Reply #37: FDR decided that it was important that "Uncle Joe" not feel left out...

[Captain Hilts]

as FDR and WSC had already spent so much time together, including the week before the conference. So, FDR decided to really play up to Stalin - Mary Soames mentioned this in the show and how much it hurt her dad to suddenly have FDR poking fun at her dad with Stalin.

Now, it was a good idea for FDR to do this, but it was a bad one not to give Churchill a 'heads' up' that he was going to do so. That way, Churchill's feelings would not have been so hurt. But, as Averill Harrimann and FDR's translator noted, FDR seemed to enjoy other people's discomfiture. It was a grander form of playing Sara off Eleanor, etc. The R's daughter noted that many times when they were kids Eleanor left the dinner table in tears over comments Sara would make about the pretty girls FDR could have married and FDR let her do it. Rex Tugwell was horrified to see how FDR let his mother address Eleanor at the dinner table. United, Sara and Eleanor could have conquered the world, divided, it left FDR in charge and a lot of people unhappy.

FDR was "just incapble of having a true friendship with anyone," as LeHand once said.