who “went overseas”: Ibid., 153n.
“a Nazi-dominated”: “First Lady’s Plea Ignored by Youth,” New York Times, 27 May 1940.
“temper of the delegates”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 92; Marcantonio, I Vote.
“wanted to listen”: “First Lady’s Plea Ignored by Youth,” New York Times, 27 May 1940.
“her sensible words”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 92–93.
“addressed the brattish”: Snorted the testy journalist, Frank Kent, Time, 3 June 1940, editorial; and Bullitt, For the President, 28 May 1940, 433–35.
“no longer existed”: Gilbert, Second World War, 77.
“It seems incredible”: My Day, 29 May 1940.
“which came from”: Fink, Marc Bloch, 229. See also Divine, Nine Days of Dunkirk. Dunkirk’s equipment losses included 475 tanks, 38,000 vehicles, 12,000 motorcycles, thousands of heavy guns, 90,000 rifles, and 7,000 tons of ammunition.
an evacuation is: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 86; Gilbert, Second World War, 81–83; Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 92; cf. David Divine, The Nine Days of Dunkirk; and Shirer, Berlin Diary, 363.
Clare Boothe Luce: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 489; Luce, Europe in the Spring, 270–71.
“but their courage”: Bullitt to FDR, 4–5 June 1940, For the President, 449–51.
that substantial American: Both Churchill and Reynaud were hopeful that equipment FDR promised would in fact arrive in time, but the planes did not.
“What a life!”: ER to Anna, 17 May 1940; ER “Links Relief to Defense,” New York Times, 21 May 1940.
“Today there are more”: ER, radio address, 26 May 1940.
“flooding down across the country”: Hamilton Fish Armstrong, “Asks Unstinted US Aid,” New York Times, 28 May 1940. ER “Pleas for War Refugees,” New York Times, 27 May 1940.
the “People’s Common”: “People’s Common Dedicated,” New York Times, 2 June 1940; “Labor Unity Urged” and “120,000 Garment Workers Swell Fair Crowd,” New York Times, 3 June 1940.
“an art which has”: My Day, 3 June 1940.
“through every experience”: Ibid.
“Some of us forget”: My Day, 4 June 1940.
“with the other boatmen”: Cook, ER, 1:58.
“very miserable childhood”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 108.
“You are right”: ER to Anna, 17 May, 4 June 1940, Asbell, 117–18; My Day, 5 June 1940.
On 5 June, the President: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 98–106.
“Every patriotic citizen”: My Day, 6 June 1940.
“where the Negro people”: Ibid.
“some rather nice pieces”: My Day, 7 June 1940.
“always an exciting”: Haven’s birth is announced in New York Times, 6 June 1940. See also My Day, 7, 8, and 10 June.
“the only reality”: My Day, 11 June 1940.
now surrounded France: For the Nazi invasion of France, see Gilbert, Second World War, 85–90.
“The times were fraught”: TIR, 211–12.
“a lone island”: FDR, “Stab in the Back” speech, 10 June 1940, Miller Center of Public Affairs, Scripps Library; New York Times, 11 June 1940.
“When the soldiers”: My Day, 12 June 1940.
“whose lives can be saved”: Bullitt to FDR, 9–11 June 1940, For the President, 456–65. See also Shirer, Berlin Diary, “June,” 399; Jean Edward Smith, FDR, 448–9.
Burke-Wadsworth bill: Smith, FDR, 464–66.
“We have never thought of ourselves”: “Scores Forced Enlisting,” My Day, 14 June 1940.
“Personally I would rather”: Ibid.
“A national mobilization”: My Day, 28 August 1940. See also My Day, 29 July 1940.
CCC and NYA: My Day, 21 August 1940.
“sense of national purpose”: ER, press conference, 4 June 1940, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences; New York Times, 4 June 1940.
“the jobless and needy”: Ibid.
a “class ruling”: “Scores Forced Enlisting,” My Day, 14 June 1940.
“sat out on”: My Day, 15 June 1940.
“It isn’t only the shock”: Anne O’Hare McCormick, “Europe,” New York Times, 15 June 1940.
“The Germans have learned”: My Day, 25 June 1940.
“from the women”: My Day, 17 June 1940.
“I’m not going abroad”: ER to Lape and Read, BWC collection.
