The Polish question was "settled." The formal proposal to hand over eastern Poland YD east of the Curzon line YD was made by Roosevelt himself.102 As to western Poland, Stalin already had a government there named by him and composed of Communists representing no one but Stalin himself. Russia wanted the amount to be 20 billion dollars of which she would take half. It was agreed that labor might be taken as a possible source of reparations. This was just a diplomatic way of authorizing the seizure of human beings to work as slaves after the war ended and is the basis of that dreadful crime perpetrated after hostilities ceased to which the President of the United States agreed. As the conference ended, Roosevelt remained an extra day because Stalin wanted to talk with him. He did so alone. What he wanted settled was "the political aspects of Russia's participation" in the Pacific. This he was able to do very quickly and to his complete satisfaction. In return for Russian participation in the Pacific, Roosevelt agreed that the Kuriles Islands would be handed to Russia, who would also get Sakhalin Island, internationalization of the Port of Darien, the lease of Port Arthur as a naval base and joint operation with China of the Eastern and Southern Manchurian railroads. And Roosevelt promised to use his influence with Chiang to force him to agree. This secret agreement, like the one supporting the use of slave labor, was not made public and was concealed even from Byrnes who was Roosevelt's adviser at alta. He did not hear of it until after Mr. Roosevelt's death. Then he saw a reference to it in a Russian dispatch. By that time he was Secretary of State. He asked President Truman to have the White House records searched for this and any other secret outstanding I.O.U.'s.105 He did suggest that to avoid criticism at home the United States be given three votes too. And Stalin agreed. When Byrnes got back to the United States he found a note from Roosevelt instructing him not to discuss this agreement even in private. Later Roosevelt decided not to ask for the three votes for the United States. Byrnes says he never discovered the reason.106 On the way home General Watson, his military secretary, died suddenly of heart disease. Roosevelt reached Washington the end of February. On March 1 he appeared before a joint session of Congress. He told the Congress that "more than ever before the major allies are closely united," that "the ideal of lasting peace will become a reality." There was no hint that the surrender which was now formally announced with respect to eastern Poland was in fact a major defeat. The disappearance of the Baltic states and practically all the Balkans behind Stalin's iron curtain was not announced in any other terms than as a great forward step in the liberation of Europe. As for western Poland, there were heavy overtones of guilt and frustration unintentionally evident. In two months Roosevelt was dead. Truman became President. Shortly after, in May, the German Army surrendered. The fighting was in the West was over. "Silent, mournful, broken Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies." Chamberlain appeased Hitler and averted war. Churchill got for England both a war and appeasement. Stalin had merely to sit tight, to make known his wishes and Roosevelt laid them in his lap with eager compliance in the notion that he could thus soften Stalin. It is all the more incredible when we remember that the things he was laying in Stalin's lap were the existence of little nations and the rights of little peoples we had sworn to defend. And when Truman and Byrnes went to Potsdam what confronted them was an appalling mess. Roosevelt not only made agreements secret from the people but secret from his closest advisers in the government. He made agreements with Stalin hostile to the objectives of Churchill and kept secret from Churchill. He made secret agreements with Chiang KaiYDshek, secret from both Churchill and Stalin, and secret agreements in derogation of Chiang KaiYDshek's interests without his knowledge. And he made many secret agreements which no one in our State Department knew about until his death and then learned about them the hard way, by having them flung in their faces at embarrassing moments by Molotov. At the end of all this, Russia held in her hands a vast belt of land running from the Baltic sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, comprising eleven nations with a population of 100 million people. These she held, not as parts of the Soviet Union, but as puppet states, presided over by Red Quislings of Stalin's own selection who represented him and not the people they governed, any more than Quisling represented the people of Norway. The truth is that Roosevelt was a dying man when he was elected, that many of those around him knew it, that the most elaborate care was exercised to conceal the fact from the people and that the misgivings of those who observed it were justified by events, since he died less than three months after his fourth inauguration. The progress of that illness and the means employed to deceive the people must be examined. Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntire, his official physician, felt called upon to put in a book his formal apologia. He was a naval officer employed by the people to watch over the President's health and these statements had the effect of deceiving the employers of the President and of the Admiral YD namely the people. What disease Roosevelt suffered from at Hyde Park and later, that produced such grave consequences, we do not know save upon the statements of Dr. McIntire. Many other doctors were called in to examine the patient, but none of these men has ever made any statements. However, while the illness seemingly began at Hyde Park after the return from Teheran, there is at least some evidence that he was far from sound before that time. Three men have written about the trip to Cairo and Teheran YD Dr. McIntire, Mike Reilly, chief of the President's Secret Service guard, and Elliott Roosevelt. The President went to Cairo by sea. But he wanted to fly from there to Teheran. Reilly tells us that Admiral McIntire "did not want to submit some of the members of the party to the rigors of high altitude flight" but that "the President was not one of these members."112 And McIntire volunteers the information that Roosevelt suffered no discomfort on high altitude flights and had shown no signs of anoxemia when flying at altitudes of 10,000 to 12,000 feet.113 ou might suppose from this Roosevelt was quite a flier. et he had never been in a plane since he flew to Chicago for his first acceptance speech 11 years before until he made the trip to Casablanca YD his only flight while President before Teheran. However, Elliott Roosevelt in his book defeats these yarns. He tells how McIntire was worried about Father's projected flight. "I'm serious, Elliott," says McIntire. "I think he could fly only as far as Basra and then go on by train." Elliott wanted to know what height his father might fly, to which McIntire replied: "Nothing over 7500 feet YD and that's tops."114 Elliott talked to the President's proposed pilot, Major Otis Bryan who, with Mike Reilly, made an inspection flight from Teheran to Basra and back and reported that the trip could be made without going higher than 7000 feet, which, says Elliott, "pleased Father very much."115 Thus McIntire and Reilly are both caught redYDhanded misleading their readers. This was before Teheran. Elliott talked to the President's proposed pilot, Major Otis Bryan who, with Mike Reilly, made an inspection flight from Teheran to Basra and back and reported that the trip could be made without going higher than 7000 feet, which, says Elliott, "pleased Father very much."115 Thus McIntire and Reilly are both caught redYDhanded misleading their readers. This was before Teheran. Whatever malady struck Roosevelt down at Hyde Park in December and kept him pretty much out of circulation until nearly the middle of May, 1944, we know that McIntire at that time caused a heart specialist from Boston to be inducted into the service to remain continuously at Roosevelt's side and that this heart specialist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, said a year later at Warm Springs that he "never let Roosevelt out of his sight," which is a most unusual performance in the case of a patient whose "stout heart never failed him," as Dr. McIntire puts it A great mystery surrounded this illness. . He was dying slowly at first, rapidly later. And at his side as his chief adviser was another dying man YD Harry Hopkins. Hopkins had had a portion of his stomach removed for ulcers and what was known as a gastroYDenterotomy performed. After this his liver troubled him and the gall bladder failed to supply satisfactorily the essential bile necessary to digestion. These two dying men, floating slowly out of life, were deliberately put into power through a fourthYDterm election by a carefully arranged deception practiced upon the American people and upon some, at least, of the party leaders. Here was a crime committed against a great nation which had made tremendous sacrifices and against the peace and security of the world in a moment of the gravest danger. History will pronounce its verdict upon all who were guilty. Dr. McIntire was immediately notified of the stroke in Washington and he, Mrs. Roosevelt and Steve Early left at once by plane for Warm Springs, arriving there at 11 P.M. They immediately decided to have no autopsy. The body was consigned to its coffin and orders issued not to open it. It was taken from Warm Springs next morning at 9 o'clock. It reached Washington next day YD the 14th YD and after lying for a few hours without ever being opened was taken that night to Hyde Park for interment next day. It has been the custom in the past for the remains of deceased Presidents to lie in state in the Capitol. This was not done. Present in the cottage