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Hitler | Stalin | Roosevelt | Churchill

The warlords: Franklin Roosevelt

On 12 April 1945, at Warm Springs, Georgia, not quite a month before Germany surrendered to the Allies, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was having his portrait painted. Suddenly he announced, 'I have a terrific pain in the back of my head,' then was unable to breathe and died from a cerebral haemorrhage at 3.35pm.

His passing devastated the American public – he had been president for almost as long as anyone could remember – and came at a delicate turning point in the 20th century, as the war in Europe was ending and the Cold War was about to begin. Roosevelt's actions – and refusal to act –  shortly before his death were to have a huge impact on the future of world history.

Youth and Eleanor

Born in 1882 into an old (by American standards) and wealthy family, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was educated by tutors at home at Hyde Park, New York, before going to boarding school and then to Harvard University and Columbia University Law School.

In 1905, while attending the latter (and against his mother's wishes), he married shy, retiring Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin who was the niece of another distant cousin, US president Theodore Roosevelt, who came to the wedding. Together Franklin and Eleanor were to have one daughter and four sons (another son died in infancy).

Entering politics

FDR was admitted to the New York state bar in 1907. Three years later, his political career began when he was elected as a Democrat to the state senate. Frances Perkins, whom Roosevelt would later appoint secretary of labour in his presidential Cabinet, rather waspishly described him at this time:

Tall and slender, very active and alert … with an unfortunate habit … of throwing his head up. This, combined with his pince-nez and great height, gave him the appearance of looking down his nose at most people.

Roosevelt was re-elected in 1912, despite typhoid fever preventing him from campaigning. By now he had placed his political future in the hands of journalist Louis McHenry Howe. The state senator was soon virtually inseparable from the wizened little man, who would guide his career well into the 1930s.

Working for Wilson

In the presidential election of 1912, Roosevelt campaigned vigorously for Woodrow Wilson (who called him 'the handsomest young giant I have ever seen'), so allying himself firmly with reform elements in the party. After Wilson's victory, he served as assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920, acquiring a reputation as an able administrator.

However, the president came to distrust him because of his openly expressed view that the US should have intervened earlier in World War I. In 1919, Roosevelt attended the Paris Peace Conference, but came away extremely critical of the subsequent Versailles treaty, which seemed to him to have made the world safe for existing empires rather than for democracy.

In 1920, he ran for vice president with presidential candidate James M Cox, but they lost overwhelmingly to the Republican anti-war ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, who pledged a return to 'normalcy'. Despite this, Roosevelt learned a lot from the relentless politicking, not least to absorb useful information and develop a memory for names and faces.

Love affairs

In the winter of 1913, finding society's expectations of a wife of an assistant secretary of the Navy difficult to live up to, Eleanor hired part-time social secretary Lucy Mercer. Shortly after she joined the Roosevelt household in the Georgetown area of Washington DC, Lucy and FDR became lovers, but it wasn't until 1918 that Eleanor found out about the affair, by discovering love letters from Lucy in Roosevelt's suitcase.

Confronting him, Eleanor offered to divorce him, but her mother-in-law Sara, who was providing much of the couple's income, would have none of it. Instead it was agreed that the Roosevelts' marriage would be in name only – there would be no more sexual relations – and that Sara would provide Eleanor with a separate home at Hyde Park.

For his part, FDR agreed to stop seeing Lucy, but while he may have stopped having sex with her (and in 1920 she married a wealthy investment banker), he certainly didn't stop seeing her – in fact, their relationship lasted until the end of his life. He would also not be faithful to Lucy – his name would be linked with those of his cousin Daisy Suckley (who was also with him on the day he died), Princess Martha of Norway and two of his secretaries.

Polio and disability

In the summer of 1921, while on holiday at the family's 32-room 'cottage' on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada, Roosevelt was struck down by polio, which paralysed his legs. He retreated to the mineral spa at Warm Springs, Georgia (where his cottage would later become known as the 'Little White House').

