October 1945

When conservative Democrats gained influence in Congress and the White House in 1938, H.A. saw The New Deal stall.  He was determined not to let that happen on his watch, but events were working against him.  With the end of the war we started rolling back some of the price controls on consumer products to encourage business to redirect their efforts from war to peace production.  Unfortunately, the transition was not as quick as anticipated creating a shortage of some goods and an increase in prices.  This inflation produced a reduction in the buying power of the average citizen.  At the same time a series of strikes occurred to increase worker's wages.  The conservative elements in both political parties painted the unions as self-serving, unpatriotic, and responsible for the higher prices.  We are working to arbitrate the strikes so they are short and effective for the workers so that we can counter this impression.  We are also working with business to help make the transition to a peace economy faster and smoother.  We are going to slow down the removal of additional price controls until we obtain guarantees from business that they are ready for such measures.  This is not helping H.A. make many friends with big business and the conservative elements in the Democratic Party.  The Whiskey Rebels, whose ranks we are told are growing daily, are calling H.A. a Communist.  It seems more and more fearful American believe H.A. is an agent of Stalin.  One poll shows that over ten percent of the nation has embraced this insanity.

Undeterred H.A. is carrying forward FDR’s vision: national health care, full employment, and continuation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission.  We will create the appropriate balance between business and workers to ensure that both prosper so that America prospers.  

With almost seven months under my belt at the White House, I am becoming more confident in my abilities.  Not everyone is happy with my role as the gatekeeper of the president and I have had a fair share of battles with some staff members.  Fortunately, H.A. has consistently backed my position and duties.

Naturally, there are a lot of people in the White House who look like me, but they are relegated to the positions of maids, butlers, and cooks.  Do not get me wrong these are important positions that are vital to the success of the White House and I admire the people doing these jobs.   One of the staff members [chief butler, Alonzo Fields –A.S.] told me, his staff was “helping to make history.  We have a small part, perhaps a menial part, but they can’t do much here without us.  They’ve got to eat, you know.”

I would just like to see some of them have the opportunity to move into other positions, but the segregation culture is going to be very difficult to disburse.  We have made advances, but they are slow and, so far, small. 

Speaking of eating, F.D.R. and Eleanor actually had some integrated dinners.   They knew it would be shocking to many.  Their relative, President Theodore Roosevelt, caused an uproar when he had a White House dinner with Booker T. Washington.  Washington was beloved by proper society because his stances did not threaten the supposed natural structure of society; however, having a President sit down and eat a meal with a person of his color was beyond the pale.   Such a thing was just not done, well, perhaps once before.  President Adams in 1798 had dinner with Joseph Bunel to discuss trade and security issues.  Bunel was a leader of the Haitian revolution and was sent to Washington by President Toussaint Louvertute.  This dinner was also met with outrage.  None of our founding slaver Presidents would do such a thing, that is until Theodore Roosevelt. 

Sadly, with the criticism of the Booker T. Washington dinner.  The Roosevelt administration at first tried to deny the dinner occurred, then said it was lunch and not dinner, to further make the meal less damaging Roosevelt’s staff said that the President’s wife and daughters had not been at the event.  I especially enjoyed this denial because proper society can never expose their women to these types of elements – it is just not safe. Who knows what this sage educator, orator, and author would do to them.  Unreasonable fear is a power weapon and it has been used effectively for hundreds of years in this nation.

This may just have been a coincidence but a day after the dinner Roosevelt issued an order officially designating the president’s residence as the “White House.”  Coincidence or not, it was fitting.

In fact Theodore Roosevelt was almost not president.  When President William McKinley was shot at the World’s Fair in Buffalo in 1901 it was not the Secret Service, but James Benjamin Parker who subdued the attacker.  Had McKinley’s doctors been competent, the president could have survived the attack due to Parker’s fast actions in preventing additional shots from being fired.  Parker, a large but humble man, said, “…the life of the head of this country is worth more than that of an ordinary citizen and I should have caught the bullets in my body rather than the President should get them.”  He continued, “I am a Negro, and I am glad that the Ethiopian race has whatever credit comes with what I did.  If I did anything, the colored people should get the credit.”  But they did not.  Parker was a celebrity within our community, but the rest of society ignored him.   Parker’s efforts were severely downplayed or simply left out of the official record of the assassination.

