On April 12, 1945, at 3.35 p.m., Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage while vacationing in Warm Springs, Georgia.

He had been president for 12 years, longer than anyone in history, so long that many Americans could barely remember another president.

And he had led the United States through its greatest

economic crisis, the Great Depression, and through World War II, the most destructive conflict

in world history. Four times, the American people entrusted him with the nation's highest

office in those critical years, something they had never done with anyone else.

The United States had been at war for three and a half years. In Europe, American and Soviet

armies were closing in on Berlin. Nazi Germany was being dismantled inch by inch. American

military officials were predicting that the war in Europe would be over in six months.

In the Pacific, American forces were engaged in brutal combat with the Japanese in the Philippines and in Okinawa.

Hundreds of American B-29s were striking the Japanese homeland with incendiary bombs,

killing and burning to death what would eventually become hundreds of thousands of people.

Still, there were few signs of a Japanese surrender. Military planners were predicting the

fighting in Asia to last another year and a half. At the highest levels, the United States had been

coordinating with Great Britain, led by Winston Churchill, and the Soviet Union,

led by Joseph Stalin, to defeat the Axis powers.

As we covered in episodes five and six, Roosevelt had met with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta

back in February 1945 to finalize plans to end the war and to shape the post-war world.

Since then, the Soviets were imposing

their grip over Eastern Europe, including Poland. Stalin promised free elections in Poland,

but in the months since, he had installed a pro-Soviet regime and had no intention of honoring

his commitments. Some Americans began fearing that once the war ended, a new conflict

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