Strange Death of FDR

The casket containing FDR’s remains was not opened for public viewing. Even a son of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), James Roosevelt, was not allowed a final glimpse of his father.

“Upon being informed of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” wrote an anonymous pamphleteer in 1947, Josef “Stalin immediately contacted in person the man who was the Ambassador to the United States, Andrei Gromyko. He instructed Gromyko to go personally to the White House, insist that the casket be opened, and report to him definitely whether or not he was convinced that Franklin D. Roosevelt was dead. Gromyko obeyed orders as far as possible, but was soon brought to a shocking halt. He discovered that even an Ambassador from one of the four most powerful nations on earth would not be permitted to view the remains.” [1]

Gromyko called Edward Stettinius, US Secretary of State. Gromyko “expressed Stalin’s wishes to Stettinius.” Stalin had his doubts about FDR’s death. Stettinius assumed the White House would grant the simple request to let Gromyko view the remains. Stettinius, “who later was to be unsuccessful in an attempt to consummate the Roosevelt plan for world government, walked briskly to the White House and contacted the one in authority, who in this instance happened to be, not the widow, not the private secretary, not the children — but Samuel Rosenman, whom the late president frequently referred to as ‘Sammy the Rose.’” [1]

At the earlier Yalta conference, “Roosevelt agreed to every demand made by Stalin… He promised Stalin practically everything he desired — the lion’s share of China, a chance at India, Hitler’s booty in Europe. He promised to let the Communist Party in America alone. He promised to make no issue of Red propaganda in the United States.” [1]

Stalin “must have known that Roosevelt was a smooth, slick operator.” Was the Roosevelt death faked, part of a sleight of hand on the Yalta promises? “Surely there must have been times when Roosevelt’s promises to [Stalin] seemed too good to be true… Stalin was afraid of just exactly what has happened — namely, that a United States without Dictator Roosevelt would not do as much for him as would be done if his political pal remained alive. Knowing the fox-like temperament of the Hyde Park squire, the Soviet dictator was anxious to make sure that the palace guard, or some powerful group, had not spirited their spokesman away on the ground that at last he had made some promises that could not be fulfilled or evaded.” [1]

Roosevelt “spirited away” and his casket empty? Or did Josef Stalin later come to believe that FDR had been poisoned and that his wife Eleanor had been part of the plot, as Col. Fletcher Prouty reportedly claimed? [2]

Josef Stalin stopped trusting Eleanor Roosevelt when she refused permission for Andrey Gromyko to examine the body. If memory serves, the final viewing of FDR was a closed casket affair. According to Prouty, when son Elliott Roosevelt asked Stalin what Gromyko hoped to learn from the corpse of FDR, Stalin became furious: “They poisoned your father, of course, just as they have tried repeatedly to poison me.”

“They, who are they?” asked Elliott Roosevelt.

“The Churchill gang,” shouted Stalin. “They poisoned your father, and they continue to try to poison me… the Churchill gang!”

After FDR apparently had died, “Sammy the Rose” took charge of all Roosevelt papers, such as correspondence, letters, etc. Sammy “removed everything that, in his opinion, the public should never see.” It is not know (as of 1947, at least) what happened to the Sammy the Rose Papers. [3]

At the 1944 Democrat Convention held in Chicago, FDR did not attend. Secretly, however, Roosevelt was hiding in a special train on the outskirts of Chicago. Who would be the next Vice-President, given FDR’s re-election to a fourth term? FDR ordered, “Clear it with Sidney.” Sidney was Sidney Hillman, head of Amalgamated Clothing Workers and allegedly a Communist organizer. [3]

On April 12, 1945, the press announced that FDR had died, at Warm Springs, Georgia. Reportedly, the only one known to be present at the moment of death was Elizabeth Shumatoff, a Russian artist. [3]

There is a suicide theory, that FDR, already having health in serious decline, put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. This might explain the closed-casket.

Others say FDR was murdered. They are suspicious of Elizabeth Shumatoff. “Those who hold to the murder theory insist that Roosevelt was the tool of a terrible international cabal. They felt that he had fulfilled his purpose. They knew he was in bad health and they feared that he might make some horrible blunder growing out of delirium or senility that might expose their hand and spoil years of successful and satanic plotting.” Reportedly, the death of Roosevelt happened one week after he had met with Ibn Saud and promised that Palestine would never be taken away from the Arabs. [3]

Writes Murray N. Rothbard: The death of FDR “is perhaps the most mysterious death of all.” Rothbard takes a second look at deaths of various presidents. Regarding Roosevelt’s strange death, Rothbard reports, “All sorts of rumors abounded: that he died of syphilis, or of a gunshot wound, either self-inflicted or inflicted by someone else. Was Mrs. Lucy Mercer there when he died? And what was the role of the mysterious Russian painter, Mrs. Elizabeth Shoumatoff?” [4]

Circa 1974, Jim Bishop investigated the strange death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Bishop wrote a book, FDR’s Last Year, after reportedly spending “28 months tracking down not only the era’s major surviving figures, including members of Roosevelt’s family, but also the minor characters in the drama: retired Secret Service agents, the long-ago mayor of Warm Springs, the undertakers who worked on F.D.R.’s wasted body. Most of them were sympathetic to Roosevelt, telling Bishop the intimate details that he needed in order to weave the kind of narrative that has given him bestsellers before (The Day Lincoln Was Shot, The Day Christ Died).” [5]

Recently, Harry S. Goldsmith, a medical doctor, has written another book on the mystery of FDR’s death: A Conspiracy Of Silence, published in 2007. One review at amazon.com states, “Goldsmith’s interest in FDR’s medical records began in 1963. Years later, he started looking for them and found at every twist and turn they had been destroyed or lost.” Did “Sammy the Rose” destroy or hide the facts?

Of one thing, at least, we can be certain: “So you see, my dear Coningsby, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” (Benjamin Disraeli, 1844)

(A version of the above first appeared at my old Conspiracy Nation web site on October 18, 2008.)

——- Sources ——-
[1] “The Roosevelt Death: A Super Mystery (1947)”. 4 megabyte pdf file available for download at http://www.archive.org/details/TheRooseveltDeathASuperMystery
[2] This is according to the late Col. Fletcher Prouty, reported the late Robert Anton Wilson in his compendium of conspiracies, Everything Is Under Control (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998)
[3] Anonymous pamphleteer from 1947
[4] “Sudden Deaths In Office”, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard116.html
[5] “F.D.R.’s Conspiracy of Silence”, Time magazine, Sept. 16, 1974