F.D.R. helped make advances in employment for my people in an Executive Order, but conservative Southern Democrats blocked many New Deal benefits from agricultural and domestic workers.  They feared federal support for these workers would undermine the Southern culture.  Although we will lose the vast majority of the south, the Democratic Party must become the leader against Jim Crow and segregation.  

I will never forget April 9, 1939, when Marion Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  An integrated crowd of 75,000 enjoyed this performance, while the southern segregationists howled in horror.  Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR [the patriotic Daughters of the American Revolution - A.S.], and I fell in love with Eleanor.  Just to assuage any fears from proper society, my love for her is completely platonic.      

©  2012 Ron Millar

September 1945

For the vast majority of leaders in the White House and before that in the Vice President’s offices, visitors to H.A. saw me little more than a piece of furniture so they felt free to talk openly in front of me.  At first this infuriated me, then I saw that it had an upside by allowing me to be privy to all the major and minor developments.

I also thought I had developed some political trust with H.A., so with the war over and as things calmed down, or as much as things calm down in the White House, I made my presentation to H.A. on my two pet issues:  J. Edgar Hoover and Spain.

I clearly spelled out the reasons why J. Edgar Hoover should be fired [redacted false claims of limiting the liberties of Americans.  Subject has a sick hero worship of anarchist Emma Goldman. -A.S.]

H.A. said that while it was clear that “Hoover specializes in building up a file against various public figures…” and “is apparently on his way to become an American Himmler” he was not prepared to fire him.  H.A. thought that with the right Attorney General leading the Department of Justice, he could keep a better watch on Hoover on the inside than if Hoover was terminated and started working directly for his opposition. 

Although H.A. is squeaky clean, I think that Hoover has too many files on key Democrats – and Hoover specializes in detailed records on extra marital affairs and odd sexual proclivities – that his removal would end far too many careers and lives.  As new and egregious developments arise I will continue my campaign.

I made even less headway in my other issue – freeing Spain.  The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade called for a V-S (Victory in Spain –A.S.) Day following the surrender of Japan.  H.A. said that his focus was on peace not a new front.

I was saddened by his refusal to take any action toward my issues, but I knew my chances were slim.  I will just have to wait for the right opportunities to broach them again.

Even without the war, H.A. has a full plate in securing the peace and building the economy.

With the end of the war and the resulting reduction of defense spending and the demobilization of millions of troops who needed to be absorbed into the economy, many economists were fearful of another Great Depression.  In his message to Congress following the end of the war, H.A. called for a “people’s peace” and a “peace of abundance.”  H.A. saw that a strong and activist government was necessary to achieve these goals the postwar years.  He said government “action should be taken to check the decline in employment… and government should be authorized to initiate its own supplementary programs if such stimulation fails to do the job.”  The economy at the end of the war was producing $200 billion in goods and services.  This was almost double its production in any year before the war.  The United States has 52 million domestic workers and 12 million in uniform so we have to find a way to employ the men and women leaving the armed services and find markets for their productive capacity.  H.A. told Congress the key was recognizing “the future of the American worker lies in the well-being of American private enterprise, and the future of private enterprise lies in the well-being of the American worker… as one team, there are no limits on what America can accomplish.”

If the United States can produce ships, tanks, and planes needed to fight a world-wide war, we can produce houses, cars, clothing, education, recreation and other necessities “on a scale that staggers the imagination.”  This production was not to simply supply the demand for consumer items, but to build a better future for America and the world.  “The items on this list include our need for more houses than ever before, more hospitals, more schools, more rural developments, more and better transportation facilities, more industrialization in the South and other regions where people normally are under-employed and don’t produce enough – and, finally, more international cooperation to build up the undeveloped human and natural resources of other lands.  These are some of the people’s unfilled orders that must go onto the books of the nation.  They represent millions of jobs and work to be done everywhere that needs only a touch of government encouragement and stimulation to release the driving power of private enterprise.”

H.A. argued that there was a middle course between the planned economies of the socialist states and the traditional laissez-faire of capitalist economies.  This middle ground would be obtained through a “full employment budget” that would take into account not only government activity, but all economic activity public and private.  This budget would allow the government to promote growth, reduce unemployment, or combat inflation where necessary. 

