The Delano Roosevelt family is one of the oldest in New York State. The ancestors of the future US president come from the Netherlands and France. One of his ancestors, Philippe de la Noy, was the first Huguenot to sail to New World.
Franklin Roosevelt's parents belonged to the new American aristocracy. His father, James Roosevelt, and his mother, Sarah Delano, were very rich people. They owned not only land, but also held shares in large coal and transport companies which their ancestors founded.
Childhood and youth
Franklin Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882. Until the age of 14, he was raised at home, receiving a decent education. He traveled a lot with his mother and father, visiting Europe every year. These trips allowed him to learn many European languages.
In 1896 he began his studies at Groton School, the best school in the country. In 1900 he entered Harvard, and in 1905 he entered Columbia University Law School. Upon completion of his studies, having received permission to practice law, he began working on Wall Street.
In 1911, Roosevelt was initiated into the Freemasons. In the fraternity, his career developed rapidly. Roosevelt became a 32nd degree initiate, which entitled him to represent the Master of the Grand Lodge of Georgia in New York.
Family
Franklin Roosevelt was married to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, his distant relative. She was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, whom Franklin considered the best politician of his time. Their marriage produced six children, of whom five survived. Eleanor Roosevelt played important role in her husband's political career.
Political career and domestic political reforms from 1910 to 1940
Roosevelt began his political career in 1910, becoming a senator from New York. During the presidential campaign of 1913, he supported Woodrow Wilson, and after his victory he became Deputy Secretary of the Navy.
From 1914 to 1921, his political career did not develop, but in 1928 he became governor of New York, in fact, this is what opened the way for him to the White House.
In 1932, Roosevelt won the presidential elections. Almost immediately, he carried out a series of reforms, called the “New Deal,” which helped bring the country out of a protracted economic crisis.
In 1936, Roosevelt was re-elected to a second term and continued reforms, mainly in the area social protection citizens.
Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy from 1932 to 1940
In foreign policy, Roosevelt the President was extremely cautious. On the one hand, he decided to take such important steps as recognizing the USSR in 1933 and normalizing relations with countries Latin America. On the other hand, he did not interfere in European affairs for a long time. Only after 1939, when it became clear that war in Europe was inevitable, Roosevelt decided to create the world's largest military-industrial complex.
Third presidential term and World War II
In the context of a global political crisis and a brewing global conflict, Roosevelt's victory in the 1940 presidential election is more than understandable. Almost immediately, his government began to provide all possible military assistance to Great Britain, then the Lend-Lease law was signed. But until January 7, 1941 (that is, before Pearl Harbor), America did not officially enter the war, although military operations against Germany were carried out in the Atlantic. After the death of the Pacific squadron (for Roosevelt, the Japanese strike came as a surprise), the United States entered the war.
Roosevelt did everything to strengthen the Anti-Hitler coalition, was one of the founders of the UN, met with I. Stalin and W. Churchill in Tehran and Yalta. By the way, in Tehran he advocated the early opening of the Second Front, without supporting W. Churchill, who wanted to postpone this issue.
Last presidential term and death
In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt became American president for the fourth time, but on April 12, 1945, he died of a stroke.
Other biography options
- Americans still put Franklin Roosevelt on a par with outstanding political figures of the past, such as George Washington, T. Jefferson and A. Lincoln.
- It is known that Roosevelt was a big fan of the work of Arthur Conan Doyle and even tried to write detective stories himself.
- Even a short biography of Franklin Roosevelt is of interest, since he was a direct participant in all major events XX century, which still influence the situation in the world.
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 32nd President of the United States- born January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park (New York), died April 12, 1945 in Warm Springs (Georgia). President of the United States from March 4, 1933 to April 12, 1945.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the most outstanding, powerful and effective US politician in the 20th century. He was a wartime president. The most severe economic crisis since the beginning of the industrial revolution until today, the most major war world history gave him a double chance for historical greatness.
At one time, his contemporaries not only respected him infinitely, but also sharply criticized and even hated him, but in the light of distance, his weight increases for three reasons: firstly, with rare unanimity, historians and political scientists share the view that “F.D.R. ." is the founder of the modern American Institute of Presidents.