“She has wanted desperately”: Tommy to Anna, 17 June 1940.
“dressed in a pink-and-black”: “Opens Drive to Aid China,” New York Times, 19 June 1940.
“women in every country”: My Day, 20 June 1940.
Chapter Twelve: “The World Rightly Belongs to Those Who Really Care”: The Convention of 1940
Gurs in the Pyrenees: Felstiner, To Paint Her Life; Lerner, Fireweed; Hanak, World of Ili Kronstein, 32–33; Paxton; Genet’s “Exodus: Spanish Civil War,” in Drutman, Flanner’s Paris, 201–3.
“It looks to me as if”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:207. For Ickes’s frustration with the State Department, see 3:216–17. See also Smith, FDR, 449–52.
And Henry Stimson: FDR to Harry H. Woodring, 19 June 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1041.
“As to Frank Knox”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:215, see also 204–15.
a “new order”: C. Brooks Peters, New York Times, 22 June to 7 July 1940.
“We may find ourselves”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 4 July 1940, 2:100. See also C. Brooks Peters, New York Times, 5 July. For context, see Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 628–44.
the Smith Act: Because Frances Perkins had opposed the deportation of Harry Bridges, the Australian-born head of the International Longshoremens Union, and was perceived to be concerned about the rights of aliens and the needs of refugees, all immigration issues were shifted from the Department of Labor to the Justice Department. Immigrant issues, along with the details of the Smith Act. now belonged to the attorney general. Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 92–98,
The Court’s majority issued: Justice Felix Frankfurter’s decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940), was deplored by ER.
“And to think”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 15 June 1940, 3:211.
“were dragged from”: My Day, 21 June 1940. See also Baker, Brandeis and Frankfurter, 399–409.
“People are breaking”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:211.
“the hysteria that is sweeping”: Ibid.
“Felix’s Fall of France”: Frankfurter to FDR, 3, 4, and 5 June 1940.
“We have been remarkably fortunate”: My Day, 24 June 1940. See My Day, 22 June 1940 for WPA and NYA training.
“I never asked”: TIR, 212.
a heart attack: Time, 27 May 1940.
“I drove through the woods”: My Day, 25 June 1940.
Gertrude von Adam Wenzel: On Trude Lash, see Adam Fifield, “A Living Primer of 20th Century Causes: Trude Lash, a Lifetime on the Barricades,” New York Times, 3 June 2001; Wolfgang Saxon, “Trude Wenzel Lash,” New York Times, 5 February 2004; “Trude Wenzel Lash, Children’s Advocate,” Vineyard Gazette, 6 February 2004. TWL said her dissertation was burned during WWII.
“more than casually attracted”: ER to Lash, in Lash, Love, Eleanor, 305; Trude Lash to author, July 2002: “I would not want to tell what I know or hurt those still alive—so I’m caught in a trap of my own making.” Subsequently I understood that she referred to her family of origin.
“Washington had moved away”: Bellush, He Walked Alone, 137. See also Perkins, Roosevelt I Knew, 300, 341–46.
“twenty-four of the best members”: Bellush, He Walked Alone, 150. For Winant’s efforts after 1939 and especially between May and June 1940, see 140–48.
“convinced” FDR to: New York Times, 6 June 1938, quoted in Bell
ush, He Walked Alone, 134–40. The office escape after the armistice and FDR’s about-face is recounted on 149–51. At McGill, Dr. Wilder Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute was Winant’s intermediary. Fifteen ILO members and their dependents left Geneva 7 August. I am grateful to Carol Riegelman Lubin for this book, and for her memories of her ILO boss Winant, and to Jewel Bellush.
“the three houses”: My Day, 25 June and 3 July 1940. See also Hitler’s Exiles, 226.
Emergency Rescue Committee: For the 25 June meeting, see Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 112–13, and Lash Diary, 25 June 1940, Lash Papers. See also Fry, Surrender on Demand, 247–48; Berenbaum, World Must Know, 60; Michael Berenbaum on Varian Fry in Beasley, ER Encyclopedia, 198–201; Lash thought Joseph Buttinger (aka Hubert Richter), his wife, heiress Muriel Gardiner Buttinger, “the daring and glamorous” couple. Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 112; Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, 6.
“always said it was possible”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 111–12.
“The President has seen”: ER to Fry, 8 July 1940.
