FDR (2023) s01e03 Episode Script

1
Everybody needs
to know, Franklin.
Will you run again?
ROOSEVELT: The situation in
France changes everything.
CHURCHILL: I’d rather
have a declaration of war
from America.
There’s nothing I’d like
better than to kick Hitler
in the teeth.
They’ve attacked Pearl Harbor.
A date which will
live in infamy.
The prime minister
of Great Britain
has nothing to hide from the
president of the United States.
Our team cracked it.
They fooled the Japanese.
We know where they’re going
to be, so we can lay a trap.
See this ship?
It’s got Marines aboard.
My son Jimmy is one of them.
He’s going to be in the
thick of it, isn’t he?
Franklin Roosevelt
was the president
who had to face the Great
Depression and World War II.
The only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.
He was ambitious and active,
incredibly privileged.
But he suffered.
You’ve contracted
infantile paralysis.
And he’s had setbacks.
But through pain
can come wisdom.
The country’s on
the edge of a cliff,
but we’re not going
to let it fall.
What do plan to do
with this power?
He has a vision to change
the very soul of America.
I pledge myself to a New
Deal for the American people.
American democracy was literally
resting on his shoulders.
This was zero hour.
[speaking german]
Get everybody in here.
He knew that he needed
to project real strength.
He is the dealer in hope
for the entire free world.
An invasion of France
is courting disaster.
He took risks.
Again and again, you see
these moments of great daring.
ROOSEVELT: Success may not
come with rushing speed,
but we shall return
again and again.
Roosevelt led the grand
alliance to victory
over fascism.
This was a tumultuous,
complicated period of time.
It’s a mistake to think that he
somehow got everything right.
But there was something
about that voice.
There was something
about that smile.
That empathy, that
humility, that resilience,
all those qualities that
FDR just had triumphantly
built into his character.
[music playing]
There’s a small American base
at Midway Island in the middle
of the Pacific, and
in the spring of 1942,
the Japanese think
they’re going to be
able to take the
Americans by surprise
and knock out that outpost.
The Japanese believe that
if they can threaten Midway,
it will bring those US carriers
that weren’t at Pearl Harbor
out and they can destroy
them in one climactic battle.
NARRATOR: Suddenly, from behind
the clouds, the Japs attack.
The Japanese think they’re going
to be able to take the
Americans by surprise.
What the Japanese didn’t realize
is that the Americans have
broken the Japanese code, and
FDR knows the Japanese fleet is
coming, and the American
forces in the Pacific
lay a trap for them.
NARRATOR: The trap is sprung.
Navy planes roar from the
decks of our carriers.
Army bombers, Marines.
It’s a really high risk
move on the part of FDR,
but it pays off spectacularly.
The results are just
catastrophic for Japan.
The Japanese lose four carriers.
The US loses one.
Japan will never, in the
entire course of the war,
replace the losses at Midway.
NARRATOR: The Battle
of Midway is over.
Our frontyard is safe, but a
big job is still to be done.
[singing]
It’s Jimmy.
You know, every mother in
America should see this film.
Won’t they be scared seeing
their sons in combat?
They’ll be inspired, Harry.
They’re seeing
their boys winning.
Roosevelt is blown away
by the uplifting story
of American victory.
Next thing you know,
this documentary
is being shown in movie
theaters all across the country.
And it was the first
kind of up close,
you are there, our
boys in action,
achieving spectacular military
victory in the Pacific.
FDR’s responsibility
as commander
in chief and president
the United States is
to be the global optimist
for Western civilization.
Summer of ’42, the
Battle of the Atlantic
still rages, the Germans are
500 miles into the Soviet Union
at this point, the Mediterranean
is still a battleground.
They’re all massive
problems of their own
of a complexity nobody has
ever dealt with before.
The Germans have driven
the British almost all
the way back into Egypt, but
the United States isn’t really
in the European war, and
this is FDR’s problem.
We’ve got to get in the war.
There’s still been no forward
movement of the American troops
against the German
army, and that’s
where so much of the attention
of the American public is at.
Roosevelt knew that somehow
we needed to get the soldiers
moving against the German army.
There’s great debate
in 1942 about which way
the Allies should go in terms
of trying to push the Nazis out
of Western Europe.
In 1942, Russia is bearing the
brunt of the Nazi onslaught.
The Nazis are driving
deep into Russia,
laying siege to Leningrad
and to other cities.
Every day, thousands of
people are being killed.
It’s really a bloodbath
on the Eastern Front.
Joseph Stalin is pleading,
demanding that Churchill
and FDR open a second front.
There were people that
wanted to keep the focus
in the Pacific, because
after all, it was Japan that
had attacked the United States.
There were people who
wanted to go straight
into continental Europe.
Churchill favors
starting in North Africa,
and then that then becomes
a staging ground to come up
through what Churchill
vividly described
as the soft underbelly of
the Nazi controlled Europe.
NEWSREADER: In Washington D.C.,
the president of the United
States welcomed the prime
minister of Great Britain.
The gravity of the moment
had brought them together.
Churchill really feels he
has his back to the wall.
Britain is basically
standing alone
against the German and Italian
threat in North Africa.
There’s great camaraderie
between FDR and Churchill,
but there’s also great tension.
I see you found the good brandy.
Thank you.
Have you given any more
thought to North Africa?
I’ve been doing nothing but
thinking about North Africa,
and northern France.
An invasion of France
is courting disaster.
We’re not ready.
From the map room.
Just came in.
Thank you, my dear.
It’s Tobruk.
Churchill was in the
White House in 1942
when there were severe Allied
reverses in North Africa,
and Tobruk falls.
And FDR looks at him and
sees the pain in his eyes.
The commingling of the
personal and the political
and the diplomatic and the human
was fascinating and decisive
in many ways.
How could this happen?
It’s one defeat.
It’s not over.
A defeat is one thing.
A disgrace is another.
Beaten by a force half our
size, the British army.
I thought they would hold on.
I need every tank you can spare
sent directly to North Africa.
Consider it done.
And I need you to agree to
the North Africa invasion.
We can’t let Hitler control
the Mediterranean and our oil.
It’s where you need it most now.
My generals say otherwise.
Some of them want France.
Some of them want me to move
more resources to the Pacific.
But we’re depending on you.
Roosevelt ultimately
sides with Churchill,
because if a cross-channel
invasion misfires,
there’ll be enormous casualties
and it’ll be morale crushing
in the United States
and Great Britain.