Secondly: since his presidency, the interventionist state and the mixed economy, in which the federal government in Washington intervenes by regulating, correcting, planning and managing, belong to everyday life Americans. Third: in foreign policy, with an unbending will, he accepted, earlier than most Americans, the challenge of German National Socialism, Japanese imperialism and Italian fascism. When in 1940 - 1941 The future of Western civilization was at stake, he was the last hope of the democrats and a direct alternative to Hitler. Through an unusual combination of a sense of strength and calling, strong nerves and tactical subtleties, he prevented the United States from becoming isolated in the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt was the great winner of World War II, and when he died, the United States became the world's new superpower.
His plans for a post-war order failed. Neither the United Nations, nor cooperation with the Soviet Union, nor the cooperation of the four “policemen of the world”: the USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and China became the determining factors of post-war politics. Likewise, the indivisible, liberal-capitalist world market remained an illusion.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on the sunny side of society. The house where he was born was in Hyde Park, a spacious estate on the Hudson River between New York and Albany. Franklin was the only child of his then 54-year-old father James Roosevelt's second marriage to Sarah, who was 26 years younger than her husband and brought a dowry of one million dollars. The father led the measured life of a rural nobleman from the best New England families of Dutch origin. He was at once a farmer, a merchant and a socialite who loved opera and theater as well as regular trips to Europe. Although the Roosevelts' wealth did not compare with the newly rich Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, their social position among the leading families of New England was invulnerable.
James and Sarah gave their only and beloved son an upbringing appropriate to his position, careful and at the same time rich in events and ideas. The natural reliability that radiated from the parents and the parental home carried over into the son's perception of life and laid the foundation for his unshakable confidence in himself and the world.
This self-confidence and extreme self-discipline helped him when he became seriously ill with polio in 1921. Despite the fact that Roosevelt tried with great energy for many years to overcome the disease, he remained paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Without the help of ten-pound steel tires, he could not stand; he could only move slowly and little by little on crutches. No matter how internally he grumbled at fate, outwardly he put on an impeccable mask, full of hope and confidence. He forbade himself any thought of disappointment and self-pity, and his surroundings - any sentimental gesture.
The disease also changed his wife, Eleanor, as well as the nature of their marriage. Roosevelt married Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant fifth-degree relative from the Hudson Valley and niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1905. The first child, a daughter, was born in 1906; over the next 10 years, 5 more sons were born, one of whom died at the age of 8 months. From an initially shy and modest housewife and mother, step by step, "Eleanor" emerged, the woman who was perhaps the most admired in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Along with her many-sided socio-political activities, her tireless advocacy for women's equality and the trade union movement, in general for the oppressed, humiliated and poor in American society, along with her activities as a teacher, editorial writer, speaker and organizer, she , especially from 1922 to 1928, became Roosevelt's deputy and contact person with the Democratic Party. The marriage turned into a political workers' community in which Eleanor, guided by Christian social convictions, embodied Roosevelt's “left conscience” and in which her own authority increased over the years, but she always recognized the political primacy of her husband. For Eleanor, this change of role simultaneously meant an escape from inner loneliness. Because Roosevelt's World War I affair with Lucy Mercer, Eleanor's attractive secretary, caused a crack in their marriage that was never mended. With her assumption of the presidency in 1933, Eleanor was forced to abandon hope that her husband would carve out for her the place in his life that she so desired: a place as an equal confidante and partner who shared her deepest hopes and disappointments. . Brilliant, witty and charming, Roosevelt, who even before his presidency was a magnet for men and women, used them for his political ambitions and expected absolute loyalty from them, revealing his innermost feelings to no one, not even his wife.
After attending one of the most refined private schools in the country in Groton, Roosevelt from 1900 to 1904. studied at Harvard College, and then from 1904 to 1907. was a law student at Columbia University.
