Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  In her memoir, ER wrote that she enjoyed walking around Quebec’s old Citadel, “particularly along the ramparts” above the St. Lawrence River. Canada’s governor general, Lord Athlone, and his wife, Princess Alice—Queen Victoria’s granddaughter—“were kindness itself.” There were several “entertainments,” and one afternoon they took ER and Clementine Churchill “for a drive in the country and a picnic tea which I shall always remember with great pleasure.”

  ER returned to Hyde Park before the meetings ended—to get back to work and to prepare for a visit from the Churchills. ER wrote Hick: “I don’t know what work goes on here but we talk much at meals. These people are all nice people & in some ways that is discouraging because they’ve not found the answers.” So many urgent issues remained confused, or suspended.

  • • •

  In July, Soviet forces approached Warsaw, and when they were ten miles away, on 1 August, Polish insurgents in Warsaw rose up against the Nazis, expecting Soviet arms and support. But the Soviet troops ceased their advance, and Stalin refused to support the Poles—whom he considered allied with the anti-Communist Polish government in exile.* The revolt divided the Allies: Churchill wanted to support the determined warriors for Polish liberation, but Stalin considered them anti-Soviet, and FDR wavered. It would remain one of the war’s most bitter controversies.

  As Soviet troops stormed west, they encountered many horrors: Gestapo headquarters, mass graves and torture chambers in the former industrial center Minsk, and the vast extermination camp Majdanek (Maidanek) two miles beyond Lublin. The first Nazi death camp to be studied and photographed, Majdanek had seven gas chambers, where two million Poles, Soviet war prisoners, and Jews from many nations were slaughtered. Some U.S. journals, including Time, published reports and photographs, but the Western press largely ignored Majdanek. Even the BBC rejected Alexander Werth’s August 1944 reports from Lublin as “a Russian propaganda stunt.” The New York Herald Tribune wanted to await “further corroboration. . . . Even on top of all we have been taught of the maniacal Nazi ruthlessness, this example sounds inconceivable.” Still, U.S. correspondents continued to send reports from Lublin, and the Tribune concluded that “if [they were] authentic the regime capable of such crimes deserves annihilation.” Nevertheless, it was not until the western camps (Buchenwald, Dachau, Belsen) were liberated, noted Werth, that the press became “convinced that Maidanek and Auschwitz were also genuine.” Whether these grim issues were discussed at Quebec is unclear, but ER nowhere referred to them.

  In her 26 August column she celebrated the liberation of Paris. That “the French people themselves . . . freed Paris must be a source of great joy.”

  Paris has always been a symbol, and now that it is again a city where [the people] are free . . . the whole nation must breathe a sigh of relief and hope. . . . We, in [the United States,] have always had an admiration and an affection for the French people and for their culture, and we wish them well. Their comeback will be a courageous one, and their eminence in the intellectual and artistic fields will, I am sure, rapidly reestablish itself.

  Loyal to her husband’s wishes, ER did not discuss de Gaulle or the political details of France’s joyous liberation. But she was surprised at Quebec when FDR and Churchill agreed not to recognize de Gaulle’s government—which General Eisenhower nevertheless did immediately.

  After Quebec, ER enjoyed a weekend with Hick and Trude to speak about politics and romance. During a long walk “through the woods” Trude was filled with high hopes, since Joe would soon return home for officer candidate school. “We even planned the wedding,” ER wrote to Joe. “. . . When you two are married I shall feel that one of my great desires has come to pass!”

  But then the Churchills arrived, and there were many obligations. She wrote Joe, “My time slips away in such useless ways. Today . . . I’ve just been a glorified housekeeper! My household however changed every hour,” and there were so many conflicting needs. “These are the days when the resentment at the tyranny of people & things grows on me until if I were not a well disciplined person I would go out and howl like a dog!”

  To ER’s annoyance, Churchill continued to chide her about Spain: they disagreed, but “he insists on bringing it up at every meal. He talks picturesquely but I am almost tempted to say stupidly at times.” Table talk was generally “interesting,” and there was good news: Allied “paratroops [had] landed in Holland.”

