by FDR
“Hello, Doug,” said the president. “What are you doing with that leather jacket on? It’s darn hot today.”
“Well, I’ve just landed from Australia,” MacArthur replied. “It’s pretty cold up there.”94
Between strategy sessions Roosevelt toured the island’s installations, driving in an open car through the streets of Honolulu flanked by MacArthur and Nimitz, with Leahy riding shotgun beside the driver. Visiting a military hospital, Roosevelt asked a Secret Service man to wheel him slowly through the amputee wards occupied by patients who had lost one or both legs. The president stopped at one bed after another, chatting briefly. He wanted to show his useless legs to those who would face the same affliction.* “I never saw Roosevelt with tears in his eyes,” Rosenman recalled. “That day as he was wheeled out of the hospital he was close to them.”95
The strategy issue Roosevelt faced was simple enough. The Joint Chiefs— Admiral King, General Arnold, and to a lesser extent General Marshall—wanted to bypass the Philippines, land on Formosa, and take the fight quickly to the Japanese home islands. “Bypassing the Philippines is not synonymous with abandoning them,” Marshall reminded MacArthur at the beginning of July.96
MacArthur insisted that the Philippines be liberated first. It was as much a moral issue as a military one. Filipinos looked on the United States as their “mother country.” To leave them at the mercy of a Japanese army of occupation, said MacArthur, would be “a blot on American honor.”97
MacArthur made a masterly presentation, speaking as he customarily did without notes, and concluded with a strictly military analysis: Luzon was more important than Formosa because with it went control of the South China Sea. Japan’s lines of communication to its southern outposts would be cut; the Filipinos, unlike the Formosans, would provide powerful guerrilla support; and bypassing Luzon would expose American forces to crippling attacks from Japanese bombers stationed there. Nimitz, less eloquent, made King’s case for Formosa first, but, as Leahy perceived, he did not disagree with MacArthur. Pressed by Roosevelt, Nimitz said he could support either operation.98
FDR had assumed he was going to Hawaii to referee a knock-down, drag-out fight between the Army and the Navy. Instead, consensus arrived quickly. MacArthur and Nimitz agreed that the Philippines should be recovered with the forces available in the western Pacific and that, contrary to the view of the Joint Chiefs, Japan could be forced to surrender without invading the Japanese homeland. “It was highly pleasing and unusual to find two commanders who were not demanding reinforcements,” wrote Leahy.99
MacArthur had expected the worst but was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. The president, he said, had conducted himself as a “chairman” and had remained “entirely neutral,” while Nimitz displayed a “fine sense of fair play.”100* Leahy thought FDR was “at his best as he tactfully steered the discussion from one point to another and narrowed down the areas of disagreement between MacArthur and Nimitz.”101 The only discordant note was Roosevelt’s health. “He is just a shell of the man I knew,” MacArthur told his wife, Jean. “In six months he will be in his grave.”102
From Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt sailed to Alaska. On July 31, while under way, he received a cable from the White House that Missy LeHand had died of a cerebral embolism earlier that day. She had never recovered from her stroke three years earlier. Eleanor, along with James Farley and Joseph Kennedy, attended her Cambridge funeral, presided over by Bishop (later Cardinal) Richard Cushing. FDR issued a moving personal statement.103 Writing in The New York Times, Arthur Krock noted that Roosevelt had now lost two of his most trusted advisers, Louis Howe and Missy LeHand.104 Rosenman said, “She was one of the most important people of the Roosevelt era.… She was the frankest of the President’s associates, never hesitating to tell him unpleasant truths or to express an unfavorable opinion about his work or about any proposed action or policy. I feel that had she lived she could have so lightened his wartime burden that his own life would have been prolonged.”105
Roosevelt mourned silently, but Missy’s death took its toll. He spoke informally to the troops at Adak, Alaska, on August 3, and then suffered an attack of angina a week later while delivering a speech to Navy Yard workers at Bremerton, Washington. FDR had been out of the country twenty-nine days and had traveled 10,000 miles by ship, a voyage that in past years would have restored him. But the Bremerton speech sent shock waves through the country. Roosevelt had intended the speech to be an informal report to the American people on his travels together with some reassurances on the progress of the war in the Pacific. He had written it two days before delivery and had not bothered to polish it—a surprising lapse since the speech was to be broadcast nationally and would be his first opportunity to address the country since the Democratic convention. He spoke from the fantail of a destroyer, facing a brisk wind, standing on braces he had not worn in almost a year. The heavy rocking of the ship forced him to hold on to the lectern with both hands, making it difficult to turn the pages. All of this affected Roosevelt’s delivery, which was rambling, halting, and indecisive.106
Ten minutes into the speech, the president experienced excruciating chest pains that extended to both shoulders. Despite the pain he gamely persevered with the speech, sweating profusely for the next fifteen minutes, until the discomfort subsided. When he finished speaking, he returned to the destroyer captain’s cabin and collapsed into a chair. Dr. Bruenn cleared everyone out, administered an electrocardiogram, and took a white blood count, but found no abnormalities.107
Rosenman, listening to Roosevelt’s speech over the radio, thought it was “a dismal failure.” That, together with the president’s gaunt appearance—he had lost nineteen pounds—caused many to write Roosevelt off. “It looks like the old master has lost his touch,” The Washington Post concluded. “His campaigning days must be over. It’s going to look mighty sad when he begins to trade punches with young Dewey.”108
Roosevelt arrived back in Washington on August 15 and less than a month later left for Quebec, where he would meet again with Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff (OCTAGON). Because postwar monetary issues were on the agenda, the president was accompanied by Secretary Morgenthau, and it was at Quebec that he and Churchill endorsed the Morgenthau Plan for the pastoralization of Germany. Churchill was initially aghast. “I am all for disarming Germany, but we ought not prevent her living decently. There are bonds between the working classes of all countries, and the English people will not stand for the policy you are advocating.… You cannot indict a whole nation.”109 But when Morgenthau agreed to write off Britain’s Lend-Lease debt and proposed a $3 billion postwar loan for the British economy, Churchill relented. “When I have to choose between my people and the German people, I am going to choose my people,” he told an incredulous Eden.110
