with the steel industry predicted a surplus of ten million tons of steel in 1942, Roosevelt canonized the report by devoting a whole press conference to it and accepting its findings. Dunn had to issue a more pessimistic report withing five weeks. Watching these happenings through skeptical pince-nez was a veteran of World War I mobilization struggles. Bernard Baruch had long enjoyed a friendly relation with the President, who paid the old Wilsonian every compliment except following his advice. For months Baruch’s advice had been simple and flat: centralize all controls - allocations, priorities, price-fixing - in one agency, with one boss. Many editorial writers agreed; so did many high administration officials. Simson too, had urged this move, on the ground that someone clearly in charge would feel the “sting of responsibility.” Morgenthau wanted his chief to set up a Cabinet-level department of supply to run the whole mobilization program. Everyone seemed to want a czar - especially if he himself could be the czar.

Roosevelt would have none of it. It was impossible to find any one “Czar” or “Poohbah” or “Ahkoond of Swat,” he had said in explaining the OPM to reporters, and only amateurs thought otherwise. Under the Constitution only one man - the President - could be in charge. But as spring 1941 approached, it was clear that the President, with his other multifarious responsibilities, could not be the co-ordinating head of defense production. Yet he would not budge. Clearly he had deeper reasons - reasons distilled from his diverse tactics of moving step by step, avoiding committments to any one man or program, letting his subordinates fell less the sting of responsibility than the goad of competition, thwarting one man from getting too much control, preventing himself from becoming a prisoner of his own machinery, and above all, keeping choices wide in a world full of snares and surprises ..... Pp. 52-53 Baruch complained that Hopkins was like a jealous woman in keeping others away from Roosevelt; everyone else had to “play him in a triangle.” P. 60 [Roosevelt] corresponded and/or talked with an amazing variety of people .....Bernard Baruch, of Lafayette Park P.62

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Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)

p. 391 After meeting with Churchill, Roosevelt moved the United States cautiously, step-by-step, into undeclared naval war against the Germans in the North Atlantic. At the same time the embargo against Japan was quietly heightening the likelihood o hostilities in the Pacific. Over several months the nation moved to the brink of global war. ...Through much of the summer he had been engaged in a crucial and difficult struggle with the isolationist bloc in Congress to obtain authorization to keep draftees and others on active service longer than twelve months. ...On the day after the Atlantic conference ended, Roosevelt was victorious, but only by a single vote, 203 to 202, in theHouse of Representatives. Draft extension was deeply unpopular, and polls both before and after the Atlantic conference indicated that about 75 percent of the American people wanted to stay out of war with Germany and Japan. Yet Roosevelt seemed to be carrying 60 percent with him in his gradual moves toward undeclared conflict. Publication of the poll results may in itself have created something of a "bandwagon effect," intensifying support for him. With opinion behind him, Roosevelt could grapple through the next month with problems of increasing defense production. Lord Beaverbrook, the British minister of supply, came to Washington after the conference and emphasized that American production must accelerate enormously. Roosevelt, resisting strong pressure to appoint a production czar -- Baruch or someone like him -- to speed sluggish armament programs, was receptive to an armed forces proposal urging a threefold increase in production. He asked Stimson, Knox, and Hopkins to provide him with specifications.

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Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins; An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948)

p. 280 Actually, Lend Lease in itself provided no overwhelming difficulties in the beginning. ... There were seven billion dollars to spend but the weapons to buy were not coming off the assembly lines fast enough nor were there enough ships to carry them overseas even when they did. This was a time when one of the most important words in the American language was “bottleneck,” and the most formidable bottleneck of all was created by the ancient principle that you cannot eat your cake and have it: the nation could not meet the reality of wartime demands for production while maintaining the illusion that it was still “at peace.” There existed an Industrial Mobilization Plan which, in the words of Bernard M. Baruch, its principle author, was designed to enable the country “to pass from a peace to a war status with a minimum of confusion, waste and loss.” But - the thinking behind this and all other plans before 1940 was based on the assumption that a nation passed from a peace status to a war status as quickly and as decisively as one passes from one room to another. No provision whatsoever had beem made for the maze of corridors, blind alleys and series of antechambers - labeled “Phony War,” “cash and carry,” more than mere words,” “Lend Lease,” etc. - which the United States was compelled for the first time in its own or any other nation’s history to traverse between September 1, 1939, and December 7, 1941.

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1941

Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms; A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 729n

In a letter of July 9, 1941, Bernard Baruch had warned Roosevelt not to trust Keynes, referring to very bad experiences at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. In his reply of July 11, the President, who was generally not inclined to put his thoughts on paper, wrote, “I did not have those Paris Peace Conference experiences with the “gent” but from much more recent contacts, I am inclined wholly to agree.” FDRL, PSF Box 177, Bernard Baruch. <><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, loc. cit.

