by FDR
Inauguration day, Saturday, January 20, 1945, dawned bitterly cold, an inch of snow blanketing the capital. Because of the war Roosevelt dispensed with the traditional parade (“Who’s going to march?”), and shifted the scene from the Capitol steps to the south portico of the White House. Leaning once again on the arm of his son James, the president, hatless and coatless, made his way laboriously to the lectern, repeated the oath after Chief Justice Harlan Stone, and delivered a brief, five-hundred-word address before several thousand people assembled in the snow. This was the first time since Bremerton that Roosevelt had worn his leg braces and the last time he would deliver a speech standing. “We have learned that we cannot live alone at peace, that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other Nations far away. We have learned to be citizens of the world. We have learned, as Emerson said, ‘The only way to have a friend is to be one.’ ”130
Rosenman recalled the simple majesty of the scene.131 John Gunther called it something from Brueghel, “with sharply colored figures etched on the loose snow, the throng of tall men in dark clothes above, and the fluid, informal movement of the listeners.”132 Roosevelt was chilled to the bone and afterward felt the same kind of angina attack he had experienced at San Diego. He rested briefly in the Green Room with his son James before heading into the reception that had been laid on in the State Dining Room. “Jimmy, I can’t take this unless you give me a stiff drink. You’d better make it straight.” His son brought him half a tumbler of scotch, which Roosevelt downed virtually in one gulp, after which he went off to the reception.133 Dr. Bruenn, evidently unaware of the president’s seizure, reported that Roosevelt seemed in excellent spirits.134 The New York Times said, “the President appears in good shape to carry on his job” and noted that “he looks as well as he did several years ago.”135
Others who had not seen Roosevelt recently were shocked by his appearance. Gunther, who attended the ceremony with Orson Welles and Mark Van Doren, said he was terrified. “I felt certain he was going to die. All the light had gone out under the skin. It was like a parchment shade on a bulb that had been dimmed.”136 Mrs. Woodrow Wilson whispered to Frances Perkins, “He looks exactly as my husband did when he went into his decline.”137
Two days after the inauguration Roosevelt departed for Norfolk, Virginia, where he boarded the cruiser Quincy (sister ship of the Baltimore), bound for the Mediterranean island of Malta. There he rendezvoused with Churchill before proceeding seven hours by air to Yalta, a Soviet resort town on the Black Sea, where Stalin waited. The meeting of the Big Three was intended to review current military matters and reach agreement on the structure of the postwar world. Roosevelt’s primary concern was not to keep the Soviets out of Eastern Europe, where the presence of the Red Army was an accomplished fact, but to secure early Russian entry in the war against Japan. The atomic bomb had yet to be tested, and whether it would be available was problematic. If the Japanese home islands had to be invaded, the Joint Chiefs estimated the fighting would continue through 1946 and cost perhaps a million American casualties.138
The Crimea conference (ARGONAUT) convened in the Livadiya Palace, the vacation residence of the Romanovs, on February 4, 1945. Roosevelt was billeted in the czar’s bedroom suite; Marshall and King in the quarters of the czarina. Sergo Beria was on hand once more, this time armed with newly developed directional microphones that could pick up conversations two hundred yards away.139 Churchill thought Roosevelt looked frail and ill. Stalin told the Politburo, “Let’s hope nothing happens to him.” Lord Moran assumed that the president was suffering from an advanced case of arterial sclerosis. “I give him only six months to live.”140
On the other hand, the American delegation saw no problem. Edward R. Stettinius, who had succeeded Hull as secretary of state in December, thought Roosevelt had recovered significantly since the inauguration and appeared to be “cheerful, calm, and quite rested.”141 Leahy felt the president conducted the meetings with great skill. “His personality dominated the discussions. He looked fatigued when we left, but so did we all.”142 Charles Bohlen, again serving as FDR’s translator, saw no loss in the president’s acumen at Yalta: “While his physical state was not up to normal, his mental and psychological state was certainly not affected. Our leader was ill, but he was effective.”143 Harriman said Roosevelt carried on the negotiations “with his usual skill and perception.”144 Dr. Bruenn, who was best placed to observe, told Anna the president had a “serious ticker situation” but did not appear overly concerned.145 In his notes Bruenn recorded that throughout the conference, with one exception, Roosevelt’s blood pressure and electrocardiogram remained unchanged.* “His mood was excellent. His appetite was excellent, and he appeared to enjoy Russian food and cooking.”146
The Big Three met eight times in eight days, usually for three to four hours. As had become customary, FDR presided. Additional discussions took place over lunch and dinner. The conference began with a review of the military situation. On the eastern front, Red Army troops had taken Warsaw, enveloped Budapest, driven the Germans out of Yugoslavia, occupied East Prussia, and were poised on the Oder, fifty miles from Berlin. In the West, the Allies had recovered from the Battle of the Bulge, expelled Nazi forces from Belgium, cracked the Siegfried Line, and were closing on the Rhine. Slowly the war in Europe was winding down.