His mother Sara, always a huge influence in his life, demanded that he return to the family home at Hyde Park and give up public life. But Eleanor – with the invaluable help of Louis Howe (whom she would later describe as 'one of the seven most important people' in her life) – successfully helped FDR regain his spirits and his ambition.

As a result, he played an active role in Al Smith's unsuccessful bid to become the Democrats' candidate for president, dramatically appearing on crutches to nominate him at the Democratic convention in 1924.

Governor of New York

In 1928, Roosevelt again campaigned for Smith within the Democratic party, and this time he got the nomination. Smith also persuaded Roosevelt to run for governor of New York state, and he was elected by a narrow margin (25,000 out of 4.5 million votes cast) despite the defeat of the Democratic ticket nationally.

A year later, the Wall Street Crash plunged the US into the worst depression in its history. Roosevelt came up with a programme of state action including farm relief, a state power authority, public utility regulation and old-age pensions. He was re-elected governor in 1930 with a vastly increased majority: 725,000 votes. To deal with the growing problems of the Depression, he surrounded himself with various experts and a small band of intellectuals – later (and sometimes disparagingly) called the 'Brain Trust' – many of whom held radical views.

In July 1932, Roosevelt became the Democratic party's presidential candidate to run against the Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover. Four months later, he was elected overwhelmingly, winning all but six of the 48 states. On 13 February 1933 at Miami, Florida, shortly before he took office, Roosevelt was shot at by disgruntled Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara. All the bullets missed the president-elect, but four bystanders were hit and one bullet killed Roosevelt's friend Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago. Zangara was executed a month later.

New president, New Deal

The 51-year-old Roosevelt came to power at the height of the American economic crisis, when at least 13 million people – about 30% of the workforce – were unemployed and almost every bank was closed. His inaugural address in March 1933 was designed to reassure the country – 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself' – and to prepare it for economic reform.

During its first 100 days, the administration rushed through a flood of anti-depression measures. Finance and banking were regulated by new laws, the US went off the gold standard and a number of government agencies – including the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration – were set up to reorganise and control industry and agriculture and revive the economy by vast injections of public funds.

The rapid build-up of all these programmes – known collectively as the 'New Deal' – and Roosevelt's forceful personality helped the administration avoid early opposition. The president explained the issues and policies to the American people via reassuring 'fireside chats', broadcast to the nation over the radio.

Opposition

In 1936, even though Roosevelt was re-elected by 60% of the popular vote, the impetus of reform began to slow. The conservative opposition was becoming increasingly bitter towards 'that man in the White House', whom they considered a 'traitor to his class' and even a Communist, and quarrels among his supporters had a divisive effect.

Then the Supreme Court – headed by Charles Hughes, a former Republican Party presidential candidate – declared unconstitutional a number of the New Deal programmes, most notably the NRA. Although Roosevelt threatened to pass legislation allowing him to add Democratic justices to the court, he eventually backed down amid much criticism. However, from then on, it was recognised that the federal government could legally regulate the economy.

Most damaging to the president's reputation was the 'Roosevelt recession', which began in the autumn of 1937 with another, though less extreme, stock market crash. This continued until large-scale government spending began a year later, to supply the munitions and ships that Britain and the other Allies needed. Despite its relatively short duration, this recession proved to the American public that Roosevelt didn't have a magic formula for prosperity.

Foreign policy

Apart from officially recognising the Soviet Union in 1933, the main focus of Roosevelt's foreign policy was initially the cultivation of 'hemisphere solidarity' through his 'Good Neighbor Policy' towards Latin America. This transformed the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into reciprocal trade arrangements and arrangements for mutual action against aggressors.

But the spectre of conflict in Europe was never far away. In August 1936, Roosevelt pledged: 'I shall pass unnumbered hours thinking and planning how war may be kept from this nation.' By 1938, however, the threat of war with Germany was coming ever closer, and Roosevelt spoke out against aggression and international greed.

'Arsenal of democracy'

After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Roosevelt speeded up his plans to build US strength and make it an 'arsenal of democracy' (while at the same time creating much needed jobs). He brought in two key Republicans to be his secretaries of war and the navy, so forming a kind of coalition government.

