The results themselves beg important questions: would the President have continued running for presidency or even won the election if the public were made aware of these findings? Would the outcome of events during this crucial time have been different if FDR were not the president of the United States?
Executive Dysfunction
Executive skills are those mental abilities that govern complex cognitive or behavioral tasks (Coffey, et. al., 2000). They include drive, the initiation of cognitive activity, sustained motivation to perform tasks, the ability to recognize patterns, the ability to perform sequences, the ability to plan and execute a strategy, the ability to complete a complex cognitive task, and syntheses, the ability to appreciate metaphoric meaning and monitor cognitive performance. Basically, these functions comprise our ability to work efficiently and complete higher-level activities. Evidence exists from observations of physicians, advisors, colleagues, and aides that suggest that Franklin Roosevelt experienced major executive dysfunction during his final term of presidency (contributable to his cardiovascular disease and drastic hypertension). This dysfunction undoubtedly affected his working life and mostly likely his participation at one of the most important Conferences in the century.
Impaired Drive and Initiative
Initiative is a crucial part of executive function, as it dictates the motive and reasoning for completing a task (Coffey, 200). FDR’s lack of curiosity in regard to his progressive physical and mental deterioration may have reflected his lack of initiative. Upon reviewing the medical observations and reports from Drs. McIntire and Bruenn, who oversaw his medical illnesses, it is apparent that Roosevelt was not interested in knowing the nature of his conditions (Bruenn, 1970; McIntire, 1946). Contrastingly, FDR faced his polio and paralysis with tireless inquiry, questioning the experts treating him regarding the nature of his illness, the prognosis, and many minute details of his treatment (Ferrell, 1992).
However, in Eleanor Roosevelt’s autobiography she states, “My husband would have been the last person to permit doctors to slur over anything which might have made him less able mentally to continue his work (Roosevelt, 1961),” which sounds convincing. She also said, “Dr. McIntire had worried about the campaign, but I had told him early in autumn that I thought Franklin drew strength from contact with people (Roosevelt, 1961).” “After the inauguration it was clearer every day that Franklin was far from well. Nevertheless, he was determined to go to Yalta, and when he made up his mind that he wanted do something he rarely gave up the idea (Roosevelt, 1961).” So, Mrs. Roosevelt conceded to the fact that her husband was sick, but concluded that FDR’s drive and initiative drew strength from interacting with people, and working for his ideological goals. It may have been stubbornness, not impairment, which harmed his judgment. This proves more so that in assessing Roosevelt’s effectiveness and impairments, his personality and temperament are things that cannot go unnoticed. Thus, his personal efforts towards his medical conditions cannot be concluded as impaired.
The decision of the location of the Yalta Conference may also reveal executive dysfunction and lack of initiative. Stalin and his associates proposed Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula as a suitable location for the summit. The summit would have taken place in what is now the Ukraine; well within the influence of Soviet Union at the time. This was a very large concern for Roosevelt’s closest associates, who believed there were very logical reasons (Such as Stalin’s well-established tendency to spy on both his associates and his adversaries (Fleming, 2001; Perisco, 2001) and the fact that the previous meeting was held in Tehran, Iran) for FDR to put political pressure on Stalin to accept a more convenient location for the American diplomats. FDR apparently failed to register these concerns and the location remained at Yalta, where each room occupied by the British and American representatives was planted with listening devices (Persico, 2001).
Evidence of Impaired Judgment and Response Control
Charles E. Bohlen was Roosevelt’s interpreter for the Yalta Conference. His personal accounts of his dealings with FDR at Yalta were mentioned in great detail in his memoir, Witness to History: 1929-1969. He recalls that at crucial points in the conference FDR blathered on about irrelevant and mostly incoherent recollections of his boyhood in Germany (Bohlen 1973). In January of 1945,
General Murphy, Eisenhower’s chief civilian advisor, stated, “The President is in no condition to offer balanced judgment upon great questions of war (Fleming, 2001).” FDR also seemingly made politically unwise and inappropriate jokes and comments that were very unlike his almost flawless record of politically and socially mastered communication.
