The Plots Against the President
Contents
Prologue:
A Beleaguered Capital
Part One:
Interregnum of Despair
 3.
A New Deal for the American People
 6.
Warriors of the Depression
 8.
Brain Trust
10.
Year of Fear
11.
American Mussolini and the Radio Priest
13.
Magic City
15.
Too Many People Are Starving to Death
18.
Fear Itself
19.
Bank Holiday
20.
I Want to Keel All Presidents
21.
Old Sparky
Part Two:
To Kill the New Deal
28.
That Jew Cripple in the White House
30.
The Shifty-Eyed Little Austrian Paperhanger
31.
A Rainbow of Colored Shirts
33.
I Was a Racketeer for Capitalism
35.
Coup d'Ãtat
38.
Are You Better Off Than You Were Last Year?
For my mother and father
In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger ⦠we need to know what kind of firm ground other men ⦠have found to stand on.
JOHN DOS PASSOS,
THE THEME IS FREEDOM
Prologue
When dawn broke in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, March 4, 1933, the atmosphere was celebratory, if anxious. Slate gray and ominous, the sky suggested a calm before the storm. Even before the sun rose, more than a hundred thousand people had gathered on the east side of the Capitol. General Douglas MacArthur was in command of the inaugural parade, and he habitually expected the worst. By that morning, American depositors had transferred more than $1.3 billion in gold to foreign accounts, millions of people had been turned away from their banks, and rioting was expected in cities throughout the nation, prompting some state governors to predict a violent revolution.
Army machine guns and sharpshooters were placed at strategic locations along the route. Not since the Civil War had Washington been so fortified. Journalist Arthur Krock likened the climate to “that which might be found in a beleaguered capital in wartime.” Armed police guarded federal buildings, and rumors swirled that Roosevelt was going to appropriate dictatorial powers and impose martial law. But if he had ever really entertained such a notionâas unused drafts of an inaugural address indicatedâhe abandoned it. Despite efforts made by William Randolph Hearst, Walter Lippmann, Bernard Baruch, and others to convince him of the necessity for a benevolent despot to seize control of the country, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was unswayed.
Hearst, the nation's most powerful publisher, went so far as to produce a Hollywood movieâ
Gabriel Over the White House
, starring Walter Hustonâto instruct both Roosevelt and the American public how to succumb to dictatorship. Even though Italy's Benito Mussolini and Fascism were enormously popular and highly regarded in America at the time, Roosevelt distrusted autocracy, did not believe that one could count on a benevolent dictator to remain so, and, especially, maintained an absolute commitment to the U.S. Constitution. “We could have had a dictator ⦠and we would have had one but for the President himself, to whom the whole idea was hateful,” a U.S. Army general later said in a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Instead, Roosevelt determined to incite the public to action rather than to capture extra-constitutional authority for himself. He wanted not to assume enhanced powers, not to take advantage of a quavering nation to elevate his own stature, but rather to ignite the citizenry to banish apathy and recapture a spirit of confidence and achievement. He sought not to issue comforting bromidesâas his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, had done incessantlyâbut to raise a battle cry, a call to arms for Americans to overcome their fear and march bravely into the unknown. His overarching message: If they had lost faith in themselves, he would restore it.
But he was not content to stop there. Even as he hoped to inspire and invigorate, he also intended to hold accountable those who had failed the nation and sent it plunging into its abyss. “When millions lived close to starvation, and some even had to scavenge for food, bankers ⦠and corporation executives ⦠drew astronomical salaries and bonuses,” as one account described the disparity between the poor and the wealthy. In a profound departure from Hoover, Roosevelt promised not only to bring relief to the victims but also to punish the perpetrators of the catastrophe. He would make clear that the departure of Herbert Hoover signified the end of the old order.
Part One
I have never in my life seen anything more magnificent than Roosevelt's calm.
RAYMOND MOLEY, “BANK CRISIS, BULLET CRISIS,”
SATURDAY EVENING POST
, JULY 29, 1939
Chapter One
Born January 30, 1882â“a splendid large baby boy” weighing ten poundsâFranklin Delano Roosevelt was descended from gentility, if not American aristocracy, on both the maternal and paternal sides. He was the sole issue of the marriage between James Roosevelt and his second wife, Sara Delano, both members of New York's oldest and richest families.
