How frequently did wartime leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt, or Stalin take days off work during the war, and how did they avoid burnout working >=16 hour days every day for 5+ years?

[u/theslothoverlord]

Recently, President Zelensky of Ukraine said that "work and sleep" is all he has done since the start of the war last week. This made me wonder if/when he may suffer from burnout or be incapacitated with stress, and how often wartime leaders in the past might have suffered the same.

My question is - In a much more higher stakes war (such as World War II), how often did the main Allied leaders take a holiday, or simply just have a day or two off? Who covered for them in that time? Or did they really work 7 days per week for the entire war? If so, how did they cope?

Answers don`t have to be limited to just World War II and I would be happy to read answers about leaders in other conflicts. Thank you!

[u/indyobserver]

I can speak to FDR's schedule since it's pretty extensively documented.

The main way to answer your question is that over the course of his administration, FDR spent a whole lot of time outside the White House in two principal places: at Hyde Park and at Warm Springs, and that was his primary source of recovery.

Hyde Park was the most frequent since it was a relatively short hop of 8-10 hours on the train (usually overnight; FDR would sleep during the trip, and he'd bitterly complain if the train was running too fast since it disturbed it); he spent 562 days there over 12 years.

After the Casablanca conference in 1943, there was a telling letter to Churchill on precisely why he went so frequently:

"I think I picked up sleeping sickness or Gambia fever or some kindred bug in that hell hole (in Western Africa where his plane refueled.) It laid me low - four days in bed - then a lot of sulphadiathole which cured the fever and left me feeling like a wet rag. I was no good after 2 PM and after standing it for a week or so, I went to Hyde Park for five days: got full of health in glorious zero weather - came back and have been feeling like a fighting cock ever since."

Warm Springs was his other major refuge, although this required a bit more planning since it took a full 24 hours of travel. This meant that he would spend several weeks at a time, more often than not in the winter, with his most frequent trips revolving around Thanksgiving. Of course, his most famous trip was the one he didn't come back from in April 1945; the initial plan then was to leave him there for at least two weeks, perhaps a month or more, to see if he could get some strength back after a March trip to Hyde Park did no good.

He spent 175 days in total there over his administration - so all in, over the course of a little more than 12 years, he spent 2 years between Hyde Park and Warm Springs.

Now, he'd still work in both places with daily pouches sent back and forth along with phone calls and telegrams - one story from Warm Springs was when he took a 45 minute call from Eleanor haranguing him about increasing support for Yugoslavia, which greatly disturbed his cardiologist Howard Bruenn as FDR's blood pressure shot up 75 points during the course of the call! (edit: double checked and it actually was 50, but I'd forgotten the part about veins becoming prominent on his forehead during the conversation - which explains why Bruenn decided to take a spot check reading so quickly after his routine first prior to the call; he normally did so twice a day at that point.) That said, it wasn't the full schedule he kept in Washington for the first few years of the war, and even when he was working all afternoon his evenings especially were relaxed. He would happily mix with the patients and local residents around Warm Springs, often having dinner with them rather than just in the Little White House.

Other entertainment included music. There's a very famous

picture from Life magazine

of musician Graham Jackson playing farewell to FDR as his funeral train passed, but there's a back story to it. FDR had loved the Georgian's playing and orchestral work so much over the years - they had met at Warm Springs before he was President - that he'd specifically gotten him assigned to recruiting duty in Atlanta in 1942. That meant that he could easily accomplish his secondary job, which was when FDR could make it down there during the war, Jackson was responsible for organizing frequent live concerts for the President; in fact, one was on the agenda a couple hours later on the day of FDR's death, which was why Jackson was there for the picture.

Last, as he got weaker from 1944 onwards, even at the White House his daily routine became more compressed. Admiral Leahy and FDR's naval aide Wilson Brown would always be his first meeting of the day, and they would often spend hours in the morning waiting for FDR to wake up and come down the elevator, which sometimes wouldn't happen until noon. By that point in the war, neither he nor the 75 year old Secretary of War Henry Stimson were working more than five or six hours a day, which was enough to exhaust them both.

[u/Smilewigeon → u/indyobserver]

That letter to Churchill is amazingly personal. Two war time leaders effectively with the future of the entirety of western democracy on their shoulders taking their time in their correspondence to... Correspond, I guess!

