No Ordinary Time, Page 70

  Why, then, did Roosevelt fail to provide leadership on this momentous issue? The answer, some suggest, is that he was wholly absorbed in waging a global war and believed that the only solution to the Jewish problem was the final defeat of Hitler and the rooting out of the Nazi system. To the extent that rescue efforts would divert time, attention, and resources from this ultimate goal, thereby lengthening the war, he could not sanction them. Yet, as David Wyman argues in The Abandonment of the Jews, “virtually none of the rescue proposals involved enough infringement on the war effort to lengthen the conflict at all or to increase the number of casualties, military or civilian.” In fact, when other humanitarian needs were at issue, when refugees in Yugoslavia and Greece were in desperate straits, transportation somehow materialized, the war effort was bent, and the rescue was achieved. Moreover, the rationale that only victory would save the European Jews ignored the chilling question which The New Republic asked that summer: “Will any of these Jews survive to celebrate victory?”

  The problem lay in the political landscape. Few in Congress showed concern about saving the European Jews. The majority of church leaders were silent on the issue; the intellectual community remained inert. Even the American Jews, who did more than anyone else to publicize the slaughter and press for action, were hampered by a lack of unity. When the Committee for a Jewish Army first proposed the Emergency Conference, rival Jewish leaders and Rabbi Stephen Wise did everything they could to undermine it. Other Jews, like Roosevelt adviser Sam Rosenman, feared that, if too much attention were paid to the plight of the European Jews, American anti-Semitism would increase. Such divisions weakened the pressure on Roosevelt, allowing him to fall back on his rationale that the most important thing he could do to help the Jews was to win the war as quickly as possible.

  In mid-August, Peter Bergson, the organizer of the Emergency Conference, met with Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park. Their conversation deepened Eleanor’s awareness of the need for action. In her column the next day, she emphasized that the Jews in Europe had suffered as had no other group. “The percentage killed among them,” she wrote, “far exceeds the losses among any of the United Nations.” Though still admitting that she wasn’t sure what could be done to save them, she predicted that “we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “IT WAS A SIGHT I WILL NEVER FORGET”

  August 1943 was a busy month at Hyde Park. There was activity everywhere, movement all day long. On the 12th, Churchill and his daughter Mary arrived at the president’s estate to spend the weekend relaxing on the Hudson before the two leaders set off for a weeklong conference in Quebec. As usual, Churchill’s visit caused considerable commotion in the Roosevelt household. The timing of the trip was particularly difficult for Eleanor, who was preparing an even longer trip of her own, to the South Pacific to visit American troops. “These last few days at home are busy for me,” she confided in Lash, “& having the Churchills won’t make it easier but somehow I’ll get off!”

  The weekend was filled with picnics on the hilltop, with hamburgers and hot dogs barbecued on the grill and watermelon slices for dessert. Knowing this was the first time Mary Churchill had eaten watermelon, the president laughingly admonished her not to swallow any of the pits lest they grow into watermelons in her stomach. Through the entire meal, Sam Rosenman observed, the prime minister enjoyed himself, his cheerfulness revealing “more eloquently” than the official bulletins “how much better we were doing in the war.” The president, too, was in a jovial mood—although, as Rosenman commented, “even during the darkest days of the war he never seemed so worried or so downcast as the Prime Minister.”

  After lunch, the president and the prime minister sat under the trees, talking, laughing, and telling stories. “You know,” Churchill told Eleanor, “one works better when one has a chance to enjoy a little leisure now and then. The old proverb all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy holds good for all of us.”

  Only the stifling summer heat cut into the pleasure of the weekend. On Friday night, Churchill recorded, it was so hot that he could barely breathe. Unable to sleep, he wandered across the back lawn to the bluff overlooking the Hudson River. There he sat for hours, only returning to the Big House, refreshed and relaxed, after the sun had risen.

