America's Greatest 20th Century Presidents (12 page)

1943

Entering 1943
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the Allies looked to press their advantage in the Pacific and Western Europe.  The United States was firmly pushing the Japanese back across the Pacific, while the Americans and British plotted a major invasion somewhere in Western Europe to relieve the pressure on the Soviets.  By the time the Allies conducted that invasion, the Soviets had lifted the siege of Stalingrad.  The Allies were now firmly winning the war.

Even before the British and Americans were able to make major strategic decisions in 1943, a massive German surrender at Stalingrad in February marked the beginning of the end for Hitler’s armies in Russia.  From that point forward, the Red Army started to steadily push the Nazis backward toward Germany.  Yet it would still take the Red Army almost an entire two years to push the Germans all the way out of Russia.

In July, just a few months after the surrender at Stalingrad, the Allies conducted what at the time was the largest amphibious invasion in history, coordinating the landing of two whole armies on Sicily, over a front more than 100 miles long.  Within weeks of the beginning of the Allied campaign in Italy, Italy’s government wasted no time negotiating peace with the Allies and quickly quit the war. 

Though Italy was no longer fighting for the Axis, German forces continued to occupy and control Italy in 1943.  The Germans attempted to resist the Allies’ invasion on Sicily but were badly outmanned and outgunned, leading to a German evacuation of the island within a month.  The Allies would land on the mainland of Italy in September and continue to campaign against the Germans there.

D-Day

From January 14
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to the 24
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of 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill and other allied leaders met in Casablanca, Morocco.  The Casablanca Conference set out Allies demands for an unconditional surrender of Axis Powers.  The leaders also agreed to the first major allied assault on Europe: an invasion from North Africa via Sicily into Germany.  Roosevelt also agreed to increase submarine bombing in the Atlantic and to send more aid to the Soviet Union. 

In August of 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met again in Quebec to discuss their major victories. Here, they discussed plans to launch a major invasion through France, opening two fronts against Germany.  The two met again in November, this time accompanied by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, to finalize their plans.  At the Tehran Conference, the Allies agreed to the D-Day invasion of France, to happen in the Spring of 1944.  The following month, Roosevelt appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander of the invasion force.

With Allied forces firmly established in Italy, the British and Americans began to plot a much more massive invasion to liberate Western Europe from the Nazis.  In December 1943, President Roosevelt appointed General Dwight Eisenhower Supreme Allied Commander for the upcoming invasion, with General Montgomery as the top British commander coordinating with Eisenhower.  During the first half of 1944, the Americans and British began a massive buildup of men and resources in England, while the military leaders devised an enormous and complex amphibious invasion of Western Europe.

Though the Allies used misinformation to try deceiving the Germans, the sensible place for an invasion was just across the narrow English Channel.  The Germans had built coastal fortifications throughout France to protect against just such an invasion, requiring the Allies to use an elaborate battle plan that would include naval and air bombardment, paratroopers, and even inflatable tanks that would be able to fire on fortifications from the coastline, all while landing nearly 150,000 men across nearly 70 miles of French beaches.  The Allies would then use their beachhead to create an artificial dock, eventually planning to land nearly 1 million men in France

In June 1944, the Allies waited for the right weather to stage the largest, most complex invasion in military history.  On June 6, 1944, General Eisenhower, who had already written a letter apologizing for the failure of the invasion and was carrying it in his coat, commenced the D-Day invasion. 

From the very beginning of June 6, 1944, events were not going as the Allies had planned.  Though the weather was good enough to carry out the amphibious invasion, low cloud-cover caused the Allies’ planes to mostly miss German fortifications on their bombing runs.  Furthermore, the plan called for tens of thousands of paratroopers to land directly behind German lines, but bad visibility caused many of them to be dropped out of place.  And basically none of the operations on the integral Omaha Beach went according to plan.  Allied leaders would have likely been astounded to hear that victory in Europe would be achieved in 11 months.

Despite the problems, by nightfall the Allies had managed to accomplish their objectives in every landing point, at the cost of about 10,000 casualties.  Throughout the summer, Allied forces advanced east along a wide front, liberating vast swaths of France and Western Europe.  On August 25, 1944, the Allies finally liberated Paris. 

While the British, Canadians and Americans pushed east, the Red Army pushed west.  During their nearly three year stay in Russia, the Germans had completely burned and destroyed thousands of Russian villages and murdered millions of Russian citizens.  The Red Army was seeking revenge by the end of 1944.

Planning Victory in Europe

Sensing victory, the Allies began planning for a post-war world.  In July 1944, diplomats from 44 nations come together in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where they established the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  Otherwise known as the World Bank, the organization was aimed at providing funds for reconstructing countries devastated by war.

The following month, the U.S., Great Britain, China and the USSR met at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference to begin planning the formation of a stronger League of Nations, this time to be called the United Nations. 