  The next day during a picnic, ER did not feel sidelined, and Clementine Churchill considered it “rather fun really.” That day at lunch “Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt debated long-run peace strategy.” ER insisted the future depended on improved “living conditions throughout the world,” while Churchill was convinced peace depended entirely on a fortified Anglo-American military agreement. During the two-hour lunch, the prime minister “twitted me about our differences of opinion on certain subjects. I assured him I had not changed, and neither had he, but we like each other, nevertheless.” Ever political, ER concluded: “It is a good thing to reach a point in life where you can agree . . . [or] disagree,” and still “like and admire” each other.

  FDR silently watched while his wife and ally sparred. Admiral Leahy was riveted. Perhaps inspired by conversations with Trude about love across all divides, ER formulated her often quoted message: “We can establish no real trust between nations until we acknowledge the power of love above all other powers.”

  By this time it was known that in the dreadful Bengal famine, three to seven million people had died. ER was in close touch with Pearl Buck, Walter White, and other friends at the NAACP who were deeply concerned. And ER was increasingly supportive of the work of Nehru’s sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. But we have no evidence that ER confronted Churchill about India during this meeting. In the past, her differences with Churchill over India had so enraged the prime minister that FDR asked her to avoid the topic. She evidently consented.

  That September, Madame Chiang Kai-shek returned to New York, again unwell, for treatment. Madame Chiang had persuaded Madame Pandit to send her daughters to Wellesley, and helped arrange her subsequent visit. ER, Pearl Buck, and Madame Chiang were the chief contributors to Madame Pandit’s Save the Children chapter for the children of Bengal, where the famine still raged, and British silence ruled. Somehow, with the “direct aid of the Roosevelts,” Madame Pandit arrived in New York aboard a U.S. military plane in December 1944.

  It is also unclear if ER challenged Churchill’s insistence on the creation of “spheres of influence.” The notion of big power control over recently liberated nations appalled ER and was contrary to all of FDR’s publicly announced plans. Nevertheless, at Quebec, FDR had agreed to a short “three month trial period.” Based on that temporary agreement, Churchill made plans to go to Moscow—to discuss Poland and spheres of influence.

  There, on 9 October 1944, Churchill and Stalin divided the Balkans: Romania would have 90 percent Russian predominance; Greece, 90 percent British predominance; Bulgaria, 75 percent Russian interest, 25 percent British interest; Yugoslavia and Hungary, evenly divided, fifty-fifty. FDR had said, after all, that the United States wanted to be out of Europe within two years, and nothing was binding until the Big Three met again—after the election. Repeatedly, after Quebec—with Greece and Italy much on her mind—ER urged FDR to be stronger, more direct, and more forceful with Churchill regarding their profound and growing differences. More immediately, the U.S. election predominated.

  Dewey was popular among NAACP activists, and ER worried that he might actually win the election. “Half my mail,” she wrote Joe, concerned the “Negro situation” among military families. It was “bad,” and changes would have to be made “everywhere when the war is over.” Many shocking indignities occurred in 1944. More than 350,000 German prisoners of war were located at military bases around the country, where they were welcome to watch films and eat in dining areas from which U.S. servicemen and -women
of color were excluded or segregated in remote sections. ER visited many of these bases, and FDR, unwilling to be distracted by issues of race, told ER to send her persistent correspondence directly to military authorities. She fully reported to General Marshall, Oveta Culp Hobby, and others. Although segregation remained the rule, some adjustments were made.

  Impressed by Hobby’s recruitment campaign, ER wondered if “colored WACs are going to get a chance to serve overseas. They are very anxious to go and I should think now they would be very useful in some of the places where there are colored troops.” Hobby agreed with her, as she had earlier when ER protested to Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy about the treatment of colored WACs assigned to Camp Shelby at Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In response to her protest, Hobby determined to end such assignments until “local conditions both on the base and in the vicinity” were suitable “for WACS to serve.”

