Franklin Delano Roosevelt (30 January 1882 – 12 April 1945) was President of the United States from 4 March 1933 to 12 April 1945, succeeding Herbert Hoover and preceding Harry S. Truman; he previously served as Governor of New York (D) from 1 January 1929 to 31 December 1932, succeeding Al Smith and preceding Herbert H. Lehman.
Biography[]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York in 1882 to a wealthy family, and he studied law at Harvard and Columbia Universities. He married his cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1905. He became active in politics, and in 1910 was elected to the New York senate. In 1913 he became Assistant Secretary for the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1921, he was stricken with polio, and henceforth was confined to a wheelchair. In the days before television, this did not seriously harm his political career, and he was elected Governor of New York as a reforming Democratic Party member in 1928.
Presidency[]
A statue commemorating Roosevelt's "Fireside chats"
He was elected President in 1932 on a promise to end the Great Depression with wide-ranging government reform, and implemented this in his New Deal programme, which gave work to millions of people and hope to the nation. While its economic efforts remain controversial, it did create teh impression that his policies had overcome the economic crisis, and became the basis of his longevity in office. Furthermore, he was quick to recognize the effectiveness of the new medium, radio. Through his regular "fireside chats", he thus was the first president to become familiar to a majority of US citizens. In the 1936 presidential election he won a crushing victory, gaining every state except Maine and Vermont.
In his second term from 1937 to 1941, inherent weaknesses of the New Deal became more obvious, in particular many of his policies' shortsightedness and their expensive reliance on subsidies. Moreover, the unconstitutionality of some of his policies led to an all-out confrontation with the US Supreme Court, though his attempt to pack the court with liberal justices failed. At the same time, he skillfully steered the USA away from policies favored by isolationists, who had succeeded in passing a series of Neutrality Acts through the US Congress. After the fall of France in 1940 he made the USA a powerful supporter of Britain's war effort, most importantly through the Lend-Lease Act. Thus, in August 1940, by his Destroyer Transfer Agreement with Winston Churchill, he exchanged fifty pre-1914 US destroyers for naval bases in the West Indies, Newfoundland, and British Guyana, thus providing Britain with much-needed convoy escorts.
World War II[]
A statue of Roosevelt at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington DC
In 1940, he ran for an unprecedented third term against the Republican Wendell Wilkie. He met much opposition from Southern Democrats, but he benefited from the upswing in the US economy resulting from the military expansion. A firm supporter of China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, he denied Japan war supplies, a policy which helped to precipitate the latter's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, which in turn triggered the subsequent declarations of war against the Axis Powers. The USA now found itself in alliance not only with Britain, but also with the Soviet Union. He extended the lend-lease agreement to the latter, but was subsequently criticized for being too trusting of Joseph Stalin, particularly by conceding too much Soviet influence over a postwar Europe. By contrast, his relationship with Winston Churchill was excellent, though he had to work hard to convince the British Prime Minister to embark on a cross-Channel attack, which eventually came to pass at D-Day.
On the strength of his wartime leadership, he won a fourth term in office in 1944. However, his health soon deteriorated, so that he died two months after participating in his last major wartime conference at Yalta. He was succeeded by Harry S. Truman. Perhaps the greatest US president of the twentieth century, he fundamentally changed the nature of US policies, through extending the role of the federal government to guarantee a stable framework for harmonious economic and social development, and through eventually establishing the USA as a major actor in world politics.
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