Franklin And Winston Part 12

The fit among Harry, Louise, Eleanor, and the White House had not turned out to be a good one. Daisy Suckley's diaries chronicled Louise's struggle to become part of the surpa.s.singly strange Roosevelt domestic sphere: "She is pretty, and I think has all good intentions, but she's 'not very bright,' as the P. put it one day, and her conversation is never illuminating, at least when I have heard it."

In late 1943, the Hopkinses were about to leave the White House. "For obvious reasons, Hopkins and his wife had cherished the natural desire to have a home of their own where they could live and entertain their friends as they pleased," Sherwood wrote, "free from the circ.u.mscriptions which were inevitable in the Executive Mansion." (One night at dinner in the White House, Mrs. Hopkins had changed Eleanor's seating plan at the table-"and that," Trude Lash said, "you did not do." It is a small but telling glimpse of daily life, and daily tensions, inside the Roosevelt White House.) Louise and Diana moved to Georgetown while Roosevelt and Hopkins were in Teheran. "Harry went there after this trip," Eleanor wrote. "Franklin had known before he left of their decision to move, and had not felt he could oppose it: it was natural that Harry and Louise should want their own home, and the end of the war was now in sight. Harry's health was very poor, and this move, plus his illness, really began to make it difficult for him to work as closely with Franklin as he had done when living in the White House." Shortly after the move, Hopkins became so sick that he could not work, and as a result, he lost much of his influence with Roosevelt. "You must know I am not what I was," Hopkins would say to Churchill in the summer of 1944.

Nothing was worse than what happened in early February: Private First Cla.s.s Stephen Hopkins, Harry's eighteen-year-old son, died in combat in the Marshall Islands. The news reached Hopkins while he was heading to Florida to recuperate. "I am terribly distressed to have to tell you that Stephen was killed in action at Kwajalein," Roosevelt cabled Hopkins. "We have no details as yet other than that he was buried at sea. His mother has been notified. I am confident that when we get details we will all be even prouder of him than ever. I am thinking of you much. FDR."

Churchill took his friend's loss hard. "Dear Harry," Churchill wrote to Hopkins, "Please accept our most profound sympathy with you in your honour and grief. Winston and Clementine Churchill."

There followed a lettered scroll of lines from Macbeth.

Stephen Peter Hopkins Age 18 "Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt: He only liv'd but till he was a man; The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd In the unshrinking station where he fought, But like a man he died."

Shakespeare.

To Harry Hopkins from Winston S. Churchill13 February, 1944.

To Averell Harriman, Pamela wrote: "Wasn't it sad about Harry's youngest son being killed on the Marshall Islands. Poor Harry, I'm afraid he is very ill himself too. He wrote Papa & said he was going to a sunny place for several weeks or months. It didn't sound too good."

IN EARLY 1944, Anna Roosevelt moved into the White House and became an essential part of her father's circle. Anna had known his moods from her earliest moments. Roosevelt was the heroic father, so active and vibrant before his bout with polio in 1921, but so weak after it. She had seen the mask fall. In the spring of 1922, Roosevelt and Anna, then sixteen, were alone in the library at Hyde Park. "I was on a ladder moving some of the books to make room for others," she recalled. "Father was in his wheelchair giving me directions. Suddenly an armful of books slipped from my grasp and crashed to the floor. I saw Father start, and an expression of pain pa.s.sed swiftly over his face. My apologies were interrupted by his voice, very sternly accusing me of being too careless for words and no help at all."

On that long-ago afternoon, Eleanor had rea.s.sured Anna, reminding her of the battles her father faced in his illness. "Back I went to the library where, of course, I not only found forgiveness but also a sincere and smilingly given invitation to resume my place on the library ladder."

Now, twenty-two years later, Roosevelt again needed her help. Eleanor, her friend Joseph Lash wrote, "was too independent, too strong, ethically too unrelenting to provide him with the kind of relaxed, unjudging company he wanted." Anna, Daisy, Polly Delano, and a few others could, and did.

IN THE OPENING months of 1944, Roosevelt battled both ill health and growing political worries. A Roper poll in Fortune in November 1943 found that while 70 percent favored Roosevelt's "conduct of the war and foreign policy," the number fell to 56 percent when they were asked about his handling of problems at home. Churchill knew what it was like to return to domestic storms and challenges. In a February election for Parliament, the Government candidate-that is, Churchill's candidate-was defeated by a Labourite. "This caused a pall of the blackest gloom to fall on the P.M.," wrote Jock Colville.

