Notes

Introduction: “Lady Great Heart”

“No woman has ever”: Clare Boothe Luce, 21 May 1950, presenting ER with the Williamsburg Settlement’s annual gold medal for aid to the underprivileged at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Allida Black, in ER, 2:412, 282.

“The First Lady of”: Pauli Murray’s 1984 centennial celebration of ER, in Bell-Scott, Firebrand and First Lady, 357.

“Attention and admiration”: Cook, ER, 1:100. There is to date no biography of Marie Souvestre.

“Whatever I have become”: Cook, ER, see Allenswood chapter, 1:102ff.

“the happiest day”: Ibid.

“Eleanor Roosevelt cares”: Lady Stella Reading interviewed for and quoted in Harrity and Martin, ER in Pictures, 208.

“apostle of good-will”: The 135th celebration, The Churchman, chapter VII.

one of history’s most powerful: Cook, ER, 1:227–32, 235–36, 245–48, 379–80.

Learning and living: ER, You Learn by Living, foreword.

“self-absorbed snobs”: Cook, ER, 1, Val-Kill chapter.

“her face to the wall”: Ibid.

“is so completely changed”: For ER’s happy days at Todhunter, purchased in 1927, see Cook, ER, 1, chapter 16; for the bitter end of the friendship, see Cook, ER, 2:525–37.

“has every right”: Tommy to Trude Pratt, 13 October 1944.

“chiselers and users”: Cook, ER, 1, chapter 18, 429–47.

“for purely sentimental”: Ibid.

“full of warmth”: Ibid.

packet of “endearing”: Ibid.

“Navy Commander’s wife”: Ibid.

“You are right”: ER to Hick, 19–20 November 1934, in Cook, ER, 2:229.

“Have you heard”: ER to Lape, as recorded by Maureen Corr. For ER’s friendship with Laura (Polly) Delano, Levy, Extraordinary Mrs. R, 178–84.

“both grew individually”: Polier, oral history, FDRL.

“I have learned”: Bowles, Promises to Keep, 121–25.

“remarkable wife” were: Ibid.

“Imagine me Feigele”: Baum, Hyman, and Michel, Jewish Woman in America, 160.

“her labor colleagues”: O’Farrell, She Was One of Us, 187. For Gila and other Japanese internment camps, I am grateful to Al Vinch for his interviews with former Gila residents.

990 Tuskegee Airmen: Buckley, American Patriots, 286–94, 311–12; Buckley, Hornes, 178–80. On the Tuskegee Airmen, I am grateful to Dr. Roscoe Brown of CUNY and to Percy Heath. See also Frances Wills Thorpe, Navy Blue and Other Colors.

“Lady Big Heart”: Rowan, Dream Makers, 131–42.

displaced persons camps: In My Day, 16 February 1946, she detailed her visit to Zeilsheim: “They made me a speech at a monument . . . to the six million dead Jewish people. I answered from an aching heart. When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”

“we let our consciences”: ER, speech to women’s division of the United Jewish Appeal, New York, 20 February 1946, in Black, ER Papers, 1:257.

“rescue the perishing”: See Pedersen, Rathbone and Conscience, 328ff, 411. Rathbone’s biographer, Susan Pedersen, points out that no study has yet been written to detail her work for refugees and rescue. Britain’s Tony Kushner dedicated his book The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination in part “to Eleanor Rathbone who knew, cared and acted.”

“The truth is”: ER, on Palestinian refugees, India and East, 24–34.

“We will have a”: FDR, 1940 speech.

“To deny any part”: My Day, 16 April 1943.

“We all go ahead together”: ER’s 11 May 1934 speech against discrimination, in Journal of Negro Education (10/1934); Cook; ER, 2:185, reprinted in Black, What I Hope to Leave Behind, 141ff.

Chapter One: “We All Go Ahead Together, or We Will All Go Down Together”

congressional opposition to: FDR to Josephus Daniels, 14 November 1938, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:827–28; Leuchtenburg, FDR and New Deal, 271–74.

“sparkling east ballroom”: ER II, Aunt Eleanor, 30–36. I am grateful to ER’s nieces Diana Roosevelt Jaicks and Janet R. Katten for press reports of ER’s party.

“a feeling of injustice”: ER to Charles Graves, 21 January 1939, box 1519, ER Papers.

detailing various outings: FDR to King of England, 18 January 1939, collected letters.

“I hope adults everywhere”: New York Times, 1 January 1939.

ER II chose to watch: ER to Lape and Elizabeth Read, l January 1939, BWC.

“Aunt Eleanor proposed”: ER II, Aunt Eleanor, 36.

“I never saw such nerve”: ER, press conference, 5 January 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 67–69. See also My Day, 3 January 1939.

“I said I would tell you”: My Day, 5 January 1939. This stunning Broadway success was intensely controversial. Morley received the Drama Critics’ Best Actor award for his portrayal of Oscar Wilde. See Kaier Curtin, We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians, 237–49.

“Bill was so fond of you”: ER to Hick, 3 January 1939.

“I’m playing a rather mean”: Ibid.

“made Pa very cheerful”: ER to Anna, 22 January 1939, Asbell, ed., Mother and Daughter, 107.

“And through the streets”: Neruda quoted in Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 344. For Ehrenburg’s extraordinary eyewitness account of Spain’s fall, see 340ff.

“Father is very gloomy”: ER to Anna, 22 January 1939, Asbell, Mother and Daughter.

“At the moment your mother”: Tommy to Anna, 2 February 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 75.

“I bobbed my hair”: ER to Anna, 22 January 1939, Asbell, 107; ER to J. H. Cairns, Los Angeles, on women’s rights and birth control information, 28 February 1938, box 1452.

“Of course the trouble is”: My Day, 5 April 1938.

“our neutrality laws may”: FDR, “Annual Message to Congress” (A Warning to Dictator Nations), January 4, 1939, in Zevin, Nothing to Fear, 162–73. FDR worked on this speech for months. He assigned an aide to find Lincoln’s words, FDR to William D. Hassett, 22 October 1938, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:820. See also Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 387–90.

“a solid block of people”: My Day, 5 January 1939.

“there can be no real democracy”: Bess Furman’s notes, press conference, 17 January 1939, Beasley, 71.

“Where you have no official”: Ibid., 70–72.

Stunned, Frankfurter whispered: Lash suggested that Frankfurter was not surprised at all, since his former students Tom Corcoran and Ben Cohen orchestrated the lobby for Frankfurter and persuaded progressive Senator George Norris (R-NE) to join their effort. According to them, when Norris agreed, FDR acted. Corcoran and Cohen, Lash wrote, were in daily communication with Frankfurter; see Dealers and Dreamers, 385–88.

“mother had been alive”: Felix Frankfurter to FDR, 4 January 1939, in Freedman, Roosevelt and Frankfurter, 482–83.

“two Jews on the train”: Joseph Lash on Rosenman, in Dealers and Dreamers, 388. Ickes lobbied vigorously for Frankfurter’s appointment; he believed that FDR was persuaded by Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, who argued that there were not that many “distinguished judges or lawyers in the US—men with lovely minds.” When Ickes’s friends learned of FDR’s signed commission to the U.S. Senate, a champagne party convened with Tom Corcoran; FDR’s new attorney general Frank Murphy; Harry Hopkins; U.S. solicitor general Robert Jackson; SEC chair William O. Douglas; WPA assistant administrator David Niles; Missy LeHand; and Peggy Dowd.

“So you would create”: Stephen Isaacs, Jews and American Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 65.

“were fanatical and”: Acheson to George Rublee, 17 January 1939, in Chace, Acheson, 74–75.

“a great roar of approval”: Chace, Acheson, 75. See also Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:552.

“That things should be”: Baker, Brandeis and Frankfurter, 345.

“was saving central Europe”: Pound on Hitler, Baker, 349ff. In 1939 Frankfurter and Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., issued the “Committee of Eight” report on religious discrimination at leading universities. Astonishingly, Samuel Eliot Morison defended the need to “save some places at mother Yale for our boys,” given that worthy sons of America’s founders were “being hustled and shoved from every side, politically mainly by the Irish; economically, by the Jews.” See Baker, passim.

“with permission to quote”: ER, press conference, 13 February 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences.

“at the present time”: ER to Justine Wise Politer, 28 February 1939.

“charming children” all too: Feingold, Politics of Rescue, 150; Richard Breitman and Alan Krant, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 74.

“poisonous” in tone: Moffatt and Bullitt in ibid., and Morgan on Bullitt, FDR: Biography, 498–99.

“to condemn whole groups”: Appendix, Congressional Record, 1772, 2253.

“America’s children are”: Reynolds statements, 26 May 1939.

“a general feeling”: Eddie Cantor to FDR, 12 January 1939; see Morse, While Six Million Died, 207–8.

“They are not our Jews”: Richard Lieberman to author on FDR to Caroline O’Day. I am grateful to Richard Lieberman for his work, still to come, on Senator Wagner and fate of his bill.

“courage and zeal”: ER celebrates Dorothy Thompson’s event, New York Times, 25 January 1939.

“Czech culture was”: Gilbert, History of Twentieth Century, 2:230. See also Crane and Crane, Czechoslovakia, 174–78. For the British government response, see Churchill, Gathering Storm, 342–46. On 15 March William Shirer reported “complete apathy in Paris tonight about Hitler’s latest coup. France will not move a finger.” Berlin Diary, 160. On 27 May exiled Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš visited Hyde Park to appeal to FDR to oppose Germany’s aggression, which threatened “world peace and the very structure of modern civilization.” This visit engendered ER’s enduring concern for Beneš and Czechoslovakia’s future; Sylvia Crane to author.

ER had long argued: ER’s efforts with Lape and Read to promote the World Court were the first documents collected by the FBI to monitor her “subversive” activities. See Cook, ER, 2:236–37.

“single infertile women”: Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 195–96. See esp. Renata Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, When Biology Becomes Destiny; Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland; and The Works of Sybil Milton.

“havens of refuge”: Infantile Paralysis Program (transcript), NBC, 11 January 1939, in Edith Nourse Rogers Papers, box 9, Schlesinger.

“on the clear understanding”: “National Conference on Problems of the Negro,” New York Times, 13 January 1939; Crisis, February 1939, 54.

“a policy of which”: My Day, February 27, 1939; “Mrs. Roosevelt Indicates She Has Resigned from DAR Over Refusal of Hall to Negro,” New York Times, 28 February 1939. An American Institute of Public Opinion poll indicated that 67 percent approved of ER’s action in resigning, and 33 percent disapproved. Democrats approved by 68 percent, Republicans by 63 percent. Only 56 percent of southerners polled disapproved. New York Times, 19 March 1939.

“Prejudice. . .rules to”: Washington Herald editorial.

“How kind of you”: ER to Dorothy Kemp Roosevelt, 3 March 1939, with gratitude for this correspondence to Diana Roosevelt Jaicks and Janet Roosevelt Katten.

“I am not surprised”: Anderson quoted in “Mrs. Roosevelt Indicates She Has Resigned from DAR Over Refusal of Hall to Negro,” New York Times, 28 February 1939. Anderson’s concert schedule is in Mary Maples Dunn, Notable American Women. See esp. Arsenault, Sound of Freedom.

“one of the most hopeful signs”: Hurok, Impresario, 245–55.

“We will all go ahead”: For ER’s 11 May 1934 speech, see Cook, ER, 2:185.

“I regret exceedingly”: ER to Citizens’ Committee.

“Bully for Oscar!”: Scott Sandage, notes from interview with Chapman’s widow, 6 November 1989, used with gratitude.

“one of the most impressive”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:614.

“she was almost overcome”: Ibid., 614–15.

“In this great auditorium”: Clarke, Roosevelt’s Warrior; and esp. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim, 650–53. After Anderson sang, Ickes was ecstatic: she “sang magnificently. I have never heard such a voice. The whole setting was unique, majestic, and impressive and I could not help but feel thankful that the DAR and the school board had refused her the use of an auditorium.” Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:615.

“I am so overwhelmed”: Keiler, Marian Anderson, 181–217; Arsenault, Sound of Freedom; Jessye Norman, Stand Up Straight and Sing, 135–45; New York Times, 10 April 1939.

the segregated, and ongoing: Real change did not occur until President Dwight Eisenhower integrated all federal spaces by executive order in 1954. Despite Ickes’s commitment to the NAACP on racial justice, his efforts were curiously limited. When a delegation of “Washington Negroes” urged him to open “all playgrounds, golf courses, parks, and swimming pools . . . to Negroes and whites alike,” he said there were adequate separate facilities for recreation and urged them to go slow. It was, he explained, a terrible time “to move too fast,” given the prejudices of the moment. Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:561–62.

“will sing for them”: Article on the concert, Time, 17 April 1939.

“No matter how many times”: ER on childbirth and love, My Day, 1 April 1939.

“Anna is doing very well”: ER to Lape and Read, 2 April 1939, Arizona Collection.

tragedy struck at: Ruby Black, ER: Biography, 121; ER II to author; “Daniel S. Roosevelt Killed,” 19 April 1939; Raymond Daniel, “Harvard Nephew . . . Killed with Classmate,” New York Times, 19 April 1939; “Mrs. FDR at Nephew’s Funeral,” 23 April 1939; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 488.

Chapter Two: “You Cannot Just Sit and Talk About It, You Have to Do Something”

“every other woman”: Cook, ER, 1:233.

“at the council table”: FDR to Hitler, 14 April 1939, in Hunt, Essential FDR, 152–55.

two-hour Reichstag rant: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 165–67.

Hungary, ethnically diverse: Enmity among Central European states was enduring. Béla Kun’s Communist Hungary might have survived had it not been for an Allied blockade and the intervention of Romanian troops with French support. In 1920 irredentist Hungarians, led by ex-king Charles of Hapsburg sought a resurrected empire that would absorb Slovakia, Transylvania (from Romania), areas of Yugoslavia, and Austria. Consequently, the First World War bled into the Second with all borders at risk. Crystal Eastman, “In Communist Hungary,” in Cook, On Women and Revolution, 315–28, esp. 321, 325; and Crane and Crane, Czechoslovakia, 66–69.

“do nothing that would entail”: FDR to Norman Davis.

“the full co-operation of Russia”: Churchill’s 4 May speech in Churchill, Gathering Storm, 327, 337, 374–77.

“I fear this terribly”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 4 May 1939, 1:401. Perhaps because he had negotiated the first trade agreements with Denmark, Norway, and Weimar Germany, which ended the blockade against the Soviet Union, Litvinov was not liquidated as so many of Stalin’s former allies had been during the dreadful purges of 1937. Subsequently, in November 1940, he was named ambassador to the United States.

“costumes and accessories”: “World of Tomorrow Dress Design,” New York Times, 22 April 1939.

“profusion of beauty”: My Day, 9 June 1939. ER was close to William Reeves, “a delightful man” who had been the White House’s head gardener since Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. ER, Autobiography, 73.

“a tempest in a teapot”: ER on Herbert Hoover, My Day, 3 February 1939.

“both unconventional and unpredictable”: Charles Hurd, “Rugged Roosevelt Individualists,” New York Times, 23 April 1939.

“Where is foreign policy made”: Time, 17 April 1939. This piece represented only the first departure from “Luce’s past coverage of Eleanor.” Subsequently Time announced that My Day was “required reading” for Wall Streeters and sided with ER against Westbrook Pegler; see Time, 3 March 1941. For ER’s speech on U.S. economic needs, see Time, 6 March 1939.

She deplored scholar-politicians: 18 March 1939.

bigotry, race hatred: New York Times, 13 January 1939; Crisis, February 1939, 54.

“Divorce is necessary and right”: Time, 14 March 1938.

“the insane dogma”: Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, 53; Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, 123.

“I have been a long time”: ER to Mrs. Charles A. Goetting, 28 March 1938, in box 1459; New York Times, 17 January 1940.

“get the whole thing”: “Roman Catholics and Birth Control,” Churchman, 15 March, 15 April, 15 May, and 17 June 1941, sent to ER by Mary Lasker.

“Like your many other”: Rev. Maurice Sheehy to ER, 13 February 1939, in box 1525; ER to Sheehy, 15 February 1939. See esp. Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, 2007). For Margaret Sanger and ER’s correspondence, see 339–44, 387–90, afterword passim.

“The president was in top”: Katherine Littell to Anna, 23 March 1940, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 36.

“I wonder if you realize”: Hick to ER, 27 January 1939, Hickok, box 6.

“It is magnificent!”: Hick to ER, 15 March 1939, Hickok, box 6.

“Many a soldier has told me”: “Conquer Fear and You Will Enjoy Living,” Look, 23 May 1939.

“a curious feeling”: “ER Reveals Ghosts,” New York Times, 19 March 1939.

“There is nothing discomforting”: “White House Shadows,” New York Times, 20 March 1939.

“laughingly admitted at”: New York Times, 18 March 1939.

“Any good things”: New York Times, 13 March 1939.

“I think my own real objection”: ER to Roy V. Peel, 20 March 1939, box 1519.

“Why do nations go to war”: Photoplay, undated ms. in Hickok, box 6.

“Your valentine came”: Hick to ER, 15 February 1939, Hickok Papers.

“Living—just going on living”: Hick to ER, 19 January 1939.

“Please take the 100”: ER to Hick, 9 March 1939.

“I’ll not even pretend”: Hick to ER, 24 January 1939.

“I’m getting two more books”: Hick to ER, 13 April 1939.

“Things are a little better”: “human dynamo,” Hick to ER, 22 April 1939.

of “government extravagance”: ER, graduation ms. April 1939.

“Do you know, my dear”: Hick to ER, 26–27 April 1939.

“in a costume of printed silk”: Kathleen McLaughlin, “Many Feminine Touches Revealed,” New York Times, 1 May 1939. Over five thousand women volunteers representing forty-eight states were at the reception, McLaughlin reported, observing that women “unconditionally and instantly loved the Fair.”

“as a symbol of peace”: FDR, speech opening World’s Fair, 30 April 1939, was the first televised speech, New York Times, May 1939.

“its formal bow”: New York Times, 1 May 1939.

Chapter Three: Tea and Hot Dogs: The Royal Visit

“Each American family must snap”: “Headlines from Headliners,” Democratic Digest, March 1939.

“private non-profit religious”: See Ira Katz-Nelson, Fear Itself, for the congressional war against the New Deal.

“all services and supplies”: Virginia Cocalis, “Medical Care for Farmers,” Democratic Digest, February 1939; “New Deal in Health,” Democratic Digest, February 1939.

“Of all the programs”: See Genevieve Forbes Herrick, “Congress Will Consider,” Democratic Digest, January 1939; FDR’s $525 million defense program, Democratic Digest, February 1939; Ellen S. Woodward, “Next Steps in Social Security,” Democratic Digest, February 1939; “Congress Considers/Congress Enacts,” Democratic Digest, April 1939; “Farm Poverty Giving Way to Security,” Democratic Digest, January 1939; Wagner on Housing, “Headlines from Headliners,” Democratic Digest, April 1939.

“human side of government”: “Mrs. R Counsels Women,” January 1939, ER’s Jackson Day speech, in Democratic Digest.

dictator Anastasio Somoza: TIR, 182; Cook, ER, 1:365; Congressional Record, 5 May 1939, 5163–64; Gregorio Selser, Sandino, passim; and Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, passim. FDR biographers generally ignored Somoza’s visit, which curiously is referred to almost nowhere.

In a published photo: George Black, The Good Neighbor, 71–72.

“Just received wire”: ER to FDR, 1 April 1939, and FDR to ER, 1 April 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:875.

“The truth is”: ER to Nan Honeyman, 14 February 1939, Nan Honeyman to ER, 11 February 1939; Cordell Hull to Honeyman constituent rescuer, Robert Auxier, 8 December 1938, ER Papers, box 1505. Honeyman and ER agreed to meet at Anna’s during her spring visit.

“It can happen here”: Congressional Record, debate on Hobbs bill, HR 5643, 5 May 1939, 5161–92; O’Day on 5164.

“the American people do not want”: Ibid., Marcantonio on 5167; Dickstein on 5171; Ludlow and Celler on 5172; list of nations on 5180.

“the big thing we talked about”: FDR to Bernard Baruch, 18 April 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:879–80.

“of all faiths and nationalities”: Baruch’s plan was endorsed by FDR’s friends, and enemies, notably Sam Rosenman who, like Baruch, sought an alternative to a “world ghetto” for Jews. Hamilton Fish, although a fervent isolationist, campaigned for Baruch’s plan in 1939. Baruch, My Own Story, 2:273–74; Jordan Schwarz, The Speculator, 564.

“national home for the Jewish”: FDR to Cordell Hull, 17 May 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:885–86. For the Balfour Declaration, see esp. Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America, 65.

“I have been admonishing”: ER to Hick, 20 May 1939.

behaved . . . “as though”: TIR, 184. See also Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 446–49.

“Pa was annoyed”: ER to Anna, 31 May 1939, Asbell, 118.

“air our minds”: Cook, ER, 2:73.

“sense of humor”: TIR, 185.

“we should give”: ER, press conferences, 5 May, 22 May, and 29 May 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences; TIR, 187.

discuss than “etiquette”: ER, press conference, ibid., 111–15.

“Hyde Park is no castle”: “Hyde Park,” Life, 29 May 1939.

“British men of war”: New York Times, 4 March 1939, 4; “Hyde Park,” Life, 29 May 1939; Time, 15 May 1939; “FDR Checks Home for Royalty,” New York Times, 28 May 1939. For decisions over protocol, see Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 145, and TIR, 184.

celebrated her “energy”: S. J. Woolf, “Energy: Mrs. Roosevelt Tells How She Conserves It,” New York Times, 28 May 1939.

radio press dispatches: There were also strikes, forest fires, and baseball scores. Johnstown won the Kentucky Derby, and public health replaced education as the foremost issue of concern among U.S. foundations. In Washington, Congress reconsidered the Neutrality Act, and there was hope that FDR would receive “more discretionary power” to sell arms on a “cash and carry” basis. Radio Press News, 8 May 1939, Tully Papers.

“in the tropic heat”: “Unwanted Refugees,” New York Times, 4 June 1939, reported travail of SS St. Louis.

The stirring speech: ER, press conference, 29 May 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 114–15; “News of Week,” New York Times, 4 June 1939.