In September 1940, after the fall of France and while Britain was being blitzed by the Germans, Roosevelt secured the passage of the Selective Training and Service Act, bringing in the country's first conscription in peacetime. He also finally transferred 50 World War I destroyers to Britain, in return for eight naval bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland – a decision that was delayed by the fall of France and Roosevelt's fears that Britain would go the same way.

In the presidential election of 1940, both of the major parties supported the national defence programme and aid to Britain but opposed entry of the US into the war. Roosevelt, running for an unprecedented third term, won over the Republican candidate Wendell Wilkie by a closer margin than in 1936 – just under 5 million votes separated them. Accusations that Roosevelt was too powerful were becoming increasingly common.

Lend–Lease and the Atlantic Charter

Roosevelt's third administration is primarily the story of World War II as it affected the United States. The Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, passed despite bitter opposition of isolationists in Congress, backed by their national organisation, the America First Committee, authorised the president to transfer 'military equipment' (which included food and clothing) to 'victims of aggression'. When Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941, the programme was extended to the Soviets. (Lend-Lease eventually cost a total of $48 billion, virtually all of which was paid back by the recipients – except the Soviets – by the late 1960s.)

In August 1941, Roosevelt met Winston Churchill at sea, off the coast of Newfoundland, and drafted the Atlantic Charter, which comprised the soon-to-be Allies' peace aims. The two men's relationship has often been depicted (not least by Churchill himself) as a golden age of collaboration: a far-sighted US president who is seduced by the bravery and eloquence of a beleaguered British prime minister and rides to his rescue. But this rosy picture is largely myth.

Roosevelt and Churchill

Roosevelt had first met Churchill in 1918, when he was assistant secretary of the Navy and the Briton had been first lord of the Admiralty. Roosevelt later remarked that Churchill had been 'a stinker – lording it all over us'. In May 1940, Roosevelt announced to his Cabinet that Neville Chamberlain had resigned as British prime minister and had been replaced by Churchill. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes wrote in his diary: 'The president said that he supposed that Churchill was the best man that England had, even if he was drunk half of his time.'

While Roosevelt eventually became a firm supporter of the British during the war, his vacillations and refusals to be pinned down gave Churchill many sleepless nights. Eleanor Roosevelt would warn him: 'When Franklin says, “Yes, yes, yes,” it doesn't mean he's agreeing– it means he's listening.'

Whatever Roosevelt's own desires were towards helping Britain against Germany, he was faced with an American public still reluctant to get involved in another world war, given their disillusion with the previous one. Indeed, a not insignificant proportion of the population was inclined to support Germany over the British. And Roosevelt's narrow win over Wilkie in the 1940 election meant that he could not claim to have a mandate from the American people for intervention in the war.

'Sheer exasperation'

After the passing of the Lend-Lease Act, Roosevelt, in the view of several of his most senior Cabinet members, began retreating on his commitment to support the British. In a diary entry for 21 April 1941, US Secretary for War Henry Stimson wrote: 'I found everybody rather discouraged by the war news and by the fact that the president doesn't seem to be keeping his leadership in regard to the matter. I cautioned him on the necessity of his taking the lead.'

Roosevelt made one move: he allowed the US Navy and Air Force to patrol further into the western Atlantic. But this gave only a little extra protection to the shipping lanes between Britain and the US, and was hardly of any use against a Hitler who now controlled most of Europe. As a result, a flurry of telegrams passed between Roosevelt and Churchill.

All Roosevelt seemed to care about was keeping Britain supplied simply in order to keep Hitler away from the US. According to US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau, Roosevelt's closest associate Harry Hopkins believed that 'the president is loath to get us into this war and he would rather follow public opinion than lead it.'

Roosevelt himself wasn't enjoying any of this: for much of May 1941 he stayed in bed, suffering from a mild cold but nothing else. When asked what was wrong, his personal secretary (and probable lover) Missy LeHand said: 'What he's suffering from most of all is a case of sheer exasperation.'