A reminder of the battles still to fight-as though any reminder were needed in London-arrived in the form of German bombs, which again fell on the capital from January to April 1944. The British called it the "Little Blitz." Two days after the dark political news reached him in the Annexe, Churchill got word that German bombers had struck Whitehall and the Horse Guards Parade-the approximate equivalent of hitting the Old Executive Office Building and Lafayette Park. "We have just had a stick of bombs around 10, Downing Street and there are no more windows," Churchill wrote Roosevelt on February 21. "Clemmie and I were at Chequers and luckily all the servants were in the shelter. Four persons killed outside."

Worse terror still awaited London.

AT A ONE-ON-ONE dinner with General Brooke on February 25, after a long day of strategic wranglings, Churchill was "quite charming, as if he meant to make up for some of the rough pa.s.sages of the day. He has astonis.h.i.+ng sides to his character. We discussed Randolph and his difficulties of controlling him. . . . His daughters, my daughters. The President's unpleasant att.i.tude lately."

A series of irritating disagreements between Britain and the United States would produce enormous cable traffic between Roosevelt and Churchill for the next fourteen months. From the Italian monarchy to Argentine beef to civil aviation rights to Middle Eastern oil and from France to Poland to the Balkans to Greece, the two would jockey over short- and long-term questions about the end of the war and the structure of the peace. The fights were both polite and fierce, with Churchill concerned about Britain's place in the postwar universe and Roosevelt pressing American interests. They would argue their positions, but they always kept the mission-and their relations.h.i.+p-in mind, understanding that statecraft is an intrinsically imperfect and often frustrating endeavor.

ROOSEVELT WAS SICK-sicker than he would let on, to Churchill or almost anyone else. Yet it was becoming clear to Roosevelt's intimates that something more than the usual "grippe" was troubling him. "Raining in Was.h.i.+ngton, on top of some snow," Daisy noted on March 20, 1944. "Found the P. in bed again, with a slight fever coming & going. He needs a complete rest, and a complete cleaning out of his whole system, I think!"

Even he could not charm his way past age and disease. Eleanor chose not to try to intervene even as the presidential campaign approached. "I think all of us knew that Franklin was far from well, but none of us ever said anything about it-I suppose because we felt that if he believed it was his duty to continue in office, there was nothing for us to do but make it as easy as possible for him," Eleanor recalled. Anna, however, prevailed on Admiral McIntire to set up an appointment at the naval hospital in Bethesda for Tuesday, March 28.

Roosevelt left for Hyde Park the weekend before the examination. Eleanor was in Guatemala while her husband spent a springtime Sunday in Dutchess County-with Lucy.

Winthrop Rutherfurd had died six days earlier, at the age of eighty-two, and his death opened the way for ambitious visits like this one on March 26. By that evening, Roosevelt would tell Daisy he "felt fever coming on," but in the daylight hours, he and Lucy lunched together, visited the new library, and drove to Top Cottage. She did not leave until about six-thirty.

He was in the middle of war, he felt miserable, he had a world to run, and he could be lonely. After dinner in the White House one night a few weeks earlier, he left his guests and asked Daisy to join him in his study. "He got on the sofa . . . and said he was exhausted-He looked it," she wrote. "He said: 'I'm either Exhibit A, or left completely alone.' It made me feel terrible-I've never heard a word of complaint from him, but it seemed to slip out, unintentionally, & spoke volumes."

To cheer himself, Roosevelt kept Daisy and Anna around; now he added Lucy. Roosevelt's circle was very discreet. When the president was with Lucy, Joseph Lash wrote, there was probably "the magic of remembered love to cast its glow over their present encounters. There were always other people around-Anna, Daisy Suckley, Laura Del-ano, the Secret Service, White House secretaries like Pa Watson, Steve Early, and Bill Ha.s.sett. It was all aboveboard, except that Eleanor was not told. They said to themselves that they were protecting her, and they wanted to do so, for she was a woman of commanding dignity and of an almost saintly selflessness, whom all admired and some even loved. Within the limits of their loyalty to Franklin, they were eager to do everything possible to protect her from hurt and humiliation."

ROOSEVELT'S MEDICAL APPOINTMENT at Bethesda that week was with Dr. Howard Bruenn, a thirty-nine-year-old cardiologist. "At the end of the examination," wrote the historian Robert H. Ferrell, "Bruenn diagnosed hypertension, hypertensive heart disease, cardiac failure (left ventricular) and . . . acute bronchitis." Roosevelt's condition, Bruenn later told Ferrell, was "G.o.d-awful."

