White House

On New Year's Eve 1942 in the executive residence, President Franklin Roosevelt hosted a dinner party for a few of his friends. He and the First Lady had invited his Chief of Staff, Harry Hopkins; Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau; Robert Sherwood, Judge Sam Rosenman, their wives, and Prince Olav and Princess Martha of occupied Norway. After dinner, the President treated his guests to a viewing of the new Warner Brothers film, Casablanca.

A little less than two weeks later the President was in Casablanca, just miles away from the fighting in North Africa, hosting a secret summit conference to which he had invited all the Allied heads of state: Churchill, Stalin, Chiang Kai Chek, and the leaders of the Free French and Fighting French, Giraud and DeGaulle.

Amazingly, Roosevelt was able to plan, travel to, and convene this summit in complete secrecy. Most of "official Washington", even members of his own staff, were not aware that the Casablanca conference was being held. Because of the secrecy, very little has been recorded about what went on during the ten-day summit. People, even today, debate the effectiveness of the doctrine of unconditional surrender without knowing that it was a product of this summit. Few know that the strategy for the invasion of Europe was decided upon at this meeting or that the future of the New France was agreed upon there. Finally, it was little known that during this summit the leader of the Free World, the President of the United States, first dealt directly with one of the leaders of the Muslim world.

What follows is the story of how the President was able to manage bringing all of this together, how the United States Secret Service was able to protect Roosevelt in a theatre of war, and how two people from different worlds ... different generations ... came together to begin a new life. It is a story of an amazing adventure and a colossal accomplishment. It is a story mad with the improbable and alive with hope. It is