He abandoned the academic completion of his studies, passed the New York bar examination and entered the service of a famous New York law office as a moderately paid trainee. Since he had no desire to delve into the details of economic law and cartel law and already had financial security and social recognition, politics became the only object of his pronounced ambition. In addition, there was also the example of Theodore Roosevelt, whom Franklin and Eleanor visited many times in the White House. Without any irony during the conversation, Roosevelt developed a clear schedule for moving up: in a favorable election year for the Democratic Party, he wanted to try to become a member of parliament in the state of New York, then his career should follow the path of Theodore Roosevelt: Secretary of State in the Department of the Navy, Governor of New York State, President.
His career developed according to this pattern. In November 1910, he became Secretary of the State of New York, in whose parliament he cast in his lot with the “progressive” Democrats. In March 1913 he was appointed Secretary of State for the Ministry of the Navy, a position which he filled with delight for seven years. In 1920, the Democratic Party even nominated him as a candidate for vice president. A year after the Democratic presidential defeat and his bout with polio, he tied his hope for a final recovery to a plan to return to politics. In 1928 and 1930 Roosevelt became governor of New York and was elected president of the United States on November 8, 1932, after a bitter election battle against incumbent President Herbert Hoover.
“This election fight is more than a fight between two men. This is more than a fight between two parties. It is a struggle between two points of view about the purpose and objectives of government.” This election statement by President Hoover could have belonged word for word to Roosevelt, since in essence he stated the same thing during his election campaign. In the passionate debate about the causes and overcoming of the economic crisis, which the Hoover administration has clearly failed to cope with, the question is whether the federal government, led by the President, has the right and responsibility, and to what extent, to intervene to regulating and bringing order to the US economy in order to eliminate crisis and need, was the decisive contrast between both candidates. The question touched on the core of American self-understanding. The deep and lifelong antagonism between Roosevelt and Hoover was based on their incompatible views on the function of government.
While Hoover appealed to the classic American virtues of individualism and voluntariness, and warned against the tyranny of the state, Roosevelt agitated for the most radical state-interventionist planning program, which had not yet been formulated in peacetime by a candidate for presidents. Already in the spring of 1930, he wrote: “For me there is no doubt that the country must be quite radical, at least for one generation. History teaches that nations in which this happens from time to time are spared revolutions.” He understood himself as a preserver and an innovator, as a supporter of tradition and progress at the same time. I never intended to question such fundamentals of the American system as private property, profit motivation, regional and functional division authorities, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Despite his sharp attacks against self-interested people at the top of the social pyramid, he was not an ideologist of class struggle. This would be deeply at odds with his core belief that the president is the defender of the public interest. He was certainly not a Marxist or a socialist, as Hoover claimed in the final phase of the election campaign. Just as little wanted to be classified as a capitalist. When asked about his political beliefs, he could say with disarming simplicity that he was a Christian and a democrat. But if the American system cannot do what Roosevelt believed it should do, namely, serve the common good and provide every American with a decent food supply, then the government must intervene. Common sense and human decency require this. Hoover's deeply un-American government philosophy spreads only doubt, hopelessness and fear among millions of people who are without money, power and social status vegetate at the foundation of the social pyramid. Roosevelt promised pre-election fight“New Deal” and meant by this concept from the vocabulary of card players that the United States was facing a new beginning.
The severity of the crisis and Roosevelt’s convictions led to a quantitative and qualitative leap in the importance of the institution of presidents. On a larger scale than even under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the White House became the energy center of the entire American government system, the source of new ideas, driving force trade, the engine of social transformation and thus, according to Roosevelt, the embodiment of the common good. For the first time, the federal government and the president became recognizable to the masses of the American population. integral part their daily lives, the center of their expectations and hopes.
The formation of the modern American institution of presidents is explained by the fact that Roosevelt consistently led the entire country out of the global economic crisis and out of the greatest war in history. In a certain sense, the United States was constantly at war these twelve years, first with economic need, then with external enemies. The double emergency became the hour of executive power. It is noteworthy that when overcoming the economic plight the metaphor of “war” played a paramount role.