  On l December 1944, ER sent McCloy a blunt memo: “Why do Northern Negro WACs have to be sent south?” She also sent a “sample” of reports from Mary McLeod Bethune that detailed conditions at southern camps, “which I must say disturb me very much.” At Lovell General Hospital, at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, on 7 March 1945, sixty WACs, trained as nurses and medical technicians, went on strike. The hospital’s commander, Colonel Walter Crandell, ordered them to perform only menial tasks, to scrub floors and toilets. When they protested he declared they were “fit only to do the dirtiest type of work, because that’s what Negro women are used to doing.” Their walkout lasted several days, until they were ordered to return to work or face court-martial for disobedience. Four refused to return to work and were arrested, convicted, sentenced to a year at hard labor, and dishonorably discharged.

  ER received many protests, including an appeal from Lillian Jackson, Baltimore’s NAACP president:

  Our people are greatly incensed. . . . These young women enlisted of their own volition to help save the country. The discrimination generally practiced against colored men and women in the Armed Forces is a matter of public record. Knowing your genuine interest in the problems of all races, we are earnestly requesting that you use your influence on behalf of these WACS.

  The case was sent to the War Department for review, and within a week “the Negro girls were exonerated and restored to duty; evidently there had been discrimination.” While all charges against the health workers were dismissed, Colonel Crandell was neither removed nor investigated.

  ER was less successful regarding the surviving victims of the Port Chicago explosion—who refused to return to work. In August 1944, 328 men—who had spent days clearing the docks and retrieving the body parts of their friends who had been blown to pieces—were ordered to resume the frightful task of loading munitions. The 258 who refused were arrested and court-martialed. After weeks of counseling, 50 of them still refused and received long sentences for “mutiny.”

  Despite Thurgood Marshall’s powerful NAACP legal defense team, and his demonstrations of “rampant discrimination,” they were all pronounced guilty on 24 October 1944, and sentenced to terms ranging from five to fifteen years at hard labor. ER appealed directly to Navy secretary James Forrestal, who was in charge of the review process, to take “special care in the case of these boys” and consider how they “suffer” various difficulties from childhood forward. Forrestal, always polite to ER, refused to comment but promised “a fair and impartial review.” Thurgood Marshall kept her fully informed of his efforts and finally won their release in January 1946.*

  The complexities of bigotry in the United States were illuminated for ER on 20 September 1944 when she and Elinor Morgenthau visited the refugee camp at Oswego, New York. The refugees, escorted by Ruth Gruber to the U.S.’s only “Haven,” lived behind barbed wire and were not free to visit relatives or travel. “It was an interesting day, heartwarming because the people were so evidently happy to be free from fear but pathetic beyond words because they were such good people. Educated, professionals and merchants.” They all seemed “exceptional.” One of her guides, Dr. Ernst Wolff, was a screenwriter who had also written more than sixty novels. Of the 982 residents, “14 nationalities were represented and four religions—50 Catholics, 10 Greek Orthodox, 10 Protestant & the rest Jewish.” ER noted the Oswego people had welcomed them and appreciated how much they had “to contribute to the community.”

  In her column, ER described conditions at the “refugee shelter” in the soldiers’ barracks at Fort Ontario. “Partitions have been put up, affording them some privacy, but only the absolute necessities of life are being provided.” There was limited food, iron cots, army blankets, stiff chairs, little comfort. “Restrictions are plentiful . . . but at least the menace of death is not ever-present.”

  ER was touched by the flowers and many handmade gifts given to her; and almost everyone enhanced their “temporary home” with impressive art and decorative work. Their efforts testified to all they endured and to their “character which has brought them through. Somehow you feel that if there is any compensation for suffering, it must someday bring them something beautiful in return for all they have lived through.”

  Eventually the children were allowed to go to the local schools and were popular among their new neighbors. ER’s intervention enabled the college-age students to attend classes the very next semester. Her continuing involvement with the refugees at Oswego resulted in some improvements, including the right to travel into the town of Oswego and to visit relatives.