“Like all other disappointments”: My Day, 3 June 1939.

“mourning the loss”: Mollie Somerville, Eleanor As I Knew Her, 37.

been “carefully coached”: My Day, 6 and 7 June 1939. The story of Billy Nelson and King Albert is in Cook, ER, 2:205–6. Carl Sharsmith and Elizabeth Stone O’Neill to author.

“If you want a press conference”: ER, press conference, 7 June 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 118–21.

“Delegates from all parts”: ER’s speech to Workers’ Alliance, New York Times, 8 June 1939. Arthur Krock condemned ER’s speech; see “The Non-Recoverable Relief Bill,” New York Times, 9 June 1939.

“At last I greet you”: FDR, Time, 19 June 1939. According to Time, five hundred people collapsed in the heat along the royal route. Sixty Girl Scouts were also felled by the heat as they waited for the procession at the White House gates, My Day, 8 June 1939. For Ickes’s account of the royals’ Washington visit, see Secret Diary, 2:642–51.

“It was a gay and happy”: ER, My Day, 8 June 1939.

“According to press stories”: Anna to Missy LeHand, 11 June 1939, Glenn Horowitz Collection.

“a few harrowing moments”: TIR, 191; Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:646–47; Tommy wrote Esther Lape that there were no mishaps in Washington, although some tension between the royal staff and the White House staff arose—since “the King’s valet was all prepared to get well saturated with W.H. whiskey, and the Q’s maid requisitioned three quarts of gin in two days.” Tommy to Lape, 13 June 1939, Arizona Collection.

“Well, one day is over”: ER to Hick, 8 June 1939.

“The Queen seems to be”: ER, press conference, 9 June 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 122–25; My Day, 9 June 1939; Arlington, My Day, 13 June 1939.

“crown and scepter”: My Day, 9 June 1939; TIR, 195.

“There are a lot of them”: ER, press conference, 9 June 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences.

“I was not the only one”: My Day, 12 June 1939; New York Times, 13 June 1939; TIR, 193.

“Dearest, This day”: ER to Hick, 8, 9 June 1939.

“You know, Anna”: Jane Ickes to Anna, 14–15 June 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 32; Ickes on dinner and Garner, Secret Diary, 2:642–51.

“My husband always loved”: My Day, New York Times, 13 June 1939, TIR.

“heard that the White House butlers”: TIR, 196; My Day, 14 June 1939; New York Times, 13 June 1939.

Meanwhile the king and queen: Swift, Roosevelts and Royals, 130–31; “British Genealogist Finds Queen Is Kin to Washington and Lee,” New York Times, 15 June 1939.

Nicholas Murray Butler: Time, 19 June 1939.

“We sat in the library”: TIR, 195–96.

“I must tell you first”: Tommy to Lape.

“Mama tried in the best”: TIR, 196.

“fell down the two steps”: Ibid., 196–97.

“their Majesties remained”: My Day, 14 June 1939.

“Why don’t my ministers”: TIR, 197.

“I think the service”: FDR to Henry St. George Tucker, 16 June 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:897.

“cannot run the risk”: TIR, 197; My Day, 13–14 June 1939.

After a quiet dinner: Missy LeHand, Laura Delano, and Tracy Dows, FDR’s aunt, were also at SDR’s farewell dinner for twenty-one; New York Times, 12 June 1939; My Day, 12 June 1939; New York Times, 14 June 1939.

“a very heavy thunderstorm”: My Day, 13 June 1939.

As they departed: Time, 19 June 1939; TIR, 198; My Day, 12 June 1939; New York Times, 12 and 14 June.

“Such fun yesterday”: Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 14 June 1939, 1:403–5; 23 June 1939, 1:405.

“the changed conditions”: My Day, 13 June 1939.

“this country will have”: Ibid.

“FDR was satisfied”: ER to Hick, 12 June 1939.

“your father particularly”: Norman Littell to Anna, 21 June 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 36.

“are very delightful”: FDR to Nicholas Roosevelt, 15 June 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:893. The quoted phrase is a reference to Elizabeth Dilling’s 1934 screed The Red Network, filled with vitriol against liberals.

The Liesel, with: Joseph Levy, “906 Seized in Palestine,” New York Times, 2 June 1939.

“to the President and Congress”: 1 June, 2 June 1939, New York Times. Daily through June details of ships afloat were published in newspapers across the United States.

“appeal to President Roosevelt”: New York Times, 7 June 1939.

The State Department rejected: New York Times, l and 2 June 1939.

“could see the shimmering towers”: “The Saddest Ship Afloat Today,” New York Times, 8 June 1939.

inaction and cruelty: See especially “Man’s Inhumanity” (editorial), New York Times, 9 June 1939; “Victims of a Plague,” Baltimore Sun, 3 June 1939, “There is something hideously wrong with a world in which there is no longer any sanctuary for the oppressed.”

referred to that event: Earl Miller to Joseph Lash, 1968, Lash Papers and Earl Miller in Miriam Abelow Papers, FDRL; daily New York Times coverage of the SS St. Louis continued from 6–21 June.

“to leave or go”: New York Times, 11 June 1939. On the St. Louis, see Morse, While Six Million Died, 219–34; Morse, “Voyage to Doom,” Look, 28 November 1967; and Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, Voyage of the Damned. On the fiftieth (1989) and seventieth (2009) anniversaries of the voyage, ceremonies were held at Eden Roc, Miami; see survivors’ interviews at www.stlouislegacyproject.org, notably that of Herbert Karliner.

“the inviolability of the right”: On 20 June the French steamer Flandre was allowed to land in France with 97 refugees, including 20 children. They had been “barred by Cuba and Mexico” and had been afloat since 16 May. On arrival they “danced down the gang plank, weeping for joy. . . . The majority of the men were shopkeepers, lawyers, doctors and engineers in their old homes,” New York Times, 21 June 1939.

China announced plans: China’s community was to be built with support from Jacob Berglas and the Chinese central government in Chungking. New York Times, 21 June 1939.

“all parts of the world”: Morse, While Six Million Died, 262–300.

Chapter Four: “We Must Think of the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number”

“by Jane H. Todd, Republican”: My Day, 14 June 1939.

fifty-fifty rules: Dorothy McAllister, “Fifty-Fifty—The First Step for ’40,” Democratic Digest, February 1939, 22.

“basic right of”: My Day, 16 June 1939.

“as soon as you discriminate”: ER at Town Hall forum, New York Times, 3 February 1936, ban “fascistic,” New York Times, 20 June 1939; 25 July 1939; My Day, 14 June 1939; Helen Rogers Reid, New York Times, 3 June 1939.

“the children are grown”: ER at Town Hall forum, New York Times, 3 February 1936.

Florence Birmingham, president: New York Times, 4 June 1939. For ER’s refusal and court decision on 18 and 20 July 1939, see Democratic Digest, August 1939; New York Times, 12 August 1939; on Felker, New York Times, 22 July 1939.

“if not for your own sakes”: Reid, New York Times, 3 June 1939.

“attend to your own knitting”: New York Times, 22 July 1939; supportive editorial is in New York Times, 24 July 1939; ER to Junior League, 28 November 1939.

unavailable for fun: ER to Hick, 9 March 1939.

splendid color films: Earl’s film, Tommy to Anna, 8 May 1939.

“the Cook and the Dickerman”: Tommy to Lape and Read, 1939, Arizona Collection.

to be “very ill”: Tommy to Anna, 8 May 1939.

essay on religious freedom: Draft, for Liberty, March 1939, in Hickok, box 6.

was “playing politics”: Marcantonio, I Vote My Conscience, 16 June, 20 July, 3 August 1939, 108–9.

Federal Theatre Project: Jane DeHart Mathews, Federal Theatre, 122–25.

“handed me a newspaper”: Flanagan, Arena, 202–5.

“Somehow we must build”: ER’s broadcast is quoted in Flanagan, Arena, 206.

“I must say that talking”: My Day, 24 June 1939.

vigorously defended the theater: Caroline O’Day in Congressional Record; Shaw and O’Neill in Flanagan, Arena, 192–93.

lewd and “salacious”: Flanagan, Arena, 355–60; and Mathews, Federal Theatre, 290–94.

“having conquered selfishness”: Flanagan, Arena, 364–65; and Mathews, Federal Theatre, 236–95; see esp. T. H. Watkins, The Hungry Years, 510–11.

A pacifist but never an isolationist: There is no biography of Caroline O’Day, and her papers have been lost. See Jonas, Isolationism in America, 189–93 and passim; and Marion Dickerman on Caroline Love Goodwin O’Day, in Notable American Women, 648–50.

“The more we see”: ER went on to say that economic waste and distress anywhere affect people everywhere. In military carnage, “the effects are just the same whether you win or whether you lose. . . . As the rest of the world suffers, so eventually do we.” ER, “Because the War Idea Is Obsolete,” reprinted in Black, Courage, 85.

“We must find a way whereby”: ER, “Three Americans Plead for Peace,” Democratic Digest, May 1937, 17.

“I think it may interest you”: FDR to Caroline O’Day, 1 July 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:900–1.

she rejected the proposed Ludlow Amendment: ER, “Three Americans Plead for Peace,” Democratic Digest, May 1937, and Time, 17 April 1939.

“Protect our Mrs. Catt”: Elizabeth N. Baker to ER, 1 February 1939; ER to Baker, 6 February 1939, ER Papers; “Because the War Idea Is Obsolete,” in Catt’s Why Wars Must Cease, 20ff, quote on 28.

Her talk at the convention: ER was accompanied by Tommy and Elinor Morgenthau. White noted that they had “reserve seats on the platform” since the mosque, which seated 5,200 people, was sold out. Walter White to ER, 13 June 1939; ER to White, 19 June 1939; White to ER, 20 June 1939, ER Papers.

a powerful speech: ER’s presentation of Spingarn Medal, Crisis, April, June, July, September, for ER-related notations.

“The courage to meet many difficulties”: Crisis, September 1939, 265, 285; “First Lady Honors Marian Anderson,” New York Times, 3 July 1939.

“Speaking in the very stronghold”: Editorial of the Month, Mrs. Roosevelt’s speech, reprinted from Chicago Defender in Crisis, August 1939, 243; lunch with Virginia’s governor James Prince, My Day, 3 July 1939.

“Nothing finer could come out”: ER to AYC, remarks and broadcast, 21 February 1939, in Hickok, box 6; “Anti-Red Resolution,” New York Times, 4 July 1939. See also Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 51; “First Lady Accused,” New York Times, 6 July 1939.

to “guard against”: ER to WILPF on freedom of the press, New York Times, 17 January 1939. At the sixtieth anniversary luncheon of the Ethical Culture Schools on 21 January, she addressed more than a thousand educators and parents with a similar speech. ER to Ethical Culture, New York Times, 22 January 1939.

“the root problem”: In this “nation afflicted at the moment with astigmatic near-sightedness,” wrote Fannie Hurst to ER, “your remarks last night were splendid, and the phrase ‘We have bought time to think’ is perfect—I hope you use it wherever possible.” Fannie Hurst to ER, 22 February 1939. ER replied to Hurst on 25 February, “How much I appreciate all you say,” Hurst Papers.

“Democracy must have”: ER to Democratic Women, and Fannie Hurst, New York Times, 16 June 1939.

“damned kike coward”: Hick to ER, 8 and 9 February 1939; 17 February 1939, Hickok, box 6.

“If anything is evident today”: “Mrs. R Asks for Interfaith Amity,” New York Times, 3 July 1939.

“educational opportunities is”: My Day, 1 July 1939. ER’s Independence Day theme was “unity of spirit and a determination to find a way to share our wealth.” My Day, 3–5 July 1939.

“impromptu press conference”: New York Times, 5 July 1939; My Day, 6 July 1939.

“I left in my own car”: My Day, 7 July 1939; FDR boarded his special train, New York Times, 5 July 1939.

“Pat, old dear”: FDR to Pat Harrison, 6 July 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:902.

“ought to understand clearly”: My Day, 8 July 1939.

“These gentlemen must”: My Day, 13 July 1939.

anti-Jewish laws . . . Gypsies: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Fifty Years After the Eve of Destruction, 9.

“The amount they say will feed”: My Day, 18 July 1939.

“indiscriminate bombing”: FDR to Cordell Hull, 7 July 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:903–4. On Ambassador Johnson, see Heinrichs, Threshold of War, 288, Oumansley in Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:670–71.

predicting a long, intense war: Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:669–70, 675–77, 685.

“because of its neutrality laws”: See Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms, 1013.

“he sounded very cheerful”: My Day, 18 July 1939.

“to open this meeting with a prayer”: Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 457–58. David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 425. On Borah, see Carol Felsenthal, Alice Longworth, chapters 8 and 9.

“perhaps, hangs the fate”: My Day, 21 July 1939.

continued to fight: Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 453. A Democratic Digest editorial for “executive powers” regarding international relations, dated February 1939, 26, read: “In this vast external realm . . . the President [has] a degree of discretion and freedom from statutory restriction which would not be admissible were domestic affairs alone involved.” Unattributed, it is possible that ER, as founder and contributing editor, was involved in the drafting of this editorial.

“I finished the mail”: My Day, 24 July 1939.

“His fund of tales”: Ibid.

“the most liberal administration”: Norman Littell to Anna, 21 July 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 36. For a discussion of the role played by Corcoran and Cohen, see Lash, Dealers and Dreamers, 366–69, 390–92; and Littell, My Roosevelt Years.

“all bets will be off”: FDR recounted his meeting with Farley to Ickes in detail; see Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:691–92. See also Anna to Katherine and Norman Littell, 8 August 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 36.

“was very useful in making”: ER to Anna, 17 July 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 57; My Day, 25 July 1939; My Day, 28 July 1939; Roosevelt Deed Library Site, New York Times, 25 July 1939; Anna to Katherine and Norman Littell, 8 August 1939.

“played so beautifully”: My Day, 27 July 1939.

“I suppose I had better”: My Day, 29 July 1939.

“Your car was stopped”: My Day, 31 July 1939.

“It is wearisome to read”: My Day, 1 August 1939. She had read Graham Hutton’s Atlantic Monthly article, “The Next War,” which illustrated how “we are duplicating our behavior of before the 1914 cataclysm.”

“No other contribution”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:689–90. See also William Preston, “Shadow of War and Fear,” in Reitman, Pulse of Freedom, 105–53; Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 95 and passim; and Theoharis, Spying on Americans, 197–98, 201–6. Martin Dies was already compiling lists of alleged subversives and federally employed “political undesirables” to be investigated under the Hatch Act, which in 1940 morphed into the Smith Act. Subsequently the federal loyalty program was dominated by Joseph McCarthy and the McCarran Act.

“I am sore and bruised of spirit”: See also Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:668, 680–84, 693–94.

to “Dearest Franklin”: ER to FDR, 5 August 1939, box 177. At the end, the typed word “Affectionately” was crossed out and signed in pen, “Much Love, ER.”

“I wish the Congressmen”: My Day, 8 August 1939.

“their sporting disposition”: My Day, 9 August 1939.

“let his wife join in”: “Off the Floor,” Time, 21 August 1939; FDR to James Roosevelt, 11 August 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:912.

“a silent, empty place”: My Day, 14 August 1939.

She tried to work on her new book: ER to Anna, 17 July 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 57.

“I can’t say that”: My Day, 14 August 1939.

“war would leave no victors”: My Day, 12 and 14 August 1939.

“I lay the other night”: My Day, 15 August 1939.

“plain, insecure, lonely little girl”: For Corinne, ER, and Marie Souvestre, see Merry, Taking on the World, 65–66.

“Auntie Bye had a tongue”: Alsop, I’ve Seen the Best of It, 30.

“light, cheerful sort of piece”: Ibid., 10–12.

“Joe Alsop was here”: ER to FDR, 14 August 1939, box 16. In that letter ER also noted that she had a “nice picnic” for newspaper people, mostly editors: she and Heywood Broun were “the only columnists.” The two events were unrelated.

“glowing” family profile: Joseph Alsop, “The President’s Family Album,” Life.

“When I was connected with”: My Day, 17 August 1939.

“I do not understand Nancy”: ER to Mary Dreier, 29 August 1939, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

a “little cottage”: My Day, 18 August 1939.

Cornelius “Neil” Vanderbilt: Vanderbilt, Man of the World, 204–6, 210–13. Raconteur, reporter, and FDR’s occasional spy, Neil Vanderbilt wrote much-admired and equally dismissed adventures in many worlds that evoked the eponymous hero of Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd novels.

“The mother of my President”: Carmel Offie to LeHand, 9 August 1939, Grace Tully Collection. Offie sent a running river of gossip and news from the Paris embassy to Missy LeHand, Mary Eben, and other White House administrators.

“Oh, comme le président”: Neil Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt: Man of the World, 204–6, 210–13.

Chapter Five: “If They Perish, We Perish Sooner or Later”

Nazi-Soviet Pact: Churchill, Gathering Storm, 374–81, 389–95; Manchester, Last Lion, 2:470–90.

“All talk of appeasement”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 21 August 1939, 1:411.

“friendship cemented with blood”: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 472–75.

defenses along the Maginot Line: Manchester, Last Lion, 2:492–96.

“grim and preoccupied”: “Americans Abroad Urged to Return,” New York Times, 25 August 1939.

“probably means a partition”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:703.

“dispatched three appeals”: “President Appeals to Poles and Reich,” New York Times, 25 August 1939.

“to go into Siberia”: For the international situation leading to this, see esp. Williams, American-Russian Relations, 247–54; Neumann, America Encounters Japan, 244–55; and Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:700–7.

“in order not unnecessarily”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:700.

“who stays on in Paris”: SDR and Aunt Dora, My Day, 24 August 1939.

“one man may decide”: My Day, 25 August 1939.

“the newspapers these days”: My Day, 24 August 1939.

an “excellent lunch”: My Day, 22 August 1939.

“I sank into bed last night”: My Day, 25 August 1939.

“I talked to the President”: My Day, 26 August 1939.

“Both the Pope and the President”: My Day, 26 August 1939.

“What ghastly hours”: Sackville-West to Nicolson, 24 August 1939, in Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1:413.

“I feel that every day”: My Day, 30 August 1939.

“lies and invented incidents”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 177–93.

“riding around on”: Ibid., 183, 185.

her lifelong friend: Alice Kidd, later Huntington, was “a great influence” on ER in the early years. See Cook, ER, 1:95.

“boys and girls, Jews, Catholics”: My Day, 30 August 1939.

“moccasins made me think”: My Day, 31 August 1939.

“Germany had invaded Poland”: My Day, 2 September 1939.

“sense of impending disaster”: TIR, 207.

“when hate was rampant”: Carola von Schaeffer-Bernstein to ER, 19 August 1939. On Carola de Passavant at Allenswood, see Cook, ER, 1:108; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 75–76, 561, 567, 574–75, 583–84.

“As I listened to Hitler’s speech”: My Day, 2 September 1939.

“I could not help remembering”: Ibid.

“From London, Birmingham”: “British Children Taken from Cities,” New York Times, 1 September 1939, 1.

“Even the highest Nazis”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters.

“War will be declared”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:712–13.

“through your radios ”: FDR, “Reaction to War in Europe: Preparing for Cash-and-Carry,” 3 September 1939, in Buhite and Levy, Fireside Chats,148–51.

“a bad proclamation”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 4 September 1939, 2:30.

“It is curious when”: My Day, 5 September 1939.

“met the steamer”: My Day 2 September 1939.

“always enjoys” this: My Day, 5 September 1939.

“We were discussing the 1914”: My Day, 7 September 1939.

“I cannot say”: ER to Carola von Schaeffer-Bernstein, 6 September 1939.

“always remain a nation within a nation”: “On Jews” (ER’s unpublished essay), 25 November 1938.

“This will be a happy day”: My Day, 9 September 1939.

“We awoke,” ER wrote: My Day, 6 September 1939.

Morgenthaus’ voyage: New York Times, 9 September 1939.

“the most beautiful drive”: My Day, 9 September 1939.

“We cooked our lunch”: Ibid.

“sight of domestic problems”: My Day, 11 September 1939.

“in time to greet”: My Day, 9 September 1939.

“all the little tag ends”: My Day, 12 September 1939.

Chapter Six: “We Have to Fight with Our Minds”

“in the present crisis”: Democratic Digest, October 1939, 25, 33.

“a good shield”: My Day, 13 September 1939.

“We must not forget”: Ibid.

of “racial extermination”: Gilbert, Second World War, 6–10; Gilbert, History of Twentieth Century, 2:271.

“Every soldier feels disgusted”: Weitz, Hitler’s Banker, 254.

“of the infantile paralysis”: My Day, 15 September 1939. There is no evidence ER knew anything about Tuskegee’s racist and deadly syphilis experiment, which continued from 1932 to 1972.

“gout hospital for colored veterans”: My Day, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 18 September 1939.

“a very pleasant beginning”: Ibid.

“Soviet Russia stabs Poland”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 199–212; New York Times.

“the attack on Poland by Russia”: ER to Maude Gray, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 584.

“I think this [Nazi-Soviet] pact”: Anna Louise Strong to ER, 24 August 1939.

“A curious way”: My Day, 18 September 1939.

“I know that you”: ER to Strong, 27 September, ER Papers.

“piece of anti-aircraft shell”: Offie to LeHand, 9 September 1939.

From Paris, Carmel: Cudahy to LeHand, 11 September 1939, Glenn Horowitz Collection.

“The war continues”: ER to Mary Dreier, 18 September 1939.

through “beautiful country”: My Day, 19 September 1939.

“any effective help”: Werth, Russia at War, 56–59.

“Human life has been”: Anne O’Hare McCormick, New York Times, 16 and 18 September 1939.

“in this war the seeds”: My Day, 19 September 1939.

“to maintain a fighting front”: “Week in Review,” New York Times, 10 September 1939.

his “appalling depression”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 16–20 September 1939, 2:33–36.

“America’s splendid isolationism”: My Day, 19 September 1939.

“hysterical with joy”: Gilbert, Second World War, 11.

as Operation T4: Ibid.

“any war anywhere”: FDR, “Message to Congress Urging the Extraordinary Session to Repeal the Embargo Provision of the Neutrality Law,” 21 September 1939, in Zevin, Nothing to Fear, 183-92; Essential FDR, 173–80.

