A few months after D-Day, FDR is reelected as president for an unprecedented fourth term. A few days after his inauguration in January 1945, he flies to Yalta, on the Black Sea, to meet with allies Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin . Russia's Red Army is only fifty miles east of Berlin; Allied forces are turning back a powerful army in Belgium at the horrendous Battle of the Bulge. Soviet forces liberate a German concentration camp at Auschwitz, in Poland, and see the unimaginable horrors committed by the Nazis . In the Pacific, in February, General Douglas MacArthur recaptures the Philippines .

In April, President Roosevelt is in Warm Springs, Georgia. He is exhausted, and needs a few days rest . He is writing a speech, thinking about the peace that is to come. He writes: "The mere conquest of our enemies is not enough. We must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible." And then suddenly Roosevelt raises a hand to his temple, and says "I have a terrific headache." They are the last words he will ever speak .

The flag-draped coffin begins its long journey to Washington . Unable to sleep, Eleanor watches from the train. Later she writes about it: "I lay in my berth, looking out at the countryside he had loved and watching the faces of the people at stations, and even at crossroads, who had come to pay their last tribute through the night."

During the memorial service, the whole nation comes to a halt . Airplanes sit on runways; radios are silent; telephone service is cut off; movie theaters are closed; 505 New York subway trains are stopped . The whole nation pays tribute to the man who led it through two of its worst times—depression and world war—with courage and unfailing confidence. And they remember these words of his about the importance of American freedom to the whole world: "In the future days, we look forward to a world founded on four essential freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear ."

On April 30, twenty days after Roosevelt's funeral, Hitler is dead. He has killed himself. A week later, German leaders surrender to General Eisenhower in France. In June, cities all over Japan are firebombed. Millions are homeless, but the Japanese won't surrender. President Harry Truman decides to use the secret super weapon that scientists have been developing. At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the first atom bomb is dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima . The size and fury of the explosion are greater than anything ever created by humans . Ten days later, Emperor Hirohito asks his people to accept the coming of peace and surrender .