Churchill sensed his friend was ebbing and feared he was, too. One night nearly four years after he first came to power, Churchill was at No. 10 with General Brooke. "He looked very old and very tired," Brooke noted. "He said Roosevelt was not well and that he was no longer the man he had been; this, he said, also applied to himself (Winston). He said he could still always sleep well, eat well and especially drink well! but that he no longer jumped out of bed the way he used to, and felt as if he would be quite content to spend the whole day in bed. I have never yet heard him admit that he was beginning to fail." Even before Teheran, Charles Eade thought Churchill, "although looking fit and happy, was, in my view, looking rather older. . . ." Yet, like Roosevelt, Churchill kept going, bouncing back from illness and exhaustion that might have killed other men their age or driven them into retirement.

Of course Roosevelt and Churchill looked tired. Of course they looked old. One of the most interesting features of Roosevelt's management of his illness is what his maneuvering says about how he lived his life: He was comfortable with secrets. Reports about Churchill's condition tell us that a man who worked hard and lived hard had his physical and emotional ups and downs-good days and bad days. His gloomy remarks were those of a complicated human being who voiced much of what came into his head around diarists.

While Roosevelt rested at Bernard Baruch's place in South Carolina that spring-Lucy came to visit from Aiken, though not on the day Eleanor breezed down to say h.e.l.lo-Churchill thrived on action. It was therapeutic. He plunged into the planning for OVERLORD. He once held a meeting after midnight at Downing Street with Ismay, Eisenhower, and others, trying to determine the best precise time for the Channel crossing. "They were arguing back and forth, back and forth, what should be done," recalled Admiral Alan Kirk, the senior U.S. naval commander during the Normandy landings. "Finally Mr. Churchill lost patience, and he smote the table and said, 'Well, what I would like to know is, when did William cross?' The accused stood mute. No one could remember. He was obviously talking about William the Conqueror. Finally Pug Ismay, standing behind Mr. Churchill, coughed into his hand and said, 'Sir, I think it was 1066.' "

The scroll the Churchills sent to Harry Hopkins after the death of Stephen Hopkins in combat in the Marshall Islands, February 1944 Churchill smashed his fist down on the table again and said, "Dammit, everybody knows it was 1066. I want to know what month and what day." None of the officers could tell him. "Cla.s.s dismissed," Churchill said. In the end, they discovered William had come in the autumn, but neither Stalin nor Roosevelt would stand for any further delay, and neither would Churchill, who believed this was the moment.

CHURCHILL "WOULD BE among the first on the bridgehead in France if he possibly could," noted Jock Colville. Now the plan seemed right to him, the technology in the Allies' favor, the timing propitious. "I do not agree with the loose talk which has been going on on both sides of the Atlantic about the undue heavy casualties which we shall sustain," Churchill wrote Roosevelt on April 12, 1944. "In my view it is the Germans who will suffer very heavy casualties when our band of brothers gets among them."

What had long been theoretical was about to become reality. The invasion of Europe, a topic of conversation, cajoling, maneuvering, and planning, from the White House holidays of 19411942 to Teheran, would now move from the tables where presidents and prime ministers sat to the coasts of the Channel. Rome fell on June 5, but neither Roosevelt nor Churchill could celebrate much. "We have just heard of the fall of Rome and I am about to drink a mint julep to your very good health," Roosevelt cabled Churchill. It would be a quick drink: OVERLORD was at hand.

CLEMENTINE AND ELEANOR captured the tension of the first week of June. "I feel so much for you at this agonising moment," Clementine wrote her husband, "so full of suspense . . . !" Eleanor remembered that "when the time came . . . our hearts were with the men on the beaches."

D-Day was set for dawn, Monday, June 5, 1944. Churchill was s.h.i.+fting from confidence to concern, and back again. Once he had converted to a creed, there could be no stopping him: He was insisting that he go along on the invasion. Eisenhower hated the idea. "As Supreme Commander he could not bear the responsibility," Churchill recalled. Churchill dismissed the worries. After the king wrote him two frank letters asking him not to go, Churchill finally gave in.

Seven years later, Churchill still regretted missing the spectacle. "A man who has to play an effective part in taking, with the highest responsibility, grave and terrible decisions of war may need the refreshment of adventure," he wrote in his memoirs. "He may need also the comfort that when sending so many others to their death he may share in a small way their risks." Churchill had to content himself with a trip to the supreme commander's headquarters in the south of England.

In a train near Eisenhower's command post, Churchill tried to work, but, Ismay recalled, there was just one telephone line. "The Prime Minister wanted to talk to all and sundry at one and the same moment-to the President in the White House, to Eden at the Foreign Office, and to the Chiefs of Staff in Whitehall," Ismay noted. "When the inevitable delays occurred, he was full of complaints. When I suggested in desperation that it might be better to get back to civilization, my head was bitten off. Were we not next-door to Eisenhower at the very centre of affairs?"