“Your message was grand”: ER to FDR, 21 September 1939; My Day, 22 September 1939.

“I have never been a pacifist”: New York Times, 28 September 1939; ER, press conference, 27 September 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 126–29.

Warsaw fell to the Nazis: Gilbert, Second World War, 12–16.

“If you feel sad, think of me”: Cudahy to LeHand, 10 October 1939, Glenn Horowitz Collection.

“300,000 tons of”: Gilbert, Second World War, 16. The German Soviet Accord was signed on 29 September 1939. See also Werth, Russia at War, 59–62.

“even sadder” than: Anne O’Hare McCormick, New York Times, 25 September and 30 September 1939.

“go down fighting”: Joseph Kennedy to FDR, 30 September 1939; Kennedy to Cordell Hull, 2 October 1939.

his friend Nancy Astor: Joseph Kennedy to Rose Kennedy, 2 October 1939, in Amanda Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 391. See also Kennedy Diary, 5 October 1939, ibid., 382–393.

“I agree with you in theory”: ER to Mrs. Barmore, 3 October 1939, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 584.

“We passed first”: My Day, 20 September 1939.

“two very kind”: My Day, 23 September 1939.

learn “various handicrafts”: My Day, 26 September 1939.

“The pool is one”: Ibid.

“voice on its natural pitch”: My Day, 29 September 1939.

“the most encouraging thing”: My Day, 2 October 1939.

“People ask me”: ER to Anna, 23 September 1939, Asbell, 112.

“It certainly is fun”: My Day, 4 October 1939.

“1. What are the goals of our schools?”: My Day, 4 October 1939.

Her son James: James Roosevelt filed for divorce from Betsey on 16 February 1940. On 7 October 1939, Betsey’s father, Dr. Harvey Cushing, died suddenly. See esp. Michael Bliss, Harvey Cusing: A Life in Surgery, and David Gratton, The Sisters: The Lives and Times of the Fabulous Cushing Sisters [Babe Mortimer Paley, Betsey R. Whitney, Minnie Astor Fosburgh].

“It seems to me that the unexpected”: My Day, 10 October 1939.

“in a great music center”: My Day, 10 October 1939.

“May you be spared”: Bernard Baruch to ER, 11 October 1939.

“very jittery about”: ER to Anna, 20 October 1939, in Asbell, 113; My Day, 13 October 1939.

“Committee has been running”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:33.

“under the pretense”: Ibid.

“an actual menace”: Ibid., 3:35.

relief to Chinese and Spanish: My Day, 12 October 1939.

“E.R. Many Happy Returns”: FDR to ER, 11 October 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:937.

“In the course of the last four months”: Einstein to FDR. See Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns; Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America.

Poland’s “General-Government”: Gilbert, Second World War, 18–24.

“Extraordinary Pacification Program”: Hans Frank in Manchester, Last Lion, 2:591.

“so poor the Poles”: Astor Drayton Phillips Diary.

The “methods employed”: Ibid.

“captured in Hamburg”: Ibid.

Many Jews: Gilbert, Second World War, 22–24.

“I go, not without fear”: Caroline D. Phillips Diary, October–November 1939, esp. 17, 24–26, with gratitude to Kathleen Dalton.

“Dreadful reprisals by the Germans”: Ibid. Over 100,000 Polish soldiers and pilots escaped to Romania, and then to England—where they subsequently fought alongside British and Allied troops in Free Polish battalions; and a significant number of Polish destroyers and submarines “reached the Orkneys and joined the Royal Navy.” Manchester, Last Lion, 2:591.

“peasants working in the fields”: Caroline D. Phillips Diary, 17, 24–26, great gratitude to Kathleen Dalton.

his “original” observation: FDR to Hull, 2 October 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:930–31.

“the whole refugee problem”: Feingold, Politics of Rescue, 83.

“before the European war was over”: FDR to Sumner Welles, 4 December 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:963.

“to speak of small settlements”: FDR, statement on political refugees, 17 October 1939.

“lift a lamp”: Ibid.

“within a very few days”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:720.

“espionage and subversive propaganda”: Democratic Digest, October 1939, 19. Three other executive orders followed the outbreak of war. FDR increased troop strength among enlisted personnel—army, navy, Marine Corps, and National Guard; he created a three-hundred-mile offshore patrol perimeter and recommissioned 110 destroyers for “sea-going intelligence service”; and he created a State Department fund to help Americans “endangered in foreign countries” return to the United States.

knew “as individuals”: ER insisted that Bill Hinckley, Abbott Simon, and especially Joseph Cadden were not Communists.

was nothing “reprehensible”: ER, press conference, 10 October 1939, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 130–39.

“purge the Federal payroll”: “No Red Purge Order Yet,” New York Times, 28 September 1939.

“no evidence of un-American activities”: Democratic Digest, October 1939, New York Times, 14 September 1939.

Chapter Seven: Red Scare, Refugees, and Racism

“first allegiance”: On Browder, see ER to Clarence Gurewitz, 30 November 1939. For ER’s criticism of Browder, with Robert Minor’s lament that she was being “victimized by sinister reactionaries” who sought to drag the United States into war, see “Young Reds Defy . . . ,” New York Times, 25 November 1939.

“impossible to remain neutral”: ER to Jerome Davis, 27 September 1939, cf. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 594; ER to Irene Nelson, 12 September 1939.

“I told them that since”: TIR, 200.

“These attacks never hurt me”: Baruch, My Own Story, 1:48–52.

its most generous supporter: Clarence Pickett to Tommy, 12 January 1939, regarding contributions ER collected from Josephine Morgenthau ($150) and Mrs. George Backer [Dorothy Schiff] ($1,000) for the AYC, and ER’s check for $500. Tommy to Pickett, 24 June 1939, with ER’s check for $812, “earned on the last broadcast with Kate Smith.” ER to Pickett, 25 June 1939: “Mr. Baruch is ill . . . and I am wondering how my account stands? I think Mr. B would be much happier to give me for next year whatever we needed for the Arthurdale school.” ER to Pickett, 5 July 1939: “Will you please send $3000 at once to the AYC. . . . I do not want the balance . . . they need sent until I get a check from Mr. B for the school.” Pickett to ER, 8 September 1939: “We have just received $5,096.19 from Mr. Baruch. Do you still wish us to send the balance to the AYC?” ER to Pickett, 11 September 1939: “Yes.” 25 September 1939, Pickett to ER: “The additional $3500 was sent to Cadden, for the AYC.”

published their names, positions: “High Government Employees Linked to Reds,” New York Times, October 26, 1939.

“we fall far short”: “Liberty Plea Made by Mrs. Roosevelt,” New York Times, 25 October 1939.

“Pa agrees wholeheartedly”: ER to Anna, 20 and 29 October 1939, in Absell, 113.

“a little chapel”: My Day, 3 November 1939.

“A Typical Day”: ER “was every inch a queen herself,” and “completely captivated her audience.” Lasso, Texas State College for Women at Denton’s college paper, 3 November 1939. I am grateful to the faculty and administration for photos and information about ER’s visit and their splendid hospitality during my visit in 1999.

“congenial home”: My Day, 11 November 1939.

“Delighted all went well”: ER to FDR, 28 October 1939.

“would suck the war”: See esp. Hank Meijer, “Arthur Vandenberg and the Fight for Neutrality, 1939,” Michigan Historical Review (Fall 1990).

“war refugees in different”: My Day, 8 November 1939.

“It is of these Poles”: Ann Cardwell, aka (Mrs. Paul) Margaret L. Super, to ER, 26 October 1939.

“I was very glad to see”: My Day, 14 November 1939.

“would be glad to receive”: FDR to Hull, 19 October 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:941–42.

“In view of the fact”: FDR to Hull, 11 November 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:952.

“Mrs. Roosevelt and I would gladly”: FDR to King Leopold and FDR to Queen Wilhelmina, drafts, 11 November 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:953.

“We were very glad”: Offie to LeHand, 15 November 1939, 9 December 1939, Glenn Horowitz Collection. William Shirer was told that Hitler planned for a five-year war, and was ready to release “a mass air attack on England,” or drive through Holland and Belgium, or through Switzerland. No small country was safe. Berlin Diary, 248.

“we will ever return”: My Day, 15 November 1939.

“the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 250.

“unchecked Nazism”: Morse, While Six Million Died, 242.

“Margaret has been [wonderful]”: Offie to LeHand, 9 December 1939.

“on the outside”: My Day, 16 and 17 October 1939.

“poise and patience”: William Mulvey, Jr., to ER, 15 November 1938.

“I think we are in grave danger”: ER to Mulvey, 26 November 1938.

“the brawls of busy little men”: Mulvey to ER, 19 September 1939.

“Most of the educated ones”: ER to Mulvey, 26 September 1939.

“to make the labor unions”: ER to Admiral Land, 27 August 1939.

“It is our conviction that”: Walter White to ER, 21 September 1939; ER to White, 26 September 1939.

their private grievances: For FDR and ER’s cuisine battles, see Henrietta Nesbitt, White House Diary, chapter II.

The cornerstone was laid: “Placed in Cornerstone,” New York Times, 20 November 1939.

the “very simple”: My Day, 21 November 1939.

“We had a funny time”: Tommy to Anna, ca. 22 November 1939, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers.

“I am thankful”: My Day, 23 November 1939.

“where the patients needing”: My Day, 25 November 1939. Racial divides did not disappear quickly in Warm Springs. When Clare Coss and I visited in 1996, we interviewed a retired teacher who had worked for decades in the school FDR built. She disparaged ER, “who cared so much more about Tuskegee and was always running off there when she was scheduled to be here. And then she built the Eleanor Roosevelt School for black children. . . . And it was built in brick too.”

“to introduce practical steps”: My Day, 25 November 1939. See also My Day, 23, 24, and 27 November 1939. On Rachel Davis DuBois, see David Levering Lewis, Du Bois 1919–1963, 189–90, 270–72; and Rachel Davis DuBois, All This and Something More: Pioneering in Intercultural Education; New York Times, “Educator Who Promoted Diversity,” 2 April 1993.

“the refugee problem from”: My Day, 30 November 1939.

“disgrace to their calling”: All quotes from the Churchman dinner are from New York Times.

“courage to keep on trying”: My Day, 1 December 1939.

“Franklin and I got particular”: TIR, 203.

“denounced the committee’s methods”: FDR, Elliott Roosevelt, “Lauds Two Years of Dies,” New York Times, 25 October 1939.

Starnes announced a lunch break: Charles Hurd, “ER Visits Dies Committee,” New York Times, 1 December 1939; Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 8–10.

He “chuckled, roared”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 11.

“One girl, Dolores”: On the Soviet invasion of Finland, see Gilbert, Second World War, 31; Werth, Russia at War; and Gellhorn’s Collier’s articles and correspondence with ER.

“a terrible thing”: My Day, 2 December 1939.

“down to earth”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 12.

“Don’t let her down”: Ibid., 15.

“piled high with mail”: Ibid., 10–12.

“All of us on the left”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 12–14.

“with a divided soul”: Ibid.

“Well, they can’t predict”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 285.

“I took a pencil”: TIR, 202; My Day, 2 December 1939.

the “profit system”: New York Times, 2 December 1939.

“your great kindness”: Lash to ER, 6 December 1939.

“I appreciate your note”: ER to Lash, 11 December 1939.

“free speech for Reds”: New York Times, 4 December 1939.

Loyalty oaths for: New York Times, 26 October 1939.

“Please always be frank”: Baruch to ER, 14 December 1939; ER to Baruch, 2 December 1939, box 1485.

AFSC Humanitarian Award: New York Times, 5 December 1939; “Humanitarian Award Announced,” New York Times, 21 October 1939; 4 December 1939 in Philadelphia, presented by Curtis Bok, for ER’s “devoted and self-sharing efforts in the cause of humanity”; My Day, 6 December 1939.

“says that he does not”: ER to Lape, 2 and 6 December 1939, BWC, Arizona Collection.

“whoopee 1940 roundup”: Margaret Hart, Washington Sun, 10 December 1939; “Is He or Ain’t He? Gridiron Club Asks,” New York Times, 10 December 1939.

“we have developed a little”: My Day, 12 December 1939.

“I hope that every citizen”: My Day, 13 December 1939.

“joined the President today”: “Dies Report Scored by Mrs. R,” New York Times, 14 December 1939. ER had not mentioned Mathews’s report in her Bill of Rights column.

“We have before us”: “Warning Sounded,” New York Times, 14 December 1939.

“the domination of un-Americanism”: New York Times, 11 December 1939; New York Times, 15 December 1939.

the loss of “personal pride”: ER on WPA and Hollywood, My Day, 14, 15, 17, 18 December 1939.

“On the Problems of American Youth”: “Hollywood, ER at Town Hall,” New York Times, 17 December 1939; My Day, 18 December 1939.

“not the only one having troubles”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 19.

“I think my daughter”: My Day, 18 December 1939.

four generations of family: “I think this old house likes the sound of children’s voices. It is certainly an ideal place for children of every age to play in.” Besides eighty-five-year-old SDR, who enjoyed every event, four grandchildren and little Diana Hopkins romped and played: Anna Eleanor (Sistie); Curtis; baby John; and FDR III. Time was set aside for telephone visits with the other cousins, the children of James and Betsey Cushing, Sara and Kate (who were to be with their maternal grandmother, in New Haven); Ruth Chandler and Elliott Jr. at home in Fort Worth, and William Donner Roosevelt, in Philadelphia.

“I needed reassurance”: Hick to ER, l November 1939.

“It’s sweet of you”: ER to Hick, 30 November and 1 December 1939.

“funny not to have”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 285.

“It has done more”: “Lauds Two Years of Dies,” New York Times, 25 October 1939.

her growing disappointment: My Day, 11 December 1939.

“deep respect and genuine”: My Day, 20 December 1939.

“Drink ye all of it”: My Day, 25 December 1939.

“Peace on earth”: “A Vision for Today,” New York Times, 24 December 1939.

“right in the middle”: My Day, 26 December 1939; “Four Generations Gather,” New York Times, 24 December 1939.

“Absolutely impossible for”: “First Lady Declines,” New York Times, 31 December 1939; New York Times, 20 December 1939.

“meet the needs”: “ER’s 1940 Wish, and School Tolerance Program,” New York Times, 31 December 1939.

Chapter Eight: The Politician and the Agitator: New Beginnings

“The New Year is a time”: My Day, 1 January 1940.

“The old year is foul”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 31 December 1939, 2:52.

“to destroy a free”: Caroline D. Phillips Diary, December 1939, courtesy Kathleen Dalton.

“Praise be, and”: Edna Gellhorn to ER, 2, 3, and 21 December 1939; ER to Edna Gellhorn, 12 December 1939, Martha Gellhorn Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

“dropped propaganda leaflets”: Gellhorn to Ernest Hemingway, 30 November 1939, in Caroline Moorehead, Letters of Gellhorn, 77. See also Gellhorn, Face of War, 52ff. The Collier’s article is “Bombs from a Low Sky: Why the Finns Are Getting Angry,” Collier’s, January 27, 1940, 12–13ff.

“War in the arctic”: Gellhorn to Ernest Hemingway, 4 December 1939, in Moorehead, Letters of Gellhorn, 76–80. For Finland, see also Carl Marzani, We Can Be Friends, 136–40, and Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War.

In fact, the Russians: Werth, Russia at War, 66–70; Manchester, Last Lion, 2:598–99.

“to be anti-German”: Caroline D. Phillips Diary, December 1939, courtesy of Kathleen Dalton.

“efforts have saved”: Ibid.

“restore and ennoble”: Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, new advent.org/library. According to John Cornwell, the encyclical was a powerful propaganda effort. It was published in Italy, scattered by the French air force over Germany, and read widely. The Nazis reproduced it, substituting the word Germany for Poland, and air-dropped copies over Poland; see Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 233–34.

“Your Holiness: Because”: FDR to Pope Pius XII, 14 February, 1940, P1000.

“very fine letter”: Caroline D. Phillips Diary, courtesy of Kathleen Dalton.

“freedom of religion”: FDR to Taylor, 22 December 1939, in Taylor, Wartime Correspondence.

letter of gratitude: Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 230.

“to jam them all”: O. G. Villard, “The Latest Anti-Jewish Horror,” Nation, 30 December 1939, reprinted in Anthony Gronowicz, ed., Oswald Garrison Villard: The Dilemma of an Absolute Pacifist in Two World Wars, 572.

“Just in case you missed”: I am grateful to Cornelia Jane Strawser, for her mother’s letter with W. L. White’s 16 December article. Ruby Black to ER, 27 December 1939; Strawser to author, 6 April 2005.

“to spend the night”: FDR to William A. White, 14 December 1939, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:967–68, cf. 1106.

“is indeed in peril”: Ibid.

a “breathtaking affair”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 25.

“Mrs. Roosevelt wondered”: Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s Address Unknown (1938) was banned in Germany but became a film released by Columbia Pictures in 1944. The discussion is recounted in Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 25–26, 29–30.

the German socialist leader: Richard W. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 201.

“At this the president”: The dinner table discussion is recounted in Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 25–26.

“a haven for a few weeks”: Ibid., 22, 29, 33.

“anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic”: Ibid., 32.

Nacht und Nebel: Gilbert, Second World War, 32.

“a holy struggle”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 275–77, 9 and 18 January 1940.

“without proper trials”: Gilbert, History of Twentieth Century, 2:292.

“found he had company”: Lash’s account of his stay at Val-Kill is in Friend’s Memoir, 37–38; see TIR, 202.

“plea for funds for Finland”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 47.

Chapter Nine: Radical Youth and Refugees: Winter–Spring 1940

“This is a book”: ER, foreword to Gould, American Youth.

“cots for 150 boys”: ER’s press conference, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 150.

She arranged for a fleet of buses: Ibid.

“believe in the communistic”: New York Times, 6 February 1940.

“a brief wrestling match”: This account is from the New York Times.

“booed for fifteen minutes”: TIR, 205.

“Deep in the dream”: Gould, American Youth, 10.

but “a spanking”: FDR’s speech is recalled and paraphrased in Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 56–58; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 603–4; and Gould, American Youth, 10–13. I am grateful to Vivian Cadden for her many memories regarding these events.

My own friends: For Amy Swerdlow, Victor Teisch, Bella Abzug, Mim Kelber, this was a defining political moment. In conversations with the author.

“hopeful and constructive”: Straight, After Long Silence.

“The young people had begun”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 603–4.

“It was raining mighty hard”: I am grateful to Ronnie Gilbert for the lyrics and publishing context for “Standing in the Rain,” reprinted in Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone and Hard Hitting Songs. It was initially published as sheet music, “Why Do You Stand There in the Rain,” and in the Daily Worker, 18 April 1940. I am also profoundly grateful to Ronald Cohen for related information, especially Pete Seeger’s draft essay, “An Informal Account of the Almanac Singers, December 1940–July 1942”; Songs for Political Action: Folkmusic, Topical Songs and the American Left, 1926–1953 (CD); and the Woody Guthrie Archives, 250 W. Fifty-seventh Street, New York, N.Y. 10107.

“Oh, Franklin Roosevelt”: I am grateful to Victor Teisch for “I Hate War,” and the ditty heard frequently during and after the February conference, in FDR’s “distinctive voice”: “I hate war. Eleanor hates war. . . (pause). I hate Eleanor.”

“I felt as you did”: ER to Anna, 21 February 1940.

“citizenship and voting rights”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 61.

“war is an outrage”: Gould, American Youth, 18. Dorothy Height’s account of ER is in Height, Open Wide the Freedom Gates, 82–91.

“Tactics of anti-Jewish”: Gould, American Youth, 18.

Frances Williams’s concluding: Ibid., 29.

“a semifascist state”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 62–63.

“When I rose to speak”: TIR, 205.

“made it a giant boo”: Gould, American Youth, 34.

“on the sore spot”: Ibid., 25–28.

“I want you neither to clap”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 63.

“Don’t you think”: The questions and answers in this and the following paragraphs are drawn from the accounts in Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 63–68; Gould, American Youth, 27; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 605–7; Straight, After Long Silence, 150; and New York Times, 12 February 40.

“in a way which”: ER to Hick, Lash, Love, Eleanor, 294.

“after all you have done”: Hick to ER, ibid., 295.

“The nation probably”: Dewey Fleming, Baltimore Sun, February 1940.

“I went to all the sessions”: Betty Lindley to Anna, 13 February 1940, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 36.

“Our problem children”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 607.

“Here I am installed”: My Day, 20 February 1940.

“I’m getting a good tan”: ER to Anna, 21 February 1940.

“My husband likes”: My Day, 21 February 1940.

“There is nothing which gives”: My Day, 22 February 1940.

as “well done”: My Day, 23 February 1940.

“in the midst of a world”: Ibid.

“a zest for life”: My Day, 24 February 1940.

“needed special education”: My Day, 28 February 1939.

to “inspect the Atlantic”: FDR to ER, 17 February 1940; FDR to SDR, 27 February 1940, both in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1002–3.

“arrogant and brutal”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 29 February 1940, Von Sittart on Joe Kennedy’s defeatism, 2:6–16 March 1940, on Welles in Berlin, 2:62–63.

“In this he will have”: Ibid., 29 February 1940.

“faithfully followed Moscow’s”: Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, 34–36.

“die for Danzig”: Ehrenberg, Memoirs, 476.

“various ideals and”: My Day, 29 February 1940.

“defeating England”: For poll results, see Boothe, Europe in Spring, 4–5n1.

“It was difficult to breathe”: Ehrenberg, Memoirs, 351–52.

“conception of the good teacher”: My Day, 1 March 1940.

“Dr. Lachmann, who”: Henry MacCracken to ER, 28 August 1939.

“the academic board”: Dean W. K. Jordan to Mr. Warner, U.S. Consulate, Berlin, 16 August 1939.

“published works and”: Erika Weigand’s parents, Frances Rhoades Weigand and Dr. Hermann Weigand, to chair of Yale German department.

“Vera Lachmann is”: Frances Rhoades Weigand to Henry MacCracken, 25 August 1939.

“I believe Dr. Lachmann”: Hermann Weigand to MacCracken, 25 August 1939.

“to do all they can”: ER to MacCracken 31 August 1939.

