Franklin Delano Roosevelt Biography
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882
– April 12, 1945), 32nd President of the United States, the
longest-serving holder of the office and the only person to be elected
President more than twice, was one of the central figures of 20th
century history. He is best known for leading the U.S. through the Great
Depression using his New Deal, building a powerful Democratic party
coalition that dominated American politics for three decades, and
leading the military alliance that defeated Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy
and the Empire of Japan in World War II. A child of economic and social
privilege, he overcame crippling illness to place himself at the head of
the forces of reform. Universally called FDR, he was both loved and
hated in his day but today many consider him one of the greatest of
American presidents.
****
Early life
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on
January 29, 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 Franklin.
Marriage and children
Meanwhile he had become engaged to Eleanor,
despite the fierce resistance of Sara Delano Roosevelt, who was
terrified of losing control of Franklin. They were married on March 17,
1905, and moved into a house bought for them by Sara, who became a
frequent house-guest, much to Eleanor's mortification. 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, of which 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 was elected to higher office despite several
attempts.
Political career
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 symbolic 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 Britain 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.
Private crisis
Roosevelt was a charismatic, handsome and
socially active man, while his wife Eleanor was shy and retiring, and
furthermore was almost constantly pregnant during the decade after 1906.
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 her 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, which is speculative.
In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were
vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Roosevelt was stricken
with poliomyelitis, a viral infection of the nerve fibers of the spinal
cord, probably contracted while swimming in the stagnant water of a
nearby lake. The result was that Roosevelt was totally and permanently
paralyzed from the waist down. At first the muscles of his abdomen and
lower back were also affected, but these eventually recovered. Thus he
could sit up and, with aid of leg braces, stand upright, but he could
not walk. Unlike in other forms of paraplegia, his bowels, bladder and
sexual functions were not affected.
Although the paralysis resulting from polio
had no cure (and still does not, although the disease is now very rare
in developed countries), 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), and
spent a lot of time there in the 1920s. This was in part to escape from
his mother, who tried to resume control of his life following his
illness.
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. 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.
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. In 1930 Roosevelt was
elected to a second term by a margin of more than 700,000 votes.
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 was tagged as a loser--and
he 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.
The election campaign was conducted under
the shadow of the Great Depression. At 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 of Chicago, Anton Cermak.
The first term and a New Deal, 1933-1937
When Roosevelt was inaugurated in March
1933, the U.S. was at the nadir of the worst depression in its history.
A fourth of the workforce was unemployed. Industrial production had
fallen by more than half since 1929. In a country with few government
social services, two million were homeless. The banking system seemed to
be on the point of collapse. There was little violence, but most
observers considered it remarkable that such an obvious breakdown of the
capitalist system had not led to a rapid growth of fascism (as happened
in Nazi Germany). Instead of adopting revolutionary solutions, the
American people had turned to the Democrats and to a leader who had
grown up in privilege.
The First New Deal, 1933-1934
Roosevelt indeed had few systematic
economic beliefs; he relied heavily on a Brain Trust of academic
advisors from leading universities. 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.
A high priority in the first "Hundred Days"
was stabilizing the financial system. By inauguration day, state
governors in every state had ordered banks closed or placed restrictions
on deposits (as bank closings increased, this created more panic as
depositors in other states rushed to withdraw funds before a
state-imposed holiday was declared in their own states). Roosevelt
issued Proclamation 2038 on March 6 ordering "all banking transactions"
be suspended through March 9, "in order to prevent the export, hoarding,
or earmarking of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency." On March
9, Roosevelt told Congress in person, "Our first task is to open all
sound banks." To accomplish this he asked for and received emergency
legislation giving him control over all banks. The same day he received
authority to "open such banks as have already been ascertained to be in
sound condition, and other such banks as may be found to require
reorganization to put them on a sound basis." 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.)[Historical Statistics
X741-7555] At first, Roosevelt opposed bank insurance, but in June he
reluctantly signed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) law
to insure bank deposits. Angered at foreign efforts to manipulate the
dollar-gold ratio by European speculators, on May 9, 1933, Roosevelt
issued Executive Order 6102 that required that by next January all gold
be turned in for paper money at face value. After January 1934, he then
devalued the international value of the dollar by 40% in terms of gold,
hoping to stimulate exports. [Freidel 1990 p 101-2] (please verify this
source)
During the first hundred days of his
administration, Roosevelt used his enormous prestige and the sense of
impending disaster to force a series of bills through Congress,
establishing and funding various new government agencies. These included
the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which granted funds
to the states for unemployment relief; the Civilian Conservation Corps
(CCC) to hire 250,000 young men to work on rural local projects; and 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 (and by ordering the slaughtering of pigs.)