Fighting for America

On 22 June, when the Nazis invaded the USSR and brought the Soviets into the war on the side of the Allies, Churchill was sure that this striking demonstration of Hitler's global ambitions would encourage the US to enter the conflict. However, Roosevelt drew a different, more subtle conclusion. He quickly calculated that the Soviet Union's forced entry into the war could help the US stay out. The USSR could also be financed to fight Germany in America's stead.

He demanded of his Cabinet that all aid possible be sent to Stalin. Stimson wrote: 'We must get the Russians the arms, even if it was necessary to take them from our troops. And I felt very badly about it. He was really in a hoity-toity humour and wouldn't listen to argument.' What Stimson failed to realise was that Roosevelt did not care about taking arms from US troops: he had no wish or intention that they should fight. That was for British and Soviet soldiers to do, with weapons supplied by the Americans.

However, when German U-boats sank two American destroyers in the Atlantic, Roosevelt finally allowed US warships to escort merchant shipping to Britain, saying: 'When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.' But he did nothing further, even when the USS Reuben James was sunk and over 100 crew members lost.

Roosevelt was defending the US and opposing Hitler, his two core aims, at almost no cost to American lives. And at the same time, he ignited a massive increase in arms production that finally brought the US out of economic depression for good.

Pearl Harbor

Although the US had not recognised Japan's conquest of Manchuria and decried its aggression against China, negotiations with the Japanese went on even after war broke out in Europe. But while the US was becoming more aligned with Britain, its relations with Japan were growing steadily worse.

On 7 December 1941, the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the US into the war. Much later, Roosevelt was accused of negligence over Pearl Harbor and even of knowing that the attack was imminent but allowing it to happen so that the US could be brought into the conflict. Historians disagree as to the validity of these charges. In the event, the US Congress declared war on Japan, and when Germany and Italy came to the assistance of their Japanese ally by declaring war on the US, Roosevelt and Congress reciprocated by declaring war on them.

The Republican isolationist congressman Hamilton Fish later stated: 'Roosevelt took us into a war without telling the people anything about it. He served an ultimatum which we knew nothing about. We were forced into the war. It was the biggest cover-up ever perpetrated in the United States of America.'

Liberated relationships

Roosevelt's responsibilities were now vastly increased. He had to negotiate with Churchill and Stalin about basic military strategy and how goods should be allocated between the various theatres of war and each of the Allies. He had to increase US defence production without creating inflation, and oversee the build-up of a huge army and navy – by 1945, more than 15 million people would have served in the US armed forces. Finally, he had to explain the course of the war to the Americans, to maintain their support.

Events had liberated the relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, and the latter visited the former as often as he could. During one visit in January 1942, the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax, observed in his diary:

Winston has … got on to the most intimate terms with the president, who visits him in his bedroom at any hour, and as Winston says, is the only head of state whom he, Winston, has ever received in the nude.

At the end of his visit, Roosevelt told Churchill: 'It's fun to be in the same decade with you.'

But beneath the smiles, those close to Roosevelt, such as his labour secretary Frances Perkins, noticed a new steel in his soul:

He was a changed, more potent and dedicated personality. He was different. The terrible shock of Pearl Harbor, the destruction of his precious ships, the unknown hazards which war might bring to the people, acted like a spiritual purge and left him cleaner, simpler, more single-minded.

Different objectives

Roosevelt was fighting his own war, not Churchill's, and the two men had very different long-term objectives. Beyond the defeat of Hitler, Churchill wanted above all to preserve the British empire, which was anathema to Roosevelt. And it was over empire that they had their first real argument.

In spring 1942, Churchill had allowed negotiations to go ahead with Indian nationalists, mainly to ensure India's loyalty in the war. When the talks broke down, Roosevelt blamed Churchill. The US president cabled London:

The feeling is almost universally held here that the deadlock has been caused by the unwillingness of the British government to concede to the Indians the right of self-government. I feel I must place this issue before you very frankly, and I know you will understand my reasons for so doing.