“Roosevelt carried the matter” to the limits of the possible that the American constitutional system sets even for a strong president. He was an artist in the politics of power. Like no other president before him, he wrested the legislative initiative from Congress and, in this sense, expanded the legislative function of the institution of presidents. Roosevelt broke all records for the use of the veto power, he vetoed a total of 635 times. He courted and persuaded decisive deputies and senators in personal conversations, used the opportunity of official patronage and, if necessary, put pressure on Congress with the help of public opinion. Roosevelt centered the public's expectations on the institution of the presidency because he had both media of the time, the press and radio, incomparably to use as instruments of his politics. Roosevelt was the first media president. He dominated major newspaper headlines, not least because of his sovereignty policy " open doors” in relation to journalists working in Washington. Year after year, paralyzed from the waist down, the president gathered up to 200 journalists around his desk twice a week. They could ask him any question without a prior written request. These conferences were masterpieces of handling a free press. They were compared in importance to the hour of questions and answers in the British House of Commons. The secret of the success of his casual fireside chats on the radio, which won an audience of millions, was that this dialogue with the people was not a manipulative ploy for Roosevelt, but concerned the essence of his understanding of democracy.
The shift in the center of gravity of politics to the executive branch also manifested itself at the personnel and institutional levels. Especially between 1933 and 1935, and then again since 1939, all new institutions, departments, committees, commissions grew like mushrooms, were in constant transformation, dissolution and reorganization, often overlapped and could drive adherents of clearly demarcated competencies and insistence to despair. a long way through the authorities. Roosevelt's staff doubled and even tripled during his presidency. executive bodies: In 1933, the federal government employed exactly 600,000 people, and in 1939, before the outbreak of the European War, about 920,000 people. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the number increased to more than 1.5 million, only to increase dramatically again as a result of the war. Under none of his followers did the number drop below 2 million.
Finally, the reorganization and personnel expansion of the presidential service were themselves supposedly among the major impacts of the global economic crisis on political system USA. After 1933, Roosevelt saw his office institutionally unable to cope with the enormous challenges and demands. He appointed a committee, the famous Brownlow Committee. This committee concluded in 1937: “The President needs help.” He proposed the creation of an executive service of the president, under whose roof the White House service should be staffed with competent, energetic employees who should be distinguished by only one thing: “a passion for anonymity.” After a bitter political tug-of-war, Congress in 1939 passed a law reorganizing the institution of the presidency, which Roosevelt implemented with Executive Order 8248.
Thanks to this, the president received an independent bureaucracy, which gave him the opportunity to compete with the also significantly expanded bureaucracy of Congress. At the same time, this reform was fraught with the possibility of abuse, the temptation to gather in the White House a power elite that was not sufficiently controlled by Congress and the public, and thus establish an “imperial presidency.”
Constant new formations and cross-stations brought Roosevelt the reputation of a bad administrator. And to a certain extent this is correct, but there was a method hidden in this process. Roosevelt relied on spontaneity, strong initiative, improvisation, the desire to experiment, competition and rivalry as the driving force of the New Deal, and later the war economy. The division of power below the level of the president corresponded to the “divide and conquer” technique, which he masterfully mastered.
He retained his freedom of decision-making and ultimate responsibility only by leaving alternatives open in business, personnel and institutional terms, always using many information channels, giving no one a monopoly on access to the president and coercing disputing ministers and advisers, to ever new compromises. Behind the justifiable complaints of politicians around Roosevelt about his unorthodox and unpredictable practices in obtaining information and making decisions, there was also often a wounded vanity.
The transformation of the institution of presidents and the strengthening of the Washington bureaucracy were both a prerequisite and a consequence of the state-interventionist policy of the “New Deal,” the goals, scope, and contradictions of which were already evident in rough outlines in the election struggle. Roosevelt promised short-term help in the crisis, economic recovery and long-term reforms that were supposed to make it impossible to repeat the unprecedented disaster. The legislation of the “new course” reflected these goals in various mixtures; often they tried to simultaneously implement two or even three goals with one measure.
