An account of a very sick FDR struggling to get the United Nations in place as he faded rapidly into death.
Last night, on a delayed flight, I finished the last of Nigel Hamilton's three volume series on FDR, the third volume, War and Peace, FDR's Final Odyssey, D-Day to Yalta
The thesis of the trilogy is that FDR was the driving force behind the allied victory in World War 2, in spite of, as opposed to the help of, Winston Churchill, who Hamilton savages as a strategically incompetent military meddler who Roosevelt had to exercise great skill to manage.
The merit of the thesis is certainly open to debate, but it certainly well known that among Churchill's goals in the Second World War, preservation of the British Imperial Empire was among them, something with which Franklin Roosevelt was not merely uncomfortable, but actually found appalling, as did his military leaders. (The curious figure of Ernest King, Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet, was an active Anglophobe and did all he could to limit British participation and access to the Pacific War.) Roosevelt tolerated the British Imperial structure only to the extent it furthered victory in the war.
As far as the war goes, Hamilton perceives Stalin as a positive force in managing Churchill and represents the relationship between FDR and Stalin as positive, even warm, with seemingly mutual admiration. He praises Stalin as a military leader, despite his otherwise horrible and criminal legacy as a human being.
Anyway, the last volume covers FDR and Stalin corralling Churchill into the D-Day invasion against his will at the Tehran summit, which Hamilton considers to be FDR's finest hour in diplomacy, and then explores the dramatic decline of Roosevelt's health thereafter and his struggle to get to and participate in the meeting at Yalta.
Yalta is often subject to criticism by the right wing, as a Munich like capitulation to the Soviets, but Hamilton suggests that FDR got all he could from the Soviets, since their huge army had already overrun much of Eastern Europe. It is not like FDR (nor Churchill) could do much for Poland, although they did manage to save Greece from being overrun by Soviet communist forces. The world was exhausted by war.
My wife and I have visited the FDR Historical Site at Springwood twice, once just to go to a special presentation at the museum on the decision to run for a 4th term, and another time to attend lectures on the Four Freedoms speech put on by Cornell. Hamilton's last volume focuses on how bad Roosevelt's health had become when the decision to run for a 4th term was made, not because Roosevelt didn't want to retire, but because he felt it important to build a structure for the creation of world peace, what we now know as the United Nations. He certainly didn't think much of the isolationist Republicans who might have made the legacy of the Second World War much like that of the First World War. I wish I had read this work before going to the first visit to the Springwood museum. The exhibit did display some copies of some of FDR's medical records, which, were they mine or yours, would generate huge concern. It is amazing he stayed alive for as long as he did. He was in major heart failure. Everyone close to him knew he was dying; he probably understood as much himself, but soldiered on to leave a last legacy for the world at large.
The last time FDR was able to manage to stand (using braces) was during his 4th inaugural speech, which was the shortest such speech since that of George Washington.
According to Hamilton, by that time Roosevelt was only able to work four or five hours a day, but nonetheless, despite his doctor's concerns, and their fears it would kill him, made the trip to Yalta in the Crimea to ensure the creation of the United Nations, at which he succeeded. Ultimately, the trip to Yalta probably did kill him.
The volume also focuses on his long term love affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford, who was present when Roosevelt died, as Eleanor wasn't. When he died, while sitting for a portrait for one of Lucy Rutherford's artist friends, he was working on a speech he planned to give at the opening of the United Nations first formal founding meeting in San Francisco.
For the record, I regard Eleanor Roosevelt has the greatest Democrat ever to have lived, and I, among many others, regard FDR as the greatest Democratic President ever to have served. Their son, Elliot Roosevelt, however, described their marriage as an "armed truce." The conditions defining much of our lives even today - even as the destructive terrorists in Congress and the United States seek to vandalize that legacy - we owe to FDR's vision, guided by the input of his wife, even though Eleanor was not really so much a wife in the sense many of us know in our marriages, but as a political and moral partner who had her husband's deepest respect, if not his deepest love.
Anyway, it's an interesting take on history, one, perhaps to be read with a healthy dollop of critical thinking, but one that breaks new intellectual ground. It's a bit depressing to read about Presidential greatness as we watch our country being dismantled by venal, cruel fools with no respect for our country or its history.
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