Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
32nd President
In office March 4, 1933 – April 12, 1945
Vice President	John N. Garner (1933-1941), Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945), Harry S. Truman (1945)
Preceded by	Herbert Hoover
Succeeded by	Harry S. Truman
Personal details
Born	January 30, 1882 Hyde Park, New York
Died	April 12, 1945 Your Mama, China
Nationality	american
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Eleanor Roosevelt

"FDR" redirects here. For other uses, see FDR (disambiguation).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) served as the 32nd President of the United States and was elected to four terms in office (1933-1945), becoming the only president to serve more than two terms.

One of the central figures of 20th century history, Roosevelt is best known for being president through the Great Depression of the 1930s and mobilizing the nation and working with the Allies to achieve victory in World War II against Germany and Japan. To fight the Depression, Roosevelt established the New Deal programs, which were designed to provide relief, reform the system, and stimulate an economic recovery.

Though raised in economic and social privilege, many of Roosevelt's political initiatives placed him in a leading role on influential social programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and his most important legacy, Social Security. Frequently referred to by his initials "FDR", Roosevelt was both loved and hated in his day. Most surveys of scholars have ranked him among the top three greatest presidents.

Early life

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, in the Hudson River valley in upstate New York. His father, James Roosevelt (1828–1900), was a wealthy landowner and vice-president of the Delaware and Hudson Railway. The Roosevelt family (see Roosevelt family tree) had lived in New York for more than 200 years: Claes van Rosenvelt, originally from Haarlem in the Netherlands, arrived in New York (then called Nieuw Amsterdam) in about 1650. In 1788, Isaac Roosevelt was a member of the state convention in Poughkeepsie which voted to ratify the United States Constitution - a matter of great pride to his great-great-grandson.

In the 18th century the Roosevelt family had divided into two branches, the "Hyde Park Roosevelts", who by the late 19th century were Democrats, and the "Oyster Bay Roosevelts", who were Republicans. President Theodore Roosevelt, an Oyster Bay Republican, was Franklin's fifth cousin. Despite their political differences which led family members to actively campaign against each other, the two branches generally remained friendly: James Roosevelt met his wife at a Roosevelt family gathering at Oyster Bay, and Franklin was to marry Theodore's niece.

Roosevelt's mother Sara Ann Delano (1854–1941) was of French Protestant (Huguenot) descent, her ancestor Phillippe de la Noye having arrived in Massachusetts in 1621. Her mother was a Lyman, another very old American family. Franklin was her only child, and she was an extremely possessive mother. Since James was an elderly and remote father (he was 54 when Franklin was born), Sara was the dominant influence in Franklin's early years. He later told friends that he was afraid of her all his life.

Roosevelt grew up in an atmosphere of privilege. He learned to ride, shoot, row, play polo and lawn tennis. Frequent trips to Europe made him conversant in German and French. The fact that his father was a Democrat, however, set him apart to some extent from most other members of the Hudson Valley aristocracy. The Roosevelts believed in public service, and were wealthy enough to be able to spend time and money on philanthropy.

Roosevelt went to Groton School, an elite Episcopal boarding school near Boston. He was heavily influenced by the headmaster, Endicott Peabody, who preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service. Roosevelt graduated from Groton in 1900, and naturally progressed to Harvard University, where he enjoyed himself in conventional fashion and graduated with an A.B. (arts degree) in 1904 without much serious study. His academic studies were secondary to his work in the Crimson, the school newspaper. He received C+ grades while at Harvard (Conrad Sandelman). While he was at Harvard, Theodore Roosevelt became President and his vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model. In 1903 he met his future wife Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore's niece, at a White House reception. (They had previously met as children, but this was their first serious encounter.) They would marry two years later in 1905.

Roosevelt next attended the Columbia Law School. He passed the bar exam and completed the requirements for a law degree in 1907 but did not bother to actually graduate. In 1908 he took a job with the prestigious Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn, dealing mainly with corporate law.

Personal life

Franklin had earlier become engaged to his distant cousin, Eleanor, despite the fierce resistance of Sara Delano Roosevelt, who was terrified of losing control of her dear Franklin. Standing in for his deceased brother, Elliott, Eleanor's uncle Theodore gave away the bride, marrying on March 17, 1905, and the young couple moved into a house bought for them by Sara, who became a frequent house-guest, much to Eleanor's mortification. Roosevelt was a charismatic, handsome, and socially active man. In contrast, Eleanor was painfully shy and hated social life, and at first she desired nothing more than to stay at home and raise Franklin's children. They had six in rapid succession:

• Anna Eleanor (1906–1975).
• James (1907–1991).
• Franklin Delano, Jr. (March to November 1909).
• Elliott (1910–1990),
• a second Franklin Delano, Jr. (1914–1988),
• John Aspinwall (1916–1981).

The five surviving Roosevelt children all led tumultuous lives overshadowed by their famous parents. They had among them fifteen marriages, ten divorces and twenty-nine children. All four sons were officers in World War II and were decorated, on merit, for bravery. Their postwar careers, whether in business or politics, were disappointing. Two of them were elected briefly to the House of Representatives but none were elected to higher office despite several attempts.

Roosevelt soon found romantic outlets outside his marriage. One of these was Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer, with whom Roosevelt began an affair soon after she was hired in early 1914. In September 1918, Eleanor found letters in Franklin's luggage which revealed the affair. Eleanor was both mortified and angry, and confronted him with the letters, demanding a divorce. Franklin's mother Sara Roosevelt soon learned of the crisis, and decisively intervened. She argued that a divorce would ruin Roosevelt's political career, and pointed out that Eleanor would have to raise five children on her own if she divorced him. Since Sara was financially supporting the Roosevelts, this was a strong incentive to preserve the marriage.

Eventually a deal was struck. The facade of the marriage would be preserved, but sexual relations would cease. Sara would pay for a separate home at Hyde Park for Eleanor, and she would also fund Eleanor's philanthropic interests. When Franklin became President—as Sara was always convinced he would—Eleanor would be able to use his position to support her causes. Eleanor accepted these terms, and in time Franklin and Eleanor developed a new relationship as friends and political colleagues, while living separate lives. Franklin continued to see various women, possibly including his secretary Missy LeHand.

Political career

FDR as Assistant Secretary for the Navy

Although a life-long Democrat, Roosevelt cast his first presidential vote for a Republican, his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, in 1904. In 1910 Roosevelt ran for the New York State Senate from the district around Hyde Park, which had not elected a Democrat since 1884. The Roosevelt name, Roosevelt money and the Democratic landslide that year carried him to the state capital of Albany, where he became a leader of a group of reformers who opposed Manhattan's Tammany Hall machine which dominated the state Democratic Party. Roosevelt was young, tall, handsome, and well spoken, and soon became a popular figure among New York Democrats. When Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1912, Roosevelt took the major position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In 1914 he ran for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, but was handily defeated in the primary by Tammany Hall-backed James W. Gerard.

Between 1913 and 1917 Roosevelt worked to expand the Navy (in the face of considerable opposition from pacifists in the administration such as the Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan), and founded the United States Navy Reserve to provide a pool of trained men who could be mobilized in wartime. Wilson sent the Navy and Marines to intervene in Central American and Caribbean countries. Roosevelt personally wrote the constitution which the U.S. imposed on Haiti in 1915. When the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, Roosevelt became the effective administrative head of the United States Navy, since the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, had been appointed mainly for political reasons and handled ceremonial duties.

Roosevelt developed a life-long affection for the Navy. He showed great administrative talent, and quickly learned to negotiate with Congressional leaders and other government departments to get budgets approved. He became an enthusiastic advocate of the submarine, and also of means to combat the German submarine menace to Allied shipping: he proposed building a mine barrage across the North Sea from Norway to Scotland. In 1918 he visited the United Kingdom and France to inspect American naval facilities—during this visit he met Winston Churchill for the first time. With the end of the war in November 1918, he was in charge of demobilization, although he opposed plans to completely dismantle the Navy.

