Not every policy, however, was as masterly. Time and again, he also temporized, unwilling to make a decision until a crisis arrived at his doorstep. Temperamentally, he might have been more at home in the quieter and quainter presidencies of Woodrow Wilson or Theodore Roosevelt, a time of simpler, more ad hoc government. But by the end of 1943, he would be responsible for creating, first, a structure for waging global war—overseeing the creation of the huge, imposing defense and war agencies that we know today—and laying the foundation for the very structure of modern presidential government.
Even here, however, he remained unpredictable. For example, he established the National Resources Planning Board, but then criticized it for dreaming up grandiose theories, particularly in economics. By the middle of the war, he had put together a first-rate, even stellar, cabinet, and surrounded himself with men like Hopkins, Hassett, Stimson, Marshall, Forrestal, Bowles, Byrnes, Nimitz, Eisenhower, and MacArthur. However, he frequently resisted delegating power to them, or even providing them with adequate coordination or administration. The result was a government often in conflict with itself. Stimson, the secretary of war, once groused that Roosevelt was “the poorest administrator I’ve ever worked under.” Stimson concluded: “He wants to do it all himself.” In truth, Roosevelt saw his job as head of state less as a matter of management and more as leading the American people. Thus he was also the sermonizer in chief, with his great, resonant eastern voice, articulating principles, fostering shared morals and momentum, and inspiring personal loyalty. In short, moving a nation.
And always, his remained the public face of humanity.
Nothing about him was textbook. He was a man of principle but also a man of expedience. He ably practiced the nuances of negotiation, but he was also a preacher, talking about the global brotherhood of man. And he was devious. With a mischievous air, he loved nothing more than keeping his own government off guard. He deliberately fostered disarray among his own people, believing that this led to more creative policy making: sometimes he would supply information to his aides; at other times he would deliberately withhold it, keeping them in the dark. He made copious use of his own personal desk drawer of intelligence, culled from bits of gossip and all the endless telegrams, correspondence, and memorandums that arrived daily in his office.
And as Hitler would one day learn, he also had an impeccable sense of timing: some days, he seemed strangely sluggish, dragging his feet on decisions, waiting interminably before acting. But he was just as likely, particularly when he was politically vulnerable, to move quickly, even before his staff and his cabinet were informed.
Given his style, it was almost predictable that as Roosevelt navigated the war, his government was in constant turmoil. No surprise, Walter Lippmann once described Roosevelt’s leadership as “hesitant and confused,” and a congressional critic gave a radio talk called “Roosevelt Versus Roosevelt,” saying that the nation needed “fewer and better Roosevelts.” Was this fair? Sometimes his presidential magic worked; sometimes not. Disorder, delays, and muddle were frequently the watchwords; problems were met principally by improvisation, not long-term strategy. Yet somehow it all came together. For example, in virtually the same breath he could be a consummate realist, speaking about winning the war as quickly as possible, but also speak fervently about the peace, when a successor to the ill-fated League of Nations would take over.
It was thus perhaps fitting that on April 13, 1943, Roosevelt dedicated the Thomas Jefferson Memorial on the two-hundredth anniversary of Jefferson’s birth. While a stiff wind whipped across the tidal basin, the bareheaded president donned his black cape and rose on his braced legs to speak to the crowd. “Today, in the midst of a great war for freedom,” he said, “we dedicate a shrine to freedom.” Then he paid this simple tribute: “Jefferson was no dreamer.” Indeed, these two presidents, one a son of Virginia, the other a New Yorker, had much in common. Jefferson was an aristocrat who spoke in the name of the common people, and so was Roosevelt. Jefferson was a schemer and a manipulator, and so was Roosevelt. Jefferson was a deft politician and a fierce partisan, and so was Roosevelt. Both gave birth to poetic words—founding documents, really—that brilliantly inspired the American people in their own time and generations later. And each could divide people as passionately as he united them. Each was also more than a touch hypocritical, even though both had a sublime quality. Finally, both men sought to peer over the political horizon.
