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1944

Page 58

by Jay Winik


  Peace did come. True, war was hardly eradicated, and the world has remained a callous, dangerous place. And the United Nations, to which Roosevelt was so committed, has often been feckless and ineffectual, if not counterproductive. Yet in the seventy years since his death, there has been no mass world conflagration. The next global conflict was the Cold War, with tense standoffs, proxy conflicts, and ideological struggles, but it was not total war. And the modern-day specter of terrorism was something Roosevelt could probably not have foreseen. (Although he might have considered 9/11 analogous to Pearl Harbor.) That said, peace, at least on a large scale, as Roosevelt envisioned it, has in some ways been preserved.

  However, there is a curious rhythm to Roosevelt’s efforts, one laden with a measure of pathos and tragedy. By making the war about its end, Franklin Roosevelt accomplished the historic goal of defending democracy and the western way of life, but nonetheless may have missed his own “Emancipation Proclamation moment.” The Civil War, a cataclysmic conflict in its own right, began as a war about secession, but it ended up becoming a war about slavery and human freedom. Abraham Lincoln, fresh off his stunning victory at Antietam, made it that, with his words and his deeds. When he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the war was no longer simply about federalism and states’ rights or even about preserving the Union; it was about freedom—and ending the scourge of human bondage. He did this even though the country never countenanced a war on behalf of the blacks, and despite considerable opposition in the north and even within his own party. Still, Lincoln boldly led the way, and once he took that step, there was no turning back. Meanwhile, Roosevelt spoke many fine words and much soaring praise for democracy and human dignity—here, the New York Times was surely right when it wrote that his leadership “inspired freemen in every part of the world to fight with greater hope and courage”—yet there was no moment when he unequivocally made World War II about the vast human tragedy occurring in Nazi-controlled Europe, about the calculated efforts to wipe an entire people from the earth. Unlike the Civil War, World War II was ultimately always about winning and not about something bigger, at least not until the fighting had all but ceased. Then, General Eisenhower, who had just glimpsed the Final Solution for the first time at the Nazi camp at Ohrdruf in April 1945, poignantly wrote, “We are told the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against.”

  That Roosevelt had no Emancipation Proclamation moment is tragic because, unique among most public figures in history, Roosevelt both embodied and embraced humanity and had an immense capacity to inspire others. Justice Jackson, who would take a leave from the Supreme Court to serve as the chief prosecutor of the surviving Nazi high command in the international war crimes trials at Nuremberg, wrote of the man he admired, “How much his passing affects the destinies of mankind, we can never estimate.” For Jackson, as for so many, Roosevelt had a “personality so appealing, a mind so richly endowed and informed, a heart so warm and understanding, a spirit so unconquerable.” For his part, Republican Robert Taft expressed what many felt, calling Roosevelt “the greatest figure of our time.”

  On the homefront, the war presented Roosevelt with the thorny challenge of uniting the nation. In the main, he succeeded. “Businessmen who had been the sworn enemies of the President enlisted under him in various posts. People who had distrusted him became his followers. The opposition pretty much melted out,” added Jackson. And Isaiah Berlin rightfully observed, “He was one of the few statesmen in the 20th century, or any century, who seemed to have no fear of the future.”

  It would be hard to disagree. As clearly as anyone else, save for perhaps Churchill, Roosevelt saw the threat of a rising Nazi Germany. As time went on, he deftly managed to navigate through the shoals of isolationist sentiment, while inching the nation ever closer to conflict. His Lend-Lease concept was a brilliant masterstroke, a lifeline for Britain and then the Soviet Union that also bought the United States vital time to turn its production and human capabilities toward war. Once the conflict came, he built a vast, unconquerable arsenal of democracy, and increasingly hurled his military resources against the Nazi regime. Statesman, strategist, commander in chief, he dominated the summits with the Allied leaders, no small feat given that his outsized partners were Churchill and Stalin. He mobilized the war industry on a scale difficult to fathom: during the conflict, the United States produced 2 million trucks; 300,000 warplanes; more than 100,000 tanks; 87,000 warships; 5,000 cargo ships; over 20 million rifles, machine guns, and pistols; and 44 million rounds of ammunition—the equivalent of building two Panama Canals every month. He personally made the difficult decision to invade North Africa, then kept the matériel flowing to the eastern front. He gave Churchill the Italian campaign; and even as his health was failing, he oversaw D-Day and persevered when the success of Overlord seemed to be in doubt. And he did it all so persuasively and with such unmatchable instinct that the American people followed him almost without reservation.

  They listened to his fireside chats and felt as if he were speaking personally with each one of them. Huddled around the radio, they were touched by his sparkling personality and thought of him as a personal friend. And they never lost faith in the war, because he never lost faith. Unable to easily wade into a crowd and reach for hand after hand, Roosevelt reached out instead with his voice. He discovered how to use words. Not since Lincoln had a president so been able to move the nation.

