Roosevelt and Hopkins

An Intimate History

Robert Emmet Sherwood

• Publisher: Arcole Publishing
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787205840
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1948, this book offers a rare insight into the workings of FDR's wartime diplomacy. It is a classic account of FDR's foreign policy during World War II and examines how Harry Hopkins, his friend and confidant, became the president's "point man" with Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and other allied leaders.
The inside history of America's inevitable wartime rise as a great power, written in a wonderfully readable prose by White House speechwriter and prize-winning playwright Robert Sherwood, this biography won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize and a 1949 Bancroft Prize.
Richly illustrated throughout.

PART I: BEFORE 1941-THE EDUCATION OF HARRY HOPKINS

CHAPTER I — Foreword

DURING the years when Harry Hopkins lived as a guest in the White House, he was generally regarded as a sinister figure, a backstairs intriguer, an Iowan combination of Machiavelli, Svengali and Rasputin. Hostility toward him was by no means limited to those who hated Franklin Delano Roosevelt. There were many of Roosevelt’s most loyal friends and associates, in and out of the Cabinet, who disliked Hopkins intensely and resented the extraordinary position of influence and authority which he held. He was unquestionably a political liability to Roosevelt, a convenient target for all manner of attacks directed at the President himself, and many people wondered why Roosevelt kept him around.

But the Presidential aide who developed in the war years—and of whom General (later Secretary of State) George C. Marshall said, “He rendered a service to his country which will never even vaguely be appreciated”—was in large measure Roosevelt’s own creation. Roosevelt deliberately educated Hopkins in the arts and sciences of politics and of war and then gave him immense powers of decision for no reason other than that he liked him, trusted him and needed him. A welfare worker from the Cornbelt, who tended to regard money (his own as well as other people’s) as something to be spent as quickly as possible, a studiously unsuave and often intolerant and tactless reformer, Hopkins was widely different from Roosevelt in birth, breeding and manners. But there were qualities in him, including some of the regrettable ones, which Roosevelt admired and enjoyed, perhaps partly because they were so different. One of the best statements of this relationship was written by the perceptive Raymond Clapper in 1938:

“Many New Dealers have bored Roosevelt with their solemn earnestness. Hopkins never does. He knows instinctively when to ask, when to keep still, when to press, when to hold back; when to approach Roosevelt direct, when to go at him roundabout...Quick, alert, shrewd, bold, and carrying it off with a bright Hell’s bells air, Hopkins is in all respects the inevitable Roosevelt favorite.”

Clapper wrote that description in the New Deal years when Hopkins had lofty political ambitions of his own. His position was drastically changed during the war years, when all personal ambition had been knocked out of him by near-fatal illness. Yet I heard from a distinguished European, who came into contact with both men for the first time in these years, a description of the relationship that almost exactly tallied with Clapper’s; this observer said: “Hopkins has an almost ‘feminine’ sensitivity to Roosevelt’s moods. He seems to know precisely when Roosevelt wants to consider affairs of State and when he wants to escape from the awful consciousness of the Presidency.” (While agreeing with that statement, I must add that I don’t understand quite why this kind of sensitivity should be described as “feminine”; I have heard of women who could bring up disagreeable subjects at inopportune moments just as well as any man.){1}

A revealing story of Roosevelt’s regard for Hopkins was told by Wendell Willkie, who was not one of the more fervent admirers of either man. It will be remembered that, after his defeat at the polls in November, 1940, Willkie provided a fine Example of good citizenship and good sportsmanship in accepting the verdict. Supporting Roosevelt’s foreign policy, he felt it would be useful for him to visit Britain which was then fighting alone against Hitler’s seemingly all-conquering German war machine and was being bombed night after night with all the power and all the fury that the Nazi world conquerors could project by air. Roosevelt readily agreed to Willkie’s proposal and invited him to come to the White House on January 19, 1941, the day before the first Third Term Inaugural in American history.

At that time, Hopkins was in England, having gone there to explore the prodigious character of Winston Churchill and to report thereon to Roosevelt (which reports will be recorded in later chapters of this book); so Roosevelt suggested to Willkie that he must be sure to see Hopkins when he arrived in London. Willkie did not greet this suggestion with much enthusiasm. He probably had more cordial dislike and contempt for Hopkins than for anyone else in the Administration against which he had fought so recently and so bitterly. Indeed, he asked Roosevelt a pointed question: “Why do you keep Hopkins so close to you? You surely must realize that people distrust him and they resent his influence.” Willkie quoted Roosevelt as replying: “I can understand that you wonder why I need that halfman around me.” (The “halfman” was an allusion to Hopkins’ extreme physical frailty.) “But—someday you may well be sitting here where I am now as President of the United States. And when you are, you’ll be looking at that door over there and knowing that practically everybody who walks through it wants something out of you. You’ll learn what a lonely job this is, and you’ll discover the need for somebody like Harry Hopkins who asks for nothing except to serve you.”