On the home front, Roosevelt also pondered the effects of an end to war on the U.S. economy.  Military mobilization had offered a huge boom to the domestic economy, but would an end to that boom put a clamp on economic growth and bring back depression?  Congress and the President thus passed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, which offered free medical treatment, low-interest loans on homes and a free education to returning servicemen.  Known as the G.I. Bill, the law later allowed over 20 million soldiers to go to college, expanded home ownership more than ever before in US history, and ushered in the boom years of the 1950's.  Thanks to these steps, a post-war recession was avoided. 

With the war coming to a gradual end, Roosevelt sought a remarkable fourth term as President of the United States.  Roosevelt was the first to receive a third term, but also became the first to receive an astounding fourth term when he was reelected in November.  The election of 1944 was his narrowest margin, though it was still a healthy victory.  Roosevelt received 432 electoral votes to Thomas Dewey's 99.  Roosevelt won 36 of the 48 states, and managed to surmount the Republican argument that no President should remain in office for 16 years.  Harry Truman was elected to serve as Roosevelt's third Vice President.

Facing imminent defeat, Hitler ordered one last desperate offensive against the Allies in December 1944 in the Ardennes, where the Nazis had surprised the French 4 years earlier.  Known as the Battle of the Bulge, the Nazis bent but could not break the Allies’ advancing lines.  Realizing that the Germans were nearing their end, the Allies in the west and the Soviets in the east began the race to Berlin.  Both armies liberated Holocaust concentration camps along their way, confirming the Nazis most heinous atrocities.  On April 30, Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered on May 7.

There was widespread jubilation when Germany surrendered, but the Japanese were showing no sign of surrendering.  In May 1945 the two sides were engaged in an extremely deadly campaign at Okinawa, an island close enough to use for air attacks on the Japanese mainland.  Facing kamikaze attacks and fanatic Japanese soldiers, the Allies suffered 50,000 casualties, leading American military officials to estimate upwards of a million Allied casualties if they had to invade the Japanese mainland.   

Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met a final time at the Yalta Conference in the Russian Crimea.  The Allies were pressing down upon Germany from both the east and the west, and with the war in Europe in its final months and nearing an end, the meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. Within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy. To some extent, it has remained controversial. Among the agreements, the Conference called for Germany’s unconditional surrender, the split of Berlin, German demilitarization and reparations, the status of Poland, and Russian involvement in the United Nations.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Yalta

Chapter 6: Death and Legacy, 1945-Present

Roosevelt’s Death

Roosevelt was exhausted after the Yalta Conference.  Many, including FDR himself, thought the lull in the war allowed the stress of the previous years to finally catch up with him.  To relax, Roosevelt went to the spas of Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had spent much time attempting to recover from paralysis after attracting polio.  While sitting for a presidential portrait painting, Roosevelt complained of sudden headaches.  Hours later, on April 12
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, 1945, still sitting for the portrait, Roosevelt slumped forward and died of a massive stroke, less than a month before victory would be achieved in Europe. 

When Roosevelt died, he was with his life-long mistress, Lucy Mercer.  The two had carried on an affair throughout FDR's presidency.  Secret Service Agents escorted Mercer away when Eleanor Roosevelt was brought in to see her husband's body. 

Roosevelt's death was met with shock in the US and around the world.  Though his health had been declining, and he seemed out of it at times at Yalta, the public knew little about his illness.  He was 63 at the time of death.

Roosevelt’s funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue

Vice President Harry Truman, somewhat unprepared for the Presidency, now had to fill some of the biggest shoes in American history. Incredibly, Truman had not been informed of the country’s secret attempt to build atomic bombs.  Now, faced with the prospect of having to invade Japan and suffering staggering casualties, Truman decided to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.  When Japan did not surrender, the Americans dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.  Unbeknownst to the Japanese, the United States had used all the atomic bombs they currently had. 

Legacy

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is frequently ranked among the top three most influential Presidents, and for many historians he vies for the top spot with Abraham Lincoln.

FDR's Presidency rightly ranks among the most important.  Few Presidents face a single crisis on the scale of the Great Depression, but no other President faced dual crises in the way Franklin Roosevelt did.  Historians agree that Roosevelt handled both the economy and the war effectively, and rightly award him positive marks.

Quantifying Presidential success is easy with Franklin Roosevelt.  No President except Roosevelt has ever won more than two terms in office; FDR won an astounding four terms as President of the United States.  More importantly, even Roosevelt's narrowest victory in 1944 was slightly above average in both popular vote and in the electoral college.  His widest margin was the greatest up to that time, and has only since been outpaced slightly by Lyndon Johnson's popular vote count in 1964.  No President can even come close to competing with Roosevelt in terms of popularity while in office.  Abraham Lincoln was contested, even in the North.  FDR's cousin's margin of victory in 1904 was not nearly as wide as Franklin's: Teddy lost the entire South.  Other great Presidents - Jefferson, Truman and Wilson – all faced electoral challenges, with Jefferson being elected only after a tie, and Truman being prematurely announced defeated in such a close election.  In sum, among all US Presidents, FDR was by far and away the most successful electorally, and endures today as one of America’s most popular Presidents.