Roosevelt
Authors: James MacGregor Burns
The Soldier of Freedom
James MacGregor Burns
FOR
Joan
David
Stewart and Sally
Deborah
Trienah
Becky
Peter
A prince must have no other object and no other thought than war and its methods and conduct…for this is the only branch of knowledge that is required of him who governs….The prince should read history, and give attention to the actions of great men related to it, and to examine the cause of their victories and defeats….A wise prince should practice such habits as these …so that when Fortune grows contrary he may be found ready to assist her.
—Machiavelli,
The Prince,
1532
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the Fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour.
—Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, November 9, 1940
…Do you realize that there is no definitive (I hate the word) short history of any of our past wars?…We ought…to capture or recapture the public pulse as it throbs from day to day—the effect on the lives of different types of citizens—the processes of propaganda—the parts played by the newspaper emperors….It is war work of most decided value. It is not dry history…
.
It is trying to capture a great dream before it dies.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt to Archibald
MacLeish, June 9, 1943
T
HE PROPOSITION OF THIS
work is that Franklin D. Roosevelt as war leader was a deeply divided man—divided between the man of principle, of ideals, of faith, crusading for a distant vision, on the one hand; and, on the other, the man of
Realpolitik,
of prudence, of narrow, manageable, short-run goals, intent always on protecting his power and authority in a world of shifting moods and capricious fortune. This dualism cleft not only Roosevelt, but also his advisers, separating Henry Stimson and others who acted consciously on the basis of the “righteousness” of their cause from those who followed the ancient practices of the Prince. And it divided the American people themselves, who were vacillating between the evangelical moods of idealism, sentimentalism, and utopianism of one era and older traditions of national self-regard, protectiveness, and prudence of another.
This dualism between the prophet and the prince was not clear-cut; nothing could be neat or tidy in the complexity of Roosevelt’s mind and heart or in the fuzzy ideology and volatile politics of Americans. Nor is it the only key to understanding Roosevelt’s war leadership. Several subthemes run through his war administration.
One such theme is the origin of the Cold War. While the roots of post-World War II hostility between Russia and the West are of course multifold, lying deep in Russian, European, and American history, I have concluded that the decisive turn toward the Cold War came during the war, at the very time when Anglo-American-Soviet relations were, on the surface, almost euphoric—indeed, partly because they did seem euphoric.
Another theme is the transformation of the presidency. It was during World War II, in Roosevelt’s third term, rather than in the earlier New Deal years, that the foundations of modern presidential government were laid. The courts sustained presidential curtailment of liberties, such as those of the Japanese-Americans. Congress was surly and prickly on minor issues, generally acquiescent on the big. Under the pressure of war, the presidential staff proliferated;
the “presidential press” had a wider role; the bureaucracy was refashioned for war.
A third theme is the alteration in American society. War is the forcing house of social change; World War II cut deep into the bone and marrow of American life. The vast migration of whites and blacks, the growth of a new culture of war at home and overseas, the creation of novel and ominous war industries, especially the atomic and electronic—these and other developments set off revolutions in the interstices of American society.
But always one must return to the division in the war strategy of Franklin Roosevelt and in the moods and practices of the American people, for that division informs all the lesser issues of the war. It was because Roosevelt acted both as a soldier bent on a military victory at minimum cost to American lives and as an ideologue bent on achieving the Four Freedoms for peoples throughout the world that his grand strategy was flawed by contradictions that would poison American relations with Russia and with Asia. It was in part because he ran the White House as a personal agency that subsequent Chief Executives had to deal with the acute problem of how the White House could master the bureaucratic giants springing up on the banks of the Potomac. It was in part because federal power during the war, especially over such matters as race relations, could not channel the fast-running social and economic currents that the war seemed to release, and bring them into balance with crucial sectors of life that burst out of control.
None of this, however, need diminish the stature of Roosevelt the man. He picked up Woodrow Wilson’s fallen banner, fashioned new symbols and programs to realize old ideals of peace and democracy, overcame his enemies with sword and pen, and died in a final exhausting effort to build a world citadel of freedom. He deserves renewed attention today especially from those who reject the old ways of princes and demand that people and nations base their relations on ideals of love and faith. He was indeed, in all the symbolic and ironic senses of the term, a soldier of freedom.
J.M.B.
PART ONE THE MISCALCULATED WAR
The Crucibles of Grand Strategy
HITLER: THE RAPTURE OF DECISION
CHURCHILL: THE GIRDLE OF DEFEAT
KONOYE: THE VIEW TOWARD CHUNGKING
ROOSEVELT: THE CRISIS OF STRATEGY
STALIN: THE TWIST OF
REAL POLITIK
“The Massed Forces of Humanity”
ROOSEVELT AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF
EUROPE: THE DEEPENING FISSURES
PART FIVE THE LAST HUNDRED DAYS
“THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE A FRIEND
…”
EUROPE: THE PRICE OF INNOCENCE
“THE WORK, MY FRIENDS, IS PEACE”
CHAPTER BIBLIOGRAPHIES WITH BASIC BOOK LIST
(Cartoons depicting the Roosevelt era, interspersed throughout the book, are not listed here.)
Hyde Park in the piping days of peace. Franklin D. Roosevelt receiving a medal on his 25th anniversary as an Odd Fellow in Hyde Park Lodge 203, September 16, 1938
President Roosevelt in Washington, Lincoln’s Birthday, 1940
Returning to the White House with Mrs. Roosevelt after the third inaugural, January 20, 1941
Roosevelt with Winston Churchill at the Atlantic Charter conference, Argentia,
Newfoundland, August 9-12, 1941. General George C. Marshall stands in the middle above.