To implement this plan H.A. drafted full-employment legislation with the help of a team of prominent industrialists and economists.   Conservative Republicans and southern Democrats united to strip some of the features of the bill, but the legislation did pass as the Employment Act of 1946. 

H.A. also appointed a committee to study the patent system, which favored monopolies and international cartels and H.A. sought to increase funding in government research, the findings of which he would make available to U.S. businesses. 

With the development of the atomic bomb, H.A. realized the power of government funding of research.

H.A. also knew that the atomic bomb was key to securing the peace, but not in the way that the conservative forces in America wanted – to scare the Soviet Union into submission.  On September 12, H.A. issued his position with regard to the bomb,  “Atomic power means ‘one world or no world,” H.A. said, “We must move with speed, determination and faith.  The stakes are the human race.  We cannot fail.  We cannot delay… If we fail there will be a senseless armament race and chaos.”

H.A. sought to place atomic weaponry under international control with the aim of destroying “all weapons of offensive warfare,” and promote the civilian and peaceful uses of atomic energy through a civilian atomic power commission. 

“I still recognize the difficulty and am still convinced of the ultimate importance of a change in Russia attitude toward individual liberty, but I have come to the conclusion that it would not be possible to use our possession of the atomic bomb as a direct lever to produce change.  I have become convinced that any demand by us for an internal change in Russia as a condition of sharing in the atomic weapon would be so resented that it would make the objective we have in view less probable… Accordingly, unless the Soviets are voluntarily invited into the partnership upon a basis of cooperation and trust, we are going to maintain the Anglo-American bloc over against the Soviet in the possession of this weapon.  Such a condition will almost certainly stimulate feverish activity on the part of the Soviet toward the development of this bomb in what will in effect be a secret armament race of a rather desperate character.  This is evidence to indicate that such activity may have already commenced.”

Secretary of War Henry Stimson agreed, “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”   The position that there was no possible way of keeping the science behind the bomb a secret and that there should be free interchange of scientific information between the members of the United Nations was held by Dean Acheson representing the State Department and Abe Fortas representing Interior.  Treasury Secretary Fred Vinson, Attorney General Tom Clark, and Navy Secretary James Forrestal strongly disagreed.

H.A. concluded that “…there was the gravest danger that by putting the screws on our scientists and trying to maintain what we thought was a secret, other nations would go far beyond us in their discoveries.”  This sharing however, did not include manufacturing techniques in creating an atomic bomb, in advocating “the interchange of scientific information but not the interchange of techniques or ‘know-hows.’”  This sharing of information would have “a quid pro quo proviso that there be as much freedom for American scientific workers to work in Russian laboratories as for Russians to work in American laboratories.”

The media went crazy – and not just the conservative papers.  The New York Times, even though H.A. was clear that he opposed the sharing of weapons technology, said that the President wanted “to give the secret of the atomic bomb to Russia.” 

Members of Congress acted against the president.  The May-Johnson bill [Senators Edwin Johnson and Andrew May of Colorado and Kentucky respectively, both Democrats –A.S.], which was actually written by opposition factions within the Department of War, would restrict research and tightly control scientific information.  The proposed control board would be dominated by military and government officials would have the power to impose severe penalties for security violations.  The bill also emphasized the military uses of atomic energy.   This bill has many supporters, but with a strong lobbying campaign I believe we can defeat it.  

Legislation was the least of H.A.’s atomic problems.  Even though he was president, H.A. had a difficult time determining the status of atomic weapons in the military.  The Secretary of War confirmed that we did not have any nuclear weapons; however, H.A. later questioned General Leslie Groves who controlled the atomic materials he said that although we don’t currently have any atomic bombs we could easily assemble a few in less than a day.  H.A. was appalled that one man was essentially in charge of  U.S. atomic weapons and that person was Groves, who had once called FDR a son of a bitch and told off-color stories about Eleanor Roosevelt.  H.A. thought Groves had fascist tendencies.   H.A. is quickly putting together a reorganization to ensure civilian control of the atomic bomb.

©  2012 Ron Millar

August 1945

V-J Day!  The atomic bomb ended the war, but I can't help worrying at what cost.  We obliterated two cities with one bomb each.  Everything and everyone killed.  The atomic bomb is unable to be used for precision bombing of military targets - everyone dies.  We abandoned precision bombing earlier in this war and destroyed entire cities with conventional bombs, but the potential for destruction now is just unimaginable.