In 1936, the U.S. Supreme Court found the AAA to be unconstitutional.
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.
Following these emergency measures in 1933
came the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which imposed an
unprecedented amount of state regulation on industry, including fair
practice codes and a guaranteed role for unions, in exchange for the
suspension of anti-trust laws and huge amounts of money through the PWA
to stimulate to the economy. The NIRA was found to be unconstitutional
by unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on May 27, 1935.
Roosevelt worked with 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 improved agriculture 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. Roosevelt cut the regular federal budget, slashed
veterans' benefits by 40% and cut military spending. 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.
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 John Maynard Keynes in
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."
The extent to which the spending for relief
and public works provided a sufficient stimulus to revive the U.S.
economy, or whether it harmed the economy, is also debated. GNP was 34%
higher in 1936 than 1932, and 58% higher in 1940 on the eve of war.
Critics at the time or since never proposed any alternatives (except
spend nothing for the emergency). 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. 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.
The second term, 1937-1941
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 enough seats in Congress to outvote
both the Republicans and the conservative Southern Democrats (who
supported programs which brought benefits for their states but opposed
measures which strengthened labor unions). 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. The Roosevelt ascendancy also prevented the growth of both
communism and fascism.
Roosevelt's second term agenda included an
act creating the 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 relief and
public works programs.
With the Republicans powerless in Congress,
the conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court was the
only obstacle to Roosevelt's programs. During 1935 the Court ruled that
the National Recovery Act and some other pieces of New Deal legislation
were unconstitutional. Roosevelt's response was to propose enlarging the
Court so that he could appoint more sympathetic judges. This "court
packing" plan was the first Roosevelt scheme to run into serious
political opposition, since it seemed to upset the separation of powers
which is one of the cornerstones of the American constitutional
structure. Eventually 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.
Unfortunately for Roosevelt, this effort was unsuccessful, and the
Southern Congressmen whom he had failed to replace ended up forging a
conservative alliance with congressional Republicans, further impeding
Roosevelt's ability to get his legislative proposals enacted into law.
By 1939, with FDR's reform momentum already
slowing down due to the Court Packing fiasco, the "Roosevelt Recession"
of 1937-38, and the President's growing difficulties in controlling
congressional Democrats, the need for bipartisan support for his
controversial foreign policy and military plans helped bring a virtual
end to further structural reforms and changes. Indeed, the Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938 (see above) was the last substantial New Deal
reform act passed by Congress.
The war placed 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 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. At the Seventh
International Conference of American States in Montevideo in December
1933, Roosevelt and Hull signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights
and Duties of States, renouncing the assumed American right to intervene
unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries. Nevertheless,
the realities of American support for various Latin American dictators,
often to serve American corporate interests, remained unchanged.
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 he
eventually signed it. In 1937 Congress passed an even more stringent
Act, but when the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937 Roosevelt found
various ways to assist China, and warned that Italy, Nazi Germany and
Imperial Japan were threats to world peace and to the U.S. When World
War II broke out in 1939, Roosevelt became increasingly eager to assist
Britain and France, and he began a regular secret correspondence with
Winston Churchill, in which the two freely discussed ways of
circumventing the Neutrality Acts.
