February 1945

Good news, H.A.’s old nemesis, Jesse Jones [former Chairman of the  powerful Reconstruction Finance Corporation -AS] is gone from [Department of] Commerce.  Conservative business leaders wanted Jones to be Vice President rather than H.A. in 1940 and put on a strong, but fortunately unsuccessful, effort.   Jones and H.A. had different views on the focus and direction of the New Deal and clashed frequently.   H.A. wanted Commerce to engage in activities to support full employment, control big businesses and assist small businesses, provide a guaranteed annual wage, and other progressive measures.  Jones a supporter of big business naturally was opposed to these ideas.

There will not be a successor named any time soon.  FDR is at the Argonaut Conference at Yalta and left instructions not to be bothered with domestic matters.   With Jones’ resignation, a bill is moving through Congress to remove the lending agencies [like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation] from Commerce to give the Congress more control of these agencies.  Big business fear H.A. and are organizing opposition to him – including Red-baiting campaigns.  Congressman Leonard Hall [New York Republican – AS] just accused H.A. of acting as if he had “received a call to change the New Deal to the New Communism.” 

I know Communists.  FDR is currently meeting with a Communist [Russia’s General Secretary Joseph Stalin – AS].  H.A. is NOT a Communist.  However, for those members of Congress who owe their allegiance to big business anyone who disagrees with their agenda to promote the interests of big business is a Communist.  H.A. wants to promote the interest of the common man - the family farmer, small businessmen, and the people who work for them.   He supports capitalism, but a capitalism that is just and fair.  A capitalist system that provides opportunities for all Americans to succeed.   We can’t go back to policies that favor big business and financial speculation.  What better lesson could we have on that failed system than the Great Depression.  The New Deal must work for all the people not just the entitled and connected one-percent. 

As an anarchist I should not be working for H.A.  I guess I’m not a good anarchist.  But H.A. is different.   Anarchists are right – power corrupts.  However, H.A. seems indifferent to power.   He uses his power not to aggrandize himself, his position, or the government itself.  He sees himself as a technician using the government as a tool to fix problems.  Working with H.A., I have become even stronger anarchist, because I clearly see that H.A. is the exception that proves the rule.  


©  2012 Ron Millar

January 1945

The inaugural was a short affair held on the south portico of the White House.  The day was cold and grey, sadly reflecting F.D.R.’s weakened condition.  I was surprised at how bad he looked.  His body shook as he spoke and from his expressions I could tell he was in pain.  I hope this is temporary and he has a speedy recovery.  We need a healthy F.D.R. to win the war and the peace.

In Spain, I saw the sick and dying, and F.D.R.’s appearance concerned me.   Since I’m already depressed I guess this is a good time to talk about Spain.

Spain.  How to begin?  For generations the landed gentry and the government and Church, which supported them, exploited the people of Spain.  Later the moneyed elite joined in this cruel party.  Then an idea took fire.  Freedom.  In it’s optimal form, freedom through anarchism united the people.  The goal was for the people to remove the power of the elite, the government, and the Church so that the people could control their own lives.  The Confederation Nacional del Trabajo (C.N.T.) gave voice to this goal to eliminate the concept of power:

“…there is no such thing as revolutionary power, for all power is reactionary by nature; power corrupts both those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised; those who think they can conquer the State in order to destroy it are unaware that the State overcomes all its conquerors; there are no good and bad politicians, only bad ones and worse; the best government is no government at all; the Nation is not the People, nor is the State the same as Society; instead of the government of men; let us have the administration of things; peace to men, and war on institutions; dictatorship of the proletariat is dictatorship without the proletariat and against them; to vote for politicians is to renounce your own personality; your union is yourself.”

This was a different goal, a rejection of the social democrats who saw the people taking over the mechanisms of the state to use it as a force to create a more equitable society and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Russian experiment to use the state to build a communist society.   Political power was the problem – anarchy removed the problem.              