when the President was stricken were the artist, Mrs. Schoumantoff, who was painting his portrait, his two cousins, his valet and several others. The artist, a Russian, was ordered to leave at once. She took a train without delay and was not located until two days later at Locust Valley, L.I. At St. Helena the British government provided its illustrious prisoner, Napoleon I, with a physician. He was Dr. Francesco Antomarchi, a Corsican, who however, did not seem particularly fond of his fallen countryman and who failed signally to win Napoleon's confidence. Dr. Antomarchi persisted to the end in the belief that his royal patient was not seriously ill. Napoleon convinced himself that his physician did not know what he was doing and that the medicines he was prescribing were actually injuring him. Napoleon watched his chance and when the doctor's back was turned, handed the mixture just prepared for him to an aide who swallowed it and was immediately taken with a violent internal disturbance. The Emperor denounced Antomarchi as an assassin. Dr. MacLaurin,126 who has written interestingly of this case, observes that from the symptoms now known to be present and even in the then state of medical knowledge at that period, the veriest blockhead would have known that the Emperor was seriously ill. Napoleon died shortly after the incident described above of cancer of the stomach. In this case, instead of passing up the autopsy, Antomarchi performed one himself in order to prove that there were no symptoms present to inform him of the presence of cancer and he wrote a book upon the subject. He did not restore our economic system to vitality. He changed it. The system he blundered us into is more like the managed and bureaucratized, stateYDsupported system of Germany before World War I than our own traditional order. Before his regime we lived in a system which depended for its expansion upon private investment in private enterprise. Today we live in a system which depends for its expansion and vitality upon the government. This is a preYDwar European importation YD imported at the moment when it had fallen into complete disintegration in Europe. In America today every fourth person depends for his livelihood upon employment either directly by the government or indirectly in some industry supported by government funds. In this substituted system the government confiscates by taxes or borrowings the savings of all the citizens and invests them in nonYDwealthYDproducing enterprises in order to create work. Behold the picture of American economy today: taxes which confiscate the savings of every citizen, a public debt of 250 billion dollars as against a preYDRoosevelt debt of 19 billions, a government budget of 40 billions instead of four before Roosevelt, inflation doubling the prices and reducing the lowerYDbracket employed workers to a state of pauperism as bad as that of the unemployed in the depression, more people on various kinds of government relief than when we had 11 million unemployed, Americans trapped in the economic disasters and the political quarrels of every nation on earth and a system of permanent militarism closely resembling that we beheld with horror in Europe for decades, bureaucrats swarming over every field of life and the President calling for more power, more priceYDfixing, more regulations and more billions. Does this look like the traditional American scene? Or does it not look rather like the system built by Bismarck in Germany in the last century and imitated by all the lesser Bismarcks in Europe? He changed our political system with two weapons YD blankYDcheck congressional appropriations and blankYDcheck congressional legislation. In 1933, Congress abdicated much of its power when it put billions into his hands by a blanket appropriation to be spent at his sweet will and when it passed general laws, leaving it to him, through great government bureaus of his appointment, to fill in the details of legislation He used it to break down the power of Congress and concentrate it in the hands of the executive. The end of these two betrayals YD the smashing of our economic system and the twisting of our political system YD can only be the Planned Economic State, which, either in the form of Communism or Fascism, dominates the entire continent of Europe today. The capitalist system cannot live under these conditions. The capitalist system cannot survive a Planned Economy. Such an economy can be managed only by a dictatorial government capable of enforcing the directives it issues. The only result of our present system YD unless we reverse the drift YD must be the gradual extension of the fascist sector and the gradual disappearance of the system of free enterprise under a free representative government. how has it advanced the cause of democracy? We liberated Europe from Hitler and turned it over to the mercies of a far more terrible tyrant and actually tried to sell him to the people as a savior of civilization. Behold Europe! Does