P. 181 -182 I carried to the President a suggestion from Ben Cohen that instead of setting up something in the nature of a War Insudsries Board of the last war, every Cabinet officer be left free to select business advisers of his own who would work with him. This would make these business advisers subservient to the government instead of the Government’s being a tail to the businessman’s kite. They would be relatively ineffective except as advisers because they would not be working together in one group. The President said that he had to do something to take care of Bernie Baruch, who was to have lunch with him on Saturday but that he didn’t know how he was going to handle him. The newspapers representing big business have already begun to pound for “competent, efficient” businessmen being called to Washington and given charge of the preparedness program. This pressure is going to be terrific and I pointed out to the President that it was important to get somethign started while there was still time. Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)

Pp. 418 , 421-422 [After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor] ".... The clashes of the jousting "war lords of Washington" were spectacular. So too were the related clashes in Congress, the press, and radio. The struggle was over the drive to meet production goals, and it also reflected the fundamental schism over the nature of the war. Was it to be fought to restore the old order, or to attain the idealistic future Rooseveltfrom time to time proclaimed? ... Roosevelt, who symbolized the issue as the advocate of a better world, sought nevertheless to bridge the schism by insisting that the immediate overriding concern of the United States was to win the war ... The specifics of the postwar world could be thrashed out later. The urgent and instant need was to raise production as high as possible. Already Roosevelt had proposed figures at what the army and the Office of Production Management regarded as the upper limit, a total of $55 billion. Lord Beaverbrook, in charge of British production, sat with him on Christmas night, 1941, until one in the morning, urging still larger output. He talked, Donald Nelson, in charge of supply allocations, remembers, "in what seemed at the time to be fantastic figures." Roosevelt accepted them at once, 45,000 tanks and 60,000 planes -- 10,000 more than the projection of a year and a half before. The increased output, Roosevelt told his administrators, must come through curtailing civilian production. Only 35 percent of the steel was going into war use, compared with 75 percent in Britain; he wanted to take 60 percent of steel, and 50 percent of all industrial capactiy. To achieve top production, Roosevelt needed to replace the makeshift, inefficient war agencies with new, more effective ones. A consensus was forming that the nation needed a single director to serve as Baruch had during the First World War, but possessing greater power than then. For some days Roosevelt clung to the concept of three directors, this dispersing power. He was wary and manipulative toward the prestigious, conservative Baruch, who had headed the War Industries Board under President Wilson. Throughout World War II, Baruch exercised influence from the Carlton Hotel and a park bench across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Roosevelt courted Baruch enough to keep him out of the opposition, and followed similar tactics with the Republican Willkie. ....

...Roosevelt did establish the War Production Board (WPB) with a single director, Donald Nelson, an amiable Democrat and a Sears, Roebuck executive. Nelson, as Roosevelt wished, was sympathetic toward New Dealers and tried to aid some business, but he could not decide how much steel and other scarce materials the military should receive compared with the civilian economy and make his decisionsstick. It was with the Army that Nelson’’s troubles gradually intensified, and repeatedly more serious conflicts came before the President. Rosenman witnessed Roosevelt spending hours and days deciding disputes between the WPB and the army. ... ...With a strong allocation plan and two decisive lieutenants, Nelson by September 1942, could run the War Production Board more effectively. He brought in Eberstadt and Charles E. Wilson, president of General Electric. It was not an entirely effective system, but despite the inevitable minor problems and strident conflicts, Roosevelt finally had a basic production in place. By 1943 it was so successful that the focus could turn toward questions of cutbacks and even limited reconversion to civilian needs. Roosevelt did little more than preside over these changes and insist that the quarrels not become too public and disruptive. The effective innovations had to come from below.

When the quarreling became too strident, between the army and the War Production Board, Roosevelt tried without openly showing his hand, to quiet difficulties in the WPB between Nelson’’s two deputies. Wilson had threatened to resign unless he received some of Eberstadt’’s powers. Nelson capitulated. The problem the secretaries and under secretaries of the navy and war felt, was with Nelson; and together with Byrnes, Hopkins, and Ickes they pressed Roosevelt to appoint Baruch head of the WPB. Byrnes in February 1943 presented such strong arguments that the appointment would quiet Congress and win the plaudits of the press, that Roosevelt agreed and signed a letter making the offer. Roosevelt became swayed by the misgivings of Director of the Budget Smith that Baruch was too elderly and perhaps was tied to one of the factions in the dispute. There followed on February 16, 1943 a bizarre episode. At breakfast an assistant informed Nelson that a letter had been drawn up for Roosevelt’’s signature appointing Baruch chairman of the WPB, and Eberstadt his deputy. The army and navy secretaries and under secretaries were to meet with Roosevelt at two that afternoon, together with Byrnes, to urge Roosevelt to sign the letter. Nelson telephoned Stimson who confirmed the planned meeting. Next he tried, without success, to reach the president, but failed. He did reach on of the White House staff, who suggested"

"The President expects you to take things in your own hands. . . . This whole row seems to be centering around Eberstadt -- yet you’’ve been keeping Eberstadt in your organization all this time. Do something about that, and then see if the Boss doesn’’t invite you in for a chat." Nelson immediately requested Eberstadt’s resignation and designated Wilson as his chief deputy. Roosevelt’s meeting with Stimson and Knox did not take place. ... Later that afternoon Roosevelt told Nelson he was satisfied with the job he was doing, yet for some days still wavered. Baruch’’s medical tests were negative. He returned to Washington, and expecting the appointment went to the White House. Roosevelt engaged him in conversation on numerous topics, but the WPB was not among them. The president changed his mind. ... .... One day early in the war, Roosevelt, nursing a head cold, lunched with Baruch, and gave him a feeling of closeness. Roosevelt remarked, "You think I am too soft." Baruch did not deny it. Yet what Baruch, Stimson and others saw as softness was Roosevelt’’s reluctance to use a bludgeon ... The failure of Baruch to head the WPB and the sudden departure of Eberstadt were cases in point.