The anarchists operated outside the state establishing communes in the rural areas and anarchist syndicates in urban areas.  The various autonomous collectives would interact in federations, which culminated in Assemblies to ensure the exchange of information and ideas across the country.  It was amazing.  People taking control of their lives without creating leaders and organizations that would control them.  Pure democracy in action.

Ironically, the anarchist advances became possible because of the Republican, and socialist dominated, government.  Or did the democratic Republic become possible because of the infectious freedom demonstrated by the anarchist movement.  I’ll leave historians to argue this chicken and egg question.   What is important is that in many regions in Spain the land and factories were run by and for the peasants and workers.  For a time, the peasants and workers proved that society self-organized under anarchistic principles was possible.

Then the landed and moneyed elite fought back through the fascist Francisco Franco with the rebellion in July 1936.  Franco and his forces expected quick success, but were only able to take over half the nation.  The popular militias were able to disarm most of the fascist rebels.  

The millions of peasants living on collectives produced food for the free portion of the nation and the anarchist factories retooled to contribute to the war effort.  Distribution based on need was put into action.  Barcelona was the best example of anarchy in Spain.   Nearly all of the public services and factories were taken over and run with tremendous success in this large and complex city.  Anarchy worked!    

However, the during the war, the anarchists with the C.N.T. and the Federation Anarquista Iberica (F.A.I.) broke their fundamental principle and joined the government to defeat Franco.  The slogan was “We sacrifice all except victory!”  Anarchists took positions in the government institutions that they had previously vehemently denounced.   They thought that this compromise would help show the unity of the Spanish Republic to her sister democracies.  The Republic was in desperate need of material support from the world’s other democracies in the fight against fascism, but the other democracies refused to help.  Instead they called for nonintervention by all nations.

The fascist nations of Italy and Germany officially agreed to the nonintervention policy, while shipping tremendous amounts of weapons, military personnel, and other support to Franco.  The democratic nations knew this, but still refused to support the Spanish Republic.  However, the freedom minded people of these nations – much like the Spanish anarchists – took it upon themselves to support the threatened Republic and the International Brigades were born [The International Brigades were under the control the Soviet Union’s Comintern -A.S.].

I left the comfort of my home to volunteer with the International Brigades to save the Spanish Republic.  Even if my country didn’t, I knew it was the right thing to do, and I was excited to be a part of what I thought was going to be a great adventure. 


©  2012 Ron Millar

December 1944

Good news!  Cordell Hull resigned as Secretary of State due to health issues.  I don’t mean that it is good news Mr. Hull is in poor health, I wish him a long and healthy life.  I just don’t want him as head of the Department of State.  Hull and H.A. never saw eye-to-eye on issues.  Hull is a supporter of the status quo with colonialism and is opposed to working with the Soviet Union.    My boss opposes colonialism and imperialism, and he supports continuing our peaceful and productive relationship with the Soviet Union.

Hull’s replacement is Edward Stettinius, Jr., a former chairman of U.S. Steel.

Stettinius is supportive of the idea of a United Nations to help maintain the peace following the end of the war, and he is willing to continue to work with the Soviet Union.  As the war is coming to a close, the former murmurings against the Soviet Union are becoming louder.  Some even suggest that our efforts will not be done in Europe if our troops fail to continue to move through the east to Japan.  A war with the Soviet Union would be insane – surely the American people are tired of war.  


Do not get me wrong, I do not trust the Soviet Union.  From my experience in Spain I know how they operate.  But we cannot treat them like enemies.  The Soviet Union is already paranoid, and perhaps rightfully, that the rest of the world wants to destroy them.  We must stay engaged with the Soviet Union to allay this paranoia.  If we treat them as an enemy, they will act as an enemy.  Without constructive engagement international problems will grow and fester.  Pointless conflicts with the loss of human life and resources will be the result.  


I know the big business war machine fears the end of conflict because they do not want to see their war profits disappear, but we can use those resources to build our society rather than destroy others.  I am proud that H.A. is a leader in this mission.