Churchill was enraged by what he saw as Roosevelt's meddling, and he drafted a furious reply, which in the end he didn't send.

A new threat?

The empire was not the only gulf between them. Britain had gone to war for the freedom of Europe, specifically the independence of Poland, but as 1942 wore on, Churchill was beginning to see a new threat to Europe: the man who had become the third ally in the fight against Hitler, Joseph Stalin.

Roosevelt saw it very differently. As far as he was concerned, the war had been caused by the in-fighting between Europe's ancient imperialist nations, and he began to see in Stalin someone who could help him rid the world of that imperialism. He also instinctively understood that he and Stalin would emerge as the leaders of the two powers on whom long-term peace would depend. In spring 1942, he wrote to Churchill: 'Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so.'

After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin had been clasped to the Allies' collective bosom. However, the Communist leader was suspicious, believing (to some extent, quite rightly) that both Roosevelt and Churchill simply wanted Germany and the USSR to fight to the death.

Betraying the Baltic states

As a test of their sincerity, Stalin demanded control of the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia after the war – something that went directly against the Atlantic Charter. However, this didn't seem to bother Churchill or Roosevelt unduly. On 7 March 1942, Churchill wrote to Roosevelt:

The increasing gravity of the war has led me to feel that the principles of the Atlantic Charter ought not to be construed so as to deny Russia the frontiers she occupied when Germany attacked her.

Roosevelt showed himself just as willing as Churchill to sacrifice the Baltic states, though he preferred to do it less openly. According to the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax:

FDR's mind is already moving along the only remaining line – i.e. of saying to Stalin that we all recognise his need for security, that to put anything on paper now is impossible, that future of Baltic states clearly depends upon Russian military progress, and that if neither United States nor Great Britain would or could turn them out. Why then should Stalin worry?

Meetings and lies

In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Casablanca in Morocco, to make further plans and to confer with Free French leaders. While there, Roosevelt announced the Allies' insistence on the unconditional surrender of their enemies.

But the question of Stalin's demands still occupied him. In his memoirs, Anthony Eden, then British foreign secretary, wrote:

The big question which rightly dominated Roosevelt's mind [in March 1943] was whether it was possible to work with Russia now and after the war. He wanted to know what I thought of the view that Stalin's aim was to overrun and communize the Continent.

Roosevelt decided that it was time for him and Stalin to meet – alone. He sent an envoy to Moscow proposing such a get-together. He kept this from Churchill for six weeks, until the latter got wind of it and, hurt and upset, cabled Roosevelt: 'I do not underrate the use that enemy propaganda would make of a meeting between the heads of Soviet Russia and the United States at this juncture with the British Commonwealth and Empire excluded.'

Roosevelt responded with a lie, saying that it had only been Stalin's assumption that they would meet alone. In the event, the meeting never took place, the Soviet premier using the pressures of war as his excuse to avoid it.

Respect and rudeness in Tehran

In November 1943, Roosevelt met with Churchill and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek at Cairo, where plans for the war against Japan were worked out. Roosevelt excessively favoured the Chinese Nationalist, refusing to recognise that precious Lend-Lease armaments allocated to Chiang for the fight against the Japanese were actually being stock-piled for a future civil war with the Chinese Communists.

After Cairo, Roosevelt and Churchill journeyed to the Iranian capital Tehran to confer with Stalin. The latter behaved respectfully towards Roosevelt, in marked contrast to the rudeness he sometimes displayed towards Churchill.

Roosevelt concluded from their conversations that Stalin was fundamentally a practical man who he could do business with. He and Stalin pushed forward – against Churchill's wishes – the agreement for Operation Overlord, and the invasion of France by US and British forces took place in June 1944, taking some of the pressure off the Soviets.

The Warsaw uprising

In August of that year, the Polish underground rose up in Warsaw against the Nazis, believing that Soviet troops nearby would come to their aid. Stalin refused to allow his army to help and then withheld permission for American and British aircraft to refuel on Soviet soil in order to supply the underground by air drop.

