His Remaining Battle: The Final Months of Franklin Roosevelt

“By far probably the most enigmatic main determine” of World Battle II. That’s how the British navy historian John Keegan described Franklin D. Roosevelt, who often left his contemporaries guessing, by no means extra so than on the finish of his life. Right here, in a vastly insightful account, a prizewinning writer and journalist untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt’s remaining months, exhibiting how he juggled the strategic, political, and private decisions he confronted because the conflict, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax.

The story has been advised piecemeal however by no means like this, with an in depth give attention to Roosevelt himself and his hopes for a secure worldwide order after the conflict, and the way these led him into a chronic courtship of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, involving secret, arduous journeys to Tehran and the Crimea. In between, because the conflict entered its remaining part, got here the thunderbolt of a dire medical prognosis, elevating pressing questions concerning the capability of the longest-serving president to face for a fourth time period at a time when he had little selection. Neither his household nor prime figures in his administration have been knowledgeable of his prognosis, not to mention the general public or his closest ally, Winston Churchill. With D-Day looming, Roosevelt took a month off on a plantation within the south the place he was examined every day by a navy heart specialist, then waited two extra months earlier than lastly saying, on the eve of his occasion’s conference, that he’d be a candidate. A political grand grasp nonetheless, he manipulated the choice of a brand new operating mate, with a watch to a potential succession, displaying a few of his outdated vigor and wit in a profitable marketing campaign.

With precision and compassion, Joseph Lelyveld examines the alternatives Roosevelt confronted, shining new mild on his frame of mind, preoccupations, and motives, each as chief of the wartime alliance and in his private life. Confronting his personal mortality, Roosevelt operated within the perception that he had an obligation to see the conflict via to the top, telling himself he might at all times resign if he discovered he couldn’t keep it up.

Lelyveld delivers an incisive portrait of this intentionally inscrutable man, a consummate chief to the final.