World War Two: 1945 and The Wheelchair President

World War Two: 1945 and The Wheelchair President examines the life and leadership of former American president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Guided by professor David Reynolds, we’ll witness how, at the height of war, Roosevelt inspired millions with stirring visions of a new and better postwar world.

Although he was a commander in-chief of the greatest military power the world had known, Roosevelt had complications of his own few knew about at the time.

His health was deteriorating in his last years, causing paralysis and being unable to walk. Furthermore, his strained marriage was close to ending and, if exposed, could have destroyed his presidency.

Enigmatic, secretive and with a complicated love life, America’s wheelchair president was racing to shape the future before the past caught up with him.

Weaving together the conduct of the war in Europe and the Pacific, the high politics of Roosevelt’s diplomacy with Stalin and Churchill, and the entangled stories of the women who sustained the president in his last year, Reynolds explores the impact of Roosevelt’s growing frailty on the war’s endgame and the tainted peace that followed.