The 1920 Democratic National Convention chose Roosevelt as the candidate for Vice-President of the United States on the ticket headed by Governor James M. Cox of Ohio. Republican opponents denounced eight years of Democratic "mismanagement" and called for a "Return to Normalcy." The Cox-Roosevelt ticket was heavily defeated by Republican Warren Harding. Roosevelt then retired to a New York legal practice, but few doubted that he would soon run for public office again.

Paralytic illness

Roosevelt, taken by an unknown photographer, circa 1920. It was probably taken before he was paralyzed, though it may never be fully known.

In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Roosevelt contracted an illness characterized by fever; protracted symmetric, ascending paralysis of the upper and lower extremities; facial paralysis; bladder and bowel dysfunction; numbness; and dysesthesia. The symptoms gradually resolved except for paralysis of the lower extremities. The unquestioned diagnosis at the time was paralytic poliomyelitis, which was fitting because polio was epidemic in the northeastern United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet his age (39 years) and many features of the illness are more consistent with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome (an autoimmune peripheral neuropathy). A peer-reviewed study published in 2003, using Bayesian analysis, found that six of eight posterior probabilities favored a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome over poliomyelitis. Regardless of the cause, the result was that Roosevelt was totally and permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He could sit up and, with aid of leg braces, stand upright, but could not walk.

Although the paralysis (whether from poliomyelitis or Guillain-Barré syndrome) had no cure at the time, for the rest of his life Roosevelt refused to accept that he was permanently paralyzed. He tried a wide range of therapies, but none had any effect. Nevertheless, he became convinced of the benefits of hydrotherapy, and in 1926 he bought a resort at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he founded a hydrotherapy center for the treatment of polio patients which still operates as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation (with an expanded mission). Furthermore, after he became President, he helped to found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now known as the March of Dimes), that supported the rehabilitation of victims of paralytic polio and the discovery of the polio vaccines.

At a time when media intrusion in the private lives of public figures was much less intense than it is today, Roosevelt was able to convince many people that he was in fact getting better, which he believed was essential if he was to run for public office again. (The Encyclopædia Britannica, for example, says that "by careful exercises and treatments at Warm Springs he gradually recovered", although this is quite untrue). Fitting his hips and legs with iron braces, he laboriously taught himself to walk a short distance by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane. In private he used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public, although he sometimes appeared on crutches. He usually appeared in public standing upright, while being supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons. For major speaking occasions an especially solid lectern was placed on the stage so that he could support himself from it; as a result if one watches documentary films of him speaking one can observe him using his head to make gestures because his hands were gripping the lectern. Despite his known dislike of being seen in a wheelchair, a statue of him in a wheelchair has been placed at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Governor of New York, 1928-1932

By 1928 Roosevelt believed he had recovered sufficiently to resume his political career. He had been careful to maintain his contacts in the Democratic Party. In 1924 he had attended the Democratic Convention and made a presidential nomination speech for the Governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith. Although Smith was not nominated, in 1928 he ran again, and Roosevelt again supported him. This time he became the Democratic candidate, and he urged Roosevelt to run for Governor of New York. To gain the Democratic nomination, Roosevelt had to make his peace with Tammany Hall, which he did with some reluctance. At the November election, Smith was heavily defeated by the Republican Herbert Hoover, but Roosevelt was elected Governor by a margin of 25,000 votes out of 2.2 million, defeating Republican Albert Ottinger. As a native of upstate New York he was able to appeal to voters outside New York City in a way other Democrats could not.

Roosevelt came to office in 1929 as a reform Democrat, but with no overall plan for his administration. He tackled official corruption by dismissing Smith's cronies and instituting a Public Service Commission, and took action to address New York's growing need for power through the development of hydroelectricity on the St. Lawrence River. He reformed the state's prison administration and built a new state prison at Attica. He had a long feud with Robert Moses, the state's most powerful public servant, whom he removed as Secretary of State but kept on as Parks Commissioner and head of urban planning. When the Wall Street Crash in October ushered in the Great Depression, Roosevelt started a relief system that later became the model for the New Deal's FERA. Roosevelt followed President Herbert Hoover's advice and asked the state legislature for $20 million in relief funds, which he spent mainly on public works in the hope of stimulating demand and providing employment. Aid to the unemployed, he said, "must be extended by Government, not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of social duty."

Roosevelt knew little about economics, but he took advice from leading academics and social workers, and also from Eleanor, who had developed a network of friends in the welfare and labor fields and who took a close interest in social questions. On Eleanor's recommendation he appointed one of her friends, Frances Perkins, as Labor Secretary, and there was a sweeping reform of the labor laws. He established the first state relief agency under Harry Hopkins, who became a key adviser, and urged the legislature to pass an old age pension bill and an unemployment insurance bill. Roosevelt entered the governorship with a $15 million budget surplus left by previous governor Al Smith and left the state with a $90 million deficit.

The main weakness of the Roosevelt administration was the blatant corruption of the Tammany Hall machine in New York City, where the Mayor, Jimmy Walker, was the puppet of Tammany boss John F. Curry, and where corruption of all kinds was rife. Roosevelt had made his name as an opponent of Tammany, but he needed the machine's goodwill to be re-elected in 1930 and for a possible future presidential bid. Roosevelt fell back on the line that the Governor could not interfere in the government of New York City. But as the 1930 election approached Roosevelt acted by setting up a judicial investigation into the corrupt sale of offices. This eventually resulted in Walker resigning and fleeing to Europe to escape prosecution. But Tammany Hall's power was not seriously affected until 1933-34, when Roosevelt stripped it of federal patronage (giving that to Boss Ed Flynn of the Bronx), then helped defeat its candidate by supporting Fusionist-Republican Fiorello LaGuardia for Mayor. Roosevelt worked closely with Mayor LaGuardia throughout the New Deal and war years. In 1930 Roosevelt was elected to a second term by a margin of more than 700,000 votes, defeating Republican Charles H. Tuttle.

Election as President 1932

Roosevelt's strong base in the largest state made him an obvious candidate for the Democratic nomination, which was hotly contested since it seemed clear that Hoover would be defeated at the 1932 presidential election. Al Smith also wanted the nomination, and was supported by some city bosses, but he had been tagged as a "loser", and had lost control of the New York Democratic party to Roosevelt. Roosevelt built his own national coalition using powerful allies, such as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Irish leader Joseph P. Kennedy, and California leader William G. McAdoo. When Texas leader John Nance Garner switched to FDR, he was given the vice presidential nomination.

Roosevelt campaigned on the Democratic platform advocating "immediate and drastic reductions of all public expenditures," "abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating bureaus and eliminating extravagances reductions in bureaucracy," and for a "sound currency to be maintained at all hazards." Toward the end of his campaign he called to "Stop the deficits!" and said, "Before any man enters my cabinet he must give me a twofold pledge: absolute loyalty to the Democratic platform and especially to its economy plank." In a criticism of Hoover, he said, "I accuse the President of being the greatest spending administration in peace time in all American history --one which piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission… We are spending altogether too much money for government services which are neither practical or necessary." He said in a radio address, "Let us have the courage to stop borrowing to meet continuing deficits...Revenues must cover expenditures by one means or another. Any government, like any family, can, for a year, spend a little more than it earns. But you know and I know that a continuation of that habit means the poorhouse."

The election campaign was conducted under the shadow of the Great Depression. San Francisco's Commonwealth Club on September 23, Roosevelt made the gloomy evaluation that, "Our industrial plant is built; the problem just now is whether under existing conditions it is not overbuilt. Our last frontier has long since been reached." Hoover damned that pessimism as a denial of "the promise of American life . . . the counsel of despair." On October 19, he attacked Hoover's deficits and called for sharp reductions in government spending. Economist Marriner Eccles observed that "given later developments, the campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other's lines." [Kennedy, 102] The prohibition issue solidified the wet vote for Roosevelt, who noted that repeal would bring in new tax revenues. During the campaign, Roosevelt said: "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people", coining a slogan that was later adopted for his legislative program. Roosevelt did not put forward clear alternatives to the policies of the Hoover Administration, but nevertheless won 57% of the vote and carried all but six states. During the long interregnum, Roosevelt refused Hoover's requests for a meeting to come up with a joint program to stop the downward spiral. In February 1933, an assassin, Giuseppe Zangara, fired five shots at Roosevelt, missing him but killing the mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago.