ROOSEVELT SPENT THE weekend in Charlottesville, at Kenwood, Pa Watson's estate. A charming southerner, Watson was a comforting figure in Roosevelt's world, guarding access to the Oval Office and providing a strong arm and a ready joke for Roosevelt when the president needed to stand or "walk." Amiable, there to serve, undemanding, Watson was part of the wallpaper of Roosevelt's life.

On the porch on Sunday night, under what Daisy called "a moonlit mackerel sky," Roosevelt talked of Churchill and Stalin, the past and the future. According to Daisy, John Boettiger and Watson said that "without the P." Teheran "would have been a tragic failure" because "Stalin loves & trusts the P. The P. is the 'solvent,' the 'Moderator,' between Churchill, Stalin, etc." Not really: Stalin loved and trusted few people, and Franklin Roosevelt was not one of them. Roosevelt's conception of himself as the referee of the Big Three, though, was largely accurate. He would like, he appeared to be thinking, to keep playing the role of global arbiter. "The P. used the word 'Moderator' as the possible t.i.tle for the [head of the] future League of Nations," Daisy said. "It would be a good one. The P. would like to be that person if he could. Who can see that far ahead-even he cannot."

ON THE EVENING of June 34, while Roosevelt was in the Virginia countryside, Churchill went to bed on his train near Eisenhower's headquarters; overnight, the supreme commander decided to postpone for a day because of the weather.

A letter arrived from Roosevelt. It was charming, thanking Churchill for a portrait the prime minister had sent the president and regretting they were not together. "Dear Winston," he began, That picture of you I particularly like. So much so that it too becomes an inhabitant of my bedroom wall. I am awfully glad to have it.

I am safely back in Was.h.i.+ngton trying to catch up and I am really practically all right again though I am still having some tests made on my plumbing and am keeping regular hours with much allocation to sleep. The old bronchial pneumonia has completely disappeared. The real triumph is that I have lost nearly ten pounds in the last couple of months and now I have begun the struggle to maintain the loss.

I do not believe I can get away for over a month. Of course, I am greatly disappointed that I could not be in England just at this moment, but perhaps having missed the boat it will be best not to make the trip until the events of the near future are more clear.

I got awfully good reports of you from Averell and Winant. Remember what I told old Moran to make you do-obey his orders. Thus the Commander-in-Chief in one country orders around a mere Minister of Defense in another country. . . . With my affectionate regards.

Touched, Churchill long remembered Roosevelt's letter for how it "expressed in most kindly terms his feelings about our joint work and comrades.h.i.+p, and his hopes and longings for our success." Replying from Portsmouth, Churchill wrote, "Our friends.h.i.+p is my greatest stand-by amid the ever-increasing complications of this exacting war. . . . I am here near Ike's headquarters in my train. His main preoccupation is with the weather. There are wondering sights to see with all these thousands of vessels."

THERE WAS NOTHING to do but wait. Roosevelt and Churchill had done what they could. "The hour was now striking," Churchill said. The moments pa.s.sed slowly. "We returned to London in an agony of uncertainty," Ismay recalled.

When word of the weather delay reached Roosevelt, he drew on personal experience to keep his equanimity. He had, Eleanor noted, "learned from polio that when there was nothing you could do about a situation, then you'd better try to put it out of your mind and go on with your work at hand."

Churchill and Clementine dined alone at No. 10 on Monday, June 5. It was, Mary wrote, one of only four such occasions for the couple in the months between January and September; every other meal required official entertaining or work. Afterward Churchill went to the map room. Clementine came in to say good night. "Do you realise," Churchill said to her, "that by the time you wake up in the morning twenty thousand men may have been killed?"

Back in the White House, Roosevelt gathered his household in the study for drinks. "Fala had not been taken to the Watsons," Daisy said, "so he rushed in, full of excitement at having his master home again." There was dinner in the West Hall (Roosevelt and Eleanor talked about de Gaulle), and at eight-thirty Roosevelt delivered his broadcast on the fall of Rome.

Heading for bed, Roosevelt briefed Eleanor on what was happening in the Channel. Despite the psychological wear and tear of the years, in times of stress the bond of marriage tended to rea.s.sert itself for both the Churchills and the Roosevelts. Churchill could be demanding, Clementine difficult, Franklin deceptive, and Eleanor wearying, but what Mary Soames once called "the golden thread of love" bound each couple together.

ELEANOR BROUGHT WORD of H-Hour to her husband. "On D-Day, about three o'clock in the morning, I was called by the White House switchboard and told to awaken the President, that the War Department wanted him on the telephone-General Marshall was speaking himself," Mrs. Roosevelt recalled. "I went in and wakened my husband. He sat up in bed and put on his sweater, and from then on was on the telephone."