The conference reached quick agreement on the occupation of Germany. The country would not be dismembered (as had been suggested at Teheran), and France would be added as an occupying power. The divisive issue of reparations was papered over. It was agreed to take the figure of $20 billion as a basis of discussion, with the Russians entitled to 50 percent, but the matter was referred to a tripartite commission for final action. Arrangements for the trial of major war criminals was handed off to the three foreign ministers. In a major breakthrough, Stalin accepted FDR’s proposal for voting procedures on the United Nations Security Council.147 Each member of the Council would have one vote, but all major decisions would require the unanimous agreement of the permanent members. The Soviets also agreed to Roosevelt’s suggestion that a conference to organize the United Nations convene shortly in San Francisco.
The issue of postwar Poland proved the most contentious, although, as Harriman observed, “events were in the saddle.” The Red Army occupied the entire country and had already installed a pro-Soviet government in Warsaw. “It would have taken a great deal more leverage than Roosevelt and Churchill in fact possessed,” Harriman observed, “in order to alter the situation fundamentally.”148 Stalin wanted a Communist Poland for security reasons. “It was a matter of life and death.”149 Roosevelt wanted face-saving cover to protect his standing among Polish Americans. The result was the Declaration on Liberated Europe. It pledged free elections in liberated countries and governments that were “broadly representative of all democratic elements.”150 The formula was so elastic, Leahy complained to FDR, that “the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it.”
“I know, Bill—I know it,” Roosevelt replied. “But it’s the best I can do for Poland at this time.”151 And there is no doubt he was correct. When Yalta convened, the war had progressed to such a point that political decisions could do little more than ratify military reality.152
With the Polish issue in place, Roosevelt met privately with Stalin to arrange Russia’s entry into the war against Japan. Agreement came quickly. Stalin pledged to move against the Japanese within two or three months of Germany’s surrender. For his part, Roosevelt agreed to recognize the status quo in Soviet-controlled Outer Mongolia; return the southern portion of Sakhalin Island to the Soviet Union (Japan had acquired it in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War); also return the Kurile Islands (ceded to Japan in 1875); and lease Port Arthur to the Soviets as a naval base. Dairen would become a free port, and the Soviet lease on Manchurian railroads would be revived.153 Roosevelt made these commitments without consulting the Chinese, but his overriding concern wa
s to secure quick Soviet participation in the war against Japan, with which, incidentally, Russia had a nonaggression pact. FDR saw Stalin’s agreement as a major victory. “This makes the trip worthwhile,” Leahy was quoted as saying.154
The Americans and British left Yalta feeling they had done well. Stalin had wanted a firm commitment on German reparations and had not gotten it. The Soviets had wanted to exclude France from the control machinery in postwar Germany, but France had been included. They had wanted to exclude governments in exile from Eastern Europe, but the door had been left open. The framework for the United Nations was in place, and Russia had agreed to join the war against Japan. Even on Poland, which was overrun by the Red Army, the agreement on free elections represented a significant Soviet concession.155 Churchill wrote Clementine, “We have covered a great deal of ground and I am very pleased with the decisions we have gained.”156 Roosevelt advised Daisy Suckley that the conference “turned out better than he dared hope for.” Later he told Adolf Berle, “I didn’t say the result was good. I said it was the best I could do.”157
On March 1, 1945, Roosevelt made a dramatic appearance before a joint session of Congress. The House chamber was packed to overflowing as the president made his way down the aisle in his wheelchair, the simple Hyde Park kitchen chair with no arms that he had designed two decades earlier. This was the first time FDR had not walked to the well of the House on the arm of an aide or associate, and he was greeted with a thunderous ovation. “I hope you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation, but I know that you will realize that it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs.”158 Another prolonged ovation.