“Dear Sumner: Thank you”: ER to Sumner Welles, 11 September 1939.

“I feel sick”: ER to Anna, 11 September 1939, 111.

a legendary American classicist: Vera Regina Lachmann’s vita, b. 23 June 1904, d. 1985. I am grateful to Renate Bridenthal, Eva Kollish, and especially Naomi Replansky for their memories and assistance researching Lachmann.

“Another heavenly day”: My Day, 1 March 1940.

Royal Palm Club: My Day, 2 March 1940.

“the day has come”: My Day, 4 March 1940.

“will be starving”: Ibid.

“so you can see for yourself”: Tommy to Lape, 2 March 1940, Arizona Collection.

“I would not have had”: Ibid.

“Our father, who hast set”: My Day, 6 March 1940.

Chapter Ten: “When You Go to War, You Cease to Solve the Problems of Peace”: March–June 1940

“small frontier rectification”: Werth, Russia at War, 75–79.

“from the dust”: My Day, 11 March 1940.

“a musical awakening”: My Day, 12 March 1940.

“but in misfortune”: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 477.

“no other President’s wife”: New York Times, 8 March 1940.

“not only gladden”: New York Times, 2 March 1940.

Foster Parents Plan: Other supporters included Herbert Hoover, Helen Hayes, the Duchess of Atholl, Sara Delano Roosevelt, Helen Keller, and Thomas Mann.

“with Catholic, Protestant”: New York Times, 13 March, 17 March, and 18 April 1940. ER agreed to be an honorary vice-president for this refugee children’s group, with Herbert Lehman, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Albert Einstein, and the Rev. Henry St. George Tucker.

During the hectic: My Day, 14 and 15 March 1940; ER, press conference, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 163.

in “on business”: My Day, 16 March 1940.

“undaunted” by all: Tommy to Lape, 27 February 1940.

“These youngsters work hard”: My Day, 16 March 1940.

“which emphasize the liberty”: ER, “Civil Liberties—The Individual and the Community,” in Baird, Representative American Speeches, 173–82.

“No real teacher can ever”: My Day, 18 March 1940.

“in a damp and fairly dark”: My Day, 19 March 1940.

“small hospital on the lake”: My Day, 16 March 1940.

“For the first time in some years”: My Day, 17 March 1940.

“greeted them under”: My Day, 23 and 27 March 1940.

“a huge vase of daffodils”: My Day, 23 March 1940.

“upset us all considerably”: My Day, 21 March 1940.

“I suppose weeks in bed”: Ibid.

“the coldest” Easter: My Day, 26 March 1940.

“Why, I do nothing”: My Day, 29 March 1940.

“These homeless people”: Ibid.

senior State Department officials: FDR to Cordell Hull, 7 March 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1004–5; Morse, While Six Million Died, 261.

In Seattle, Anna: My Day, 30 March, l April 1940.

“with the press stalking”: Tommy to Lape, n.d., ca. March 1940, BWC.

“our friend, Hick”: Ibid.

“ragged starving people”: Douglas, Full Life, 148, see also 142–44. See also John Steinbeck to ER, 20 June 1939; ER to Steinbeck, 30 June 1939.

“DEAR YOU MUST”: Hick to ER, 13 May 1939, with two pages of quotes.

“Squatters pay no rent”: My Day, 4 April 1940.

“an electric light”: Ibid.

had not exaggerated: Douglas, Full Life, 154–55; “Mecca of Reports . . . Says Steinbeck Told the Truth,” New York Times, 3 April 1940; My Day, 4, 5, and 6 April 1940.

“the county authorities”: My Day, 5 April 1940.

“standards for decent”: Ibid.

“must be proud”: Ibid.

“I know the president”: ER to Douglas, in Scobie, Center Stage, 113.

“filled with apprehension”: Douglas, Full Life, 155–56.

in San Francisco: My Day, 8 and 9 April 1940.

“Miss Chaney, just who”: Mayris Chaney memoir (unpublished ms.), 1–10, 49–50. I am grateful to Anna Eleanor Martin, Mayris Chaney’s daughter, for access to Tiny’s memoir. See also Tommy to Lape on Chaney, 6 April 1940.

“good audiences and”: Tommy to Lape, 6 April 1940.

“The waterfalls are”: Sargent, Yosemite’s Famous, 34.

“after leading the boycott”: Chaney memoir (unpublished ms.), 45–50, with San Francisco Chronicle clip, and New York Times, 7 April 1940.

Grim news arrived: Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 539–42. Norwegian minister of war Vidkun Quisling, whose surname is forever after a word for traitor, had worked with Berlin to plan the Nazi occupation of Norway.

of “emerald green”: My Day, 11 April 1940.

“It is all horrible”: ER to FDR, 11 April 1940.

“think of anything”: My Day, 12 April 1940.

“must keep out of war”: New York Times 15 April 1940.

“group from the crippled”: My Day, 15 April 1940.

“She is very much”: My Day, 13 April 1940.

Dr. Will Alexander: ER to Alexander, 10 April 1940; Alexander to ER, 16 April 1940; ER to Alexander, 12 March 1940; Egerton, Speak Now, 47–50. ER had a significant correspondence regarding the future of the SCHW. They worked closely together with the Julius Rosenwald Fund.

“an equal opportunity”: Reed, Simple Decency, 21–27; Baltimore African-American, 13 April 1940; New York Times, 16 April 1940.

“Communist aggression”: Egerton, Speak Now, 133, 297–98.

“rise in net profits”: My Day, 17 April 1940.

a message from Judge Charlton: ER to Robert Jackson, l May 1940; Jackson to ER, 24 October 1940.

She sent a sizable check: During the election campaign, in October and November, the conservative Constitutional League would use ER’s 23 April check to Highlander, for $100 (about $1,000 today), to discredit FDR throughout the South. See Joseph Kemp, The Fifth Column in the South (pamphlet), in Nashville Tennessean, leading Democratic newspaper, 1 November 1940, and widely reprinted.

exhibited “bad manners”: “Why I Still Believe in the Youth Congress,” Liberty, 20 April 1940, in Black, Courage, 125–29. “We have been the stupid ones,” to argue: “Don’t go near that group, they are controlled by Communists,” she said. “Jobs to Balk Reds, First Lady’s Plea,” New York Times, l April 1940. In an address to over one thousand social workers, broadcast nationally, she said that unless youth had the means to lead “independent, creative lives,” they would be prey to any stray idea. “The best thing we can do to help youth is to give youth the feeling they are needed in every community. . . . We say youth has failed. Perhaps they think we have failed. . . . Perhaps we all need a change.” “First Lady Pleads for Aid to Youth,” New York Times, 21 March 1940. In an address to 150 foreign correspondents and their guests, she said, “The only way to fight communism is to give youth something vital to solve their problems.” “First Lady Denies Youth Group Is Red,” New York Times, 22 March 1940.

“It is nice to be home”: My Day, 18 April 1940.

“The news from Norway”: David Gray to ER, 16 April 1940, David Gray Collection.

“In the very heart”: “Appeal to Eleanor Roosevelt,” New York Times, 10 March 1940.

“our basic liberties”: “Save Our Liberties, First Lady Urges,” New York Times, 24 April 1940.

our “regularly constituted”: My Day, 23 April 1940.

were “sadly needed”: My Day, 19 April 1940.

“with the ladies of the 75th”: My Day, 20 April 1940.

“believes she can tell”: Ibid.

“forgotten to mention”: My Day, 19 April 1940.

“if you have enjoyed”: My Day, 24 April 1940.

“Such a week”: Tommy to Lape, 21 April 1940.

“to see some of the Farm Security”: My Day, 25 and 26 April 1940.

to the Carolinas: My Day, 28 and 29 April 1940. In Asheville ER visited “Rabbit”—Louis Howe’s assistant, Margaret Durand—who was recovering from TB. See My Day, 27–30 April 1940.

“What is going to happen”: My Day, 1 May 1940.

“democracy a reality”: New York Times, 2 May 1940.

“has stood for freedom”: Ibid.; My Day, 3 May 1940.

Her old allies: Scobie, Center Stage, 114; Ware, Partner and I, 139–40; Helen Gahagan, “FSA Aids Migratory Worker,” Democratic Digest, February 1940, 11.

of “solid, tweedy”: “Women: Voters and Party Workers,” Time, 13 May 1940.

“a committee of Negro”: All April 1940 memos in Democratic National Committee Institute file, FDRL.

“What will keep peace”: “Women Democrats Hear Peace Pleas,” New York Times, 5 May 1940; see also My Day, 6 and 7 May 1940.

“a beautiful idea”: “Mrs Roosevelt’s Three Ideas,” New York Times, 7 May 1940.

“Do you think the poll”: Democratic Digest, June 1940, 24.

“I would like to tell you”: My Day, 7 May 1940.

“One cannot help”: My Day, 9 May 1940.

a “terrific attack”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 7 May 1940, 2:77. For Churchill’s message, see Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 638. See Nicolson, 14 April–10 May 1940, 71–85.

refuge for the royal: FDR to John Cudahy, 8 May 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1024–25. Also see FDR to ER, 1022–23.

“All these young things”: My Day, 10 and 12 May 1940.

“Altogether,” ER wrote: My Day, 14 May 1940.

“so vile that it would”: FDR to ER, 4 May 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1022–23. FDR’s memo to Sumner Welles, 4 May 1940; Welles to FDR, 6 May 1940.

do “something worthwhile”: ER to Hick, 11 May 1940.

200,000 Belgian and Dutch refugee: New York Times, 16 May 1940.

International Child Service Committee: “New Group to Aid Child Refugees Here,” New York Times, 18 April 1940. See Catt to ER, 3 May 1940, and ER to Catt, 6 May 1940, regarding homes for refugees established by Louise Wise.

Children’s Crusade drives: “75 Educators Back Children’s Crusade,” New York Times, 24 March 1940; New York Times, 1 April 1940.

“Every child in America ought”: Time, 13 May 1940, and New York Times, 18 April 1940.

“Darkness is only”: My Day, 14 May 1940.

Chapter Eleven: “If Democracy Is to Survive, It Must Be Because It Meets the Needs of the People”

“I have nothing”: Gilbert, Second World War, 64. See also Manchester, Last Lion, 2:682–83.

“It must be a most”: My Day, 15 May 1940.

“But what if the Nazis”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 89–90.

“My heart sank”: My Day, 15 May 1940.

“The small countries”: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 345-46.

“the latest type”: Ibid., 355. See also Manchester, Last Lion, 64–67.

“far more personal”: My Day, 17 May 1940.

“If democracy is to survive”: Ibid.

“a nation of healthy”: My Day, 18 May 1940.

“facing a sinister power”: “Sinister Power Hit by Mrs. Roosevelt,” New York Times, 18 May 1940.

“one cannot live in a Utopia”: My Day, 17 May 1940,

“for the succor”: Bullitt to FDR, 20 May 1940, telegrams, Orville H. Bullitt, ed., For the President: Personal & Secret, 428–29.

“the Jew Prime Minister”: Murphy, Diplomat, 34; Bullitt to FDR, 27 May 1940, For the President, 432.

“My friends . . . Tonight”: FDR, “Deepening Crisis in Europe and American Military Readiness,” 26 May 1940, in Buhite and Levy, Fireside Chats, 152–62.

“You don’t want to go”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 92.

who “went overseas”: Ibid., 153n.

“a Nazi-dominated”: “First Lady’s Plea Ignored by Youth,” New York Times, 27 May 1940.

“temper of the delegates”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 92; Marcantonio, I Vote.

“wanted to listen”: “First Lady’s Plea Ignored by Youth,” New York Times, 27 May 1940.

“her sensible words”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 92–93.

“addressed the brattish”: Snorted the testy journalist, Frank Kent, Time, 3 June 1940, editorial; and Bullitt, For the President, 28 May 1940, 433–35.

“no longer existed”: Gilbert, Second World War, 77.

“It seems incredible”: My Day, 29 May 1940.

“which came from”: Fink, Marc Bloch, 229. See also Divine, Nine Days of Dunkirk. Dunkirk’s equipment losses included 475 tanks, 38,000 vehicles, 12,000 motorcycles, thousands of heavy guns, 90,000 rifles, and 7,000 tons of ammunition.

an evacuation is: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 86; Gilbert, Second World War, 81–83; Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 92; cf. David Divine, The Nine Days of Dunkirk; and Shirer, Berlin Diary, 363.

Clare Boothe Luce: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 489; Luce, Europe in the Spring, 270–71.

“but their courage”: Bullitt to FDR, 4–5 June 1940, For the President, 449–51.

that substantial American: Both Churchill and Reynaud were hopeful that equipment FDR promised would in fact arrive in time, but the planes did not.

“What a life!”: ER to Anna, 17 May 1940; ER “Links Relief to Defense,” New York Times, 21 May 1940.

“Today there are more”: ER, radio address, 26 May 1940.

“flooding down across the country”: Hamilton Fish Armstrong, “Asks Unstinted US Aid,” New York Times, 28 May 1940. ER “Pleas for War Refugees,” New York Times, 27 May 1940.

the “People’s Common”: “People’s Common Dedicated,” New York Times, 2 June 1940; “Labor Unity Urged” and “120,000 Garment Workers Swell Fair Crowd,” New York Times, 3 June 1940.

“an art which has”: My Day, 3 June 1940.

“through every experience”: Ibid.

“Some of us forget”: My Day, 4 June 1940.

“with the other boatmen”: Cook, ER, 1:58.

“very miserable childhood”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 108.

“You are right”: ER to Anna, 17 May, 4 June 1940, Asbell, 117–18; My Day, 5 June 1940.

On 5 June, the President: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 98–106.

“Every patriotic citizen”: My Day, 6 June 1940.

“where the Negro people”: Ibid.

“some rather nice pieces”: My Day, 7 June 1940.

“always an exciting”: Haven’s birth is announced in New York Times, 6 June 1940. See also My Day, 7, 8, and 10 June.

“the only reality”: My Day, 11 June 1940.

now surrounded France: For the Nazi invasion of France, see Gilbert, Second World War, 85–90.

“The times were fraught”: TIR, 211–12.

“a lone island”: FDR, “Stab in the Back” speech, 10 June 1940, Miller Center of Public Affairs, Scripps Library; New York Times, 11 June 1940.

“When the soldiers”: My Day, 12 June 1940.

“whose lives can be saved”: Bullitt to FDR, 9–11 June 1940, For the President, 456–65. See also Shirer, Berlin Diary, “June,” 399; Jean Edward Smith, FDR, 448–9.

Burke-Wadsworth bill: Smith, FDR, 464–66.

“We have never thought of ourselves”: “Scores Forced Enlisting,” My Day, 14 June 1940.

“Personally I would rather”: Ibid.

“A national mobilization”: My Day, 28 August 1940. See also My Day, 29 July 1940.

CCC and NYA: My Day, 21 August 1940.

“sense of national purpose”: ER, press conference, 4 June 1940, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences; New York Times, 4 June 1940.

“the jobless and needy”: Ibid.

a “class ruling”: “Scores Forced Enlisting,” My Day, 14 June 1940.

“sat out on”: My Day, 15 June 1940.

“It isn’t only the shock”: Anne O’Hare McCormick, “Europe,” New York Times, 15 June 1940.

“The Germans have learned”: My Day, 25 June 1940.

“from the women”: My Day, 17 June 1940.

“I’m not going abroad”: ER to Lape and Read, BWC collection.

“She has wanted desperately”: Tommy to Anna, 17 June 1940.

“dressed in a pink-and-black”: “Opens Drive to Aid China,” New York Times, 19 June 1940.

“women in every country”: My Day, 20 June 1940.

Chapter Twelve: “The World Rightly Belongs to Those Who Really Care”: The Convention of 1940

Gurs in the Pyrenees: Felstiner, To Paint Her Life; Lerner, Fireweed; Hanak, World of Ili Kronstein, 32–33; Paxton; Genet’s “Exodus: Spanish Civil War,” in Drutman, Flanner’s Paris, 201–3.

“It looks to me as if”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:207. For Ickes’s frustration with the State Department, see 3:216–17. See also Smith, FDR, 449–52.

And Henry Stimson: FDR to Harry H. Woodring, 19 June 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1041.

“As to Frank Knox”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:215, see also 204–15.

a “new order”: C. Brooks Peters, New York Times, 22 June to 7 July 1940.

“We may find ourselves”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 4 July 1940, 2:100. See also C. Brooks Peters, New York Times, 5 July. For context, see Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 628–44.

the Smith Act: Because Frances Perkins had opposed the deportation of Harry Bridges, the Australian-born head of the International Longshoremens Union, and was perceived to be concerned about the rights of aliens and the needs of refugees, all immigration issues were shifted from the Department of Labor to the Justice Department. Immigrant issues, along with the details of the Smith Act. now belonged to the attorney general. Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 92–98,

The Court’s majority issued: Justice Felix Frankfurter’s decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940), was deplored by ER.

“And to think”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 15 June 1940, 3:211.

“were dragged from”: My Day, 21 June 1940. See also Baker, Brandeis and Frankfurter, 399–409.

“People are breaking”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:211.

“the hysteria that is sweeping”: Ibid.

“Felix’s Fall of France”: Frankfurter to FDR, 3, 4, and 5 June 1940.

“We have been remarkably fortunate”: My Day, 24 June 1940. See My Day, 22 June 1940 for WPA and NYA training.

“I never asked”: TIR, 212.

a heart attack: Time, 27 May 1940.

“I drove through the woods”: My Day, 25 June 1940.

Gertrude von Adam Wenzel: On Trude Lash, see Adam Fifield, “A Living Primer of 20th Century Causes: Trude Lash, a Lifetime on the Barricades,” New York Times, 3 June 2001; Wolfgang Saxon, “Trude Wenzel Lash,” New York Times, 5 February 2004; “Trude Wenzel Lash, Children’s Advocate,” Vineyard Gazette, 6 February 2004. TWL said her dissertation was burned during WWII.

“more than casually attracted”: ER to Lash, in Lash, Love, Eleanor, 305; Trude Lash to author, July 2002: “I would not want to tell what I know or hurt those still alive—so I’m caught in a trap of my own making.” Subsequently I understood that she referred to her family of origin.

“Washington had moved away”: Bellush, He Walked Alone, 137. See also Perkins, Roosevelt I Knew, 300, 341–46.

“twenty-four of the best members”: Bellush, He Walked Alone, 150. For Winant’s efforts after 1939 and especially between May and June 1940, see 140–48.

“convinced” FDR to: New York Times, 6 June 1938, quoted in Bellush, He Walked Alone, 134–40. The office escape after the armistice and FDR’s about-face is recounted on 149–51. At McGill, Dr. Wilder Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute was Winant’s intermediary. Fifteen ILO members and their dependents left Geneva 7 August. I am grateful to Carol Riegelman Lubin for this book, and for her memories of her ILO boss Winant, and to Jewel Bellush.

“the three houses”: My Day, 25 June and 3 July 1940. See also Hitler’s Exiles, 226.

Emergency Rescue Committee: For the 25 June meeting, see Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 112–13, and Lash Diary, 25 June 1940, Lash Papers. See also Fry, Surrender on Demand, 247–48; Berenbaum, World Must Know, 60; Michael Berenbaum on Varian Fry in Beasley, ER Encyclopedia, 198–201; Lash thought Joseph Buttinger (aka Hubert Richter), his wife, heiress Muriel Gardiner Buttinger, “the daring and glamorous” couple. Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 112; Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, 6.

“always said it was possible”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 111–12.

“The President has seen”: ER to Fry, 8 July 1940.

“Under the quota”: My Day, 26 June 1940.

“I love my porch”: ER to Anna, 26 June 1940.

“The children are temporary”: “Lift Bar to Children, ER Urges,” New York Times, 7 July 1940. ER depended on the activist members of this splendid committee: Katherine Lenroot, head of the Federal Children’s Bureau, Marshall Field, Bishop Bernard J. Sheil of Chicago, Dorothy Bellanca, Dr. Frank Kingdon, Shepard Morgan, Clarence Pickett of the AFSC, and Agnes King Inglis among others. The committee was a massive undertaking of several organizations, including the American Committee for Christian Refugees, the Friends of Children, the German-Jewish Children’s Aid, the Catholic Youth Organization, the American Joint Distribution Committee, the English-Speaking Union, the Foster Home Department of New York’s Children’s Aid, the Non-Sectarian Foundation for Refugee Children, the Allied Relief Fund, the Unitarian Service Committee, the Committee for Catholic Refugees, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, and the Queen Wilhelmina Fund, among others. This committee represented all faiths, and was “in the truest sense a nonsectarian, nonpartisan movement inspired solely by the desire to rescue children.” They intended to “coordinate all resources”; cooperate with Canada; aid children directly everywhere in danger; provide care in family homes for those children admitted to the United States. “U.S. Groups Formed,” 21 June, “Many Offer Homes to Refugee Children,” 22 June, “Saving Democracy’s Children,” editorial, 22 June 1920, New York Times.

Christian Action Committee: My Day, 9 July 1940.

“the years of depression”: My Day, 28 June 1940.

“Sometimes I wonder”: My Day, l July and 29 June 1940. On the 1940 Republican convention, see also Neal, Dark Horse, 86, 99; Smith, FDR, 451–55; My Day, 29 June, 1 July 1940.

“I don’t care”: Hick to ER, 2 July 1940, in Streitmatter, Empty Without You, 229.

“This job is such fun”: Hick to ER.

“corporate, entrenched wealth”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 29 June, 3:220–21.

nobody in FDR’s inner circle: TIR, 212–13; Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 127.

“I personally want”: My Day, 4 July 1940. See also My Day, 6 July; New York Times, “Hyde Park Library,” 5 July 1940.

“my husband had”: My Day, 8 July 1940.

“essential indifference to labor”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 304–5.

“Don’t get tired”: ER to Hick, July 1940.

“had a gay time”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 128.

“was in trouble”: Ibid.

she “turned shy”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 308.

“in a mess”: Ibid., 309–10.

“every effort to improve”: Ibid.

in his words, “spry”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 130; Lash journals, 15 July 1940.

“The President has never”: Alben Barkley, speech at 1940 Democratic Convention.

“shook her head resignedly”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 131.

“led the procession”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:240, 243, 247.