She thought Franklin "was tense waiting for news." Calm on the surface, Roosevelt was thinking of the men under fire. "Even then," Eleanor remembered of her apparently serene husband, "the only thing he said was: 'I wonder how Linaka will come out.' Mr. Linaka, a retired naval veteran of the First World War, had worked for my husband on his tree plantations and was now back in the navy. He commanded one of the landing craft on D-Day." (And made it through.) In London, Churchill worked in the map room. In the White House, Roosevelt spent the hours getting reports. They knew their men were facing death-in the end, there were about 10,300 American, British, and Canadian casualties-and they knew history would hold them to account. Until the issue of dropping an atomic weapon was more than theoretical, OVERLORD was arguably the most difficult decision a president or a prime minister of the twentieth century had had to make. And Roosevelt and Churchill had made it. "All that weekend," Pamela Churchill wrote Averell Harriman, who was in Moscow, "the drone of airplanes was more intense & continuous than ever before."

AT NOON LONDON time, Churchill went to the House and spent ten minutes talking about Italy. "After thus keeping them on tenterhooks for a little," Churchill recalled, he came to the point: "I have also to announce to the House that during the night and the early hours of this morning the first of the series of landings in force upon the European continent has taken place." Churchill listed the specifics, then said: "The battle that has now begun will grow constantly in scale and in intensity for many weeks to come, and I shall not attempt to speculate upon its course. This I may say however. Complete unity prevails throughout the Allied armies. There is a brotherhood in arms between us and our friends of the United States."

The operation appeared to be succeeding. "Thank G.o.d!" Roosevelt said of lighter-than-expected early casualties.

"Except for the planes overhead it was all so quiet," Pamela Churchill told Harriman. She ran into Martha Gellhorn, the writer, who, Pamela said, "was having difficulty in making her cab driver believe it was D-Day. He was quite certain that as a member of the Home Guard, the invasion could not possibly have started without him. Rather touching."

AT LAST, THE Second Front was open, a bridgehead soon established, the journey to Berlin set to begin. Decades later, there is still debate over whether such an operation could have taken place in 1943, but the preponderance of the evidence-and the resulting victory-suggests that Churchill and Roosevelt, whatever their differing motivations through the months from the first Was.h.i.+ngton conference to Teheran, followed a sound course. With the luxury of retrospection, we can see that the events of 1943 and early 1944 (the combat experience gained in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, and the achievement of air superiority over northwest France by April of 1944), the extraordinary buildup of forces and materiel, and the Allied triumph in the Battle of the Atlantic, which kept supplies coming to the liberating armies, all took time. (And the landings were just the beginning; it was a long and b.l.o.o.d.y slog to V-E Day.) Churchill and Roosevelt dealt with a staggering number of substantive issues during the war, from huge economic questions to colonialism to China to postwar political arrangements in countries large and small. All important, all of moment. In the sweep of what Churchill might have called the long story of the great democracies, however, the liberation of Europe and, in time, the defeat of j.a.pan made a new world possible-a world that was, for many, a better one than existed before. World War II was marked by incalculable bloodshed, immeasurable suffering, and the horrifying and unforgivable sacrifice of the innocent. Faced with a world at war, however, Churchill and Roosevelt did their best, together, to find the means to guide a coalition of nations through one of the defining storms of human history. Sometimes one was right, sometimes the other. But they always stayed in the arena, grappling with each other and with Stalin to find a way to win. Had they failed, or truly fallen out with each other, we could be living in a different world.

STRANGELY, ROOSEVELT TOOK a moment on D-Day to dispatch two typewriters to Churchill. Warren Kimball later explained the background: "After returning from a visit with British military officials in England, General Joseph T. McNarney had written to thank the Prime Minister for his hospitality," Kimball wrote. "Churchill indicated that he would like two typewriters which had the typeface used in McNarney's letter (a modified 'square serif')." Roosevelt's jocular accompanying note read: "My dear Winston: I am informed that you liked the type script of a letter recently sent you by General McNarney, U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff. Two electric typewriters that produce this type script are being s.h.i.+pped without delay which I hope you will accept as a gift from me and as a symbol of the strong bond between the people of America and Great Britain."

AS THE DAY wore on, Churchill and Roosevelt played roles each found comfortable. Churchill would again brief the House, "obviously enjoying," The New York Times said, "his old role of war reporter [and] painting a glowing picture of the initial Allied successes, which he said were accomplished with 'extremely little loss.' " The president a.s.sumed the part of national pastor. That night, Roosevelt broadcast a D-Day prayer; the White House had distributed the text beforehand so that the audience-an estimated one hundred million Americans-could recite the words with Roosevelt.

Almighty G.o.d: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rus.h.i.+ng speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. . . .

Thy will be done, Almighty G.o.d.

Amen.

Roosevelt had the prayer bound in leather and sent a copy to Churchill.