  And the feeling for Roosevelt extended far beyond America. State Department adviser Charles Bohlen, who was hardly a fanatical admirer of Roosevelt, noted that the president almost always had the upper hand in dealing with foreign leaders, owing in large measure to “his enormous popularity throughout the world, even in countries he had never been in.” At home, he was far more beloved than his major wartime predecessors, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and John Adams. And unlike Lincoln, he did not need to die to receive an outpouring of public affection. Even the passage of time has done little to dim his greatness in the public mind and in the minds of historians, and justly so. His overall stewardship of the war was nothing if not a monumental achievement.

  And albeit late, Roosevelt did with his War Refugee Board bring about the rescue of several hundred thousand who might otherwise have perished at the Nazis’ hands. Britain took in some refugees, and the Soviet Union absorbed eastern European Jews who fled, but neither made a conscious effort at wide-scale rescue.

  Roosevelt was larger than life and endowed with exquisite timing; nothing seemed to be beyond his reach, or his ability to solve, or his imagination. Except one thing: a Holocaust increasingly unfolding in plain sight. He could never quite see beyond the exigencies of winning the war and crafting the postwar structure of peace.

  Given the depth of public admiration for him, had Roosevelt at some point desired to make this a war for human liberation—a war against the Final Solution, a war to end the unimaginable Nazi cruelties, a war to save hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent lives—he could no doubt have roused the American public to follow him. In 1944 he had his chances. His choice not to take more sustained action was among his most fateful decisions, every bit as much as were his greatest military initiatives. And herein lay not just the grandeur of the war, but its tragic irony: when the guns finally fell silent and the city lights were finally turned on, when the victory parades eventually ended and national flags again snapped triumphantly in the breeze, and when the dancing ceased in the streets, the full magnitude of the Holocaust became evident.

  Sometimes in a hush, sometimes in a shout, to this day the millions of deaths have left a gaping, tormenting echo in history.

  The other fruit of 1944.

  THE WAR WAS WON and the peace was made, both singular achievements. But the larger, ambiguous humanitarian questions have haunted not just history or Roosevelt’s own legacy, but his successors as well. We can see them looming over the Prague spring and the Hungarian uprising, w
hen presidents hesitated to act. These same questions must be asked about the other successors to the Holocaust, the times when America shrugged its shoulders and stood idly on the sidelines: Pol Pot’s horrific genocide in Cambodia, to which the world turned a blind eye; the tragedy of Rwanda, among the fastest of killing sprees in the century; the blatant ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia; the rise of the brutal Taliban in pre-9/11 Afghanistan; the intermittent attention paid to Darfur in the Sudan; and internecine carnage in the Middle East. Why does a beheading, a famine, or wholesale slaughter in one nation draw our attention and intervention, while we avert our gaze from another nation? One has to wonder. How much can be traced to our ambivalence in World War II? Could it be that our halting, tentative measures then have left later presidents feeling conflicted and uncertain? It is one of history’s interminable conundrums.

  At the war’s end, a somber Edward Murrow, broadcasting from Buchenwald, said, “They spoke of the president just before he died.” As for Auschwitz? “Sometimes I am asked if I know the response to Auschwitz,” Elie Wiesel has written. “I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don’t even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response. What I do know is that . . . when we speak of this era of evil and darkness, so close and yet so distant, ‘responsibility’ is the key word.” Or as Abraham Lincoln himself once memorably said to Congress, “We must think anew, and act anew. . . . Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility.”

  Seventy years later, around the globe, we are still struggling to answer the question whispered through the Nazi camps: When will the Allies come? When will the Americans come?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  One night some years back in a New York hotel, I was invited to a little dinner with Martha Stewart, Mike Wallace, Frank McCourt, our hosts Wayne and Catherine Reynolds, and Elie Wiesel. It was a far-ranging, eclectic discussion. At one point I looked over to Elie, who remains the paragon of moral authority on the Holocaust, and asked if Franklin Roosevelt did the right thing with Auschwitz. He looked over to me with a sideways glance and exclaimed in a soft voice, “This is too important to discuss now.” He gave me much to think about as I constructed 1944.

  Another evening, a little group of historians gathered for a meal at the British ambassador’s in Washington to talk about World War II. The group included historian Andrew Roberts, Chris Buckley, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Beschloss, Rick Atkinson, and me. Once again, I came away with much to think about concerning the diplomatic and military side of World War II, which came into play also in writing 1944.

  As with my previous books, my first debt goes to the outstanding list of distinguished scholars and peerless historians, too extensive to name here, whose work has at once inspired and educated me. I also want to thank the staffs of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, which helped me enormously, particularly Matthew Hanson; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, particularly Kathy Struss; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, particularly Judith Cohen and Michael Abramowitz; the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.; and the U.S. Army Military History Institute.

  I have written about the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and his era; the founding period, George Washington, and his tumultuous era; and now I’ve turned my attention to World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, and his era. It is a rare privilege to have lived in the world of America’s three greatest presidents. Once more, my work is a narrative and my orientation is to weave together disparate pieces of scholarship in history in order to re-create events faithfully as they happened. Having dealt with the other presidential giants and the other towering epochs in American history has, I believe, provided me with considerable insights for World War II and presidential leadership. And I have immeasurably benefited from great scholars of these earlier time frames, people whom I enormously admire, like my good friend, Gordon Wood, and James McPherson.