“convention is bleeding”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:249.

“men who are determined”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:249–50. See also Smith, FDR, 458–60.

“get promises out”: Perkins, Roosevelt I Knew, 128–132.

“I certainly am not”: TIR, 214.

“overcome with emotion”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 282.

“Jim Farley really”: TIR, 215.

“Tell Jim to meet me”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 281–84; Black, ER, 150.

“We sat thru”: Lash journal, 17–18 July 1940.

“allowed me to fly the plane”: TIR, 215.

“an unusual gravity”: Kathleen McLaughlin, “No Campaigning . . . ,” New York Times, 19 July 1940.

“Jim Farley drove”: TIR, 216.

“It must be Wallace”: TIR, 216–17.

“sweetened the convention”: Perkins, Roosevelt I Knew, 133.

“The Stadium was packed”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 283.

“the State delegations”: New York Times, 19 July 1940.

She “moved forward”: ER and Hickok, Ladies of Courage, 283.

“For many years”: ER, speech to 1940 Democratic Convention.

“It was striking”: TIR, 217.

“the first wife of a president”: Kathleen McLaughlin, “No Campaigning . . . ,” New York Times, 19 July 1940.

“For God’s sake”: Smith, FDR, 463.

“had done a very good”: TIR, 218.

“The perfect, gentle knight”: Senator George W. Norris to ER, 19 July 1940.

“I listened over the radio”: Ibid. See also TIR, 214–18; Smith, FDR, 458–63; New York Times, 19 July 1940.

“we will not participate”: Democratic Party platform, 1940, criticized for failure to grasp realities, Sydney Herald.

seemed a “retreat”: “Hits at Foreign Plank,” New York Times, 20 July 1940.

Chapter Thirteen: War and The Moral Basis of Democracy

her remarkable meditation: ER had begun the year with four book contracts: The Story of the White House (never written); a collection of essays on the meaning of Christmas around the world; a book for children, Christmas: A Story of Hope, which would be illustrated by Fritz Kredel and published by Knopf; and her essay on citizenship, which became The Moral Basis of Democracy. See Black, ER: Biography, 117.

“stimulate the thoughts”: ER, Moral Basis, 11–14. Quotes from this book in the following paragraphs are from pages 26, 33–37, and 42–82.

“strengthen the ticket”: My Day, 20 July 1940.

she had deplored: For Wallace’s 1933 programs, see Cook, ER, 2:81–82, 412; ER to Lape, 22 September 1933, Arizona Collection.

to “humanize capitalism”: Wallace’s Paths to Plenty and other works in Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, Wallace of Iowa, 250–55 and passim.

“To me there is”: My Day, 20 July 1940.

“the growth of three”: My Day, 17, 18, and 19 July 1940.

“on the saddle”: Death of Aunt Dora, 21 July 1940. My Day, 22, 23, and 25 July 1940; New York Times obituary of Dora Delano Forbes, 22 July 1940.

“is always happier”: Tommy to Anna, 12 July 1940.

she worked closely: Mary McLeod Bethune: Joanna Schneider Zangrando and Robert Zangrando, “ER and Black Civil Rights,” in Hoff-Wilson and Lightman, Without Precedent, 96–98.

“to eliminate racial”: Neal, Dark Horse, 146; “White House Blesses Jim Crow,” Crisis, November 1940; Burke-Wadsworth in Smith, FDR, 464–66.

“the horrid legal details”: My Day, 13 July 1940.

was “very impatient”: When ER called from 20 June 1940 meeting with Lash and Karl Frank (aka Paul Hagen), then met with Joseph Battinger, Clarence Pickett, and Varian Fry and others, 27 June 1940. There is, however, no record of this meeting.

“I know it is due”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 113n.

“to tie up the ship”: “Family Separated by Stern Laws of US,” Norfolk Virginia Pilot, 12 September 1940. The Quanza story was revived by Jacob L. Morewitz’s son David and his grandson Stephen. See Stephen J. Morewitz, “The Saving of the SS Quanza,” William and Mary Magazine, Summer 1991; Stephen Morewitz and Susan Lieberman, Steamship Quanza, a play reviewed in the Chicago Tribune on 29 May 1991; and Rebecca Zweifler, “Where Are They Now? Survivors of the SS Quanza,” interviews for a traveling exhibit of Yeshiva University Museum, at the Cardozo School of Law, November 1994.

officials granted permits: Sumner Welles to ER, 12 September 1940; Eliot B. Coulter to ER, 19 September 1940/R 70, both in Sumner Welles Papers, box 793; Breckinridge Long to Prichard, Department of Justice, and Lemuel B. Schofield, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, 12 September 1940, FDRL, copies from David Morewitz; Stephen J. Morewitz and Susan B. Lieberman, “The Saving of the SS Quanza in Hampton Roads,” 14 September 1940; and David Morewitz to author.

“very generous in offering”: Bellush, He Walked Alone, 152. It is not clear whether FDR’s former World War I boss, Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels, who likened the Quanza situation to Edward Everett Hale’s “Man Without a Country,” communicated his distress about the refugees to his one-time assistant. Nor is it clear why Long’s antagonism to Winant’s endangered ILO colleagues in Geneva did not give FDR pause.

“young and old”: My Day, 20 September 1940.

“music is a universal”: My Day, 26 July, 12 August, and 8 August 1940.

“Their performances,” ER was: My Day, 18 September 1940.

On 15 August: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 734–35.

“Never in the field”: Ibid., 736.

“I looked at the moon”: My Day, 14 August 1940.

“The horror grows”: My Day, 7 September 1940.

Hitler’s “cruel, wanton”: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 778–79.

“calmness and great”: My Day, 14 September 1940.

City of Benares: Nagorski, Miracles on the Water.

Women’s Committee for Mercy: Mercy Ship Bill and Yorkshire mothers letter, New York Times, 9 August 1940.

“We want American ships”: Foster Parent Plan for 32,250 children at the Children’s Sanctuary, New York Times, 22 September 1940. Long Committee meetings, My Day, 16 August 1940; ER to Eric Biddle, 21 September 1940; “Child Refugee Aid to Continue,” New York Times, 10 October 1940; Ruth Gage-Colby to author. In addition to rescue efforts, ER organized relief efforts for the 30,000 Belgian refugees in Britain, as well as Bundles for Britain. See New York Times, 18 August 1940.

“I used to pray”: My Day, 23 September 1940.

Reverend Martin Niemöller: Berenbaum, World Must Know, 40–41; Gilbert, Second World War, 685–86; and Gilbert, History of Twentieth Century, 17, 39–40, 174, 719–20. In 1941 Thomas Mann published Niemöller’s sermons, which Reinhold Niebuhr praised for their “thrilling note . . . of urgency,” despite their “grave differences” on key issues, according to Niebuhr’s daughter. Elizabeth Sifton, Serenity Prayer, 244–45.

The fictionalized version: “JR Gets British Film,” New York Times, 16 July 1940; “ER Filmed for Anti-Nazi Picture,” New York Times, 18 July 1940.

“achieves a moment”: Bosley Crowther, review of Pastor Hall, New York Times.

“I am glad to introduce”: Virtually lost to history, I was unable to find ER’s prologue, written in part by Robert Sherwood—until my friend WNYC archivist Andy Lancet put out an international call. We learned that for Toller’s centennial in Berlin in 1993, Jeanpaul Goergen had presented Pastor Hall and published a pamphlet, “Ernst Toller: Schallplatte, Rundfunk, Film,” which included ER’s words; and the producer Roy Boulting’s essay, 21–25. I am grateful to Jeanpaul Goergen; to Leo Enticknap, University of Leeds; and to David Pierce, Association of Moving Image Archivists.

“Not even the oldest”: New York Sunday Mirror, 22 September 1940, with gratitude to Peter Smith for this reference; Lash Diary, 21 September 1940, Lash Papers.

“It seemed strange”: My Day, 23 September 1940.

“applauded vigorously”: “President’s Mother Backs Anti–Nazi film,” New York Times, 3 October 1940.

Chapter Fourteen: “Defense Is Not a Matter of What You Get, But of What You Give”

“so many things”: ER, review of Lillian Wald: Neighbor and Crusader, in Survey Graphic (December 1938).

“I always fall”: My Day, 19 August 1940.

“spray of white dahlias”: “Thousands Mourn Lillian Wald,” New York Times, 5 September 1940.

“the most alarming situation”: Gertrude Baer’s WILPF circular letter and bulletins, from Geneva’s WILPF Archive, 1940–45. I am grateful to Felicity Hill for these extraordinary documents. See also Gertrude Bussey and Margaret Tims, WILPF, 1915–1965.

“American Women: Listen”: Lida Gustava Heymann, “From Europe to Women in America,” WILPF Archive.

Some objected to: My Day, 16 August 1940. On Burke-Wadsworth, see Smith, FDR, 464–66.

“conscientious objectors should”: My Day, 7 August 1940.

“No one hearing him”: My Day, 6 September 1940.

“may prove to be wrong”: My Day, 7 August 1940.

“business and government”: My Day, 31 July 1940.

“it is one thing”: My Day, 6 August 1940.

“national defense is a matter”: My Day, 28 August 1940.

and “morale” as: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 154–56.

“youth occupation trips”: My Day, 12 August 1940. See also My Day, 2 August 1940.

“I have yet to see anywhere”: My Day, 28 August 1940. See also My Day, 20 August 1940.

Children’s Crusade for: My Day, 31 August 1940.

“Everyone who believes”: My Day, 30 August 1940. See also Smith, FDR, 466.

“a particularly happy time”: Diana R. Jaicks and Janet R. Katten remembered their time with Aunt Eleanor as entirely enchanting, to author.

“We could hardly be blamed”: My Day, 10 August 1940.

“When bombing begins”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 3 and 12 July 1940, 98–101.

“the nation has changed”: My Day, 3 September 1940.

“There were too many”: My Day, 2 September 1940.

“every non-citizen”: Alien Registration Act, Public Law 76-680.

“Why, they are”: “Three Making Negro Film Held as Fifth Columnists,” New York Herald Tribune, 18 June 1940.

“At a time when”: Jane Sommerich to ER, 18 June 1940, with Herald Tribune clip. See also Tommy to Sommerich, 24 June 1940; Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 92–98.

“It is estimated”: Marcantonio, I Vote My Conscience, 129–30. See also Congressional Record, 9 February 1940, 1345–46, and broadcast on 30 July, opposing Smith Act. I am grateful to Annette Rubinstein for these sources and many suggestions over time.

“Several people have”: My Day, 22 August 1940.

“If eight million”: Gilbert, Second World War, 125.

“mixed up together”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 671 and 832. The president made this extraordinary swap on his own authority as commander in chief, bypassing Congress since opposition there was so great. See Smith, FDR, 470–72.

“It is hard even”: My Day, 24 July 1940.

“Our course is clear”: Gilbert, Second World War, 131.

“know it is not”: ER and Walter White’s speeches to 16 September 1940 banquet are in Proceedings of the First Biennial Convention of the Ladies’ Auxiliary, 40–45. I am grateful to Mindy Chateauvert for this document. On Harriet Pickens, Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 61, 122–24; Bill Pickens on his aunt’s Smith College honors, to BWC; ER and Bethune at Pullman confab, Chicago Defender, 28 September 1940.

“Here in our own country”: Ibid.

“forced him to reveal”: Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 237–42.

“If Elbert Williams”: Pittsburgh Courier, 10 August 1940.

“mum as the Sphinx”: “Willkie Promises Everything,” Chicago Defender, 21 September 1940.

if there were more Nazis: Baltimore Afro-American, 17 February 1940.

“there is a growing”: ER to FDR, 16 September 1940 in Buckley, American Patriots, 263.

“an ally of the NAACP”: Ibid., 292.

“This is for”: White to ER, 17 September 1940; ER to FDR, 21 September 1940; ER serves 100, box 1584.

“The policy of the War”: FDR, press release, 9 October 1940.

“been proven satisfactory”: White, Randolph, and Hill to FDR, 10 October 1940.

“it is the policy of the”: “White House Blesses Jim Crow,” Crisis, November 1940, 350–57.

“one could not have”: Lash Diary, 11 August 1940, Lash Papers.

“statement on Negroes”: Harriet Pickens, 20 October 1940, Baltimore African-American; White to ER, 4, 7, and 12 October 1940. ER sent all to FDR. FDR to ER with Steve Early’s apology, 29 October 1940.

“I regret that”: General Davis, 375; FDR to White, Randolph, and Hill, 25 October 1940, in Crisis, November 1940, 350–57; Buckley, American Patriots, 63–65.

were “mainly Republicans”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 316. See also Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 531.

“Friday afternoon, at”: My Day, 28 October 1940.

“constantly around headquarters”: Lash Diary, end of August–early September 1940, Lash Papers.

the “indefatigable women”: Democratic Digest, January 1941, 18, 21.

“someday we will reach”: My Day, 16 October 1940.

“will be intelligently”: FDR, press release on Selective Service Act, 16 September 1940, Grace Tully Papers.

“on her old friends”: Time, 30 September 1940.

she was “unruffled”: “Eleanor Buttons,” New York Times, 26 October 1940. See also My Day, 21 and 22 October 1940.

“he will not discuss”: Willkie, speech, 16 October 1940, Neal, Dark Horse, 154–60.

“The people have a right”: Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 236. See also Neal, ibid.

“loved a good fight”: FDR, speech in Philadelphia, 23 October 1940; My Day, 24 and 25 October 1940.

“I hope that everyone”: My Day, 25 October 1940.

“Martin, Barton and Fish!”: FDR, “Campaign Address at Madison Square Garden, New York,” 28 October 1940, in Zevin, Nothing to Fear, 233-42.

“It seemed to us”: My Day, 30 October 1940. See also Smith, FDR, 476.

“If anybody thinks”: Buckley, American Patriots, 265. See also Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 531–32.

“I have said this”: FDR, in Boston, 30 October 1940.

“The President really”: Kathleen Kennedy to Joseph Kennedy, 30 October 1940, in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 489.

“put 25 million”: Joseph Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce. Luce asked what changed Joe’s mind, Life noted, which had saved FDR’s election. He told her FDR promised to support Joe Jr. for governor. See Neal, Dark Horse, 169.

was “very gracious”: Joseph Kennedy Diary, 27 October 1940, in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 481.

“It is true”: Joseph Kennedy, radio address, 29 October 1940, ibid., 482–89.

“We have all”: FDR to Joseph Kennedy, 29 October 1940, ibid., 489.

she wondered what: My Day, 1 November 1940.

“Today no one”: My Day, 2 November 1940.

Irita Van Doren: Neal, Dark Horse, 37–44.

These “guru letters”: Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, Wallace of Iowa, 273–75. See also Ruth Drayer. Nicholas and Helena Roerich.

“Both sides agreed”: Neal, Dark Horse, 144–45.

“soothsayers” that no: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 308.

“Let us show”: Democratic Digest, January 1914.

“It is the destiny”: FDR, Campaign Address at Cleveland, Ohio, 2 November 1940, in FDR, The American Way, 16–18, 24. See also www.presidency.ucsb .edu/ws/?pid=15893. He closed by saying, “Always the heart and soul of our country will be the heart and soul of the common man—the men and women who never have ceased to believe in democracy.”

speech, saying it “was grand”: ER to Anna, 3 November 1940, Asbell, 127; My Day, 4 November 1940.

“We in this nation”: FDR, Cleveland speech. See also Smith, FDR, 478–79.

“I would be grateful”: Walter White to ER, 4 November 1940; White, Man Called White, 198–99.

seemed “particularly bright”: My Day, 5 and 6 November 1940.

“comical silver donkey”: New York Times, 6 November 1940.

“confident of victory”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 187.

“We are facing”: Ibid., 192–94; ER to Anna, 15 November 1940, Asbell, 127. See also My Day, 7 November 1940.

Chapter Fifteen: “Heroism Is Always a Thrilling Thing”: The Politics of Race

“one of the clearest”: Charles Poore’s “Books of the Times,” New York Times, 2 November 1940; ER to Anna, 3 November 1940.

reading the “interesting”: My Day, 23 October 1940.

“She walks as”: Black, ER: Biography.

“the President stopped”: Ruby Black to ER, 1 November 1940.

“I felt you had done”: ER to RB, 13 November 1940.

“1. Her personality”: Ruby Black, “Can Eleanor Roosevelt Stop Wendell Willkie,” Look, 8 October 1940. I am grateful to Black’s daughter Cornelia Jane Strawser for this article and for many insights over the years, esp. “ER, Ruby Black and Me,” to author, 8 August 1999. See also Anne Cottrell Free, “Ruby Black,” ER Encyclopedia, 62–66.

“Anybody will tell”: Ruby Black, “How and Why ER Does It,” Democratic Digest, October–November 1940, 16, 51.

ever-expanding Black Cabinet: This group of Washington insiders and New Deal officials changed over time. It initially included Robert Vann (attorney, editor, and publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, and special assistant to the attorney general, who supported Willkie but died shortly before the election), Judge William Hastie, Dr. Robert Weaver (housing administrator and the first black Harvard PhD in economics), Lawrence Oxley (social worker who became chief of Division of Negro Labor), and Dr. Frank Horne (physician and college president, Lena Horne’s uncle, who worked for several New Deal agencies, most notably the Federal Housing Administration).

“they appeared so often”: Peare, Bethune, 165.

“always went running”: West, Upstairs, 31–32.

“Together, as war needs”: In the coming years Bethune, with the support and assistance of ER, would expand Bethune-Cookman College. In 1941 she opened a new library, and in 1942 she added a Trades Building for National Defense, financed by NYA with new programs in mechanics, masonry, electricity, and engineering. Also in 1942 Bethune-Cookman became a four-year senior college. Eventually it would have 32 buildings on 52 acres to serve scores of thousands of U.S. and international students with 25 major degree programs for women and men, in teaching, nursing, business, engineering, and law, among others. See Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in America, on Mary McLeod Bethune, Bethune-Cookman College, and National Council of Negro Women. I am grateful to Harry Gurney for the current works of Bethune-Cookman College.

“I’m willing to spend”: “Kennedy Says Democracy All Done in Britain, Maybe Here,” Boston Globe, 9 November 1940. For Kennedy’s 6 November interview with FDR, see Amanda Smith, ed., 491–92. Asked specifically about ER, Kennedy called her a “wonderful woman. And marvelously helpful and full of sympathy.” In Washington and London she was always after him “to take care of the poor little nobodies who hadn’t any influence. . . . She’s always sending me a note to have some little Susie Glotz to tea at the embassy.”

“threw the fear of God”: Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 226. Douglas Fairbanks to FDR, in Will Swift, The Roosevelts and the Royals, 227; Frankfurter to FDR on Kennedy’s words, 11 November 1940, in Max Freedman, Roosevelt and Frankfurter, 559–60. See also Smith, FDR, 491–92.

“bidding to ask”: MacAdams, Ben Hecht, 225.

“we thought were”: John Boettiger to FDR, in Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 228.

“is out to do”: Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 229, 302. FDR and Kennedy met again at the White House on 1 December, when the ambassador’s resignation was officially and cordially accepted and then announced. Over the years, reports of a bitter break, misremembered by ER as reported by Gore Vidal, have been repeated in many books. Until a new ambassador could be appointed, FDR dispatched his two trusted emissaries, Wendell Willkie and Harry Hopkins, to London. By February, at Esther Lape’s suggestion, John Gilbert Winant was named the new ambassador. See Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 495–97.

“there was not a sign”: Ickes, Secret Diary, December 1940, 3:386–87.

“has always been”: ER to Alice Huntington, 12 December 1940, ER box 1555/100.

“we have been on this”: Tommy to Anna, 18 November 1940.

“She fought with everyone”: Tommy to Anna, 18 November 1940.

the largest turnout by women: In some states women voters had “actually outnumbered the men”: Illinois, 56 percent; California, 54 percent; Montana, 53 percent; Missouri, 51 percent. ER’s team was particularly satisfied that in New York City over 300,000 more women voted than in 1936. Democratic Digest, December 1940–January 1941.

“just the way the president”: ER to FDR, 11 November 1940.

“make a magnificent job”: Molly Dewson to ER, 10 November 1940; ER to Dewson, 15 November 1940.

“with unusual and wide”: “Lorena Hickok, Executive Secretary; Gladys Tillett, The Future Program for Democratic Women,” Democratic Digest, January 1941, 5, 9.

“Party politics had always”: ER, “Women Must Learn to Play the Game As Men Do,” Redbook, 1928. See also Dewson to Hick, 14 January 1941.

to “gently urge”: Tommy to Anna, 18 November 1940.

“My trouble, I suspect”: Hick to ER, 7 November 1940; ER to Hick, 8 November 1940; Hick to ER, 11 November 1940.

“You are wrong”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 278.

Earl continued regularly: Lash Diary, 4 August 1940, Lash Papers.

“Now we’ve stopped”: ER to FDR, 12 November 1940; FDR to ER, 13 November 1940, with Sumner Welles’s memo to FDR, l November 1940, in answer to ER’s “request for facts on the subject of scrap iron exports to Japan . . . and Sino-Japanese trade.” See also FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1077.

Maternally she sought: Lash Diary, 2, 17, and 28 March 1940, Lash Papers.

“two of the pleasantest”: My Day, 14 November 1940. See also ER to Florence Kerr, 16 December 1940; Kerr to ER, 20 December 1940. Kerr sent the information to George Foster, national director of the WPA music program about Florence Rush’s new symphony, “rendered beautifully” by his splendid orchestra, to make final arrangements with Tommy.

“You will do”: ER to Lash, in Lash, Love, Eleanor, 321–22.

“Heroism is always”: My Day, 16 November 1940. See also My Day, 18 and 20 November 1940.

“The family is so scattered”: My Day, 22 November 1940.

“Today as a nation”: My Day, 21 November 1940.

“We are free to register”: Ibid.

On Saturday ER: My Day, 26 and 27 November 1940; Lash, Love, Eleanor, 322.

“compelling” because the: My Day, 26 November 1940. See also My Day, 23 and 25 November 1940.

“little bronze boy”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 327.

“the first birthday letter”: ER to Lash, 2 December 1940, in Lash, Love, Eleanor, 323.

“a wonderful birthday week”: Ibid., 323–24; Lash Diary, 8 December 1940, Lash Papers.

