FDR - Jean Edward Smith [399]
* Roosevelt’s views about Palestine were revealed to Henry Morgenthau in December 1942. According to Morgenthau’s diary entry, the president said he “would call Palestine a religious country … leave Jerusalem the way it is and have it run by the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, the Protestants, and the Jews—have a joint committee run it. [He] would put a barbed wire around Palestine … begin to move the Arabs out” and “provide land for the Arabs in some other part of the Middle East. Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish family. Palestine would be 90 percent Jewish and an independent nation.” Morgenthau Diary, MS, December 3, 1942, FDRL.
* Leonard Dinnerstein, in his careful study Antisemitism in America, notes that “Roosevelt always dealt with the Jews as an issue in the context of a broader agenda. His primary goal was to end the war as quickly as possible, his British allies were pressuring him to do nothing to help Jews escape from Europe, and he wanted to retain Congressional good will to insure support for a United National organization after the war.… The country had elected an extremely conservative group of men and women to the House of Representatives in 1942. When he sought permission from Congress to permit him to allow people into the country who would not qualify under existing legislation, the members emphatically rejected his request.” Antisemitism in America 143–144 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
* An important collateral issue pertained to the currency Allied forces would use in France. In January 1944 Morgenthau and McCloy met with Roosevelt and suggested that the bills (which were to be printed by the Bureau of Engraving) be emblazoned “Républic Française.” FDR overruled them. “How do you know what kind of a government you will have after the war is over?” he asked. “De Gaulle is on the wane.” At the president’s insistence the new currency proclaimed “La France,” with the Tricolor supported on either side by British and American flags. The FCNL objected strenuously. “Allez, faites la guerre avec votre fausse monnaie [Go make war with your counterfeit money],” said de Gaulle contemptuously. The issue was not resolved until de Gaulle’s visit to Washington in July, when it was agreed that only the government of the Republic of France could issue currency. Charles de Gaulle, 3 The War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle 253, 275 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959); G. E. Maguire, Anglo-American Policy Towards the Free French 133–135 (London: Macmillan, 1995); Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography 717–719 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985); McCloy to FDR, June 10, 1944, FDRL.
* Dewey received 1,056 of the 1,059 votes, two delegates being absent and one from Wisconsin voting for Douglas MacArthur. The allusion is to Nebraska’s William Jennings Bryan, known at the inception of his career as the Boy Orator of the Platte.
* Roosevelt normally was seen in public either standing with his braces locked, or seated in an open car. On only one other occasion did he allow strangers to witness his infirmity. That was in 1936, when he dedicated a new building at Washington’s Howard University. Howard’s president, Dr. Mordecai Johnson, asked Roosevelt if the students could see that he was crippled. They had been so crippled because of their race, said Johnson, the president’s example would inspire them. “Roosevelt agreed. He let himself be lifted from his car and set down in public view, and then he proceeded to walk slowly and painfully to the platform.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time 532–533 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
* “You know, the President is a man of great vision—once things are explained to him,” MacArthur is alleged to have told the newspaper correspondent Clark