Roosevelt did not talk much about the loneliness of high office. Indeed, in his letters, he was forever saying that he was having a “grand,” “fine” or “bully” time. But that loneliness was a reality. Roosevelt was naturally a gregarious man who preferred talking to reading or writing. Like anybody else, he wanted to get away from his job now and then, but people wouldn’t let him do it. Even in a poker game, while the cards were being shuffled, some member of the Cabinet was apt to interject, “By the way, Mr. President, the boys over at the Bureau of the Budget are taking what I consider a dangerously narrow-minded point of view toward our program—and I’m sure if you study the details you’ll agree that—“ etc. Roosevelt became more and more suspicious of the people associated with him and kept more and more to himself. When he could choose his own company, he preferred to be with old friends and relatives who had nothing to do with government and with whom he could talk about the old days in Hyde Park and about his innumerable, varied plans for his own future when he would retire to private life. It was characteristic of him that, when he went on his last journey to Warm Springs in a belated attempt to get some rest, his only companions apart from his personal staff were two gentle cousins of his own generation, Margaret Suckley and Laura Delano—and also his dog, Fala.

It is true that, in their final years, a special bond developed between Roosevelt and Hopkins, due to the fact that both men had fought with death at close range, both were living on borrowed time. But Hopkins achieved his favored position long before he had his own first encounter with death—and long before he could be described as one who crossed the Presidential threshold wanting nothing. In the F.E.R.A. and W.P.A. days, he was not reluctant to use his close friendship with the President for the advancement of his own interests and those of the agencies with which he was personally concerned.

I first met Hopkins on a week end on Long Island early in September, 1938, under the hospitable roof of Herbert and Margaret Swope. At the time I was keeping a diary (I stopped doing so regularly in June, 1940, which is just when I should have started) and I noted at the time: “Long talk at breakfast with Harry Hopkins, the W.P.A. Administrator, a profoundly shrewd and faintly ominous man.” That was all I put down, but I remember that on that occasion Hopkins talked to me very agreeably, revealing a considerable knowledge of and enthusiasm for the theater. He took obvious pride in the achievements of W.P.A. in the Federal Theater and Arts Projects, and I believed he had every right to be proud. But I did not quite like him. He used such phrases as, “We’ve got to crack down on the bastards.” I could not disagree with his estimate of the targets in question but I did not like the idea of cracking down. I had the characteristically American suspicion of anyone who appeared to be getting “too big for his breeches.” A year or so later, when he was beaten down and chastened by terrible illness, I came to know him much better and to form a friendship which must color everything I write about him and for which no apologies are offered.

When, after Roosevelt’s death, President Truman conferred the Distinguished Service Medal on Hopkins, the War Department citation spoke of the “piercing understanding” which he had displayed in attacking the manifold problems of the war. That is a wonderful phrase for Hopkins—“piercing understanding”—indicating the penetrating sharpness of his mind and the relentless, tireless drive that was behind it. In the year before Pearl Harbor, and the years of war that followed, Hopkins made it his job, he made it his religion, to find out just what it was that Roosevelt really wanted and then to see to it that neither hell nor high water, nor even possible vacillations by Roosevelt himself, blocked its achievement. Hopkins never made the mistake of Colonel Edward M. House, which caused the fatal breach with Wilson, of assuming he knew the President’s mind better than the President did. Roosevelt could send him on any mission, to the Pentagon Building or to Downing Street, with absolute confidence that Hopkins would not utter one decisive word based on guesswork as to his Chief’s policies or purposes. Hopkins ventured on no ground that Roosevelt had not charted. When Hopkins first journeyed to Moscow, in July, 1941, within a month after Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union, Roosevelt sent a message to Joseph Stalin: “I ask you to treat him with the identical confidence you would feel if you were talking directly to me.” At that time, Roosevelt had never had any personal contact with Stalin, but Stalin took him at his word and talked to Hopkins with a degree of candor that he had displayed to no previous wartime emissary from the democratic world. What was remarkable about this first contact with Stalin—which will be recorded verbatim in a later section of this book—is that Hopkins carried with him no written instructions whatsoever from Roosevelt as to what he should say or do. The President could and did trust him fully.{2}

Roosevelt used to say, “Harry is the perfect Ambassador for my purposes. He doesn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘protocol.’ When he sees a piece of red tape, he just pulls out those old garden shears of his and snips it. And when he’s talking to some foreign dignitary, he knows how to slump back in his chair and put his feet up on the conference table and say, ‘Oh, yeah?’” It was this same ability to break all speed records in getting down to brass tacks that endeared Hopkins to the heart of Winston Churchill, who has said:

“I have been present at several great conferences where twenty or more of the most important executive personages were gathered together. When the discussion flagged and all seemed baffled, it was on these occasions Harry Hopkins would rap out a deadly question: “Surely, Mr. President, here is the point we have got to settle. Are we going to face it or not?” Faced it always was and being faced, was conquered.

