March 1, 1945: FDR's Last Speech

March 1, 1945, 80 years ago: President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses a Joint Session of Congress, at the Capitol Building in Washington.

Just 18 days earlier, he had concluded the Yalta Conference, meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, in the Crimea, on Stalin's home turf. They discussed how to finish the European and Pacific phases of World War II, and what to do with the defeated nations afterward, and how to rebuild the postwar world.

Due to having contracted polio in 1921, whenever FDR had to give a public speech, would be "walked" up to the podium by holding onto a cane with one hand and an aide's arm with the other. His braces would be adjusted so that he could stand, and he would then deliver his speech.

But now, early in his 4th term, he was 63 years old, tired, and sick: His blood pressure was much too high, and he had heart disease. As I said, it had been 18 days since Yalta had wrapped up. Had he been healthy, then, given the transportation modes then available, he could have needed only about half that to get home and prepare his remarks for Congress.

And it wasn't just rest he needed: He wasn't going to be able to stand to make the speech. For the 1st time, he addressed Congress from his wheelchair. Also for the 1st time during his Presidency, in an address broadcast coast-to-coast over the nation's radio networks, he made a public reference to his disability. 

He began as follows: "I hope that you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say. But I know that you will realize that it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs; and also because of the fact that I have just completed a fourteen-thousand-mile trip." The members of Congress applauded.

He added, "First of all, I want to say, it is good to be home." More applause. He went on: "It has been a long journey. I hope you will also agree that it has been, so far, a fruitful one. Speaking in all frankness, the question of whether it is entirely fruitful or not lies to a great extent in your hands. For unless you here in the halls of the American Congress, with the support of the American people, concur in the general conclusions reached at Yalta, and give them your active support, the meeting will not have produced lasting results."

In other words, unless Congress properly funded the Department of War to end the job of the war, and the Department of State to start the job of the peace, then the war effort, which had already killed about 300,000 Americans, would have amounted to nothing.

Roosevelt went on to explain the progress of our fighting men. U.S. troops had already crossed into German territory. Six days later, they would cross the Rhine River at the Ludendorff Bridge. He spoke of why Yalta was chosen as the site, because it was once a Black Sea resort, and of what the Nazis had done to devastate it. So he spoke of how the Nazis had to pay for what they'd done, but that the German people shouldn't have to suffer any further.

And he spoke of building a new international organization to replace the failed League of Nations, the United Nations, with a Charter that would be based on the Constitution of the United States.

He also said, "On the way back from the Crimea, I made arrangements to meet personally King Farouk of Egypt; Halle Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia; and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Our conversations had to do with matters of common interest. They will be of great mutual advantage because they gave me, and a good many of us, an opportunity of meeting and talking face to face, and of exchanging views in personal conversation instead of formal correspondence."

He said, "Twenty-five years ago, American fighting men looked to the statesmen of the world to finish the work of peace for which they fought and suffered. We failed them then. We cannot fail them again, and expect the world again to survive."

Ever since the Yalta Conference, conservatives have claimed that FDR "betrayed" Eastern Europe by leaving it to Stalin there. But the war was not over. Germany was still fighting, even if the end, there, was in sight. Japan was still fighting, with no end in sight. The Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were yet to come. FDR needed the Soviet Union in that fight.

The Red Army was already in control of most of Poland by the time they met at Yalta. In other words, Poland and Eastern Europe were not Roosevelt's to "sell." Stalin already had already "bought" them, his "currency" being the lives of millions of Soviet soldiers.

FDR also knew that the United Nations would be stronger after the war if the Soviets were in it. He agreed to some concessions at Yalta, for the same reason he cut his social programs short, telling a reporter, "Dr. New Deal had to give way to Dr. Win the War."

FDR never made another public speech. This address, and his Inaugural Address on January 20, would be his only public appearances in the U.S. during his 4th term. He left Washington, and returned to his home in Hyde Park, New York. But he didn't think he was getting the rest he needed there. So, on March 30, he left for his "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had previously gone in his vain attempt to regain the use of his legs. He died there on April 12. Not only was the war not finished, but Adolf Hitler was still alive and in charge -- albeit of a quickly crumbling Third Reich.

After FDR's death, it was 18 days before Hitler killed himself, rather than be taken by Soviet troops; 26 days before Germany surrendered, V-E Day; and 134 days before Japan surrendered, V-J Day.

Between the lasting legacy of the New Deal, and the way he set things up for the postwar world, perhaps FDR's greatest achievement was building a world that didn't need him anymore.