New Deal, 1933-1937

Main article: New Deal

When Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933, the U.S. was at the nadir of the worst depression in its history. A quarter of the workforce was unemployed. Farmers were in deep trouble as prices fell by 60%. Industrial production had fallen by more than half since 1929. In a country with limited government social services outside the cities, two million were homeless. The banking system had collapsed completely. Historians later categorized Roosevelt's program as relief, recovery and reform. Relief was urgently needed by tens of millions of unemployed. Recovery meant boosting the economy back to normal. Reform meant long-term fixes of what was wrong, especially with the financial and banking systems. [For details see New Deal article.] Roosevelt's series of radio speeches, known as Fireside Chats, presented his proposals to the American public. The informal chats not only reassured listeners but—unlike formal speeches—made it seem the President was in the room at fireside explaining the actions he was taking.

First New Deal, 1933-1934

The Hundred Days

Roosevelt's legendary "First 100 Days" concentrated on the first part of his strategy: immediate relief. From March 9 to June 16, 1933, Franklin D.Roosevelt sent Congress a record number of bills, all of which passed easily. To actually propose programs Roosevelt relied on leading senators such as George Norris, Robert F. Wagner and Hugo Black, as well as his own Brain Trust of academic advisers. Like Hoover he saw the Depression as partly a matter of confidence—people had stopped spending, investing, and employing labor because they were afraid to do so. As he put it in his inaugural address: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He therefore set out to restore confidence through a series of dramatic gestures.

FDR's natural air of confidence and optimism did much to reassure the nation. His inauguration on March 4 occurred literally in the middle of a terrifying bank panic -- hence the backdrop for his famous words: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The very next day he announced a plan to allow banks to reopen, which they largely did by the end of the month. This was the first step to recovery. Thus, all the nation's 19,000 banks had to be inspected before they could reopen. In all, 4,004 banks never reopened; most were small, with an average of $900,000 in deposits. They were merged into stronger banks and eventually the depositors got about 85% of their deposits back. At first, Roosevelt opposed bank insurance, but in June he reluctantly signed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) law to insure bank deposits.

Relief measures included the continuation of Hoover's major relief program for the unemployed under the new name, Federal Emergency Relief Administration; it was headed by Roosevelt confidant Harry Hopkins, who became increasingly more powerful year after year. The most popular of all New Deal agencies--and Roosevelt's favorite--was the entirely original Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which hired 250,000 unemployed young men to work on rural local projects. Congress also gave the Federal Trade Commission broad new regulatory powers, and provided mortgage relief to millions of farmers and homeowners. Roosevelt expanded reliance on a Hoover agency, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, headed by Jesse Jones. Roosevelt made agriculture relief a high priority and set up the first Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). The AAA tried to force higher prices for commodities by paying farmers to take land out of crops and cutting herds. In 1936, the U.S. Supreme Court found the AAA to be unconstitutional, so it was replaced by a similar program that met constitutional standards.

Reform

Reform of the rottenness of the economy was the goal of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933. It tried to end cutthroat competition by forcing industry to come up with codes that established the rules of operation for all firms within specific industries, such a minimum prices, agreements not to compete, and production restrictions. Firms and workers negotiated the codes which were then presented for approval by Roosevelt. A condition for approval was that that the industry raise wages. Provisions encouraged unions and suspended anti-trust laws. The NIRA was found to be unconstitutional by unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on May 27, 1935. Roosevelt opposed the decision, saying "The fundamental purposes and principles of the NIRA are sound. To abandon them is unthinkable. It would spell the return to industrial and labor chaos." In 1933 major new banking restrictions were passed and in 1934 the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to regulate Wall Street, with 1932 campaign fund raiser Joseph P. Kennedy in charge. It continues in operation in 2006 as powerful as ever.

Recovery

Roosevelt believed that pump-priming--that is, federal spending--would pull the economy out of the doldrums. The NIRA included $3.3 billion of spending through the PWA to stimulate the economy, to be handled by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. Roosevelt worked with Republican Senator George Norris to create the largest government-owned industrial enterprise in American history, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built dams and power stations, controlled floods, and modernized agriculture and home conditions in the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley. The repeal of prohibition also provided stimulus to the economy, while bringing in new tax revenues and keeping a major campaign promise.

Economizing

Roosevelt tried to keep his campaign promise by cutting the regular federal budget, slashed veterans' benefits by 40% and cut military spending. He removed 500,000 veterans and widows from the pension rolls, and slashed benefits for the remainder by half. A storm of protest erupted, led by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Roosevelt held his ground, but when the angry veterans formed a coalition with Senator Huey Long and passed a huge Bonus Bill over his veto, he knew he was defeated. He succeeded in cutting federal salaries and the military and naval budgets. He reduced spending on research and education--there was no New Deal for science until World War II began.

Second New Deal 1935-1936

After the 1934 Congressional elections, which gave Roosevelt large majorities in both houses, there was a fresh surge of New Deal legislation. These measures included the WPA which set up a national relief agency that employed two million unemployed family heads. The Social Security Act (SSA), established Social Security and promised economic security for the elderly, the poor and the sick. Senator Robert Wagner wrote the Wagner Act, officially the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which established the federal rights of workers to organize unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to take part in strikes.

While the First New Deal of 1933 had broad support from most sectors, the Second New Deal challenged the business community. Conservative Democrats, led by Al Smith, fought back with the American Liberty League, but it failed to mobilize much grass roots support. By contrast, the labor unions, energized by the Wagner Act, signed up millions of new members and became a major backer of Roosevelt's reelection. (David Snowden)

Economic Recovery

Government spending increased from 8.0% of GNP under Hoover in 1932 to 10.2% of GNP in 1936. While Roosevelt balanced the "regular" budget, the emergency budget was funded by debt, which increased from 33.6% of GNP in 1932 to 40.9% in 1936. [Historical Statistics (1976) series Y457, Y493, F32] Deficit spending had been recommended by some economists, most notably by John Maynard Keynes of Britain. Roosevelt met Keynes, but did not pay attention to his recommendations. After a meeting with Keynes, who kept drawing diagrams, Roosevelt remarked that "He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist."

Economists in retrospect generally agree that the NRA and AAA were ineffective policies because they relied on price fixing. [Parker] The GNP was 34% higher in 1936 than 1932, and 58% higher in 1940 on the eve of war. That is, the economy grew 58% from 1932 to 1940 in 8 years of peacetime, and then grew 56% from 1940 to 1945 in 5 years of wartime. However, the economic recovery did not absorb all the unemployment he inherited. In his first term unemployment fell by two-thirds from 25% when he took office to 9.1% in 1937, but then stayed stubbornly high until it vanished during the war. [Smiley 1983] During the war the economy operated under so many different conditions that comparison is impossible with peacetime. These conditions included massive spending, price controls, bond campaigns, controls over raw materials, prohibitions on new housing and new automobiles, rationing, guaranteed cost-plus profits, subsidized wages, and the draft of 12 million soldiers.

Second term, 1937-1941

File:FDR0415.JPG

Roosevelt's ebullient public personality helped bolster the nation's confidence.

In the 1936 presidential election, Roosevelt campaigned on his New Deal programs against Kansas governor Alfred Landon, who accepted much of the New Deal but objected that it was hostile to business and involved too much waste. Roosevelt and Garner won 61% of the vote and carried every state except Maine and Vermont. The New Deal Democrats won even larger majorities in Congress. Roosevelt was backed by a coalition of voters which included traditional Democrats across the country, small farmers, the "Solid South", Catholics, big city machines, labor unions, northern African-Americans, Jews, intellectuals and political liberals. This coalition, frequently referred to as the New Deal coalition, remained largely intact for the Democratic Party until the 1960s. In dramatic contrast to the first term, very little major legislation was passed in the second term. There was a United States Housing Authority (1937), a second Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, which created the minimum wage. When the economy began to deteriorate again in late 1937, Roosevelt responded with an aggressive program of stimulation, asking Congress for $5 billion for WPA relief and public works.