At the end of the day, they plan
an invasion of North Africa
called Operation Torch,
and FDR will do this
against the military advice,
a presidential
prerogative as commander
in chief, to say we
need to get in the war
and North Africa is
where we do this.
Now FDR has got to focus on
getting our military squared
away and all of the
tools that they need
to go out and be victorious.
FDR understood that part
of being a war leader
is not simply to be commander
in chief of the armed forces
but to be able to
mobilize the home front.
It’s not just making
strategic determinations
about where to fight
and what battles,
you have to get the people and
the soldiers wanting to fight,
willing to fight, willing to
be producing on the home front
24 hours a day.
To win the war, we have
to ramp up production,
and to ramp up production,
the president has to be deeply
involved in making the federal
government a force to make
capitalism start to
create a war machine,
to create what FDR
calls arsenal democracy.
FDR knew that he had to
change his relationship
with the business community,
which had been marked
by hostility at the
end of the New Deal,
that he had to pivot and make
himself a partner of business,
and he really makes a peace.
Factories are transforming from
cars into planes and tanks.
Doctor New Deal becomes
eventually Doctor Win The War.
Rarely do you find a leader who
is good at proposing
controversial programs as FDR
did during the New Deal,
and then in the 1940s
uniting the country
to win the war.
Name me anyone else who
might have been president
of the United States during
those years who could have done
that.
It was only FDR.
He felt it was so important to
go to the manufacturing plants,
to go to the factories, because
he knew the enormous pressure
that they were working
under to produce.
They know that these weapons
and planes and tanks are
critical for the war effort.
There’s a lot of sense
of needing to make
sure their morale is up.
In every factory
that he visited,
the productivity went
up shortly thereafter.
And he also has to pressure
the manufacturers to get them
moving as fast as they could.
One of the leading
manufacturers in the United
States was the
Ford Motor Company.
Ford had this enormous Willow
Run Plant that they’ve created,
the biggest one of all.
They’ve only produced one
bomber that’s all that’s
come off the assembly line.
Henry Ford was largely an
opponent of the New Deal.
He was a vicious antisemite.
He said nice things
about Hitler.
So Henry Ford would not have
been at the top of FDR’s hit
parade.
But in 1942, he is
a wartime president
and is trying to mobilize
absolutely everyone.
Henry, quite an impressive
place you have here.
You got a lot of
nice press for it.
We’ve got a mile
long assembly line.
You should bring Hitler
and Tojo in here to see it.
They’d surrender in two seconds.
Only if it lives
up to its billing.
Your factory is
behind the others
and I’m here to find out why.
Mr. Roosevelt,
everything is new.
New machinery, new parts.
You can’t expect it to run like
clockwork right off the bat.
We’re going to get
rid of the Nazis.
And when we do, I hope I’ll
have you and your factory
to thank for it.
Weeks after that
visit, productivity
goes up at the Ford
plant, and they actually
do outstrip the industry
average eventually.
The relationship between
business and government
during World War II was the most
productive in all of history.
It was an incredible
accomplishment.
We see this incredible
increase in factory production.
The country is in
better economic footing
than it has been.
The workplace is
becoming more diverse.
We are seeing more and
more African-Americans,
Mexican-Americans, Latinos
contributing to the war effort.
We are seeing more women in
the workforce, in factories.
Rosie the Riveter.
Eleanor was instrumental
right from the start.
By 1942 and ’43, she was
arguing with the factory owners,
bring women aboard.
You need them.
She made a statement, if
I were a young girl at 17,
I would want to
work in a factory.
That’s where I would want to be.
And Eleanor focused
on the women who had
come to work in the factories.
During the war, Eleanor was
instrumental in encouraging
women to work the 24/7 shifts.
Eleanor met with them,
became pen pals with them,
secured better working
conditions for them,
got them raises, and made sure
there was daycare available
at federal employment
facilities.
Before her, there had been
ceremonial first ladies,
but she was the first
first lady to speak
at a national convention,
the first to speak
at a congressional
investigation,
the first to hold weekly press
conferences, the first half
radio shows of her own.
The price FDR paid for
Eleanor’s independence,
however, was that she was
gone almost 200 days a year.
But as Eleanor emerged into
the first lady she became,
FDR’s admiration for
her only increased.
She becomes absolutely
central to his leadership.
At the fall of 1942, there’s a
lot of pressure on Roosevelt.
It had been almost a year,
and the United States
had done nothing meaningful it
seemed in the European theater.
Winston Churchill would
argue, you haven’t been to war
unless you’ve
fought the Germans.
So this will lead us
to November of 1942.
Operation Torch will be the
largest amphibious invasion
in the United States
history, where
they will land on three
different landing sites
on the coast of North Africa.
The idea is if you can pinch
the Germans in North Africa
between the one force
coming from the east
and the other force
coming from the west,
you can clear all
of North Africa.
The weekend before the
invasion of North Africa, FDR
was uncharacteristically tense,
and I think the reason was
because he was the one
responsible for making
the decision to invade North
Africa against the wishes
of Marshall and Eisenhower, so
you can imagine what he felt
as he was waiting for the news.
Were the troops ready?
Were they sufficiently trained
enough to make this work?
On the eve of the invasion of
North Africa, Operation Torch,
Roosevelt is at one of his
vaunted cocktail parties,
and most of those people
there would not have even
known this was even happening.
Boss.
Thank you, Grace.
Is there anything from Marshall?
Nothing yet.
Get down.
We’re taking a hell of a
chance with this, Harry.
I feel good about our chances.
Is there anything I can do?
It’s out of our hands now.
I can’t stop wondering
if we’re ready.
[phone rings]
Hello?
It’s the war department.
Yes?
Thank god.
Thank god.
Well, that sounds grand.
Congratulations.
We have landed in North Africa.
We are striking back.
[applause]
British and American forces
have landed in Operation Torch
in November of 1942.
NEWSREADER: A gigantic American
invasion force is landing.
A second front is at hand.
65,000 American troops
plus British troops
will hit the beaches
in French North Africa,
and they’re going to
start pushing eastward
along the North African coast.
Operation Torch
allows for Americans
to see their ground
troops in action.
That has a morale
building effect stateside.
FDR made every
American feel like they
were a part of this challenge
to beat back fascism.
Every radio address ended
with a call to action.
There is one front where
everyone in the United States,
every man, woman, and
child is in action,
and that front is
right here at home.
The story of the war cannot
be told without the story
of the home front, and the story
of the home front cannot be
told really without the
incandescent leadership
of Franklin Roosevelt. FDR
understood that the only way
that we could get the soldiers
the equipment they needed when
there were scarcity of
supplies was rationing.