In Moscow, the Russians were delighted with the news from Western Europe-the Soviets, Averell Harriman said, were "awash in boozy good feeling."

"THE FIRST WAVE of excitement over D-Day is pa.s.sing-& people are reverting to normal again . . . ," Pamela wrote Harriman by the end of that first week. As Churchill played bezique at Chequers with his daughter-in-law the weekend after the landings, the story of the conflict between the Mediterranean and France was about to get a new chapter. The latest controversy: an operation code-named ANVIL, a follow-up landing in southern France. Churchill wanted to use the resources to push ahead in Italy and possibly on into Austria.

Churchill sent a long memo to make the case. "I am shocked to think of the length of the message that I shall be sending you tonight," Churchill told Roosevelt on June 28. "It is a purely personal communication between you and me in our capacity as heads of the two western democracies."

Roosevelt rejected Churchill's pleas.

"At Teheran," Roosevelt wrote back, "we agreed upon a definite plan of attack. That plan has gone well so far. Nothing has occurred to require any change. Now that we are fully involved in our major blow, history will never forgive us if we lose precious time and lives in indecision and debate. My dear friend, I beg you let us go ahead with our plan."

Reading Roosevelt's cable, Churchill called for General Brooke, who told his diary: "I thought at first we might have trouble with him, he looked like he wanted to fight the President. However in the end we got him to agree to our outlook which is: 'All right, if you insist on being d.a.m.ned fools, sooner than falling out with you, which would be fatal, we shall be d.a.m.ned fools with you, and we shall see that we perform the role of d.a.m.ned fools d.a.m.ned well!' "

Churchill, who had been pus.h.i.+ng for a trip to Was.h.i.+ngton to make his case personally, composed a reply to Roosevelt. It must have been a difficult night, one not unlike the evenings at Teheran, when Churchill felt his influence with Roosevelt waning. His disappointment leapt off the page. "We are deeply grieved by your telegram," he wrote Roosevelt. This was, he said, "the first major strategic and political error for which we two have to be responsible. . . . It is with the greatest sorrow that I write to you in this sense. But I am sure that if we could have met, as I so frequently proposed, we should have reached a happy agreement. I send you every personal good wish. However we may differ on the conduct of the war, my personal grat.i.tude to you for your kindness to me and for all you have done for the cause of freedom will never be diminished."

Tough words, but saying them lifted his spirits. Having made his case, he was ready to move on. Brooke found Churchill "in a good mood" the next day. Going over the cable at Hyde Park, a "tired & listless" Roosevelt tried to soothe Churchill. "I appreciate deeply your clear exposition of your feelings and views on this decision we are making," Roosevelt wrote. "I honestly believe that G.o.d will be with us as he has in Overlord and in Italy and in North Africa. I always think of my early geometry 'A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.' "

The future with the Soviets was also an issue. Over the Fourth, Roosevelt and Daisy talked of Russia. Stalin, Daisy said, had been quoted saying that "the President is my friend, we will always understand each other." His dealings with Stalin, Daisy told Roosevelt, "are one of the great triumphs of his career, and only the future can tell how much that relations.h.i.+p is going to count in rebuilding our shattered world-Before they met, there was doubt & suspicion on Stalin's part, & also, probably, on the P.'s. Now, there is the basis for talking, for working things out together-but the P. smiled & said he keeps his fingers crossed!"

CHURCHILL WAS ALSO confronting a new threat at home: Hitler's "flying bombs"-V-1 and later V-2 rockets-were terrorizing London. Mary had to deal with the missiles firsthand in her antiaircraft battery. For Clementine, it was one more worry to add to all the others.

Randolph was in a plane crash in July 1944, prompting a kind note to Churchill from Roosevelt. "I am very happy that Randolph has come through all right," Roosevelt wrote. "Thank you so much," Churchill replied. "Ten died and nine survived."

Family, war, and politics were interwoven for both men. One night early in 1944, Franklin Jr. and John Boettiger got into a heated dinner debate about the war. Franklin Jr. raised his voice; Boettiger countered him point by point. Looking "rather wan," Daisy said, Roosevelt listened as young Franklin made an interesting point. "To a man," the president's son said, "from the highest to the lowest, every individual in the armed forces would consider the P. was a 'quitter' if he did not run again this year." Afterward, Roosevelt "did a little work," Daisy said, but "didn't feel up to much."

"London is as black as ever, one notices no difference"

Winston and Mary Churchill survey an antiaircraft battery directing fire at a V-1 rocket overhead, summer 1944.

CHAPTER 11.

LIFE IS NOT VERY EASY.

Churchill Worries About Roosevelt's Reelection-.

Stalin and Churchill in Moscow-.

