Franklin Roosevelt

Review: Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After

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eleanor-roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, Blanche Wiesen Cook. New York: Viking, 2016.

Summary: The third and final volume in this biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, covering her advocacy, friendships, and relationship with Franklin during the war years, and briefly, her accomplishments after his death.

I had often heard that Eleanor Roosevelt did as much to redefine the role of First Lady as her husband did the Presidency, perhaps more. This work, volume three of a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt (who the author usually refers to as “ER”) helped me understand that she did far more than that, in the war years and after.

She was a prodigious writer and her daily columns often and weekly broadcasts sometimes had more influence than her husband’s speeches. She represented her husband not only at various domestic functions but in a number of overseas trips including extensive journeys in the southwest Pacific (at some personal risk) and Latin America. And she hosted countless functions at the White House, and their Hyde Park residence, including a visit from the royal family. Her address to the 1940 Democratic Convention may have saved the day for Roosevelt in that election.

Perhaps what stood out most was her advocacy–progressive even by today’s standards. Most striking was her tireless advocacy for Jewish refugees before, during, and after the war. She was among the earliest to recognize the impending holocaust and struggled against a resistant State Department as well as foreign governments to rescue refugees attempting to flee the Nazi threat. And sadly, as in so many instances since, including the genocide in Aleppo, the U.S. as well as other powers turned away from the most vulnerable. Yet there were many who owed their lives to her.

Cook chronicles her efforts to end the oppression against blacks, including her support for the Tuskegee airmen, trained but sitting at a U.S. air base.  She fought for voting rights against the poll taxes, and even late in life, was one of the foremost voices urging college youth to go south in the early sixties to support voting registration. She argued for social and economic assistance for those in Depression-era poverty, including a basic level of nutrition, housing, and health care, recognizing that deficiencies in these area hampered employment, as well as the fitness of young men to serve in the approaching conflict. Later on, she would propose support for college education, incorporated into the G.I. Bill.

Because she fought so many progressive causes, she often was criticized (and even monitored by the FBI) for ties with Communists. She was actually vociferously anti-Communist in her statements but her support for groups like the American Youth Congress made her suspect. Her visibility made her a target for attacks on her husband’s policies.

The book does a good job exploring her complex relationship with Franklin. She knew of his affairs, including that with Lucy Mercer Rutherford (who was with him when he died), and came to terms with this. He both valued her principled advocacy and was annoyed by it, and sometimes set limits on what she could do for political reasons. She constantly pushed her ideas, and pushed him, and Cook sees some of her language and ideas in his best speeches. Some of the complexity relates as well with the intimate friendships ER had with Lorena Hickock, and the circle of women who were close friends, several including Hickock known to be lesbian . How intimate is not clear here (I appreciated the biographer’s restraint), but plainly her closeness to Hickock, Tommy (her secretary) and others sustained her in the times when for personal or political reasons Franklin was distant.

The bulk of the book (540 pages) concern the war years up to the death of Franklin. Only the last 30 pages discuss the last seventeen years of her life, although not her death. Most of this is focused around her role in the first U.S. delegation to the newly formed United Nations, and to her lead role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that may be as significant as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence in enunciating basic human freedoms. Articles 1 to 22 in this declaration concern personal and political freedoms that were finally ratified in Congress in 1992. The social and economic freedoms of Articles 23 to 30 never have been. Even today, then, the document stands as a challenge to all governments, including that of the United States, of the high ideals of human freedom, rarely attained in any of our countries.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but Eleanor Roosevelt broke new paths for women, not only in the White House, but in politics, in journalism, in the military, and industry. Her example and advocacy, as well as her stubborn persistence (described well in her work with an all-male U.N. delegation), won her the respect of the men with whom she worked and opened doors for other women.

Reading the final volume made me want to go back to the first two. In volume three, we see who Eleanor Roosevelt had become and at the top of her influence. One almost can’t help but want to trace the influences and decisions that formed a woman like this. Perhaps the publishers will release the biography as a set, now that it is complete. Welcomed or not, it might make a good gift to the incoming First Lady.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher . I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

I Will Not Vote For Fear

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By Elias Goldensky (1868-1943) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Elias Goldensky (1868-1943) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”  -Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address

It seems we have come a long ways, and not for the better, from this inaugural address given by Franklin Roosevelt in the depths of the Depression. It was a time where fear was palpable as people wondered about how they would feed their families, where they would find work. Roosevelt realized something that we might consider for our day — nameless, unreasoning fear paralyzes.

There are times when fear is good — when we recognize real danger, like stopped traffic and take action like hitting the brakes. Nor does what I am saying mean we don’t reckon with real dangers that we may face as a nation and take appropriate action–and go on with our lives. But we often get this far out of proportion and focus on things that are more distant threats while ignoring common sense things in front of us. We fear Ebola outbreaks when more die every month of heart disease due to poor diet and exercise (roughly 50,000 per month) than all who died in last year’s epidemic in west Africa, bad as it was. That’s what nameless and unreasoning fear does.

