FDR Dies: America Loses Its Wartime President
Franklin Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, while sitting for a portrait. He had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. He was 63. Germany surrendered 26 days later. He never knew the war he'd led America through for four years would be won in the weeks after his death. He'd been visibly failing for months — the photos from Yalta in February show a man who looks like a ghost of himself. Stalin reportedly told his advisers after Yalta that Roosevelt wouldn't live much longer. Harry Truman, who had been Vice President for 82 days and had been kept almost completely uninformed about the war, learned about the atomic bomb the day he was sworn in. Two of them were used four months later.
April 12, 1945
81 years ago
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