In May 1940 Germany attacked France and
rapidly occupied the country, leaving Britain vulnerable to German air
attack and possible invasion. Roosevelt was determined to prevent this
and sought to shift public opinion in favor of aiding Britain. He
secretly aided a private body, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding
the Allies, and he appointed two anti-isolationist Republicans, 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 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 Britain. In August, Roosevelt openly defied the
Neutrality Acts with the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which gave 50
American destroyers to Britain 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 Britain.
The third term and the path to war,
1941-1945
After the 1938 Congressional elections the
Republicans staged their first comeback since 1932. 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, and then only
because of support from Northeastern Republicans who wanted to force
higher wages in competing southern textile mills.)
The no-third-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 that 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 Britain, 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 anti-Axis coalition.
From 1939, unemployment fell rapidly, as
the unemployed either joined the armed forces or found work in arms
factories. By 1941 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 turned for foreign policy advice
to Harry Hopkins. They sought innovative ways to help Britain, 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. Britain 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 Britain 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.
Pearl Harbor
Roosevelt was less keen to involve the U.S.
in the war developing in East Asia, where Japan occupied French
Indo-China in late 1940. He authorized increased aid to China, and in
July 1941 he restricted the sales of oil and other strategic materials
to Japan, but also continued negotiations with the Japanese government
in the hope of averting war. Through 1941 the Japanese planned their
attack on the western powers, including the U.S., while spinning out the
negotiations in Washington. The "hawks" in the Administration, led by
Stimson and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, were in favor of a
tough policy towards Japan, but Roosevelt, emotionally committed to the
war in Europe, refused to believe that Japan might attack the U.S. and
favored continued negotiations. The U.S. Ambassador in Tokyo, Joseph C.
Grew, passed on warnings about the planned attack on the American
Pacific Fleet's base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, but these were ignored
by the State Department.
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 later made scapegoats for this disaster. The fault
really lay with the War Department in Washington, which since August
1940 had been able to read the Japanese diplomatic codes and had thus
been given ample warning of the imminence of the attack (though not of
its actual date). In later investigations, the War Department claimed
that it had not passed warnings on to the commanders in Hawaii because
its analysts refused to believe that the Japanese would really have the
effrontery to attack the United States.
It has become a staple of postwar
revisionist history 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. Conspiracy theorists cite a document known as
the McCollum memo, written by a Naval Intelligence officer in 1940 and
declassified in 1994, as evidence that the Roosevelt administration
actively sought to enter into a war with Japan. It has never been shown,
however, that Roosevelt or his Cabinet saw this document or were aware
of the arguments it contained, let alone adopted them.
In fact it is clear that when the Cabinet
met on 5 December, its members were not aware of the impending attack.
The Cabinet discussed the mounting intelligence evidence that the
Japanese were mobilizing for war. Navy Secretary Knox told the Cabinet
of the decoded messages showing that the Japanese fleet was at sea, but
stated his opinion that it was heading south to attack the British in
Malaya and Singapore, and to seize the oil resources of the Dutch East
Indies. Roosevelt and the rest of the Cabinet seemed to accept this
view. There were intercepted Japanese messages suggesting an attack on
Pearl Harbor, but delays in translating and passing on these messages
through the inefficient War Department bureaucracy meant that they did
not reach the Cabinet before the attack took place. There is no evidence
that Roosevelt was made aware of them. All contemporary accounts
describe Roosevelt, Hull and Stimson as shocked and outraged when they
heard news of the attack.
The Japanese took advantage of their
pre-emptive 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. Isolationism 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., Britain,
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 like the way Churchill did in Britain, let alone take direct
command of the forces as 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
Main article: 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 evacuate 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 evacuation. Roosevelt looked at the 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 permitted them to return 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 the
conventional 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, but said "this is not a
governmental affair" and refused to make any public comment. 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
isolationists — 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, was a visceral
anti-Semite who did everything he could to obstruct Jewish immigration.
Despite frequent complaints, Roosevelt failed to remove him.
