U.S. At War: The Last Seven Days

The 1944 Presidential campaign, which began as politely as a harpsichord duet, wound up with all the kettledrum banging of a Respighi crescendo.

“Assassination.” The last seven days spewed forth a spate of name-calling rancor. Sidney Hillman said that a Dewey victory would be a “national catastrophe”; John Bricker charged that Communists now control the Democratic party. The New York Daily News thought it “fair to surmise that [Roosevelt] is even now hoping to have one of his sons succeed him as King of the United States.”

There were calmer voices too. Minnesota’s Congressman Walter H. Judd divided the Commander in Chief’s job into three parts: 1) to pick a general or admiral, not to be one; 2) to unite the home front—”results there are far from what they should be”; 3) to wage political warfare against our enemies, at which, said Judd, Franklin Roosevelt is “inept.”

But it was the Russians, in their lushest cloak-&-dagger manner, who added a touch of comic melodrama to the last days of the campaign. Izvestia, official Soviet Government newspaper, ran an article headlined: THE ELECTION OF ROOSEVELT GUARANTEED. It is said that the core of Dewey’s Republican staff had “pro-Fascist, pro-German ties”; and that with campaign “failure imminent . . . Republicans in despair might resort to a big adventure.” The “adventure,” it said, might well be a fake last-minute assassination plot against Dewey, with the Communists, of course, blamed for it. Thundered Izvestia: “History includes a number of such insolent, crude provocations on the eve of parliamentary elections in democratic countries, up to the burning of the Reichstag in Germany.”

Save Dave. John Bricker swung back to Columbus, Ohio, after trekking down side roads in 31 states, 16,000 miles from coast to coast. Harry Truman ended an 8,000-mile, 15-state tour with a blazing blunder in close-fought Massachusetts. He called his fellow Democratic Senator, Massachusetts’ massive, paunchy David Ignatius Walsh, an isolationist, adding brightly: “But we have a chance to reform him.” Senator Walsh, a longtime anti-New Dealer, reputedly of great influence on the Massachusetts Catholic vote, had devoted exactly two grudging sentences to the support of his party, without reference to Term IV. Walsh made the most of the insult. For four days he played “off again, on again” with Bob Hannegan, debating whether he would consent to appear with Franklin Roosevelt in Boston’s Fenway Park, at the President’s request. (He finally decided not to, but rode 44 miles on the President’s train.)

“Anxious to Win.” Both Presidential candidates had saved a blow for Boston.

Tom Dewey packed 20,000 into the Boston Garden. He charged: “Mr. Roosevelt, to perpetuate himself in office for 16 years, has put his party on the auction block—for sale to the highest bidder.”

The highest bidders, he said, were Sidney Hillman’s P.A.C. and Earl Browder’s Communists. He distinguished between the American Communists and “our fighting ally, Russia.” Tom Dewey charged that “Mr. Roosevelt has so weakened and corrupted the Democratic Party that it is subject to capture, and the forces of Communism are, in fact, now capturing it.”

Three days later, Franklin Roosevelt, before 47,000 in outdoor Fenway Park, denounced “religious intolerance.” “Everybody knows that I was reluctant to run for the Presidency again … but since this campaign developed, I tell you frankly that I have become most anxious to win. Never before in my lifetime has a campaign been filled with such misrepresentation, distortion and falsehood.”

In the same town where, four years earlier, he had made his famed pledge—”I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars” —Mr. Roosevelt hit back hard at the critics of that sentence. He said that “we got into this war because we were attacked. . . . Under the same circumstances, I would choose to do the same thing—again and again and again.”

In answering Dewey’s Boston speech, Mr. Roosevelt said: “When any politician says solemnly that your Government could be sold out to Communists, that candidate reveals, and I’ll be polite, a shocking lack of trust in America.”

That same night Candidate Dewey ended his campaign with a fighting speech in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden. Once again he charged that Henry Morgenthau’s plan for a severe peace (TIME, Oct. 2) had strengthened German resistance. “The blood of our fighting men is paying for this improvised meddling which is so much a part and parcel of the whole Roosevelt Administration. . . . [Franklin Roosevelt’s] own confused incompetence has . . . prolonged the war in Europe.” Tom Dewey said that Mr. Roosevelt had “offered no program, nothing but smears and unspecified complaints, and the reason is because the New Deal has nothing to offer. …”

In contrast, he pointed to the Republican pledges of the Dewey-Bricker team, who “are dedicated” to three main propositions : 1) speeding of victory and prompt return of American soldiers by putting competence in Washington; 2) U.S. leadership for an effective world peace organization; 3) Government policies to provide jobs and opportunities.

Predictions. Democratic Chairman Hannegan predicted a bigger electoral victory than 1940. Republican Chairman Brownell saw G.O.P. majorities outside the Solid South. Privately both sides thought the election too close for comfort, and fought accordingly.