Books: The Thin Man

ROOSEVELT AND HOPKINS (979 pp.)—Robert E. Sherwood—Harper ($6).

On the evening of July 27, 1941, a skinny, sickly civilian clambered aboard a PBY Catalina at Invergordon, Scotland. His correct, grey Homburg hat bore the initials of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. The pasty-faced passenger had no official title: he was going to Moscow to see Marshal Joseph Stalin as the personal emissary of the President of the U.S. In fact, the trip was the thin man’s own idea. But President Roosevelt had given Harry Hopkins his blessing, and Winston Churchill had given him his hat, when Hopkins lost his own.

The mission to Moscow and the gift of the hat were, in their differing ways, typical of both the confidence and the affection that Hopkins commanded from the world’s most powerful leaders during World War II. Roosevelt created him, then leaned on him. Churchill sized him up and unconditionally awarded him his respect and friendship. Stalin, Sherwood implies, was more frank with Hopkins than with any other U.S. representative. Harry Hopkins, the chronically ill, chronically broke son of an Iowa harnessmaker, a poor speaker and a worse writer, became perhaps the world’s most important minister without portfolio during the greatest crisis in modern history.

From 40 Filing Cases. In Roosevelt and Hopkins, Playwright Robert Sherwood (Idiot’s Delight, Abe Lincoln in Illinois) has written the best book on World War II by an American. The title belies the vast scope of Sherwood’s effort. This is not only the story of Hopkins in the role of personal chief of staff and messenger of F.D.R. It is the one book so far which adequately provides 1) a sympathetic but candid exposition of Roosevelt’s domestic, foreign and military dilemmas throughout the war, and how he met them; 2) an informed, balanced and simultaneous view of the U.S., British and Russian positions as events created and altered them; 3) a thoroughly documented look at the Big Three (F.D.R., Churchill, Stalin) in action, from the vantage point of an expert dramatist who was often on the scene he describes.

Like several other historians of the period, Sherwood himself was on the inside track in World War II. He was head of the Overseas Branch of OWI; as one of Roosevelt’s speech writers for five years, he frequently lived at the White House, heard plenty and knew F.D.R.’s mind. Besides being on the inside track, he had a head start: the use of 40 filing cabinets of papers left by Hopkins.

In these files, Sherwood found the notes that Harry used to pass to F.D.R. and which sometimes changed the course of history (one chit persuaded F.D.R. to make the unfortunate reparations concessions at Yalta). And here was F.D.R.’s surprising promise, as recorded by Hopkins, to back Hopkins for the presidency in 1940.

Sherwood would not deny his bias in favor of Roosevelt and Hopkins, yet it is a bias frequently dissolved by candor. There is enough in these pages to explain why Hopkins was feared and hated by men of all parties. Noting that Harry “was addicted to the naked insult,” Sherwood quotes Hugh Johnson without disapproval : “He has a mind like a razor, a tongue like a skinning knife, a temper like a Tartar and a sufficient vocabulary of parlor profanity—words kosher enough to get by the censor but acid enough to make a mule-skinner jealous . . . He’s just a highminded Holy Roller in a semi-religious frenzy.”

$5,000,000 a Day. His frenzy first took the form of running himself ragged for the New Deal (he began to work as FERA administrator while his desk was still out in the corridor, spent $5,000,000 in his first day). When F.D.R. made him Secretary of Commerce, it was to groom him for the presidency.

Hopkins, the once selfless social worker, began to show all the signs of an avidly ambitious politician. Writes Sherwood: “Harry Hopkins, in the promotion of his own slender chances, was impelled to connive, plot and even to misrepresent . . .” Then, says Sherwood, when his illness compelled Hopkins to renounce that impossible ambition, “in the war years . . . he became and remained one of the most incorruptible of men.”

Sherwood says that Hopkins, Wallace and many another New Dealer were slow in understanding the threat to the U.S. in Axis aggression. But F.D.R. valued Hopkins enough to spell out patiently the facts of international life for him, and Harry learned so fast that by March 5, 1941, Secretary Stimson wrote in his diary: “The more I think of it, the more I think it is a Godsend that [Hopkins] should be at the White House.”

Sherwood’s picture of life at the White House during the war years is one of the bright features of a very readable book. Hopkins came for dinner one evening, and was invited to stay for the night. He lived in Lincoln’s old study for the next 3½ years. His desk was a card table, his bedroom was his office. In a sloppy dressing gown, Hopkins would traipse through the White House corridors to consult Roosevelt or Churchill. Usually he was miserably ill (cancer, ulcers, numerous complications), but at a word from F.D.R. he was on his way. He usually knew the President’s mind so well on any given subject that specific instructions were unnecessary (Roosevelt to Stalin: “I ask you to treat Mr. Hopkins with the identical confidence you would feel if you were talking directly to me”).

Roosevelt and Hopkins is full of details that make it far more colorful than historical fiction. Once when Roosevelt complained that he never could have peanuts because his secret service would have to check each one, Sherwood and Rosenman slipped out and got him a bagful which he kept under his coat and devoured. His aides were quick to spot the chief’s moods and behave accordingly. Sometimes it would be: “God help anybody who asks him for any favors today.” Again: “He feels so good he’ll be telling Cotton Ed Smith that it’s perfectly all right for the South to go ahead and secede.”

So That F.D.R. Could Sleep. Sherwood makes it clear that there was but one unanimous choice for Supreme Commander of the invasion: George Marshall. It was F.D.R. who, first supporting Marshall, changed his mind. He then overrode Stalin and Churchill to name Eisenhower. Roosevelt explained his change of mind to Marshall : “I could not sleep at night with you out of the country.” At the time, the country would undoubtedly have slept better had F.D.R. made what seemed the stronger choice.

One incident alone illustrates Hopkins’ enormous influence. On Oct. 3, 1944, Roosevelt had cabled Churchill implying that he (Churchill) could speak for the U.S. on Balkan affairs when he next saw Stalin. F.D.R. had written a cable to Stalin to the same effect; when Hopkins heard about it he ordered the White House map room to stop the Stalin cable. The cable officers obeyed without question. Then Hopkins went to F.D.R.’s bedroom, where the President was shaving, told him what he had done, and persuaded him that the U.S. should always speak for itself. Roosevelt admitted that he had made a serious mistake, and took it all back.

Biographer Sherwood clearly agrees with the Yank estimate of F.D.R.: “He was the Commander in Chief, not only of our armed forces, but of our generation.” It is also Sherwood’s contention, and he does much to document it, that in the war years Harry Hopkins used his vast, F.D.R.-given power wisely. Later historians may question the wisdom, but they will not be able to question the power. Nor will any historian of the Roosevelt era be able to ignore this book.