The Morgenthau Plan had a short shelf life. Back in Washington the responsible cabinet officers heaped scorn on the proposal. “I have yet to meet a man who is not horrified at the ‘Carthaginian’ attitude of the Treasury,” said Stimson. “It is Semitism gone wild for vengeance and will lay the seeds for another war in the next generation.” In Stimson’s view, the industrial capacity of the Ruhr and the Saar were essential for the recovery of Europe.111 Hull told Roosevelt it would lead to last-ditch, bitter-end German resistance that would cost thousands of American lives.112 When the Republicans appeared ready to make the Morgenthau Plan a campaign issue, FDR backed off. “Henry Morgenthau pulled a boner,” he told Stimson on October 3. The president said he was frankly staggered by the plan to convert Germany into an agricultural and pastoral country and “had no idea how he could have initialed this.”113
That Roosevelt did not remember may have been his way of dissociating from an unpopular position. It may also have been a sign of his flagging health. Churchill sought out Admiral McIntire at Quebec to inquire about FDR’s wan appearance. McIntire assured him that the president was fine. “With all my heart I hope so,” Churchill replied. “We cannot have anyth
ing happen to that man.”114 Lord Moran, for his part, wondered how far Roosevelt’s health impaired his judgment. “You could have put your fist between his neck and his collar—and I said to myself then that men at his time of life do not go thin all of a sudden just for nothing.”115
Harry Truman, who called at the White House for a symbolic picture-taking session with the president, shared Moran’s worry. “You know, I am concerned about the president’s health,” he told his legislative assistant, Major Harry H. Vaughan. “I had no idea he was in such a feeble condition. In pouring cream in his tea, he got more cream in the saucer than he did in the cup. There doesn’t seem to be any mental lapse, but physically he’s just going to pieces. I’m very much concerned about him.”116
Like an old fire horse responding to the station’s alarm bell, Roosevelt rallied for the campaign. This was America’s first wartime election since 1864, and, like Lincoln, FDR made the most of his role as commander in chief. While Dewey toured the country, racking up short-term gains with attacks on the “tired old men” who were running the government and outrageous charges of Communist influence (FDR had pardoned Earl Browder, leader of the American Communist Party), the president held his fire until September 23, when he kicked off the Democratic campaign with a speech to the Teamsters Union at the Statler Hotel in Washington, D.C. This would be FDR’s first speech to the nation since the debacle at Bremerton, and the party leadership worried about the outcome. “Do you think Pa will put it over?” Anna whispered to Sam Rosenman. “It’s the kind of speech which depends almost entirely on delivery. If the delivery isn’t just right, it’ll be an awful flop.”117
Roosevelt not only rose to the occasion but gave what many believe to be the greatest speech of his political career. Mindful of his problems at Bremerton, the president delivered the speech seated and honed the text through dozens of drafts. He began with a humorous reference to his age: “Well, here we are together again—after four years—and what years they have been. You know, I am actually four years older, which is a fact that seems to annoy some people.” The audience loved it. As they warmed to the president, Roosevelt proceeded with a voice that purred softly and then struck hard, taunting his opponents for their reactionary record and ridiculing Republicans for their quadrennial efforts to pose as friends of labor and the working class. “The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the depression.… If I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience, the last word in the whole dictionary that I would use is that word ‘depression.’ ”118
Waves of thunderous applause cascaded through the Statler’s giant ballroom. The outpouring of affection from the audience startled even those who had seen Roosevelt on the campaign trail in many past elections. “The Old Master still had it,” a reporter from Time observed. “He was like a veteran virtuoso playing a piece he has loved for years, who fingers his way through it with a delicate fire, a perfection of timing and tone, and an assurance that no young player, no matter how gifted, can equal.”119
The climax came when Roosevelt delivered his facetious rebuttal to Republican charges about Fala. “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or my sons. No, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them.” The audience howled its delight, and Roosevelt continued with deadpan seriousness:
You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on an Aleutian Island and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself … but I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.120
The Dewey campaign suffered a body blow from which it never recovered. “The campaign of 1944 was the easiest in which I ever participated,” wrote Harry Truman afterward. “The Republican candidates never had a chance.”121 Thomas E. Dewey, a humorless, self-important young prosecutor propelled by his own ambition—the groom on the wedding cake, in Alice Longworth’s dismissive phrase—was an easy man for Democrats to despise and for Roosevelt to hate. The only remaining hurdle to victory in November was the question of the president’s health, and FDR chose to address it head-on. On Saturday, October 21, he undertook a grinding tour of New York City’s four largest boroughs—Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan—riding in an open White House limousine. Roosevelt wanted to make a point, and the weather could not have been more opportune. It was forty degrees and raining heavily when he started out at Brooklyn Army Terminal, pouring when he addressed 10,000 spectators at Ebbets Field on behalf of Senator Robert Wagner, and coming down in bucketsful by the time he reached Times Square. Roosevelt was soaked almost as soon as he got under way, often riding bareheaded and without his cape, waving and flashing his famous smile for four hours as the procession wound its way fifty-one miles through the city. In 1944, 7 percent of American voters lived in New York City, and Roosevelt was seen by an estimated 3 million persons. Two and a half inches of rain fell on New York that day, the tail end of a hurricane lingering off the Atlantic coast, and Roosevelt’s bravura performance temporarily stilled speculation that his health was not up to the demands of another four years in the White House.