H.A.’s primary concern with the bomb was “that the darn thing went off.”

As Vice President, H.A. was well aware of the development of the bomb.  He attended a meeting on October 9, 1941 with FDR and Vanneavar Bush [head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development -A.S.] to be briefed about the conclusion of British and American scientists that the development of an atomic bomb was possible, the bomb's potential as a weapon, and the potential dangers of such a weapon.  Following the meeting H.A. was appointed to a small group comprised of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, Arthur Compton of the National Academy of Sciences [University of Chicago professor and Nobelist in physics -A.S.], Bush, and H.A., to provide advise on building an atomic weapon.  The S-1 program, later renamed the Manhattan Project, was approved by this small committee and the president.  Development of the project was then placed under military control, but H.A. was frequently updated on the progress of this ultra-secret project.  

At the Potsdam Conference just a few weeks ago, H.A. was informed of the successful atomic bomb test near Alamorgordo, New Mexico, and the confirmation of the devastating power of the bomb.  H.A. informed Stalin of the weapon, the British had been working with us on the project since the beginning.  Military and political consensus of those in the know were eager to use the bomb on Japan.  Even though, the Japanese signaled an interest in having the Soviet’s broker a peace.  Japan's key surrender condition was to be allowed to keep their emperor; however, FDR had wanted an unconditional surrender.  The allies, continuing this policy, issued a joint demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan.  Also during the conference, Churchill was defeated in elections and Clement Attlee, from the Labour Party, replaced him at Potsdam.  It was very odd, opening the conference with Churchill and closing with Attlee.  I was not sad to see Churchill go.  Churchill wants to the western allies to create a united front against the Soviet Union.  Churchill is eager to turn the Soviet Union from an ally into an enemy. 

Having good relations with the Soviet Union is a centerpiece of H.A.’s administration.  “There is altogether too much irresponsible defeatist talk about the possibility of war with Russia,” H.A. declared shortly after the conclusion of the war in Europe.  “In my opinion, such talk, at a time when the blood of our boys shed on the fields of Europe has scarcely dried, is criminal.  There are certain people – and they are the rankest kind of un-Americans – who are anxious to see the United States and Russia come to blows.”

H.A. praised General Dwight D. Eisenhower for friendly remarks he made that were quoted in an Associated Press article.  Eisenhower replied to H.A. that “So far as a soldier should have opinions about such things, I am convinced that friendship – which means an honest desire on both sides to strive for mutual understanding – between Russia and the United States, is absolutely essential to world tranquility.  Moreover, I believe that most of the Russians I have met share this conviction.”

Now that we have the atomic bomb the forces seeking to attack the Soviet Union are emboldened and are eager to take action. 

©  2012 Ron Millar

July 1945

The celebration of the end of the war in Europe has dissipated.  The continuation of the conflict in the Pacific and the summer heat are making people edgy.  Parents want their children in uniform returned home, the general public wants an end to rationing.  Businessmen and farmers want an end to price controls, and seeing the immanent lifting of controls, workers are demanding higher wages. 

In this atmosphere an odd movement has formed – the Whiskey Rebels.  They are holding protests in parks, convention halls, and street corners across the country and have a small but passionate following.  They are angry, afraid, and blame the government for all their problems.  To them the government is the problem.  Somehow government is preventing our big businesses from flourishing, which would allow America to flourish.  Somehow these people missed the Great Depression – that was the product of big business freed from government regulations.   The press loves them.  They are getting coverage in newspapers and radio that seems much greater than what they deserve.  But for certain outlets the Whiskey Rebels match their political interests and beliefs. 

The Whiskey Rebels claim to love the Constitution.  However, its seems they want the Articles of Confederation of the early Republic not our current Constitution: no federal taxation, state government dominance over the federal government, and an end to all New Deal policies and programs. 

The Whiskey Rebels take their name from the first rebellion against the new federal government that happened in the early 1790s.  At federal tax was created on whiskey production by Alexander Hamilton to help pay down the national debt.  Farmers west of the Allegheny Mountains who turned their grain into whiskey to more easily transport their product to the markets in the east opposed the new tax.  The protests turned violent and tax collectors were attacked.  It got so bad that President George Washington called on state militias and personally lead 15,000 troops to put down the revolt. 