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Bruce M. Russet, “FDR- Unnecessary Intervention and Deception,” in Warren F. Kimball ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937-1945 (Lexington: C. D. Heath and Company, 1973

p. 36 I have no quarrel with the decisions for rearmament or to institute Selective Service with revision of the Neutrality Act to permit “cash and carry” by belligerents (effectively by allies only), with the destroyers-for-bases exchange, with Lend-Lease, or with the decision to convoy American vessels as far as Iceland. Even the famous “shoot- on-sight” order, even as interpreted to allow American destroyers to seek out the sight of U-boats, seems necessary if convoys were to be protected on the first state of the critical lifeline to Britain. ... Only two major exceptions to the content of American policy in 1941 appear worth registering. One is the vote by Congress in mid-Novermber 1941, at the President’s behest, removing nearly all the remaining restrictions of the Neutrality Act. It permitted American ships to carry supplies all the way across the Atlantic, instead of merely as far as Iceland. ... The other and more serious exception I take is with President Roosevelt’s policy. It was neither necessary nor desirable for him to have insisted on a Japanese withdrawal from China. ... <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1954)

P. 607 Friday, September 5, 1941 Bernie Baruch tried to get through to me after the new mobilization order was issued and I called him at Saratoga Springs at a designated hour last Friday. I told him that it looked as if he had been superseded by Rosenman and he admitted the fact. He also agreed that Harry Hopkins was now in effect Assistant President. He didn’t make any reproaches but I suspect that he did not like the summary but characteristic way in which he also had been pushed aside. After all, Rosenman hasn’t had the wild experience in these matters that Bernie has. Bernier has had more of it than any other man in the country. Moreover, so far as I know, Rosenman has never had any experience in administration. It looks to me as if he hadtaken the Baruch proposal and pared and whittled to put it into some form that would be satisfactory to Harry Hopkins. At any rate, this is my guess. It may have looked for a time as if I would come through merely by force of circumstances as an important figure in the defense program. But Harry has seen to it that I haven’t.

Bernie said that he wanted to see me as soon as I got back to Washington and before I went up to testify before any of the Congressional committees. He wants me to show that, with respect to oil and aluminum, I was trying to anticipate the needs instead of waiting for the needs to come into being, and to cry out in such loud tones that no one could ignore them.

I suspect that Bernie thinks that he can get some satisfaction out of the kicks that I can administer to the pants of OPM. I certainly am willing to do what I can along this line. I think that the President has given Bernie a particularly rotten deal. He called on him for help, which was cheerfully and loyally rendered. But the President apparently could not go along with Bernie and, at the same time, keep certain people, including myself, in their places. SO he called upon Rosenman to do the kind of job that he and Harry wanted. .......

P. 614 -616 September 2_, 1941 ..... I think that Bernie has undoubtedly been hurt by the President’s conduct toward him. However this was not the first occasion that the President has ridden over him roughshod. In 1939 Bernie volunteered to set up something in the way of a war industries board and the President turned him down. Subsequently Lousi Johnson, Assistant Secretary of War, set up the Stettinius boear, and again Bernie was hurt. However, I have never known a better soldier. He feels keenly that we have been very negligent in not putting a ceiling over all prices as well as a ceiling over profits and wages. He felt that he had to go before the Currency Committee yesterday to make his position clear, and he made an excellent and convincing statement. He remarked on Wednesday that he wasn’t going to attack the President or be bitter but that when he got through with the pending bill, there wouldn’t be anything left of it except the title. I think that he as done a brave and much-needed job. A man like Baruch can go on the witness stand and insist that all profits really ought to be taxed out, but a more radical person would only arouse the feeling that he was attacking business as such. Bernie told me about his last talk with the President, following which he had announced from the White House steps that the seven-man board was a faltering step in the right direction and that he was going to go after the price-fixing bill. Of course, Bernie shouldn’t have announced this from the White House steps, but I can understand his very natural reaction after the President had done to him what he had in taking all of his work and turning it over to Sam Rosenman to play with and distort.

Baruch told me again quite definitely that the President had specifically promised to put his plan of organization into effect. Baruch feels just as strongly as ever that the situation calls for one man. He doesn’t believe that seven men with equal authority will be able to do the job effectively. He had even gotten so far with the President as to suggest two men and the President had agreed to one of them, namely Bill Dougals. I think that the other one was Under Secretary of War Patterson. The President told Bernie that he wanted him to be present when he talked with Douglas, but Bernie thought that this would not be fitting and dissuaded the President. But, according to Bernie, the President actually called Bill Douglas on the long-distance telephone, apparently with a view to making a preliminary offer or at least arranging for an interview. Then the President, without more ado, announced the seven-man board. What happened during their telephone conversation or what caused the President to change his mind at a stage like that, Bernie does not know. Bill Douglas got back to Washington on Thursday night and my plan is to see him early next week and find out what I can from him. Bernie also told me of his discussion of me with the President. Bernie had been pressing me for an appointment as Coordinator of Hard Fuels and Power, as well as of Petroleum. And as such, he thought that I ought to be in what he called the “War Cabinet.” During the discussion the President asked him whether I would be satisfied with this or with that. Bernie assured him that I would be satisfied with whatever place the President gave me and that I would be a good soldier. Apparently the President acted on this assurance, although he ran some risk in doing so.

Baruch feels that we all have to go along and make the best of the situation. When he lunched again with me on Thursday, he told me that the only thing to do was to be patient; that the situation would develop in the long run so that I would get my chance at the defense program. He didn’t convince me, but for the time being there isn’t anything to do except go along. Developments in our relationship with Japan may put a different face on the situation.