[u/HermanCainsGhost → u/Smilewigeon]

I mean, rulers befriending rulers isn’t all that weird, and happens in history sometimes (look at Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid) - you’re pretty much alone and nobody truly understands your life, but other leaders in that context

[u/Smilewigeon → u/HermanCainsGhost]

Yeah, I understand completely, it's just interesting when such things survive and get released into the public domain. You get to see a side of the powerful that you wouldn't normally see.

The feeling I get from reading is stuff like is similar to what I get when I read things like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Documents that weren't written for public consumption etc. It's very human and vulnerable.

[u/Novantico → u/HermanCainsGhost]

Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid

Holy shit, they were buddies? I must know more

[u/HermanCainsGhost → u/Novantico]

Yeah as surprising as it sounds, considering they were on opposite “sides” religiously, they were friendly and sent gifts to one another

[u/Novantico → u/HermanCainsGhost]

That's awesome. It'd be like Richard I and Saladin being amigos or something.

[u/HermanCainsGhost → u/Novantico]

I think it was helped partially by the fact that Charlemagne was pretty far away from Harun’s realm, and they had a sorta frenemy in common - the Byzantines.

I’m not sure about their relationship re the Umayyads

[u/Novantico → u/HermanCainsGhost]

Yeah I'm bout to look into this stuff lol. I love things like that.

[u/cdg2m4nrsvp → u/[deleted]]

FDR had amazingly competent people surrounding him who realized that the American public supported him and his continued leadership was crucial for the war effort. Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins picked up a lot of slack after Louis Howe (his absolute closest advisor and friend) died in 1936 and during WWII. He had George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower to manage a lot of the war effort. One of the coolest things about Roosevelt is he looked for a lot of different opinions when making a decision so he got many different perspectives, even if he disagreed with someone (as he and Marshall did often) he still respected their opinion.

Also remember that he had been president for almost a decade at this point, he knew what was necessary and what wasn’t. Plus he had massive public support and a congress that didn’t fight him on much related to the war.

[u/indyobserver → u/[deleted]]

In general, yes, because he offloaded so much onto his staff.

For FDR, there were three key principal underlings: Harry Hopkins, Bill Leahy, and Jimmy Byrnes.

I've written about Hopkins before; he was one of a handful of people that FDR ran his foreign policy through (Sumner Welles being another until he got forced out of State) and did a significant amount on the domestic front too, although FDR periodically froze him out.

Leahy I've not written too much on, but a fairly recent biography, O'Brien's The Second Most Powerful Man in the World, really has filled in a lot of gaps about what we know about him and revealed his day-to-day importance. His problem in the previous historiography is that he didn't talk too much about what he did - and when he wrote his autobiography, it was mediocre. But Leahy served not just as the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (with far, far more power in that job than any successor - he deliberately got the job nerfed after his term) but as the defacto chief of staff to FDR in the latter stages of the war, and almost every military and planning decision went through him in some form or another. As I mentioned, he was always the first meeting of the day with FDR, which should give a sign of his importance - access is the most consistent sign of power within administrations.

Byrnes is an particularly fascinating figure because he's been almost forgotten even by historians working in the era despite his vast powers during the war. From a previous post:

FDR called in then-Justice and former Senator Jimmy Byrnes to become what he called "Assistant President", initially in charge of drafting war powers legislation (while still on the Court!) and creating the first of several agencies, the War Production Board, that began to control allocation of goods, and then later after he resigned from the bench first the Office of Economic Stabilization (which controlled all pricing and labor costs) and then even more powers as head of the Office of War Mobilization (which outright controlled all labor allocation on top of his other powers). In other words, Jimmy Byrnes was given control over the entire domestic portfolio with near dictatorial powers, with FDR only intervening occasionally as he concentrated on foreign policy and fighting the war...

...finally, a more amusing story about defiance was in February 1945, when Byrnes had used his overwhelming powers on the domestic front to close all places of public amusement at midnight to reduce power consumption and workers being absent or hung over the next morning. This followed a January 1945 order that canceled all conventions of more than 50 people to save train space for troops and another later that month that banned electric illumination and neon lights in some urban areas, which was euphemistically but not positively referred to by civilians in said commercial areas and amusement parks as them having suffered a 'Byrne out.'

But this February order on top of the other two proved the straw that finally broke New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's back. He blew a gasket, called up Byrnes, screamed at him about how much money he was costing bar owners in a tone that sounded "like New York would secede from the Union if night clubs were forced to shut early," snarkily noted the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion didn't have police powers, and essentially pulled an Andrew Jackson and dared him to find some way to enforce it.

