1944 by Jay Winik
There is no doubt that Roosevelt liked being president. He liked the crowds, the outpouring of affection. He fed off the attention of the press corps, which frequently seemed to hang breathless on his every word. Being president meant that the world would come to him. There would always be witty dinner conversation, there would always be a line of callers outside the door of his Oval Office, there would always be a devoted self-sacrificing staff ready to do his bidding. But more than that, having been president at the start of World War II, Roosevelt was determined, even desperate, to see it through to its conclusion. He dreamed of succeeding where Woodrow Wilson had so grandly failed. He wanted to leave as his legacy an international organization that would eliminate the scourge of war, a new international order built on the foundation of a permanent peace. He did not want the war to end with the isolationists simply rearising, or with calls for America to once again exit from the world stage. He wanted to manage the war, but most of all he wanted to be the architect of the peace. That had been his mission since his early meetings with Churchill and his first meeting with Stalin. Now, in the summer of 1944, with D-Day complete and U.S. forces steadily moving across France, Roosevelt’s goal at last seemed within reach.
He committed himself to the election as late as humanly possible, husbanding his failing energy and shrewdly limiting the time during which the Republicans could make him a target. After all, when he wasn’t yet a candidate, all the chatter was focused on him and whether he would run. Any barbs that might have been thrown at him were at worst a sideshow. So he chose July 11, near the end of a press conference, throwing out a teaser: “I have got something else.” The president began by reading a letter from the head of the Democratic National Committee, politely asking him to convey his intentions. In the middle, he asked for a cigarette, which his press secretary, Steve Early, dutifully lit. As the president held the letter, his hands trembled. Cigarette ash scattered across his desk. He began his reply: “If the convention should nominate me, I shall accept. If the people elect me, I will serve.” He then slyly declared, “For myself, I do not want to run,” but “as a good soldier, I repeat that I will accept and serve in this office.”
The most important decision of the election was made not by Roosevelt or Dewey, but by a small group of Democratic bosses huddled in the second-floor study at the White House. These men were enjoined with finding a new vice presidential candidate to replace the current officeholder, Henry Wallace, who was deemed by his critics to be too intellectual, too liberal, and too impractical (Roosevelt did not much like him anyway). The bosses didn’t quite know what man they wanted, but in light of Roosevelt’s failing health, they knew that the vice president was likely to be the president sometime in the next four years, and perhaps sooner rather than later. They definitely did not want the possibility of President Wallace.
Actually, Roosevelt initially wanted Willkie, his former foe and more recently his ally, who would help him create a new political party. But that idea had quickly foundered. Then he proposed Justice William O. Douglas. That too foundered. The men eventually settled on Harry Truman, a senator from Missouri. Roosevelt had mixed emotions about Truman—he thought him too old—but he gave his tacit approval. True to form, however, he neglected to personally inform Wallace about this; it was Eisenhower and Marshall all over again. Also, he still supported one of the other potential nominees for vice president, Bill Douglas. It fell to the head of the Democratic National Committee to wrap things up in Chicago. Scurrying around on the presidential train, the DNC head got Roosevelt to at least place Truman’s name before Douglas’s in the letter to be delivered to the delegates. But for that switch, the man from Missouri might never have ascended to the ticket.
Truman himself was at first reluctant too—he was backing James Byrnes of South Carolina, who had resigned from the Supreme Court to head the Office of Economic Stabilization—but he signed on after some prodigious arm-twisting, including listening in on a call between Roosevelt and the DNC head, during which Roosevelt said that it would be Truman’s “responsibility” if the Democratic Party was broken up “in the middle of a war.” Once Truman assented, after a few more late-night phone calls, the convention was poised to nominate him for vice president. When a now sleepless Truman departed the room with his wife on his arm, ringed by a clutch of strangers, security men and gawkers alike, he was “scared to death.” Bess Truman, horrified, asked, “Are we going to have to go through this for the rest of our lives?”
Roosevelt himself was not even at the convention. He was making his way by train to San Diego, and he would give his acceptance speech not in person but over the radio, from the observation car of his armor-plated train. The president did not have to worry about the convention-goers; they would back him all the way. His task now was to prove his vitality, his vigor, his command; to dispel all rumors of his failing health; and to remind the American public why they had loved and still loved FDR. His acceptance speech once again displayed his mastery of political theater; it was designed to make his most vulnerable point—his own stamina—into a strength, and to put his opponent squarely on the defensive. “I shall not campaign, in the usual sense, for the office,” Roosevelt’s voice said, over the loudspeakers. “In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting. And besides, in these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time.
“What is the job before us in 1944?” he went on. “First, to win the war—to win the war fast, to win it overpoweringly. Second, to form worldwide international organizations, and to arrange to use the armed forces of the sovereign Nations of the world to make another war impossible within the foreseeable future. And third, to build an economy for our returning veterans and for all Americans—which will provide employment and provide decent standards of living.” Roosevelt closed by quoting from Abraham Lincoln’s eloquent second inaugural, speaking of binding up the nation’s wounds, and of doing “all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all Nations.”