  At dinner Saturday night, Churchill launched into a discussion of “his hopes that the fraternal relationship between the United States and Great Britain would be perpetuated in peacetime.” Eleanor, Averell Harriman recorded, was less than enchanted by this idea. “Mrs. Roosevelt seemed fearful this might be misunderstood by other nations and weaken the United Nations concept.” The prime minister took just the opposite tack, arguing that the only hope for the United Nations lay in “the leadership given by the intimacy of the U.S. and Britain in working out misunderstandings with the Russians—and the Chinese too.” Listening to the lively conversation, Harriman was impressed by the purity of Eleanor’s idealism. Churchill was also impressed. Having grown accustomed by now to her spirited interruptions, he was able to enjoy the byplay. She had “a spirit of steel and a heart of gold,” he told Harriman later that night.

  The next morning, with Churchill en route to Quebec a day early, Eleanor relished the chance to be alone with her husband. As the time for her departure to the South Pacific drew near, she found herself in a tranquil mood, happy for once to sit still and enjoy the summer day. “Your mother is so pleased with herself,” Tommy reported to Anna. “She has lost 25 pounds and looks very slim and young and it has not made her face look drawn.”

  After a leisurely breakfast, Eleanor joined Franklin in his study as he penned letters to General MacArthur and Admiral Halsey in her behalf. Though both men had already been apprised of the first lady’s visit, Eleanor was afraid that undue security concerns would keep her from seeing the troops and the battlefields. In particular, she yearned to visit Guadalcanal, where Joe Lash was stationed. Recognizing how much it meant to her to see young Lash, the president paved the way. “She is especially anxious to see Guadalcanal,” he told Admiral Halsey, “and at this moment it looks like a pretty safe place to visit.” But of course, he added, “I would not have you let her go to any place which would interfere in any way with current military or naval operations—in other words, the war comes first.” This was the best Eleanor could hope for, and she was pleased.

  Enjoying her husband’s company, Eleanor decided to postpone her departure for New York, where she was supposed to appear on a radio show with Mayor LaGuardia to talk about “Unity at Home—Victory Abroad.” Hurried arrangements were made to tape the broadcast from Hyde Park. “I spoke from the library,” she later wrote, “with my husband listening which was a curious situation, for I have often sat listening to him but I cannot remember when he sat listening to me. The fact that I could speak from there gave us several more hours in the country together and I was happy not to miss the pleasant, leisurely luncheon out of doors and the good talk, which is one of the rare things we enjoy when only a small company is gathered together.”

  In the late afternoon, Eleanor left for New York and the president returned to Washington. Since he was leaving for Quebec the following day and she was flying out that night to San Francisco en route to the South Pacific, this was the last time they would see one another for nearly six weeks. “The P[resident] was very sweet to her when she left,” Tommy reported to Esther Lape. “She left all her jewelry and instructions as to their disposal in case anything happened. It gave me a queer feeling.”

  Anna, too, was plagued with worry as Eleanor boarded the unheated army bomber that was to take her to the South Pacific. “Darling, it kinda gives me the creeps to think of you heading off into space. Please don’t take any more chances than you have to.”

  • • •

  While Eleanor flew west, Roosevelt journeyed north by train, accompanied, as usual, by Harry Hopkins. On Tuesday evening, August 17, a small crow
d was gathered in the president’s car to celebrate Hopkins’ fifty-third birthday. For Hopkins, who was being subjected daily to vicious attacks in the papers, the relaxed celebration was a moment to be cherished. Though controversy had attended Hopkins from the start of his unconventional relationship with the president, the recent spate of criticism had assumed an unusual virulence. In one paper after another, it was charged that the president’s closest friend was benefiting in questionable ways from his position of public trust.

  One story, told by a Republican congressman on the floor of the House and retold in the papers, held that Lord Beaverbrook had presented Louise Hopkins with a gift of emeralds worth nearly a half-million dollars. Though the story was vehemently denied by Louise Hopkins, who insisted that she did not own even a single emerald, the damage was done. The emerald story was followed by reports of an extravagant dinner for sixty invited guests which Bernard Baruch held at the Hotel Carlton in honor of Harry and Louise. Since the dinner coincided with the publication of an article in The American magazine in which Hopkins urged the populace to accept rationing as part of the inevitable sacrifice of war, the newspapers took great pleasure in running the dinner menu at the Carlton, complete with caviar and pâté de foie gras, alongside Hopkins’ call for sacrifice.