©  2011 Ron Millar

November 1944

We won the election!  I’m glad but not surprised.  I mean, who, in their right mind, would vote against F.D.R. as we are successfully fighting fascism overseas and poverty at home.   Okay, people did vote against us.  We won by a comfortable margin, but by the smallest margin of F.D.R.’s four elections.  I don’t know who these anti-New Deal voters were because we didn’t meet them on the campaign trail. But even with a smaller margin it was still a win for F.D.R., H.A., and the New Deal.   Socialist Party candidate Norman Thomas, who I supported years ago, gained less than 80,000 votes of nearly 50 million cast.   I still respect Norman Thomas, but H.A. and the New Deal are implementing many of the programs that the Socialists have been preaching about years.  I’ll go with implementation of real policies over dreams of a better someday everytime.

Except for a few meetings, H.A. had little contact with F.D.R. during the campaign.  The campaign’s design was to have F.D.R. visibly running the war effort with H.A. traveling the country by train and car campaigning on behalf of the ticket.  The pace of the campaign was hectic and the crowds enthusiastic and adoring.  Even with H.A. being the active campaigner, this was a contest between F.D.R. and the Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York. 

Dewey had an energetic campaign.  His campaign was against the New Deal and a return to a small federal government that did not interfere in business.  To some Republicans regulation of business is seen as the first steps of a communist takeover.  Dewey even accused F.D.R. as being “indispensable” to corrupt government officials and American Communists.  But the vast majority of Americans either ignored or laughed off this extreme rhetoric.

At the end of the campaign, F.D.R. jumped back into the race with a speech in Chicago’s Soldiers Field.  He promoted his progressive vision of postwar America with an economy of sixty million jobs, new programs on conservation and crop insurance, healthcare and housing, and promoting unionization by removing barriers on collective bargaining.  H.A. was thrilled by the speech, it showed that F.D.R. was back in fighting form and wanted to advance the New Deal.

This year we go right back to work in the Administration.  When H.A. first won the Vice Presidency in 1940, he, and I, were jobless.  H.A. had to resign as Secretary of the Agriculture to run for office and once the campaign was over we had nothing to do until the Inaugural in January.  However, H.A. is not good at being idle. 

H.A. had been studying Spanish for several years and thought this would be a good opportunity to immerse himself in the language by taking a trip to one or more of our southern neighbors.

He discussed his idea with F.D.R. and was put on the State Department payroll as an ambassador extraordinary.  The plan was to drive to Mexico – I was hired as the driver – to attend the presidential inauguration of the newly elected president, Manuel Avilo Camacho.  We drove from Washington D.C. to Mexico City.  Naturally, H.A. made me stop frequently along the way to examine corn fields.  We started with just a two car caravan.  My car carried H.A. and his wife Ilo and the second car contained Jim LeCron and his wife Helen [LeCron was Wallace’s assistant at Agriculture –A.S.].  By the time we reached Mexico City the caravan numbered more than fifteen vehicles.  The Mexican people were very enthusiastic about the visit.  From the cities and the villages people would line the streets to welcome the Vice President-elect.  I’m told over 150,000 came out to cheer on H.A. in Monterrey, throwing confetti and flowers at the car.  H.A. said with a grin that “I never flew the Atlantic or had a triumphal march down Wall Street, so this was my first paper rain.”

In addition to attending the inaugural, H.A. was asked to speak before the Mexican Congress.  H.A. gave his speech in Spanish and was enthusiastically received.   We spent a month in Mexico attending meetings, receptions, and of course inspecting corn fields and farm markets.  H.A. was appalled at the low yield of even the best farms we visited in Mexico.  Once we were back in the States, H.A. met with leaders of The Rockefeller Foundation and convinced them to invest in Mexico to create agricultural experiment stations to help farmers increase their production.   If successful the project will help Mexico feed itself. 

