Broken Circle: The Isolation of Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II*

Abstract

On the night of 21–22 June 1941, two different crises converged, changing the outlook for Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. German armies crashed into the Soviet Union. At nearly the same hour, forty-three-year-old Marguerite A. “Missy” LeHand, FDR's closest companion for two decades, was crippled by a stroke followed by a nervous breakdown. Roosevelt faced the challenges of a widened war at the moment when he lost a key member of his circle. Samuel I. Rosenman, a Roosevelt insider since the 1920s, pointed to LeHand as “the one indispensable person around the Executive Mansion and later around the White House.”1 He ranked her as “one of the five most important people in the U.S.”2 Indeed, LeHand operated as FDR's personal and political partner. As the New Dealer Raymond Moley put it, “Missy was as close to being a wife as he ever had—or could have.”3 Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes detailed how LeHand's strengths fit Roosevelt's needs. After war broke out in Europe, Ickes wrote,