He has rubber drives
in the village squares,
and everybody brings on a
Saturday their old rubber toys
and rubber hoses, rubber bands,
and he does that same thing
with aluminum.
One very important
feature of World War II
is that the sense
of shared sacrifice.
It’s the same spirit of
during the Great Depression
and the New Deal, that same
idea that we’re all in this
together.
Trust is the most important part
of his leadership in many ways.
The American people trusted him.
So when he told them that
this is necessary for you
to only have five gallons
of gasoline a week,
it’s necessary for you to only
drink one cup of coffee a day,
even though they grumbled
and got angry with it,
eventually they knew they had to
do their part, because we were
all working together
in a common goal.
That’s one of the huge
parts of FDR’s leadership,
that he was able to mobilize
that collective will
of the country.
It’s January 1943,
and the war has really
reached a crossroads.
Stalin is in the process
of losing a million men
at Stalingrad and he is
desperate for his Western
partners to open a Western Front
to take some of that pressure
off of the Red Army.
In fact, Stalin
says bluntly to FDR
and to Churchill, we Russians
are killing more Germans
every day than the two of
your people put together.
The fear is that if Russia
gets worn down by the Nazis,
that they’ll sue for
a separate peace.
They’ll just give up.
And so FDR is eager
to do something
to help the ally Joseph
Stalin and to relieve some
of that pressure.
I cannot tell you when or
where the United Nations are
going to strike next in Europe,
but we are going to strike
and strike hard.
We believe that the Nazis and
the fascists have asked for it,
and they’re going to get it.
After Operation Torch,
for the first time
the Allies have the initiative.
FDR and Churchill, they’re
going to meet in Casablanca
in Morocco.
FDR is going to be the first
president to leave the United
States in a time of war, and
he’ll be the second president
since Abraham Lincoln
to go to a war zone,
and this conference is really
about what are the next steps.
And they ask Stalin to come,
but Stalin is afraid to fly,
and Stalingrad is
in the midst of it
so he’s not going to be there.
What meant so much to
FDR about Casablanca
is that two of his sons in
the military were there,
Harry Hopkins’ son was there,
Churchill’s son was there,
and there’s that next
generation who are carrying out
the goals of that older
generation of Churchill
and Roosevelt.
They seem to be hitting it off.
Yes.
Did you know Stalin’s
son has been captured?
It’s awful.
I’m told he refuses
to negotiate for him.
I hear his motto is,
not one step back.
I guess that goes
for his son too.
Well, he’s certainly
making the Nazis bleed.
He just might hold Stalingrad.
It’s good to have
our boys close by.
Yes.
They’re out of harm’s
way, for the moment.
At the Casablanca
conference, Churchill
is advocating for a
continuation of this attempt
to strike Germany through
the soft underbelly of Europe
by invading through
Italy in hopes of getting
a quick series of victories.
But within the United
States, the military advisors
are not necessarily
of the same mind.
Some of them feel that
most of the attention
should be on the Pacific, while
others feel that the Europe
first strategy is
still the way to go.
We’re already in position
for an invasion of Sicily.
I believe I’ve made
that abundantly clear.
This is just a delay
of the inevitable.
We need to strike in France now.
I’m not certain your
Yanks are ready for that.
When the time comes,
we’ll be ready.
You can bet on that.
Gentlemen, the point is Italy
is a much more achievable
target than France right now.
But we all know it won’t do
anything to help the Russians.
What’s your view,
General Eisenhower?
The invasion of France is
going to be the biggest
operation maybe ever.
The way I see it,
we’re short on time.
Time to supply our bases
in England for launch, time
to train enough troops.
How much time?
We can’t do it before ’44.
It’s true.
We’ll need an overwhelming force
for the invasion of France.
So, in the meantime, we
strike a blow in Italy.
All right.
Italy seems the most
feasible option right now.
FDR was not risk averse,
but he was patient
and he knew when to strike.
He had an uncanny
sense of when to strike
and when to not strike.
FDR shows his
tremendous leadership.
He realized that you have to
have a powerful coalition.
You can’t go it alone, and
you can’t lose the British
and you can’t fight
without the British.
And so to keep this
alliance together,
he said, OK, we’ll do that
because they’re our ally
and then they’ll end up
serving our interests.
At the end of the
Casablanca conference,
Churchill goes to Roosevelt and
suggests that they take a trip
out to Marrakesh.
Churchill wants Roosevelt to
see the sun set over the Atlas
mountains before he goes home.
Uncle Joe is going to be
furious when he finds out
there won’t be a second
front in France this year.
He’ll get a second front
when the time is right.
And we both know Stalin
is not to be trusted.
He made a pact with
Hitler once before.
Who’s to say he
won’t do it again?
God help us if he does.
But at least we’ll
get there in 1944.
We have to stand by our
promises, and after the war,
we’ll lead by example.
What do you mean?
I’m talking about your colonies.
People have the right
to self-determination.
I did not become prime
minister in order to liquidate
the entire British Empire.
If we want freedom in Europe,
that means freedom everywhere.
I’m telling you as
a friend, if you
stick with the old
way, Winston, there
will be a third world war.
And nobody would survive that.
In February of 1943, during
the invasion of North Africa,
the Allies have the initiative.
They’ll drive
across North Africa.
But America’s troops are young
and not terribly well trained
yet, still trying to learn the
lessons of armored warfare,
of combined operations
using aviation.
The Germans will counter
an attack at a place called
Kasserine Pass,
and they’re going
to wreck part of the United
States Army’s advance.
They’re going to roll
it back upon itself.
The Americans were
routed by the Germans.
There were some
examples of cowardice.
There was not good leadership.
It was a flop, and it was
kind of a demoralizing
one and a bad start.
At the same time,
there’s an operation
halfway around the world
in the Southwest Pacific
in Guadalcanal and
Solomon Islands
whose casualties are much
higher than they are at Torch.
In the Pacific
theater, we’re going
to hop from island to island as
we close in the defensive ring
on Japan.
At Guadalcanal, both sides
are feeding in reinforcements.
And, of course, the
casualties grow.
NARRATOR: Now it began, the
toil and the terror that
makes Guadalcanal not
a name but an emotion.
The casualties mount
from the fighting,
from malaria, from dengue,
from the rot and corruption
of the jungle, which
knows not mercy.
It’s costly in men.
It’s costly in munitions.
It’s a very, very
costly campaign.
General Marshall’s on his way.
Is Eleanor coming to dinner?
No.