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 refused to allow any systematic attempt
to rescue European Jewish refugees and bring them to the U.S. 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. He suggested that since the Nazis had killed
three million Polish Jews, there should now be plenty of room in Poland
to resettle all the Jewish refugees. Roosevelt's attitudes towards
Japanese-Americans, Blacks and Jews remain in striking contrast with the
generosity of spirit he displayed, and the social liberalism he
practiced in other realms.
Strategy and diplomacy
The U.S. took the straightforward view that
the quickest way to defeat Germany was to transport its army to Britain,
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. Churchill succeeded in
persuading Roosevelt 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.
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. MacArthur and Nimitz 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 the 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 Britain 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.
The fourth term and his death, 1945
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
(though not to stop smoking). Had it not been for the war, he would
certainly have retired at the 1944 election, but under the circumstances
both he and his advisors felt there was no alternative to his running
for a fourth term. 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 at first
resisted but finally agreed to replace 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. After the elections, Cordell Hull, the longest-serving
Secretary of State in American history, retired and was succeeded by
Edward Stettinius Jr..
After the Yalta conference, 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." Many in his audience doubted that the proposed
United Nations would achieve these objectives, but there was no doubting
the depth of Roosevelt's commitment to these ideals, which he had
inherited from Woodrow Wilson.
Roosevelt is often accused of being naively
trusting of Stalin, but in the last months of the war he took an
increasingly tough line. During March and early April 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."
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 was sitting in a leather chair signing
letters, his legs propped up on a stool, while Shoumatoff worked at her
easel. Just before lunch was to be served, he dropped his pen and
complained of a sudden headache. Then he slumped forward in his chair
and lost consciousness. A doctor was summoned and he was carried to bed;
it was immediately obvious that he had suffered a massive cerebral
hemorrhage. At 3:31 pm he was pronounced dead. The painting by
Shoumatoff was not finished and is known as the 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, much longer than any other
person, and had led the country through some of its greatest crises to
the brink of its greatest triumph, the complete 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 been robbed by death of a victory which was
only a few weeks away. On May 8, the new president, Harry S. Truman, who
turned 61 that day, dedicated V-E Day to Roosevelt's memory, paying
tribute to his commitment towards ending the war in Europe.
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
President Roosevelt appointed nine Justices
to the Supreme Court of the United States. George Washington appointed
eleven. 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's legacies to the U.S. were a
greatly expanded role for government in the management of the economy,
increased government regulation of companies to protect the environment
and prevent corruption, a Social Security system which allowed senior
citizens to be able to retire with income and benefits, a nation on the
winning side of World War II (with a booming wartime economy), and a
coalition of voters supporting the Democratic Party which would survive
intact until the 1960s and in part until the 1980s, when it was finally
fractured by Ronald Reagan, a Roosevelt Democrat in his youth who became
a conservative Republican. Internationally, Roosevelt's monument was the
United Nations, an organization which offered at least his hope of an
end to the international anarchy which led to two world wars in his
lifetime.
Majority support for the essentials of the
Roosevelt domestic program survived their author by 35 years. The
Republican administrations of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon did
nothing to overturn the Roosevelt-era social programs. It was not until
the administration of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) that this was reversed,
although Reagan made clear that though he wanted to greatly scale back
many of FDR's programs, he would keep them intact (especially Social
Security). Bill Clinton, with his program of welfare reform, was the
first Democratic president to repudiate elements of the Roosevelt
program. Nevertheless, this has not undermined Roosevelt's posthumous
reputation as 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.
Trivia
In 1939, Roosevelt tried to move the date
of the Thanksgiving celebration forward a week in an attempt to spur
retail sales for the holiday shopping season. This controversial
decision led many to deride the "new" holiday as Franksgiving and split
the country between those who celebrated a traditional Thanksgiving and
this new date. Congress officially passed a law, which Franklin signed
in 1941, making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November officially.
Roosevelt's face can be found on the
obverse of the dime, in honor of his founding of the March of Dimes.
It was Roosevelt who made the often-quoted
remark about the dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza: "Somoza may be
a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."
****
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