Today’s Whiskey Rebels are not currently violent, they are more like a mad tea party.  It appears that this movement is a new iteration of the crazies that think H.A. is a Soviet plant.  This movement is also funded by big business that fears H.A.  I fear big businesses involvement in the political process.  In Spain, American big business abandoned democracy for profit by supporting Franco – greed has no democratic loyalties.  Big business will do the same in America if they think it will increase their profits.  They will forgo American workers for cheap labor overseas.  There are millions of desperate workers overseas who are willing to work for next to nothing.  I even believe big business will hide their profits offshore to prevent paying their fair share of taxes.  They will do this to maximize profits even though it will eventually starve the very system they need to maintain their dominance.  This avarice and short-sightedness will eventually lead to the downfall of big business, but their fall will hurt everyone.

If the Whiskey Rebels think they have it bad, Europe is much, much worse.  I don’t think you can even say they have economies – tens of millions are near starvation.   H.A. views Europe’s hunger as shameful and immediately created large-scale loans and aid packages.  

H.A.’s efforts to win the peace in Europe continue.  Hopkins has successfully negotiated a summit meeting for July with Stalin and Churchill in Germany for next month.  Getting Churchill and Stalin to agree to meet was very difficult. 

Efforts to build a strong United Nations is also on track; however, H.A. had to replace some U.S. delegates at the San Francisco U.N. organizing conference who were attempting to defeat language making “the right to work and the right to education” part of the U.N.’s goals.  The fired delegates thought that these elements would promote communism in the United States.  H.A. told me, “More and more it begins to look like the psychology is favorable toward getting into war with Russia.  This must not be.  It seems incredible that our people should drift toward this whirlpool.”


©  2012 Ron Millar

June 1945

H.A. has an 87 percent approval rating according to the Gallup Organization.  Naturally, this is due in large part to the success in Europe in defeating Mussolini and Hitler, but it is still good news for a man unexpectedly thrust into leadership under the shadow of F.D.R.

However, the rhetoric from the birther and red menace idiots is growing.  I fear we are going to have another witch hunt on communists, socialists, and anarchists like happened after the last world war.

Even the heros of the current war are not immune from attack.

Several of my Lincoln comrades joined the OSS [Office of Strategic Services - we are monitoring Milton Wolff, Irving Goff, Vincent Lossowski, Milton Felson, Michael Jiminez – A.S.] in 1942.  After training they were given the rank of technical sergeants while their fellow graduates became commissioned officers.  Ignoring this snub, they followed the U.S. landings in North Africa that liberated thousands of Spanish Republican Refugees and International Bridagers who had fled to French north Africa at the beginning of the war.  The Lincoln OSS organized these political prisoners to fight against the fascists with the expectation that the Allies would ultimately help them remove Franco from power in Spain.  


The Lincoln OSS trained their Spanish and International Brigade comrades to infiltrate and operate behind German lines in North Africa and France.  [Colonel William J. ] Donovan the head of OSS was very impressed with their work and when informed of the slights given in rank he remedied the situation.  In 1943, the Lincoln OSS moved to Naples [with the exception of Felsen who was wounded and captured by the Germans –A.S.].   In Italy the Italian Communist Party had a vast underground network.  One comrade [Goff –A.S.], because of his activities in Spain, formed an alliance and quickly expanded the Allies contacts and agents behind German lines.  I'm told he said, “We had guerrillas operating on every highway, every railroad, every German convoy.  We had the identifications, the material in every car on every highway reported through the network of radios.” 

In March 1945 a Congressional subcommittee investigated the promotion of fourteen “Communist officers.”  Major General Clayton Bissell, head of army intelligence, defended the officers as did Donovan, “These men I’ve been in the slit trenches with, I’ve been in the muck with, and I’d measure them up with any men.”    Under continued pressure from the red baiters in Congress, the Lincoln OSS were evacuated immediately following the capitulation of German forces in Italy [May 1945 –A.S.], their promotions were denied, and all the Lincolns were discharged from the service.  Donovan feared the Congress, who controlled the purse strings, would retaliate against him if he did not. 