That evening, after resting at ER’s Washington Square apartment (his first visit there), Roosevelt gave a powerful internationalist address to the two thousand members of the Foreign Policy Association at the Waldorf-Astoria. “Peace, like war,” said the president, “can succeed only when there is a will to enforce it, and where there is available power to enforce it. The Council of the United Nations must have the power to act quickly and decisively to keep the peace by force if necessary.”122
In late October MacArthur landed in the Philippines; the Navy sent most of what remained of the Japanese fleet to the bottom of the Pacific in the Battle of Leyte Gulf (four carriers, three battleships, ten cruisers, and nine destroyers); and the campaign turned into a rerun of 1864 after Sherman captured Atlanta. Roosevelt repeated his New York appearance in Philadelphia on October 27, riding another four hours in an open car despite intermittent rain and near-freezing temperatures. In Chicago he spoke to the largest crowd in the city’s history, 125,000 persons shoehorned into Soldier Field plus another 150,000 outside, and closed out the campaign with a swing through New England and a final address to a packed house at Fenway Park, where Frank Sinatra sang the national anthem. “Religious intolerance, social intolerance, and political intolerance have no place in American life,” said Roosevelt in Boston.
I reminded a genealogical society—I think they are called ‘ancestor worshippers’*—I said to them that they knew that all our people—except the pure-blooded Indians—are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.… It is our duty to make sure that, big as our country is, there is no room in it for racial or religious intolerance—and that there is no room for snobbery.123
When the campaign ended, Dr. Bruenn examined the president and was pleasantly surprised. Roosevelt, he said, “really enjoyed the ‘hustings’ and his B[lood] P[ressure] levels, if anything, were lower than before. He is eating somewhat better, and despite prolonged periods of exposure, he has not contracted any upper respiratory infections. The patient appears to be well stabilized on his digitalis regime.”124
As was his habit, FDR awaited the returns on election night in the dining room at Hyde Park—AP and UP news tickers in the corner and the radio on. He tabulated the results on long tally sheets, placing a call to Democratic National Headquarters at the Biltmore from time to time, and by 10 P.M. the trend was clear. The pr
esident put down his pencil and turned to Admiral Leahy. “It’s all over, Bill. What’s the use of putting down the figures.”125 Roosevelt defeated Dewey 25.6 million to 22 million and carried thirty-six states with 432 electoral votes. Dewey took twelve states with 99 electoral votes. He carried Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Ohio, which Willkie had not, but lost Michigan, which returned to the Democratic column. In the House, the Democrats gained 24 seats, giving them a comfortable 242–190 majority, and lost 2 in the Senate, where they retained control 56–38. The icing on the cake for Roosevelt was the defeat of his neighbor and bitter political opponent Hamilton Fish in New York’s Twenty-ninth Congressional District, and the isolationist Senator Gerald P. Nye in North Dakota.126
Roosevelt’s health took a decided downturn after the election. His appetite was poor, and he lost more weight. Dr. Bruenn reported that his blood pressure climbed to 260/150, although an electrocardiogram showed no change and there was no evidence of digitalis toxicity.127 After a two-hour cabinet meeting on January 19, Frances Perkins noted the president’s fatigue and thought he had the pallor of a man who had long been ill. “He looked like an invalid who had been allowed to see guests for the first time and the guests had stayed too long.”128
Though his health was obviously failing, Roosevelt’s spirit appeared undaunted. He resumed his twice-weekly press conferences in the Oval Office, and his bantering with newsmen continued unabated. Asked by Tom Reynolds of the Chicago Sun to reflect on his presidential years, FDR replied, “The first twelve were the hardest.” That moved May Craig to inquire whether “the word first” had any significance.129
