Transcript: Chapter 23

Narrator: On November 8, 1942, ignoring the advice of some of his top commanders, FDR sent American soldiers into combat for the first time against the German army. More than 80,000 Americans poured out of hundreds of warships onto the North African beaches. When Roosevelt picked up the phone to receive news that the assault had begun, an aide noticed that his hand was trembling. He listened, then announced, "We have landed in North Africa. Casualties are below expectations. We are fighting back."

Two months later, Roosevelt again made a dangerous journey. This time he flew to the North African battlefront. No American president since Lincoln had visited troops in a combat zone.

At Casablanca, he met with Winston Churchill to discuss Allied war plans, and again Churchill argued to postpone the cross-channel invasion and Roosevelt agreed. Ships were still in short supply. Then Roosevelt and Churchill set off together for a brief holiday across the Moroccan desert to Marrakech.

Lady Mary Soames: My father said to the president, "You cannot come all this way and not see the sun set over the Atlas Mountains from Marrakech."

At the golden hour, the president had to be carried up to the tower. He was determined to see it from where my father said it should be seen. They sat at the top of the tower and they watched the sun set over the Atlas Mountains.

My father had brought his paints, and he played truant from the war for two days, and he painted the only picture from his brush in the whole of the war. And he later gave it to the president to remind him of their journey to see the sunset.

Narrator: All during the war Roosevelt in secret retreated to his home at Hyde Park, New York. When sleep eluded him, he imagined himself a boy again, he said, coasting down the hills in the snow.

Each day, the war presented the president with terrible choices, forcing him to make decisions that would haunt his reputation. When he was advised to send to internment camps Americans whose only crime was their Japanese ancestry, he sent them. When news of the slaughter of Jews in the German death camps reached him, he felt he could take no special military steps to rescue them. When scientists recommended a weapon more terrible than any known to man, he secretly set them to work on the atomic bomb. Those closest to him would later say that Roosevelt had won overriding goal: winning the war.

Meanwhile, Eleanor Roosevelt hurled herself into the war effort with all the energy that she had brought to the New Deal. During the course of the war, she traveled the world, visiting American soldiers everywhere. The Secret Service gave her the code name "Rover."

On one trip to the South Pacific, she traveled 23,000 miles and visited 400,000 soldiers in Australia, New Zealand and the tiny islands on the edge of the war zone in the Pacific. But she never gave up her social ideals. She continued to insist to her husband that he fight the war, but not surrender the reforming spirit of the New Deal.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: She wanted to use the war as a way of changing the country. Behind the scenes, day after day, she is sending Franklin memos about blacks getting into the armed forces, blacks getting into jobs, day care for women in the factories, unions versus business -- she's always on union's side. She is often at cross-purposes with him, always arguing that the war had to be a vehicle for social reform.

Edna Gurewitsch: There were many times that he would be irritated and Mrs. Roosevelt was a conscience. It's not so pleasant to have someone say, "You shouldn't be doing this, you should be doing something better." It's like your mother.

Trude Lash: She certainly sometimes was his hair shirt. She needed to remind FDR of things which sometimes he didn't forget, but he wanted to push over there while he had other things to do.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: What he would say to her was, "Eleanor, I've got to be careful. If I look like I'm making the war a vehicle for even further New Deal reforms, I'm going to lose my support in Congress." And he kept telling Eleanor that, "If you trust in the momentum of democracy, the country will be changed."

Narrator: By the end of the war, the government had pumped $380 billion into the economy, more than six times the amount spent during all the New Deal years. Every American who wanted a job now found one. The Great Depression was finally over.

And with American factories pouring out weapons and supplies, the tide of war was slowly turning, but at a terrible cost. For two years, American soldiers had been dying all over the world, at Bataan, Corregidor, Iran, Guadalcanal.

In November 1943 Roosevelt flew to Tehran, Iran. With Churchill at his side, he would meet for the first time he other ally, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The Russians had been fighting the Nazis for more than two years, suffering more dead and wounded than any other country at war. Stalin pressured his western allies to launch the cross-channel invasion into Europe as soon as possible.

George Elsey: Stalin was screaming for relief. The Russians were in desperate shape and Stalin hoped that an opening on the second front would relieve some of the pressure on his front.

Narrator: Roosevelt distrusted Stalin, but behind his back, he mischievously called him, "Uncle Joe."

George Elsey: Roosevelt felt he could charm the pants off anyone. He thought it included Uncle Joe, which it most certainly did not.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: When he first starts talking to Stalin, he knows somehow that his charm hasn't penetrated, so he decides to use Churchill as the way of reaching Stalin. As soon as he sat down, he started whispering to Stalin in a very intimate way, in a way that Churchill would have to see what was going on. And then he started openly teasing Churchill relentlessly about his John Bull manner, about his cigars, about his habits, about his clothes. Stalin loved the idea that he had a friend now. Now it was Stalin and Roosevelt against Churchill.

Lady Mary Soames: I think my father was very upset. The president did rather shoulder my father out. I mean, it was-- I can't describe it better than two's company, three's none.

Narrator: FDR believed that by winning Stalin's confidence, he could influence the shape of the post-war world, a world in which one day Russia would replace Britain as a major power.

Lady Mary Soames: If you look at it in purely cold political terms, of the big three, my father represented the nation who contributed least in terms of soldiers and guns and power, and politics is about power.

Narrator: They talked for four days. When Roosevelt told Stalin that the Allies would cross the English Channel and invade northern France in six months, Stalin was satisfied. So was Roosevelt. He had convinced Stalin to enter the war against Japan once Germany was defeated.

By January 1944 FDR had been president for 11 years. He wanted to see the country through to victory, but he also had an extraordinary vision for post-war America. He spoke of guaranteeing everyone a job, a decent home and effective health care. He insisted veterans get a free education and access to low-interest loans. He designed an international organization dedicated to peace, the United Nations.

But the long, hard years in office were beginning to show. Although he was just 62 years old, his health had begun to fail.

George Elsey: By '44, FDR was a noticeably different man than he had been at the beginning of the war. He'd lost a great deal of weight. His face was thin and gaunt. He no longer came to the map room. His hours-- he was spending more and more time in the bedroom or away from the White House, convalescing.

Curtis Roosevelt: I could see the physical deterioration. I mean, the legs were thinner and you could see his face. You could sense that the vitality was ebbing.

Alonzo Fields: You could see him just fade away. He would come to the table sometimes and he would be bright and cheerful, but if any agitation happened in the conversation, he would again sag and he'd sort of droop and drop his head or he would drop his jaw.

Milton Lipson: And I recall on several occasions when he had the misfortune to fall out of his chair and you'd have to come in and there was the president of the United States helpless on the floor, and you gently pick him up, say nothing about it, put him back on the chair and that was it. But your heart would break.

Narrator: Alarmed by the president's failing health, in March 1944 Roosevelt's doctor brought in heart specialist Howard Bruenn.

Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, Cardiologist: And I asked him a lot of questions and there were a few things he mentioned very casually which suggested that he might be having some trouble. Then I went over his neck and chest and I was literally appalled at what I was finding: congestive heart failure, hypertension, high blood pressure. And if there's a weak spot there, it blows just like a pipe.

back to top