“It was the first reference he had ever made to his incapacity,” Frances Perkins recalled. “He did it with such a casual, debonair manner, without self-pity or strain that the episode lost any grim quality and left everybody quite comfortable.” Perkins thought Roosevelt had recovered substantially from his earlier exhaustion. “His face was gay, his eyes were bright, his skin was a good color again. His speech was good. His delivery and appearance were those of a man in good health.”159
The president relished the occasion. “It has been a long journey. I hope you will also agree that it has been a fruitful one. I returned from the trip refreshed and inspired. The Roosevelts are not, as you may suspect, averse to travel. [Howls of laughter.] We seem to thrive on it.” [Laughter and sustained applause.]
Roosevelt spoke for almost an hour. At times he rambled, but his message was clear:
The Crimea Conference was a successful effort by the three leading Nations to find a common ground for peace. It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances … the balances of power, and all other expedients that have been tried for centuries—and have always failed.
This time we are not making the mistake of waiting until the end of the war to set up the machinery of peace. This time, as we fight together to win the war finally, we work together to keep it from happening again.160
Roosevelt’s address to Congress was his last major public appearance. On Saint Patrick’s Day he and Eleanor celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary with a small formal dinner in the State Dining Room. The guests included Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, Justice and Mrs. Robert Jackson, and the Nelson Rockefellers. “Thus another milestone is passed in the career of an extraordinary man and wife,” reported White House aide William Hassett.161
Roosevelt had exerted himself to the utmost during the campaign, the trip to Yalta, and his address to the joint session. His health was spent. And he had resumed a taxing schedule. According to Dr. Bruenn, Roosevelt was again working too hard, seeing too many people, and working too late in the evenings. “His appetite had become poor, and although he had not been weighed, it appeared that he had lost more weight. He complained of not being able to taste his food.”162 On Saturday, March 24, the president and Eleanor left for several days’ rest at Hyde Park. ER noticed that for the first time Franklin did not wish to drive himself. He let her drive, and he let her mix the drinks before dinner, something that ordinarily would have been inconceivable.163
Roosevelt returned to Washington briefly on March 29, before leaving for Warm Springs that evening. Grace Tully, who saw FDR upon his arrival, was distressed at his appearance. “Did you get any rest at Hyde Park, Mr. President?” she asked.
“Yes child, but not nearly enough. I shall be glad to get down South.”164
Roosevelt’s last appointment in the White House was with General Lucius D. Clay, who had just been named to head the military government in Germany. Clay was then deputy director of war mobilization, and he was escorted into the Oval Office by James Byrnes. FDR reminisced about his boyhood in Germany and stressed the need for a giant power development in Central Europe, something along the line of the TVA. He never gave Clay a chance to get a word in. “Two or three times Steve Early tried to break it up,” Clay recalled, “but without success. Finally we left, and when we got out, Mr. Byrnes sort of teasingly said, ‘Lucius, you didn’t answer any questions. You didn’t say very much.’