As with the Depression, throughout the mind-numbing trials of the war, Roosevelt never shed his optimism. But unlike Hitler, neither did he have blinkers on. Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau observed, “The amusing thing about the president is that he can state these facts coolly and calmly whether we win or lose the war, and to me it is most encouraging that he really seems to face these issues, and that he is not kidding himself one minute about the war.” And as Isaiah Berlin said of Roosevelt, “He was absolutely fearless. In a despondent world which appeared divided between wicked and fatally efficient fanatics marching to destroy, and bewildered populations on the run . . . he believed in his own ability . . . to stem this terrible tide” of war. Berlin concluded that Roosevelt had the character and energy of the Axis dictators, but was “on our side.”
Yet even his equanimity had its limits. Roosevelt sought respite from the war, often with a small group of intimates, on many weekends at Shangri-La, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains about sixty miles north of Washington. Invariably, his workload traveled with him. But once there, he could thumb through his beloved detective novels, nibble on cheeses and cocktail appetizers, and chat with friends, sometimes about matters of state but more often about trivial things. In contrast to Hyde Park, Shangri-La was rustic to the point of being ramshackle. For Roosevelt, this was grand. His eyes lit up with boyish glee, and he liked to inform his guests jokingly that one of the bathroom doors “did not close securely.”
No one, however, neither his enemies nor his friends, should have been seduced by his geniality. He was as tough as steel—or just as aptly, as tough-minded as Abraham Lincoln, who weathered the heavens hung in black to win the Civil War. Actually, his adviser Rex Tugwell did compare Roosevelt’s ordeal in the face of the Depression to Lincoln’s struggle against disunion.
A good fight invigorated him—Roosevelt said mockingly that every senator was “a law unto himself”—and he dripped with contempt for his adversaries. Once, speaking before a cheering crowd at Madison Square Garden in October 1936, he said that his enemies were “unanimous in their hate for me!” Then he paused dramatically, and added, “and I welcome their hatred!” Another time he was subjected to sustained booing on Wall Street, and again in Cambridge when Harvard students gathered to see the university’s most eminent alumnus as he glided by in his motorcade; in both instances Roosevelt continued on his way, waving and smiling warmly. Not unsurprisingly, he came to admire the populist Andrew Jackson, who like him had been increasingly regarded with venom by the rich.
Politically he described himself as “a little left of center,” though it is worth remembering that he kept a folder labeled “Liberalism Versus Communism and Conservatism.” Still, he was anything but dogmatic in his philosophy, willing to experiment with countless policies, or jousting with the secretary of state, or deriding economists speaking in “jargon, ab-so-lute jargon.” But deep down, he was a liberal: when his critics insisted that the administration have a balanced budget, Roosevelt boomed, “Hell, a balanced budget isn’t putting people to work. I will balance the budget as soon as I take care of the unemployed!” And there remained an indisputable fact: for a time in the 1930s, when American democracy seemed on the verge of dissolution, when the two political parties seemed drained of energy and the collapse of free institutions remained a very real concern, when millions of people had flocked to the new pied pipers of unrest, demagogues like Huey Long and Father Coughlin, and when society and humanity were in peril, Roosevelt rescued democracy at home. Now, as World
War II raged and the Tehran summit began in earnest, the question loomed: could he do the same abroad?
During the war, this was the issue. It was always the issue.
IN TEHRAN ROOSEVELT WAS about to see exactly how far his personal magic could take him. At three o’clock on a warm Sunday afternoon beneath a cloudless blue sky, Stalin walked unaccompanied from his building and was met outside by a U.S. army officer who escorted him into a room where Roosevelt was waiting. Stalin—a short man with bristly gray hair, pitted cheeks, and a weather-beaten face, not to mention broken teeth stained from years of smoking—was dressed in a khaki tunic adorned with a star of the Order of Lenin on his breast. Roosevelt, seated in his wheelchair, was dressed in a handsome blue business suit. As Stalin extended his hand to take Roosevelt’s, the president was struck by what a powerful figure he was. (“He was a very small man, but there was,” one American noted, “something about him that made him look awfully big.”) Roosevelt also noticed that Stalin looked “curiously” at his shriveled legs and ankles.