She’s left for New
York, giving a speech.
She wrote you a note.
I see.
I must have forgotten.
Thank you, grace.
Sir.
Have a seat, General.
Thank you, sir.
I came to let you know
Eisenhower has the situation
in hand at the Kasserine Pass.
The Germans are withdrawing.
We can’t afford these
command problems.
It’s my responsibility, sir.
Do we know the casualties yet?
7,000 of ours, but mostly
wounded, or missing.
300 killed.
Where are we when 300 dead
boys seems like a small number?
How many was it at Guadalcanal?
7,000.
Dead?
But they were both
victories, sir.
Yes, I know.
7,000 killed or wounded.
At some point, it’s
numbers on a ledger,
but each one of those ledgers
has a mother or a father,
and it’s FDR who
carries that weight
and considers how would
you write that letter
to every mother and father.
It is the burden of command.
It is the burden of being
the commander in chief.
He knew that this
was not a battle.
It was a war.
He knew this was not
the work of six months.
He knew it would be many years.
He had learned that
you have to keep going.
And I think that as
he led us into war,
there was a fortitude and
a resilience that grew out
of his own personal
fortitude and resilience.
Somebody said to
FDR, how can you
go to sleep at night with
all these hard decisions
that you’ve had to make and
the pressures that are on you?
He said, if you spend
two years just trying
to wiggle your big toe, you’re
going to learn patience.
As the war unfolds, there is
increasing pressure because
of the losses that Stalin
and the Soviet Union
are sustaining to open a
second front in the West.
So Stalin Churchill
and Roosevelt
go to Tehran in November
1943, and the central question
from Stalin is, when are you
going to attack in the West?
Tehran is the first
opportunity for Roosevelt,
Churchill, and Stalin to all
sit down, the three of them.
Roosevelt really relied
on his own personal powers
of persuasion and
really dependent
on personal connections.
FDR loved politics, and
politics at the very highest
was keeping together a coalition
of thoroughly disagreeable
potential enemies.
And although their three
countries were in an alliance,
their interests
were not parallel.
Stalin believed that
Churchill and Roosevelt,
those capitalists, were ganging
up on Stalin, as indeed they
were.
So Roosevelt’s got to figure out
how to mollify Stalin when they
got together.
And during the war, FDR sent
his advisor Harry Hopkins
to meet with Stalin.
Hopkins was the entire
State Department
all by himself in this sort of
unofficial capacity as advisor
to the president.
Harry, you’ve met the man.
What can I expect?
Well, he does not care much
about clever strategies.
But he does care about killing
as many Nazis as possible.
That’s clear.
But what’s he really like?
Besides being a butcher
in his own right?
When I first met him, I was
astonished how polite he was.
Perfect uniform, polished
boots, cool as a cucumber.
When I was in Moscow, we
could hear German guns.
No sign of fear from him.
No hesitation.
Go on.
I need something I can use.
He does have a sense of humor
in his own peculiar way.
He laughs, but when
you least expect it.
And he does not trust Churchill.
What matters is
that he trusts me.
When the time comes, I’ll
have to distance myself
from Winston.
He will not like that.
I can’t worry about that now.
We need Stalin to stick with us.
It shouldn’t be long now.
I’m glad to see you.
I’ve tried for a long
time to make this happen,
and here we are.
[speaking russian]
That’s quite all right.
I believe men should
meet face to face.
I was so terribly sorry
to hear about your son.
[speaking russian]
I suppose we all must
be prepared to sacrifice
everything to win this war.
Tehran Conference is the
first conference where we now
have all of the big three.
NEWSREADER: Tehran,
capital of Iran.
Here, 6,000 miles from
Washington, the president
and prime minister
meet their great ally
in the war against Nazi Germany,
Marshal Joseph Stalin, premier
of Soviet Russia.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt has
the relationship with Winston
Churchill, and Winston Churchill
has met with Stalin before,
but Franklin Delano
Roosevelt has not,
so he wants to
develop a rapport,
and fundamentally he thinks, he
is the only one on Earth that
should be able to go ahead and
break this crusty exterior.
Stalin is ruthless, I would
go so far as to say heartless,
but that Soviet Union
was a necessary ally.
Roosevelt looked at
Stalin not as his partner
or as his great friend,
but as a leader who
was in charge of millions of
soldiers that might wind up
saving American democracy.
One of Roosevelt’s
enormous strengths
was that he could manipulate
people and he could oppose them
or he could have them
working with each other.
I always think one of the
best metaphors for FDR
as a leader is, you know, he had
spinning plates on his fingers
and on top of the plates
were spinning forks,
and this whole apparatus was
operating well because FDR was
there providing the leadership.
Roosevelt was careful to make
sure that Stalin saw that there
was no solid Anglo-US front.
So at Tehran, that the dynamic
of that US-British relationship
begins to change
just a little bit,
but it must have come as
quite a shock to Churchill
to see this gap
begin to open up.
Imagine the human
side for Churchill.
He’s been at war with Hitler
since September 1st, 1939.
Stalin was allied
with him at the time
and America was living
in a fantasyland,
and now Churchill is becoming
less important as these two
forces come up, and it
was incredibly painful
for Churchill, and FDR
didn’t do much to help.
[speaking russian]
Your aspirations are
justified, Marshal Stalin,
but your numbers are off.
The Atlantic wall is
not to be taken lightly,
and Hitler’s got to have more
than eight Panzer divisions
there.
[speaking russian]
The prime minister
is not haggling.
He just woke up on the
wrong side of the bed,
and he was forced to
wake up before noon
for the first time in 20 years.
[laughter]
And without his
precious brandy to boot.
Now, I agree with
the prime minister
that the risks for
this invasion are high,
but it’s a greater risk
to not take action now.
So I agree with
you, Marshal Stalin,
that we must commit to an
invasion of France immediately.
My doubts haven’t changed, but
you stood by me after Tobruk.
I’ll stand by your decision now.
Then we have a lot
of work ahead of us.
Churchill’s giving Ike a hard
time over using those bombers
over France.
He still thinks if we keep
bombing Germany we can avoid
the whole invasion.
Well, he’s wrong.
I’ll handle Winston.
The most important decision
reached at Tehran is that
the United States and Britain
will conduct Operation
Overlord, which becomes
D-Day in Normandy.
Operation Overlord,
or the Allied advance
from England into
mainland Europe,
is the fastest way to Berlin.
Because the war is not
over until a soldier
stands in Berlin with their
heel on Adolf Hitler’s neck.