  As one attack followed another, Hopkins pondered what to do. The final blow came when the Chicago Sunday Tribune published a malicious article which likened him to the Siberian mystic Grigory Rasputin, whose ability to improve the condition of Alexis, the hemophiliac heir to the Russian throne, made him a favorite at the court of Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra. The article featured side-by-side pictures and compared their leering expressions, their clumsy demeanor, and their malevolent influence over their nations. Against the advice of the president, Hopkins decided to sue for libel. “This is a fight in which you would be licked before you could even get started,” Roosevelt warned Hopkins. “The whole proceedings would give them a glorious opportunity to pile on smears . . . . What earthly good would it do you to win a verdict and receive damages of one dollar?” Though Hopkins eventually backed down, the hurt remained.

  Adding immeasurably to Hopkins’ stress that summer was his wife’s desire to move out of the White House into a house of their own. Louise was convinced that their lives would never be their own so long as they remained at the president’s beck and call in the second-floor suite. Eager to invite her own guests to dinner and to serve her own meals as she thought they should be served, she had begun to look for a house in Georgetown. For Harry, it was a difficult choice, knowing as he did that Roosevelt would not be pleased. But by midsummer, the pressure to move proved irresistible. “Harry and Louise are going to move to their own house,” Eleanor reported to Joe Lash, “though P[resident] doesn’t like their going.”

  On the surface, Harry’s relationship with the president remained as before, but underneath, the cord of communion was cut. For the president, accustomed to standing at the absolute center of Hopkins’ life, his friend’s decision to move seemed to suggest an ebbing of affection, a form of abandonment. Though Hopkins postponed the move for five months, a frost descended on their relationship.

  When Churchill was at Hyde Park before the trip to Quebec, he had found Hopkins “ailing and fearing he had lost favor with his chief.” But in short order “it seemed like old times again,” and Churchill delighted in the presence of the straight-speaking Hopkins. So now, as Hopkins relaxed with the president on the train, mixing a round of old-fashioneds to celebrate his birthday, everything appeared for the moment the same as it had always been.

  In Quebec on the evening of the 17th, the president and the prime minister stayed in the Citadel, a magnificent fortress that stood above the St. Lawrence River on the heights of Cape Diamond. The aides were quartered in the Château Frontenac, a few miles away, where the official working sessions took place. For five days prior to the arrival of the president and the prime minister, the military experts had been doing preliminary “pick and shovel” work. Now, with both leaders present, the time for decision had come.

  The principal business at the Quebec Conference was to decide the date for the cross-Channel attack. Though Churchill was still haunted by his memories of World War I, he knew, Lord Moran claimed, that the time had come to give way. He could delay the decision no longer. As he studied the plans for the invasion, he could not help being impressed by the massive numbers that would be engaged, the tonnage involved. More than once, Moran recalled, he referred to the plan as “majestic.”

  With the target date set for May 1, 1944, the two leaders turned their attention to the details of the landing—the numbers of landing craft required, the building of synthetic harbors, the extent of shipping necessary. In the midst of these discussions, British Minister of Defense Lord Ismay records a curious conference in Churchill’s bathroom. “If a stranger had visited,” Ismay wrote, “he might have seen a stocky figure in a dressing gown of many colors, sitting on a stool and surrounded by a number of what our American friends call ‘top brass.’ While an admiral flapped his hand in the water at one end of the bath in order to simulate a choppy sea, a brigadier stretched a lilo [an inflatable rubber mattress] across the middle to show how it broke up the waves. The stranger would have found it hard to believe that this was the British high command studying the most stupendous and spectacular amphibious operation in the history of the war.”