“Ever since our talk”: ER to Trude Pratt, n.d., in Lash, Love, Eleanor, 66.

“sense of being driven”: Ibid.; Lash Diary, 4 January 1941, Lash Papers.

“Of course I knew”: Trude Pratt to author, 15 July 2000.

Chapter Sixteen: “Isolationism Is Impossible”: The Politics of Rescue

“immediately endangered political”: Varian Fry’s Papers are at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University; see esp. Karen Greenberg, ed., Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 5, Columbia University Library, selected documents from the Varian Fry Papers and the Fort Critario Emergency Refugee Shelter Papers.

“Is there no way”: ER to Sumner Welles, 6 September 1940. See also correspondence from Karl Frank to ER, 15, 21, and 30 August 1940, box 1551.

“is holding up”: Frank Kingdon to ER, 20 September 1940.

“disloyal to the Reich”: In 1934, ER read Lion Feuchtwanger’s prophetic book about the Nazi regime The Oppermanns, published in English by Ben Huebsch of Viking, and in ten other languages. Written to stir concerned people beyond indifference and passivity to the most intense Nazi cruelties faced by Jews and anti-Hitler democrats, it was a highly regarded best-seller—which failed nevertheless to diminish the appeasement policies that insured Hitler’s unimpeded march across Europe for six years.

They had left Marseilles: Alma Mahler described their journey in And the Bridge Is Love; see Keegan, Bride of the Wind, 279–80. See also Peter Jungk, Franz Werfel, 154–64, 170–73; Marino, Quiet American, 68–76.

The Blue Angel: Steven Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 6–7, 106–21.

But Heinrich Mann: Retirement folder, Peter Pratt Papers.

“pioneers” at Sosúa: Marian Kaplan, Dominican Haven, 49–54. See “On Arrivals,” New York Tribune, 14 October 1940, “Writers Fleeing Nazis Here by ‘Under ground,’” in Werfel, “Heinrich Mann, Golo Mann, among 15 Who Escaped France”; New York Times, 14 October 1940, “Authors Who Fled Nazis Arrive.”

“get this cleared up”: ER to FDR, 28 September 1940, in Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy, 129–33.

“At a stroke”: Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat. See Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: A Life in History. See also Carmen Callil, Bad Faith.

“The war is won!”: Gilbert, Second World War, 130–34; and Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 888.

“The world Cause”: Churchill cable to FDR, 27 October 1940.

“Suppose my neighbor’s”: FDR, Press Conference on Lend-Lease, 17 December 1940, in Rauch, FDR: Selected Speeches, 268–71.

“The Nazi masters”: FDR, “Fireside Chat on National Security” (“Arsenal of Democracy” speech), 29 December 1940, in Zevin, Nothing to Fear, 247–58.

Some of his staff: FDR told speechwriter Sam Rosenman to ignore the State Department’s request to remove the line. Smith, FDR, 487.

“a running argument”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 636–37, 747. See also ER to FDR, 7 November 1940, and ER to Welles, 11 December 1940.

“As a human”: Hans Lustig’s lament to Kingdon, 13 September 1940, Kingdon to ER, 4 October 1940, 102/box 1808.

“MGM may itself”: Long to ER, 11 October 1940.

“Mrs. R is sorry”: Tommy to Kingdon, 22 October 1940, 102/box 1808.

“I am just reading”: Charlotte Lustig to ER, 1 September, 54/box 4157.

“Can’t something be”: ER to FDR, December 1940.

“Is there anything”: ER to Sumner Welles.

“everything in its”: New York Times, 10 December 1940. See also Ickes, Secret Diary, 13 December 1940, 3:389–90.

“There are 12,000”: Breckinridge Long Diary, 13 November–12 December 1940, 151–61.

“working at cross”: Ibid., 27 November, 1940.

“rather slapped my ears”: Ickes, 21 December, Secret Diary.

“Varian Fry’s arrest”: ER to Welles, 9 December 1940, FDRL.

“no physical harm”: Welles to ER, 11 December 1940, FDRL. On 10 December Fry wrote to Frank Kingdon detailing the appalling circumstances of his arrest in a surprise raid on their rented commune, Villa Air-Bel. Detectives had arrived without a search warrant, confiscated their papers and typewriters, accused them of nothing, and transported them to the SS Sinaia. They were held from Monday night until Thursday noon, then released as they had been arrested, with no word of explanation. Kingdon shared the letter with ER. Fry, Surrender on Demand, 130–31, 146–49.

“Franklin, you know”: Justine Wise Polier, oral history, 19, 20, FDRL. Around this time Judge Polier’s father, Rabbi Stephen Wise, had learned that “affidavits he had sent to get people out were being held up by the U.S. Consul in Marseilles.” When Rabbi Wise confronted the consul—“I understand you are not honoring my affidavits”—the consul replied: “Rabbi Wise, nobody could honor as many affidavits as you have given.” According to Polier, her father insisted the consul call FDR “to find out whether you are to honor my word or not.” The consul yielded, and that group “was cleared for admission to the United States and saved.”

never referred to her: Years later, on 17 May 1960, Marta Feuchtwanger (wife of Lion, who died in 1958) wrote to ER that Hiram Bingham had told her husband that “you [ER] were instrumental in his visa at a moment of ultimate danger.” ER replied, “It was really my husband. . . . I could have done nothing except when he asked me to do it and I had his backing.” Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 637.

“a kind of world”: FDR, “Four Freedoms” Speech, Annual Message to Congress, 6 January 1941, in Zevin, Nothing to Fear, 258–66.

“saddened to notice”: My Day, 7 January 1941.

from Thomas Mann: My Day, 14 January 1941. See also Klaus Mann, The Turning Point, 322ff, and chapters 14 and 15.

“The Thomas Manns”: ER to Lash, January 1941.

was “the busiest”: Fry, Surrender on Demand, 186–88.

“important enough and”: Ernst, Not So Still Life, 199; Rosemary Sullivan, Villa Air-Bel, 339–42.

“Eleanor right about”: Jimmy and Dallas Ernst to BWC, 1940–46, 1966 affidavits.

“It was wonderful”: My Day, 14 January 1941.

“be sensitive to”: Lash Diary, 16 January 1941, Lash Papers.

“The Mrs. came into”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:396–97. See also Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 213–14.

“is defense housing”: “Housing Lag Seen Slowing Defense,” New York Times, 26 January 1941.

“the Number 1”: Time, 3 February 1941, 59.

“never went home”: West, Upstairs, 19–24.

first lady’s “closest confidante”: Ibid.

“Crown Princess Martha”: Ibid.

“In contrast to”: Ibid.

“It is wonderful”: ER to Lash, 6 January 1941 Lash, Love, Eleanor, 336.

“did not like”: Tommy to Lape, March 1941, Arizona Collection.

“I am sorry”: ER to Eileen Fry, 13 May 1941, 100/box 1607.

“suicides will increase”: Frank Kingdon to ER, 2 July 1941.

Winant was an: Olson, Citizens of London, 23–24.

“had been thrown”: Lady Florence Willert to ER; Lash Diary, 5 January 1941, Lash Papers.

closest school chum: Bennett to ER, 1 Janaury 1941, 100/box 1625. See also ER to Bennett, 25 February 1941.

“Suddenly he opened one eye”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 208; Lash Diary, 27 February 1941, Lash Papers.

nineteenth-century plantation: Roegner, Minnie of Hobcaw.

“her beautiful horses”: See also My Day, 26 March 1941.

Belle “liked Eleanor”: Mary Miller, Baroness of Hobcaw, 115.

associates urged decisive action: Olson, Citizens of London, 86–90, 116.

“snatch at beauty”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 338–39.

her “empty heart”: Lash Diary, 30 March 1941, Lash Papers.

“mood of lonely despair”: ER to Lash.

“Time with you”: Lash Diary, April 1941.

with “great applause”: Ibid., 20 April 1940, Lash Papers; Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 214–15.

a “social fascist”: Joe Cadden to ER, 5 and 6 May 1941.

“immediately to range”: Loewenheim, Langley, and Jonas, Roosevelt and Churchill Correspondence, 83 and passim.

“naval and military”: FDR, “Fireside Chat Outlining American Policy in the World Crisis,” 27 May 1941, in Zevin, Nothing to Fear, 271–83. See also Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 293–300. See also FDR: Personal Letters, 4: 1154–55.

“None of us saw him”: Lash, Diary, 4 June 1941, Lash Papers.

Missy LeHand believed: Cook, ER, 1:314–17.

“be surprised at”: ER on Missy to Lash, Lash Diary, 20 March 1941, 20 April 1941, Lash Papers.

“assigning students”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 236–54.

“did most to fire”: Ibid., 251.

“very quiet life”: FDR to SDR, 2 August 1941, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1196–97.

“Early in August”: TIR, 224.

when Franklin Jr.: TIR, 225–26.

the Atlantic Charter: Loewenheim, Langley, and Jonas, Roosevelt and Churchill Correspondence, 152–55; Brands, Traitor, 597, 603–11.

“reaffirmed faith in”: Plesch, America, Hitler and the UN, 24–27. The Atlantic Charter defined Allied goals for the postwar world. By this charter, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed: (1) to seek “no aggrandizement territorial or other”; (2) to seek “no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned”; (3) to “respect the right of all peoples to choose [their own] form of government . . . ; and wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored” wherever it has been forcibly denied; (4) to “endeavor” to create a system of equal access to all states “to the trade and raw materials of the world” needed for economic prosperity [a caveat that exempted “existing obligations” suggested historical and imperial limitations]; (5) to seek “to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations” and to secure “for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security”; (6) after “the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny,” to seek a peace for all nations and that provides all inhabitants therein with “freedom from fear and want”; (7) to seek a peace that would “enable all” to travel everywhere “without hindrance”; and (8) to strive for “all nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons,” to abandon “the use of force,” since pending a “permanent system of general security . . . disarmament . . . is essential.”

“honestly faced my”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 352–53.

“An anxious 24”: My Day, 7 September 1941.

“I see. So you”: When ER II told me that story, she said, “If you join the growing group that argues SDR was historically mistreated, I will never speak to you again.”

“My idea of hell”: ER to Lash, 25 September 1941.

“It’s such an”: ER to Anna, 17 September 1941.

“Pale, but stately”: “G. Hall Roosevelt Dies,” New York Times, 26 September 1941. “Rites,” 27 September 1941; “Burial,” 28 September 1941.

She intended to build: John Winant, Esther Lape, and others in ER’s circle often discussed the various roles women played in Britain. Eugene Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post, had recently visited London and seen that women were “really a part of the armed forces with rank and recognition.” He returned home filled with admiration for women volunteers. He met with ER and encouraged her to help build something similar. Ickes, Secret Diary, 25 October 1941, 3:634. Meyer thought La Guardia as OCD director was “a joke.”

“The loss of someone”: TIR, 230.

“I will carry on here”: Tommy to Anna, 2 October 1941.

“One morning my”: TIR, 231.

“Her friends and family”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 259–60.

“I feel as you”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 361.

“for the honor”: Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:654–55; 7 December 1941, 3:661–66. See also Gilbert, Second World War, 262–64, 268–73.

“when one of the ushers”: TIR, 232–35.

“Yesterday, December 7”: FDR, “War Message to Congress,” 8 December 1941, in Zevin, Nothing to Fear, 301-3. See also TIR, 232–35. FDR’s speech was accepted without “a peep from an appeaser or an isolationist anywhere.” Ickes, Secret Diary, 3:665.

Chapter Seventeen: “To Know Me Is a Terrible Thing”: Friendship, Loyalties, and Alliances

“a curious sense”: My Day, 9 December 1941.

“trend of thought”: My Day, 16 December 1941.

“The crops were ready”: Tommy to Lape, 16 December 1941.

“The greatest test”: My Day, 16 December 1941.

“if we are going to keep”: My Day, 27 and 28 November 1941.

“I hope every person”: My Day, 3 December 1941.

“an amazing letter”: Tommy to Lape, 16 December 1941; see also Greg Robinson, By Order, 75.

“more basic than”: Pearl Buck to ER, 18 December 1941, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 669. See also ER’s draft of review for Pearl Buck’s “American Unity and Asia,” New Republic, 3 August 1942. I am grateful to Greg Robinson for this reference.

“ER said she”: Tommy to Lape, 16 December 1941.

“comprehensive community”: My Day, 27 November 1941.

“health is a stepping stone”: My Day, 6 December 1941.

“in the operating policy”: ER to National Council of Negro Women, press clip 20 October 1941 in NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.

“maternal, child health”: TIR, 235–40.

“inspiring” . . . “her passionate integrity”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 646.

“had a strictly”: My Day, 20 December 1941.

“Her voice did not”: Lash Diary, 26 December 1941, Lash Papers.

“the favorite of most”: West, Upstairs, 38–40.

His “most colorful”: Ibid.

disregard for public opinion: Parks, Family in Turmoil, 98–100; Smith, FDR, 543–44.

“the best Christmas”: Coit, Baruch, 491–94.

“I don’t trust”: ER to Anna, 23 December 1941 and 4 January 1942, Asbell, 140–41.

“talked much with”: ER to Hick, 26 December 1941, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill and America, 249–50.

“loveable and emotional”: ER to Anna, 23 December 1941; 4 January 1942, 140–41, Asbell. According to John Lukacs, ER “had gone so far as to ask a friend to impress that upon her husband.” Lukacs, Five Days in London, 72.

“The United Nations”: My Day, 2 January 1942.

“I did not open”: Lash Diary, l January 1942, Lash Papers.

of “other authorities”: The Big Four were the United States, Britain, USSR, and China. They would have twenty-two allies: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Poland, South Africa, and Yugoslavia.

“gotten as far”: Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 16–20.

“was upstairs pacing”: Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 19. On the negotiations over Christmas week, see Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 444–69, Plesch, America, Hitler and the UN, 31–38, and James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom, 483–89.

“Here, where the”: Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 18n.

“Four fifths of the human”: Ibid., 20.

“prelude to a”: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins.

“group activities, especially”: My Day, 25 and 29 December 1941.

enjoy “physical exercise”: See also Mayris Chaney memoir (unpublished ms.), 57–58; 93–99.

“largely in the mountain”: My Day, 12 January 1942.

“most moving and”: My Day, 13 January 1942.

“information and propaganda”: Douglas, Autobiography, 116–23.

“To know me”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 651.

“ferried planes to”: My Day, 27 and 28 January 1942.

“freedom for every”: My Day, 4 February 1942.

“not quite moral”: My Day, 13 February 1942.

“I do not think”: TIR, 249–50.

“Eat it up”: My Day, 21 February 1942.

“I am not”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 651.

“it was a Declaration”: Ibid.

“small and very vocal”: ER broadcast, 22 February 1942. Tiny was also grateful to Eddie Cantor, who organized a group of performer friends in her defense, and for two significant columns: Sam Grafton, “I’d Rather Be Right,” New York Post, 11 February 1942; and John D. Barry, “Ways of the World,” 26 February 1942.

“more recognition” to: Daily Mirror, 21 February 1942.

hero Doris “Dorie Miller”: See Marcantonio, I Vote, 155–56. Miller had started out as the ship’s cook, had not been trained as a machine gunner. “I just pulled the trigger, and she worked fine,” he explained. In May 1942 he received the Navy Cross “for courage under fire.” On 24 November 1943 he died when his ship was torpedoed in the South Pacific.

“no law-abiding aliens”: ER, broadcast, 4 December 1941.

to “do something”: In 1940 Churchill had detained 74,000 “enemy aliens.” Britain subsequently released them since most were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, as well as antifascist allies, grateful and entirely loyal to Britain.

The author Louis Adamic: ER was subsequently shocked by Louis Adamic’s distortions in his 1946 book Dinner at the White House, which misrepresented her convictions and denounced Winston Churchill so vigorously, he “hotly resented it,” sued for libel—and won. TIR, 245. See esp. Robinson, By Order, 93–94 passim; and Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 749–60.

“photographed and examined”: My Day, 15 January 1942.

“to avoid mass internment”: Biddle, In Brief Authority, 207–11. ER agreed with Biddle’s determination.

by EO 9066: Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 209 and map; Smith, FDR, 494.

“I see absolutely no”: Milton Eisenhower, President Is Calling, 99–127, esp. 100.

“virtually all permanent”: Robinson, By Order, 108.

“thousands of small”: Eisenhower, President Is Calling, 99.

“behind barbed wire”: Morgenthau quoted ibid., 99.

“brooded about this”: Ibid., 125.

“for mass internments”: Ibid., 99, 125–26.

“prisoners of war”: My Day, 19 February 1942.

as “smoothly, quickly”: Eisenhower, President Is Calling, 95–125.

“I’m afraid no one”: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 24 March 1942.

“These are days”: My Day, 21 March 1942.

“secure fair prices”: Morgenthau’s conversation with FDR, 5 March 1942, in Smith, FDR, 552. See also Robinson, By Order, 75, 134–45, 176, 249.

$400 million in: After the war, Congress paid $37 million in reparations and in 1980 Ronald Reagan allocated an additional $20,000 for each surviving refugee.

“You know I am”: Memorandum of conversation, 15 May 1942, Morgenthau Papers, quoted in Gellman, Secret Affairs, 293. See also Blum, Price of Vision, 79–80.

“It did your mother”: Tommy to Anna, 1 April 1942, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 75.

“Many times I wanted”: Lash Diary, March 1942, Lash Papers.

everybody “chatted amiably”: Ibid.

“the linen and silver”: ER to Anna, 27 April, 7 May, 19 May 1942.

“very comfortable, there is”: Tommy to Anna.

“they don’t make things”: ER to Anna, 27 April, 7 May, 19 May 1942.

“the summer with us”: Tommy to Anna.

“to please your mother”: Tommy to Anna.

“Elliott dropped from”: ER to Anna, 27 April, 7 May, 19 May 1942.

“I shall return”: For the Pacific situation, and Douglas MacArthur’s longtime friendship with Quezon, independence leader and first president of the Philippines, see Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 205–9.

“Pa says Johnnie”: ER to Anna, 27 April, 7 May, 19 May 1942.

“people of the world”: “Race, Religion and Prejudice” for the New Republic, 11 May 1942.

“The pictures in”: ER and Frances Cooke Macgregor, This Is America.

“fleeing from oppression”: Ibid. It is unclear how ER came to write this book or the origins of her friendship with Macgregor, a pioneering photographer who also published Twentieth Century Indians. See ER to Anna, 7 May 1942.

“Freedom to live”: ER, “What We Are Fighting For,” American Magazine 134 (July 1942), 16-17, 60-62.

“in its truest sense”: Ibid.

“Some have spoken”: Henry Wallace, “The Price of Free World Victory,” speech to the Free World Association, New York, 8 May 1942.

“the Americanization of”: Henry Luce, “The American Century,” Life, February 17, 1941.

“a voluntary registration”: ER, press conference, 5 May 1942, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences.

“This memo is”: Wise to ER, 1 April 1942, and ER to Welles, in Welles, FDR’s Global Strategist, 226–27. See also Feingold, Politics of Rescue, 170–73; and Gilbert, Auschwitz and Allies, 21–24, 32–36.

“for fear of Arab”: Welles to ER, in Welles, FDR’s Global Strategist, 226–27.

“not allowed to marry”: ER, press conference, 5 and 14 May 1942, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 289–95.

Oveta Culp Hobby: Bill Hobby to author; Celia Morris and Sissy Farenthold to author.

“I’m rather tired”: ER to Anna, 19 May 1942.

“If only the war”: ER to Lape, 14 June 1942; TIR, 250–51; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 556–79.

“There is a great”: Tommy to Lape, 21 July 1942; see also letters from June and August 1942, esp. 24 August.

“thought through what”: TIR, 256–57.

“I am very glad”: ER, press conference, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences. See also “Hopkins Wedding,” New York Times, 5 July 1942.

“which meant she”: TIR, 257.

“best big party”: Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday, 220–21.

rigid “old dragons”: Mosel and Macy, Leading Lady.

“Harry Hopkins and”: Anna to ER, 27 July 1942.

“Vichy has agreed”: Varian Fry to ER, 27 August 1942, with 25 August report, ER box 853. On 22 July 2012, French president François Hollande commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the 16–17 July 1942 Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup. See also Hollande, “The Crime Committed in France by France,” New York Review of Books, 27 September 2012.

“The U.S. Committee”: ER to Norman Davis, 4 September 1942, box 1637.

“I was very sorry”: My Day, 5 September 1942.

Vichy France denied them: Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France, 261–70; Wyman, Paper Walls, 133–34. The State Department limited an effort to save 200 children who were already across the Pyrenees in Spain. Ultimately, 76,000 French Jews were deported to death camps; of them, only 2,500 returned.

“Naturally we should”: ER to FDR; FDR to ER.

“I am firmly”: ER speech, June 1942. Democracy in Action was supported by Wendell Willkie, Mary McLeod Bethune, Tallulah Bankhead, Herbert Agar, Lyman Beecher Stowe, Carl Van Doren, Daisy Harriman, and other notables, New York Times, 2 June 1942.

“the propaganda campaign”: Murray, Song.

“tried to evade us”: Ibid., 166–76.

“in a voice that”: Ibid.

“four or five times”: Harry Hopkins, memorandum, 1 July 1942.

“the Government of the US”: Murray’s open letter to FDR (draft), 17 July 1942, Pauli Murray Papers. The letter was signed by A. Philip Randolph; Frank Crosswaith, director the Negro Labor Committee and the New York Housing Authority; William Lloyd Imes, pastor of St. James Presbyterian Church in New York; Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Negro Women, Inc.; Layle Lane, vice-president of the American Federation of Teachers; Leon Ransom, acting dean of Howard University Law School; Pauli Murray, chair of the NAACP Student Conference; and Albert Hamilton of the Workers Defense League.

“If Japanese-Americans”: Murray to FDR.

“I wonder if it”: ER to Murray, 3 August 1942.

“Today what concerns”: My Day, 3 April 1942. In this column ER also cited Earl Brown’s article “American Negroes in the War.”

“danced around”: Lash Diary, 1 January 1942, Lash Papers.

“One cannot help”: My Day, 13 April 1942.