Roosevelt gets credit for
choosing Dwight Eisenhower
to head the invasion of
France and the war in Europe.
Roosevelt recognized
in Eisenhower something
of a capacity that
he himself had,
and that was this personal
political skill, this ability
to keep divergent
interests in other people
from destroying the central
purpose toward which they’re
working.
Roosevelt was willing to
delegate responsibility,
so he listened to Eisenhower.
Winston?
Yes, I figured
you’d still be up.
Listen, Ike assures me
it’s essential to divert
those bombers to
targets in France.
Yes, I know France
is our ally and there
will be civilian casualties, but
I’ve got to leave the choice up
to the commander.
It’s his responsibility
and his decision.
Well, that’s really
all there is to it.
You too, Winston.
Get some rest.
Good night.
Your daughter sent me.
She wants to know if you
plan on sleeping tonight,
or ever again.
Maybe she’s right.
We’ve got two months to pull
off the biggest invasion
the world has ever seen.
And if it fails, we won’t
get a second chance.
I’ll sleep when it’s over.
You could see, really, in the
end of ’43 and early ’44 that
hollows were coming
under Roosevelt’s eyes,
that his color wasn’t very good,
that he was having some trouble
breathing, that he was
having headaches at night.
I imagine the anxiety he
must have felt about knowing
that something was wrong but not
being able to talk to anybody
about it.
Who could he talk to about the
fact that his body was failing?
Who could he talk to about
his anxieties about the war?
Because for everybody
else, he had
to keep up as much of
a cover as he could
and not let people know what
he was really feeling inside,
so it must have been, I imagine,
a really lonely time for him.
And Anna, his daughter,
saw this, finally persuaded
her father to go and have a
checkup done at Bethesda Naval
Hospital.
He meets with a
young cardiologist,
and he was stunned when
he saw Roosevelt’s visage.
He could see that he was in
the midst of congestive heart
disease.
Things are so bad that
Roosevelt’s doctor recommends
that he stay in bed to
arrest the deterioration.
He’s being told that he can’t
work more than 10 to 15 hours
a week.
This is during among
the most critical times
in world history.
To say that there’s a
lot riding on D-Day,
Operation Overlord, is a
massive understatement.
Operation Overlord
is the culmination
of years of effort
by Franklin Roosevelt
to convince Americans that
they needed to be prepared
for the war, and then once
we entered the war, taking
an army of just a couple
100,000 and building it
up putting people into
uniform by the millions.
Just the logistics of that
alone is pretty staggering,
and training all those folks
and outfitting all those folks.
It is the largest military
operation ever undertaken
in history.
It involves so many
people, so many layers
of military apparatus,
from transports and tanks,
ammunition, soldiers and
sailors, communication devices,
aircraft, tremendous
amount of coordination.
It’s an extraordinarily
difficult operation.
The Atlantic wall is
a system of defense
that the Germans start to
create from the moment they take
Europe.
This is what the Allies
have to break in order
to get into Europe.
It’s basically a 1,700 mile
wall that starts in Norway,
goes all the way to
the Spanish coast.
If you think about the Atlantic
wall as these 15,000 bunkers
as being the skeleton, the
trenches that connect them
would be the sinew that
connects those bones.
The cannons would be the
muscles that make it all work.
In front of that would be
6,000 mines, the obstacles
on the beaches, the obstacles
in the field to keep
gliders from landing.
That would be the
armor or the skin.
And then ultimately the
soldiers that defend it
would be the blood
that pump through it.
In the buildup to what
becomes Operation Overlord,
the D-Day invasion, the Allies
create all kinds of diversions,
all kinds of fake radio
traffic, even using fake tanks
and things like that to create
the illusion that this may be
a three-pronged or a
two-pronged operation,
all to get the Germans to not
massed their forces at what
ultimately becomes the main
point of contact at Normandy.
We need waves that are
less than five feet.
We’re going to land at dawn.
We’d like to have a half a moon.
We’d like to have 2,500
feet of cloud ceiling.
We’d like to have at
least 50% visibility.
How do we get those
conditions to happen?
On the eve of D-Day, this
is the culmination of years
of preparation, years of
building the supplies,
years of coalition building.
Now there’s nothing
more that FDR can do.
He had to believe that he had
supplied the soldiers the best
they could, that
they were trained
and they were ready for this,
and there was nothing he could
do but depend upon
those soldiers.
Across June 6th, we’re going
to put 155,000 soldiers
on the beach on one day.
You’ve got 7,000 ships,
13,000 aircraft all in support
of this.
It’s the greatest
joint Army, Air Force,
Navy coalition multi-service
military operation
in the history of Earth.
If you were in the
first wave of D-Day,
you would’ve left your port
early in the morning of June
6th.
You would have made your
way across rough seas.
You were probably seasick.
They tried to give
you some breakfast.
You took it and now
you’ve thrown that up.
All the toilets are full.
All the rails are full.
You’ve now gotten
on a landing craft.
Climb down a slippery rope
to get in that landing craft.
You would have been
splashed by sea waves,
soaking wet carrying
60 pounds of gear.
You can hear the
aircraft go overhead.
You hope they’re
doing their part.
And in front of you you would
see German defenses, mines,
and barbed wire, artillery
and mortars and machine guns.
Then all of a sudden the
boat would hit the beach,
and then they would
drop the ramp.
FDR had made the decisions
he could make and was now
at the mercy of events, of
time and tide quite literally.
Come in.
From General Eisenhower,
Mr. President.
10 seconds, Mr. President.
And 5, 4.
My fellow Americans,
in this poignant hour
I ask you to join me in prayer.
Almighty God, our sons,
pride of our nation,
this day have set upon
a mighty endeavor.
They struggle to preserve
our republic, our religion,
and our civilization, and to
set free a suffering humanity.
They will need life lessons.
Their role will be long and
hard, for the enemy is strong.
Success may not come
with rushing speed,
but we shall return
again and again.
By the righteousness of our
cause, our sons will triumph.
We shall prevail over the
unholy forces of our enemy.
Help us to conquer the apostles
of greed and racial arrogances.
Lead us to the saving
of our country,
and with our sister nations into
a world unity that will spell
a shore of peace, and a peace
that will let all of men
live in freedom.
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.
That speech was arguably
the largest mass prayer
in human history.
100 million Americans listened.
Church bells rang,
and everybody went
to churches and synagogues.
The impulse to pray
was overwhelming.
By noon on June 6th,
1944, even defenses
around Omaha Beach, bloody Omaha
Beach, will start to break,
and now what we have is
the invasion is a success.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s
prayer speaks volumes.