Roosevelt's Global Vision-"It's in the Bag"

AS THE ROCKETS struck London, the Allies fought through the Norman hedgerows, and the j.a.panese dug in for years of war to come, Churchill mused aloud about the press of business to Roosevelt. "We have immense tasks before us," he wrote Roosevelt in the weeks after D-Day. "Indeed, I cannot think of any moment when the burden of the war has laid more heavily upon me or when I have felt so unequal to its ever-more entangled problems. I greatly admire the strength and courage with which you face your difficulties, especially in a year when you have, what I may venture to call, other preoccupations." The central "preoccupation" was the 1944 presidential race, and the old campaigners understood each other.

"Over here new political situations crop up every day but so far, by constant attention, I am keeping my head above water," Roosevelt had written Churchill a few days before OVERLORD. Roosevelt had a few health scares-a collapse in his train in California and an angina attack during a speech aboard a wars.h.i.+p among them-but only a handful of people knew the specifics. "Nothing," wrote John Gunther, "was going to budge him from the driver's seat except death."

Churchill's circle monitored FDR's fortunes on the home front with care. A year earlier, in mid-1943, Beaverbrook had come to the United States to take political soundings about the upcoming race. What Beaverbrook heard from Roosevelt's foes suggested that a Roosevelt loss-MacArthur, Dewey, and Willkie were the most likely Republican nominees-would make Churchill's job harder. According to Beaverbrook's notes, a bitter Joseph Kennedy believed that "Roosevelt will be defeated. The Republican candidate will be Dewey. . . . Roosevelt's chances, Kennedy declared, are declining steadily. . . . Kennedy makes attacks on the President for yielding to Churchill's strategy [on Africa in 1942 and '43]. . . . This is bad business for the Americans, and damaging to the President." The next day, with Willkie: "Willkie is moving in the direction of hostility to Great Britain's public men," Beaverbrook noted. ". . . And he speaks with admiration of Stalin." The day after that, with Dewey himself: "Dewey's conversation is given up altogether to domestic issues. He is too far removed from the war front to give close study to Europe, and he is of the opinion anyway that the war is nearly over." Beaverbrook's summation as he returned to London: "Danger of hurting Roosevelt by coming up too strongly in his favor." All Churchill could do was watch. "I saw a lot of Richard Pim, who ran the Prime Minister's map room, and he made it very clear that they were praying for FDR to win," recalled George Elsey. They would have to be quiet prayers, said in the shadows.

DEWEY WAS GOING to make Roosevelt's age part of the campaign. Anna knew it was coming. "One must not minimize his evident strategy," Daisy noted after talking with Anna, "which will include harping on the subject of the age of the members of the cabinet, F.D.R.'s health, etc."

Anna had another issue concerning her father to deal with. "Father asked me one day . . . whether I would mind if he invited a very close friend to dinner," she recalled. His daughter guessed who it was before he could tell her: "He said Mrs. Rutherfurd." Anna agreed. "It was a terrible decision to have to make in a hurry, because I realized that Mother wasn't going to be there, and I was sure she didn't know about it, but my quick decision was that the private lives of these people were not my business," Anna said. "After all, it was their business. And who was I to say you can or cannot?" Eleanor would not be told. "I didn't feel guilty or anything else," Anna said. "I never said anything to Mother just because I thought you don't want to hurt somebody else's feelings, that was all. . . . I just felt, while they were my parents, nevertheless they had reached an age where they certainly were ent.i.tled to lead their own private lives without having me, of all people, or any of their children, say, 'You shouldn't do this' or 'You shouldn't see this person or the other person.' "

Roosevelt's ability to operate on different levels simultaneously was remarkable. Concealing his contacts with Lucy from Eleanor, he could also be an amiable husband, father, and grandfather. Eleanor related this story: their son John Roosevelt, a naval officer, was dropping his wife, Anne, and children, including a new baby, off for a White House stay while he went to sea. "Johnny called me one evening just before Anne and the children were to come," Eleanor wrote. "I was out, so he talked to his father who was already in bed. . . . Finally he said: 'Be sure to order the diaper service.' Franklin, who had never heard of the diaper service, said, 'What did you say?' Johnny replied, 'The diaper service,' and explained what it was and said the order should be for two hundred. This bewildered his father who asked: 'Is there anything wrong with the baby? We always boiled ours.' Johnny said: 'Oh, father, people don't do things like that any more. . . . This is just a supply to have on hand.' Franklin dutifully made a mental note. . . . He thought to himself, 'I will call Hacky (Miss Hackmeister, the head telephone operator) and say: 'Hacky get me the diaper service immediately' and Hacky will say 'What did you say, Mr. President' and then I will answer: 'The diaper service, Hacky, I do not know what it is but please get it.' After Hacky completes the call I will say: 'This is the President of the United States and I want to order two hundred diapers sent to me at the White House.' All of this having been carefully decided in his mind, he put out his light and went to sleep." Roosevelt enjoyed retelling the tale, which suggests a fond engagement with the life of his family. He could regulate his emotions, balancing secrets with the life he had built with Eleanor.

