FDR’s Global View
Winter 2004, Vol. 36, No. 4 | Pieces of History
In this December 1942 photograph taken in the Oval Office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt studies the progress of the war on the globe given him by Gen. George C. Marshall.
Just more than a year into World War II, on December 18, 1942, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt:
"The battles now in progress make a most appropriate introduction to the New Year because I am confident that they foreshadow great victories. That you may be better able to follow the course of these battles we wish to install a special globe in your office, the duplicate of which is being delivered to 10 Downing Street [Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s residence in London]."
The plaque on the globe’s base read: “This globe is presented to the President of the United States by the United States Army, Christmas 1942.”
On December 30, Roosevelt responded to Marshall: “I am made very happy by your letter and by the special Globe which I have set up in my office directly behind my chair. I can swing around and figure distances to my great satisfaction.”
Roosevelt used the globe throughout the war, making pencil notations in places of particular interest. In March 1944, he transferred the globe to his presidential library in Hyde Park, New York. The globe has recently undergone extensive conservation and restoration and in June 2004 was placed on permanent display in the FDR Library’s Oval Office exhibit, next to the President’s desk as it was in December 1942.
The fifty-inch, 750-pound globe rests on rubber rollers within movable bases so that it can be turned any direction. The map’s scale of 1:10,000,000 (157.8 miles to the inch) results in an equator of some thirteen feet in circumference.
Roosevelt not only tracked the global war at his desk, he also traveled great distances to meet with America’s allies. Less than a month after receiving Marshall’s Christmas gift, Roosevelt became the first sitting President to travel by airplane when he went to Casablanca for a conference with Churchill.
After arriving in Miami from Washington by train on January 11, 1943, he boarded a Boeing Clipper aircraft, owned by Pan-American under charter to the U.S. Navy. The party reached Bathurst, Gambia, on January 13, having refueled in Trinidad and Belem, Brazil. The next morning, he boarded a C-54 army transport aircraft for the final leg. When he arrived in Casablanca, he had traveled a total of 1,162 miles by train and 6,125 miles by air.
After the Casablanca conference would come other overseas meetings with Churchill, Stalin, and others in Quebec, Teheran, Cairo, and Yalta. A war in two hemispheres required a global view, and FDR monitored its progress both in the Oval Office and on the move.