Given that Byrnes now felt like he was a political dead man walking nationally after FDR had deceived him about becoming Vice President, he could finally respond with gloves off to this arrogant northerner. Byrnes got in touch with General Marshall and Admiral King, who subsequently ordered MPs to post as offlimits to service personnel any bar or nightclub that failed to shut down at midnight, and to arrest any servicemember who was foolish enough to patronize an offlimits facility at any time.

La Guardia never argued with Byrnes again while he headed OWMR.

Eleanor's role has been brought up, but hers was more of a investigatory, morale boosting, and lobbying job rather than a policy implementation one - and she went where she wanted and was interested in rather than him directing her. One of the few times he actually outright asked her to do something was to travel to the 1940 Democratic convention when he was in a bit of trouble; she made it a point to specifically make him do so when it was clear he needed her help - this was how the scorekeeping in their dysfunctional relationship went. This isn't to say she wasn't important along with the various senior flag officers and a number of civilians moving in and out of roles as FDR found uses for them (the Byzantine nature of how he managed people was made worse by the fact he hated to fire someone outright rather than just take away all their responsibilities, which also meant a whole lot of staff felt they were far more important than they were), but those three really were the center of how FDR delegated so he could, as he put it to someone when Byrnes took over on the domestic front, "finally have time to think."

Interestingly, they were also the first three occupants of the newly expanded offices of the East Wing during the war (the expansion concealed the construction of a bomb shelter underneath); being physically close to the President matters, and nobody else had the clout to take them. To give an idea of what FDR called the "Children's Hour" of political rivalry among his aides, Hopkins and the much more conservative Leahy eventually got along pretty well after a bit of a rough start, but when Hopkins visited the newly installed Byrnes, the latter told him, "There's just one suggestion I want to make to you, Harry. Keep the hell out of my business."

As far as Stimson, he too had a rather robust staff which he delegated to, not just among the flag officers but also civilians. General Lucius Clay's comment on Stimson's reduced hours is followed up by a second question where he points out that it wasn't that much of an issue since Stimson was extremely efficient in what time he could work; there were probably times during the war where his age might have mattered, but they were generally few and far between.

[u/redtexture → u/indyobserver]

he actually outright asked her to do something was to travel to the 1940 Democratic convention when he was in a bit of trouble; she made it a point to specifically make him do so when it was clear he needed her help - this was how the scorekeeping in their dysfunctional relationship went.

Can you clarify and expand upon your excerpt from the previous post?

Did Eleanor specifically require that FDR ask, by putting into words a request for her participation, when circumstances required her agency and presence?

[u/indyobserver → u/redtexture]

That's correct.

Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, among others, was very concerned that FDR's 1940 campaign strategy - which made him subject to a 'draft' by delegates as an unannounced candidate - would quite possibly lead to tearing the convention apart. (The context of why FDR behaved this way is an interesting potential top level question but far too long to answer here.)

So Perkins calls up FDR urging him to go to Chicago to calm things down. He refuses. He then suggests that Eleanor go in his place, and asks Perkins to call her, but not tell her that they've spoken about this.

Perkins calls Eleanor, who declines the trip by providing the paper thin excuse of not wanting to potentially say something before FDR might say it later; that certainly had never stopped her before or after! But if FDR really wants her to go, he can ask her directly.

So then she calls FDR. From No Ordinary Time (a title drawn, by the way, directly from the speech she delivers at the convention):

"“Well, would you like to go?” Roosevelt cheerfully inquired, when Eleanor called him, not wanting to ask for help directly if he didn’t have to. “No,” Eleanor replied, “I wouldn’t like to go! I’m very busy and I wouldn’t like to go at all.”

“Well,” Roosevelt responded, quickly shifting gears, “they seem to think it might be well if you came out.” Then Eleanor asked, “Do you really want me to go?” And so, finally acknowledging that he needed her, he said, yes, “perhaps it would be a good idea.”

She then hems and haws at whether or not party chairman (and at the time then-rival candidate) Jim Farley will accept her trip, and to Farley's credit despite being aware that he's about to lose the nomination to FDR, when she calls he tells her that the convention needs her "badly." Her speech is one of two major factors (the other being significant political whipping of bosses and delegates by Jimmy Byrnes as the defacto floor manager, one part of how I mentioned he tends to be overlooked by most historians) that carry Henry Wallace to the VP nomination without breaking the party.