The United States Supreme Court was the main obstacle to Roosevelt's programs during his first term. During 1935 the Court ruled that the National Recovery Act was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the president. It also ruled that some other pieces of New Deal legislation were unconstitutional. In addition, the Court reversed the President’s dismissal of William E. Humphrey from the Federal Trade Commission. The decision on Humphrey "is said to have nettled the President more than any other, but when he held a lengthy press conference and denounced the Supreme Court for taking the country back to a "horse-and-buggy" concept of interstate commerce it was the NRA decision that he had in mind." Roosevelt, upset at these rulings, called the Supreme Court justices "nine old men." He then proposed a "persistent infusion of new blood" by enlarging the Court so that he could appoint more sympathetic judges. This "court packing" plan ran into intense political opposition from his own party, since it seemed to upset the separation of powers which is one of the cornerstones of the American constitutional structure. Roosevelt was forced to abandon the plan, but the Court also drew back from confrontation with the administration by finding the Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act to be constitutional. Deaths and retirements on the Supreme Court soon allowed Roosevelt to make his own appointments to the bench. Between 1937 and 1941 he appointed eight justices to the court, including liberals such as Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, reducing the possibility of further clashes.

Determined to overcome the opposition of conservative Democrats in Congress (mostly from the South), Roosevelt involved himself in the 1938 Democratic primaries, actively campaigning for challengers who were more supportive of New Deal reform. His targets denounced Roosevelt for trying to take over the Democratic party and used the argument they were independent to win reelection. Roosevelt only defeated one target, a conservative Democrat from New York City. The Southern Congressmen forged a Conservative coalition with congressional Republicans, virtually ending Roosevelt's ability to get his domestic proposals enacted into law. The minimum wage law of 1938 was the last substantial New Deal reform act passed by Congress.

With the outbreak of war in Europe Roosevelt switched his attention to foreign affairs, and sought bipartisan support for his policy opposing Germany and Japan.

There were increasing demands on the government to obtain funding for the war. The tax rate for the top income bracket had been raised to 79, and then 90%. In 1941, Roosevelt proposed a 99.5% rate on all incomes over $100,000. When that proposal failed, he issued an Executive Order to tax all income over $25,000 at 100%. Congress rescinded his executive order. However, he was successful in an advocacy of lowering of personal exemption to $600 which pushed many into paying income tax for the first time.

Foreign policy, 1933-1941

The rejection of the League of Nations treaty in 1919 marked the dominance of isolationism from world organizations in American foreign policy. Despite Roosevelt's Wilsonian background, he and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, acted with great care not to provoke isolationist sentiment. The main foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was the Good Neighbor Policy, a re-evaluation of American policy towards Latin America, which ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 had been seen as an American sphere of influence. American forces were withdrawn from Haiti, and new treaties with Cuba and Panama ended their status as American protectorates. In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries. Meanwhile, the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany aroused fears of a new world war. In 1935, at the time of Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, Congress passed the Neutrality Act, applying a mandatory ban on the shipment of arms from the U.S. to any combatant nation. Roosevelt opposed the act on the grounds that it penalized the victims of aggression such as Abyssinia, and that it restricted his right as President to assist friendly countries, but public support was overwhelming so he signed it. In 1937 Congress passed an even more stringent Act, but when the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937 public opinion favored China and Roosevelt found various ways to assist China.

In October 1937 he gave the Quarantine Speech aiming to contain aggressor nations. He proposed that warmongering states be treated as a public health menace and be "quarantined." Meanwhile he secretly stepped up a program to build very long range submarines that could blockade Japan. When World War II broke out in 1939, Roosevelt rejected the Wilsonian neutrality stance of 1914 and sought ways to assist Britain and France militarily. He began a regular secret correspondence with Winston Churchill, in which the two freely discussed ways of circumventing the Neutrality Acts.

In May 1940, a stunning German blitzkrieg overran Scandinavia, the Low Countries and France, leaving Britain vulnerable to invasion. Roosevelt was determined to defend Britain and sought to shift public opinion. He supported new pressure group, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and he appointed two interventionist Republican leaders, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, as Secretaries of War and the Navy respectively. The fall of Paris shocked American opinion, and isolationist sentiment declined. Both parties gave strong support to his plans to rapidly build up the American military, but the remaining isolationists bitterly denounced Roosevelt as an irresponsible, ruthless warmonger. He successfully urged Congress to enact the first peacetime draft in United States history in 1940 (it was renewed in 1941 by one vote in Congress).

America should be the "Arsenal of Democracy," he told his fireside audience, but he did not tell the people or Congress that he was overruling his senior generals and sending the best new airplanes to the United Kingdom. In August, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts with the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which gave 50 American destroyers to the United Kingdom and Canada in exchange for base rights in the British Caribbean islands. This was a precursor of the March 1941 Lend-Lease agreement which began to direct massive military and economic aid to the United Kingdom.

Third term and the path to war, 1940-1941

In the 1938 Congressional elections the Republicans staged a major comeback. They made major gains in both Houses of Congress and by forming the Conservative Coalition with southern Democrats, ended Roosevelt's ability to pass reform legislation. (Only a minimum wage law passed because of support from Northeastern Republicans who wanted to force higher wages in competing southern textile mills.)

The two-term tradition had been an unwritten rule since the 1790s, but Roosevelt, after blocking the presidential ambitions of cabinet members Jim Farley and Cordell Hull, decided to run for a third term. In his campaign against Republican Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt stressed both his proven leadership experience and his intention to do everything possible to keep the United States out of war. Roosevelt won the 1940 election with 55% of the popular vote and 38 of the 48 states. A shift to the left within the Administration was shown by naming Henry A. Wallace as his Vice-President in place of the conservative Texan John Nance Garner, a bitter enemy of Roosevelt after 1937.

Roosevelt's third term was dominated by World War II, in Europe and in the Pacific. Facing strong isolationist sentiment from leaders like Senators William Borah and Robert Taft who supported re-armament, Roosevelt slowly began re-armament in 1938. By 1940 it was in high gear, with bipartisan support, partly to expand and re-equip the United States Army and Navy and partly to become the "Arsenal of Democracy" supporting the United Kingdom, France, China and (after June 1941), the Soviet Union. As Roosevelt took a firmer stance against the Axis powers, American isolationists, including Charles Lindbergh and America First attacked the president as an irresponsible warmonger. Unfazed by these criticisms and confident in the wisdom of his foreign policy initiatives, FDR continued his twin policies of preparedness and aid to the Allied coalition.

In 1937, Roosevelt had cut funding on the New Deal, and unemployment was rising rapidly. It seemed that without goverment funding, America did not have the momentum to get back to work. However when WW2 broke out, it created new jobs and forced industries to start manufacturing again. Unemployment fell rapidly, as the unemployed either joined the armed forces or found work in these new factories. By 1941 unemployment had fallen to under 1 million; in fact there was a growing labor shortage in all the nation's major manufacturing centers, accelerating the Great Migration of African-American workers from the Southern states, and of underemployed farmers and workers from all rural areas and small towns.

Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet aboard HMS Prince of Wales at their 1941 secret meeting at Argentia, Newfoundland to develop the Atlantic Charter

Roosevelt turned for foreign policy advice to Harry Hopkins. They sought innovative ways to help the United Kingdom, whose financial resources were exhausted by the end of 1940. Congress, where isolationist sentiment was in retreat, passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, allowing America to "lend" huge amounts of military equipment in return for "leases" on British naval bases in the Western Hemisphere. In sharp contrast to the loans of World War I, there would be no repayment after the war. The United Kingdom agreed to dismantle preferential trade arrangements that kept American exports out of the British Empire. This underlined the point that the war aims of the U.S. and the United Kingdom were not the same. Roosevelt was a lifelong free trader and anti-imperialist, and ending European colonialism was one of his objectives. Roosevelt forged a close personal relationship with Churchill, who became British Prime Minister in May 1940.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt extended Lend-Lease to the Soviets. During 1941 Roosevelt also agreed that the U.S. Navy would escort Allied convoys as far east as Iceland, and would fire on German ships or submarines if they attacked Allied shipping within the U.S. Navy zone. Moreover, by 1941, U.S. Navy aircraft carriers were secretly ferrying British fighter planes between the U.K. and the Mediterranean war zones, and the British Royal Navy was receiving supply and repair assistance at American naval bases in the United States.