No foreign trip this year.  We just went back to work in our suite of rooms in the Senate Office Building  and our formal office in the Capitol Building.  As Vice President his only official role is to preside over the Senate and cast a vote in the case of a tie.  H.A. told me that, “One of the most futile occupations I know is presiding over the Senate” because of its long-winded debates and gentlemen’s club atmosphere. 

Fortunately, H.A. convinced F.D.R. to expand the role of the Vice President and through executive orders established the Economic Defense Board (the E.D.B.) and Supply Priorities and Allocations Board (the S.P.A.B.) with H.A. as their chairman. 

The S.P.A.B. coordinated the government’s efforts in preparing for war.    At the time, H.A. said that, “Every available man and machine must be employed either on direct defense requirements or at work essential to the civilian economy.  Along this road lies protection of our freedom and of the basic economy necessary to the maintenance of that freedom.”  Helping to allocate resources to build our industrial infrastructure and procure defense supplies, H.A.’s efforts were amazing, and his work helped America immediately and effectively jump into the war effort following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The E.D.B., after Pearl Harbor it was renamed Board of Economic Warfare (the B.E.W.), was a policy and advisory agency focused on international economic issues  such as exports, imports, foreign exchange, patents, and other items.  This position helped H.A. plan out what the international economic world order should be following the successful conclusion of the war.   As H.A. said in a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in 1941, “After the victory, what of the peace?  The battle of the peace will be more difficult to win than the battle of the war.  All Europe will be a mad swirl of chaotic forces.  Unless we are prepared to help in the reorganization of a shattered world, these forces will leap from continent to continent and destroy even the United States.”

These executive positions make H.A. the most powerful Vice President in the history of our nation, and this work helped focus H.A.’s vision of how the world should work.

In an article for the Atlantic Monthly, H.A. wrote,  “The overthrow of Hitler is only half the battle; we must build a world in which our human and material resources are used to the utmost if we are to win complete victory.  This principle should be fundamental as the world moves to reorganize its affairs.  Ways must be found by which the potential abundance of the world can be translated into real wealth and a higher standard of living.  Certain minimum standards of food, clothing and shelter ought to be established, and arrangements ought to be made to guarantee that no one should fall below those standards.”

I am so proud to be working for a man with this great vision and, more importantly, the ability to make it happen.

©  2011 Ron Millar

October 1944

The war is going well for us [Subject describes battles in the European and Pacific theaters - A.S.].

The war in Spain went well for a while too.  A short while, but not for the first wave of volunteers.  I was a chofer, a driver, for the American Medical Bureau.  I met up with the Major [Dr. Edward K. Barsky, Chief of the American Medical Bureau – A.S.] outside of Madrid.   Sometimes I drove the Major's car, sometimes an ambulance (one was donated by the students and faculty Harvard University), and sometimes I drove the autochir.  This was the mobile hospital.  It had an operating table, surgical instruments, x-ray machine, a gas-powered generator for electricity and everything you needed to treat the wounded.  I was told it held about fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of equipment.  

In Madrid, we were treated like heroes – even though I had not yet done anything.  I was a little embarrassed by the attention; however, I welcomed their gratitude and love.


 Most of the action at Madrid had taken place before I arrived.  My colleagues did not talk about it, because about 600 International Brigade volunteers were killed.  Many blamed the deaths on inept decision-making. 

We soon moved out of Madrid and relocate to Villa Paz.  This is the Aragon region.  I can still feel the cold – I could never get warm there.  When we were not using our vehicles we drained the radiators to make sure that they would not freeze.  Among the drivers and mechanics, I was very popular because I brought my tool set.  However, I had to watch it constantly because tools were so rare – they would quickly disappear.  Even though I am an anarchist, I became obsessively possessive of my tools.  With the environment both weather and militarily so hostile a breakdown could cost you your life.  I did many runs transporting wounded, but I was far from the front.  I occasionally heard fascist planes, but they were always far away.