James Roosevelt had practiced law with a distinguished Manhattan firm before becoming a financier invested in coal, railroads, and canals, and ultimately a gentleman farmer at Hyde Park, his Hudson River Valley estate. Like the rest of the Oyster Bay branch of his family, which included first cousin Theodore Roosevelt, he lived a life of sailing and fishing, horse breeding and fox hunting, skating and sledding, and a dabbling in politicsâfirst with the Whig and then the Democratic Party. His wife Sara was twenty-six years his junior, the daughter of a neighbor and friend, who had been raised in the same rarefied world of the “River families.” They were married four years after the death of his first wife, and he “brought his young bride back past the ivied stone columns and the broad lawns down the long drive through the magnificent trees to his comfortable country house at Hyde Park,” as historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. described the couple's return from their monthlong European honeymoon.
For her part, Sara was the offspring of the fabulously moneyed Delanosâa French Huguenot clan that had immigrated to America on the
Mayflower
. Her father, Warren Delano II, had made a fortune in the Chinese tea and opium trades, and she had been raised on an estate in Hong Kong and in a fashionable apartment in Paris. She had attended finishing school in Germany, had vacationed in England and France, and slipped seamlessly into the leisurely lifestyle provided by her new husband.
From the moment her beloved son Franklin was born, Sara Roosevelt defined herself through him. She breast-fed for a year or more, and then continued to bathe Franklin until he was eight years old. Dressing him in
Little Lord Fauntleroy
costumes and English sailor suits and coiffing his long curls, Sara carried the child all day longâin contrast with the parenting style of most women of her social class. There were the requisite governesses and tutors who had served America's nobility, but Sara took a primary role in educating and shaping the perfect being in her charge. Of keen mind and lively spirit, the good-natured little boy won the hearts of all who interacted with him. “Popsy,” as he called his father, who had been fifty-four when Franklin was born, taught him to ride, hunt, fish, and sail. His mother read to him constantly and oversaw the exacting and regimented routine by which he would become a disciplined and learned man. Indulged as the only child of wealthy parents, Franklin Roosevelt amassed a valuable stamp collection by the age of nine, owned a pony and a sailboat, had traveled to Europe eight times while under the age of twelve, and spent his summers at the family's comfortable vacation home on Campobello Island, off the Canadian coast in New Brunswick. He was passionate about birds, first collecting their eggs and nests and eventually shooting, stuffing, and mounting them. His most avid interest, which he carried into manhood, was the seaâan enthusiasm inspired by his seafaring grandfather Delano, his father's yachting experiences, and the adventure stories his mother read to him. As a boy, he began collecting a naval history library, ship models, and photographs and prints of vessels.
He attended Reverend Endicott Peabody's Groton Schoolâa predictable route for the adolescent boys of his social strata who eagerly entered the “little Greek democracy of the elite.” Having been homeschooled, and two years older than the other students who had already formed friendships with each other, Roosevelt felt “left out” and found the “character building” academy a rude awakening. Modeled after the British upper-class boarding schools for boys, Groton was Spartan, stern, and intellectually exactingâand his time there was a harsh contrast to his previous years. While the experience was challenging, he made the best of it and learned the fine art of ingratiating himself with both faculty and peers. He excelled in the classics, joined the debating and missionary societies, learned fluent French and German, became a manager of the baseball team and a dormitory prefect, and was a popular actor in the school drama club.
He then went to Harvardâanother expected path for young men of his classâeven though he desperately preferred to attend the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Both parents refused to allow it, fearing that a naval career would inevitably separate them from their son, and that their longing for him would be unbearable. He entered Harvard in September 1900 and was bereaved beyond expectation when his father died four months later. He found solace and diversion in college activity, throwing himself into the milieu. He joined several campus clubs, including the Republicans; acquired a bit of renown for his work on the campus newspaper, the
Crimson
; and attended lectures by such notables as Frederick Jackson Turner and Josiah Royce. He managed to receive his degree in only three years.