Interestingly, Roosevelt had almost failed to deliver the speech.
Roosevelt had set out for California on what was to be a monthlong journey that would begin in San Diego and continue to Hawaii, where he was scheduled to meet with General Douglas MacArthur to discuss war strategy in the Pacific. The train moved, like all of Roosevelt’s trains, slowly. There were leisurely meals, games of gin rummy; there was time to read, and also to do some work. Roosevelt reveled in the cocoon of company and conversation.
The train pulled into San Diego on July 20, 1944. Eleanor prepared to depart; Roosevelt was slated to watch a landing exercise in Oceanside the next day. That night, he would accept, for the fourth time, the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Roosevelt was going to be joined by one of his sons, Jimmy, for the review. Jimmy was already on board the train as the commander in chief was preparing to depart.
Suddenly, much as had happened at Tehran, Roosevelt’s face turned white. “His face took on an agonized look,” Jimmy recalled.
“Jimmy, I don’t know if I can make it,” the president gasped. “I have horrible pains.” Jimmy immediately wanted to race for the doctor, but Roosevelt refused. Instead, he insisted it was nothing more than stomach pains and instructed his son to help him from his bed and let him lie flat on the floor. For about ten minutes, the president of the United States lay on the floor of a railroad car. His eyes were closed, his face “drawn.” Periodically his torso “convulsed as the waves of pain convulsed him.” Jimmy was left to watch, alone, in excruciating silence.
As the minutes passed, the pallor disappeared and Roosevelt’s body calmed itself. “Help me up now, Jimmy,” he whispered. “I feel better.” And as if nothing had happened, Roosevelt allowed himself to be transported to an open car, which headed to a high bluff where he would watch five thousand marines and three thousand navy men practice an invasion on a California beach. Within hours, Roosevelt was delivering his address to the Demo
After Roosevelt spoke, pool photographers were ushered in to take posed pictures of the president reading his speech. The photographers snapped closed-mouth shots and open-mouth shots; then the film was rushed to Los Angeles, where the AP could process it and transmit it to all the major outlets. The photo the AP editor picked off the roll of negatives showed an open-mouthed Roosevelt, speaking. But when the print was made, this shot showed much more. The president’s eyes looked glassy; his face was haggard with exhaustion; his jaw was slack and he looked indescribably spent. Predictably, anti-Roosevelt newspapers used the image; and equally predictably Roosevelt’s press secretary, Steve Early, erupted, expelling the photographer who had taken the shot from the remainder of the trip. But there was no returning the image to the darkroom. Thomas Dewey and his supporters would have ample ammunition to make Roosevelt’s health an issue, if not the main issue, of the race. And they would be right to do so.
AS ROOSEVELT’S GAUNT IMAGE was being seen across the United States, Germany was concluding a frenzied manhunt. On July 20 a bomb had been detonated in the conference room at Hitler’s retreat, Wolf’s Lair, while the Führer was attending a briefing with his top military personnel. The thunderous explosion had shattered doors and windows. Glass sliced through the air. Blocks of wood were shredded into splinters, while scraps of paper and other debris rode on plumes of thick smoke. Flames rolled up the walls. Remarkably, the Führer emerged unharmed, suffering only superficial injuries, although his pants were briefly lit on fire and the back of his head was singed. He was one of only two occupants in the room to escape without a concussion.
This was not the first attempt on Hitler’s life, but each previous time he had walked away unscathed. The first, rather feeble effort had been made as far back as 1939. It was followed by more elaborate plots. One was a bomb disguised as two bottles of cognac and was placed aboard Hitler’s plane, but it inexplicably failed to detonate. Other earlier failed opportunities had included at least one at Wolf’s Lair itself. However, the July 20 was to be the final, most definitive plot, carried out by an elegant, aristocratic colonel, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. A former supporter of National Socialism, he had first begun to turn against the regime in 1938, over its drive toward war. The rising barbarity of the Nazi regime, particularly the reports of wholesale slaughter of Ukrainian Jews by the SS, intensified his opposition. A veteran of the North Africa campaign—there he had lost his right eye and right hand—Stauffenberg joined the July 20 conspirators initially as a plotter, and then, when a promotion gave him access to Hitler, became the designated assassin. His goal was to deliver Germany from the clutches of the Nazis. Of his own role, he said, “The man who has the courage to do something must do it in the knowledge that he will go down in German history as a traitor. If he does not do it, however, he will be a traitor to his own conscience.”
He was right. But instead of Hitler’s body being pulled from the wreckage, the lead conspirators were tracked down, rounded up, and shot by firing squad, illuminated by the headlights of parked cars—or hanged from giant meat hooks. The bodies were then dragged off to be buried. By the following morning, Himmler had issued orders to have the dead men exhumed and cremated. The last attempt to depose Hitler had literally gone up in a puff of ash.