He’s responsible for speaking
for all freedom loving people.
What Operation Overlord
stands for, its hope.
Liberty is not just
this ethereal idea.
Liberty is coming.
The summer of 1944, the
Allies now have a foothold
in northwestern Europe and
are able to push across France
and directly into Germany.
The war is still unfolding.
The war in Japan
has no end in sight.
So for FDR, it was
The job was unfinished.
The war was not won.
After D-Day, he feels a sense
that it’s close to the end,
but he has to get there.
So the question
was, will Roosevelt
run for a fourth term?
You have to remember the
enormous emotional toll
being the commander in
chief had taken on FDR.
He was giving orders that
were sending boys into battle
every day, who were dying.
And he could not imagine walking
away from that responsibility
for himself.
Sacrifice was everything to him.
He believed that he had a
duty to serve his office,
to serve his country until
he could no longer do it.
FDR’s decision process seems
to largely lie on a sense
that, my work is not done yet.
The country still needs
an optimistic leader,
an aspirational leader.
I think one of his biggest
strengths was his imagination.
How can we open the
doors for the future?
He has a lot more to do.
NEWSREADER: President Roosevelt
signs GI Joe’s Bill of Rights
that guarantees a
returning soldier
a year of unemployment
insurance and helps pay
for the completion
of his schooling.
The GI Bill was created to
assist veterans returning
from war so that they had a
substantial leg up economically
as they were trying to look
for housing, look for homes,
or go back to school.
When the GI Bill of Rights
passed, he was so happy.
I think he wanted to be the
man who would shape the peace,
and he thought he was
probably in a better position
to do that than anyone else.
The real concern is,
his health is failing,
and there are media
outlets who are making
that point in subtle ways
that, hey, you know, you’re not
looking well.
By 1944, FDR is dying of
congestive heart failure.
You can see that FDR is sick.
He doesn’t look as well.
He’s lost his rosy good cheer.
And he’s not going out much.
He’s not giving speeches.
And there’s some question,
is he up to the demands
of being president?
And so when he was
in Pearl Harbor
for some strategic sessions
with MacArthur and Nimitz,
he went to visit the
troops in a particular ward
where they had lost limbs.
And he deliberately
told the people,
I want to be wheeled in.
I want them to see
me in my wheelchair.
And he very, very rarely was
ever seen in his wheelchair
beyond the inner
circle, but he thought
it was important for them to see
that he was disabled, that he
had lost use of certain limbs,
but he could lead a full life
again.
It’s a pleasure
to meet you, sir.
You a sailor?
I was.
I’m a bit of a sea man myself.
Nothing soothes me more than
being out in the open water.
Yeah, me too.
That’s over now.
Well, if you want to sail
again, then you’ll sail.
That’s a joke.
Are you telling me
that I don’t sail?
No, I
Well, if I can do it, you can.
Tell you what, if you find
the strength to get back out
to sea, I’ll be sure to
get out there with you.
NEWSREADER: At the International
Teamsters Union dinner,
President Roosevelt makes his
first campaign speech of 1944.
Here we are again
after four years,
and what years they have been.
The 1944 election is not
an easy one for Franklin
Roosevelt. He’s in some trouble.
For his political opponents,
Dewey, the Republican running
against him, they’re starting
to draw attention to Franklin
Roosevelt not being out there.
Where is he?
And is he up to the
demands of being president?
And at the same time, there
is a conspiracy theory
that’s been floated
by the Republicans,
that FDR has sent a destroyer,
a warship, to get his dog Fala.
There’s this rumor about how
FDR had left his dog Fala
at a base in Alaska, at great
cost to the taxpayer sent
a destroyer to go
and fetch his dog.
Completely false.
And so FDR is making a campaign
speech at a Teamsters dinner,
and he said, enough of this.
He knew that he needed
to project real strength.
These Republican
leaders have not
been content with attacks on me,
or on my wife, or on my sons.
No, not content with that, they
now include my little dog Fala.
[laughter]
Of course, I don’t
resent attacks,
and my family don’t
resent attacks,
but Fala does resent them.
[laughter]
Roosevelt shows he’s back.
He’s taunting his enemies.
He’s having fun with them.
He’s not a sick old man.
He’s the great politician
Franklin Roosevelt.
You know, Fala’s scotch,
and being a Scotty,
as soon as he learned that
the Republican fiction writers
in Congress and out had
concocted a story that I had
left him behind on
an Aleutian island
and sent a destroyer
back to find him,
at a cost to the taxpayer
of two or three or eight
or $20 million, his
Scotch soul was furious.
He has not been
the same dog since.
When he gave the great Fala
speech, the old master still
has it, newspapers said.
So time and again he
could rally himself.
The next day, it’s
played and replayed.
It’s printed and reprinted.
I mean, if anything could
go viral in 1944, this does.
NEWREADER: Crowds at Ebbets
Baseball Field, Brooklyn greet
President Roosevelt starting
his tour of New York City.
Mr. Roosevelt has a special
word for Brooklyn Dodger fans.
You know, I come from
the state of New York,
and I’ve got to make a
terrible confession to you.
I have never been in
Ebbets Field before.
They planned a long,
hard, arduous day for him
to prove that he was
still up to the job,
and he was going to go
in an open touring car
through the boroughs
of Manhattan and Queens
and Bronx and Brooklyn.
They didn’t plan on the fact
that there would be a drenching
rain and that it would be
freezing cold that day.
And people look at his
ability to do this.
I think it went for 50 miles,
and they say, all those rumors
that FDR is in bad health,
those must be wrong,
otherwise he could not
have done that this day.
That day in New York
City was a masquerade.
He was pretending to be much
more healthy than he was,
and he always knew that
politics was drama.
FDR once said to the
actor Orson Welles,
you and I are the two
greatest actors in America.
And almost like the actor
being taken off stage,
he was taken to Eleanor
Roosevelt’s apartment
in New York City, her separate
apartment, which he has never
seen.
Eleanor was traveling so much,
and she had become that person
that she could no
longer go back from.
And in some ways it turned out
to be fine for both of them.
He had enormous respect for her,
more than he had had before.
Quite the life you’ve had.
Yes.
Not exactly what I expected.
You always try to
do what’s right.
And people see that.
You must be hungry.
I can scramble you some eggs.
Don’t trouble yourself.
I should get cleaned up
and get out of your way.
Why not stay here?
I’ve already put
your room together.
Thank you, Babs.
But I’m speaking at the
Waldorf in a few hours.
People are expecting me.
