1944

by Jay Winik

  1. Adolf Hitler in 1936 triumphantly reviewing his honor guard in Berlin.

  2. Kristallnacht, on November 9–10, 1938, a chilling first sign that the Nazi regime would make attacking Jews a priority. Horrified residents watched a synagogue, one of many torched, go up in flames.

  3. With the seizure of territory in the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis began executing Jews en masse. Members of the SS look on as a Ukrainian Jew is executed in cold blood.

  4. It was at the Wannsee Villa in 1942 that the Nazis, in the greatest of secrecy, planned a systematic, industrialized means of mass murder: the Final Solution. After the plans were drawn up, the Germans retired to the library to sip sherry.

  5. The train tracks leading to the main entrance of Auschwitz.

  6. Heinrich Himmler, third from the left, with Rudolf Hoess next to him facing the camera, inspects the Monowitz-Buna complex by Auschwitz on July 17, 1942.

  7. Gerhart Riegner, after a clandestine meeting with Eduard Schulte, a highly placed German industrialist, wrote a fateful cable in August 1942 to alarm Roosevelt and the United States government about the impending slaughter of European Jews.

  8. From June 1940 onward, Breckinridge Long and the State Department put up roadblock after roadblock to keep Jews from being able to come to the United States, which amounted to a death sentence for them. At one point Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau dramatically confronted Long, telling him, “Frankly, Breck, the impression is that you are anti-Semitic.”

  9. A close ally of Roosevelt’s and one of the most prominent Jews in America, Rabbi Stephen Wise was “demented with grief” over the fate of the Jewry. He was a moving spirit behind efforts to prod the White House to do more. Here, pictured on the right, he is at a rally of 47,000 people to raise public awareness about the persecution of European Jews.

  10. Jan Karski, a member of the Polish underground, infiltrated one of the death camps and witnessed firsthand the Nazi atrocities against the Jews. In July 1943 he met with Roosevelt—a meeting that had great impact on the president’s thinking. Nonetheless, the Polish ambassador said that the president did not commit to any concrete action.

  11. Henry Morgenthau, only the second Jew in history to hold a cabinet post, was reluctant for years to raise Jewish issues with Roosevelt. But faced with the alarming facts about the Final Solution and the administration’s reluctance to get involved, he decided to risk his cherished friendship with the president. He hotly protested to FDR in January 1944 about the government’s “acquiescence in the murder of the Jews.”

  12. The War Refugee Board was hastily created in January 1944 by Franklin Roosevelt. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Morgenthau, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson gather here along with Executive Director John Pehle. The board would save at least 200,000 lives, prompting Morgenthau to lament “the terrible 18 months” of delay before the board was created.

  13. The gassing of the Hungarian Jews in the spring of 1944 was the worst single mass killing in the war, carried out with frightening speed. Here they undergo selection on the ramp to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Humanitarians, eventually joined by the War Refugee Board, frantically called on the White House to bomb the death camp.

  14. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish emissary sent to Hungary in June 1944 by the War Refugee Board, employed every method at his disposal to save Jews there. He even confronted one SS officer and threatened that he would “swing from the gallows” if he carried out the execution of a group of Jews. Wallenberg was an example of a humanitarian exerting creative methods on behalf of European Jews—the kind of creativity that had been missing from American policy.

  15. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the Tehran conference in Tehran, Iran, November 29, 1943. It was here that the Big Three agreed on a strategy for 1944—mainly that a second front in France would be opened up in the spring.

  16. Franklin Roosevelt with General Dwight Eisenhower and General George Patton in Sicily after the Tehran conference. In one of the most important decisions of the war, Roosevelt told Eisenhower simply, “Well, Ike, you are going to command Overlord.”

  17. The Allied military high command met to plan Operation Overlord in England in 1944. The meeting was intense and fraught with questions. When the weather kicked up on June 4, one of the generals remarked, “It’s a hell of a gamble.” Eisenhower later gave the order: “Okay, we’ll go.”

  18. Rallying the men, Eisenhower met with paratroopers of the 101st Airborne on June 5, 1944. He was blunt and to the point. “Go get ’em,” he bellowed.

  19. At 7:30 a.m. at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, American soldiers waded through the water from their Allied landing craft. Casualties were atrocious, German fire was unremitting, but the men kept pushing forward.

  20. Gliders brought a continuous stream of supplies to the Allied troops at Utah Beach.

  21. Allied troops continued to advance at Omaha Beach, and within a week more than 300,000 reinforcements had arrived in France. Nevertheless, Germany managed to hold out eleven more months.

