immediately to ER’s invitation to host Madame Chiang at the White House. She arrived on 17 February 1943—with a complicated entourage, unexpected demands, and astonishing manners.

  Of her traveling staff of forty, only two nurses and her two assistants—a niece and nephew, the children of her sister Ailing—moved into the White House. Madame’s behavior to the staff was surly, marked by clapping and barking for immediate attention; some were appalled, but ER seemed mostly surprised and rather amused. Tommy was not at all amused and wrote Lape, “I think she is able and very lovely to look at, but she is a prima donna, temperamental and [considers] the Chinese people . . . superior to all other people. . . . I think they are decidedly rude.” Madame Chiang “has a niece with her who is a curious, rather neuter gender person, dresses like a boy . . . very small, aged 23, and a nephew who looks normal.” But ER, Tommy noted, “is quite impressed with [Madame Chiang] and argues against my opinion.”

  Initially, ER was persuaded that Madame Chiang supported democracy in China. On 18 February Madame Chiang delivered an hourlong address to a joint session of
Congress and received a standing ovation, which filled ER with “a great feeling of pride” and seemed to her unprecedented. Their cheers, she wrote, “marked the recognition of a woman who, through her own personality and her own service, has achieved a place in the world, not merely as the wife of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, but as a representative of her people.”

  On 24 February, ER invited Madame Chiang to her press conference. The wide-ranging session touched on the need for an equal rights amendment both in the United States and in China. Madame Chiang said, “I feel strongly that since the men expect us to bear over half the responsibility it is up to them to give us equal privileges. I have never known brains to have any sex.” When asked how China had endured so long under the dreadful siege, Madame Chiang replied, “I think we are a very old nation and we realize that spiritual values are eternal.” Individually, we only live “but a few years . . . but the nation” endures.

  But ER slowly recognized Madame Chiang’s cruel, even ruthless, aspects. At one dinner party, FDR asked her how she would deal with a labor leader like John L. Lewis, who was about to call a miners’ strike. Gracefully, without a word spoken, her “beautiful small hand came up . . . and slid across her throat. . . . Franklin looked across at me to make sure I had seen.” Presumably FDR told ER about Chiang’s anti-union atrocities, as well as the anti-student and anti-Communist slaughters, like the one on 7 January 1941, when Chiang’s forces massacred nine thousand troops of Yan’an’s Communist Fourth Army.*

  The insult to democracy that definitively turned ER against her, however, occurred when Madame Chiang refused to speak at a program sponsored by the NAACP, even after ER had negotiated for them to appear together. She refused even to meet with Walter White. Since ER had once described her to FDR as “a sweet, gentle and pathetic figure,” it gave FDR “keen pleasure to tease me about my lack of perception.” By then he was eager for her to leave.