Throughout his career Roosevelt had believed in his ability to bond with political allies and adversaries alike, and he was determined to make a personal connection with the Soviet dictator. Well, he should have been; there was much at stake in this meeting. Coarse, cunning, and unscrupulous, Stalin was bound by neither morality nor sentiment: he was the architect of the gulag and the great purges; his regime had coldly executed hundreds of thousands of alleged “enemies of the people” on the flimsiest of evidence; and having started the war as Hitler’s partner until the Nazis double-crossed him by invading the Soviet Union, he was also an unpredictable ally. Up to this point, Stalin had been insisting angrily that the Soviets were suffering a disproportionate loss of life, and the Americans therefore feared that even now the Soviet Union might make a separate peace with Germany. Almost incomprehensibly, the Soviets had lost 1 million men in their victory at Stalingrad alone, more than the United States would lose in the entire war. But bravery and sacrifice also took other forms. Thanks to Roosevelt, the United States was contributing crucial supplies and munitions to the Soviet war effort. In the latter part of 1942 alone, it had sent Stalin a staggering 11,000 jeeps, 50,000 tons of explosives, 60,000 trucks, 250,000 tons of aviation gas, and 450,000 tons of steel, as well as (soon) 5,000 fighter planes, and 2 million pairs of boots for the Russian soldiers fighting and bleeding in the gravelly, snowy wastes around Stalingrad. American tires were keeping Soviet trucks moving and American oil was keeping Soviet planes flying; American blankets were warming Soviet troops, and American food—millions of tons including wheat, flour, meat, and milk—was feeding them. Still, Stalin believed the Allies should bear a larger burden of the fighting: hence his intense determination that they make a direct assault on Nazi-occupied western Europe as soon as possible. Here, Roosevelt was sympathetic.
Nonetheless, Churchill had been lukewarm about this idea, preferring to invade Sicily or to focus on the Mediterranean, while out of necessity Roosevelt had deferred the idea until the United States had sufficient sea transport—cargo boats, tankers, destroyers, and escort vessels—for a major cross-Channel assault. But now, as 1943 drew to a close, with troops fighting on the mainland of Halu, the Allies were making significant inroads. The end of the war was within sight.
The next storm was about to break over Europe. And while meeting with Stalin, Roosevelt was looking ahead.
IN TRUTH, ROOSEVELT HAD wanted to see Stalin in person from the moment the Germans had lunged across the Polish border. He often said that at a meeting he learned more by watching a face than by listening to any of the actual words that were uttered. For years, even as president, he had disliked relying on long written missives. And his private secretary Grace Tully also noted that although he used the phone constantly—it was a lifeline—Roosevelt liked to watch facial expressions as well. Churchill too had recognized this early on and took many opportunities to sit down with Roosevelt in person in order to cement the Anglo-American relationship. But so far, Joseph Stalin had only sent his elusive deputy, V. M. Molotov, to the White House. That was not enough for Roosevelt. So it was that the first meeting of the Tehran conference would be an informal tête-à-tête between himself and Stalin, and it would take place in Roosevelt’s rooms.
Roosevelt welcomed Stalin, repeating his long-stated wish that they meet in person. Surprisingly soft-spoken, even humble, Stalin countered with his own greeting and pleaded, once again, that his preoccupation with military matters had until now kept the two apart. Then the two men began to talk, and the topics ranged across the globe. True, Roosevelt wanted to talk about military issues, but above all he wanted to discuss longer-term diplomatic matters as well. Still, in deference to Stalin, the president asked about the eastern battlefront, where the Soviets were taking the brunt of the punishing German assault—it was “not too good,” in Stalin’s words. Stalin added that the Germans were bringing up fresh divisions and the Red Army was about to lose a crucial railway center. Roosevelt artfully asked, however: didn’t the initiative still lie with the Red Army? Stalin nodded yes.