  22. By the spring of 1944, the Allied mastery of the skies was nearly complete. A number of German cities lay in ruins, including Ludwigshafen, pictured here. It was then that the debate over bombing Auschwitz intensified.

  23. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy (on left) resisted all of the cries to bomb Auschwitz as well as military efforts to rescue an endangered Jewry, prompting Morgenthau to attack him as an “oppressor of the Jews.”

  24. Nothing could quite prepare the Americans for the ghastly sights they found when they liberated Ohrdruf and other Nazi concentration camps. Dwight Eisenhower and his generals view the charred bodies of prisoners at Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945. General Patton was so sickened that he vomited.

  25. Bodies of prisoners at Ohrdruf are stacked like cordwood.

  26. Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta conference, Livadia Palace, February 9, 1945, to discuss the postwar architecture of the world. Roosevelt acknowledged he felt “more bloodthirsty” than ever toward the Germans, but his focus was on the establishment of the United Nations. Visibly deteriorating, Roosevelt had only two months left to live.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © JAMES BOWDEN

  The author of the New York Times and #1 bestselling April 1865 and the New York Times bestseller The Great Upheaval, Jay Winik is renowned for his creative approaches to history. The Baltimore Sun called him “one of our nation’s leading public historians.” He is a popular public speaker and a frequent television and radio guest. He has been a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal book review section as well as to the New York Times. His many national media appearances include the Today show, Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and NPR, and he covered both of Obama’s historic inaugurations as a FOX News presidential historian. He is a former board member of the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a historical advisor to National Geographic Networks.

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  ALSO BY JAY WINIK

  April 1865: The Month That Saved America

  The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788–1800

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  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  INTERIOR

  p. iv: Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

  p. xiv: Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

  p. 13: Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library

  p. 77: Courtesy of American Heritage

  p. 79: Courtesy of American Heri
tage

  p. 207: Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  p. 250: Courtesy of American Heritage

  p. 336: Courtesy of American Heritage

  p. 356: Courtesy of American Heritage

  p. 431: Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  p. 493: Courtesy of American Heritage

  p. 501: Courtesy of American Heritage

  p. 505: Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  PHOTO INSERT

  1. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  2. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  3. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  4. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  5. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  6. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  7. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  8. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  9. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  10. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  11. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  12. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  13. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  14. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

  15. Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

  16. Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

  17. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  18. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  19. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  20. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  21. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  22. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  23. Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

  24. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  25. Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

  26. Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

  NOTES

  In my previous works, I was fortunate enough to live in the world of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, and then the world of George Washington and the founders in the 1790s, both extraordinarily rich, important, and fascinating periods, among the most important in modern world history. Now, I’ve cast my net on Franklin Roosevelt and World War II, a time no less important, no less fascinating, no less filled with giants and giant issues on the world stage. As in the past, my orientation and goal are to offer a comparative story that draws on a broad and often disparate set of history and scholarship, in this case, melding works about Roosevelt, World War II, and the Holocaust, as well as seeking to provide perspectives and biography from the German side. My first debt goes to the remarkable network of distinguished public historians and dedicated scholars who have inspired me and taught me. These gifted historians, on whose shoulders I’ve sought to stand, too numerous to name, have made this book possible. Other historians, whose distinguished works I’ve drawn heavily on, do warrant mention here: Elie Wiesel, James MacGregor Burns, Ian Kershaw, Martin Gilbert, William Shirer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bill Brands, Jon Meacham, Jean Edward Smith, Richard Breitman, David S. Wyman, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Rick Atkinson, Stephen Ambrose, Geoffrey C. Ward, Michael Beschloss, Michael Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum, Sam Rosenman, William Hassett, Kai Bird, Robert H. Abzug, and Douglas Brinkley. And of course I have also drawn on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library (FDRL).

  To avoid an unwieldy notes section, which could otherwise stretch for hundreds of pages, I have followed the widespread practice of using collective references rather than individual numbered citations. As there is a common “body” or “text” of literature, I have resisted the temptation to cite every single source I consulted or to offer a note for every quotation and point. Rather, I have listed works, primary and secondary, that interested readers may consult for further information or that provided useful background for me. From time to time, I’ve listed books, papers, diaries, newspapers, and journal articles that were influential in molding my interpretations and writing. Also from time to time, I have offered a brief discussion of sources, or an amplification of a salient point. Having said this, I should add that reading the original memos—often urgent or impassioned—of the participants, or sifting through newspapers or periodicals of the time, is an extraordinary experience and a treat for any scholar.