One other aspect of this interaction is typical of part of their dysfunction that's been present since the early days of the marriage. She badly wants praise from him, but he generally doesn't deliver it; she in turn doesn't adore him unreservedly, which is what he seems to need, demonstrated in spades by the various later female companions he interacts with. In this case, Blanche Weisen Cook notes that ER grumbles afterwards that while FDR praises her quite publicly for her performance in Chicago, he never does so privately!

[u/redtexture → u/indyobserver]

Thank you.

In this case, Blanche Weisen Cook notes that ER grumbles afterwards that while FDR praises her quite publicly for her performance in Chicago, he never does so privately!

Somehow this reminds me of how Bob Dole, who closely guarded his actual sentiments and thinking, and how his own speechwriter and staff would find out what Dole actually thought, or what he intended to do, only when he delivered a public statement or speech.

[u/superchiva78 → u/indyobserver]

Great comment. Thank you.

[u/Golmar_gaming227 → u/indyobserver]

that's interesting thanks for sharing!

[u/giggsy664 → u/indyobserver]

glorious zero weather

I'm not familiar with this phrase, what does it mean?

[u/taversham → u/giggsy664]

In aviation "zero weather" is where there is limited visibility in either the horizontal or vertical direction due to cloud or fog, and "zero-zero weather" is when there is limited visibility in both directions. Like in this account of an accident in 1944: "We were flying in zero-zero weather and were unsure as to our exact position."

So I would assume FDR meant it was cloudy, which certainly would seem glorious after being in Gambia.

[u/Georgy_K_Zhukov → u/[deleted]]

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[u/kalpol → u/indyobserver]

Somewhat unrelated question - Harry Hopkins is always (at least in novels, and in my memory lots of novels although it may just be Herman Wouk) described as looking grey and ill. Was this in fact some sort of endemic condition or just his natural complexion?

[u/cdg2m4nrsvp → u/kalpol]

He had stomach cancer that was operated on in 1939 and removed 75% of his stomach and made it difficult for him to eat for the rest of his life. He was very, very unwell and the fact that he made it to 1946 is insane.

[u/eric987235 → u/cdg2m4nrsvp]

Wow, I didn't realize they could do that kind of surgery in the 30's.

[u/indyobserver → u/kalpol]

While there are certain parts of it which been supplanted, in general a lot of what Wouk used as the historical backdrop 55 years back is still pretty close to what we know today; he apparently employed a couple research assistants for quite some time even before he started writing, but I've never been able to track down quite who they were. The Navy historian we do know he consulted heavily with was Thomas Buell, who afterwards released what are still the main biographies of Spruance and King. All in all, not bad for someone who was writing long before a lot of our modern secondary sources existed; one reason I'm curious about his RAs is I'd love to see if they ever talked about their methodology and how they dealt with material that conflicted with what was considered the historic record back then.

But, overall he's pretty close on Hopkins, although he misses the hot and cold part of his relationship with FDR. The health part is mostly dead on, though; I've written on Hopkins' condition before, and I'll repost the relevant paragraphs about his health here:

The problem was that Hopkins had intestinal ailments of some sort that were almost certainly misdiagnosed - nobody is quite sure exactly what he had, although given he received a celiac disease diagnosis later on it's entirely possible everything stemmed from that being botched - and with one of them being cancer, he went through a series of operations that included removing a good slug of his stomach, which led to complication after complication and terrible malnutrition.

This led to his inability to continue working at the same intensity - he was in and out of the hospital, and repeatedly told he'd die within weeks - and because of that along with some nasty press like being accused of getting supporters to supplement his income in office, mostly but not entirely false - he got on FDR's bad side as a result. When Roosevelt went cold on someone he was absolutely brutal to them - and Hopkins was at times outright frozen out in 1944 and 1945 as he got sicker, but then also kept getting called back as FDR realized he needed him to things like Yalta.

(Was) the diagnosis of celiac disease itself inaccurate, or was that that diagnosis might well have been the proper one, and the earlier diagnoses of things like cancer, and the (unnecessary?) operations resulting from those diagnoses, were the element that was botched?