Roosevelt entered the national stage on March 4, 1933, as a healer and left it only after being re-elected three times in 1936, 1940 and 1944. along with his death on April 12, 1945. Even without taking into account the famous first 100 days of his presidency, in which Washington nearly exploded with activity and Congress passed most bills at a record pace, Roosevelt, despite some setbacks and despite growing opposition from left and right, almost always had the initiative.
When Roosevelt assumed the presidency, the United States was in an unprecedented crisis. In February 1933, the entire banking industry was in danger of collapse, and there were several cases of starvation in a country suffering from excess food. One of the areas where the Roosevelt government intervened immediately after taking office by declaring a four-day “bank holiday” was the US monetary and credit system. All activities in this area served three purposes: radical reform of the rather chaotic banking sector, supervision and control of trading in securities and, most importantly, initial phase, creation of a legal basis for the state’s inflationary policy in order to overcome deflation through new money emission.
Along with opening the banks, Roosevelt, if he wanted to restore public confidence in government, had to urgently address a pressing social problem - massive unemployment. It was impossible to wait until the legislative reform brought the expected economic results. The means of temporary improvement were direct payments of Union welfare benefits to individual states and communities, but above all, widespread government program employment, which began in March 1933 as a temporary forced measure and ended, contrary to original plans, only with the entry of the United States into the Second World War.
No matter how confusing the external picture of successive and complementary programs and organizations may be, no matter how capital- and labor-intensifying projects compete with each other, Roosevelt’s main idea was simple: he wanted to remove from the streets those able-bodied unemployed who were not find jobs in the private sector, protect them from impoverishment and despair and restore a sense of self-worth through the confidence that they will earn their livelihood by consciously working for the common good. If you add in family members, 25 to 30 million people benefit from the albeit modest salaries of government jobs. The administration, led by Roosevelt confidant Harry Hopkins, built 122,000 public buildings, 664,000 miles of new roads, 77,000 bridges and 285 airports. Even teachers, artists and writers got jobs, thereby winning over the opinion-shaping stratum for the New Deal.
Some of the deepest government interventions in the market economy include support measures in agriculture, which was undoubtedly the hardest hit sector of the economy. Relying on laws urgently passed by Congress, the Roosevelt government launched a sweeping attempt to regulate production and price. The curse of overproduction also encouraged intervention in the industrial sector. WITH federal law The hope was to restore industry through a kind of cooperative self-regulation under loose supervision and with the assistance of the government to replace “destructive competition” with “fair competition.” The government, entrepreneurs and working class had to cooperate voluntarily to stabilize production, prices and wages.
The working class in this concentrated action, for the first time in US history, received as a reward the right to a free organization standing above the enterprise and the right to collectively negotiate tariffs. Further, the maximum working day and the lowest wages were agreed upon, and the labor of children under 16 years of age was completely prohibited.
The union's decisive step towards a welfare state was marked by the Social Security Act of 1935, which introduced unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. But Social Security's beginnings were extremely modest. Almost half of Americans were still unable to benefit from the already meager benefits. Health insurance was not introduced. The legislation of the “New Deal”, however, even today still determines the dual structure of federal-state social policy. Both basic principles social state, contribution-financed social insurance and tax-financed social assistance or social security go back to the 1930s.
Still is controversial issue how successful the New Deal was. It is true that the “New Deal” was able to mitigate, but not eliminate, unemployment and poverty, and socio-political laws did not go beyond modest beginnings. Only the war brought full employment and record-breaking production. Unorganized groups of the population and socially declassed minorities, as well as blacks, remained on the margins of the New Deal, the unequal structure of opportunity and income changed little, monopolies and concerns lost in influence, but not in size. No one knew the limits of the New Deal better than Roosevelt himself, because in his second term he proclaimed a struggle against the poverty of the bottom third of the nation. What he did not achieve depended not on him, but on the insurmountable barriers that the US political-economic system posed even to strong presidents. His two severe domestic political defeats, the attempt to reorganize the Supreme Court, which resisted the centralizing tendencies of the New Deal, and the exclusion of the conservative opposition from his own party after a remarkable victory in the elections of 1936 are striking examples of this. Both attempts that Roosevelt believed would secure and advance the New Deal failed because he overestimated the capabilities and power of the president.
