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Old 04-24-2012, 11:11 PM
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icenine icenine is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueStreak View Post
FDRs health was very bad in his third term. Enlarged heart as I understand it. He did smoke a lot for a long time. I would agree, Pete, he probably should not have run that last time. As it turned out Truman was not a bad successor.Dave
Yeah his health was really bad by the time of Yalta....I think Churchill was really surprised by the state of his health . However, I believe mentally he was still very much cognizant. I never bought that right wing he gave it all away to Stalin because he was sick mindset. There were Soviet troops on the ground in Europe at that time and after all the carnage and death in Russia from the Eastern Front battles they were not going to leave. He might have believed in the free elections promises by Stalin but there was no way in hell the United States was going to force the issue at that time, and Roosevelt wanted their support in the Pacific war against Japan.
Compare how FDR looks at Tehran (1943) and what he later looks like at Yalta (1945)

Tehran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHOO_1S_6Q4

Yalta http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybnzMnFEWJY

The Russian with the goatee and glasses ( wearing the big hat in the Yalta newsreel) is Molotov, Soviet Foreign Secretary...talk about being a survivor.
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