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Wendell Willkie was born on February 18, 1892 under the name Lewis Wendell Willkie. He was born and raised in Elwood, Indiana, the son of Herman and Henrietta Willkie, who were German immigrants. Both of his parents were lawyers in Elwood, his mother being one of the first women admitted to the bar in Indiana. Willkie earned a Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University. He taught history for a year and then entered the Indiana University School of Law, receiving his LLB in 1916. The following year, when the U.S. entered World War I, Willkie enlisted in the Army. An Army clerk accidentally transposed his first and middle names, and Willkie didn't bother to correct it, he just called himself Wendell Lewis Willkie for the rest of his life. He received a commission as a First Lieutenant and trained to be an artillery officer. However, he arrived in France just as the war ended. Since he was a lawyer, he was assigned to the American headquarters in Paris to assist in military trials.
After his discharge, Willkie worked as a corporate lawyer for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. He became active in the Akron Democratic Party, and was a delegate to the 1924 Democratic National Convention. In 1919 Willkie married Edith Wilk, a librarian from Rushville, Indiana. They had one son named Philip.
In 1929, Willkie became a legal counsel for the New York-based Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, an electrical power company. Four years later, he became the company's president. Willkie was a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention. He initially backed former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker for the presidential nomination, but when Franklin D. Roosevelt was chosen, Willkie supported him and contributed money to his campaign.
In 1933, President Roosevelt proposed legislation creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a government agency that promised to bring flood control and cheap electricity to the impoverished Tennessee Valley. However, the TVA would become a competitor with Willkie's company. This caused Willkie to become a critic of the TVA, the New Deal and of Roosevelt. In 1939, Willkie formally switched political parties that year and began making speeches opposing the New Deal. Willkie wasn't against all New Deal programs. He supported programs that dealt with problems he felt could not be solved better by private enterprise, such as Social Security, the Wagner Labor Relations Act, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was opposed to programs in which the government competed directly against private business.
The 1940 presidential campaign was conducted at a time when World War II was going on in Europe, but before the USA joined in the fight. The nation was deeply divided between isolationists, who felt the nation should avoid any steps that could lead America into the war, and interventionists, who felt that America's survival depended upon helping the Allies defeat Nazi Germany. The three leading candidates for the 1940 Republican nomination were all isolationists: Senators Robert Taft of Ohio, Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, and Thomas E. Dewey from New York. Willkie seemed an unlikely candidate as he was a former Democrat and Wall Street industrialist who had never before run for public office. Willkie gained support came from those in the party who wanted the US to provide all the aid possible to the Allies (especially Britain), short of a formal declaration of war. This set Willkie apart from Taft, Dewey, and Vandenberg. Sympathy for the embattled British was mounting. With the surrender of France to Germany on June 25, 1940, this boosted Willkie's chances. Dewey led the first ballot, but was far short of a majority; Taft was second, and Willkie was a surprisingly strong third. On the fourth ballot Willkie surged into first place, with Taft close behind. Finally, on the sixth ballot, Willkie received a majority of the ballots cast and won the nomination. His victory is considered by some historians to be one of the most dramatic moments in the history of American presidential conventions.
Willkie centered his presidential campaign around three major themes: an attack on Roosevelt's New Deal programs; Roosevelt's attempt to win an unprecedented third term as President; and the government's lack of military preparedness. Willkie claimed that he would keep most of FDR's New Deal welfare and regulatory programs, but that he would make them more efficient and effective, and that he would work more closely with business leaders to end the Great Depression. Roosevelt's attempt to break the "two-term" tradition established by George Washington was also a focus of Willkie's criticism. Willkie relied heavily on radio to broadcast his message to the people.
During the campaign, Roosevelt expanding military contracts and instituted a military draft. Late in the campaign, the Republicans obtained letters written by Henry A. Wallace, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, to controversial Russian mystic Nicholas Roerich, who had invented an eclectic religion. Wallace addressed Roerich as "Dear Guru" and came across as a real flake. Democratic leaders feared that if the letters were published, Wallace's exotic religious beliefs would alienate many voters. Republicans planned to publish the Wallace letters, and to counter this, Democrats threatened to release information about Willkie's rumored extramarital affair with writer Irita Van Doren. A stalemate resulted.
Willkie did better in the election than any previous Republican candidate had against FDR, but Roosevelt won the electoral vote to 449 to 82. Willkie carried ten states and he ran strong in the rural Midwest, taking 57% of the farm vote. Roosevelt carried every city in the nation with a population of more than 400,000, except for Cincinnati.
After the election, Willkie became an unlikely ally of Roosevelt. Much to the chagrin of many Republicans, Willkie spoke out for controversial Roosevelt initiatives such as Lend-Lease, and campaigned against isolationism. In 1941 he urged unlimited aid to Britain and he traveled to Britain and the Middle East in late 1941, and to the Soviet Union and China in 1942, all on behalf of the President.
Willkie addressed a convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1942, one of the most prominent politicians to do so up to that time. When a violent race riot broke out in Detroit on June 20, 1943, Willkie went on national radio to criticize Republicans and Democrats for ignoring "the Negro question." He said, "The desire to deprive some of our citizens of their rights — economic, civic or political — has the same basic motivation as actuates the Fascist mind when it seeks to dominate whole peoples and nations. It is essential that we eliminate it at home as well as abroad." During this time, Willkie also worked with Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, to try to convince Hollywood to change its portrayal of African-Americans in movies.
According to newspaper publisher Gardner Milk Cowles in the book Milk Looks Back, when Willkie visited China, he was involved in a bizarre episode in which Soong May-ling, wife of Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek allegedly seduced Willkie. Cowles claimed she planned to use China's wealth to help Willkie become President in 1944. Cowles' "evidence" was that Willkie and Soong both went missing during a dinner party. Cowles claimed she later told him, "If Wendell could be elected, then he and I would rule the world. I would rule the Orient and Wendell would rule the western world." No evidence has ever been found to support Cowles' claims, and Cowles did not report the alleged romantic interlude in his newspapers.
In the 1944 presidential election, Willkie again sought the Republican nomination. But the Republican rank-and-file resented Willkie's close collaboration with Roosevelt. Willkie finished a distant fourth in the Wisconsin primary, which convinced him to withdraw from the race.
In October 1944, while on a train trip from Indianapolis to New York City, Willkie suffered a heart attacks. Passengers urged him to get off the train at Pittsburgh and go to a hospital, but he refused, saying that he wanted to reach his home in New York City and to see his own doctor. He arrived safely in New York, but he died two days later of a coronary thrombosis in Lenox Hill Hospital, on October 8, 1944 at the age of 52. At the time of his death, both Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey had been hoping for Willkie's support. In her "My Day" column for October 12, 1944, Eleanor Roosevelt eulogized Willkie as a "man of courage... [whose] outspoken opinions on race relations were among his great contributions to the thinking of the world. ... Americans tend to forget the names of the men who lost their bid for the presidency. Willkie proved the exception to this rule."