one refer to the wreckage there as liberation and salvation? Is anyone so naive as to suppose that democracy and free capitalism have been restored in Europe? Fascism has departed from Germany, but a hybrid system of socialism and capitalism in chains has come to England, which is called social democracy but is on its way to Fascism with all the controls without which such a system cannot exist. And in America the price of the war is that fatal deformity of our own economic and political system which Roosevelt effected under the impact of the war necessities. The war rescued him and he seized upon it like a drowning man. By leading his country into the fringes of the war at first and then deep into its center all over the world he was able to do the only things that could save him YD spend incomprehensible billions, whip up spending in the hot flames of war hysteria, put every man and his wife and grandparents into the war mills, while under the pressure of patriotic inhibitions, he could silence criticism and work up the illusion of the war leader. Look up the promises he made, not to our own people, but to the Chinese, to Poland, to Czechoslovakia, to the Baltic peoples in Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia, to the Jews out of one side of his mouth and to the Arabs out of the other side. He broke every promise. The figure of Roosevelt exhibited before the eyes of our people is a fiction. There was no such being as that noble, selfless, hardYDheaded, wise and farseeing combination of philosopher, philanthropist and warrior which has been fabricated out of pure propaganda and which a small collection of dangerous cliques in this country are using to advance their own evil ends. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In June the longYDawaited invasion of the continent was launched. With this we will not concern ourselves. The other subject that occupied Roosevelt's mind was his plan to have himself renominated for a fourth time. The President had lost his head, at least a little. Congress was slipping away from him. A growing section of his party, particularly in the Senate, was moving out of that collection of incongruous elements called the Third New Deal. It was crawling with Reds and their gullible allies who got themselves into key positions in all the bureaus and were talking with great assurance about what they were going to do with America and the world. The Communists had all become antiYDfascists and everybody who was against the Communists was, therefore, a fascist. A group of organizations financed by undisclosed benefactors was riding roughshod through the country smearing everybody who questioned the grandiose plans of the Great Leader for remaking America and the world. Nobody was getting a hotter dose of this smearing than the American Congress. The radio and the frightened press and magazines kept up a barrage against the members of the President's own party in both houses. It was a Democratic bill and the blast that exploded in his face brought him up with a jerk. In the upper house, Senator Barkley, Democratic leader, Roosevelt's own representative there, rose to upbraid him. He said the message was "a calculated and deliberate assault upon the legislative integrity of every member of Congress." He cried: "I do not propose to take it lying down," as Democratic and Republican senators united in a roar of applause. He ended his philippic with an announcement that made headlines in every paper in the country. He declared that after seven years of carrying the New Deal banner for the President, he now resigned his post as Democratic majority leader and he called on every member of the Congress to preserve its selfYDrespect and override the veto. The Senate overrode it 72 to 14 and the House 299 to 95. It brought Roosevelt tumbling off his high horse. He sent Steve Early running to Barkley's home that very night to beg him not to quit. Barkley yielded. McIntire was a naval doctor in 1932 and was recommended to Roosevelt as White House physician by Admiral Grayson. McIntire was an eye, ear and nose specialist. He got along famously with Roosevelt, was elevated by him to the grade of admiral and made head of the Naval Hospital Service. Thus once again the problem of disease entangled itself in the making of history. It had happened after the First World War when the President was stricken by a brain hemorrhage that paralyzed his body and impaired his mind and, worse than this, disturbed his normal mental balance. What might have been the course of history had Woodrow Wilson's mental and physical powers survived must be a matter of speculation. We have seen how the Communist party had successfully penetrated the unions organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations YD the CIO YD and how John L. Lewis and David Dubinsky had got out of it for this reason, leaving Sidney Hillman in complete control. We have also seen how the war brought Hillman to the top in White House circles when he and William Knudsen became the directors of the economic war effort. Knudsen departed in good time, but Hillman remained close to the White House. . By 1943, Earl Browder, Communist leader, had about completed the discovery that there was no hope for a proletarian revolution in America. The party got nowhere preaching Communism. The people just wouldn't listen. But it learned that it could getyYYY !