A Brief History…

I have finished my third book about Wendel Willkie. I got interested in him for two reasons. I read Amity Schlaes’ book The Forgotten Man, an economic history of the Great Depression. I wrote a review of the book on Amazon. Ms. Schlaes describes the battle between private utilities, led by Willkie, a lawyer and later president of Commonwealth and Southern, a large utility, and David Lilienthal who was appointed by Roosevelt to establish the Tennessee Valley Authority as a monopoly in the South. Willkie eventually lost his battle and was forced to sell the private utility to TVA but he did get a decent price for his shareholders. The contest between Willkie and Roosevelt made him famous. He was a long time Democrat but, by 1939, Republicans who despaired of the isolationist Republican Party had convinced him to switch his registration and to consider a run for the presidency in 1940.

The second book, Five Days in Philadelphia, describes the Republican convention of 1940 where the dark horse Willkie, who had never run for office and who had not entered any primaries, won the Republican nomination, defeating Robert Taft and Thomas Dewey, among others. I have written a review of that book, as well.

I just finished the third book, Dark Horse, which is a full biography. He was an amazing man and one that the Republican party could use today. He had an incredible touch with people. Present day students of politics might be surprised to see the support he had from union leaders like David Dubinsky, founder of the garment workers union.

Dubinsky had hopes of launching a national liberal party, headed by Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate for President in 1940 who had soured on the Republican Party after his defeat in the primaries in 1944. He proposed that Willkie begin by running for Mayor of New York City in 1945; Willkie, however, died before the plan could get off the ground.

Willkie received more votes in 1940 than any Republican would get until Eisenhower in 1952. He lost by a large majority in the electoral college but a switch of as few as 600,000 votes could have swung enough states for him to win.

After the election, he agreed to undertake a fact-finding mission to Britain at the height of the Blitz. He refused to be coddled and walked the streets of London during the bombing, visiting air raid shelters that held as many as 10,000 people. He became a familiar and beloved figure to the Londoners, especially after Churchill convinced him to wear a white helmet during air raids.

He cut short his trip to return to testify before Congress, and hostile members of his own party, in favor of Lend Lease. Roosevelt credited him with the easy passage of the bill. He conducted a series of debates with Charles Lindberg before huge audiences and urged preparedness. The final debate was canceled by Pearl Harbor.

Once the war had begun, he agreed to undertake another mission for Roosevelt and traveled around the world, visiting Egypt just before the battle of El Alamein. General Montgomery allowed him to tour the battlefield and visit the “Tommies” in their camps. He met King Farouk and concluded that he was a weak sybarite but others impressed him and he came to the conclusion that the colonies of Britain would have to be allowed independence after the war. This led to a clash with Churchill but Willkie’s popularity in Britain was undiminished and he reinforced Roosevelt’s belief that the colonial era would end once the war was over.

Willkie met with the Shah of Iran and leaders of Iraq and Syria. He refused to stay in the palace the French had arranged for him and nearly precipitated an international incident over his desire to keep in touch with the local people and not the colonial overseers. He went on to the Soviet Union and had several very interesting meetings with Stalin. One incident, similar to a fictional incident in Herman Wouk’s novel, The Winds of War, involved a mild confrontation with Stalin in which Stalin good naturedly gave way. Many of the travels of Captain Victor Henry, Wouk’s hero of the two novels, Winds of War and War and Remembrance, seem to based on Willkie’s trips. Willkie even visited with Red Army troops facing the Germans and was once admonished by a Soviet general when he mentioned that the Red Army was defending. The general insisted that was wrong; they were attacking.

From Moscow, Willkie, like the fictional Captain Henry, flew east to China, were he spent time with Chiang Kai Shek and was entranced by Madame Chiang to the point where there was concern about a romance. He continued on around the world and, after his return, wrote a hugely influential book titled One World, which unexpectedly sold 2 1/2 million copies in a few months.

By 1943, Willkie had returned to law practice; the major New York law firm who recruited him changed its name to list him first as a partner. He continued to speak out on the war and his concerns about the world after the war ended. He was interested in another try at the presidency in 1944 but the Republican Party, with stupidity that boggles the mind, rejected him and chose Thomas Dewey, who was easily dispatched by the ailing Roosevelt.

Roosevelt actually considered asking Willkie to take the Vice-Presidential nomination on a unity ticket since he was dumping Henry Wallace at the insistence of the party. The consequences of that possibility are enormous. Willkie was (rightly) suspicious of Roosevelt and did not encourage such speculation so Roosevelt chose Senator Harry Truman. Willkie was interested in founding a third party for 1948, which would exclude the southern segregationists of the Democrats and the isolationist-protectionist wing of the Republicans. Willkie was powerfully involved in Civil Rights, was a close friend of Walter White, president of the NAACP and a major figure in early civil rights action. By the way, the use of the term “Liberal” in 1944 had little to do with the term as currently understood. Willkie, for example was a free trader in an era of high tariffs, a position that aggravated his problems with the Republican Party. Republicans, having passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which helped so much to bring on the Great Depression, had learned nothing since and were as protectionist as in 1929.

Unfortunately, Willkie, who was a chain smoker and had gained 40 pounds since his 1940 nomination, died of a heart attack in the summer of 1944. With him died the potential for a modern political party and an end to racial segregation 20 years before those things came to be. He was a towering figure who should be better known. He also makes a contrast with the present presumed Democratic nominee who, superficially, has a similar dark horse persona.

My next book about him will be his “One World,” which is described as very readable and not dated in style. I will report after finishing it.

Tags: Republican party, Roosevelt, Wendell Wilkie, World War II

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 6:34 pm and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.