Harry Hopkins

Harry Hopkins was one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest advisers and a pivotal intermediary during the political uncertainty surrounding the 1944 vice-presidential nomination. His influence rested not on a public campaign for himself but on his access to Roosevelt, his ability to carry the President’s judgments to other political figures, and the trust he had earned through years of cooperation. Even as serious illness weakened him, Hopkins continued to shape succession discussions and undertake delicate diplomatic work; after Roosevelt’s death, he became an important counselor to Harry S. Truman.

Position in Roosevelt’s circle

The book presents Hopkins as exceptionally close to Roosevelt: in the succession discussions, he was described as the only person closer to the President than James F. Byrnes. That closeness gave his words particular weight. When Hopkins returned from the Teheran Conference, he had looked out at the stars during the flight home and asked Roosevelt who would be best able to take over if the plane went down. Roosevelt answered without hesitation: Byrnes. The exchange later informed the vice-presidential maneuvering, revealing Hopkins not merely as a conduit for political news but as someone trusted to pose the starkest question of succession directly to the President.

That trust did not mean Hopkins spoke for Roosevelt without qualification. In the spring of 1944, Roosevelt’s preference remained difficult to read, and Hopkins helped navigate the distinction between the President’s private views and what he had publicly said. As the vice-presidential contest developed, Byrnes sought clarity about Roosevelt’s intentions. Hopkins told him that Roosevelt believed Byrnes would win the nomination if he entered the race. Hopkins’s assurance translated the President’s confidence into practical political information, encouraging Byrnes at a moment when the choice of running mate carried unusually high stakes.

The 1944 succession struggle

The vice-presidential question acquired added urgency because Roosevelt’s deteriorating health was concealed from the public but increasingly alarming to people around him. After Roosevelt suffered what was called walking pneumonia, he went to Bernard Baruch’s South Carolina estate for a rest intended to last two weeks; he remained away for a month. Ed Flynn was so troubled by Roosevelt’s appearance after his return that he urged Eleanor Roosevelt to use her influence to keep him from running again. Other political figures likewise feared that the person nominated for vice president might soon become President.

Hopkins’s role in this setting was not to announce a choice on Roosevelt’s behalf, but to transmit judgments and interpret a situation in which the President’s signals were carefully controlled. In July, after a 51-day, 27,000-mile mission to China, Hopkins arrived in Washington exhausted and met Roosevelt to report on what he had seen. Their conversation ranged from China to Hopkins’s journey into Outer Mongolia, where no American had set foot in seventeen years. Roosevelt then turned to politics, while insisting that Hopkins should say publicly that they had not discussed it. The episode captures the tension Hopkins worked within: trusted with private political conversation, yet expected to preserve the separation between confidential consultation and public account.

Roosevelt told Hopkins that he intended to run again and that Hopkins remained his choice as running mate, describing the coming term as one that would be genuinely progressive. Hopkins, however, told the President to choose someone else if that person would add more strength to the ticket. Roosevelt warned him about the ordeal of a contested nomination at the Chicago convention and the jeers and rejection Hopkins might face. Hopkins said he was not worried about his family. The exchange shows both the President’s stated preference and Hopkins’s willingness to place the ticket’s electoral strength above his own prospects. The subsequent contest, in which Byrnes remained a central possibility, therefore unfolded amid overlapping calculations about party unity, political appeal, and the presidency itself.

Counselor to Truman

Hopkins’s importance continued after Roosevelt’s death. During the funeral, he left a sickbed in Minnesota to attend and appeared so ill that Truman asked how he felt. Hopkins answered that he felt terrible. The two then spent nearly two hours reviewing the Roosevelt years and discussing Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill while rain struck the office windows. The conversation placed Hopkins between the vanished administration and the new President: he could give Truman a seasoned account of the preceding years at the very moment when mourning and the transfer of power occupied the capital.

Hopkins also offered Truman a pointed lesson about governing. He had told Truman that it was a mistake to ask Roosevelt’s Cabinet to remain in office and that a President ought to have his own people around him. Cabinet changes soon began, including the appointment of Bob Hannegan as Postmaster General and Lewis Schwellenbach as Secretary of Labor. The evidence does not make Hopkins the architect of each appointment; it shows him advising Truman on the broader principle that a new President needed a circle of his own. His counsel thus connected personal loyalty to the practical work of establishing a distinct administration.

Diplomacy and the limits of his strength

As conflict threatened the United Nations conference in San Francisco, Charles Bohlen and Averell Harriman urged Hopkins to undertake a mission to Moscow. They believed he might be able to reach Stalin because he had been close to Roosevelt and had consistently worked for cooperation with the Soviet Union. He could also help arrange a meeting of the Big Three. Though gravely ill, Hopkins agreed to go. His selection depended on a particular political asset: he could approach Stalin not simply as a new administration’s representative, but as a figure associated with Roosevelt’s earlier policy of cooperation.

Hopkins’s career in these episodes is marked by the contrast between physical vulnerability and continuing political usefulness. The man who arrived from China after a punishing journey, attended Roosevelt’s funeral despite grave illness, and accepted another demanding diplomatic assignment was repeatedly entrusted with work that depended on confidence across personal and institutional boundaries. His significance lies in that intermediary role: he carried Roosevelt’s private judgments into the succession struggle, helped Truman interpret the transition, and was sent toward Moscow in an effort to preserve cooperation when postwar diplomacy was in danger.