Credit: Lilly Library, Indiana University
Edith Willkie accompanied her husband throughout the 1940 campaign, but, being naturally shy she stayed in the background and rarely spoke to crowds or reporters. Still, she was a crowd favorite. If Willkie gave a speech from his campaign train without Edith by his side, the crowd would often begin chanting for her, and Edith would oblige by emerging from the train car to wave to the crowd and smile for the cameras. This was not a pleasant experience for Edith, however, because she believed that she did not photograph well.
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Credit: Lilly Library, Indiana University
It’s unknown whether this photograph was taken at one of Willkie’s five farms near Rushville, Indiana. Willkie never claimed to be a farmer; he bought the farms as an investment and was never directly involved in managing them. But Willkie’s managers tried to associate their candidate with rural Indiana as often as possible during the 1940 campaign as a way to counteract his image as a Wall Street lawyer and industrialist. This strategy allowed Harold Ickes, FDR’s chief political strategist, to coin the most memorable phrase of the campaign when he mockingly called Willkie the “Barefoot boy from Wall Street.”
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Credit: ushistory.org
The 1940 campaign was one of the fiercest presidential campaigns in American history. Roosevelt tried to stay above the fray, saying that his presidential duties were too pressing, and he only began making campaign speeches a month before the election. In contrast, Willkie embarked on a rigorous whistle stop train tour of the country, often making several major speeches a day. As a consequence, he was physically and mentally exhausted by election day. The person in the photograph with Willkie is unidentified.
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Credit: Lilly Library, Indiana University
In this undated photo, Willkie is seen seated with "America's Sweetheart," film actress Mary Pickford. Many biographers have noted that Willkie thought his business associates were dull and uncreative, and that for intellectual stimulation, he sought out the friendship of artistic types. Most of Willkie’s connections were with New York literary types, but he liked to socialize with Hollywood figures, too. Of course, Willkie was also very much a ladies' man, and he enjoyed the fawning attention he received from the many women who were attracted by his masculine good looks.
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Credit: Lilly Library, Indiana University
Photo taken during Willkie’s 1942 trip around the world. Gen. Charles de Gaulle is seated at Willkie’s right. Willkie wrote in One World that de Gaulle was obsessed with, and more than a little arrogant about, the struggle between France and Britain over control of Syria and other parts of the Middle East. Willkie, frustrated by de Gaulle's unrepentant colonialism, was very critical of him in One World. To this day, many French historians have never forgiven Willkie for this slight.
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Willkie’s around-the-world trip in 1942 received heavy media coverage. And Willkie made international headlines at one of his first stops, at the front line in El Alamein, Egypt, where Allied forces had just won a decisive battle against German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s forces. With British General Bernard Montgomery’s permission, Willkie made the announcement of the German Army’s defeat. Here Willkie is seen with a pair of British officers near Montgomery’s headquarters at El Alamein. Photo from illustrated edition of One World (1944).
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In Ürümqi, located in the northwest corner of China near the Russian border, Willkie viewed a military parade. He described it in One World thusly: "The soldiers looked neat, well trained, and healthy. Several dozen cavalrymen, lithe, wiry Mongols and Kazaks who sat their saddles as if they were part of the horses, charged in turn through a series of assignments. With two-edged sabers they cut through saplings, sliced off a dummy head, picked objects off the ground -- all at a dead gallop. It was not hard to understand, after watching them, the terror Genghis Khan inspired in his enemies." Photo from illustrated edition of One World (1944).
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Credit: City of Elwood
A recent photograph of Willkie’s childhood home in Elwood, Indiana, located at the intersection of South A and 19th Streets. When Willkie was growing up in Elwood, natural gas was so plentiful that the city did not turn off the gas-powered street lamps during the day. The residential areas had no sidewalks, however, which meant that walking about was a chore, especially after a rain turned the dirt on the unpaved streets into mud.
Timothy D. Walker