“I said, ‘No, I didn’t. The President didn’t ask me any questions, but I am glad that he didn’t. Because I was so shocked watching him that I don’t think I could have made a sensible reply. We’ve been talking to a dying man.’ ”165
Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs in the early afternoon of March 30, 1945. Mike Reilly of the Secret Service found it difficult to transfer the president to his car—“he was absolutely dead weight”—but once seated behind the wheel FDR appeared to revive and drove from the station to the Little White House joking with his cousins Laura Delano and Daisy Suckley.166
“He is steadily losing weight,” William Hassett wrote in his diary. “Told me he has lost 25 pounds—no strength—no appetite—tires so easily.… The old zest was going.” That evening Hassett told Dr. Bruenn, “He is slipping away from us and no earthly power can keep him here.” Bruenn admitted the president was in a precarious condition but thought the situation was not hopeless. He told Hassett that Roosevelt could be saved “if measures were adopted to rescue him from certain mental strains and emotional influences.” Hassett did not believe Bruenn’s conditions could be met. “This confirmed my conviction that the Boss is leaving us.”167
The weather in Warm Springs was ideal, and Roosevelt seemed to recover. “Within a week,” Bruenn recorded, “there was a decided and obvious improvement in his appearance and sense of well-being. He had begun to eat with appetite, rested beautifully, and was in excellent spirits. He began to go out every afternoon for short motor trips, which he clearly enjoyed. The physical examination was unchanged except for the blood pressure, the level of which had become extremely wide, ranging from 170/88 to 240/130.”168
On one afternoon outing Roosevelt encountered Merriman Smith, the White House pool reporter from United Press, riding a horse he had hired at the village drugstore. “As I reined in the horse,” Smith remembered, the president “bowed majestically to me. His voice was wonderful and resonant. It sounded like the Roosevelt of old. In tones that must have been audible blocks away, FDR hailed me with ‘Heigh Ho, Silver!.’ ”169
On Monday, April 9, Lucy Rutherfurd arrived from Aiken, South Carolina, with her friend the society portraitist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, whom she had commissioned to paint a portrait of the president. Doris Kearns Goodwin reports that presidential phone logs reveal that in the days leading up to her visit, FDR called Lucy almost daily from Warm Springs.170 Dinner that evening was festive. Shoumatoff reported that the president was “full of jokes” and seemed constantly to address himself to Lucy in a wide-ranging conversation that moved from Churchill to Stalin to food.171
On April 11 Roosevelt worked on his Jefferson Day address for the Democratic faithful. He penned the peroration in his own hand:
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our
doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.172
That evening Henry Morgenthau came to dinner. He was shocked at the president’s appearance. “I found he had aged terrifically and looked very haggard. His hands shook so that he started to knock over the glasses. I had to hold each glass as he poured out the cocktail.… I found his memory bad and he was constantly confusing names. I have never seen him have so much difficulty transferring himself from his wheelchair to a regular chair, and I was in agony watching him.”173
The following day, Thursday, April 12, 1945, Roosevelt sat in the living room of the Little White House while Elizabeth Shoumatoff painted. She was struck how much better the president looked. The “gray look” had disappeared, and he had “exceptionally good color.” Later Shoumatoff learned from doctors that Roosevelt’s flushed appearance was a warning sign of an approaching cerebral hemorrhage.174
Shortly before one o’clock the butler came in to set the table for lunch. FDR glanced at his watch and said, “We have fifteen minutes more to work.” Then suddenly, he put his hand to his head in a quick jerky manner. “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head,” he said.175 Roosevelt slumped forward and collapsed. He never regained consciousness. At 3:35 P.M. Dr. Bruenn pronounced the president dead.
The world mourned. “I was overpowered by a sense of deep and irrefutable loss,” wrote Churchill.176 In Moscow, Averell Harriman drove to the Kremlin to inform Stalin. The Soviet leader was “deeply distressed” and held Harriman’s hand for perhaps thirty seconds before asking him to sit down. “President Roosevelt has died but his cause must live on,” he told Harriman and then agreed to send Molotov to represent the Soviet Union at the upcoming United Nations conference in San Francisco.177 Senator Robert Taft, long in opposition, captured the moment. “The President’s death,” he said, “removed the greatest figure of our time at the very climax of his career, and shocks the world to which his words and actions were more important than those of any other man. He dies a hero of the war, for he literally worked himself to death in the service of the American people.”178