You’re running yourself ragged.
You’re sure you won’t stay?
I should go.
Please don’t worry about me.
But I do.
I, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, do solemnly
swear that I will faithfully
execute the office of president
of the United States,
so help me God.
Winter, 1944, I think
a lot of Americans
expected the war
to have been over
after the success of Overlord.
The forces are still not
actually in Germany yet.
In December 1944, Hitler’s
unwilling to accept defeat,
so he comes up with a daring
scheme involving 10 Panzer
divisions to smash
through the Allied lines
where they’re at their weakest.
NEWSREADER: In the
Christmas season of 1944,
the German army unleashed
a desperate offensive.
The Germans conduct this
counteroffensive that today we
call the Battle of the Bulge.
It’s a surprise offensive that
takes place in December 1944.
The Battle of the Bulge
is called the bulge
because there was a
bulge in the Allied line,
the drive in ostensibly
to get to Antwerp all
the way on the Belgian coast.
When the Germans
begin their assault,
they have bad weather
on their side,
so American airpower is negated.
The German tanks and
artillery can just
slice through the Americans
of the British and slaughter.
The Americans lost 19,000 men.
10,000 men surrendered.
NEWSREADER: The Nazi party is
willing to sacrifice every soul
in Germany to stave off defeat.
The Germans could not afford
any mistakes, because they
couldn’t replace their
resources and the people that
had been lost.
There was a close moment
during the Battle of the Bulge
when things could
have gone very badly,
but eventually the United States
wears down the other side.
NEWSREADER: The
attack was blunted,
the spearhead stopped, the
Nazi columns thrown back
by men who had flung
themselves into the breach.
The Battle of the
Bulge is probably
the last German attempt
to try to change
the strategic
momentum of the war.
Once that fails, they
really are fighting
on the defensive in the West.
In January 1945, the Soviets
uncover the concentration
camps, and they were completely
unprepared for what they saw.
The Allies had learned
that the Nazis wanted
to commit mass murder of
European Jews very early on,
and at this point the
Allies could no longer
deny what was happening in
the concentration camps.
My sister was in Auschwitz.
When she came home post-war,
she said the one thing
that we never understood
while in Auschwitz, we
saw large groups of American
and Allied planes flying high
up in the air, and we stood
there praying that they should
come down and bomb
the gas chambers
and bomb the crematoria and
bomb the whole damn camp,
not caring about what would
happen to our own lives.
And they just flew on and
never came to help us.
We could not understand why they
would never attack this death
factory.
Franklin Roosevelt
and Winston Churchill
should have destroyed those
camps, even though there would
have been many lives
destroyed along with them.
It’s a complicated problem,
and we should not understate
just how deep the antisemitism
was in major parts
of the American government.
Roosevelt asked his military
advisors, what could we do?
Could we bomb the rail lines
that lead into the camps?
And the answer was, we’ve
been trying to bomb rail lines
for the last three years,
and it’s really hard
and they can rebuild overnight.
But I suspect that
Roosevelt thought,
what if we bomb somewhere
near the camps and the bombs
go astray and hit the camps?
Then the Germans might very well
say it was the American bombs
that killed the Jews.
There was an argument on
the part of the military
that it’s better off to
bomb factories and prevent
the production of war so
the war will end earlier,
and that will help the
situation as a whole.
Roosevelt said the German
leaders are going to be held
strictly accountable.
They will be brought
to the bar of justice.
It’s January 1945, and it looks
like finally after a half
decade of war, the war in Europe
will finally come to a close
sometime in the late spring
or early summer.
And with this brings
pressing questions
that Churchill, Roosevelt,
and Stalin have to address,
and they’re questions
that they feel
they can only address in person.
So they decide that they’re
going to have a conference
together at the LaGuardia Palace
on the Black Sea, the farthest
west that Stalin will go.
NEWSREADER: Yalta
on the Black Sea
was the scene of a
big three meeting.
Here starts a series of talks
that will profoundly influence
the diplomatic and political
future of the world.
February of 1945, they’re
starting to plan the post-war
world.
And you have three people that
see the world very differently.
The big three arrive at
Yalta with distinct goals.
Roosevelt wants to bring the
Soviet Union into the war
against the Japanese,
but Roosevelt also
has a personal goal that’s
looking even farther
into the future.
After the war’s over, he wants
to create a new organization
for international peace,
the United Nations.
FDR believes the United
Nations will help the world
resolve its problems, will help
de-escalate militarism and make
the world a safer
place into the future.
For Churchill and Stalin,
their objectives for Yalta
are really centered
around Poland.
Britain went to war in defense
of Polish sovereignty in 1939,
and the Polish government
has been in exile in London
ever since.
Churchill wants to make sure
that when all of this is over,
that Poland is free,
that they are independent
and have self determination.
Stalin wants to
make sure that they
are going to have a government
in Poland that’s controlled
by Stalin.
FDR never thought that Soviets
and Americans ultimately
had the same political ideals.
But as a tough political leader,
Roosevelt knew at the beginning
of 1945, the only way
to finish off this war
is to keep the Soviets
fighting, and that
may mean allowing Stalin
to do a lot of things
that Roosevelt would have
preferred that he not do.
[speaking russian]
Of course we want Poland’s
government to be friendly,
but most importantly, it must
be decided by the Polish people.
Which means, Marshal
Stalin, the members
of the Polish administration
who’ve been taking refuge
in my country should be
included in the government,
but you have shut them out
and put your own people in.
[speaking russian]
I’m assuming that you will
honor our previous agreement
that Poland will
enjoy free elections
under American and
British supervision.
[speaking russian]
Then swear to me that you
will guarantee free elections
in Poland.
[speaking russian]
I will need your word
on something else too.
I want you to join
the war against Japan.
The legacy of Yalta
was complicated.
When they depart, they
have reached agreements
that are going to lead to
peace, to a better world.
And yet Churchill
is deeply concerned
that Stalin has no intention
of honoring his agreements,
especially when it comes to
guaranteeing free elections
in Poland.
Roosevelt does succeed in
drawing the Soviet Union
into his plan for
the United Nations.
He also walks away with
a commitment from Stalin
to join the fight
in the Pacific.
We now look back on the
Yalta Conference in 1945,
and many people would say why
did Roosevelt give up Eastern
Europe?
Was it because he
was old and sick?
No, it was because the Soviet
army owned an awful lot
of Europe, and no matter how
charming or how angry Roosevelt
got at this conference,
his personal skill was not
enough to overcome that.