Roosevelt refused to intervene on the Poles' behalf, despite Churchill's pleas. Roosevelt cabled him: 'I do not consider it advantageous to the long-range general war prospect for me to join with you in the proposed message to UJ ['Uncle Joe' – i.e. Stalin].'

A man in a hurry

In November 1944, Roosevelt, with Harry S Truman as his running mate, faced his fourth election for president. There was no conflict within the US over foreign policy, and so the election was concerned largely with domestic issues. However, and unsurprisingly, as the country was at war, the Roosevelt/Truman ticket was triumphant over Republican Thomas E Dewey.

Six months earlier, Roosevelt had been diagnosed with heart disease, and with the rigours of campaigning, his physical decline had become increasingly apparent. While on a visit to the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park, New York, Churchill's wife Clementine wrote to her daughter Mary:

The president with all his genius does not – indeed cannot partly because of his health and partly because of his make-up – function round the clock, like your father. I should not think that his mind was pinpointed on the war for more than four hours a day, which is not really enough when one is a supreme warlord.

Roosevelt must have known he was unlikely to live out his full fourth term as president. He was now a man in a hurry.

Crucial agreements

The Big Three – as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin were known – conferred for the last time in February 1945 at Yalta on the Black Sea coast. Everyone there was shocked by Roosevelt's deterioration. After the opening dinner, British foreign secretary Anthony Eden wrote in his diary: 'Dinner with Americans; a terrible party I thought. The president vague and loose and ineffective.'

Occurring as the European war was about to end, this conference resulted in a number of crucial agreements, including:

• the nature of the proposed post-war international organisation that would become the United Nations

• the military occupation of and free elections in eastern Europe: Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to the handing over of a large swathe of Polish territory to the Soviet Union; in return, Stalin promised free elections in Poland (on which he later reneged)

• the division and occupation of Germany

• the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan following the end of the European war (which Roosevelt obtained by secretly bribing Stalin with offers of Japanese and Chinese territory).

As Roosevelt left Yalta, he remarked to his doctor: 'I've got everything I came for and not at too high a price. The one nettlesome problem is Poland. The settlement we have in mind leaves much to be desired.' On his return home, he told his Cabinet:

Stalin has something else in his being besides this revolutionist, Bolshevist thing. Perhaps it is do with his early training for the priesthood. I think that something entered into his nature of the way in which a Christian gentleman should behave.

After Yalta

'There's a myth that Roosevelt gave Stalin eastern Europe,' Roosevelt's envoy in Britain Averell Harriman would later state (in an interview in Stud Terkel's book The Good War, 1985):

I was with Roosevelt every day at Yalta. Roosevelt was determined to stop Stalin from taking over eastern Europe. He thought they finally had an agreement on Poland. Before Roosevelt died, he realised that Stalin had broken his agreement.

I think Stalin was afraid of Roosevelt. Whenever Roosevelt spoke, he sort of watched him with a certain awe. He was afraid of Roosevelt's influence in the world. If FDR had lived, the Cold War wouldn't have developed the way it did, because Stalin would have tried to get along with Roosevelt.

Yet Roosevelt – and, to a much lesser extent, Churchill – simply stood by and watched the Soviets impose a puppet government on Poland and send the remaining leaders of the underground to the gulag. It was only when Stalin accused the British and Americans of doing a secret deal with the Nazis in order to free them to fight against the USSR that Roosevelt first expressed his anger with the Soviet premier, cabling him on 4 April 1945:

Frankly I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment toward your informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentations of my actions or those of my trusted subordinates.

Stalin apologised abjectly, leading Roosevelt to believe yet again that he would always respond to his appeals.

The end

It was too late for him to find out the truth, that Stalin would undoubtedly have doggedly pursued any path that would increase his and the Soviet Union's power. Eight days after this cable, Roosevelt died.

His mistress Lucy Mercer was with him at the Little White House, but quickly left before her presence became known. (But Eleanor did find out and was devastated.) Harry Truman took the oath of office to become FDR's successor the same day. Roosevelt was buried in the rose garden of the family estate at Hyde Park, New York.

 

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