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwxyz{}yYYY~Y~ very far by using a different technique. After all, Communist revolutionaries know that before they can introduce Communism they must destroy the political and economic system of the country in which they conspire. t fascism YD the Planned Capitalist Economy YD is merely a decadent phase of capitalism. For this reason the Communist party had been promoting with great success RedYDfront organizations and inducing the most important people, like Mrs. Roosevelt, Henry Wallace and scores of prominent leaders in education and public life, to work with them. As 1944 opened, Browder decided to liquidate the Communist party. It would go out of politics. It would become a mere educational association. This was done, and Browder and Sidney Hillman teamed up to capture the American Labor Party. This had been formed originally in New ork City to provide a political vehicle for Fiorello LaGuardia in his local politics. It had all sorts of people in it. There were a lot of Reds, a lot of socialists and a lot of parlor and campus pinks of all sorts, plus a lot of social reformers and welfare reformers. It had corralled a lot of votes YD enough to swing an election in New ork State YD by giving or withholding its vote from the Democrats. It supported Lehman in 1940 and elected him on the Democratic ticket. It refused to endorse the Democratic candidate, Bennett, for governor in 1942 and the Democratic vote, without it, was insufficient and thus Dewey became governor. Now Browder and Hillman joined forces and decided to take over the American Labor Party. They met resistance from the mixed collection of pinks who had control, but in a bitter battle Browder and Hillman took it over. Actually Browder dominated this team because it was Communist votes that did the trick. In addition to this, Hillman had organized in 1943 a new political labor group called the CIO Political Action Committee. The CIO had violated the law by supporting candidates in various primary elections and to get around this Hillman formed this Political Action Committee and pressure was put on members of CIO unions to compel them to join. This organization was now being used as a club in the Democratic party to bludgeon Democratic congressmen and officials generally to play ball with Hillman, Wallace and their crowd, while Hillman and Browder did business as a team in New ork State in the newly reYDformed Communist American Labor Party. The Democratic party could win if it could carry the Southern states and in addition New ork, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey. These states could be carried with the support of Sidney Hillman's Political Action Committee and Browder's American Labor Party, but not without them and Roosevelt was the only possible candidate who could get this support. The Democrats had to nominate Roosevelt or lose the election. There were some Democrats who thought it was better to lose the election, but not enough of them. Accordingly when the convention assembled in Chicago on July 19, Sidney Hillman was there, not as a delegate YD he was not even a member of the party YD but to see that the subservient Democrats behaved to his satisfaction and to the satisfaction of his friend and partner, Browder. To this pass had Roosevelt's personal political ambitions brought the Democratic party of Jefferson, Cleveland and Wilson. Hillman had a headquarters there. He wasn't worried about Roosevelt's nomination. That was settled. He wasn't worried about the platform. That was written to his satisfaction before the convention assembled by Sam Rosenman. He had one more demand. He wanted Henry Wallace nominated again for Vice President. Harry Hopkins and Henry Wallace and, of course, Sidney Hillman knew. They knew that Roosevelt was doomed and that if they could name Henry Wallace Vice President this time, the government would be in their hands. But Chicago had a visitor about whom nothing was known until later. On the evening of July 14, Roosevelt left Washington with great secrecy on a special train. It reached Chicago on Saturday the 15th. That same day, Robert E. Hannegan, Democratic national chairman, got to Chicago. Reporters awaited him at the station. But he slipped out through a rear door of his train and into Mayor Kelly's policeYDescorted automobile and vanished. Reporters frantically hunted him all over town. He remained out of sight until the next day. But in the meantime he had made a visit to Roosevelt's train, secretly parked on a remote railroad siding. There poor Wallace's goose