The decisive thing was that Roosevelt gave new hope to a disheartened, unsure and directionless nation. The only thing the nation had to fear, as he proclaimed upon his inauguration, was fear itself.
Interdependence, understood as the mutual dependence of all sections of the American people, was a central concept of domestic political thinking; interdependence, understood as the mutual dependence of all states of the world, was a central concept of Roosevelt's foreign policy thinking. The United States should not isolate itself from the rest of the world, because the future security and common good of the country are inextricably linked to the fate of Europe and Asia. True, in order to be elected and not lose domestic political support for the “new course,” Roosevelt was forced in the 30s to make concessions to the prevailing isolationist mood in the United States, which, under any circumstances, wanted to protect America from a new war in Europe and Asia. But he never shared the limitation of isolation by national interests in the Western Hemisphere and half of the Pacific Ocean. His internationalist worldview led him, due to the expansive foreign policies of Germany, Italy and Japan in 1941, to a dilemma from which he was freed only by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war on the United States.
In the 1930s, fears grew in the United States that perhaps the supposed “Trojan horse” - the NSRPG in the USA, the “Union of Friends of the New Germany”, would threaten the internal security of the United States. At the same time, there was growing concern that the foreign policy of the Third Reich posed a threat to world peace. This double fear did not lead to a preventive interventionist policy in Europe, but, on the contrary, to an increase in the isolationist mood of the American people in view of these signals of the danger of isolating themselves even more decisively from Europe. Traditional foreign policy recipes, supposed conclusions from the failed “crusade” of 1917 - 1918. and a narrow understanding of US national interests were the most important determinants of American foreign policy before the outbreak of the European War in 1939. What Hitler tried in vain to achieve in 1940 with the Three Power Pact, the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 and the alliance with Japan, namely, to keep America away from Europe and to scare it back into the Western Hemisphere, the American Congress itself did. by issuing a law on neutrality. The international political situation began to develop in the opposite direction. At a time when aggression and expansion were increasing in Europe and Asia, Congress passed the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1937. replenished the register of foreign policy events prohibited for the Roosevelt government during the period of war and crisis. At the level of official foreign policy, supported by Congress, legislation and public opinion, Roosevelt was, at the outbreak of the European War in 1939, an unarmed prophet of infinitesimal magnitude, and as such he was treated accordingly by Hitler.
Roosevelt knew all too well that he would win freedom of action and the ability to act in world politics to the extent that he could change the “threat sense,” the American people’s perception of the threat potential of National Socialist Germany and the United States. He had to explain and demonstrate to the American people that limiting national interests to the Western Hemisphere, isolating itself in Fortress America and leaving events in Eurasia to their own course is a dangerous illusion for the United States. Readiness - industrial, economic psychological preparation to a possible war - was the prevailing goal of his foreign policy until 1941. In this sense, foreign policy was largely domestic. Methodologically and institutionally, Roosevelt was extremely skillful. In order not to fall under suspicion of spreading his worldview with the help of government propaganda, which would only strengthen the accusation of Roosevelt’s haters of wanting to make himself the “dictator of America,” he relied, as in the years of the “New Deal,” on an informal, but extremely effective strategy. In the White House, in numerous ministries and agencies, so-called “information departments” were created, which supposedly had only one goal - to inform the American people about the international situation. After the French incident in 1940, Hollywood, a large number of documentary and newsreel studios, radio stations, newspapers and magazines cooperated with the government to force isolationists and non-interventionists to go on the defensive. In this educational campaign, Roosevelt developed his internationalist vision of the world, the basic views on the future role of the United States in the world. And on this fundamental level, Roosevelt was extremely constant, he was neither a comforter, nor a juggler, nor an opportunist, nor a swindler who, by promising not to enter the war, only dragged the United States into it - all this was only at the tactical level. In the internal political conflict with the isolationists, he deployed the dialectic of US globalism in its both components: a warning against the world domination of the enemy and a global definition of US national interests, namely, in relation to the content and range of national interest.
