Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 13 April 1945
We announce with the deepest regret that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States since 1933, died yesterday afternoon at Warm Springs, Georgia. A White House announcement stated that the President died suddenly, from a cerebral haemorrhage. Mr. Harry Truman, the Vice-President, has already been sworn in as the 33rd President.
After stating that an immediate meeting of the Cabinet had been called, the White House statement said that the four Roosevelt sons in the Services had been sent a message by their mother which said that "the President slept away this afternoon. He did his job to the end as he would want to do. Bless you all and all our love."
"The funeral services will be held on Saturday afternoon in the east room of the White House," the statement added. "The interment will be at Hyde Park — the President's New York estate — on Sunday."
President Roosevelt had been at Warm Springs for over a week. He had been there frequently in past years for treatment for infantile paralysis. His physician stated last night that he collapsed while a friend was making sketches of him and died two hours later without regaining consciousness.
President Truman announced this morning that the United Nations Conference at San Francisco will go on as planned. A view expressed in London earlier was that Mr. Roosevelt would have preferred the work to go forward.
News of the President's death was conveyed to the King at midnight and he received it with profound regret. Mr. Churchill was greatly shocked when given the news. It is expected that he will pay tribute to the late President in the Commons to-day, and that the House will then adjourn.
The German radio gave the news of Mr. Roosevelt's death, under an Amsterdam dateline, without comment.
The news in London
THURSDAY (MIDNIGHT)
The terrible shock caused among people all over the world to-night will be much like that which struck America when Abraham Lincoln fell by a madman's stroke at the moment of the victory of the North in the American Civil War.
The tragedy that we mourn today has been out of men's thoughts for years. It must have been far from the Democratic party's mind when it decided on Mr H.S. Truman, with his comparatively slight experience of official responsibility and world affairs, as the Vice-President, who is now called to be President of the United States at this tremendous moment of its history.