FDR made several remarks that were particularly alarming and suggestive of executive dysfunction. For instance, Roosevelt asked Stalin to repeat a toast to the execution of 10,000 German prisoners of war that Stalin had made in Tehran a year earlier, and told Stalin that he was thirsty for German blood and would give 6 million American Jews to the Saudi King, Ibn-Saud, as a special gift (Bohlen, 1973). These arguments reflect a totally different FDR than the world had previously known.
Lord Moran, Churchill’s personal physician, said,
“… it was not only [Roosevelt’s] physical deterioration that had caught their attention … he intervened very little in the discussions, sitting with his mouth open. If he has sometimes been short of facts about the subject under discussion, his shrewdness covered this up … I doubt, from what I have seen, whether he is fit for his job here.”
This testament from another physician sheds further light on FDR’s medical appearance and apparent “invalidity.” Many accounts were made connecting Roosevelt’s clear physical decline to his ability to think and act effectively.
In contrast, Bohlen also said, “… our leader was ill at Yalta, but he was effective … I so believed that at the time and still so believe (Bohlen, 1973; Lomazow & Fettman, 2009).” James McGregor Burns, a biographer of FDR, said about FDR’s speech: “He did not speak out as eloquently as Churchill, or as bluntly or cogently as Stalin, but he was generally quick, alert, articulate, and even witty,” and that “… he handled matters effectively and even skillfully (Burns, 1970).” Anthony Eden, one of Churchill’s advisors, conceded later that Roosevelt’s seeming ill-health did not alter his judgment. He apparently marveled that the President not only kept up with Churchill in the round of formal and informal conferences, but also found time to conduct a whole separate enterprise Yalta-negotiations with Stalin over East Asia (Burns, 1970).This juxtaposes the examples of his inappropriate response control, but most would say that the effectiveness itself trumps the way at which it is managed. The evidence of impairment is important to consider when resolving his overall effectiveness, but the fact that he may have been effective is more important.
Impaired Ability to Learn from Mistakes and Synthesize Information
The most popular consensus among historians is that FDR’s main strategy for persuading Stalin was to “charm” him into entering the war with Japan (Beichman, 2003; Dobbs 2012; Kennan, 1960). The invasion of Japan by the Soviet Union was pivotal for a victory in the Pacific, and was necessary in order to save millions of American lives. This feat - it certainly wasn’t an easy task – may have been slightly possible if FDR were in his political prime; most people believed that to be in the first 100 days of his first term (Kennedy, 1999). However, Roosevelt was apparently not in the physical or mental condition to be trying to “charm” a man of Stalin’s stature, and FDR’s associates warned him of this (Bohlen, 1973).
Roosevelt was well informed by the State Department of Stalin’s purges for his own self-gain; purges which had exterminated millions of his own people and led to the total annihilation of his country’s first parliament (Fleming, 2001; Bohlen, 1973; Perisco, 2001). Even if he had no knowledge of Stalin’s governmental murderous practices, FDR did have a detailed analysis of how Stalin ordered the Katyn Massacre, where up to 25000 Polish P.o.W.’s were executed; Winston Churchill told FDR personally (Churchill, 1953; Bohlen, 1973; Persico, 2001). It was extremely unlikely, if not impossible, for a feeble FDR to charm a megalomaniac mass murderer.
There were a multitude of other reasons to suspect that FDR’s logic toward trying to create a trusting relationship with Stalin was flawed. Between the Tehran and Yalta Conferences, Stalin had exhibited his untrustworthiness by constantly violating the core agreements of the Tehran Agreement – signed by all three leaders. According to the Tehran Agreement, the three powers were to cooperate militarily, and the Soviets were supposed to let American fighter jets have access to Russian Airfields; this privilege was denied to the Americans many times (Fleming, 2001; Persico, 2001). Stalin also on a number of occasions refused to let American strategic bombers take off from the Russian airfields (Fleming, 2001; Perisco, 2001). Stalin’s military cooperation, like most of his agreements with the Western Allies, hardly ever existed beyond what was found on paper, and thus repeated American diplomatic and military protests to these restrictions were to no avail (Bohlen, 1973).
FDR’s strategy to charm Stalin and his failure to alter his strategy despite alarming and convincing signs proves consistent with the theory of executive dysfunction. George Kennan wrote in 1960, referring to FDR’s “strategy”, that it was foolish for Roosevelt to assume “that his ideological prejudices would melt away and Russian cooperation with the West could easily be obtained, if only Stalin was exposed to the charm of a personality of FDR’s caliber. There were no grounds at all for this assumption; it was so childish that it was really unworthy of a statesman of FDR’s standing (Kennan, 1960; Beichman, 2003).”