One time Churchill, Roosevelt and Hopkins were having lunch together upstairs in the Oval Study in the White House. They were thrashing out in advance major problems which were coming up for discussion at a full dress conference to be held later that afternoon. As usual, both Roosevelt and Churchill were wandering far afield. (Churchill might have been refighting the Battle of Blenheim and Roosevelt recalling the tactics employed by John Paul Jones when the Bonhomme Richard defeated the Serapis.) It was for Hopkins to bring these soaring imaginations down to earth, to contemplation of the topic immediately at hand.{3}

When he did so, with his usual brusqueness, Churchill turned on him and said:

“Harry! When this war is over His Majesty’s Government is going to reward you by conferring upon you a noble title.”

Hopkins remarked sourly that membership in the House of Lords was one reward that he did not covet. But Churchill went right ahead:

“We have already selected the title. You are to be named ‘Lord Root of the Matter.’”

Hopkins had very little of Roosevelt’s or Churchill’s powers of vision and almost none of their historical sense. He looked to the immediate rather than the long-term result. He was an implementer rather than a planner. He was accustomed to divide people he knew into two groups, the “talkers” and the “doers,” and he placed himself proudly in the second category. When Roosevelt contemplated a subject, his mind roamed all around it; he considered it in its relation to past, present and future. Hopkins, contemplating the same subject, was interested only in thrusting straight through to its heart and then acting on it without further palaver. In that respect, Hopkins was remarkably useful to Roosevelt—but Roosevelt was essential to Hopkins.

Despite his furious devotion to duty, and despite his persistent ill health, Hopkins had a zest for living which caused him often to revert to the role of a Grinnell (Iowa) College freshman when turned loose in the Big Town. He loved the race tracks ($2 window), the theaters and night clubs, he loved the society of the fashionable, the beautiful, the talented, the gay and of such taverners as Sherman Billingsley, Jack and Charlie, and Toots Shor. He was pleased and rather proud whenever the hostile press denounced him as a “playboy.” That made him feel glamorous. The President’s physician, Admiral Ross T. McIntire, once said: “Our biggest job is to keep Harry from ever feeling completely well. When he thinks he’s restored to health he goes out on the town—and from there to the Mayo Clinic.” Hopkins was not a hard drinker—he was physically incapable of being one—but almost any drink that he did take was more than was good for him.

Roosevelt regarded the mild frivolities of his wayward friend with amusement not unmixed with considerable concern. His attitude was that of an indulgent parent toward an errant son whose wild oats, while forgivable, must be strictly rationed.

Following is a handwritten letter, dated May 21, 1939, during one of the many periods when Hopkins was bedridden with wasting sickness:

“DEAR HARRY—

Good Boy! Teacher says you have gained 2 pounds.

2 Lbs.=2$

Keep on gaining and put the reward into your little Savings Bank. But you must not gain more than 50 lbs. because Popper has not got more than so$.

As ever

F.D.R.

Clipped to that letter were two one-dollar bills. They are still clipped to it as this is written, eight years later. There was not a great deal more money left in the Hopkins estate.

Another letter of May 18, 1944, when Hopkins was in the Ashford General Hospital:

“DEAR HARRY:—

It is grand to get the reports of how well you are getting on at White Sulphur Springs, and I have had a mighty nice letter from [Dr. Andrew B.] Rivers—couched mostly in medical terms—which, however, I have had translated!

The main things I get from it are two. First, that it is a good thing to connect up the plumbing and put your sewerage system into operating condition. The second is (and this comes from others in authority) that you have got to lead not the life of an invalid but the life of common or garden sense.

I, too, over one hundred years older than you are, have come to the same realization and I have cut my drinks down to one and a half cocktails per evening and nothing else—not one complimentary highball or night cap. Also, I have cut my cigarettes down from twenty or thirty a day to five or six a day. Luckily they still taste rotten but it can be done.

The main gist of this is to plead with you to stay away until the middle of June at the earliest. I don’t want you back until then. If you do come back before then you will be extremely unpopular in Washington, with the exception of Cissy Patterson who wants to kill you off as soon as possible—just as she does me.

My plans—my medical laboratory work not being finished—are to be here about three days a week and to spend the other four days a week at Hyde Park, Shangri-La or on the Potomac. For later in the Summer I have various hens sitting but I don’t know when they will hatch out.

I had a really grand time down at Bernie’s [Ba...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: BEFORE 1941-THE EDUCATION OF HARRY HOPKINS
• PART II: 1941-MORE THAN MERE WORDS
• PART III: 1942-THE NARROW MARGIN
• PART IV: 1943-THE SECOND FRONT
• PART V: 1944, 1945-VICTORY AND DEATH
• OPERATION CODE NAMES
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER