In 1945, FDR’s daughter accompanied him to one of the most important meetings in US history
Anna Roosevelt Boettiger became one of her father’s closest advisers
For the sake of secrecy, it was codenamed the Argonaut Conference — and it was considered the meeting of the 20th century.
In February of 1945, the three giants of World War II — American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin — convened for a week at the Livadia Palace in Crimea. The purpose of the historic gathering was to determine Europe’s postwar reorganization and to convince Stalin to take a more active role against Japan.
For that dual mission at what would later be known as the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt enlisted the help of the expected players, including Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman, General George C. Marshall, and other senior military figures.
But FDR determined one adviser was completely indispensable for the voyage. It was not his famous wife, Eleanor, but his daughter and confidante, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger — a latecomer to the president’s inner circle who had become the most powerful White House adviser in the third and final term of the Roosevelt administration.
“I wanted desperately to go, you see,” Anna later wrote in a letter to a friend. “But I also knew that if mother went I couldn’t go….So I sort of fell in with this, just blocked it out for my own purposes very selfishly.”
Roosevelt’s selection of Anna over Eleanor at a crucial moment among an exclusive group was certainly a sign of the state of the Roosevelts’ precarious marriage. But it was equally an indication of the depths of power his first child, and only daughter, had accumulated in the few years since arriving at the White House.
Late one night in the summer of 1942, FDR asked Eleanor to pare down her political activities and travel schedule to make more time for the traditional first lady duties of hosting nightly cocktail hours and regular White House dinners. He also hoped she would accompany him on weekend trips to Camp David (then called Shangri-La) and to his hometown getaway in Hyde Park, New York.
But his plea was about more than her role at the White House.
“I think he was really asking her to be his wife again in all aspects,” their son, Jimmy, later recalled. “He had always said she was the most remarkable woman he had ever known, the smartest, the most intuitive, the most interesting, but because she was always going somewhere he never got to spend time with her.”
But Eleanor felt she had earned her role among the political and international elite after playing a pivotal role in FDR’s political comeback after his diagnosis with polio that left him paralyzed — a condition that led her to do the traveling that he could not and allowed her to serve as his “eyes and ears” across the country. And while FDR became known for his sporadic radio fireside chats, Eleanor penned an almost-as-popular daily syndicated column called “My Day.”
Driven away partly by FDR’s decades-long affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd and partly by her self-driven mission, Eleanor was annoyed by the suggestion of what she saw as a demotion to to the ceremonial duties of the White House hostess. By most measures, she had built herself into the most important first lady in history through her work on poverty and civil rights and she was offended that FDR wished to curtail that.
And that’s why when Eleanor rebuffed FDR’s request, he turned to Anna, who was living with her second husband, John Boettiger — a newspaper publisher for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where she was a columnist and and editor for several years.
At first, Anna moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to make certain her father was properly taking care of himself in the absence of her mother. “She took to having lunch with him, just to make sure that he laughed and ate his food,” according to a Life magazine profile of the first daughter at the time. “And pretty soon she found herself doing other things.”
But upon arrival, she realized more than his personal care needed attention. “With no preliminary talks or discussions,” she later wrote, “I found myself trying to take over little chores that I felt would relieve Father of some of the pressure under which he was constantly working.”
From nearly the beginning, Anna filled the roles of White House hostess, FDR’s drinking partner, and presidential gatekeeper. She also began writing speeches and handling White House correspondence. And while she may have claimed that it was “immaterial to me whether my job was helping to plan the 1944 campaign, pouring tea for General de Gaulle or filling Father’s empty cigarette case,” she was gaining power for her social and political efforts.
By some measures, Anna was better suited for the first lady role. And FDR found in Anna a kindred spirit compared to the more introverted Eleanor — something Life noticed when they referred to her as the “free-speaking, free-cursing” daughter.
The family also saw the matching temperaments of the two. “Father could relax more easily with Anna than with Mother,” her brother, Elliott, later noted. “He could enjoy his drink without feeling guilty. Though Mother had gotten to the point where she would think she was relaxing, she was always working.”
“Anna’s day at the White House begins at 6:45 a.m.,” Time magazine reported in a glowing profile of the first daughter. After breakfast in the Lincoln suite and sending her son off to kindergarten with a Secret Service escort, she spent the day by FDR’s side “until Johnny comes marching home” from school. Following a full day of official White House work, Anna “will preside over social engagements and welcome visitors of state any time Eleanor Roosevelt is off on a trip” — yet the unassuming presidential hostess and aide “made it plain that she will not be considered an assistant hostess. She has reiterated … instructions to the State Department’s protocol office: at White House guest dinners, ‘Put me anywhere, I’m not official.’”
Anna’s ability to work and socialize by Roosevelt’s side gave her access and influence over the president that in many respects eventually eclipsed Eleanor’s in some respects. Before long, FDR would discuss matters of the his 1944 reelection campaign, war, political appointments, and White House protocol. According to presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Though he rarely chose to reveal to anyone the full extent of what he was thinking or feeling, he spoke openly to Anna about his frustrations with Eleanor.”
Anna fell short of replacing Eleanor, who remained unparalleled as first lady in the eyes of the public. However, with time, Anna’s role rapidly expanded, “because I was there all the time and it was easy for Father to tell someone to ‘ask Anna to do that’ or to look over at me and say, ‘Sis, you handle that,’” she later wrote.
Roosevelt’s health continued to decline and he died just two months after Yalta, on April 12, 1945, during a visit to Warm Springs, Georgia. (His mistress was there. But his wife was not.)
Mother and daughter later reconciled and co-hosted a daily radio show, “The Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program.” And Anna assumed caretaker duties when Eleanor became terminally ill in 1962.
Anna later worked in public relations for universities and, beginning in 1963, was appointed to presidential commissions by John F. Kennedy, serving on the Citizen’s Advisory Council on the Status of Women for several years, and as vice-chairman of the President’s Commission for the Observance of Human Rights.
And that’s precisely why the American public not only accepted Anna’s role during her father’s presidency, but came to highly approve of it. She was not stepping out of the family empire to reap the financial benefits of meetings with government officials or foreign heads of state at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Instead, she left the White House with as much uncertainty as she entered it.