Impaired Communication
Franklin Roosevelt’s speech to the joint-session of Congress on March 1, 1945 stands with historians as one of his worst speeches ever delivered. The speech was broadcasted to the public and was heard all over the country; all of FDR’s slurred pronunciations, inappropriate phrases, flawed verbal expressions, and inadequate uses of vocabulary could be observed by millions (Lomazow & Fettman, 2009).
Roosevelt’s true oratorical characteristics would have never consisted of slurred speech. His words often lost their meaning as they could not be registered by his audience. Words with two or three syllables were reduced to dragging single-syllable slurs. The words “returning,” “inspired,” “tremendous,” and even “Yalta” were all incomprehensible at times.
Toward the end of his address, FDR had begun to address Yalta as “Malta.” He inappropriately referred to the Japanese as “Japs,” the Middle East as “Arabia,” and even referred to what was obviously Charles de Gaulle of France as a “prima donna of the world.” While the speech in front of him read, “the religious and ethnic conflicts,” Roosevelt unprofessionally said, “that whole problem” (Roosevelt, 1945; Rosenman, 1945). Samuel Rosenman, one of Roosevelt’s speechwriters, had this to say about FDR’s performance: ““FDR was wholly irrelevant and some of the things he said almost bordered on ridiculous” (Evans, 2002; Fleming, 2001; Freidel, 1990).
However, the speech’s effectiveness was not considered wholly invalid. Grace Tully said in her memoir, F.D.R., My Boss, “… but the informality of it all seemed to suit both his immediate audience and the editorial writers who commented on the results of the conference.” Another of his secretaries, William D. Hassett, said in his book, Off the Record with F.D.R.; 1942-1945, “But to my surprise, the reaction of the senators and representatives … was favorable.”
This display of cognitive and communicative impairment truly suggests that Roosevelt’s mental capacity had diminished, that his executive functions had been severely affected by his medical conditions.
Short-term Memory and Attention/Concentration Impairment
Numerous individuals noticed FDR’s deficit of short term memory during the years of 1944 and 1945. On August 24, 1944, Roosevelt welcomed the President of Iceland with the same welcoming speech twice – and completely unaware of it as well (Fleming, 2001). At a luncheon with Roosevelt in August of 1944, Dorothy Thompson, a well-known journalist of the time, noticed that the President told the same story at the beginning and at the end of their conversation (Fleming, 2001).
Was concentration a problem at the Yalta Conference for Roosevelt? FDR’s chief advisor Harry Hopkins said, “At Yalta, FDR didn’t follow half of what was going on (Fleming, 2001).” A President with full intention to participate fully and effectively in the conversations at Yalta would have been expected to review important reports and documents beforehand. Evidence shows that Roosevelt read very few reports provided by the State Department about Stalin and the security measures at Yalta (Bohlen, 1973). Also, the President mistakenly thought that the Kuril Islands (Islands spanning from northern Japan to a northeastern Russian peninsula) were taken from the Russians by the Japanese by force, when they had actually been exchanged commercially without conflict – a fact that the President might have been aware of if he had read the reports concerning Russia and Japan (Bohlen, 1973; Fleming, 2001). FDR also displayed a complete failure to pay attention to detail when he signed a memorandum inviting Argentina to become a founding member of the United Nations. It was directly stated in the Yalta Protocol that only those nations that declared war on Germany could be founding members (Bohlen, 1973; State Department Yalta Protocol, 1945).
FDR’s Actions and Their Consequences
Many historians claim or acknowledge that Roosevelt was “naïve” in his dealings with Stalin and in his foreign affairs late in his life (Beichman, 2003; Kennan 1960; Bishop, 1975). Criticism of FDR stems mainly from his strategy and relationship with Stalin before and after Yalta; Roosevelt deployed “charm” – which as we know failed – and seemed to portray desperate appeasement towards Stalin (Beichman, 2003).