Bill Bullit came in late Wednesday afternood and it was a Bill Bullit in distress. He had seen the President and had finally learned definitely that there was no place for him in the preparedness organization. Bill was terribly hurt. He was being game about it and he told about his interview with the President with a laugh, but it wasn’t a merry laugh. It seems that the President has been stringing Bill ever since he resigned as Ambassador to France. Bill held himself available because the President insisted that it was his full intention to call him into the service in some important post. ... After months of this, Bill finally saw the President on Wednesday to force the issue. He had begun to suspect that he was being given the run-around. The President told him that he had wanted to use him but that no position had offered that was commensurate with Bill’s standing and abilities.

During their interview, Bill told the President that he understood the situation perfectly: that Harry Hopkins was responsible for his exclusion. The President vigorously denied this and said that Harry had nothing to do with it. Bill told him that four people had related to him incidents in connection with Harry, which proved to him that it was Harry’s doing. The President said: “You may say to these people that the President of the United States says that this is a damned lie.”

I asked Bill, as I had already asked Bernie Baruch, to explain the new defense setup and particularly to give the reason why Stettinius, who has been a failure in every job he has held so far, has been moved up to the important post of Administrator of the Lend- Lease Act. Both were of the opinion that all of these moves had been to protect Harry Hopkins. They believe that Harry is now, in effect, Assistant President, but his standing on the Hill is such that the need of someone to front for him has to be recognized. According to Bernard Baruch, Jimmy Byrnes told the President afte Harry was appointed Administrator of the first Lend-Lease Act that if the Congress had known that this was to go to Harry, it would not have voted a nickel. Now the President wants some more money and he dare not go to Congress and ask for it with Harry Hopkins looming as Lend-Lease Administrator. So Stettinius has been given that title, but he can be depended upon to do whatever Harry tells him to do. In other directions Harry is also protected. In other words, here is a man with tremendous power whom Congress and even public opinion cannot reach. I must confess it is a very clever arrangement. Bill Bullitt ruefully remarked to me that it seems that the President had to have someone near him who was dependent upon him and who was pale and sick and gaunt. He had had such a person in Louis Howe and now another in Harry Hopkins. Bill insisted that the two resembled each other physically, being cadaverous and bent and thin.

P. 641 Bernie Baruch was in for luncheon yesterday. The President had sent for him and he seemed to be in a better frame of mind, although I can’t say that at any time he was particulary downcast. He is really quite philosophical, despite which, however, he felt, and still feels, the summary way in which the President threw his plan for a reorganization of the defense agencies into the wastepaper basket and substituted one by Sam Rosenman. Bernie had told me at our last meeting that he would not ask to see the President but that, of course, if he were sent for he would respond.

Bernie doesn’t think that things are going any better. He was glad that I had been appointed Hard Fuels Coordinator. He referred again to the fact that the President had categorically promised to put the Baruch plan into effect and I told him that he needn’t urge the matter again.

P. 649 I saw by the newspapers that Bernie Baruch was to be in Washington to appear as a witness in support of the price control bill and so I asked him to lunch with me. I asked Jane too. This was fortunate because just before Baruch came in at twelve fortyfive “Pa” Watson called me up and said that the President would like to have me lunch with him. I suppose that some other plan and fallen out and that I was chosen to fill in. So I had just a few minutes with Baruch before I ad to leave for the White House. He asked me whether I had been consulted with reference to the coal strike and I told him No. He assured me again that all I ad to do was to exercise patience and that I would be brought in before long. ....

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1942

James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt; The Soldier of Freedom 1940-45 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970) p. 247

Roosevelt was still being urged to set up an integrated super angency under a real superczar, as Baruch had proposed long before the war, and he was still resisting. In the spring of 1942 strategic plans were still open; whether or not Russia could survive the gathering German offensive was still a burning question. .....

Always there was the frantic demands of Allied Nations for supplies, and no one in authority in Washington was more sensitive to those demands than Roosevelt. The pressure from abroad itself was institutionalized; uneasily coexisting with the United States agencies by this time were a host of international organizations for allocation. At the ARCADIA Conference Roosevelt and Churchill had set up the Combined Munitions Assignments Board (MAB) in Washington and London, operating under the Combined Chiefs of Staff ; other combined boards were established for raw materials, production, shipping, and food during the first half of 1942.

P. 259 Congress forced the President’s hand. Impatient for action, fearful of nationwide gasoline rationing, impressed by the popular demand for czars who could break through obstacles, the legislature passed a bill establishing a Rubber Supply Agency under a director with wide powers. Roosevelt vetoed the measure arguing that it would frustrate centralized control under the WPB. But recognizing by now, early August, the need for more drastic action, he announced in his veto message the appointment of a committee of Conant, Compton, and Baruch, chairman, to investigate the problem, after Chief Justice Stone had turned down a similar assignment. “Because you’re ‘an ever present help in time of trouble’ will you ‘do it again’?” he wrote to Baruch in longhand - and by enlisting the old promoter of tough remedies, Roosevelt knew he would get a recommendation for drastic action. So he did : rubber and gas rationing, stepped up synthetic-rubber programs, and a powerful rubber administrator under the WPB.

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_________, Freedom frm Fear, loc.cit.

P. 629 ... the WPB found itself under excruciating pressure as the cockpit where all the controversies between the various services, between the services and the civilians, and between competing economic sectors, were bitterly contested.

Roosevelt characteristicaly reacted to the rising pressure on the WPB in October 1942 by creating another mobilization body, the Office of Economic Stabilization, which officially metamorphosed into the Office of War Mobilization (OWM) in May 1943. Each was headed in itds turn by former South Carolina senator and Supreme Court justice James Byrnes. .....

With the Appointment of Byrnes, Roosevelt openly acknowledged the political dimension of economic mobilization. The crooked timber of humanity, not scarce critical materials, was now recognized as the principal obstacle to efficient production. Byrnes was no businessman. He had neither executive experience nor technical expertise. But he was the consummate political operator.

