POL 499: Senior Seminar in Political Science: FDR: Administrative Decisions

Live the exciting Holocaust story of heroes, Jewish and Gentile, who risked everything sneaking into and out of concentration camps and the Warsaw Ghetto to bring the news of the slaughter. Go inside the State Department to experience American bureaucrats, knowing of the mass murders of Jews, nevertheless prevented Jewish immigration and concealed, downplayed or outright denied what they knew was happening while the President, for political reasons, did nothing.

The death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945 sent shock waves around the world. His lifelong physician swore that the president had always been a picture of health. Later, in 1970, Roosevelt’s cardiologist admitted he had been suffering from uncontrolled hypertension and that his death--from a cerebral hemorrhage--was "a cataclysmic event waiting to happen.” But even this was a carefully constructed deceit, one that began in the 1930s and became acutely necessary as America approached war. In this great medical detective story and narrative of a presidential cover-up, an exhaustive study of all available reports of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s health, and a comprehensive review of thousands of photographs, an intrepid physician-journalist team reveals that Roosevelt at his death suffered from melanoma, a skin cancer that had spread to his brain and abdomen. Roosevelt’s condition was not only physically disabling, but also could have affected substantially his mental function and his ability to make decisions in the days when the nation was imperiled by World War II.