  Churchill’s apparent change of heart brought relief to Roosevelt and the American high command, but Hopkins feared that the decision was not irrevocable, that Churchill might change his mind again, as he had done the previous year. In a conversation with Moran one morning, Hopkins spoke of Churchill in an uncharacteristically aggressive way. Though Churchill had seemingly thrown in his hand, Hopkins told Moran he was convinced that “Winston’s obstinacy, his drawn out struggle to postpone a second front in France has in fact prolonged the war. That if he had been reasonable earlier we might now be in sight of peace.” Was Hopkins right? Moran asked himself. “That must remain the riddle of the war.”

  In the meantime, the news arriving from the Italian front was excellent. On August 17, reports confirmed that, after only thirty-one days of fighting, the island of Sicily was under Allied control. The campaign had succeeded beyond expectations, so much so that Eisenhower was now recommending that the success in Sicily be followed up with an assault on the Italian mainland, beginning September 3. This was, of course, what Churchill had wanted all along, and finally Roosevelt agreed, believing that the plans for Operation Overlord were firmly set.

  As the planning for the cross-Channel attack became more detailed, the question of command arose. The president and prime minister had previously agreed that the commander of Overlord should be British, since Eisenhower had commanded the landings in North Africa. Based on this understanding, Churchill had offered the post to Field Marshal Alan Brooke, chief of the imperial general staff. But now, as the contours of the invasion became clear, Churchill recognized that the Americans would be sending “a very great preponderance” of the troops, five times more than the British. When Roosevelt argued for an American commander on the basis of the numbers, Churchill gracefully agreed. To balance the scale, the Southeast Asian command was established under Lord Louis Mountbatten, with General Joseph W. Stilwell as his deputy.

  While in Quebec, the president and the prime minister discussed the atomic bomb. Churchill had agreed the previous year that research and manufacture of the bomb should take place in the United States, but the British felt that the Americans were deliberately keeping them from knowing what was going on. To provide an amicable solution to what was becoming a divisive issue, Roosevelt agreed to sign a joint “tube alloy” memo with Churchill, which ensured full sharing of all the work and promised that no secrets would be withheld on either side. Each nation also promised never to use the bomb against the other and not to use it against a third party without the other’s consent.

  Stalin provoked th
e only dark moment at the Quebec Conference. On the sixth afternoon of the summit, a cable arrived from Moscow. “Until now the matter stood as follows,” the Russian premier asserted. “The United States and Great Britain made agreements but the Soviet Union received information about the results of the agreements between the two countries just as a passive third observer. I have to tell you that it is impossible to tolerate such situation any longer.” Both Roosevelt and Churchill were offended by the tone of the message. “We are both mad,” Roosevelt announced as he arrived for dinner that evening. Curiously, Harriman noted, Roosevelt’s anger made him gayer than usual; his conversation at dinner sparkled with banter and good cheer. In contrast, Churchill arrived at dinner “with a scowl and never really got out of his ill humor all evening.” Stalin, Churchill told Harriman, is “an unnatural man. There will be grave troubles.”

  When the conference closed on August 25, Churchill followed Roosevelt to Washington for an additional round of talks. As always, Churchill’s presence turned the White House upside down, creating havoc for everyone, including Hick, who was forced to vacate her bedroom on the second floor and move upstairs. “I gather she didn’t like the third floor,” Tommy told Anna. “However, I know your father would have spasms if any of the Churchill party had to go on the third floor and Hick was left on the second. One would think knowing the criticism of Harry’s being there that she would take a hint.”

  “PM’s sleeping arrangements have now become quite promiscuous,” British Foreign Office Undersecretary Sir Alexander Cadogan noted. “He talks with President till 2 am and consequently spends a large part of day hurling himself violently in and out of bed, bathing at unsuitable moments and rushing up and down the corridors in his dressing gown.”

  Accustomed by now to Churchill’s irregular routine, Roosevelt found refuge at Hyde Park, where he escaped for the weekend while Churchill remained in the White House. But Hopkins had returned from Quebec so exhausted that he had to be admitted to the Naval Hospital for another series of blood transfusions. Although he joked that it was nothing serious, that Quebec and Churchill had simply been “too much for him,” he admitted that he was “in pretty bad shape” and remained in the hospital for three weeks.