  Since public and private collections alike are now widely available online, for Internet sources, I frequently simply state where researchers and readers should go to find crucial information. Increasingly, the Internet is providing a gold mine for scholars, at their fingertips.

  One significant fact is that before I took up writing, my background was in government and international affairs, where I dealt with issues of war, diplomacy, leadership, and policy making; the nature of bureaucratic decision making; and—perhaps most important for this book, the stain of genocide, in my case the killing fields of Cambodia. Along the way I advised two secretaries of defense. As a result of this experience, I’ve been fortunate to develop instincts as well as what I believe are invaluable insights about the policy process and leaders, which I trust can do much to enhance our understanding of events. Ultimately, however, my vantage point is that of a historian seeking to re-create the crucial events as faithfully as I could, re-creating the world as the actors themselves saw it, of living in their heads and their hearts and listening to their disparate voices; and of measuring their fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams.

  Finally, there remains the question of what type of a story the pivotal year 1944 is. An exhilarating war story about the unvarnished triumph of democracy over a monstrous dictatorial system? To be sure. A story of an uncommon president who roused the American people and the western world to victory, an uncommon triumph in every sense of the word? Also to be sure. But then: is it also a bittersweet story? Is it a story of vanquishing Nazism, one of the worst regimes ever known to humankind, but also a story of missed opportunities, of countless innocent lives that could have been saved, of a statement for humanity that was never fully or adequately made?

  History, 1944 being no exception, is rarely tidy or simple. I leave this for the reader to judge.

  PRELUDE: THE SPHINX

  Stretching to the horizon . . . entire war: Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry (Sphere, 1968), 62–63; Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 (Holt, 2007). For Churchill/FDR Cairo meeting: Notes from FDR library, official log of the president’s trip, November 23; FDR pocket diary longhand notes; FDR letter to Grace Tully, in Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (Random House, 2004), 246–49. See also New York Times, Cairo dateline, December 5; James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom: 1940–1945 (Open Road Media, 2012), 404–16, especially 415–16. For background on Egypt, see Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life (Random House, 2010), 1–2, 76; see also the outstanding work by Desmond Stewart, The Pyramids and Sphinx (Newsweek, 1979).

  That same late-November sun . . . Churchill had in mind: See Stephen Ambrose, D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches (Pocket Books, 2002), 41. For discussion of the bombing of Berlin on November 22–23, 1943, see Donald Miller, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany (Simon & Schuster, 2007); A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities (Bloomsbury, 2006); Alan W. Cooper, Bombers over Berlin: The RAF Offensive November 1943–March 1944 (Pen and Sword, 2013); Robin Neillands, The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany (Barnes and Noble, 2005); Robert F. Dorr, Mission to Berlin: T
he American Airmen Who Struck at the Heart of Hitler’s Reich (Zenith, 2011). Here, the bombing of Berlin relies mainly on Martin Middlebrook, The Berlin Raids: R.A.F. Bomber Command Winter 1943–1944 (Viking, 1988), 104–23; and the superb work by Roger Moorhouse, Berlin at War (Basic Books, 2010), 307–35. For “sea of flames”: Moorhouse, 318. Urinated: the temperature often reached fifty below for the airmen. “Everywhere it is still burning” and “remnants of walls and debris”: Moorhouse, 321–22; for further details see Louis Lochner, ed, The Goebbels Diaries, 1942–1943 (Doubleday, 1948), 432–33. “Everywhere, . . . glass fragments”: Moorhouse, 309. For list of ruins, see eyewitness testimony, Moorhouse, 321. Shrunken to the size of small children: Moorhouse, 328. “You see nothing but remnants”: Moorhouse, 322. An American general boasted; Stephen Ambrose, The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany, 1944–1945 (Simon & Schuster, 2002), 108. The general was Hap Arnold. Regarding the bomber offensive, it is of note that the British were hoping it would crush the morale of the Germans, while the Americans’ strategy was to hit precise targets crucial to winning the war. For more see Jorg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany 1940–1945 (Columbia University Press, 2008), especially 350–51; see also the detailed work in Daniel Oakman, “The Battle of Berlin,” Wartime, Issue 25 (2004). Oakman quotes Goebbels as lamenting that “hell itself seems to have broken loose over us.” Yet German propaganda at the same time sternly referred to the bombing as the work of “Anglo-American terror plots.” For more, see Helga Schneider, The Bonfire of Berlin: A Lost Childhood in Wartime Germany (Random House, 2006), p. 65. This book powerfully captures the reality of wartime Berlin under siege. Schneider’s father was fighting on the Eastern front; her mother actually left Berlin to work as a guard in Auschwitz-Birkenau.