FDR wanted Soviet entrance into the war with Japan. With the help of the Russians, the end of that war would be swift, and save millions of lives. However, Roosevelt was well-aware of the operations at Los Alamos (Manhattan Project) back in the United States; in fact, he was the only American at Yalta who knew about it (Persico, 2001). The President of the United States is privileged with the most confidential military and political information, and entrusted to synthesize that information when he deals in domestic or foreign affairs. He was the only man who had access to reports from the OSS (Secret Service) and the Manhattan Project and at that time knew that the atomic bomb was making very promising progress (Perisco, 2001; Jones, 1985). With the atomic bomb, Soviet assistance in the war would have been useless. FDR appeased and ceded many gains and privileges for Stalin all for a fruitless cause; the Soviets did agree to enter the war, but only after 90 days following the end of the war in Europe. This uncertainty should have prompted Roosevelt - or would have for a more able-minded president – to change his strategy and rely on the $2 billion ($25.8 billion today) Manhattan Project to end the war (Jones, 1985; Consumer Price Index, 2012).
Within the weeks following Yalta, Stalin was supposed to allow for free and democratic elections for Poland and most of the Eastern European countries (State Department, Yalta Protocol, 1945). Roosevelt and Churchill - with reluctance from Churchill - mistakenly entrusted Stalin with this responsibility, as Stalin’s Red Army took over the Polish, Romanian, and Bulgarian governments and produced famous Russian rigged elections (Churchill, 1953; Fleming, 2001; Bohlen, 1973; Freidel, 1990; Weinstein & Vassiliev, 1999). This concession of power from the Western Alliance to the Soviet Union not only boosted Stalin’s ego, but laid the lives of millions of Europeans in Communist hands. Churchill referred to it as the “Iron Curtain” being raised between the East and West (Churchill, 1946). However, there isn’t direct evidence that ties this concession to illness or impairment of judgment. William D. Leahy, with FDR at the Yalta conference, said this about Poland to FDR after agreements were made: “Mr. President, this is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without even technically breaking it.” FDR responded, “I know Bill – I know it. But it’s the best I can do for Poland at this time (Burns, 1970).” James McGregor Burns said, “His position resulted not from naïveté, ignorance, illness or perfidy, but from his acceptance of the facts: Russia occupied Poland (Burns, 1970).” George W. Bush, on the 60th anniversary of the Yalta Conference, said, “When powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable (Bush, 2005).”
The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 stipulated that the United States would offer aid to the countries of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Free France, and the Republic of China during the war (Crowley, 1947). The U.S. gave $11.3 billion in aid of supplies to the Soviet Union over the course of the war. More than 4,000,000 pairs of boots, 1,000,000 telephones, 400,000 trucks, and 14,000 planes were sent to the Soviets as aid. This assistance was necessary at times during the war, but what raises question is that the aid never stopped after the constant violations of protocol by Stalin (Dear & Foot, 1995; Haynes & Klehr, 2000). FDR’s silence or perhaps negligence toward the issue allowed for the Soviet Union to become more aggressive with military expansion, and expand Communist forces at the expense of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States; this could be the direct result of Roosevelt’s impaired judgment, response control, or attention.
Conclusion
When looking at his entire presidency, Franklin Roosevelt was a mighty and wholehearted President, who facilitated momentous progress for the United States. However, in speculating the man’s illness and its effect on his function in his final year of life, one cannot disregard that it hindered his performance. Personal accounts and historical documents will always disagree and will always hold some degree of bias, but, upon analyzing this President’s actions and their consequences, the consensus is clear: his trailing health was clearly evident, and it hindered his effectiveness. That’s not to say that his presidency or his actions were complete failures, but rather to suggest that more success could have been achieved – were it not for the circumstance of his medical and mental conditions.
The President experienced hypertension, heart failure, bronchitis and fatigue. Although those close to him expressed a lack of knowledge of his illness, evidence exists that places the President’s health at a dangerous level. The President displayed evidence of executive dysfunction in multiple ways. Numerous personal accounts and memoirs link FDR’s weary appearance to declining initiative, drive, and energy. Examples of the President’s impairments are compelling and reveal that his effectiveness in his fourth term of Presidency was inadequate.
Because of this executive dysfunction, Roosevelt’s appearance on the world stage was affected; his interactions with the Soviet Union during this crucial period were not as successful as they could have been. Millions of lives, billions of dollars, and the entire continent of Eastern Europe could have all experienced a different fate if it were not for the President’s below average executive performance.
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