This excellent book reviews the last year-and-a-half of FDR's life, when he was focused on the Allied invasion of Europe, his own re-election and his romancing of Josef Stalin, the man he called 'Uncle Joe'. Stalin dominates the story as the President knew the war could not be won without the Russians and that they were also the key to a successful post-war settlement. The President was a man of intuition, hunches and supreme confidence in his own ability. He was convinced he could charm Stalin.
The Big Three met at Tehran in November, 1943. FDR and Stalin were together for approximately thirty hours. They agreed on a May 1944 Operation Overlord, overruling Churchill's stalling tactics, and Stalin agreed to commit to a post-war structure. Roosevelt had seen the failure of Wilson to convince America to join the League of Nations and was bound and determined to succeed where his predecessor had failed.
Early in 1944, FDR got the flu, was bedridden for over a week and lost ten pounds. Thereafter, observers began to regularly characterize him as 'tired'. The inexorable decline in his health had begun. Later in the spring, a cardiologist diagnosed FDR as suffering from acute congestive heart failure, specifically left ventricular failure. His heart was enlarged. The President was told to stop smoking, to work but two hours per day and to take a few months off. Amazingly, he did take two months off. A month long sojourn to Bernard Baruch's South Carolina estate was a state secret. Very few people knew where he was. When he returned to Washington, all cheered his well-being and fitness level, but those close to him knew he wasn't well. He himself knew he couldn't survive a fourth term, should he chose to run.
FDR had a good summer in 1944. He decided to run, saying that he couldn't ignore the orders of his Commander-in-Chief - the American people. He masterfully managed the Chicago convention from afar, and then sailed to Honolulu, where he massaged Doug MacArthur's ego and contributed to the final plans to defeat Japan. While in Honolulu, he did something that seems out of character with his opaque approach to his own disability. He wheeled himself through an amputee ward, telling the young men that he had spent twenty-three years without the use of his legs and encouraging them to rise above their handicaps. Aides said it was the closest FDR had ever come to tears.
He rallied throughout the campaign and buried Dewey in another landslide. Three days after his fourth inauguration, he set sail for Yalta. Most historians believe that although FDR was visibly failing, he accomplished all that he could have reasonably expected to at the eight day tri-lateral conference. His most important goal was to establish the UN and in this he succeeded. Stalin also agreed to declare war on Japan as soon as practicable after the defeat of Germany. Of course, the inability of Churchill and Roosevelt to further self-determination for the Poles is the issue for which FDR, in particular, has been castigated for over seventy years. The fact that Poland had been the springboard for Germany's invasion of Russia and was now occupied by the Red Army led by a dictator whose country had suffered tens of millions of casualties, never seems to enter into the criticisms.
On March 1, he sat before Congress and made his final speech. At the end of the month, he headed to Warm Springs. He died at 3 in the afternoon of the 12th of April. Senator Robert Taft, Mr. Republican, said "He dies a hero of the war, for he literally worked himself to death, in the service of the American people." This is a great book about one of our truly great presidents.
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