Blessed and charmed, the young man seemingly effortlessly glided into adulthoodâ“after all he had many advantages that other boys did not have,” his mother remarked with understatement. If childhood friends, boarding school peers, and college professors harbored misgivings about Roosevelt's lofty aspirations, Sara Delano Roosevelt never faltered in her vision of her son's destiny. Now the unrivaled center of his widowed mother's world, Roosevelt stunned her when, shortly after entering Columbia Law School, he became engaged to a distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. Born October 11, 1884, “Eleanor” was the daughter of Elliott Rooseveltâformer president Theodore Roosevelt's younger brotherâand his stunningly beautiful wife, Anna Hall. Eleanor was not the wife that Sara had in mind for her perfect son, and since she could not openly disapprove, she urged Franklin to keep the engagement secret for a year to determine the certainty of his choice. Plain and shy, Eleanor was a stark contrast to her handsome, gregarious fiancé. The daughter of an unstable alcoholic and a domineering and mean-spirited mother who nicknamed her “Granny” for her toothiness, dowdiness, and gawkiness, the solemn Eleanor seemed no match for the charismatic and convivial Roosevelt. Still, she was the niece of a former president, a young woman with a fine mind and a compassionate spirit, statuesque and cultured, and, in any case, Roosevelt was unmistakably smitten with her, calling her “an angel” and “my darling” in his diary. Even Eleanor, in her self-deprecating and humble way, could not dampen his ardor. “I am plain. I have little to bring you,” she responded to Roosevelt's marriage proposal. But he was undeterred, spurred by love and, perhaps, as some historians have suggested, a long-standing resolve to merge the Hyde Park and Oyster Bay branches of the Roosevelt family.
Bored with law school, Roosevelt failed two courses before dropping out altogether and focusing on his betrothal. Reverend Endicott Peabody officiated at the March 17, 1905, wedding, where two hundred guests watched as Theodore Rooseveltâone of the most revered men in America and the country's twenty-sixth presidentâwalked Eleanor down the aisle. The couple moved into an apartment on West Forty-fifth Street in New York City, where Roosevelt began his quick, if conventional, political rise. He somehow managed to pass the bar examination and joined the Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn, which represented such commercial clients as Standard Oil of New Jersey and the American Tobacco Company. Hudson River families were overwhelmingly Republican, but Roosevelt, like his father, became a reform-minded Democrat. Though an incorrigible snob, James Roosevelt had instilled in his son a sense of social justice. “In all countries and all ages there have been more workers than work,” James Roosevelt once railed at a gathering in his Hyde Park church. “Help the helpless! Help the poor, the widow, the orphan; help the sick, the fallen man or woman, for the sake of our common humanity. Help all who are suffering ⦠Work for humanity.” Franklin recognized and admired in his new wifeâEleanor Roosevelt Rooseveltâthis same responsibility of noblesse oblige inherent to their class.
The couple had their first three children in rapid successionâAnna born in 1906, James in 1907, and Franklin Jr. in 1909. Franklin's first foray into politics came in 1909, when he joined the New York Milk Committee mandated to fight infant mortality. Franklin Jr. had succumbed to influenza at seven months old, joining in death more than a thousand other infants in Manhattan during that summer. As would become a pattern in their long and historic marriage, it was Eleanor who served as Roosevelt's eyes and ears in the community, who first brought to his attention the tales of squalor that surrounded them. She volunteered in the slums on the Lower East Side, teaching calisthenics and “fancy dancing” to young girls. It was through this, and her work with the National Consumers' League, that she learned of the appalling conditions of women and children living in poverty. Eleanor was “deeply moved by the sight of a society undergoing fundamental transformations at every level,” wrote one of her biographers, and, like her socially conscious uncle Teddy, was committed to economic and political change.
Roosevelt became a director of the First National Bank of Poughkeepsie, where he met several like-minded men who helped smooth the way for him to run for state senator in 1910. He became the first Democrat from that district elected to the New York State Legislature since 1856. Joining the progressives, he threw his support toward women's suffrage and other social legislation, and he set out to block the infamously corrupt Tammany Hall political machine that had controlled New York municipal and state politics since the late eighteenth century. “From the ruins of the political machines we will reconstruct something more nearly conforming to a democratic government,” he promised, disenchanted equally with both crooked Democrats and fat-cat Republicans. In fact, it was Eleanor who had encouraged him to challenge the fraternal Tammany Society, which she saw as a “lair of predators” dating back to its 1888 effort to remove Grover Cleveland from the White House. Roosevelt's fight against them brought him his first national acclaim.
Conspicuous in the state capital for his upper-crust background and unabashed strivingsâand bearing the fortunate surname of his wife's uncleâhe used the opportunity to polish his oratory skills and deepen his thinking. It was during this time in the state legislature that he began to explore the role he thought government should play in the lives of Americans. Inspired by Teddy, whom he considered the greatest man alive, and whose promise of a “square deal” for every American he thought divinely guided, Roosevelt shaped his beliefs about what it meant to be a steward of nature's resources. He had always had an affinity for land, water, and wildlife, and now saw the conservation of natural resources as analogous to that of human reserves. “The conservation battle,” according to Schlesinger, “thus helped shape in Roosevelt's mind a broad conception of the public welfare as something that had to be vigilantly protected against private greed.”
At twenty-eight years of age, Roosevelt launched his national political life.