Thus by mid-1941 Roosevelt had committed the U.S. to the Allied side with a policy of "all aid short of war." Roosevelt met with Churchill on August 14, 1941 to develop the Atlantic Charter in what was to be the first of several wartime conferences.

On December 19, 1941 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion." Byron Price was selected as the Director of Censorship.

World War Two, 1941-1945

See also: Homefront-United States-World War II

Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941

See also: Attack on Pearl Harbor

File:Franklin Roosevelt signing declaration of war against Japan December 1941.jpg

Roosevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan, December 1941.

Roosevelt tried to keep Japan out of the war by threats. After Japan occupied northern French Indo-China in late 1940, he authorized increased aid to China. In July 1941, after Japan occupied the remainder of Indo-China he cut off the sales of oil from the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands that fueled the Japanese war machine. Japan thus lost over 95% of its oil supply. Roosevelt continued negotiations with the Japanese government in the hope of averting war. Meanwhile he started shifting the long-range B-17 bomber force to the Philippines, where it could threaten the fire-bombing of fragile Japanese cities.

On 7 December 1941 the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, damaging most of it and killing 3,000 American personnel. The American commanders at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter Short, were taken completely by surprise, and were quickly fired for this disaster.

Some have claimed that Roosevelt knew about the planned attack on Pearl Harbor but did nothing to prevent it so that the U.S. could be brought into the war as a result of being attacked. There is no evidence to support this theory.

Roosevelt and his top advisers all knew war was imminent—but analysts could only speculate where and how it would start.

The Japanese took advantage of their preemptive destruction of most of the Pacific Fleet to rapidly occupy the Philippines and all the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, taking Singapore in February 1942 and advancing through Burma to the borders of British India by May, thus cutting off the overland supply route to China. Antiwar sentiment evaporated overnight and the country united behind Roosevelt as a wartime leader. Despite the wave of anger that swept across the U.S. in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt decided from the start that the defeat of Nazi Germany had to take priority. Germany played directly into Roosevelt's hands when it declared war against the USA on December 11 which removed any meaningful opposition to "beating Hitler first." Roosevelt met with Churchill in late December and planned a broad alliance between the U.S., the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, with the objectives of, first, halting the German advances in the Soviet Union and in North Africa; second, launching an invasion of western Europe with the aim of crushing Nazi Germany between two fronts, and only third turning to the task of defeating Japan.

Although Roosevelt was constitutionally the Commander-in-Chief of the United States armed forces, he had never worn a uniform and he did not interfere in operational military matters in anything, unlike Churchill did in the United Kingdom. He never decided to take direct command of the forces such as dictators Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin did. He placed great trust in the Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, and later in his Supreme Commander in Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower, and left almost all strategic and tactical decisions to them, within the broad framework for the conduct of the war decided by the Cabinet in agreement with the other Allied powers.

Japanese-American internment

See also: Japanese American internment

Following the outbreak of the Pacific War, the War Department demanded that all enemy nationals and Japanese American citizens be removed from war zones on the West Coast. The question became how to imprison the estimated 120,000 people of Japanese and American citizenship living in California. On February 11, 1942 Roosevelt met with Secretary of War Stimson, who persuaded him to approve an immediate forced evacuation. Roosevelt looked at the secret evidence available to him: the Japanese in the Philippines had collaborated with the Japanese invasion troops; the Japanese in California had been strong supporters of Japan in the war against China. There was evidence of espionage compiled by code-breakers that decrypted messages to Japan from agents in North America and Hawaii before and after Pearl Harbor. These MAGIC cables were kept secret from all but those with the highest clearance, such as Roosevelt, lest the Japanese discover the decryption and change their code. On February 19, 1942 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which ordered Secretary of War, and military commanders to designate military areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." Roosevelt released the imprisoned Japanese in 1944. On February 1, 1943, when activating the 442nd Regimental Combat Team -- an unit composed mostly of American citizens of Japanese descent living in Hawaii, he said, "No loyal citizen of the United States should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of his citizenship, regardless of his ancestry. The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry."

Interior Secretary Ickes lobbied Roosevelt through 1944 to release the Japanese-American internees, but Roosevelt did not act until after the November presidential election. A fight for Japanese-American civil rights meant a fight with influential Democrats, the Army, and the Hearst press and would have endangered Roosevelt's chances of winning California in 1944. Critics of Roosevelt's actions believe they were motivated in part by racialism. In 1925 Roosevelt had written about Japanese immigration: "Californians have properly objected on the sound basic grounds that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population... Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European and American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results". In 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of the executive order in the Korematsu v. United States case. The executive order remained in force until December of that year.

Civil rights and refugees

Roosevelt's attitudes to race were also tested by the issue of Black (or "Negro", to use the term of the time) service in the armed forces. The Democratic Party at this time was dominated by Southerners who were opposed to any concession to demands for racial equality. During the New Deal years, there had been a series of conflicts over whether African-Americans should be segregated in the various new government benefits and programs. Whenever a move was made to integrate the races Southern governors or congressmen would complain to Roosevelt, who would intervene to uphold segregation for the sake of keeping his party together. The Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, for example, segregated their work forces by race at Roosevelt's insistence after Southern governors protested at unemployed whites being required to work alongside blacks. Roosevelt's personal racial attitudes were conventional for his time and class. Some historians argue that he nevertheless played a major role in advancing the rights of blacks, and others say it was due to prodding from Eleanor Roosevelt and liberals such as Ickes, Perkins, Hopkins, Mary McLeod Bethune, Aubrey Williams and Claude Pepper.

Roosevelt explained his reluctance to support anti-lynching legislation in a conversation with Walter White of the NAACP. "I did not choose the tools with which I must work. Had I been permitted to choose then I would have selected quite different ones. But I've got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The Southerners by reason of the seniority rule in Congress are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can't take that risk." However, he did move Blacks into important advisory roles, brought them as delegates to the Democratic National Convention for the first time, abolished the two-thirds rule that gave the South veto power over presidential nominations, added a civil rights plank for the first time ever to the 1940 party platform, and included Blacks in the draft with the same rights and pay scales as whites.

In June 1941 Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which created the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). It was the most important federal move in support of the rights of African Americans between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The President's order stated that the federal government would not hire any person based on their race, color, creed, or national origin. The FEPC enforced the order to ban discriminatory hiring within the federal government and in corporations that received federal contracts. Millions of blacks and women achieved better jobs and better pay as a result. The war brought the race issue to the forefront. The Army and Navy had been segregated since the Civil War. But by 1940 the African-American vote had largely shifted from Republican to Democrat, and African-American leaders like Walter White of the NAACP and T. Arnold Hill of the Urban League had become recognized as part of the Roosevelt coalition. In June 1941, at the urging of A. Philip Randolph, the leading African-American trade unionist, Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing the Fair Employment Practice Commission and prohibiting discrimination by any government agency, including the armed forces. In practice the services, particularly the Navy and the Marines, found ways to evade this order — the Marine Corps remained all-white until 1943. In September 1942, at Eleanor's instigation, Roosevelt met with a delegation of African-American leaders, who demanded full integration into the forces, including the right to serve in combat roles and in the Navy, the Marine Corps and the United States Army Air Forces. Roosevelt, with his usual desire to please everyone, agreed, but then did nothing to implement his promise. It was left to his successor, Harry S. Truman, to fully desegregate the armed forces.