He had begun his long Washington career as a protege of Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolina’s infamously racist baron, and he enjoyed the lavish patronage of his sometime fellow Sough Carolinian, Bernard Baruch, the Democratic Party’s multimillionaire gray eminence.

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1943

James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt; The Soldier of Freedom 1940-45 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970)

p.334 ...The arsenal of democracy, he [Roose velt] said, was making good, and he hit out at criticism based on guesswork and malicious falsification. But he remained dissatisfied with war production during early 1943. “The war goes on and on-“ he wrote to Beaverbrok in March, “and while I think we are gaining, it is difficult for you and me to curb our impatience, especially when our military and naval friends keep saying that this cannot be done and that cannot be done and this time schedule seems so everlastingly slow to us.” A few weeks later Baruch reported that shipbuilding was going well, escort vessels improving, high-octane gasoline coming along better, but aircraft production still lagged. “We are making planes but not as many as we should.”

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The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, loc. cit.

p. 438 Bernard M. Baruch came in at three o’clock in the afternoon. It seems that he is down the first of every week, trying to get the defense outfit straightened out. This he is doing at the request of the President. According to Baruch, things are in pretty bad shape with the Defense Commission. He philosophically remarked that it was all that we had to deal with and that we ought to make the best we could of it . I could see that he was disturbed by the way many of these people are operating. He told the President that the situation was even worse than he had suspected.

I think that the President made a mistake in not seeking Baruch’s advice earlier, but Baruch also made a mistake in his first suggestion to the President that, in effect, he bring back into the government service for this period of emergency not only himself but Hugh Johnson and George Peek. Perhaps if Baruch had volunteered his own services without trying to take back with him the other two men who are particularly distasteful to the President, he might have gotten somewhere. And with Baruch at his elbow, I do not believe that the President would have made some of the mistakes that he has.

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1944

John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect; A Profile in History (New York: Pyramid, 1962) [original ed.: New York: Harbor and Brothers, 1950)

p.153 On campaign trips the President’s train ran to sixteen or even eighteen cars; on the runs between Washington and Hype Park or Warm Springs they averaged eight. ... The train was, as a rule, broken up after each trip, but early in 1944, it stayed intact for the month that the President was visiting Mr. Baruch’s plantation in South Carolina; there was no telephone in the house, and the train, parked eight miles away became his office.

James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt; The Soldier of Freedom 1940-45 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970)

p. 339- 340 Changes came by fits and starts. A year after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt’s defense organization was still a public issue. Appointing czars, shoring up the WPB, making Byrnes Economic Stabilization Director - these and other steps did not long satisfy the critics. In Congress the Truman and Migration Committees continued to call for more centralized authority. A Senate Military Affairs Subcommittee reported that war mobilization was “in crisis.” .... the WPB was racked by disputes among its top officials. In the Senate friends of the President sponsored a bill for a super-superagency that would take over and boss a dozen war agencies. Byrnes, struggling with a tide of stabilization problems that cut across bureaucratic empires and their czars, began to lean toward the idea of an office of war mobilization with broad powers to direct the whole war effort.

For a moment the President toyed with a move he had long resisted - to reestablish the WPB as the supreme mobilization agency on the model of the War Industries Bnoard of World War I. And he even decided to appoint the very man, Bernard Baruch, who had headed the earlier board and had the presitge, status, and self-assurance to rebuild and command an agency rivaling the White House in publicity and power. He must have been sorely disturbed by the state of mobilization and the conflicts between and within his war agencies - especially the WPB - to appeal to Baruch. But appeal to him he did, in a letter that frankly admitted that he was “coming back to the elder statesman for assistance.” Surprised and pleased, Baruch debated whether he should give up his freedom - as symbolized by his “office” on a Lafayette Park bench - and whether he was physically up to it. He was on his way to New York City to consult his doctor when, as luck would have it, he fell ill, and it was a week before he returned to Washington to tell the President he had decided to accept. Roosevelt, leaning back in his chair and puffing on an uplifted cigarette, greeted him with his usual geniality. “Mr. President,” Baruch began, “I’m here to report for duty.” Roosevelt did not reply; he seemed not even to have heard. Baruch knew something had gone wrong. The President said: “Let me tell you about Ibn Saud, Bernie.” He chatted a bit about the Mid-East. Then he abruptly stopped talking, excused hjimself, and departed for a Cabinet meeting. He never again, mentioned the WPB post to Baruch. Swallowing his pride, groping for some explanation, Baruch concluded that there must have been intervention by Hopkins, who seemed to Baruch full of suspicion and self-protectiveness that grip men so close to the throne.

Doubtless Hopkins did influence Roosevelt’s change of heart, but a far more important factor also intervened. Both the President and his Economic Stabilization Director were leaning more and more during early 1943 toward the idea of a mobilization office directlyunder the President rather than in a vast, independent new agency uner a new superczar. Byrnes had been working in the east wing for some months and was already dealing with a variety of problems outside his stabilization duties. He proposed a new office of war mobilization with wide powers ove war production, allocation and manpower 9except for men in uniform), that he take on thisbroader role, and that his job as Economic Stabilizer be passed on to Fred M. Vinson, a former Congressman and an old friend.

