But Franklin Roosevelt’s biggest love is reserved for the American people, whom he has led through twelve daunting years of deprivation and warfare. Roosevelt was first elected president just five weeks before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, but while Hitler has pursued a course of evil that is destroying his nation, Roosevelt has lifted America up from the lowest point in U.S. history to make it the most powerful nation on earth. He has done the people of America one final great favor by ensuring that his successor will not be an ideological extremist, but a man of the people who will do his best to heal the nation when the war inevitably ends. In this way, FDR does not repeat the mistake of Abraham Lincoln, who selected Andrew Johnson as his second vice president. Johnson’s bumbling presidency deepened the rifts and divisions after the Civil War ended and Lincoln was assassinated. As FDR well knows, some of the problems Johnson created exist to this day.4

The crowd pressing in on the South Lawn does not know upon which Bible verse Roosevelt’s hand rests. But they can hear his love in the timbre of his voice—so confident and assured, the father figure who will work tirelessly to lead the nation out of danger.

When they draw him, political cartoonists like to accentuate FDR’s strong, uplifted chin. This is how FDR actually appears as he recites the oath of office, a symbol of authority and optimism. And despite the heart disease that is slowly killing him, and the bone-thin legs that can barely support him, the president hardly looks ill. His posture is ramrod straight, his complexion a healthy pink, and his voice strong and clear.

The oath of office complete, FDR now turns to the crowd of seven thousand, and to millions of Americans listening on the radio, and prepares to deliver his final inaugural address.

*   *   *

Four thousand miles away, Gen. George S. Patton is not paying attention to the inaugural. Patton, who thinks highly of Roosevelt, and whom the president fondly addresses in person as the “Old Cavalryman” and “Our greatest fighting general—a pure joy,” is too busy directing the mop-up to be done on the battlefields of Luxembourg and Belgium, and enduring military politics.

Once again, Dwight Eisenhower is ignoring Patton. Having done the impossible, Patton is once again benched. Rather than having his top general lead the drive into Germany, Eisenhower is putting his strategic weight behind British field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, who has demanded that he lead the decisive Allied push to the Rhine River. Montgomery cleverly planned for this next wave of combat by withholding most British troops from the Battle of the Bulge. While Patton’s Third Army was taking casualties and losing scores of tanks and halftracks, Montgomery was husbanding his resources. Now, fresh and unscathed, the British army and those American units under Montgomery’s command are the new tip of the Allied spear. Meanwhile, as the inaugural takes place in Washington, Patton and the Third Army are relegated to rooting out the last pockets of German resistance in the Bulge.

Knowing that being bitter and angry will not help his cause in the slightest, Patton tries to put a positive spin on the situation.

“Saw a lot of dead Germans today, frozen in funny attitudes,” he writes to his wife, Beatrice. “I got some good pictures, but did not have my color camera, which was a pity.

“They are definitely on the run, and have suffered more than we hoped.”

*   *   *

“Wild Bill” Donovan is furious.

He is in Chungking, China, in the last week of a monthlong around-the-world tour that began in Washington, DC, at the same time Bastogne was being liberated. As always, he is driven by personal, not ideological, motivations. It is his deep desire that his Office of Strategic Services (OSS) remain the world’s most elite clandestine organization. And as with the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin, Donovan has no moral or ethical qualms about dealing with the Communists. He is positioning himself and the OSS for a prominent place in the postwar world. Nothing must stand in his way. And since it is clear to Donovan that Communists will be a powerful global presence once Germany and Japan surrender, he is more than happy to deal with them.

The Chinese Communist rebels want twenty million dollars to purchase arms for themselves to battle China’s Japanese occupiers. Donovan is not concerned that this angers China’s existing national government and its leader Chiang Kai-shek, which rightly fears that the Communists will someday attempt to take over the country. Nor is Donovan concerned that twenty million dollars is far more money than the Communists require for such a task.

“Wild Bill” Donovan during the Nuremberg Trials

What concerns Donovan is that his secret slush fund, provided for him by Congress and its War Agencies Appropriations Act of 1944, is just twenty-one million dollars. The terms of the money are that Donovan can spend it any way he likes, without regard to oversight or legality. That money is meant to cover all his far-flung spy operations, from France to Germany to Greece and even into the Vatican. Giving almost all his funds to the Chinese Communists would be ridiculous.

Donovan sends a counteroffer to the Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung,5 hoping he will lower their price.

But today the Chinese are not the source of Donovan’s fury. His focus is on Europe. Donovan seethes about the capture of OSS operatives near Patton’s headquarters. The event happened in September, and began with a flirtation at the bar of Paris’s Ritz Hotel between American socialite Gertrude Sanford Legendre and a U.S. naval commander who doubled as one of Donovan’s spies. The pair quickly struck up a romantic friendship, then borrowed a rented Peugeot and left for a joyride to the front. Gertrude, an undercover OSS agent, wanted to pay a visit to the headquarters of her friend George S. Patton.

Soon they made the mistake of unwittingly crossing into Germany, where the Nazis promptly captured them. Legendre quickly became the subject of a massive propaganda blast by the Germans, portrayed as the first woman POW on the Western Front.

The story was picked up by the global media. Legendre had the good sense to tell her captors that she was nothing more than a Red Cross employee, but Donovan knows that it is just a matter of time before Gestapo6 interrogators break her. Legendre is privy to an enormous amount of top-secret information that could damage OSS clandestine operations. So while Donovan is concerned about their fates, he is equally outraged that his two spies allowed themselves to be captured in such ridiculous fashion. There will be no forgiveness if they return alive. Wild Bill Donovan is a man who believes in retribution and punishment. Those who run afoul of his agenda will pay a heavy price.

Patton, of course, had nothing to do with their capture. But Donovan is wary of the general, due to Patton’s notorious mistrust of the Russians. There is growing sentiment in Washington that Patton’s soaring popularity must be brought back down to earth. It was no secret in American G-2 (intelligence) circles or the military press that certain politicians and generals did not want George Patton to garner more laurels, a war correspondent who traveled with the Third Army will write after the war.

So Donovan keeps an eye on Patton as he waits for news about his missing spies, and secretly monitors the many situations around the globe that might somehow affect his postwar power.

Meanwhile, as Donovan is set to fly from Chungking to visit his British counterparts7 in Ceylon, the Chinese Communists come back with their counteroffer.

They want more money, not less.

Donovan says he will get back to them.