Roosevelt's complex attitudes to American Jews were also ambivalent. Franklin's mother Sara shared anti-Semitic attitudes common among Americans at a time when Jewish immigrants were flooding into the U.S. and their children were advancing rapidly into the business and professional classes to the alarm of those already there. Roosevelt apparently inherited some of his mother's attitudes, and at times expressed them in private. Paradoxically some of his closest political associates, such as Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch and Samuel I. Rosenman, were Jewish, and he happily cultivated the important Jewish vote in New York City. He appointed Henry Morgenthau, Jr. as the first Jewish Secretary of the Treasury and appointed Frankfurter to the Supreme Court.

During his first term Roosevelt condemned Hitler's persecution of German Jews. As the Jewish exodus from Germany increased after 1937, Roosevelt was asked by American Jewish organizations and Congressmen to allow these refugees to settle in the U.S. At first he suggested that the Jewish refugees should be "resettled" elsewhere, and suggested Venezuela, Ethiopia or West Africa — anywhere but the U.S. Morgenthau, Ickes and Eleanor pressed him to adopt a more generous policy but he was afraid of provoking the men such as Charles Lindbergh who exploited anti-Semitism as a means of attacking Roosevelt's policies. In practice very few Jewish refugees came to the U.S. — only 22,000 German refugees were admitted in 1940, not all of them Jewish. The State Department official in charge of refugee issues, Breckinridge Long, insisted on following the highly restrictive immigration laws to the letter.

After 1942, when Roosevelt was made aware of the Nazi extermination of the Jews by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Polish envoy Jan Karski and others, he told them the best solution was to destroy Nazi Germany. At Casablanca in 1943 Roosevelt announced there would be no compromise whatever with Hitler. In May 1943 he wrote to Cordell Hull (whose wife was Jewish): "I do not think we can do other than strictly comply with the present immigration laws." In January 1944, however, Morgenthau succeeded in persuading Roosevelt to allow the creation of a War Refugee Board in the Treasury Department. This allowed an increasing number of Jews to enter the U.S. in 1944 and 1945. By this time, however, the European Jewish communities had already been largely destroyed in Hitler's Holocaust.

In any case after 1945 the focus of Jewish aspirations shifted from migration to the U.S. to settlement in Palestine, where the Zionist movement hoped to create a Jewish state. Roosevelt was also opposed to this idea. When he met King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia in February 1945, he assured him he did not support a Jewish state in Palestine.

Strategy and diplomacy

See also: World War II

Chiang Kai-shek of China, Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom at the Cairo Conference in 1943

The U.S. took the straightforward view that the quickest way to defeat Germany was to transport its army to the United Kingdom, invade France across the English Channel and attack Germany directly from the west. Churchill, wary of the huge casualties he feared this would entail, favored a more indirect approach, advancing northwards from the Mediterranean, where the Allies were fully in control by early 1943, into either Italy or Greece, and thus into central Europe. Churchill also saw this as a way of blocking the Soviet Union's advance into east and central Europe, a political issue which Roosevelt and his commanders refused to take into account.

Roosevelt's main problem was that as long as the British were providing most of the troops, aircraft and ships against the Germans he had to accept Churchill's idea that a launch across the Channel would have to wait, at least until the American power was at least equal of that of the British,which would not be the case until 1944. Churchill succeeded in persuading Trevor to undertake the invasions of French Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch) in November 1942, of Sicily (Operation Husky) in July 1943, and of Italy (Operation Avalanche) in September 1943. This entailed postponing the cross-Channel invasion from 1943 to 1944. Following the American defeat at Anzio, however, the invasion of Italy became bogged down, and failed to meet Churchill's expectations. This undermined his opposition to the cross-Channel invasion (Operation Overlord), which finally took place in June 1944. Although most of France was quickly liberated, the Allies were blocked on the German border in the "Battle of the Bulge" in December 1944, and final victory over Germany was not achieved until May 1945, by which time the Soviet Union, as Churchill feared, had occupied all of eastern and central Europe as far west as the Elbe River in central Germany.

Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and FDR at Cairo, 1945; FDR promised American friendship

Meanwhile in the Pacific the Japanese advance reached its maximum extent by June 1942, when Japan sustained a major naval defeat at the hands of the U.S. at the Battle of Midway. The Japanese advance to the south and south-east was halted at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and the Battle of Guadalcanal between August 1942 and February 1943. The US then began a slow and costly progress through the Pacific islands, with the objective of gaining bases from which strategic air power could be brought to bear on Japan and from which Japan could ultimately be invaded. In any event, this did not prove necessary, because the almost simultaneous declaration of war on Japan by the Soviet Union and the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities brought about Japan's surrender in September 1945.

By late 1943 it was apparent that the Allies would ultimately defeat Nazi Germany, and it became increasingly important to make high-level political decisions about the course of the war and the postwar future of Europe. Roosevelt met with Churchill and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference in November 1943, and then went to Tehran to confer with Churchill and Stalin. At the Tehran Conference Roosevelt and Churchill told Stalin about the plan to invade France in 1944, and Roosevelt also discussed his plans for a postwar international organization. Stalin was pleased that the western Allies had abandoned any idea of moving into the Balkans or central Europe via Italy, and he went along with Roosevelt's plan for the United Nations, which involved no costs to him. Stalin also agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan when Germany was defeated. At this time Churchill and Roosevelt were acutely aware of the huge and disproportionate sacrifices the Soviets were making on the eastern front while their invasion of France was still six months away, so they did not raise awkward political issues which did not require immediate solutions, such as the future of Germany and Eastern Europe.

By the beginning of 1945, however, with the Allied armies advancing into Germany, consideration of these issues could not be put off any longer. In February, Roosevelt, despite his steadily deteriorating health, traveled to Yalta, in the Soviet Crimea, to meet again with Stalin and Churchill. This meeting, the Yalta Conference, is often portrayed as a decisive turning point in modern history, but in fact, most of the decisions made there were retrospective recognitions of realities which had already been established by force of arms. The decision of the western Allies to delay the invasion of France from 1943 to 1944 had allowed the Soviet Union to occupy all of eastern Europe, including Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, as well as eastern Germany. Since Stalin was in full control of these areas, there was little Roosevelt and Churchill could do to prevent him imposing his will on them, as he was rapidly doing by establishing Communist-controlled governments in all these countries.

Churchill, aware that the United Kingdom had gone to war in 1939 in defense of Polish independence, and also of his promises to the Polish government in exile in London, did his best to insist that Stalin agree to the establishment of a non-Communist government and the holding of free elections in liberated Poland, although he was unwilling to confront Stalin over the issue of Poland's postwar frontiers, on which he considered the Polish position to be indefensible. But Roosevelt was not interested in having a fight with Stalin over Poland, for two reasons. The first was that he believed that Soviet support was essential for the projected invasion of Japan, in which the Allies ran the risk of huge casualties. He feared that if Stalin was provoked over Poland he might renege on his Tehran commitment to enter the war against Japan. The second was that he saw the United Nations as the ultimate solution to all postwar problems, and he feared the United Nations project would fail without Soviet cooperation.

Fourth term and death, 1945

See also: Homefront-United States-World War II

Personal

File:Yalta Conference.jpg

The "Big Three" Allied leaders at Yalta: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin

Although Roosevelt was only 62 in 1944, his health had been in decline since at least 1940. The strain of his paralysis and the physical exertion needed to compensate for it for over 20 years had taken their toll, as had many years of stress and a lifetime of chain-smoking. He had been diagnosed with high blood pressure and long-term heart disease, and was advised to modify his diet (although not to stop smoking). Aware of the risk that Roosevelt would die during his fourth term, the party regulars insisted that Henry A. Wallace, who was seen as too pro-Soviet, be dropped as Vice President. Roosevelt replaced Wallace with the little known Senator Harry S. Truman. In the November elections Roosevelt and Truman won 53% of the vote and carried 36 states, against New York Governor Thomas Dewey.

Diplomacy

After the 1944 elections, Cordell Hull, the longest-serving Secretary of State in American history, retired and was succeeded by Edward Stettinius Jr.. After the Yalta conference in February 1945 , relations between the western Allies and Stalin deteriorated rapidly, and so did Roosevelt's health. When he addressed Congress on his return from Yalta, many were shocked to see how old, thin and sick he looked. He spoke from his wheelchair, an unprecedented concession to his physical incapacity. But he was still mentally fully in command. "The Crimean Conference," he said firmly, "ought to spell the end of a system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries — and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these, a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join." There was no doubting the depth of Roosevelt's commitment to these ideals, which he had inherited from Woodrow Wilson.

