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A review by komet2020
FDR'S LAST YEAR: April 1944-April 1945, by Jim Bishop
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
FDR'S LAST YEAR: April 1944 - April 1945 offers the reader both a poignant and incisive view of the final months in the life of one of America's great Presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What amazed me in reading this book is how it was that 2 of the U.S. Navy's physicians charged with caring for the President never disclosed to him that he was a dying man. Nor did they inform his family of the exact nature of his steadily declining health. FDR submitted himself to health checks pretty much every month over the last year of his life. But frankly, FDR was someone with an indomitable spirit and ebullient personality who was determined to shepherd the U.S. to victory in World War II and help establish the foundations for a lasting peace via the United Nations. He never queried either Admiral Ross T. McIntire or Lt. Commander Howard Bruenn (both of FDR's physicians) as to the various ailments (e.g. high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and an increasing hardening of the arteries) that were gradually sapping him of his usual zest and vigor. FDR simply got on with the job, was renominated (though with a different running mate, Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, because the Democratic Party bosses did not want to retain the previous Vice President - Henry Wallace - because of his liberal leanings and their sense that FDR would not likely live out a 4th term as President), ran a somewhat perfunctory re-election campaign against Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, and once re-elected, met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin at Yalta in February 1945, which proved to be the last Big Three conference FDR would attend.
The following remarks in the book I felt pretty much summed up the feelings about the Yalta Conference shortly after FDR had returned to the U.S. to report to Congress about it: “Roosevelt admirers called Yalta a triumph; his enemies referred to it as a defeat. It was both. He won a little, gave a lot. Personally, he was far removed from the vigorous champion of 1933. Fatigue and fear made him mellow and malleable. He made an error in seeing himself as the supreme arbiter between Stalin and Churchill; he was the rich target of two impoverished men. At moments when sparks were struck, he lapsed into stories which had but the barest relevance to the issue; at others he bargained shrewdly until he saw Stalin stand and rip the back of a chair – then he backed down a little at a time. In a childish way, he delighted in proving to Stalin that there could be no collusion between FDR and Churchill because he opposed and lectured the British Prime Minister at every opportunity. He was a man who despised treachery and deceit, and yet he permitted the Soviets to claim that the Big Three had no power to form a Polish government without consulting the Poles, while, on the other hand, he disposed of property belonging to a member of the Big Five --- China. Even the final communiqué was designed to lull the watching world into believing that there was noble unity among Russia, Great Britain and the United States.”
Though coming in at 939 pages, FDR's LAST YEAR never flagged and made for very compelling reading, revealing much about FDR's personal life and how the impact of his death affected his family, close aides, Harry S. Truman, and political contemporaries - as well as the nation at large.
The following remarks in the book I felt pretty much summed up the feelings about the Yalta Conference shortly after FDR had returned to the U.S. to report to Congress about it: “Roosevelt admirers called Yalta a triumph; his enemies referred to it as a defeat. It was both. He won a little, gave a lot. Personally, he was far removed from the vigorous champion of 1933. Fatigue and fear made him mellow and malleable. He made an error in seeing himself as the supreme arbiter between Stalin and Churchill; he was the rich target of two impoverished men. At moments when sparks were struck, he lapsed into stories which had but the barest relevance to the issue; at others he bargained shrewdly until he saw Stalin stand and rip the back of a chair – then he backed down a little at a time. In a childish way, he delighted in proving to Stalin that there could be no collusion between FDR and Churchill because he opposed and lectured the British Prime Minister at every opportunity. He was a man who despised treachery and deceit, and yet he permitted the Soviets to claim that the Big Three had no power to form a Polish government without consulting the Poles, while, on the other hand, he disposed of property belonging to a member of the Big Five --- China. Even the final communiqué was designed to lull the watching world into believing that there was noble unity among Russia, Great Britain and the United States.”
Though coming in at 939 pages, FDR's LAST YEAR never flagged and made for very compelling reading, revealing much about FDR's personal life and how the impact of his death affected his family, close aides, Harry S. Truman, and political contemporaries - as well as the nation at large.