It was not easy for Roosevelt to go along with this plan. The press had already dubbed Byrnes “Assistant President” and “Chief of Staff” - terms Roosevelt disliked - and throughout his presidency he had resisted sharing his powers with any rival person or office of this sort. On the other hand, he trusted Byrnes. The former Justice was not one to jump onto a white charger and gallop off with the war effort. ... He preferred to deal with appeals from clashing agencies rather than to issue plans and command from on high. He proposed to continue to operate with a tiny staff, headed by Roosevelt’s old friend and adviser Benjamin Cohen. Instead of congealing into a whole new bureaucratic layer, his office would co-ordinate policy among the existing war agencies. And he would claim the services of the ablest people -even Baruch, who gamely continued to advise Byrnes and the White House.

P. 352 For Roosevelt it was a question of power. When critics charged that he would not make Baruch or some other strong man a superczar because he wanted to hoard his own authority or feared a rival, they were quite right. Partly it was a matter of temperament; as a prima donna, Roosevelt had no relish for yielding to spotlight for long. But mainly it was a matter of prudence, experience, and instinct. The President did not need to read Machiavellian treatises to know that every delegation of power and sharing of authority extracted a potential price in the erosion of Presidential purpose, the narrowing of options, the clouding of the appearance of presidential authority, the threat to his reputation for being on top.

p. 432 Baruch [ opposed to Roosevelt’s National service proposal in 1944] argued that the best way to mobilize and allocate manpower was by allocating materials; men would shift to high-priority industries to get jobs. ... His mind set, but tired of the endless debate, Roosevelt, on returning from Teheran, told Rosenman to draft a proposal for a national-service bill for his State of the Union address, but not to tell a soul about it. Rosenman was aghast. Not even tell Buyrnes or McNutt or Stimson or “Bernie,” men who had been laboring on the problem? No, said his chief, he did not want to argue about it any more. “I want it keep right here in the room just between us boys and Grace.” ...

........ A national service law, [Stimson] told the Congressmen, was a question of responsibility. “IT is aimed to extend the principles of democracy and justivce more evenly throughjout our population. . .” Congress did not see it that way; the bill died in committee.

p. 447 Hopkins was critically ill and out of commission all through the winter and spring.

....Marvin McIntyre was dead [a loyal Roosevelt aid for 20 years -DE]. P. 448- 449 The chief of the warriers was sixty-two and in the winter of 1944 he was ailing and tired. Days after he had recovered from his post-Teheran flu of January he was complaining of headaches in the evening. Those in the White House who saw him the most - especially Anna Beottiger and Grace Tully - became more and more alarmed about his condition. He seemed strangely tired even in the morning hours; he occasionlly nodded off during a conversation; once he blanked out halfway through signing his name to a letter, leaving a long scrawl. Finally Anna spoke to Dr. McIntire. The Admiral, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, seemed concerned, too, but curiously resistant to talking with the President. Anna pressed him to speak at least to Eleanor. The upshot was that the President was persuaded to go, on March 27, 1944, to the United States Medical Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland, for a check-up. Lieutenant Commander Howard G. Bruenn, a consultant in cardiology who was in charge of the Electro-Cardiograph Department, was detailed to examine him. ....

It was Bruenn who was first surprised, then disturbed, and finally shocked as he conducted the examination and then rushed to check the earlier records. Not only was Roosevelt tired and gray of face, slightly feverish, able to move only with difficulty and with breathlessness, and coughing frequently - clearly suffering from bronchitis - but his basic condition was more serious. Roosevelt’s heart, Bruenn found a blowing systolic murmur. The second aortic sound was loud and booming. Blood pressure was was 186/108, compared with 136/78 in mid-1935, 162/98 two years later, and 188/105 in early 1941. Since 1941 there had been a significant increase in the size of the cardiac shadow. The enlargement of the heart, which was mainly of the left ventricle, was evidently caused by a dilated and tortuous aorta; and the pulmonary vessels were engorged.

Bruenn’s findings were grim: hypertension, hypersensitive heart disease, cardiac failure.

Emergency conferences were held among McIntire, Bruenn, and other Navy doctors, with Drs. James A Paullin and Frank Lahey brought in as consultants. .... Bruenn urged that at least Roosevelt be digitalized; there was some resistance, but Bruenn insisted that if that were not done he could take no further responsiblity for the case. The doctors finally agreed on a program; digitalis, less daily activity, fewer cigarettes, a one hour rest after meals, a quiet dinner in the White House quarters, at least ten hours’ sleep, no stimming in the pool, a diet of 2,600 calories moderately low in fat, and mild laxatives to avoid straining.

The digitalis seemed to bring good results within three days. When Bruenn examined his patient on April 3, 1944, Roosevelt had had a refreshing ten hour’s sleep, his color was good, his lungs entirely clear, and there was no dyspnea on lying flat. The systolic murmur persisted however, and his blood pressure was still disturbing. He continued to improve during the following days, but Bruenn and his colleagues decided that he needed a real vacation. The President readily agreed to take a long rest in the sun at Bernard Baruch’s plantation, “Hobcaw,” in South Carolina.

The cardinal issue during these alarming days was who should tell the President about his condition, and in what manner? The doctors agreed that he should be given the full facts, if only to gain his co-operation. .... Bruenn did not feel it his duty to inform the President; he was only a lieutenant commander and was a newcomer to the White House. Everyone evidently assumed that McIntire had the responsiblity and would exercise it, but there is no indication that he did. ...

P.450 So Roosevelt went to Hobcaw Barony not knowing that he was suffering from anything more than bronchitis, or the flu. ... He wrote to Hopkins that he had had a really grand time there - slept twelve hours out of the twenty-four, sat in the sun, never lost my temper, and decided to let the world go hang.” The President did experience a painful gall bladder attack at Hobcaw, but medication relieved the pain and there were no cardiac symptoms.

