On This Date in 1945 - The Passing of a President...

On April 12 in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away in his hideaway in Warm Springs.
I hasten to remind the reader that this recognition of Mr. Roosevelt has nothing to do with my personal view of this or any other politician I may choose as a subject. It is merely a reflection of a man who attained great personal power; additionally, I write of Roosevelt in the same light as I do of Beethoven or Mozart, or any other individual who successfully promulgates the process we call an art form.
Certainly Roosevelt falls into the category of artist by way of his mode of performance as a politician much in the same manner as a Heifetz activated on his violin, or Horowitz would communicate through the piano.
Roosevelt, on the world stage, through a combination of incalculable personal charm and political prowess, became one of the three most powerful men on earth during the Second World War, along with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader and dictator Joseph Stalin.
It is a rather sad reality that Roosevelt died only eighteen days before the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the subsequent surrender of Nazi Germany just a week after. The titanic struggle of free people, represented by the leadership of Roosevelt and Churchill, warding off the frightening specter of Hitlerism, sapped the physical strength of the President, who, after all, never gained full health after his being felled by polio years before.
Were Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt America's most powerful presidents?
One might consider the proposition that Events make the Man, not very often the other way around.