It seems that the political rhetoric, as well as news media stories, foster a state of free-floating fear in the populace. Cancer, epidemic, terrorism, guns and those who use them, Wall Street, immigrants, gays, homophobes, health insurance, the “liberals”, the “conservatives” are all objects of fear. In politics, it seems the basic tactic is to focus on a fear, summons our worst nightmares about that fear, and argue that if you elect the other man or woman, that’s what you will get. Along the way, we demonize a whole group of people, because a few from their group have done something horrendous.

We’ve created a politics of gridlock and a politics that pits our citizenry against itself rather than summoning us to listen to each other, to work together to solve real problems like our national infrastructure, whether physical or digital, and the perennial challenge of how we will raise our children to be people of character who have the skills and industry to foster the common good. In Roosevelt’s words, it seems we choose retreat rather than advance. By protecting ourselves from what we fear, we may also wall ourselves off from opportunity.

What troubles me most is when I see people of faith succumb to the politics of fear. A friend of mine observed that often the very first thing God says in encounters with human beings is “be not afraid.” Many of the Psalms chronicle the spiritual journey of people from fear of their circumstances to faith in the God who cares not only for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, but also for the people made in God’s image. Somehow, living in a steady state of fear seems inconsistent with being a person who trusts in the care of God, and that the good, the true, and the beautiful will in the end endure.

Some time back I reviewed a book titled Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear that explores the culture of fear we have increasingly surrounded ourselves with. One of the most moving chapters is one describing the response of the Taize’ community to the brutal murder of Brother Roger by a mentally deranged person in the midst of their worship. Most of us would install metal detectors and have armed security available. This community decided that this would be to give way to fear instead of remaining a community of welcome and shalom.

For these reasons, I’m putting our politicians, and the media wizards who surround them, on notice that I will not vote for those who try to win my vote through fear-mongering. We can do better than that. Life is inherently unsafe, and the only true safety, at least from my faith perspective, is in the God who holds me in life and death. I want those who will call us, not to fear, but to both courage and compassion as a people, who appeal to “the better angels of our nature”, of which Abraham Lincoln spoke in his first inaugural address.

Is that too much to ask?

Review: Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945

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Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945
Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 by Max Hastings
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“What, another Churchill book?” This was my wife’s comment when she saw me reading this book. I’ve read Churchill’s own account of World War 2 as well as several other biographies. So, beyond my admiration for Churchill, what possible reason was there to pick up this book?

What Hastings does is focus particularly on Churchill’s leadership of England from his ascent to Prime Minister in 1940 during England’s darkest days, to his ignominious departure from office in July of 1945, shortly after Allied victory in Europe. What Hastings gives us is neither a hagiography nor a hatchet job. Rather I found this a balanced treatment that justly celebrates the qualities of character that made Churchill the “indispensable man”, at least up to 1943, as well as delineating the less seemly aspects of his leadership.

Among the latter was his conservatism, which he had to overcome in dealings with Stalin, and resulted in his lack of connection with the domestic concerns of his own people, particularly in post-war life, which accounted for his unceremonious turning out from office. He was also an infuriating dabbler in military strategy, particularly with the British Army, whose leadership frustrated him. He avoided the castastrophic errors such as invading the Dardenelles that brought him down in World War 1 but was often thwarted in diverting forces from the D-Day invasions by the Americans who had to put up with repeated proposals for actions other theaters. He also could not see, as did Roosevelt, the end of Britain’s colonial empire.

All of this, and other flaws, pale in the light of the fact that Churchill was a warrior, more than most of the war-weary military leadership in England. He recognized that Nazi tyranny could never be compromised with, and from early 1940 until America’s entry in the war in late 1941, led Britain in standing alone in the face of possible invasion threats and the air Battle of Britain that convinced Hitler to turn eastward in the fatal decision to invade Russia. Hastings, more than others I’ve read, recognizes that while Churchill and Roosevelt were not nearly as close as often stated, Churchill’s major success was in bringing the US into the European War when it would have been easier to focus our attention in the Pacific. He also argued persuasively for the importance of Allied action in 1943, so that Russia might not be seen as fighting Germany all alone.

One of the things Hastings book explores more thoughtfully than most is this dilemma of allowing Russia to bear the brunt of fighting Germany, arguably a military necessity in light of the weakness of British military forces and the necessary buildup of American forces. Churchill perhaps agonized more than most at the postwar consequences this would have in Eastern Europe, accentuated by his inability to awaken the Americans to these concerns. Consequently, apart from rescuing Greece from communist forces, there was little he could do but protest incursions and broken agreements.

What Hastings book points up for me are the differences between peace time statecraft and warcraft. It seems these may require different kinds of leadership, and that the same person may not always be able to do both. Perhaps that was the distinction between Churchill and Roosevelt. What is clear is that when war comes, nations need leaders who can lead with courage and resolution to “see the thing through” and can impart that courage to their people, something Chamberlain could not do and both Churchill and Roosevelt did.

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