President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) had just concluded breakfast on an early spring day on April 12, 1945, at his "Little White House" atop Pine Mountain in Warm Springs, Georgia.
He was one month into his 12th year of the presidency.
The president had recently returned from the Big Three Conference in Yalta, Crimea, where, with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Russian leader Joseph Stalin, he discussed the future of Eastern Europe, the role of the Soviet Union in...