‘Depressed’ FDR handed Stalin victory at Yalta (Dr. Salerian quoted)

The Sunday Times (UK)
February 24, 2002
By John Harlow, Los Angeles





A PSYCHIATRIST who has studied the medical records of Franklin D Roosevelt,
 one of the greatest American presidents, claims he gave up a large area of eastern
Europe to Joseph Stalin in the final stages of the second world war because he was
gripped by clinical depression.

The research by Alen Salerian, a former chief psychiatric consultant to the FBI, challenges
the view of historians who maintain that even during the last months of his struggle against
circulatory disease and polio, Roosevelt remained realistic about what he could wrest back
from the Soviet armies occupying much of Europe.

Salerian’s work supports the view privately expressed at the time by Winston Churchill,
 Roosevelt’s ally at the Yalta conference in February 1945, when the continent was divided up,
that a stronger American president could have saved Czechoslovakia and perhaps Hungary
from Russian domination.
Salerian, who bases his conclusions on a reinterpretation of scant medical records and witnesses’
recollections, said “FDR” had suffered a recurrence of depression that had struck after he
contracted polio in 1921. Charles Bohlen, a White House aide, reported that, shortly before
Yalta, he had seen Roosevelt in a daze in the Oval Office for 30 minutes with spittle on his lips.
The president, who died two months later during his record fourth term in office, should have
 stood aside at Yalta for Harry Truman, his vice-president and eventual successor, Salerian claims.
“I have studied reports brushed into the corners by Roosevelt’s political heirs for the past half-century,
 looking at them as a psychiatrist,” Salerian said. “It was irresponsible for Roosevelt to represent our
country at Yalta, and his illnesses may have had terrible consequences.”
Andrew Johnsson, a history lecturer at the University of Southern California, is preparing his own study
of Roosevelt’s legacy. “Churchill could not understand why his old ally allowed so much to slip away at
Yalta,” he said. “That Roosevelt was both mentally and physically weak at Yalta explains a lot.”
Other historians disagree, saying the military positions of the Soviet and American armies
determined the line of what was to become the iron curtain. “There are unanswered questions
about his health but I do not think his judgment and mental clarity were in doubt,” said Professor
David Woolner, director of the FDR archives at Marist College in New York.