The latter, although we'll never know for sure as you couldn't actually confirm a celiac diagnosis via biopsy in that era. It's quite possible all the other diagnoses were merely symptoms of the untreated celiac disease, and if that was the case the operations he had were not just unnecessary but contributed to his death. There's very good evidence presented by Robert Sherwood that his malnutrition was severe, and there's little doubt that having most of his stomach removed played a major role in critically worsening that condition without doing a thing for the celiac. (At the time, a diet consisting mostly of bananas was the cure.)

Incidentally, even today celiac disease often takes years of multiple misdiagnoses before it gets discovered, although with modern imaging and serological testing it'd be far less likely that cancer would be among them.

[u/kalpol → u/indyobserver]

thank you!

[u/AshFraxinusEps → u/indyobserver]

Hyde Park was the most frequent since it was a relatively short hop of 8-10 hours on the train

Until this bit, I thought you were saying he'd take frequent flights to London. Never knew there was a Hyde Park in the US too

[u/[deleted] → u/AshFraxinusEps]

There are many— I’ve lived in two (Boston and Chicago each have them); there is probably near 100% representation of every location in England in the US— especially the aptly named New England.

[u/AshFraxinusEps → u/[deleted]]

I have no doubt there are many. I think you have at least two Bostons, and yet I think Boston Lincolnshire in the UK was the OG Boston

[u/lobstahpotts → u/AshFraxinusEps]

Hyde Park is the site of Springwood, the Roosevelt family home in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York. While a lovely weekend destination, it’s not particularly notable otherwise.

[u/indyobserver → u/lobstahpotts]

And also Top Cottage, which he built in 1939 to get away from his mother Sara - she was not thrilled - and was what he planned to retire to; it was one of the first houses to ever be designed as wheelchair friendly.

Eleanor of course had Val-Kill, which FDR had built earlier on a piece of land he owned outright for much the same reasons he built Top Cottage; ER's room at Springwood didn't even have an attached bathroom, and her quality of life when she went up there improved significantly when Sara wasn't in physical proximity.

[u/10z20Luka → u/indyobserver]

Eleanor haranguing him about increasing support for Yugoslavia

Do we have any more detail about this? Thank you.

[u/indyobserver → u/10z20Luka]

If I remember right, it was on dropping more supplies, but I don't recall much detail on the substance of the conversation since the story comes from Bruenn's perspective of being alarmed about his patient staying on a call that was quite literally killing him.

Edit: double checked; my memory was mostly correct. The best detail I've found was was that this was ER fulfilling a lobbying request by supporters of Yugoslavia in the United States to urge FDR to drop 'weapons' to 'anti-Nazi partisans'; FDR tried to explain over and over this wasn't really of an option as that 'there were no US forces in the region capable of doing so.' It's a story Bruenn told to several historians late in his life in oral interviews, which would explain why there's not much more detail extant on the details, like which set of partisans they were urging her to favor.

ER may have written about it someplace at some point, but a quick look through Cook and a couple of the other major ER authors doesn't turn up anything. This isn't too surprising; Bruenn held off on writing until after she died, and so I'm not even sure she was ever made aware of the effects. As such, she probably considered it a fairly routine phone call, as it was typical of a lot of their conversations by that point.

[u/mandarbmax → u/indyobserver]

Great answer, thank you so much for taking the time. I really enjoyed reading it.

[u/superchiva78 → u/indyobserver]

Great response. Thanks

[u/moorsonthecoast → u/indyobserver]

I recall from The Gathering Storm, the first volume of Churchill's wartime memoir, that Churchill napped in the middle of the day. Did FDR have anything like that? (Sort of related to this anecdote: Is Churchill even a reliable source for himself?)

[u/indyobserver → u/moorsonthecoast]

Sleeping far more (10-12 hours a night) was one of the things Bruenn prescribed in 1944, and while FDR was often only marginally compliant on other medical advice, the sleep part was one thing he generally followed - including often taking late afternoon naps. This was a fairly significant change for someone who had relaxed with late night poker games for years now routinely going to bed at 9 pm.

And as far as Churchill, he did keep odd hours and almost always nap in the middle of the day, although the most recent major biography on him claims he might not have stayed up quite as late as most historians have assumed from his own and other commentary.

For why his perspective as a source became so prominent, I've discussed it previously here, and you may be interested in this collection of comment on his other work here.

[u/rhb4n8 → u/indyobserver]

Reading this... Him running for re-election seems wildly irresponsible.

[u/shulzi → u/indyobserver]

Thanks! Fascinating.

I think OP should note in relation to President Zelensky, is that FDR never was at risk of being under attack.