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Land of the Free. It was the shifting fortunes of war in Europe that swung the U.S. alternately into optimism and pessimism, and always the pendulum swung too far. When the Allies won and held their first foothold in Normandy, the war seemed all but over. When the first attempts to break out of the peninsula failed, gloom settled down. When the breakout came and the Germans were routed, it was in the bag. When the Allies pulled up in September, back came the gloom. When Generals Bradley and Devers resumed the offensive in November, there were Congressmen in Washington who said it might all be over in 30 days. Rundstedt's amazing winter offensive brought the thickest gloom of the year.
In the midst of war, the U.S. people took time out to elect a President. Franklin Roosevelt's claim as Man of the Year was mainly that he won a fourth term. But the President had already broken the precedent with his third term. And this time he won through by the narrowest margin of any election since 1916.
The man who made the deepest emotional dent in the country was one who died before his time: Wendell Willkie. Seldom in this century had any man been so sincerely and widely mourned. From defeat in 1940 to repudiation by his own party in 1944, Willkie had grown great in vision, forthrightness and courage, and the millions who followed his progress gained a new conception of human freedom.
Two other men made their marks on the year, Sidney Hillman of the C.I.O. and James Caesar Petrillo of the Musician's Union. Whether or not it decided the election, Hillman's Political Action Committee brought labor closer to the balance of power in national politics than it had ever been before. Petrillo, after successfully defying the War Labor Board and the President of the U.S., rammed home the revolutionary principle of royalties paid by corporations directly to union treasuries.
Changing Aspects. In Europe, there were several men of stature whose aspect changed in the shifting light of events. One of these was somber, iron-willed Charles de Gaulle. For four years he had been the symbol and touchstone of French resistance to the Nazi conqueror, but he had lived in the half-light of exile. In 1944 he returned in triumph to his free but prostrate country. In the liberated countries, he was the only exile who went back to a people solidly ranked behind him, and the only man who seemed able to control the revolutionary ferments which liberation had set astir.
Winston Churchill, Man of 1940, had also been a symbol. In Britain's darkest and finest hour, his flaming words and dauntless courage had heartened his country to stand alone against Hitler at the crest of his Blitzkrieg power. As one of the organizers of victory, Churchill had been magnificent. Now in the last weeks of 1944, he was facing—with his usual truculence—the heaviest criticism of his World War II career; his critics charged him with responsibility for the civil war in Greece and for selling out Poland to Russia.