Roosevelt believed
that he was going
to keep going back to
Stalin to negotiate issue
by issue as things unfolded.
He didn’t see Yalta
as this climactic act.
It was not supposed
to be the final word.
Sir.
What do you think
of the changes?
The speech is fine, Sam.
They won’t like some of
the things I did out there,
but I did my best.
I think we should forget
the braces for tonight, Sis.
I don’t think
that’s a good idea.
Pa, don’t give them any more
reason to criticize you.
This is who I am.
I have nothing left to prove.
FDR returns to the United
States on March 1st, 1945,
comes before a joint
session of Congress.
[applause]
You can imagine the moment
with a filled chamber,
the doors open, and
FDR is wheeled down
the aisle in his wheelchair.
Congressmen and senators who’ve
been dealing with him for years
had never seen him in
a wheelchair before.
I hope that you will pardon
me for an unusual posture
of sitting down, but I know that
you will realize that it makes
it a lot easier for me in not
having to carry about 10 pounds
of steel around on
the bottom of my legs,
and also because of the fact
that I have just completed
a 14,000 mile trip.
It has been a long journey.
[applause]
The Congress just felt
a sense of love for him
because he had
acknowledged his infirmity.
And it’s the first time he
has ever admitted in public
to his disability.
Both Eleanor and
Frances Perkins later
commented that it wasn’t so
much that FDR was admitting
to the American people
that he had a disability.
He was admitting it to himself.
In the month after his
address to Congress,
FDR has a frantic set of
legislation and things
he has to deal with.
He’s exhausted.
He’s in poor shape.
I think he just felt, I’ve got
to give it everything I can
just to make sure the war
comes to the right end,
the peace treaty is
right, and that I’ve
got people established on a
different road toward peace.
Roosevelt had a sense
of his own immortality
that was borderline irrational.
He actually thought he was going
to serve out until 1948, ’49,
and then he was going
to go to Hyde Park
and world leaders were going
to come and fly in and bring
their problems to him
as a former president
and he would solve them.
Finally, towards
the end of March,
he goes down to Warm
Springs to recover.
And despite the fact that
his health was failing,
FDR was still focused now on
the first meeting of the United
Nations, which is to take place
in San Francisco in late April.
But he gets the Warm Springs,
he’s in such bad shape
that he has to be carried off
the train and put into his car.
The population of Warm Springs,
who had always come out
to meet him, when they see
what condition he’s in,
literally gasp and ask each
other, what happened to him?
What’s the matter?
Warm Springs had always
been the place that gave him
that resuscitation of his energy
because of the original time
of what Warm Springs
meant to him.
He went back there
again and again almost
like he was finding the
strength in that ground
there that he had once had.
And it appears to
people around him
that FDR is actually starting
on that path towards recovery
and that maybe he’ll
be strong enough
to go to San Francisco for the
opening of the United Nations.
This was what he
was working towards,
and he was very hopeful that
this would mean something
for the future.
Sir.
Yes, let’s go.
We have a lot to do.
It’s Thursday, April 12th, 1945.
Warm Springs, Georgia.
FDR had just been
working on a speech
he was to deliver the next day.
In the speech he was
going to talk about how
the only limitation to
our dreams for tomorrow
would be our doubts of today.
Let us move forward with
strong and active faith.
That was the last speech
he was supposed to give.
A Russian portrait painter
had been there painting him
in his Navy cape.
A cousin, Polly Delano is there,
and Lucy Mercer Rutherford
is there, the woman he was
never supposed to see again
after 1918, but who had
been back in his life.
He has an aneurysm.
Among his last words were,
I have a terrific headache,
as he faded.
Mrs. Roosevelt.
Yes?
I’m sorry, but you’re needed
at the White House right away.
Right away?
It gives me great
pleasure to introduce
my friend and the first lady of
the White House, Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt.
[applause]
Eleanor gave her talk, and she
said she knew that something
dreadful had happened.
As his cousin
Daisy Suckley said,
Franklin Roosevelt, the
hope of the world, has died.
Eleanor summons vice president
of Truman to the White House,
and she put her hand
on his shoulder,
and she says, Harry,
the president is dead.
And Truman says, oh, Mrs.
Roosevelt, I’m so sorry.
You know, what can I do for you?
And she says, that’s
the wrong question,
because you’re the one
that’s in trouble now.
From his beloved second
home at Warm Springs,
Georgia, the body of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
moves on to the first
stages of its journey
to his final resting place.
There’s immense public grieving.
There’s this sense that the
glue that had held the country
together had
cracked, that someone
who had seemed perennial
was actually temporal.
And "The York Times"
that day wrote, "Men
will thank God on their
knees 1,000 years from now
that Franklin Roosevelt was in
the White House when he was."
There was a daily
government list
of casualties that went out, and
the top casualty that day was,
Roosevelt, Franklin
Delano, commander in chief.
There was a sense of his being
the only president for lots
of people that
they’d ever known.
12 years is a long time.
Having carried them
through the Depression,
carried them through the war.
Feeling a sense of
connection to him.
The kids who went to the
Civilian Conservation Camps
become the soldiers
in World War II.
There’s a story
of somebody who’s
crying during the funeral, and
they say to him, an old man,
he’s crying, did you
know President Roosevelt?
He said, no, but he knew me.
Franklin Roosevelt rescued
democracy and capitalism
in their hours of
maximum danger,
and the fact that we have a
market economy and a republic
if we can keep it is in
no small measure because
of his fundamental belief
in the constitutional order.
Ambition is the most
mysterious part of leadership.
FDR had this ambition
that’s large,
but it’s for something
larger than himself.
FDR had this great gift
for understanding what
the American people needed.
FDR made us better than we are.
He could call on
our better angels.
I pledge myself to a New
Deal for the American people.
There was something
about that voice.
There was something
about that smile that
suggested it’s going to be OK.
Roosevelt opened the eyes of
Americans to positive effects
that government could
have on individual lives.
Everybody talks at the end
about how he’ll be remembered
for having gotten us
through the Depression,
carrying us through World War
II, and there’s Social Security
and all these things you can
see in the history books.
He would say, it’s the
bond with the people
that I’ve established
and that I care for.
Underneath all those
laws are people,
and they’re people whose
lives he’s affected
and people who he
helped to get them
back on their feet in the ’30s
to be ready to be the Greatest
Generation in the ’40s, and
I think that’s what he’d
want to be remembered for.
Americans have
always been lucky.
We got Lincoln
when we needed him,
we had Washington
when we needed him,
and we had FDR
when we needed him.
Let me assert my firm belief
that the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.