During March and early April 1945 he sent strongly worded messages to Stalin accusing him of breaking his Yalta commitments over Poland, Germany, prisoners of war and other issues. When Stalin accused the western Allies of plotting a separate peace with Hitler behind his back, Roosevelt replied: "I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment towards your informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentations of my actions or those of my trusted subordinates."

Death

Roosevelt's funeral procession.

On March 30, Roosevelt went to Warm Springs to rest before his anticipated appearance at the April 25 San Francisco founding conference of the United Nations. Among the guests was Lucy Mercer, his lover from 30 years previously (by then Mrs. Lucy Rutherfurd), and the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who was painting a portrait of him. On the morning of April 12 he complained of a sudden headache, then slumped forward in his chair and lost consciousness. The doctor saw he had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. At 3:31 p.m. he was pronounced dead. The painting by Shoumatoff was not finished and is known as his Unfinished Portrait.

Roosevelt's death was greeted with shock and grief across the U.S. and around the world. At a time when the press did not pry into the health or private lives of presidents, his declining health had not been known to the general public. Roosevelt had been President for more than 12 years, longer than any other person, and had led the country through some of its greatest crises to the defeat of Nazi Germany, and to within sight of the defeat of Japan as well. Although in the decades since his death there have been many critical reassessments of his career, few commentators at the time had anything but praise for a commander-in-chief who had passed away with victory only a few weeks away.

Less than a month later, on May 8, came the moment Roosevelt fought for: V-E Day. The new president, Harry Truman, who celebrated his 61st birthday that day, dedicated V-E Day and its celebrations to Roosevelt's memory, paying tribute to his commitment towards ending the war in Europe.

Criticism

Much of the early criticism of FDR centered on fears that he was heading toward a dictatorship, by seizing control of the Supreme Court (1937), the Democratic party in the South (1938), and the White House by rejecting the no-third-term tradition in 1940. As two historians explain, "In 1940, with the two-term issue as a weapon, anti-New Dealers...argued that the time had come to disarm the "dictator" and to dismantle the machinery." These criticisms largely ended after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, as Americans left and right called for strong presidential leadership of the war effort.

Second FDR was attacked for his economic policies, especially the shift from individualism to collectivism that he represented with the dramatic expansion of the welfare state and regulation of the economy. Those criticisms remained strong decades after his death. However as the old generation died out so did these debates (See Critics of the New Deal). One factor was the rise of Ronald Reagan, who greatly admired Roosevelt and who dominated conservative thinking by 1980.

Today, Roosevelt is criticized by advocates of free market capitalism for his extensive economic interventionism. These critics often accuse his policies of prolonging what they believe would otherwise have been a much shorter depression. Their argument is that government planning of the economy was both unnecessary and counterproductive, and that laissez-faire policies would have ended the suffering much sooner. Austrian school economist Thomas DiLorenzo, says "FDR’s New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt 'got us out of the Depression' and 'saved capitalism from itself,' as generations of Americans have been taught by the state’s education establishment." Historian Jim Powell, in FDR's Folly, points out that the median joblessness rate throughout the New Deal was 17.2 percent and never went below 14 percent. He says the Depression was worsened and prolonged "by doubling taxes, making it more expensive for employers to hire people, making it harder for entrepreneurs to raise capital, demonizing employers, destroying food...breaking up the strongest banks, forcing up the cost of living, channeling welfare away from the poorest people and enacting labor laws that hit poor African Americans especially hard." However as Alvin Hansen pointed out at the time, few businesses were attempting to expand. The poor voted at the 80-90% level for Roosevelt according to public opinion polls. [Cantril and Strunk] A study by Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian concludes that the "New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression as President Roosevelt and his economic planners had hoped," but that the "New Deal policies are an important contributing factor to the persistence of the Great Depression." The say that the "abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong economic recovery of the 1940s."

William P. Hoar of the John Birch Society says the "economics of Fascist Italy were...imported into this country by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose C.C.C., W.P.A., PWA. and other Depression-era schemes proved so damaging."

It was former President Herbert Hoover who developed the fascist theme, saying that the NRA was too closely linked to the "fascism" that big business industrialists wanted to impose.

Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 .... [these ideas] were first suggested by Gerard Swope(of the General Electric company)... They were adopted by the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was sheer fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true.

— Hoover Memoirs 3:420 [Whatever Hariman told Hoover, Roosevelt had not signed off on Swope's plan]

A different line of attack came from Michael S. Sweeney, who accused Roosevelt of misuing the Office of Censorship during the war. Sweeney says Roosevelt used it to censor media coverage of his travels in order to conceal his deteriorating health and to hide visits with his former mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherford.

Upon FDR's death in 1945, H. L. Mencken predicted in his diary, that FDR would be remembered as a great president, "maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln," reasoning that FDR "had every quality that morons esteem in their heroes."

Economic record

File:Gdp33-41.jpg

GDP data (real 2000 dollars) January 1933 to January 1941

National debt from two years before Roosevelt took office to the time that he died in office.

The U.S. economy had its fastest growth rates ever in Roosevelt's years. The 10-year rate 1933-43 was slightly higher than Hong Kong in the 1970s or Japan in the 1950s. However, this was accompanied by massive unemployment --the median joblessness rate throughout the New Deal was 17.2 percent and never went below 14 percent. Overall through his term, average unemployment was 13%.

Jobs

Under the FDR adminstration, there was a net increase of 18.31 million jobs. The average annual increase in jobs during his adminstration was 5.3%, so the total number of jobs during his adminstration increased by over 60%.

National debt

The national debt (as a % of GNP) doubled under Hoover from 16% to 41% of GNP in 1933. Under Roosevelt it stayed level until World War II; then it soared to a maximum of 129% in 1946.

Administration and Cabinet, 1933-1945

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt	1933–1945
Vice President	John Nance Garner	1933–1941
	Henry A. Wallace	1941–1945
	Harry S. Truman	1945
State	Cordell Hull	1933–1944
	Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.	1944–1945
War	George H. Dern	1933–1936
	Harry H. Woodring	1936–1940
	Henry L. Stimson	1940–1945
Treasury	William H. Woodin	1933–1934
	Henry Morgenthau, Jr.	1934–1945
Justice	Homer S. Cummings	1933–1939
	William F. Murphy	1939–1940
	Robert H. Jackson	1940–1941
	Francis B. Biddle	1941–1945
Post	James A. Farley	1933–1940
	Frank C. Walker	1940–1945
Navy	Claude A. Swanson	1933–1939
	Charles Edison	1940
	Frank Knox	1940–1944
	James V. Forrestal	1944–1945
Interior	Harold L. Ickes	1933–1945
Agriculture	Henry A. Wallace	1933–1940
	Claude R. Wickard	1940–1945
Commerce	Daniel C. Roper	1933–1938
	Harry L. Hopkins	1939–1940
	Jesse H. Jones	1940–1945
	Henry A. Wallace	1945
Labor	Frances C. Perkins	1933–1945

Supreme Court appointments

Further information: List of nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States

President Roosevelt appointed nine Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. John Tyler also appointed nine, and George Washington appointed eleven (all others appointed less). By 1941, eight of the nine Justices were Roosevelt appointees.

• Hugo Black (AL) August 19, 1937 – September 17, 1971
• Stanley Forman Reed (KY) January 31, 1938 – February 25, 1957
• Felix Frankfurter (MA) January 30, 1939 – August 28, 1962
• William O. Douglas (CT) April 17, 1939 – November 12, 1975
• Frank Murphy (MI) February 5, 1940 – July 19, 1949
• Harlan Fiske Stone (Chief Justice, NY) July 3, 1941 – April 22, 1946
• James Francis Byrnes (SC) July 8, 1941 – October 3, 1942
• Robert H. Jackson (NY) July 11, 1941 – October 9, 1954
• Wiley Blount Rutledge (IA) February 15, 1943 – September 10, 1949

In 1937, Roosevelt proposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 (called the Court packing Bill by its opponents). The proposal gave the President the power to appoint an extra Supreme Court Justice for every sitting Justice over the age of 70. The bill caused a deep division in the Democratic party, as newly reelected Vice president John Nance Garner led the opposition. The proposal was defeated.