The population of the Aragon was mostly anarchristic.  Seeing anarchist ideals put into reality was mind-bloggling.  The towns, villages, and farms operated in a communal manner without hierarchy.   I learned as much as I could with my limited Spanish and pantomime.  Although we were in the middle of a war and there was scarcity of life’s basic needs, the people of the region were incredibly optimistic for the future of the society they were building.  And the pride in that it was something they were building themselves was awe inspiring.  The pride, vigor, resourcefulness, and happiness of the people was infectious.  I felt honored to be there to help with their revolution. 

Naturally, not everything operated perfectly,  The various villages and towns started to print their own currency.  Even the various anarchist syndicates such as bakers, barbers, etc. issued their own money. Unfortunately, the money was rarely accepted outside of the issuing agency.  The leadership in Barcelona ordered that these currencies be withdrawn, the locals cried out that the central authorities were "betraying the revolution."  

Little did they know then what "betraying the revolution" would really look like.


©  2011 Ron Millar

September 1944

The campaign is going well.  Large and enthusiastic crowds at each stop who are eager to support the New Deal ticket to win the war and win the peace. 

More information is filtering out about near debacle at the convention.   The forces against H.A. were well organized and diverse.  They included conservatives who want to halt any additional New Deal programs, big businessmen who want to be free of any government regulations, imperialists who want to expand U.S. hegemony around the world, isolationists who following the war want the U.S. to ignore the world, and southern segregationist who fear federal interference with their Jim Crow culture.  On our side was labor, the progressives, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Because we beat the bosses, H.A. felt even more free to take on issues that the bosses wanted to ignore.  He campaigned in neighborhoods absent from our 1940 tour.  In New York, we appeared with New York City councilman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in Harlem to speak about Civil Rights and we did the same in Chicago with Congressman William L. Dawson.  H.A. proudly attended integrated cocktail parties, even though he does not drink,  in segregated Washington.  H.A. is determined that all Americans will have an equal share of a prosperous postwar economy.  I like to think that I have been a good influence on H.A., but I think I had little to do with it.  It is just H.A. being H.A.  H.A. has had a lot of good influences.  For example, George Washington Carver, an associate of H.A.’s father while at Iowa State College, taught a young H.A. (he would have been around 6 years old), how to identify different parts and species of plants.  George Washington Carver as a teacher!  In Iowa!  There is hope for this country – and its leading light is H.A.

H.A. campaigned on a lot of issues:  full employment, responsible health and old-age insurance, low freight rates and improved roads, free enterprise and opportunity for small business, racial and gender equality, good schools, cultural resources, and a new international order to create economic opportunity and world peace.  However, full employment was his main domestic issue, he said, “The greatest economic sin is the waste of human labor.”   For some reason this scared some people (including people within our administration and campaign); however, among regular citizens H.A. is very popular.  


©  2011 Ron Millar

August 1944

This is just an aside to the unfortunate person who may one day transcribe these rolls.  I don’t want you to think that I have an amazing memory for the quotes I’m rattling off.  I have extensive scrapbooks of speeches and press clips that I am often reviewing and even putting together while using the Dictaphone.  My memory is good, but not that good.

Shortly after the convention, I resigned my job as Personal Aide to Vice President Henry A. Wallace.  I am now the Personal Aide for Vice Presidential Candidate Henry A. Wallace.  

I am reprising my role from the 1940 campaign.  In fact, it was the 1940 campaign that earned me the position in the Vice President’s Office.   Because of my logistics skills, from moving the field hospital in Spain to organizing farmers in Iowa, I was hired for the 1940 campaign.  F.D.R. wanted H.A. to be the primary campaigner while he, F.D.R., remained aloof from the fray.  The campaign was a driving and train tour all over the nation.  H.A. would deliver a half-dozen speeches each day to enthusiastic crowds.  

The goal of the 1944 campaign is to replicate this successful model.

However, I remember that the 1940 campaign had barely even started when we were almost torpedoed.   Embarrassing letters that H.A. wrote to a bizarre guru, Nicholas Roerich, and his staff members were given to the Republicans.