was cooked. Hannegan, too, got a letter. It said the President would be happy to have either Harry Truman or William Douglas as his running mate. And as Hannegan was leaving the train, Roosevelt warned him "to clear everything with Sidney." The Presidential approval of Truman was no good until Sidney O.K.'d it Truman was nominated with 1100 votes to only 66 for Wallace. But not until Sidney Hillman had approved the change. His first speech was not made until September 24 to a dinner given by the International Teamsters' Union dominated by Daniel Tobin YD an AFL union. Its purpose was to put some emphasis on the support of the AFL in view of the bitter feeling among AFL leaders because of the dominant role Sidney Hillman's CIO was playing in Roosevelt's councils and particularly in its favored position before Roosevelt's Labor Board ~~~~~~~~~ Secret Service Page- The first occurred on February 1, 1933, in Miami, Florida Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots a President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was making an impromptu speech while sitting in an open car that had stopped momentarily. Although none of the shots hit President Roosevelt, Zangara mortally wounded Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago, and hit four other people, including a Secret Service agent. On February 15, 1933, Zangara attended a speech given by Roosevelt at Bayfront Park in Miami, Florida. When Roosevelt had finished his talk and was preparing to leave, Zangara pulled out a pistol and opened fire. A bystander deflected the assassin's aim by pushing his arm into the air. Zangara wounded five people who had been near the president-elect, two of them seriously. Most critically injured was Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was struck by the bullet in the chest which then lodged in his spine. Zangara was immediately charged with four counts of attempted murder. He was not charged initially with the wounding of Cermak, as authorities waited to see if the mayor's wounds would prove fatal. The State charged Zangara for attempting to murder Franklin Roosevelt, Russell Caldwell, Margaret Kruise, and William Sinnott. Zangara was found guilty on each count and sentenced to four consecutive twenty year terms. On March 6, Mayor Cermak died from complications stemming from the shooting. The same day Zangara was indicted by a grand jury and charged with first degree murder in the death of Cermak. His trial began on March 9 and ended on March 11 with a guilty verdict and a death sentence. The prisoner was transported to the Florida State Prison at Raiford, where he was executed on March 20, 1933. The parade car moved slowly down the street as President-elect Roosevelt and Mayor Cermak smiled and waved. The car stopped and President-elect Roosevelt gave a speech while sitting on the back of the car. A man named Guiseppe Zangara pushed through the crowd. He fired five shots at the President-elect. The bullets hit four people and Mayor Cermak. The mayor fell out of the car and called out "The President, get him away!" But Roosevelt ordered his car to stop and that Mayor Cermak be put in with him. President-elect Roosevelt held Mayor Cermak all the way to the hospital. Mayor Anton J. Cermak died three weeks later, on March 8, 1933. His body was taken back to Chicago and buried in the Bohemian National Cemetery. Guiseppe Zangara was executed in the electric chair on March 21, 1933. That was only 13 days after Mayor Cermak died. It was not always thus. Consider the case of Guiseppe Zangara, who was executed in 1933 for the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in which Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was fatally shot. Zangara pleaded guilty in state court on March 10, was sentenced to death, and was executed on March 20 -- an interval of 10 days! Kenneth J. Davis, FDR: The New ork ears 1928-1933 (Random House, 1985) at 427-435. After Roosevelt had delivered a speech in Florida on February 14, 1938, Guiseppe Zangara, an unemployed bricklayer, fired six sbots from a handgun at Roosevelt from twelve yards away. The president elect, who was sitting in an open car, was uninjured but five other people were shot, including Chicago mayor Anton Cernak, who was killed. Zangara, who had a pathological hatred for rich and powerful figures, was found guilty of murder and electrocuted.February 15, 1933, Guiseppe Zangara rose early in Miami, Florida to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president-elect. In the past weeks, FDR's popularity had increased. That warm, reassuring voice, that ready grin and tilted cigarette holder, had reached out to touch millions of folks all over America. Zangara did not share these emotions. Pushing his way through the crowd, Zangara shouted out "There are too many people starving to death!" He fired shot after shot at FDR, but a woman's quick move knocked the gun upward. The bullets hit several bystanders and mortally wounded Mayor Cermak of Miami.