One of Germany’s greatest generals, the famed Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel, was implicated in the plot; the SS forced him to take poison.
Now the only way Hitler would be overthrown was when Allied tanks finally reached Berlin.
IN SAN DIEGO, ROOSEVELT anxiously awaited details of the attempted assassination. And at midnight on July 21 he began his journey to Pearl Harbor to meet with General Douglas MacArthur. Under cover of darkness, a navy cruiser, the Baltimore, began evasive maneuvers, leaving the port and heading toward the open Pacific. Always a naval man at heart, Roosevelt was glad to be on the water, sailing toward a new destination.
At Pearl Harbor, the pier was mobbed. Hawaiians had turned out en masse, and sailors lined the rails of the ships, standing at attention. Cheers erupted when they spotted the dignitaries. Admiral Nimitz and others came up the gangplank to greet their commander in chief on the quarterdeck. Only one military man was absent—the head of the war in the Pacific, Douglas MacArthur. Imperious, overbearing, a riddle of a man, he had planned his own entrance. To the sound of police sirens, MacArthur arrived in a long, open-topped black car. A military driver was at the wheel, and MacArthur, in his trademark leather jacket, was seated in the back. There was a second round of mighty applause. But the commander in chief wasn’t in the mood to be awed. “Hello, Doug,” Roosevelt said. “What are you doing with that leather jacket on? It’s a darn hot day.”
MacArthur could only bluster, “Well, I’ve just landed from Australia. It’s pretty cold there.”
With the war winding down in Europe, Roosevelt now talked about strategy in the Pacific with his commanders—whether to attack the island of Formosa and the Chinese coast or to bypass Formosa and focus on liberating the Philippines (MacArthur’s preference). He also made time to tour the island’s military installations, including a military hospital with a ward for amputees. Once inside, Roosevelt requested a Secret Service agent to push him gingerly past the beds where, as Sam Rosenman observed, young men lay, missing one or both legs. Offering cheering smiles and a few words, the president said nothing in particular about his own withered, useless legs, but they were on full view. The message was clear: the president had once risen crippled from a bed and had embarked on a new life. So might they too. “I never saw Roosevelt with tears in his eyes,” Rosenman recounted. “That day as he was wheeled out of the hospital, he was close to them.”
The military issues were quickly resolved. One participant thought Roosevelt was “at his best.” But privately, MacArthur reached a different, troubling conclusion. The general told his wife, “He is just a shell of the man I knew. In six months, he will be in his grave.”
During the journey to Hawaii there had been inevitable rumors about the president’s health. Talk had already spread across Washington: Roosevelt had had a clandestine operation for cancer while he had been at Hobcaw; others darkly hinted that he had had a stroke or a major heart attack. There was so much speculation that at one point Secret Service agent Mike Reilly had allowed reporters to watch Roosevelt from a distance in South Carolina, just to refute claims that the president was actually in a hospital in Boston or Chicago. Now, while Roosevelt was in Hawaii, Harry Hopkins wired to the president, saying that an FBI agent stationed on the island had told J. Edgar Hoover the Pacific trip had been scrubbed because Roosevelt was unwell. The president’s next stop on his journey was the island of Adak, a U.S. military base off the western coast of Alaska. Then it was back to the mainland and Washington state for a final stop before the train ride home.
Whether it was because of the rumors about his health, or because of his own need to prove himself, or because his personality that fed on the adulation of a live crowd, the president did not want to start his train trip back to Washington, D.C., without first giving a large public address. He originally asked for a baseball stadium, but the Secret Service flinched. Harry Hopkins cabled, suggesting the deck of the destroyer that had taken him over the ocean, with the large guns as the backdrop for the speech. Roosevelt eagerly said yes. The audience was to be ten thousand dockyard workers at the Bremerton shipyard, plus a radio audience across the nation.
Roosevelt was determined to stand up as he spoke, but it was several months since he had last stood, and in the interval his legs had become more emaciated, with muscle wasting over the bone, so his braces no longer fit. He could barely keep his balance. There was a furious wind, and the deck rocked, so the president had to clutch his lectern and was barely able to turn the pages of his speech. His voice, usually sonorous, was in the words of biographer James MacGregor Burns, “tepid and halting,” and the speech itse
Following the speech, the Washington Post offered, in effect, Roosevelt’s political obituary, noting, “It looks like the old master has lost his touch,” and adding that “his campaigning days must be over.”
Five days after his return to Washington, Roosevelt was at Hyde Park. But the rest he sought was still elusive. The house was packed with guests. “The President still a little tense and nervous,” Hassett observed, “not yet rested from his five weeks’ trip into the Pacific area via land and sea. Too many visitors at mealtime—all ages, sexes, and previous conditions of servitude—hardly relaxing for a tired man.” Even Eleanor noticed, recording, “Pa complains of feeling tired and I think he looks older. I can’t help worrying about his heart.”