So it was not really a matter of work. He was tired, Miss Perkins remembered later, and he could not bear to be tired. Grace Tully still worried about the more pronounced tremble of his hands as he lit a cigarette, the dark circles that no longer ever seemed to fade from around his eyes, the slump in his shoulders. ....[Allen] Drury detected a certain lifelessness, a certain preoccupation, a tired impatience - whether from work or political opposition, or from age or ill-health, Drury could not tell. ...

P. 451 In his diary Stimson was still railing at the President’s “one man government,” which helped produce “this madhouse of Washington.” IN fact, his chief was running the White House much as he had in prewar days, while all around him were rising the huge bureaucratic structures of defense and welfare that would characterize the capital for decades to come.

The apex of the huge structure was the tiny west wing of the White House. Here the old hands, including Steve Early and Pa Watson served and protected the President. Executive clerks, Maurice Latta and William Hopkins sought to keep some control over the documents and messages that flooded into the White House - no easy job given Roosevelt’s distaste for set communications channels. The White House office had already begun to spill over into the old State Department Building across the way; administrative assistants - Jonathan Daniels, Lowell Mellett, Lauchlin Currie, David K. Niles, and others - occupied the second floor row of offices they called “Death Row” because of the turnover. The President obtained Blair House across the street, for putting up distinguished guests. Rosenman was still in charge of the speechwriting team, because Hopkins was in the Mayo Clinic and Sherwood was in London as head of the Overseas Branch of OWI.

Over in the east wing, which was in the final stages of building, Byrnes ran an even smaller shop than Roosevelt’s. In a clutter of tiny offices and partitioned cubbyholes - for a time the news ticker was in the men’s room - a small staff struggled with the tide of problems relentlessly streaming in from the civilian agencies struggling for funds, authority, manpower, and recognition. Ben Cohen, as incisive and unpretentious as ever, served as legal adviser; “special adviser’ Baruch offered wise, opinionated counsel; Samuel Lubell and a handful of others made up the rest of the full-time staff. Byrnes set up a War Mobilization Committee composed of Stimson, Nelson, and other top civilians. ...

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Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)

p. 508At first, the illness seemed no more threatening than those Roosevelt had weathered since the spring of 1940, and part of the time he seemed to be on the mend. Then, in late March, his secretary, William D. Hasset noted: "The President not looking so well ....Every morning in response to inquiry in response to inquiry as to how he felt, a characteristic reply has been ‘‘Rotten’’ or ‘‘Like hell.’’" During a weekend in Hyde Park, Roosevelt had a temperature of 104. Hassett recorded: "Looks ill, color bad; but he is cheerful in spirit. . . Not inclined, however to take up anything but most pressing business." During days when illness drained his energy, Roosevelt delegated power even more than he had earlier in the war. Already he was leaving many domestic problems to his cabinet and subordinates; now he was remote from them and ill disposed to have their differences brought to him for solution. Propped up in bed one morning, perusing memoranda from Morgenthau and Ickes, he remarked "he wished he could get Cabinet members who would do their own work."

Even in reaching military decisions and keeping up with the incessant correspondence with Churchill, Roosevelt depended more and more upon his staff. With Hopkins seriously ailing and absent, Roosevelt relied heavily upon his chief of staff, Admiral Leahy, his naval aide Captain Wilson Brown, and the offers attached to the White House map room. ... .... 512

... In 1944, Roosevelt’’s medical problems clearly extended beyond his nose and throat. His secretry Grace Tully was concerned over the shake in his hand when he lit a cigarette, and his tendency to not while reading letters or dictating. ...Miss Tully became so alarmed that she carried her concerns to Anna, who shared them. Anna already had urged McIntire to look into the president’’s overall health; McIntire sent him for a thorough checkup at the naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. At Bethesda, Roosevelt was wheeled into the office of ayoung cardiologist in the Naval Reserve, Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, and lifted onto the examination table. Dr. Bruenn later recalled that the president was in good humor, but "appeared . . . very tired, and his face was very gray. Moving caused considerable breathlessness " Dr. Bruin diagnosed him as suffering from hypertension, hypertensive heart disease, cardiac failure in the left ventricle of his enlarged heart, and acute bronchitis. Admiral McIntire, along with Dr. Bruenn, conferred with leading physicians at the naval hospital. ...Two days later they met with two consultants, Drs. James A. Paullin and Frank Lahey, who went over the X-rays, electrocardiograms, and other data. In the afternoon Drs. Paullin and Lahey examined Roosevelt at the White House. Dr. Lahey, particularly concerned with the gastrointestinal tract, did not recommend surgery, but felt Roosevelt’’s condition was sufficiently grave that he should be fully informed so that he would cooperate wholeheartedly. After some debate, Dr. Bruenn finally won support to administer digitalis to Roosevelt. Overall, the president’’s ailments were serious but did not seem at the time an immediate threat to his life. His blood pressure in the months ahead fluctuated considerably in response to his physical shape and degree of stress. At its high points it indicated severe hypertension, of a level a patient was not likely to survive for more than a year. ...