“Under the quota”: My Day, 26 June 1940.
“I love my porch”: ER to Anna, 26 June 1940.
“The children are temporary”: “Lift Bar to Children, ER Urges,” New York Times, 7 July 1940. ER depended on the activist members of this splendid committee: Katherine Lenroot, head of the Federal Children’s Bureau, Marshall Field, Bishop Bernard J. Sheil of Chicago, Dorothy Bellanca, Dr. Frank Kingdon, Shepard Morgan, Clarence Pickett of the AFSC, and Agnes King Inglis among others. The committee was a massive undertaking of several organizations, including the American Committee for Christian Refugees, the Friends of Children, the German-Jewish Children’s Aid, the Catholic Youth Organization, the American Joint Distribution Committee, the English-Speaking Union, the Foster Home Department of New York’s Children’s Aid, the Non-Sectarian Foundation for Refugee Children, the Allied Relief Fund, the Unitarian Service Committee, the Committee for Catholic Refugees, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, and the Queen Wilhelmina Fund, among others. This committee represented all faiths, and was “in the truest sense a nonsectarian, nonpartisan movement inspired solely by the desire to rescue children.” They intended to “coordinate all resources”; cooperate with Canada; aid children directly everywhere in danger; provide care in family homes for those children admitted to the United States. “U.S. Groups Formed,” 21 June, “Many Offer Homes to Refugee Children,” 22 June, “Saving Democracy’s Children,” editorial, 22 June 1920, New York Times.
Christian Action Committee: My Day, 9 July 1940.
“the years of depression”: My Day, 28 June 1940.
“Sometimes I wonder”: My Day, l July and 29 June 1940. On the 1940 Republican convention, see also Neal, Dark Horse, 86, 99; Smith, FDR, 451–55; My Day, 29 June, 1 July 1940.
“I don’t care”: Hick to ER, 2 July 1940, in Streitmatter, Empty Without You, 229.
“This job is such fun”: Hick to ER.
“corporate, entrenched wealth”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 29 June, 3:220–21.
nobody in FDR’s inner circle: TIR, 212–13; Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 127.
“I personally want”: My Day, 4 July 1940. See also My Day, 6 July; New York Times, “Hyde Park Library,” 5 July 1940.
“my husband had”: My Day, 8 July 1940.
“essential indifference to labor”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 304–5.
“Don’t get tired”: ER to Hick, July 1940.
“had a gay time”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 128.
“was in trouble”: Ibid.
she “turned shy”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 308.
“in a mess”: Ibid., 309–10.
“every effort to improve”: Ibid.
in his words, “spry”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 130; Lash journals, 15 July 1940.
“The President has never”: Alben Barkley, speech at 1940 Democratic Convention.
“shook her head resignedly”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 131.
“led the procession”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:240, 243, 247.
“convention is bleeding”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:249.
“men who are determined”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:249–50. See also Smith, FDR, 458–60.
“get promises out”: Perkins, Roosevelt I Knew, 128–132.
“I certainly am not”: TIR, 214.
“overcome with emotion”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 282.
“Jim Farley really”: TIR, 215.
“Tell Jim to meet me”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 281–84; Black, ER, 150.
“We sat thru”: Lash journal, 17–18 July 1940.
“allowed me to fly the plane”: TIR, 215.
“an unusual gravity”: Kathleen McLaughlin, “No Campaigning . . . ,” New York Times, 19 July 1940.
“Jim Farley drove”: TIR, 216.
“It must be Wallace”: TIR, 216–17.
“sweetened the convention”: Perkins, Roosevelt I Knew, 133.
“The Stadium was packed”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 283.
“the State delegations”: New York Times, 19 July 1940.
She “moved forward”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 283.
“For many years”: ER, speech to 1940 Democratic Convention.
“It was striking”: TIR, 217.
“the first wife of a president”: Kathleen McLaughlin, “No Campaigning . . . ,” New York Times, 19 July 1940.
“For God’s sake”: Smith, FDR, 463.
“had done a very good”: TIR, 218.
“The perfect, gentle knight”: Senator George W. Norris to ER, 19 July 1940.
“I listened over the radio”: Ibid. See also TIR, 214–18; Smith, FDR, 458–63; New York Times, 19 July 1940.
