Susan Butler - Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership

This is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Copyright 2015 by Susan Butler

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Butler, Susan, [date]
Roosevelt and Stalin : Portrait of a Partnership by Susan Butler.First edition.

pages cm

This is a Borzoi BookT.p. verso.
ISBN 978-0-307-59485-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-101-87462-2 (eBook)
1. World War, 19391945Diplomatic history. 2. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 18821945. 3. Stalin, Joseph, 18791953. 4. United StatesForeign relationsSoviet Union. 5. Soviet UnionForeign relationsUnited States. I. Title.
D 753. B 83 2015
940.532dc23 2014011723

Jacket image: World War II Poster Collection (detail), (Mass 36), Literary Manuscripts Collection, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Jacket design by Janet Hansen

v3.1

To the 405,000 Americans and the 27,000,000 Russians who died in World War II

O n Thursday morning, November 11, 1943, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, President Roosevelt left the White House in an open convertible and swept through the capital, the Stars and Stripes and the presidential flag flying from the front of the car. He was on his way to pay homage at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. There was a holiday air in the city: flags were on display, and banks were closed for the day. As the presidents car reached the cemetery and proceeded to the tomb, a twenty-one-gun salute, fired from the latest antitank guns, boomed out across the Potomac valley.

At eleven oclock, the exact hour the armistice had been signed, Roosevelt stood bareheaded between General Edwin Pa Watson, his military aide, and Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, his naval aide, in front of the tomb. The day was chilly and raw, the trees almost bare; there was a cold wind. Over the presidents shoulders was the dark navy dress cape he frequently wore on short trips from the White House. An army bugler flanked the group on one side; a soldier holding a big wreath of yellow and russet chrysanthemums stood on the other. An army band struck up The Star-Spangled Banner, after which there was the customary moment of silence. Admiral Brown then took the wreath and laid it on the tomb for the president. Four ruffles of muffled drums were heard, and the bugler blew taps.

Following the brief ceremony, the sounds of a second twenty-one-gun salute boomed out across the valley as the presidents car wound its way out of the cemetery.

The House of Representatives marked the day with commemorative speeches, most of which voiced the sentiment that ways must be found to make the coming peace more durable than the last. The Senate was not in session.

Roosevelt was in the tenth year of his presidency, the country almost two years into World War II. As darkness fell and rain started, the president again left the White House by car, but unlike in the morning he slipped out unobtrusively. He was on his way to the marine base at Quantico, Virginia, where the USS Potomac, the sleek white 165-foot presidential yacht, a Coast Guard cutter to which an upper deck and a cabin had been added, awaited. It would take him on the first leg of the 17,442-mile trip through submarine-infested waters to Tehran, Iran, more than halfway around the world. There, for the first time, he would meet Joseph Stalin, the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, the renegade. It would be a momentous occasion for both of them and for the world.

With Roosevelt was his closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, in charge of the Lend-Lease program providing the massive aid flowing to the Soviet Union; his chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy; his personal physician, Vice Admiral Dr. Ross McIntire; Admiral Brown; General Watson; and his physical therapist, Lieutenant Commander George Fox. The presidents car arrived at a dark, seemingly deserted dock far away from intrusive eyes, where the Potomac awaited. Aboard the Potomac all was in readiness.

Exactly six minutes after the presidential party stepped onto the ship, it headed down the Potomac River bound for Cherry Point, Virginia, in the Chesapeake Bay, sixty-three miles distant, where it anchored for the night.

A little after 9:00 the next morning the Potomac approached the USS Iowa, anchored out in the bay in deeper water. It drew up alongside, and in the very light, cool morning air Roosevelt was placed in a sort of bosuns chair rigged from the rear sundeck of the Potomac and swung aboard the Iowas main deck just abreast of number three turret. When the transfer of the rest of the party was completed, the Potomac vanished into the distance, ordered to cruise out of sight and away from its well-known home berth for the next week, to create the impression, in case any journalist noticed the presidents absence, that he was off on another private pleasure cruise aboard what some called the Floating White House because of the large amount of time he spent on it.

Roosevelt had always loved the sea. As a young boy at Campobello Island in Canada, where he summered, he had learned to sail his fathers sailboat the Half Moon, a forty-six-foot cutter, taking it out every chance he got and handling it with ease. After he contracted polio at thirty-nine and lost the use of his legs, he had invested in a houseboat that he kept in Florida waters and lived on for months at a time.

Now he was looking forward to the voyage of the Iowa, the navys newest, largest, fastest battleship. It had been specially fitted out for him: an elevator installed, ramps built over the coamings and deck obstructions to accommodate his wheelchair. As in all places where FDR lived, in the bathroom there was a tub with metal railings that FDR could grasp to raise himself up, a toilet bowl exactly the height of his wheelchair, and a mirror low enough so he could shave sitting down. His favorite leather-upholstered reclining chair was also in his quarters.

Half an hour after he was swung aboard, the big ship was under way. Waiting to greet FDR were all the top brass of the U.S. Armed Forces: General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army; H. H. Hap Arnold, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces; General Brehon B. Somervell, chief of Army Service Forces; Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet; and Admiral William Leahy, the presidents chief of staff; plus four other generals, three more admirals, and about fifty staff officers of subordinate rank. At Roosevelts request, no honors were rendered as he came aboard, and because of wartime restrictions his flag was not flown. Also aboard were the eight Secret Service men who always guarded the president.