Legacy

Roosevelt is still considered by many to be a great president. A 1999 survey of academic historians by CSPAN found that historians consider Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Roosevelt the three greatest presidents by a wide margin.. A 2000 survey by The Washington Post found Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt to be the only "great" Presidents. Roosevelt is the sixth most admired person in the 20th century, according to Gallup. He was ranked #3 in a 2005 survey by the conservative Federalist Society that included specialists in history, political science, economics and law.A 2006 internet survey by the GVSU Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies ranked Roosevelt as the U.S. President who has had the greatest impact on the world. According to William E. Leuchtenburg, "it may readily be acknowledged that such polls often say more about the ideological predisposition of scholars than about the nature of presidential performance, and that historians have been scandalously vague about establishing criteria for "greatness." Yet there are in fact significant reasons for Roosevelt's rating, some of them substantial enough to be acknowledged even by skeptics." He says the most important reason for him being ranked as a great president is "his role in enlarging the presidential office and expanding the domain of the State while leading the American people through the Great Depression" and the sense of hope and optimism he brought to Americans while doing so.

See also

The Four Freedoms engraved on a wall at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington.

• Four Freedoms
• Arsenal of Democracy "Fireside chat" — Famous Radio Address vaulting nation into preparation for what became known as World War II.
• U.S. presidential election, 1944
• History of the United States (1918-1945)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (Hyde Park, New York)
• New Deal
• Critics of the New Deal
• Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights
• Timeline of environmental events
• U.S. presidential election, 1920
• U.S. presidential election, 1932
• U.S. presidential election, 1936
• U.S. presidential election, 1940

References

Primary sources

• Cantril, Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds.; Public Opinion, 1935-1946 (1951), massive compilation of many public opinion polls from USA
• Gallup, George Horace, ed. The Gallup Poll; Public Opinion, 1935-1971 3 vol (1972) summarizes results of each poll as reported to newspapers.
• Loewenheim, Francis L. et al, eds; Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (1975)
• Moley, Raymond. After Seven Years (1939), memoir by key Brain Truster
• Nixon, Edgar B. ed. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs (3 vol 1969), covers 1933-37. 2nd series 1937-39 available on microfiche and in a 14 vol print edition at some academic libraries.
• Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Rosenman, Samuel Irving, ed. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (13 vol, 1938, 1945); public material only (no letters); covers 1928-1945.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (1976)
• Zevin, B. D. ed.; Nothing to Fear: The Selected Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932-1945 (1946) selected speeches
• Documentary History of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration 20 vol. available in some large academic libraries.

Scholarly secondary sources

• Beasley, Maurine, et al eds. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (2001)
• Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt (1956, 1970), 2 vol; interpretive biography, emphasis on politics; vol 2 is on war years
• Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (1990), One-volume scholarly biography; covers entire life
• Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt (4 vol 1952-73), scholarly biography; ends in 1934.
• Graham, Otis L. and Meghan Robinson Wander, eds. Franklin D. Roosevelt: His Life and Times. (1985). encyclopedia
• Kennedy, David M. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. (1999), general survey
• Leuchtenberg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. (1963). A standard interpretive history of era.
• Herbert S. Parmet and Marie B. Hecht; Never Again: A President Runs for a Third Term (1968)
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, 3 vols, (1957-1960), the classic narrative history. Strongly supports FDR. Online at vol 2 vol 3

Popular Biographies

• Black, Conrad. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Public Affairs, 2003. Popular biography
• Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1982-1928 (1972)
• Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (1995)
• Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers (1971), history of a marriage.
• Morgan, Ted, FDR: A biography, Simon & Schuster, New York (1985), a popular biography
• Ward, Geoffrey C. Before The Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905 HarperCollins, 1985.
  • Geoffrey C. Ward, A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, HarperCollins, 1992, covers 1905-1932.

Foreign Policy and World War II

• Beschloss, Michael R. The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 (2002).
• Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom (1970), vol 2 covers the war years.
• Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (2nd ed. 1995).
• Heinrichs, Waldo. Threshold of War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (1988).
• Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973)
• Kimball, Warren. The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as World Statesman (1991)
• Langer, William and S. Everett Gleason. The Challenge to Isolation, 1937-1940 (1952). Vol 1 of highly influential semi-official history
• Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. The Undeclared War, 1940-1941 (1953). Vol 2 of highly influential semi-official history
• Larrabee, Eric. Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War. History of how FDR handled the war
• Offner, Arnold A. America and the Origins of World War II, 1933-1941: New Perspectives in History (1971)
• Rauch, Basil. Roosevelt, from Munich to Pearl Harbor: A Study in the Creation of a Foreign Policy (1950)
• Schmitz, David F. and Richard D. Challener. Appeasement in Europe: A Reassessment of U.S. Policies (1990)
• Traina, Richard P. American Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War (1968).
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (1994). Overall history of the war; strong on diplomacy of FDR and other main leaders
• Wood, Bryce. The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy (1961).
• Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)

Criticisms

• Barnes, Harry Elmer. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath (1953). from a leading "revisionist" who blames FDR for inciting Japan to attack.
• Conkin, Paul K. New Deal (1975), critique from the left
• Gary Dean Best. The Retreat from Liberalism: Collectivists versus Progressives in the New Deal Years (2002) Best (a conservative) criticizes intellectuals who supported FDR
• Gary Dean Best. Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933-1938 Praeger Publishers. 1991; summarizes conservative newspaper editorials
• Kennedy, Thomas C. Charles A. Beard and American Foreign Policy (1975) scholarly analysis of leading revisionist
• Moley, Raymond. After Seven Years (1939) insider memoir by Brain Truster who became conservative
• Russett, Bruce M. No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States Entry into World War II 2nd ed. (1997) says US should have let USSR and Germany destroy each other
• Powell, Jim. FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. (Crown Forum, 2003), a stinging attack on all FDR's policies from the right
• Greg Robinson. By Order of the President : FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (2001) says FDR's racism was primarily to blame.
• Gene Smiley. Rethinking the Great Depression (1993) short essay by economist who blames both Hoover and FDR
• David S. Wyman. The Abandonment Of The Jews: America and the Holocaust Pantheon Books, 1984. Attacks Roosevelt for passive complicity in allowing Holocaust to happen

External links

• The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
  • Audio Archive
  • Academic Data Related to the Roosevelt Administration
• FDR cartoon archive

Speeches: audio and transcripts

• The American Presidency Project at University of California at Santa Barbara
  • Public Papers of the Presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • State of the Union Addresses
    • 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944
  • State of the Union Written Messages
    • 1945
  • Inaugural Addresses
    • 1933, 1937, 1941, 1945
  • Fireside Chats
  • Presidential Elections
    • 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944
  • 32 Audio/Video Clips of FDR
• Roosevelt's Secret White House Recordings via University of Virginia
• FDR - Day of Infamy video clip (2 min.)
• Audio clips of speeches
• First Inaugural Address, via Yale University
• Second Inaugural Address, via Yale University
• Third Inaugural Address, via Yale University
• Fourth Inaugural Address, via Yale University
• Court "Packing" Speech March 9, 1937
• University of Virginia graduating class speech ("Stab in the Back" speech) June 10, 1940

Other

• IPL POTUS — Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Encyclopedia Americana: Franklin D. Roosevelt
• An archive of political cartoons from the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Warm Springs and FDR's Polio Treatment
• Dutch Martin's review of FDR's folly
• FDR at the Atlantic Conference
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Links
• On Franklin Roosevelt's progressive vision from the Roosevelt Institution, a student think tank inspired in part by Franklin Roosevelt.
• Works by Franklin D. Roosevelt at Project Gutenberg

Websites critical of Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Socialist Lust for Power - FDR, The American Great Depression and WWII