  As news of Europe’s liberation spread, bitter discontent among the residents deepened. There was depression and suicide. On 17 January 1945 news arrived that Zhukov’s Red Army troops had entered Warsaw. That month in Oswego more than fifty inches of snow fell, and Ernst Wolff wrote an essay “Storm in the Shelter” to describe the agony there. “We thought,” he wrote, “that we were to be guests; but we became prisoners behind barbed wire.” He wrote of his soul at war; as the wind howled and the snows raged, he was grateful to be alive, “safe from [Europe’s] chaos. . . . The catastrophe increasing day by day.” But his heart was anguished by the absence of freedom.

  He sent it to ER with a letter on 1 February to appeal to “your world-known humanity.” He wanted her to understand the “melancholy” of the thousand people “you so honoured with your visit.” To save our souls, “Give us our Freedom, give us back to the life! Be our lawyer . . . your voice will be heard. . . . Reborn us and [become] our mother!”

  Dr. Ernst Wolff’s cry for freedom profoundly moved ER. She sent it to Henry Morgenthau with the hope that he and his WRB would liberate the refugees at Oswego, who felt like imprisoned inmates. Morgenthau rejected her request that the refugees be allowed to leave the camp, which crushed ER. She turned to Ickes and Ruth Gruber, who also sought liberation for Haven’s inmates.

  The FBI investigators who routinely monitored ER concluded that her efforts would surely result in what they initially expected—a movement “to culminate in the admission for permanent residence of this unselected, unscreened group of aliens.” The FBI was correct. While there was a great effort to return the thousand Oswego refugees to Europe immediately after the war, ER was prominent among those who fought for their freedom within the United States. Despite much opposition and even Morgenthau’s refusal to intervene, on 22 December 1945 Truman would declare the Oswego refugees “admissible under the immigration laws.”

  In the context of the 1944 campaign, ER understood FDR’s preference for silence on many bitter and controversial issues. While she trusted his political sagacity, her own need to speak out at least to him contributed to a new level of tension between them.

  In 1944, ER focused her fantasies for a really liberal Democratic Party and movement on Henry Wallace, the NAACP, the AFSC (through which she continued to give all her contributions), and the labor PACs—since they especially called for full employment and enhanced New Deal reform and racial justice. FDR had urged Wendell Willkie to join him
in a new movement and seemed pleased by Willkie’s global vision across race, ethnic, and national divides. His views were heresy to current Republican leaders—Dewey, John Bricker, and Arthur Vandenberg, who hated Willkie as much as they despised FDR. In his last two articles for Collier’s, Willkie argued that a truly liberal party would work to end “the Old World’s colonial empires, and achieve real civil rights laws—including an anti-lynch law [and] repeal of the poll tax.” He urged FDR immediately to issue an executive order to desegregate the military. But on 8 October, after a series of fourteen heart attacks, Wendell Willkie suddenly died. The fifty-two-year-old visionary who ate too much, drank too much, smoked too much, and loved too much was gone.

  On 10 October ER attended Willkie’s funeral. In her column, she celebrated his “great leadership qualities” that were too soon “removed from this troubled world. . . . His outspoken opinions on race relations were among his great contributions to the thinking of the world.”

  After the funeral, ER took the night train to Washington for the next day’s press conference. It would be one of the largest, in celebration of her sixtieth birthday on 11 October. She was grateful for the outpouring of love and admiration for her work and for the notes from friends. Hick assured her, “You are still my favorite person in the world.” Joe wrote a long praise-song about the woman who transformed “the ornamental office of First Lady into an expression of American democracy’s concern with all the people [marked by] warm friendliness and hospitality.” And she did “all these things not for political gain or prestige but because of . . . your great heart. . . . None of these things were done without a struggle.” Joe admired that she had done it all “against tradition and custom, against family sometimes, and class.” And he said that as the political passions of the times subsided, “you would loom ever larger in the hearts and imaginations of the American people and that your life would be held up as an example to all.” ER replied to Joe’s “birthday letter” with gratitude: even “if I don’t deserve [all the nice things you say], I love you to think them.”