.... While Roosevelt from March, 1944, on continued to make only general remarks about his chronic nose and throat problems, Admiral McIntire was a fount of disinformation, again and again announcing that Roosevelt was om a fine state of health. The conspiracy of silence was important if Roosevelt was to run again, as he felt he must, he told his son James in the summer of 1944, "to maintain a continuity of command in a time of continuing crisis." P. 514 -515 On May 16, 1944, he startled one of his assistants, Jonathan Daniels, by prefacing an account of his conversations with Stalin on Poland with an ominous phrase: "Here is something you should write about if I pop off." Whether or not Roosevelt kept himself closely informed on his medical problems , he was an exemplary patient, cutting back on his hours of work, increasing his periods of rest, reducing his smoking from a pack or more a day to about six cigarettes (then back up later to a full pack), exercisingin the White House swimming pool -- which he enjoyed -- and adhering to a limited lowsalt diet to bring down his blood pressure andhis weight. This was the standard treatment for hypertension, which he must have known. Soon his health improved. On April 5 he told Dr. Bruen he felt fine. Tow days later he was in good humor when he held a pres conference; correspondents thought he looked better than a week before. Within two weeks, X-rays and an electocardiogram showed his heart more nearly normal and his lungs clearing. To speed his recovery, Roosevelt headed south on April 8 for a vacation at Bernard Baruch’’s plantation, Hobcow, in South Carolina. For security reasons his whereabouts was secret, but three White House correspondents waited and watched nearby, as they had in Poughkeepsie during his Hyde Park sojourns. He was accompanied by Admiral McIntire, Admiral Leahy, and the military and naval aides, but took with him none of the assistants concerned with domestic or foreign policy. While Roosevelt was there, his medical problems continued. On April 17, Dr. Bruenn arrived ... He found Roosevelt ...

Still suffering from elevated blood pressure; but at the end of April and in early May Roosevelt went through a fresh ordeal, suffering two acute gallbladder attacks, which Dr. Bruenn treated with codeine. Admiral McIntire was reassuring at the time, saying the pain was temporary and not serious. ... The setback contributed to a decision for Roosevelt to remain at Hobcaw an extra week, until May 6. P. 519 With the campaign more likely to center upon domestic issues, Roosevelt immediately upon his return from Hobcow had to confront what had so long been a prime Republican theme -- the charge that he was a tyrannical oppressor of business. The press and radio were filled in May 1944, with denunciations of a new episode in the ongoing wartime struggle between business and organized labor, the government seizure of the giant mail-order and retailing firm, Montgomery Ward. The stringent Smith Connally (War Labor Disputes) Act ... Roosevelt had sought ... to use the measure while he was at Hobcaw to discipline Sewell L. Avery, the vehemently antiunion president of Montgomery Ward, who since 1942 had been defying the War Labor Board.In January 1944, Avery refused to have further dealings with a CIO union, arguing that a majority of the work force no longer favor it. ... The president under the Smith -Connally Act had the power to take over a strikebound plant if it was "useful" to the war effort. Montgomery Ward, supplying the army and millions of farmers, seemed to Attorney General Francis Biddle to be within this category. Biddle flew to Chicago to await Avery in the Montgomery Ward office. Avery arrived and refused to budge, sputtering "to hell with government." Two military policement then ousted Avery.

They picked him up, and as they carried him out the main door, a news photographer caught a picture that appeared on the front pages throughout the nation. Roosevelt seemed to be in a trap, but by the time he arrived back in Washington he had devised a means to wriggle out. The first press conference opened in cheerful fashion and he kept the reporters laughing all through the session. Roosevelt declared that the union election was taking place that day, and if the union did not have a majority, that would end the case; if it did , since management had declared it would be willing to continue its contract, that too would end the case. The union won its election that day, so the government withdrew its control, ending the immediate embarrassing political problem for Roosevelt. Avery continued stubbornly to resist War Labor Board rulings, but it was not until December 28, 1944, after the election, that Roosevelt intervened, this time firmly and prevented Avery from running Montgomery Ward. ...

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Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament; The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) P. 777n

Winthrop Rutherford died in 1944, after a long illness. Thereafter, Roosevelt sometimes stopped his train en route to Hyde Park from Washington to visit the Rutherford estate at Allamuchy, New Jersey, and Lucy [Rutherford] spent time with him at Hbocow Barony, Bernard Baruch's South Carolina estate.

During the last, increasingly lonely months of the President's life, she joined the little band of other women -- including Anna, Margaret Suckley, and Laura Delano -- who devoted much of their time to trying to ease his burdens and see to his failing health. Once, home on leave from the Navy, Franklin Jr. bounded into his father's office unannounced to find him having his wasted legs massaged by a strange woman who was introduced to him only as "my old friend, Mrs. Winthrop Rutherford."

She was with him in Warm Springs on April 12, 1945. Hers was the last face he saw before he died. Source: Interview with Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.

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Hugh Gregory Gallagher, FDR's Splendid Deception, (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1985) P. 142

When Lucy's husband died, Roosevelt had his train stopped in New Jersey, had himself lifted by the Secret Service into a waiting car, and paid a call on her at Tranquility Farms. She gave him a cup of tea. When Roosevelt was attempting to recover his failing health at Bernard Baruch's plantation in South Carolina, Lucy drove over to visit, using Baruch's precious ration coupons to obtain the gasoline for the trip. It seems whenever the President and newly widowed Lucy were together, there were others with them -- friends, children, staff, servants. The entire business, Anna protested to biographer Bernard Asbell, was "so open, aboveboard, not hanky-panky or whatever you want to call it."

By 1943, Roosevelt had lost the women who had given him unquestioned love and devotion. These were also the qualities Lucy could offer. She was aboslutely uncritical in her adoration of FDR. He was, she wrote in a letter, "one of the greatest men who ever lived--to me the greatest." ... Lucy was content simply to be with Franklin. She did not harry him, as did Eleanor, with unfulfilled commitments. She simply sat with him and listened, smiled, and said, "Isn't he wonderful."