Roerich is a Russian émigré, a painter, a peace activist, and a mystic.   H.A. became friends with Roerich and corresponded about his religious beliefs. 

H.A. does not hold the traditional religious beliefs of his Iowa neighbors.   

Religion is the one of three areas, the others are his vegetarianism and tea totaling, where I don’t understand H.A.   H.A. is a very evidence based man, he looks to science for the answers to earthly problems, but with religion he trusts his intuition.  However, he does approach his search for the metaphysical world as he does for the physical world.  Openness and experimentation.  He is open to learning about and experiencing a variety of religious expressions, regardless of how odd the person presenting the idea, enter Roerich, is seen by the general public or how the general public might respond to the religious idea itself.

H.A.’s family were members of the United Presbyterian Church.  But following his grandfather’s death – remember he was a minister and patriarch of the family – H.A. began his religious explorations.   He read Ralph Waldo Emerson and his followers and H.A. embraced the idea that a divine spiritual force flowed through all living things.  He also attended Roman Catholic services and enjoyed the mass for its traditional performance (I too enjoy the vestments and the incense – but their politics, especially in Spain, where the Church sided with the fascists – are completely unacceptable).  H.A. studied séances, religious symbols and rituals, astrology, native and Asian religions, secret societies, and mysticism – items that the average Protestant Iowa farmer, and American, would find odd and even scary.

H.A. is formally a member of the Episcopal church; however, “Real religion” H.A. told me, had nothing to do with  “church-going, or charity, or any other outward manifestation of what is popularly called religion.”  Religion is a far more all encompassing power, “whereby man reaches out toward God in an effort to find the spiritual power to express here on earth in a practical way the divine potentialities in himself and his fellow beings.”

H.A. became so friendly with Roerich that he sent him on an expedition to Manchuria to collect seeds and plants for the Department of Agriculture.  It was during this expedition that H.A. and Roerich parted as friends.  Apparently, Roerich used the trip to promote himself rather than collecting specimens for the government.

H.A.’s publicity men prepared materials to counter the release of the Roerich letters, but if released, the letters would be very damaging.

Fortunately, F.D.R. and his skilled political fixers threatened to retaliate against the Republicans if the letters were released.  Apparently, Wendell Willkie [1940 Republican nominee for president -A.S.] had a mistress [Irita Van Doren, the literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune -A.S.].   However, everyone thought that H.A.’s religious peculiarities would be more damaging than exposing Willkie’s infidelities.  A campaign staffer claimed that when hearing of the scandal, F.D.R. said, “We can handle sex, but we can’t handle religion.”  Fortunately, a truce between the camps was established and the letters were withheld from the public.  

F.D.R.’s fixers assure us that we have nothing to worry about for this election.

I personally have no use for religion.  I just don’t buy it.  Having seen first-hand the cruelty of man both here in the States and in Spain, if the divine runs through all living things, or is sitting up in heaven looking down at us, then it is doing a really crappy job of inspiring or encouraging tolerable behavior.  There is no divinity in life, there is just life.   There is no divine plan for life, we just follow our instincts for self-preservation and the continuation of our species.  Sadly, many people, most of whom have strong religious convictions, follow their baser instincts and make life difficult and sometimes impossible for others. 

I also have no use for the secular religions of the Market and History.  Those adherents of laissez-faire capitalism, with its mystical and magical invisible hand that directs sellers and buyers, are no more rational than fundamentalist Bible-thumpers.  These religionists think that if the Market is left undisturbed it will take us to an economic promised land.  The same can be said of the adherents of Marx’s dialectial materialism where the inevitable forces of History will produce a communist classless society.   The only inevitable thing is that all religions, even the secular ones, have authoritative priesthoods whose job it is to direct our lives.  Since they are all false, I oppose all priesthoods.  I want to direct my own life – but thank you very much for offering.

Okay, that was preachy.  But just to end my sermon – No Gods, No Masters!  Remember I’m still an anarchist.  Just a closeted one.


©  2011 Ron Millar