Transcript: Chapter 25

Narrator: A quarter of a century earlier, Roosevelt had fallen in love with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer. When Eleanor discovered the romance, Roosevelt promised never to see her again. Not long after, Lucy married a wealthy Southerner Winthrop Rutherford.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: In April of 1944, after Roosevelt had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, he was sent to Bernard Baruch's plantation to recover. And it happened that the month before, Lucy's husband, Winthrop Rutherford, had died. So Lucy came to have lunch with Roosevelt. It was a reminder to him of what it was like when he was young before his polio, what it was like before his body was giving way, as it now was because of his heart condition, and he just felt some need somehow to see her more often. And the only person he could trust with that terrible task of arranging Lucy's visits when Eleanor was away was his daughter Anna.

Curtis Roosevelt: My mother realized that she was getting in perhaps over her head with a divided loyalty, because she certainly realized if she'd called up my grandmother and said, "Pa wants to invite Lucy Mercer for supper, okay?"-- she knew very well what the-- "What?" So it was done in secret.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Lucy would come to Washington. She came six different times in 1944 and 1945, and according to the usher's diaries, Roosevelt would go and pick her up in Georgetown. It would say in the diary, "President motors to Georgetown to pick up Mrs. Rutherford," which seems to me almost, again, a memory of a courtship.

No one has to pick up a person to come to the White House -- they will come on their own accord -- but I think he wanted to go and be in the car alone with her, bring her back to the White House. And then I imagine it just as an easy dinner, they talked about the past, he told her what was going on during the day.

Curtis Roosevelt: It was just a kind of casual, funny conversation that FDR found relaxing, that nobody was asking him to do something, nobody was trying to influence him of one opinion or another.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Niece: To feel the warmth and love of someone -- that's what human beings live for. I think that's what made him carry on. It helped.

Narrator: In the fall of 1944 Roosevelt campaigned for president for the fourth time. The mood in America was changing. The Allies had already liberated Paris and had begun to recapture the islands they had lost in the Pacific.

In a cold, drenching rain, he campaigned through the streets of New York City. Hurricane winds blew just off the coastline. He rode in an open car, baring himself to the elements. He was determined to persuade American voters and whispering journalists that he was not a sick man. In Brooklyn at Ebbets Field, home of the Dodgers, he turned on the old Roosevelt charm.

President Franklin Roosevelt: You know, I come from the State of New York and I've got to make a terrible confession to you. I come from the State of New York and I practiced law in New York City, but I have never been in Ebbets Field before. I've rooted for the Dodgers, and I hope to come back here someday and see them play.

Alistair Cooke: He still looked a boisterous, buoyant character, but of course he was in terrible shape, because he was already very sick. See, we didn't know that. It was the beginning of the-- and then, of course, the decline through the winter was very bad indeed.

Narrator: In January 1945 Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of office for a fourth time.

President Franklin Roosevelt: I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.

Narrator: Twelve years before, he had told a desperate people that they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Now, weak and frail, he still spoke with the same confident optimism.

President Franklin Roosevelt: Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights, then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward, that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.

Narrator: The war was drawing to a close. Berlin lay in ruins, devastated by Allied bombs. Tokyo, too, was burning from bombs dropped by American B-29's. Just two days after the inauguration, Roosevelt traveled to Yalta, a Soviet city on the Black Sea. There he met with Churchill and Stalin for the last time.

Robert Dallek: It's crystal clear to all of them that the war in Europe is coming to an end. It may not end in a month or even three months, but it's clear that Nazi Germany is now going to be defeated and that they are going to have to sort out what the post-war world and post-war Europe is going to look like.

Narrator: Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had been united in their struggle against Hitler, but now, with Nazi Germany crumbling, the Alliance was threatening to come apart. Stalin demanded control of Poland after the war. Roosevelt convinced him to agree to free elections there, but had few illusions the Russian leader would keep his word.

Robert Dallek: What Roosevelt believed was that Stalin and the Soviets had the power and the influence to control Eastern Europe at the end of the war. They were there with millions of men. They were there with a huge -- a vast army and the notion that we were going to go into Eastern Europe to drive them out, I think, is utter nonsense.

Narrator: "I didn't say the agreement was good," Roosevelt told an aide. "I said it was the best I could do." Two days after his return from Yalta, Roosevelt went before Congress to report to the American people.

President Franklin Roosevelt: Yes, I returned from the trip refreshed and inspired. The Roosevelts are not, as you may suspect, averse to travel. We seem to thrive on it.

George Elsey: When he returned from Yalta, he wasn't even able to stand up in the Congress, but gave his speech sitting down, which was extraordinary for him. He would never-- had never before been willing to admit a weakness.

President Franklin Roosevelt: I hope that you will pardon me for an unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say. I know that you will realize that it makes it a lot easier for me in not having to carry about 10 pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs, and also because of the fact that I have just completed a 14,000-mile trip.

Narrator: This was the only time in his long career that FDR publicly acknowledged that he was crippled. The president needed to rest. On Good Friday, March 30, 1945, he retreated to Warm Springs, Georgia.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: And there was something about the simplicity of the place and the pleasures that seemed to bring him back a little bit and allow him to feel perhaps that he had gathered up enough strength to go back to Washington for the final push, but of course, it was not to be that way.

H. Stuart Raper, M.D., Medical Director, Warm Springs Foundation: On the Easter -- the last Easter, you might say -- he came to church. And as he went in, we turned and looked at each other and shook our heads. He looked horrible. He had lost weight. He had lost that smile. He had lost his interest in life and it was very obvious to anybody that he was a sick, sick man.

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