My comrades were not just heros in the OSS.  Other Lincoln’s joined the regular army and were exemplary solders [e.g. Bob Thompson who is under surveillance. –A.S.].   They too met similar fates as the Lincolns in the OSS.   

Since my comrades cannot even retain their positions in the OSS and military how can we hope to convince Americans to help free Spain from Franco.  Although he opposes Franco, H.A. is not interested in taking any action against him.  The VALB [Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade –A.S. ] has been organizing around this issue, but the growing anti-communist fear  and red baiting ensures that their efforts will not be successful.


©  2012 Ron Millar

May 1945

A very odd movement has developed just weeks after, my boss, President Henry A. Wallace was sworn into office.   Several nuts have taken to the radio and lecture halls leading a crusade that H.A. is not a U.S. citizen, but a Soviet plant.  Based on this lie, they are calling for his removal as President. 

They claim that he does not have a valid birth certificate and secretly speaks Russian.  The fact is that H.A. was born on his family’s farm without the help of a doctor or even midwife, and he does indeed know Russian and a couple other languages.  He did not obtain a birth certificate until well into his adult years.  They also believe that H.A.’s trip to Russia and China in the Spring of 1944 was to receive orders from his Communist masters and they infer that he is responsible for F.D.R.’s death.  This is an insane conspiracy story.   The fact that F.D.R. sent H.A. on the trip never is mentioned and that the trip almost cost H.A. the Vice Presidency because he was not in the States to defend himself against the forces trying to remove him from the ticket.   I don’t know what brew they are adding to their morning tea or coffee, but it is making them crazy.

But saying they are crazy is too easy an answer.  This is an organized and complex campaign.  Crazy people don’t organize meetings and pay for radio and newspaper space to promote them.  Who is recruiting these people?  Who is writing the script for them? Who is paying them and their bookers to get them on the radio and in lecture halls around the country?  That is the real mystery and conspiracy!  As further proof, they say H.A.’s middle name is Russian, “Agard” – it is really from Horace Agard a Methodist minister relative of H.A.’s mother.  But I guess old Horace could be a Soviet plant too – assuming these nuts believe that there really was a Horace Agard!

Friends, I know Communists and I can assure you that H.A. is not one.  A progressive democrat yes – a Communist definitely not!  I don’t even think the Socialist Party would have him.  However, for people like this there is no distinction between liberals, communists, socialists, or anarchists – we are just lumped together as the Red Menace.  Sadly, the members of these various groups do recognize the differences and spend the vast majority of their time attacking each other rather than working together to bring positive change to the nation.

H.A. is ignoring this silly sideshow.

We have more important things to do – the war in Europe is over!  However, I am sorry that F.D.R. did not live to see this day.  Sadly, as one war ends forces are trying to spark another – and we haven’t defeated the Japanese yet.  Churchill is part of this movement.  He sent us a telegraph just four days after V-E Day that stated, “An iron curtain is drawn down upon their” meaning the Soviet’s “front.  We do not know what is going on behind.”  To try to dispel these fears H.A. sent Henry Hopkins [key foreign policy advisor - actually lives in the White House  -AS] to Moscow to meet with Stalin and sustain relations.  Our ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, seems to be moving to Churchill's side.  Harriman, who previously was supportive of the Soviet Union, changed his stance and he even opposes the Soviet’s request of a $6 billion loan to help rehabilitate the war-ravaged nation.  H.A. overruled him.  Fortunately, our military, following the accords made at Teheran and Yalta, are cooperating fully and peacefully with the Soviet military on matters of strategy and occupation.  The U.S. military leaders understand that Soviet assistance is needed in the war against Japan.  They see no advantage to alienate the Soviets at the moment of victory in Europe.

H.A. had to reprimand Nelson Rockefeller, the State Department’s top man on Latin American, who wanted Argentina to be admitted into the UN.  H.A. correctly opposed this because Argentina’s government had been supportive of the Axis powers throughout the war.  H.A. believes that elements of the State Department wanted to build a solid anti-Soviet bloc of nations using Latin America and Great Britain and its colonial states at the UN.  H.A. fears that if such a coalition is formed the Soviets would find themselves outvoted again and again in the Assembly, and the Soviet Union would not trust, and then not work with, the world organization to ensure a peaceful future.