“we will not participate”: Democratic Party platform, 1940, criticized for failure to grasp realities, Sydney Herald.
seemed a “retreat”: “Hits at Foreign Plank,” New York Times, 20 July 1940.
Chapter Thirteen: War and The Moral Basis of Democracy
her remarkable meditation: ER had begun the year with four book contracts: The Story of the White House (never written); a collection of essays on the meaning of Christmas around the world; a book for children, Christmas: A Story of Hope, which would be illustrated by Fritz Kredel and published by Knopf; and her essay on citizenship, which became The Moral Basis of Democracy. See Black, ER: Biography, 117.
“stimulate the thoughts”: ER, Moral Basis, 11–14. Quotes from this book in the following paragraphs are from pages 26, 33–37, and 42–82.
“strengthen the ticket”: My Day, 20 July 1940.
she had deplored: For Wallace’s 1933 programs, see Cook, ER, 2:81–82, 412; ER to Lape, 22 September 1933, Arizona Collection.
to “humanize capitalism”: Wallace’s Paths to Plenty and other works in Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, Wallace of Iowa, 250–55 and passim.
“To me there is”: My Day, 20 July 1940.
“the growth of three”: My Day, 17, 18, and 19 July 1940.
“on the saddle”: Death of Aunt Dora, 21 July 1940. My Day, 22, 23, and 25 July 1940; New York Times obituary of Dora Delano Forbes, 22 July 1940.
“is always happier”: Tommy to Anna, 12 July 1940.
she worked closely: Mary McLeod Bethune: Joanna Schneider Zangrando and Robert Zangrando, “ER and Black Civil Rights,” in Hoff-Wilson and Lightman, Without Precedent, 96–98.
“to eliminate racial”: Neal, Dark Horse, 146; “White House Blesses Jim Crow,” Crisis, November 1940; Burke-Wadsworth in Smith, FDR, 464–66.
“the horrid legal details”: My Day, 13 July 1940.
was “very impatient”: When ER called from 20 June 1940 meeting with Lash and Karl Frank (aka Paul Hagen), th
en met with Joseph Battinger, Clarence Pickett, and Varian Fry and others, 27 June 1940. There is, however, no record of this meeting.
“I know it is due”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 113n.
“to tie up the ship”: “Family Separated by Stern Laws of US,” Norfolk Virginia Pilot, 12 September 1940. The Quanza story was revived by Jacob L. Morewitz’s son David and his grandson Stephen. See Stephen J. Morewitz, “The Saving of the SS Quanza,” William and Mary Magazine, Summer 1991; Stephen Morewitz and Susan Lieberman, Steamship Quanza, a play reviewed in the Chicago Tribune on 29 May 1991; and Rebecca Zweifler, “Where Are They Now? Survivors of the SS Quanza,” interviews for a traveling exhibit of Yeshiva University Museum, at the Cardozo School of Law, November 1994.
officials granted permits: Sumner Welles to ER, 12 September 1940; Eliot B. Coulter to ER, 19 September 1940/R 70, both in Sumner Welles Papers, box 793; Breckinridge Long to Prichard, Department of Justice, and Lemuel B. Schofield, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, 12 September 1940, FDRL, copies from David Morewitz; Stephen J. Morewitz and Susan B. Lieberman, “The Saving of the SS Quanza in Hampton Roads,” 14 September 1940; and David Morewitz to author.
“very generous in offering”: Bellush, He Walked Alone, 152. It is not clear whether FDR’s former World War I boss, Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels, who likened the Quanza situation to Edward Everett Hale’s “Man Without a Country,” communicated his distress about the refugees to his one-time assistant. Nor is it clear why Long’s antagonism to Winant’s endangered ILO colleagues in Geneva did not give FDR pause.
“young and old”: My Day, 20 September 1940.
“music is a universal”: My Day, 26 July, 12 August, and 8 August 1940.
“Their performances,” ER was: My Day, 18 September 1940.
On 15 August: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 734–35.
“Never in the field”: Ibid., 736.
“I looked at the moon”: My Day, 14 August 1940.
“The horror grows”: My Day, 7 September 1940.
Hitler’s “cruel, wanton”: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 778–79.
“calmness and great”: My Day, 14 September 1940.
City of Benares: Nagorski, Miracles on the Water.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3 Page 78
