Prelude
The large, heavy wooden table in the middle of the dining room is laid out for seventeen. It is just before eight on the evening of Friday, 5 February 1943. The location is central D.C. It is freezing outside, but the room is well heated. The flickering of the candles is reflected in the sparkling wine glasses, the napkins, artfully turned into standing fans, now lie, folded casually, next to the plates. Staff are serving the various courses – oysters, roast ham with pineapple, various vegetables as side dishes, salad and cheese – and the aroma of good food lies in the air. One of the guests has clearly made an effort to dress for the occasion. He is wearing a three-piece suit and a bow tie. Through his black-rimmed spectacles his gaze rests on the woman sitting opposite whom he seems to be quietly lecturing. He reinforces his words with hand gestures designed to demonstrate his confidence. Even so, he does not seem to be entirely at ease. Looking at him amicably with her blue eyes, his interlocutor is listening attentively and occasionally nods in agreement. She is wearing a loosely fitting but high-necked dress and pearls. Occasionally, the resolute woman, who is nearing sixty, looks to the right where her husband is absent-mindedly eating his meal. Her husband is the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was his wife Eleanor who invited the guests now attending the plush dinner party. Her nephew and the Roosevelts’ daughter-in-law, Ruth Josephine, are also in attendance.1
The group includes four naturalised German guests who seem oddly out of place. They have come to present their plans for post-war European reconstruction. Also in attendance is Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who subsequently noted that two of the guests, ‘Lowe and Polak’, were Jews. It is unclear how or why he knew this. He acknowledged, however, that both were excellent economic statisticians.2 ‘Polak’ was in fact called Pollock, but the names can admittedly be difficult to distinguish in American pronunciation.
For Pollock, the man in the three-piece suit and bow tie, this evening in February 1943 marked the zenith of his endeavours.3 His friend Max Horkheimer congratulated him on this extraordinary ‘opportunity to listen in on conversations of historical importance’.4 Pollock was certainly pleased. The now decades-long quest for a better place had taken him from tranquil Freiburg (Breisgau) through half of Europe all the way to the White House. He now had an opportunity to present his ideas and plans to the most powerful man on earth – even if, as yet, only his wife was actually paying attention. He explained at great length that only the creation of a ‘true democracy’ in Germany would secure peace in the long term. He appreciated that some in the State Department and the armed forces would rather establish a military administration, yet this would offer only a short-term solution. In the long run, there was a risk that Europe would turn ‘either Communist or fascist’ once the occupation forces withdrew.
The First Lady listened attentively but the President was evidently irked by Pollock’s preachiness. Back home, Trude Lash, one of Eleanor Roosevelt’s closest associates and, like Pollock, a native of Freiburg, told her husband that
The Germans were not as clear and good as last time. The White House, the Vice President and the President proved too much. Their manner was too professorial and in the end the President asked them to prepare school books – thus treating them as school masters which distressed Pollock especially.5
As it turns out, she need not have been all that concerned: Pollock was invited back.
So how did Friedrich Pollock of all people come to be invited to dinner at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW? What kind of life had led him from an apartment located above a small shop for women’s apparel in central Freiburg to the heart of twentieth-century political power?
Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day, 5 February 1943,
Morton (ed.) 1973.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s telegram to Pollock of 2 February 1943 implies that he wore a business suit, Fondo Friedrich Pollock, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2.1.1, doc. 1.
Max Horkheimer to Friedrich Pollock, 10 February 1943, in Horkheimer 1996a, pp. 420–5, p. 421.
Lash 1982, p. 428.