ROOSEVELT WAS ALSO running cold and then hot about Churchill. At tea in late June with the Chinese amba.s.sador, Roosevelt joked about Churchill's stubbornness. To Chiang Kai-shek through the envoy, Daisy noted, "The P. sent word, confidentially, & by word of mouth, that later this year, he hopes for a meeting of the four powers: Churchill, Stalin, Chiang & himself-probably in Scotland, or North England-with a laugh he said: 'I think that Stalin, Chiang, & I can bring Brother Churchill around.' "

At the same time, he was giving Churchill a number of souvenirs tied to Churchill's love of history. First went a batch of naval papers bearing the signatures of a number of British officers who died at Jutland in World War I and, in Roosevelt's words, "various items which relate to some early Churchills. I thought you would like to have them for your family papers." They thrilled Churchill, evoking a moment of reminiscence about Lord Randolph. One of the papers, Churchill said in a note of thanks, was a "visiting card signed by my Father in 1886 when, as you know, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer." As you know. Just the sight of his father's handwriting pulled him back in his imagination to the legend of Lord Randolph; it is touching that Churchill believed in the myth of his father so strongly that he would a.s.sume everyone could chart the milestones of his long-ago career. Roosevelt also sent Churchill a framed copy of the Declaration of the United Nations, a reminder of their happy New Year's Day two and a half years before.

IN MIDSUMMER 1944, there was talk in London and in Was.h.i.+ngton about military action against the deadly machinery of the Holocaust. The potential target: Auschwitz. Telling Churchill on July 7, 1944, of a request by the Jewish Agency of Palestine to bomb railway lines leading to the death camp, Anthony Eden suggested looking into striking the killing complex as well. "Get anything out of the Air Force you can," Churchill replied, "and invoke me if necessary." Citing technical military reasons, the British secretary of state for air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, thought the operation beyond their capabilities but said they should propose it to the Americans "to see if they are prepared to try it." Was.h.i.+ngton, however, was resisting the idea. Bombing the rail lines would probably have done little: The Germans were always quick to repair infrastructure. Attacking Auschwitz itself was also problematic, for the mission would have killed some of those it was intended to save. Advocates of the proposal, however, argue that the symbolic value of the strike would have outweighed these other considerations. In any event, from the available evidence, Roosevelt and Churchill did not discuss the bombing of the rail lines or the camps, and nothing came of the proposed mission.

CHURCHILL PROPOSED A summer summit-anywhere. Roosevelt, who was managing his nomination for a fourth term, traveling to the West Coast and heading to Hawaii to ponder Pacific strategy, thought it best to wait a bit on seeing Churchill. "I wholly agree that we three should meet but it would be a lot easier for me if we could make it the tenth or fifteenth of September," Roosevelt wrote on July 17. "This would get me back in plenty of time for the election, although that is in the lap of the G.o.ds."

Roosevelt was trying to have everything his way this season, including who was to be his running mate. Henry Wallace was out-the party regulars thought him too ethereal and too liberal.

Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, who had led a panel investigating war production, fit the moment. Roosevelt did not know Truman well, but, as Democratic boss Ed Flynn noted, "his record as head of the Senate Committee . . . was excellent, his labor votes in the Senate were good; on the other hand he seemed to represent to some degree the conservatives in the party, he came from a border state, and he had never made any 'racial' remarks. He just dropped into the slot."

CHURCHILL WAS CONSUMED with the crush of government, military strategy, the German rocket attacks, and some family strife.

There was more trouble with Randolph and Pamela. Writing to Harriman on July 1 after speaking with her estranged husband, Pamela reported: "It is difficult for me to describe my conversation with R. I think it would take too long & it could not all be put on paper. Roughly, the idea behind it all was this-R had such a row with his father that they were not going to see each other again. . . . The major part of the row I believe to have been over me & the child being at C[hequers], which R resents very much." Trying to negotiate these complex currents-currents that were consuming at least a part of Winston Churchill's time and emotional energy in the middle of the war-Pamela and Randolph lunched. "As R was leaving the country at 4 o'clock there was no time to mince words-So I told him that I had heard many 2nd and 3rd hand talks of what he had said-& that if he had any grievances I'd like to hear them direct from him. Well we had the most amiable lunch-He saw my point of view & I saw his. The outcome being that we parted better friends than we've been for years."