With the conflict over in Europe and moving to a successful completion in the Pacific, I fear that the war-mongers will not allow us to give peace a chance.  They have found their new enemy.  Do they want perpetual conflict?  Surely, the profit of war does not trump the potential wealth of peace.

©  2012 Ron Millar

April 1945

The President is Dead!

April 12 is a day I will not soon forget.  White House Secretary Steve Early called and told Wallace to come to the White House immediately.  Wallace didn’t know what was happening, but the urgency in Early’s voice made Wallace uneasy.  We ran through the Capitol and jumped into a waiting car.  At the White House, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt gave H.A. the news, “Henry, the President’s dead.”  Wallace immediately asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?”  Eleanor kindly replied, “Is there anything we can do for you, Henry?  For you are the one in trouble now?”  I love Eleanor.  Through her grief, Eleanor realized the daunting task ahead for H.A. – taking on the responsibility for the war and having to replace the most revered president since Lincoln – and she immediately offered her support to the new president.  Eleanor is an American treasure.

Although I knew FDR was ill, I had hoped he would recover and see our nation through to end of the war and help establish a just peace.  He deserved to see our victory.  H.A. had only met with FDR two or three times since the inaugural and did not realize this health was in such a serious state.  I don’t even think FDR knew, or at least he didn’t want to know, he was that close to death.  If he did know I would hope that he would have taken the time to brief his Vice President for a smooth transition, but as we saw at the convention FDR had his peculiarities. 

I know that I should not be critical of FDR so soon after this death, but he did make some bad decisions and succumb to cruder political influences: the internment of Japanese Americans, turning away the Jewish refugee ship the St. Louis, supporting excluding my people from New Deal programs, and refusing to provide aid to the Spanish Republic.  Even with these harmful and deadly actions, FDR was a great man and the man we needed to lead us out of the economic depression and to end the regimes of the evil axis fascists Mussilini, Hilter, and Tojo.

But FDR is dead and I’m very glad that H.A. is here to lead our nation.  In the early evening, the cabinet, the chief justice, the Speaker of the House, and H.A.’s wife and children were all assembled in the Cabinet Room at the White House.  H.A. received the oath of office from Chief Justice Harlan Stone.  My boss, the odd duck from Iowa, was president.  I can hardly believe it.

Two days later, H.A. met Eleanor Roosevelt at Union Station.  Mrs. Roosevelt had flown to Georgia to accompany the body of her husband back to Washington.  Over 350,000 people lined Pennsylvania Avenue to watch FDR’s flag-draped coffin pass on a caisson drawn by six white horses.  The funeral service was held in the East Room of the White House.  That evening FDR’s body was taken by train to its final resting place in Hyde Park, New York.

Two days after the funeral, H.A. gave his first national speech as President.  He knew he needed to build confidence in his ability to lead and complete FDR’s goals for his fourth term, so he gave a national radio address before a joint session of Congress.  H.A. reassured the nation of his determination to fulfill FDR’s war-time and post war goals including the unconditional surrender of the axis powers and the founding conference for the new United Nation’s organization in San Francisco.  The UN’s goal is to prevent future wars and build peaceful relationships among nations.   The grieving nation welcomed the speech and embraced H.A. as the appropriate successor to FDR.

H.A.’s life has become a continuous series of meetings.  As his aide I’m always there.  The majority of his visitors ignore me as one of the invisible help – don’t forget, Washington is a southern city.  This infuriates me, but I learned to deal with it a long time ago.   I enjoy the fact that being seen as a servant allows many people talk more freely in front of me than they would with other staff members.  I’ll accept the slight to gain the access to information.  

Two meeting stood out for me.  H.A. had the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov over to the White House to discuss Soviet assistance in the war with Japan, free elections in occupied nations, and the voting structure of the UN Security Council.  The meeting had tense moments, but H.A. is committed to keeping good relations with our Soviet ally.   The other memorable meeting was form Secretary of War Henry Stimson.  Although H.A. had been briefed on the Manhattan Project as Vice President, Stimson gave H.A. a full briefing.  Advances on creating a wonder weapon had advanced dramatically.  I am amazed at the expected power of this thing.  I don’t think our civilization is ready for this much power.  From his presentation, I think Henry Stimson agrees. 


©  2012 Ron Millar