At Roosevelt’s urging, they moved on to discuss broader matters: France, Indochina, China, and India. Again and again, the president was drawn to diplomacy; again and again, he wanted to talk about the future beyond the war, and specifically his concept of a postwar world managed by an international body led by the four great powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China. Then, almost as quickly as it had begun, the private meeting was finished; the two had spoken for about an hour.
It was enough time for them to feel each other out but, as far as Roosevelt was concerned, not enough to cement “any kind of personal connection” with Stalin.
THE FIRST MEETING OF all three leaders had been scheduled for four o’clock, in the large conference room at the Soviet embassy.
The leaders and their staffs gathered around a specially procured oak table. It was round, eliminating the issue of who would be seated at the head or the foot, but that did little to eliminate the subtle jockeying for global influence. Given this group’s diversity, there was bound to be conflict. Also, there was no fixed agenda; the participants could discuss what they liked and avoid whatever they did not. Inside, the conference room itself was more suited to the chilly winds of Moscow than the sunny warmth of Tehran. Curtains billowed about the windows, tapestries hung from the walls, and the chairs were oversized. Each leader arrived with his aides, although Roosevelt was without George Marshall, who, confused about the scheduled time, was off sightseeing.
Churchill and Stalin had already agreed to defer to Roosevelt to open the session.
Roosevelt, who was sixty-two, began with a quip about welcoming his elders, and then noted emphatically, “We are sitting around this table for the first time as a family, with the one object of winning the war.” Churchill spoke next; he was suffering from a cold, so his normally resonant voice was barely audible, yet he said eloquently that the three of them represented the “greatest concentration of power the world has ever seen,” adding, “In our hands here is the possible certainty of shortening the war, the much greater certainty of victories, but the absolute certainty that we hold the happy future of mankind.” Stalin was perfunctory, speaking about the “potential collaboration” of the three Allies, then thundering, “Now let us get down to business,” by which he meant the American and British invasion of Europe, the opening of a true second front against Germany.
The Americans in turn wanted Stalin to signal willingness to commit his forces in the battle in the Pacific. Here, Stalin was sly, saying that he was too deeply engaged in Europe to join in the war against Japan, but that once Germany collapsed the Allies would march together in the Far East. Satisfied, Roosevelt then steered the conversation back to Europe and the projected invasion, emphasizing that the Allies should indeed stand by the decision, made in August 1943 at the Quebec Summit, to invade in May 1944, while also noting that the harsh realities of weather w
ould impede a second front in France before late spring. “The Channel is such a disagreeable body of water,” Roosevelt said; then, conscious of Stalin’s concerns, he added, “No matter how unpleasant that body might be, however, we still want to get across it.”
Churchill, who could well remember a dismal period less than three years earlier when Great Britain had been the only nation under assault from German bombs, testily interjected that when it came to the English Channel, “We were very glad it was a disagreeable body of water at one time.”
Roosevelt plunged ahead with further discussion of the cross-Channel invasion, to be code-named Overlord. Given the projected timetable, what could America and Britain do in the interim to divert German resources and reduce the onus on the Red Army? An impassive Stalin, smoking profusely, had his ideas, averring that an invasion from the north could be preceded by an attack through the south of France. In a pointed reminder that the east still remained the central front of the war, he stated that in battling the Germans it had become clear to him that a big offensive launched from only one direction had a far lower likelihood of success. Attacking from two directions would compel the Germans to disperse their forces and would give the Allies a chance to link up and multiply their power by converging. Perhaps this thinking might be applied to the current plans?
Whereas Roosevelt seized upon this concept, Churchill balked. He did not want to pull out forces currently in Italy; as such, he had already suggested making alternative plans for the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps even enticing Turkey to join the war. But Stalin wanted no eastern Mediterranean routes; he believed Italy could be nothing more than a diversion, useless as a path into Germany because of the near impassability of the Alps. Ignoring Churchill, Roosevelt sided with Stalin. The British prime minister gracefully fell back, saying, “Although we are all great friends, it would be idle of us to delude ourselves that we all saw eye to eye on all matters.” Meanwhile, Roosevelt implored the military staffs to begin work at once on a plan of attack on southern France to accompany the cross-Channel invasion.