Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread 11/15/21
Dizzying Plummet

1/There’s a marvelous scene in Eric Larson’s "The Splendid and the Vile" when the great Harry Hopkins is preparing to leave England after his prolonged visit with Winston Churchill.

2/The moment was fraught. Hitler was preparing his invasion of Russia, and wanted to finish off England with even more saturation bombing. Roosevelt had promised during his third campaign not to join in the war (Japan had not yet bombed Pearl Harbor).

3/...The rest of Europe was tottering. England stood alone.

4/England was almost out of money, desperately needing guns, ships, planes, food. Churchill had sent urgent personal letters to FDR imploring America’s help and promising that he would not ask for American troops. Republicans, of course, were opposing Roosevelt.

5/Roosevelt understood men. He was very close to Harry Hopkins, who was first FDR's Commerce Secretary in charge of reviving the economy from the depths of the Great Depression...

6/.. and later as a general advisor on all the challenges FDR faced. Hopkins would eventually become the administrator of the Lend Lease Program that actually helped save England.

7/Of all the titans of the 30’s and 40’s Harry Hopkins may have been the most wonderfully humane. He was ill for years, suffering from stomach cancer, weak of voice, and yet sublimely kind. His vision matched his compassion.

8/FDR had to decide, against the huge majority of Americans at the time, whether to directly involve America in this new, vast, horrible European war.

9/Roosevelt needed to get at the truth of England’s plight and, above all, to discern whether the population of England still had the grit required to respond to the horrific suffering Hitler was imposing on the British people.

10/ FDR had dreamed up the idea of Lend Lease, but what he needed to know was whether England's cause was as hopeless as it looked.

11/What FDR trusted was Harry Hopkins' heart as well as his mind. Churchill was aware that FDR’s closest and most trusted advisor was Hopkins, whom he had never met. So Churchill was both excited to meet Hopkins and taken aback by his initial impression.

12/Hopkins was a disheveled, unimposing person. Surprisingly, very strong people like Churchill and FDR, various senators and cabinet secretaries loved him. Hopkins was dis-arming. Churchill took him everywhere, housed him in 10 Downing St. and at Chequers...

13/.. The more people who met him, the more people spread the word that he was this wonderful, surprising, humble, kind man, not at all what they expected from brash America. Hopkins was also battling stomach cancer, and he knew his time was limited.

14/Churchill quickly saw what an immense intellect he was dealing with.

15/FDR had instructed Hopkins to sense whether the British people--after years of devastating bombing by the Nazis, with one neighborhood after another being reduced to smoldering ruins--were still able to resist the fascists.

16/On the last night of his 4-week visit, Hopkins was given a farewell dinner and asked to make some remarks. Churchill was intently concerned to know what Hopkins would tell Roosevelt. Hopkins thanked everyone, etc, and then turned to face Churchill.

17/ “I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well, I'm going to quote you one verse from that Book of Books in the truth of which . . . my own Scottish mother was brought up":

18/Hopkins dropped his voice to a near whisper and quoted the Book of Ruth: “Wither thou goest I will go; and wither thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.” Hopkins added, “even to the end.”

19/ Churchill wept.

20/He was no longer alone.

21/This question now haunts me: How did the United States fall so far so quickly?

22/In my lifetime, we have gone from FDR and Hopkins to Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. Our leadership, chosen by the people, went from heroism to moral squalor. Thanks to the GOP, both we and God have a heavy lift on our hands.