“You are right”: FDR to Ickes, 12 August 1942, Library of Congress. See William L. Neumann, “Roosevelt’s Options and Evasions in Foreign Policy, 1940–1945,” in Liggio and Martin, Watershed of Empire, 162–82; Fischer, Life of Gandhi, 360–65, 384ff; Gaddis Smith, 90; and Bhagavan, Peacemakers.

“met us at the door”: Murray, Song, 190–95.

an ISS conference: Ibid., and New York Times, 2 August 1942, to announce the ISS World Council, 2–5 September 1942.

“Fairness gives you”: For the Tuskegee Airmen in combat from 1943 to 1945, I am grateful to Dr. Roscoe Brown and Percy Heath for their memories, and to Dr. Brown for the Tuskegee Airmen history. See Redtails, the book and the film; and Henry Louis Gates, “3 Women ‘Red Tails’ Left Out,” Root, posted 25 January 2012; I am grateful to Louise Bernikow for this last reference.

pilot Jacqueline Cochran: My Day, 16 September 1942.

“We opened our”: My Day, 14 and 16 September 1942. On the Battle of Stalingrad, see Ehrenburg, War, and Werth, Russia at War, 441ff. The Soviet victory was achieved after almost two million deaths.

“FDR read. It is horrible.”: ER to FDR, 9 October 1942. The article was Paul Winterton, News Chronicle, London.

Chapter Eighteen: “Golden Footprints”: A Permanent Bond in War and Peace

persuaded Roland Hayes: Olson, Citizens of London, 289.

“across what has now”: My Day, 24 October 1942.

“by the queen”: TIR, 263.

“grew more and more nervous”: TIR, 263–64.

“We welcome you”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 659. See also Tania Long, New York Times, 24 October 1942.

“various women’s services”: Tommy to Lape, 7 May 1942.

“blocks upon blocks”: TIR, 261–65; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 658–61; My Day, 24–26 October 1942.

“in no way prepared”: My Day, 27 October 1942.

“with Sir Stafford”: ER to Lash, 29 October and 5 November 1942; Lash, Love Eleanor, 411–12; Tommy to Lape, 14 November and 21 December 1942.

“At the White House”: William Phillips Diary, May–September 1943, 253–73. See also Caroline D. Phillips Diary, 7 May 1942, 215–16; 23 June 1942, 225ff; 5 November 1942, 235; 6 January 1943–May 1943. I am grateful to Kathleen Dalton for these journals.

“she ran nine canteens”: Olson, Citizens of London, 107–9.

“it was a little too late”: TIR, 275.

“Mrs. Churchill is”: Ibid., 267.

“a Woman’s Land Army”: My Day, 4 December 1941.

talking “without faltering”: Tania Long, “Calmly Ignores First Genuine Air Raid Alarm,” New York Times, 27 October 1942.

“every type of army”: My Day, 29 October 1942.

“a delightful place”: TIR, 267–68; My Day, 27 and 28 October 1942.

“side by side”: TIR, 273–74.

“We used to look down”: Ibid.

“erotic frenzy of”: Olson, Citizens of London, 98–104.

“Randolph Churchill’s”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 662. Duncan Sandys, Diana Churchill’s husband, believed everybody knew of the affair. Hopkins told FDR, and he “got a big kick out of it.” Olson, Citizens of London, 103.

Norway’s Princess Martha: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 677–79.

“Rover has lost”: TIR, 268.

“young colored trainees”: My Day, 4 November 1942. See also My Day, 3 November 1942, Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 662–66, Christopher Paul Moore, Black Soldiers, 29–30.

“in some ways”: TIR, 269–71.

was “not . . . hilarious”: Ibid. See also My Day, 3 and 4 November 1942, ER to FDR in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 622, and Tommy to Lape, 14 November 1942.

“I liked her very much”: Swift, Roosevelts and Royals, 199–201.

“very much the same”: My Day, 5 November 1942. See also My Day, 6 and 8 November 1942.

for “country nurseries”: My Day, 9 November 1942.

“the British people”: My Day, 10 November 1942.

“We come among you”: Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, 364.

“we assured that”: My Day, 9 November 1942.

“Are we fighting”: Smith, Eisenhower in War, 239. See also Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 9–27 November, 2:261–67.

“felt betrayed and”: Plesch, America, Hitler and the UN, 78.

on the “futility”: My Day, 12 November 1942.

“a big gathering”: My Day, 14 November 1942; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 667–68. See also My Day, 11–13 November 1942.

“it was good to have a bath”: My Day, 14 November 1942; ER Diary, 11–12 November 1942.

“very old Allenswood”: My Day, 15–17 November 1942; TIR, 176.

“I suppose I look”: ER Diary, 13 November 1942, 79–83.

“a delightful evening”: My Day, 17 November 1942.

“You certainly have left”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 668.

“has done more”: Ibid.

“I don’t care how”: Ibid.

“surprised to see”: My Day, 19 November 1942.

“I really think Franklin”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 668.

only “buy refreshments”: Buckley, American Patriots, 260–61.

“fight for freedom”: Dwight Eisenhower in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 243–44.

“I do not want us”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 26 November 1942, 2:263–64.

“I have not become”: Winston Churchill, “The Bright Gleam of Victory,” speech, 9 November 1942, 2544–46.

“more than anyone”: Blum, Morgenthau Diaries; ER to Anna, 24 October 1942.

“was a most ruthless”: Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau, 495.

“something that affects”: Ibid., 497.

“We are opposed”: FDR, “Statement on Political Arrangements in North Africa,” 17 November 1942.

Bonnier de la Chapelle: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 6 December 1942, 2:269.

“none of us will ever forget”: My Day, 13 June 1942. Lidice was remembered in Germany and Czechoslovakia in June 2012, with panels and the film Lidice, In the Shadow of Memory by Alan Teller and Jerry Zbiral.

“resolved to do all”: Writers’ War Board introduction to Edna St. Vincent Millay, Murder of Lidice. See also Gilbert, Second World War, 332.

“1,000,000 Jews slain”: New York Times, 30 June 1942.

“This morning I saw”: My Day, 5 December 1942.

“a message transmitted”: My Day, 10 December 1942.

“Letters, reports, cables”: Varian Fry, “The Massacre of the Jews,” New Republic, 21 December 1942.

“any statement to make”: Plesch, America, Hitler and the UN, 104–6.

“we gathered at midnight”: My Day, 2 January 1943.

“To the person”: Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, 364–65.

“to the women”: My Day, 2 January 1943.

“I’m sure the kids”: ER to Anna, 21 December, 2 and 3 January 1943.

“I don’t know if I”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 416–18.

“motioned for me”: Eisenhower, President Is Calling, 143–44.

“the French empire”: Olson, Citizens of London, 221.

“Roosevelt was familiar”: Ibid., 217.

“the only man”: The day after Peyrouton’s appointment was announced, Henry Wallace phoned Milton Eisenhower for his views “and found him very much disturbed about it.” Wallace, Price of Vision, 167–68.

“mean to maintain”: Brands, Traitor, 700–2; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 274–98.

“to overcrowd the”: Grose, Israel, 123–33; Neil Smith, American Empire.

“a politician and a fanatic”: TIR, 281.

“97% of the political prisoners”: Lash, Love Eleanor, 423.

to “trouble spots”: TIR, 284.

“The world of war”: My Day, 1 April 1942. Mayling Soong Chiang’s letter, dated 12 January 1942, was delivered by China scholar Owen Lattimore. For Lattimore’s efforts in China see Robert Newman, The Loss of China, and BWC introduction to Lattimore, Ordeal by Slander.

“seemed so small”: TIR, 283; My Day, 1 and 15 April 1942.

“mingled fire and ice”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 676.

“sensitive to the global”: Ibid.

“I think she is able”: Tommy to Lape, 25 February 1943.

“a great feeling of pride”: My Day, 19 February 1943.

“I feel strongly”: ER, press conference, 24 February 1943, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 325–28.

“a sweet, gentle”: TIR, 283–84.

“extravagance and arrogance”: Tommy to Lape, 14 April, 26 April, and 6 May 1943.

“The President . . . is”: Tuchman, Stilwell and China, 352.

“F. said one”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 431.

“The imprisonment of”: George Bernard Shaw, “From a Message to the Tagore Society,” reprinted in Twice a Year, 26 February 1943, 60–64.

“Please read this”: FDR to Hopkins, 19 March 1943.

“To throw [the Congress activists]”: Lash, World of Love, 8.

was “very complimentary”: FDR to Phillips.

“Phillips returned to”: Breckinridge Long Diary, 13 May 1943.

“the great man thumped”: Caroline D. Phillips Diary, 6 January–17 March, 16 May, 24 May 1943, courtesy of Kathleen Dalton. On Churchill meeting, 241–63. See also Fischer, Life of Gandhi, 391–96.

“Loewe and Pollock”: Wallace, Price of Vision, 184. See also Lash, Love, Eleanor, 428.

“the loneliest man”: Daisy Suckley, 14 February 1943, in Geoffrey Ward, Closest Companion, 201.

“G-2 operatives had”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 450.

“what the hotel people thought”: Tommy to Lape, 14 and 26 April 1943; Lash, Love, Eleanor, 450–54.

a “gigantic conspiracy”: For the invasive file, zealously compiled on Joe, Trude, and ER, March 1943, see Lash, Love, Eleanor, 459–91.

“I spent a rather terrible”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 446.

“I’m sorry that I”: Ibid., 450.

“insist that Army intelligence”: Ibid., 451.

“isn’t playing straight”: Tommy to Lape.

FDR gave Hoover: On Hoover’s unlimited authority, unchecked wiretaps, and routine discrimination against Spanish Civil War veterans, see Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 104–15; Athan Theoharis, From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover, 59–65; and Tim Weiner, Enemies, 74–108.

“would make her appear”: Henry Wallace, oral history, 11 March 1944. Wallace noted that Hoover’s agents revealed “stupendous ignorance” and used as a “trust barometer” an individual’s view of ER and himself: “If they thought highly of [ER or me] that made them suspicious characters,” 3174.

leaflets saying “Freedom!”: Gilbert, Second World War, 412.

“There is great ferment”: Hermann Vinke, Short Life of Scholl, 15–118, 154–56.

“The world is deeply moved”: Scholl, White Rose, 148–59. See also Anne Nelson, Red Orchestra, 275–89; Shareen Brysac, Resisting Hitler.

a political warfare campaign: Paul Hagen, “How to Prepare Collaboration with the Anti-Nazi Underground Movement,” Twice a Year, X–XI, 1943, 102–9; Dorothy Norman, “Editor’s Statement,” 21.

“the mass memorial”: My Day, 14 April 1943.

“Do all we possibly can”: My Day, 16 April 1943.

the “moving, exciting”: Kurt Grossmann, August 1943 to Sophie Scholl. After the war Sophie Scholl’s sister, Inge Aicher-Scholl, visited New York, and on 29 April 1957 she and Grossmann had tea with ER at her apartment.

“Today is the 10th”: My Day, 11 May 1943.

was “highly educated”: Ibid.

“North African territory”: Breckenridge Long Diary 20 April, 22 April, 7 May, and 12 May 1943, 306–8; 29 January 1942, 246–47; and 23 June 1943, 316.

It accomplished nothing: For Bermuda, see Wyman, Abandonment, 104–23, 341–3. Wyman points out that Long appointed State Department advisers to Bermuda who opposed rescue efforts, led by R. Borden Reams—who had sought to silence publicity about exterminations, and opposed the 17 December 1942 UN war crimes declaration.

“flashed news of”: Gilbert, Second World War, 421, 428; Wyman, Abandonment, 123.

“Morale is disturbed”: Buckley, American Patriots, 288.

“the 99th was off”: Ibid., 282–94. See also Redtails. I am grateful to Dr. Roscoe Brown for his memories and for the Tuskegee Airmen Chronology.

“Lady Big Heart”: Ibid., 266–67, 272.

“hotbed of racial hatred”: Rowan, Dream Makers, 99–102 See also Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 675.

“Dearest Franklin, I’ve”: ER to FDR, 9 July 1943, family archive, box 16.

Frankie “is o.k.”: Lash, World of Love, 50–51.

“The State Department”: Max Lerner, “What About the Jews, FDR?” PM, 22 July 1943.

“I will be glad to say”: Wyman, Abandonment, 145.

“extermination list,” and: New York Times, August 1943.

“I do not know”: My Day, 13 August 1943.

“You know better”: Stella Reading to Churchill, 16 January 1943; ER to Lash and Trude Pratt, 25 July 1943; ER to Hick, 26 July 1943; Lash, World of Love 45–52.

Rescue the Perishing: Breitman, Official Secrets, 171ff; Feingold, Politics of Rescue, 209. See also Nicolson. Diaries and Letters, 35, 2:343; and Susan Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience.

“Like everybody else”: My Day, 27 July 1943.

“Death stares them”: My Day, 2 August 1943.

“was turning red”: Churchill to FDR, 5 August 1943; see also My Day, 27 July and 2 August 1943; BWC, Declassified Eisenhower, 21–24; Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 382–92.

“was kindness itself”: Soames, Daughter’s Tale, 247–48.

to eliminate “destitution”: My Day, 14 August 1943. See FDR, “Statement on the Second Anniversary of the Atlantic Charter,” 14 August 1943.

“the P was very sweet”: Tommy to Lape, 18 August 1943.

Chapter Nineteen: “The White Heron of the One Flight”: Travels in the Pacific and Beyond

“I hate to see”: Tommy to Lape, n.d., postmarked 18 August, 23 August, and 25 August 1943, BWC Arizona Collection.

“representative of the”: My Day, 28 August 1943.

“was a wonderful”: TIR, 303.

“is seen but once”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 685.

“as bad as bullets”: ER to Hick, 1 September 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 62.

“The people here”: Ibid., 61–62.

“did a magnificent job”: Durno to Tommy, n.d., in Lash, World of Love, 62–63.

her “first encounter”: TIR, 299.

“seemed to be no”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 683.

“Last night four men”: ER to Tommy, n.d., in Lash, World of Love, 59.

“dreaded” ER’s arrival: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 684.

“When I say”: Ibid., 685.

“she wanted to see”: Robert M. White, “A Mother at the Front,” Christian Advocate, 30 December 1943, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 687.

“When she came”: Calvin Thompson in Fleming, Our Eleanor, 101.

“The natives of Guadalcanal”: My Day, 23 September 1943. ER’s daughter Anna and Hick considered this column “one of the best you have ever written.” Hick to ER, 24 September 1943; ER to Anna, 27 September 1943. See also My Day, 1, 3, 13, 18, and 24 September 1943.

“I shall have”: TIR, 309.

“How I hated”: ER to Joe, 18 September 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 71.

“it was impossible”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 691.

“I was ashamed”: Ibid.

“hospitals and cemeteries”: Hick to ER, 24 September 1943.

“Men not chief”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 691.

“I talked to her”: Lash, World of Love, 74.

“seemed pretty feeble”: Ibid.; Lape to ER, Tommy to Hick, 22 September 1943.

who was “happy”: ER to Lash, 22 September 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 74.

“Pa asked me more”: ER to Anna, 27 September 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 77.

“the onset of a”: Lash, World of Love, 75.

“the men had been mentally”: TIR, 311.

“I know that the Army”: FDR to Henry Stimson and Frank Knox, 20 September 1943, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1443.

“some Rabbis sobbed”: Wyman, Abandonment, 148–53.

“In a democracy”: Heschel, to his classes, which I attended, 1961–62.

his attitude “perfect”: My Day, 9 October 1943.

message of encouragement: ER’s broadcasts with Peter Bergson for OWI, 18 and 29 October 1943, in Wyman, Race Against Death, 139.

by Eleanor Rathbone: See Pedersen, Rathbone and Conscience; Kushner, Holocaust and Liberal Imagination. Britain’s Tony Kushner dedicated his book to Eleanor Rathbone, who knew, cared, and acted.

“The Boss was very”: Trude to Lash, 9 October 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 80–81.

“As long as she”: Trude to Joe, 9, 10, 11 October 1943, ibid., 81.

and “brushed aside”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 8 and 11 October 1943, in Ward, Closest Companion, 248–49.

ER’s “terrible sorrow”: Lash to Trude, 28 October 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 81.

“find out whether”: Henry Wallace Diary, 30 September 1943, 21 October 1943. FDRM, IV, 1391, 1530f.

“waste spaces for”: For Bowman’s 1938–1940 reports, see Cook, ER, 2:560–62. For the M Project, see Smith, American Empire, 301ff.

“from the Mediterranean”: Wallace, Price of Vision, 276–77.

The first lady was impressed: Ibid., 210–11; at this meeting Churchill spoke about the “development of trans-Jordania for the Jews, which Wallace agreed with. ER to Lash on Baruch, in Lash, World of Love, 88–90; Baruch and King Leopold, Baruch, Public Years, 2:274; Baruch to Wallace, Price of Vision, 279.

“questions beyond her”: Smith, American Empire, 305–6.

akin to the Nazis’: Ibid., 306. See also Wallace, Price of Vision, 263–65, 269–70.

the President told: FDR, 22 May 1943, Wallace Diary.

“some Zionist ladies”: ER to Lash, 16 November 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 91.

“to gas chambers, probably”: Henry Morgenthau.

“The British say”: Morgenthau Diaries, 519–29; Wyman, Abandonment, 178–85.

was “very happy”: Trude to Lash, in Lash, World of Love, 88.

“Today in the East Room”: My Day, 10 November 1943.

“something great may”: ER to Lash, 9 November 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 88.

that two women: My Day, 4 December 1943. See also Morgenthau, Mostly Morgenthaus, 225.

all “abominable deeds”: Gilbert, Auschwitz and Allies, 160.

“commission of diplomatic”: Medoff, Blowing the Whistle, 56.

“Bestial and abominable”: New York Times, 5 November 1943; Wyman, Abandonment, 154–55; ER to Bergson, 139; Morgenthau, Mostly Morgenthaus, 323; Ben Hecht, Child of the Century, 576–82. Although his chronology is inaccurate for “My Uncle Abraham,” his details about the Bergson group, Romania’s offer, and related issues are stunning, 521ff. I am grateful to Mim Kelber for this book.

“I’ve been amused”: ER to FDR; Weinberg, World at Arms, 493; Gilbert, History of Twentieth Century, 521–22.

to be “sidelined”: Tommy to Lape, ca. October 1943, BWC Arizona Collection.

FDR became “furious”: ER to Lash, in Lash, World of Love, 101.

“had a liking”: My Day, 24 November 1943.

“I find it hard”: ER to Lape, 19 November 1943; BWC Arizona Collection.

because of political “realities”: For the work of the American Foundation, see Cook, ER, vols. 1–2; and for Lape and Elizabeth Read’s influence on ER, see 11, 97, 294–95, and passim. On Esther Lape, see Susan Ware, ed., Notable American Women (2004 ed.).

“Life without Lizzie”: ER to Lape, 14 December 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 100.

“I am sorry”: ER to FDR, 5 December 1943.

“Day by day news”: My Day, 8 December 1943.

“Those four powers”: FDR, Christmas Eve Fireside Chat on Teheran and Cairo Conferences, 24 December 1943, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers, 12:558ff.

“Though two of our”: My Day, 27 December 1943.

“I guess one”: ER to Lash, 25 December 1943, in Lash, World of Love, 104.

“I want to tell you”: ER to Lash and Trude Pratt, ca. 1 January 1944, ibid., 105.

“There is one thing”: ER to Lash, 21 January 1944, ibid., 116.

“the most radical speech”: Burns and Dunn, Three Roosevelts, 483; cf. Brands, Traitor to His Class, 733–34.

“We have come to a clear”: FDR, State of the Union address, 11 January 1944, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers, 13:41–42.

“WAVES at their”: My Day, 13 January 1944.

“complete, unified social”: My Day, 19 January 1944.

“social insurance measures”: My Day, 20 January 1944.

“the colored residents”: My Day, 5 January 1944. See also My Day, 22 and 25 January 1944.

“wipe out illiteracy”: My Day, 24 January 1944.

“to the limit of their”: My Day, 14 January 1944. See ER to Lash, 18 January 1944, World of Love, 111.

copy two cables: Gruber, Haven, 16–19. See also Medoff, Blowing the Whistle.

“One of the greatest”: Gruber, Haven, 24.

“the tragic bottleneck”: Ibid., 25–26.

“failed to use”: Ibid., 24.

president “listened attentively”: See Medoff, Blowing the Whistle, for the fullest account.

“placed in the same”: Ibid.

draft for a WRB “wonderful”: Ibid.

“Those terrible eighteen”: Morgenthau Diaries, 531–33; Morgenthau, Mostly Morgenthaus, 321–35.

“immediate rescue and”: FDR executive order, 22 January 1944.

“was withdrawn from”: Gruber, Haven, 26–27.

Raoul Wallenberg, a young: See Marton, Wallenberg; Wallenberg, Letters and Dispatches.

“none is too many”: Troper and Abella, None Is Too Many.

FDR was “cordial”: Morgenthau, Mostly Morgenthaus, 333.

“Anna’s presence was”: TIR, 319.

“be conquered by”: ER’s initial response to Anna as told to Ward, Closest Companion, 285.

ER graciously “greeted”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 30 January, 273.

he had surgery: Ibid., 2 February, 275–76; My Day, 3 February 1944.

“not for the needy”: ER to Lash, ca. 23 February 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 112.

a “fighting liberal”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 695.

she said, “Now, Franklin”: Anna, in Asbell, 177.

“In continuing to”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 693.

“What fun our”: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, ca. 6 March 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 113.

“Trude and I talk”: ER to Lash, 27 April 1944, ibid., 120.

“felt they were in”: TIR, 319.

“a real weariness”: Tommy to Lape, ca. 14 March 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 112–13.

“Many happy returns”: ER to FDR, 10, 13 and 17 March 1944. ER reflected on her trip in My Day, daily from 7 March to 7 April 1944.

“flying from Recife”: ER to FDR, 17 March 1944.

“cheered the men”: “First Lady Visits Brazil,” New York Times, 16, 17 March 1944.

“The trip did”: Tommy to Lape, ca. April 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 115.

diagnosed with “hypertension”: Lash, World of Love, 114–116.

“Hobcaw was just”: TIR, 328.