  As in the past, I have been fortunate to be supported by a number of fellow authors and supporters of the humanities, who provided help and good cheer throughout the writing of this book. I want to thank my friends Chris Buckley, P. J. O’Rourke, Wayne and Catherine Reynolds, Mark Penn and Nancy Jacobson, and James Guerra. Also Howard Owens, formerly the president of National Geographic Channels, with whom I had such a wonderful collaboration; Evan Thomas; Ron Chernow; Max Boot; David Ignatius; Chris Wallace; Bret Baier; James Rosen; my fellow board members and colleagues at Ford’s Theatre, including Eric Spiegel, and Paul Tetreault; and the distinguished scholar Richard Breitman, who carefully read chapter 9 about Eduard Schulte (he literally wrote the book about him) and made countless helpful comments. Lyric Winik assisted with editing. Then there are some of the nation’s top policymakers with whom I’ve been fortunate to discuss this book, including the fateful decision over whether to bomb Auschwitz: President Bill Clinton; President George W. Bush, over a private lunch at the White House; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during a private dinner at the State Department; Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten; General Dave Petraeus, who gave me much to think about concerning the military side of things; former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen; and Judge Larry Silberman, who has a vast reservoir of knowledge about World War II as well as FDR, and who challenged and reminded me of more things than I care to mention. His wonderful wife, Tricia, made sure I was well fed.

  John Fahey of the National Geographic Society provided encouragement. Also: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, John Roberts, Stephen Breyer, Antonin Scalia, and Sam Alito. Rick Atkinson, an inspiration; as well as Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has set the standard. Former Congressman Steve Solarz, before he passed away, suggested an idea to me for a book—a variation of what I ended up writing about.

  Special thanks to Ed Grosvenor, publisher of the marvelous American Heritage magazine, who generously made some of the maps from the outstanding AH collection available to me.

  For further encouragement, Roy and Abby Blunt, Janet Cohen, Chuck Robb, Wayne and Lea Berman, and Meryl Chertoff. Also Rusty Powell; Ken Weinstein and Amy Kauffman; Carol Watson of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the former NEH chairmen, Jim Leach and Bruce Cole, and now especially William “Bro” Adams, the current NEH chairman; Marvin Krislov; John Gaddis; former British ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald, whose historian dinners at the embassy always challenged me; Sir Peter Westmacott; and former Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid and Tom Daschle along with Mitch McConnell and Rose Styron.

  With Steve Gillon and Anthony Giacchino at the History Channel, I participated in a marvelous documentary special about Pearl Harbor and FDR, which did much to stimulate my thinking.

  Throughout some ups and downs in the course of writing 1944, I was fortunate to have dear friends in my corner, Burnie Bond and Mark Werksman. Also Rick Kahlenberg, the wonderful Mari Will, Mark and Margot Bisnow, Victoria and Chris Knopes, Eleni Rossides, Clint Stinchcomb, Jim Denton, Alice Kelly, Adam Lovinger, Rick and Susie Leach, Nina Solarz, tennis pal David Cody, and Stewart Patrick. I need to give a special shout out to my brother and sister-in-law, Gary and Trish Winik. Also to Larry Goldstein. My faithful computer guru, Roy Hewitt, was always there, as was my other savvy computer guru, Ari Goldberg. Thomas Simpson helped with research as did Nicholas Cravatta. Rachel Dillan was fabulous in collecting original documents and other mounds of research for me.

  I owe special gratitude to Simon & Schuster, which brought the book to publication as only Simon & Schuster can. Thanks go to my incomparable publisher, Jonathan Karp, who is an old friend and the very best in the business. My first editor, Thomas LeBien, worked passionately with me to help shape the book and sharpen my ideas and concepts. Priscilla Painton, who took over from him, deftly and energetically shepherded the manuscript to publication, with help from her talented assistant, Sophia Jimenez. Richard Rhorer and Dana Trocker helped with marketing. Anne Tate Pearce was a valued
partner for publicity. I turned over my sources to Andrea Sachs, formerly the senior reporter for publishing for Time magazine, who checked to ensure the originality of my prose against the sources and helped in countless other ways, including key facts and fact checking. She was a joy to work with. As in the past, I was represented by my literary agent, Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management.

  And then there are family members. My mother, Lynn Abrams, lost a protracted battle with cancer during the writing of this book. She loved my writing and loved books. We spoke almost every day. I miss her terribly. I know this is a book that would speak to her. My stepfather, Steve Abrams, was always good about checking in on me, so we both could talk about my mother. My marvelous cousins Peter and Sylvia Winik were always there as well, above and beyond the call of duty.

  And most of all, there are my two precious boys, Nathaniel, thirteen, and BC, eleven, who are the greatest blessing in my life. When we are not talking tennis, which is often, we’re talking history. Both became intimately familiar with 1944. Both know about FDR, D-Day, and the Holocaust. BC is a talented military historian. His brother Nathaniel, an academic superstar, has already read all of his “daddy’s books.” He balances his love of history and biography (he can already debate the issues of World War II with his little brother) with a penchant for science fiction (history in the future). They are my two special treasures, and with as much love as I can muster, this book is dedicated to them.

 

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