“knew that Franklin”: Ibid., 329. ER’s visit 24 April 1944, to Lash, World of Love, 118–19; My Day, 27 April 1944. See also Brockington, Plantation, 95; Miller, Baroness of Hobcaw, 134–41. Photographs of FDR without his blemish, thought by many a melanoma, occur after his Hobcaw visit. See Harry S. Goldsmith, MD, “Unanswered Mysteries in the Death of FDR,” Surgeon’s Library (December 1979), 899–908; Lomazow and Fettmann, FDR’s Deadly Secret. Thanks to ELR, MD, and MDWL. To date there is no evidence of FDR’s surgery at Hobcaw, although James MacGregor Burns refers to a rumor that circulated “even in the White House” that FDR had had a “secret operation at Hobcaw.” Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 507.

“I am more worried”: Daisy Suckley Diary, April 1944, 292; 4–9 May 1944, 294–98; 26 March 1944 at Hyde Park, 287–88.

“shorten the war”: See Y. Aleksandra Bennett, introduction to Brittain, One Voice; Brittain, Testament of Experience; Brittain, Seed of Chaos, 324–36.

“the callous cruelty”: Brittain, Seed of Chaos, 324–36.

“their facts are wrong!”: “Mass Bombing Foes Rebuked by Roosevelt,” Tribune, 26 April 1944; “FDR Defends Mass Raids,” New Chronicle, 27 April 1944.

“I must really live”: ER to Lash, 19 May 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 118.

“is so fine”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 19–24 May 1944, 300–3.

“very good orientals”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 19–24 May 1944, 300–3.

“was composed of”: My Day, 23 May 1944.

“more serious subjects”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 19–24 May 1944, 300–3.

“Was this a war”: My Day, 30 May 1944. ER’s last words here suggest that she had not dismissed Seed of Chaos as merely “sentimental nonsense” as was reported.

“the foundations of”: FDR, “Fireside Chat on the Fall of Rome,” 5 June 1944, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers, 13:148, 151.

“Soldiers, sailors, and”: Eisenhower, 6 June 1944.

“went off with some”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 7–8 June 1944, 309–10.

“So at last”: My Day, 7 June 1944.

“Last night, when I”: FDR, D-Day prayer.

“a good prayer”: My Day, 8 June 1944.

“I hope that many people”: Ibid.

Oswego, New York: Gruber, Haven, 117ff.

“ER is trying to force”: Morgenthau Diaries, 6 July 1944; other conversation materials, thanks to Bill Hannegan. On Wallace, Pendergast, and Truman, see Wallace, Price of Vision, 395.

“Labor is firmly”: Trude to Lash, 14 July 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 129.

“The future belongs”: Wallace, Price of Vision, “Recollections of the Chicago 1944 Convention,” 367–74.

“but F says”: ER to Lash, ca. 16 July 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 129. As requested, ER did not publish the column until 24 July.

“Hannegan came to”: ER to Hick, 16 July 1944, ibid., 130.

“I don’t know that”: ER to Trude, 16 July 1944, ibid., 129.

“I am no politician”: ER to Lash, 16 July 1944, ibid., 130.

“shot and killed”: Crisis editorial, August 1944, 249.

“There has been”: ER to Lash, 18 July 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 131.

“dancing in a little”: My Day, 28 July 1944.

“has spoiled me”: ER to Anna, 16 July 1944, Halsted Papers.

“Wallace did not lose”: Crisis editorial, August 1944, 249.

promised “progressive leadership”: FDR, address broadcast from a naval base on the Pacific Coast to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 20 July 1944, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers, 13:204–5. See also Wallace’s detailed convention notes, Price of Vision, 360–81, 413–14.

note “Dearest Babs”: FDR to ER, 21 July 1944, FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1525. ER to FDR, 30 July 44, family archive, box 16, mentions FDR’s colly-wobbles, with no indication it might have been a heart attack. ER to Lash, 29 July, 132–33.

“There is integrity”: My Day, 24 July 1944.

“who think first of”: My Day, 10 August 1944.

“year of extra training”: My Day, 24 August 1944.

“was sad, but”: ER to FDR, 6 August 1944. Missy died on 2 August.

“valiant and important”: My Day, 4 August 1944.

“subject the nations”: Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 516.

“The ladies have”: ER to Trude, 12 September 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 137.

“It seems such a waste”: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, ibid., 137.

“particularly along the”: TIR, 335–36.

“I don’t know what”: ER to Hick, in Lash, n.d., World of Love, 138.

“a Russian propaganda”: BBC, rejected Werth’s “Reports from Lublin.”

await “further corroboration”: New York Herald Tribune. Werth, Russia at War, 884–899, esp. 890, 898; Gilbert, Second World War, 559. One reason for disbelief was that the Nazis destroyed and buried Sobibor and Treblinka before the Soviets arrived. See Manchester, Last Lion, 2:873.

“the French people”: My Day, 26 August 1944.

“through the woods”: ER to Lash, ca. 16 September 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 139.

“My time slips”: ER to Lash, 18 September 1944, ibid., 139–40.

“rather fun really”: Clementine Churchill’s “high praise,” Manchester, Last Lion, 2:876.

prime minister “twitted”: My Day, 14 September 1944. See also ER to Lash, 18 September 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 140.

Leahy was riveted: Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 521.

“We can establish”: ER’s now much-quoted sentiment on love, with gratitude to Frazer Doughtery for his New Year message, 2014.

“direct aid of”: Bhagavan, Peacemakers, 23–25, 30–31ff. For the Bengal famine and Churchill’s “will to punish” the people of India, see Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War. Mukerjee revised the death toll to over five million. See also John Newsinger, “Britain’s Noxious History of Imperial Warfare,” Global Research, 19 November 2013.

divided the Balkans: Breckinridge Long, Diary, 6 June 1944, 352; William Neumann, After Victory: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and the Making of the Peace, 130; Manchester, Last Lion, 2:877–82. The Moscow meetings lasted until 27 October to deal with Poland, and Stalin’s desire to recognize Charles de Gaulle, which FDR agreed to do, eventually.

“Half my mail”: ER to Lash, 14 September 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 139.

“colored WACs are going”: ER to Oveta Culp Hobby, 4 May 1944.

colored WACs assigned: Colonel William Scobey, executive assistant to McCloy, secretary of war, to ER, 24 June 1943. Scobey reported Hobby’s decision that assignments to Camp Shelby “will not be made” and other locations would be investigated; “Colonel Hobby shares Mrs. Roosevelt’s feeling concerning overseas service for Negro members of our Corps.” But we send only “personnel requisitioned by the theatre commanders” and no Negro WAC “has been requisitioned.” See ER to Alston, 8 November 1944.

“Why do Northern Negro”: ER to McCloy, December 1944.

“fit only to do”: Moore, Fighting for America, 292.

“Our people are greatly”: Lillian Jackson to ER, 24 March 1945.

of “rampant discrimination”: See Moore, Fighting for America, 201–3; James, Fighting Racism, 321–23.

“special care in”: ER to James Forrestal, 8 April 1945, with NAACP pamphlet “Mutiny”; Forrestal to ER, 12 April 1945.

“Partitions have been”: My Day, 22 September 1944.

“character which has”: Ibid.

“Storm in the Shelter”: Gruber, Haven, 199.

“your world-known humanity”: Ernst Wolff to ER, 1 February 1945, enclosing “Storm in the Shelter”; Morgenthau to ER, 20 February 1945; Morgenthau to Wolff, 19 February 1945; Elinor Morganthau and sleepless nights, 217.

“to culminate in”: FBI report on “Refugees At Oswego,” S. S. Allen to D. M. Ladd, 27 February 1945.

“admissible under the”: Gruber, Haven, 238–45.

“the Old World’s”: Wendell Willkie, “Cowardice at Chicago,” and “Citizens of Negro Blood,” Collier’s, 7 September and 7 October 1944; Neal, Dark Horse, 315–23. See also Muriel Rukeyser, One Life.

his “great leadership”: My Day, 12 October 1944.

“You are still my”: Hick to ER, ca. 11 October 1944, ibid., 142.

“the ornamental office”: Lash to ER, 1 October 1944, ibid., 143.

“if I don’t deserve”: ER to Lash, 22 October 1944, ibid., 144.

of “re-homing people”: Lady Reading to ER, 10 October 1944, box 1739; ER replied to this letter and to Lady Reading’s cable of congratulations on FDR’s election on 18 November 1944. For V1s and V2s see Olson, Citizens of London, 323–26.

“Republican leaders have”: FDR, Address at Dinner of International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, . . . Washington, DC, 23 September 1944, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers, 13:290.

“The right to vote”: FDR, radio address from the White House, 5 October 1944, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers, 13:317.

vigorously slammed “propagandists”: Ibid.

to “this land”: FDR, campaign address at Soldiers’ Field, Chicago, 28 October 1944, ibid., 13:3670.

“change into dry”: TIR, 337.

“I was really worried”: TIR, 337.

“prudence” in riding: Churchill to FDR, 23 October 1944.

“does not hurt”: FDR to Churchill, 24 October 1944.

“very peaceful and”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 7 November 1944, 140–41.

“the leaves crackling”: Lash, World of Love, 145–47.

“an unusually nice”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 7 November 1944, 140–41.

the president toasted: Lash, World of Love, 146.

“winning the war”: ER, press conference, 9 November 1944, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences. See also C. B. Powell, “FDR or Governor Dewey,” Crisis, October 1944, 315.

wanted all “pussyfooting”: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 831; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 712, 713.

“had their lunch”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 23–27 November, 346–47.

“I received yesterday”: My Day, 4 December 1944. John Groth, ER’s source, was a correspondent and artist for the Chicago Sun. “The Camp of Disappearing Men” was based on reports from the Polish underground labor movement; the pamphlet may have been in part a product of the Office of War Information director Elmer Davis. It was published before the Soviets liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 and was distributed by the CIO War Relief Committee. It has been digitized by the University of Michigan.

“It seems to me”: ER to FDR, 4 December 1944, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 713–14. ER’s worries about FDR’s State Department shared by Wallace, see Diary, 11–20 December 1944, 400–9, and Waldo Heinrichs on Joseph Grew.

and “treacherous aggressors”: For Greece, see Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, 23–35, 322–23; Papandreou, Nightmare in Athens, 20–26. For Sforza and Italy, see Cook, Eisenhower, 21–37.

“The composition of”: Stettinius, statement, 5 December 1944.

“I like the statement”: ER to FDR, 6 December 1944, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 714.

be a “pest”: Lash, World of Love, 159.

“suspicious of this”: ER to Trude, 5 December 1944, in Lash, World of Love, 159.

“wrote a column”: ER to FDR, 6 December 1944, ibid.

ER’s phone calls: Daisy Suckley Diary, 28 November–17 December 1944, 347–66.

“You will . . . I believe”: FDR, Fourth Inaugural Address, 20 January 1945, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers, 13:523.

“evening when we”: ER to Lash, 11 January 1945, in Lash, World of Love, 164.

“I am tired”: ER to Lash, 21 January 1945, ibid., 165.

“Franklin felt that”: ER to Florence Willert, 8 February 1945.

“territorial trusteeships and”: Stettinius, Roosevelt and Russians, 236–39.

“I have never met”: FDR’s visit with King Ibn Sand in Colonel William Eddy’s memo of conversations aboard USS Quincy. The Lebanon-born U.S. minister to Saudi Arabia, Marine Colonel William Eddy, translated and documented these meetings; see Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud. For Eddy’s memo of conversations and related FRUS documents and State Department Bulletin, 25 February 1945, I am grateful to Karl Meyer. FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 1–9.

“his one complete failure”: ER to Lash, 28 February 1945, in Lash, World of Love, 172; also Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 717. See also Thomas W. Lippman, “The Day FDR Met Saudi Arabia’s Ibn Saud,” The Link (Ameu.org), April–May 2005, 1–12; and Thomas Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia.

“Many people in”: My Day, 26 February 1945. For changes in Middle East policy, see Catherwood, Churchill’s Folly, and Fromkin, Peace to End All Peace.

great “personal loss”: TIR, 342.

“Franklin feels his”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 27 February 1945, 397.

“I come from the”: FDR, address to Congress on Yalta, 1 March 1945, in Rosenman, FDR Public Papers.

“He says he felt”: ER to Lash, 28 February 1945, in Lash, World of Love, 172.

“thin and worn and gray”: Margaret Fayerweather Diary, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 718–19.

“I found him less”: TIR, 342–43.

“they would not”: Ibid.

“settled in Warm”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 719.

“great meeting at”: ER press conference, 2 April 1945, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 331–32.

“We are now talking”: Ibid.

“whether colonial empires”: Bhagavan, Peacemakers, 34–41, 49–53. See also Brittain, Envoy Extraordinary; Pandit, Scope of Happiness.

“so as not to stir”: ER to Stettinius, 4 April 1945, in Bhagavan, Peacemakers.

“Dearest Franklin, I”: ER to FDR, 8 April 1945.

“most interesting speeches”: My Day, 11 April 1945.

was “terribly shocked”: Morgenthau Diaries, 11 April 1945, 1499–1503, with gratitude to Bill Hannegan.

“real knowledge” of: ER, press conference, 12 April 1945, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 334–36.

“in a sea of misery”: For U.S.-U.K. reaction to the camps, 11–15 April, and Eisenhower’s tour, see Hitchcock, Bitter Road, 295ff, and Cook, Eisenhower, 33–35. The night Eisenhower learned that FDR was dead, he resolved to honor all agreements made at Yalta. For ER’s tour of Zeilsheim, see the epilogue.

FDR had “fainted”: TIR, 343–44.

“the President had slipped”: Laura (Polly) Delano’s call.

“pour a generous jigger”: ER II, With Love, 84–85; ER II to author.

“tall and stately”: West, Upstairs, 55–56.

“waited in our office”: West, Upstairs. In TIR, ER says she asked to have the casket opened “so that I could go in alone to put a few flowers in it,” 345.

“Today this nation”: FDR’s final speech, ms.

“did not tell anyone”: Lash, World of Love, 183.

“I know you”: ER to Lash, 16 April 1945, ibid., 188.

“loved him more deeply”: Daisy Suckley Diary, 420–21.

“I don’t think she ever”: Lape to Lash and many others.

“You have an understanding”: ER to Lape, 25 April 1945, in Lash, World of Love, 190. See Eleanor and Franklin, 720–23; World of Love, 183–90; Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 601–6.

“All human beings have”: TIR, 349.

“The story is over”: Lash, World of Love, 191.

Epilogue: ER’s Legacy: Human Rights

“Like countless other women”: ER, You Learn by Living, 55.

“pervades the world”: My Day, 17 April 1945.

“a stroke of genius”: Black, ed., ER Papers, 1:16.

“Nothing would induce me”: My Day, 19 April 1945.

“Because I was the wife”: My Day, 19 April 1945.

“I’m glad you like”: ER to Trude Lash, n.d., in Lash, World of Love, 192.

“The Trumans have”: ER to Hick, 19 April 1945, ibid., 189.

“If we do not”: My Day, 30 April 1945.

“I listened to your”: ER to Truman, 8 May 1945, in Neal, Eleanor and Harry, 25.

“the whole family”: Truman to ER, 10 May 1945, ibid., 26–27.

“Your experience with”: ER to Truman, 14 May 1945, ibid., 28–29.

“The day the atomic”: My Day, 12 October 1945.

“We have an obligation”: ER to Truman, 20 November 1945, in Neal, Eleanor and Harry, 45–46.

felt “very inadequate”: ER to Anna, 20 December 1945, in Lash, World of Love, 207.

“first UN team”: New York Times, 20 December 1945.

“War must be abolished”: Carrie Chapman Catt to ER, 28 December 1945, box 4561, ER Papers.

“the desires of American Negroes”: Walter White, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois to ER, December 1945, box 4561.

“The important thing”: Lape to ER, December 1945, box 4562, ER papers.

“said in his rather deep”: ER, On My Own, 41–42.

her words were quoted: New York Times, 8 January 1946; FRUS, I, 1947, 304ff; FRUS, I, 1948, 278–79.

“I like the Vandenbergs”: ER, London Diary, 2, 6, 7, and 27 January 1946.

“is smart & hard”: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 20 January 1946, in Lash, World of Love, 214. ER told Hick, “Byrnes is a curious study, when I come home I’m going to give you thumbnail sketches of my playmates that I don’t dare put on paper.” ER to Hick, 22 January 1946, in Lash, World of Love, 215–16.

“I said many things”: ER, London Diary, 16 January 1946.

“The papers should not”: Ibid.

“At the Assembly”: Ibid.

“Yesterday was the”: ER, London Diary, 31 January 1946.

“The afternoon session”: Ibid., 23 January 1946.

“a pleasant dinner”: Ibid., in Black, ed., ER Papers, 1:221. In 1947, when Brittain was on a ten-week tour of the United States, ER invited her to Hyde Park. Again, we have no details of their discussions, although Brittain noted that ER was “now informal and unintimidating.” Brittain, Testament of Experience, 407. A lifelong member of WILPF, she subsequently wrote a biography of its illustrious British founder Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, whose favorite expression after the war was “It’s women for women now!” See Brittain, Pethick-Lawrence; Brittain, Envoy Extraordinary; and Muriel Mellown, “Vera Brittain: Feminist in a New Age (1896–1970),” in Spender, ed., Feminist Theorists, 313–44.

“It is a liberal”: Ibid.

“Ukrainians, Belorussians”: ER, On My Own, 49–50.

“all we could”: ER, On My Own, 49–53.

“So—against odds”: ER, London Diary, 6 and 8 February 1946.

“had the pleasure”: My Day, 11 and 13 February 1946.

“at the end”: ER, London Diary, 29 January 1946 and passim.

“fill our souls”: My Day, 16 February 1946. See also On My Own, 55–56; Black, ER Papers, 1:252–59.

“Poles and Balts”: My Day, 16 February 1946.

the “ultimate answer?”: My Day, 16 February 1946.

“the structure and functions”: Glendon, A World Made New, 30.

“From Stettin in the Baltic”: Churchill, Iron Curtain speech, 5 March 1946. See YouTube, with dramatic details. Also see My Day, 7 March 1946. Margaret Truman, who wrote her father’s speech, was not prepared for Churchill’s bellicose declaration, although the prime minister had sent the president an “Iron Curtain” telegram on 12 May 1945. See Churchill, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–65, 311–314.

“Instead of running”: My Day, 7 March 1946.

“men of all parties”: Arthur Murray to ER, 19 March 1946, in Black, ER Papers, 1:279–281. ER to Murray, 13 April 1946.

the committee that: Mary Ann Glendon details the work and vision of the key members of the team that drafted and lobbied for the Declaration from its first meetings in January 1947 at Lake Success, New York, to its final meetings in Geneva and Paris. Glendon, A World Made New, 32–35, 53. The contributions of John Humphrey, Charles Malik, P. C. Chang, and René Cassin were mostly forgotten and uncelebrated until Glendon’s book; see 126–30.

the words “all men”: Ibid., 90–92. For Hansa Mehta’s role, see Bhagavan, Peacemakers, 137–46.

“All human beings”: UN Declaration of Human Rights.

a “first step”: Glendon, A World Made New, 139.

Hansa Mehta’s suggestion: Bhagavan, Peacemakers, 137–43, 204.

“reached a turning point”: Truman, “Address Before the NAACP,” 29 June 1947, in Geselbracht, Legacy of Truman, 152–55. For 29 June 1947, see Neal, Eleanor and Harry, 88, 105–6.

“blot of lynching”: Geselbracht, Legacy of Truman, 96.

“To Secure These Rights”: ER to Truman, 23 December 1947, in Neal, Eleanor and Harry, 117; New York Times, 19 June, 29 June, and 30 June 1947.

“We Charge Genocide”: Black, ER Papers, 2:855–58.

“role will embarrass”: Glendon, A World Made New, 195.

“harsh and naïve”: Ibid., 199. Republican Ambassador to the Holy See under George W. Bush, Prof. Glendon’s views are tempered and complex.

“reports and studies”: The UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948, and it entered into force on 8 September 1951. The United States did not ratify the Genocide Convention until 1988. Browne-Marshall, Race, Law, and American Society, 234–35.

she traveled across: See ER, India and the Awakening East.

“Where, after all”: ER to United Nations, 27 March 1958, in Black, ER Papers. In 1980 the human rights case Filártiga v Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980), brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, globalized the Universal Declaration. For ER’s human rights legacy, see Beth Van Schaack, “The Anatomy of Torture: A Documentary History of Filártiga v Peña-Irala” (review), Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 4 (November 2008). See also Bert Lockwood, ed., Women’s Rights: A Human Rights Reader; Wendy Chavkin and Ellen Chesler, Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality, and Women; and Amnesty International, Outright, Human Rights Watch.

“our great struggle”: ER, Congressional Record, 19 April 1950, A-2802.

“leader among the American”: My Day, 3 May 1952.

“save us” from: My Day, 22 May 1952.

“He wanted to find”: My Day, 3 September 1949.

“does not permit”: ER, “Some of My Best Friends Are Negro,” Ebony, February 1953, in Black, What I Hope to Leave Behind, 171–78.

“dedicated to the fight”: For ER and Anne Braden, see Catherine Fosl, Subversive Southerner. Anne Braden became editor of The Southern Patriot in 1957; her memoir, The Wall Between, which ER hoped everyone would read, was published in 1958.

“segregation were practiced”: My Day, 17 October 1952. See also Black, ER Papers, 2:956–59.

“the white race”: ER’s campaign addresses for Adlai Stevenson, Detroit, 3 October 1956, in Black, What I Hope to Leave Behind, 441–42; see esp. Charleston, WV, 1 October 1956, 437–39.

“inaugurated the American”: Belafonte, My Song, 188.

“Well, little man”: Ibid., 189.

“I am sure”: Ibid., 191–92.

“to move in”: Ibid., 192.

“race . . . the greatest”: Ibid., 188–197.

“freedom and democracy”: My Day, 3 November 1961.

“It has always seemed”: My Day, 14 September 1962.

With “proper education”: ER, Tomorrow Is Now.

“The influence you exert”: Ibid.

“Her life was crowded”: Adlai Stevenson, 9 and 17 November 1962, Memorial Address at the UN and St. John the Divine.