He shared the view of Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan that the balance of power on the European continent was a vital interest for the United States. Along with Woodrow Wilson, he believed in the ideal of “that kind of peace,” in which the self-determination of a nation and the principles of collective security should guarantee peace. With his Foreign Secretary, Cordell Hull, he shared the belief that only a free world economy could produce the goods and services needed to maintain world peace in the long term. Hitler and the Third Reich clearly threatened everything at once: the balance of power in Europe, world peace and a free world economy. Therefore, Roosevelt framed his warnings, his globalism, as a triple warning of the future.
With every military success of the aggressors in Europe and Asia, according to the president and his supporters, a future was approaching, the implementation of which would mean disaster for the American economy: the victory of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, Japan in Far East would force both regions into a system of almost import-independent planned economies, which would mean the end of the liberal, indivisible world market and a serious threat to the American economic and social system. If the United States and its allies lose control of the world's oceans, according to Roosevelt, it could be used by the Axis powers to attack the Western Hemisphere. But control of the seas cannot be exercised only by the US fleet; it is possible only if the Axis powers do not dominate in Europe and Asia and it is possible to have the shipbuilding capacities of two continents. France, the British Empire and China, and from mid-1941 the Soviet Union, must be supported because they indirectly protect the United States.
Moreover, the approaching war had a moral dimension for Roosevelt even before the mass destruction. For him it was a crusade to defend freedom from aggressors and dictators. Almost obsessively repeating, Roosevelt constantly explained: the right of peoples to free self-determination and the duty of states to submit in international politics to the principles of international law are inseparable. Violence and aggression as a means of changing the status quo are illegal. Even before 1941, he interpreted the war as an epochal struggle for the future image of the world between aggressors and peaceful nations, between liberal democracy and barbarism, between citizens and criminals, between good and evil. For Roosevelt there could be no peace with the aggressors. The worst possibility, from his point of view, was a “super-Munich” in Europe and Asia, which would give Hitler a free hand for his racial empire in Europe, and the Japanese for their empire in East Asia. While he, in the light of public opinion and Congress, maintained until the fall of 1941 the fiction that U.S. aid to its allies would keep the country itself out of war, Roosevelt knew even before Pearl Harbor that the United States had to go into it. However, the claim that he was informed in advance about the Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet and deliberately did not take any action is the stuff of legend.
With the entry of the United States into the war, 61-year-old Roosevelt was faced with tasks that sapped his strength so that, from 1944, physical destruction was visible to everyone. In addition, there were also the transition to a war economy, the military and allied-political problems of the “grand coalition” against the Axis powers and Japan, the new diplomacy of conferences in the war, Roosevelt’s selfless role as commander in chief of all American armed forces . Since 1943, the problems of relations with enemy states after the expected victory, which he tried to postpone for a long time, and, finally, the big question of how to create a lasting peaceful order after this Second World War. Roosevelt was forced to solve all these problems, constantly making excuses to a society that did not give the president freedom of action even in war, but at the same time left the institutions of criticism to exist. Public opinion, Congress, party-political contradictions between Democrats and Republicans, and finally, the presidential election of 1944 remained during the war, factors that Roosevelt had to take into account in word and deed. In this respect, he was more dependent than Winston Churchill, not to mention Stalin and Hitler.
Along with the variety of problems, their global scale was also evident. During the war, what Roosevelt had formulated back in 1941 operated with greater force: the tasks of American foreign policy are so enormous and intertwined with each other that every attempt to even imagine them forces him to think about two continents and seven seas. The United States, as Roosevelt predicted, became the “arsenal of democracy.” In 1943 and 1944 the country produced 40% of all military goods in the world. Both the main enemies are Germany, Japan and Italy, and the main allies are England and British Empire, the Soviet Union and China forced Roosevelt to think on a global scale. Major decisions in Europe were made with Asia in mind, and vice versa. Hitler's Germany was the main enemy number one, however, since the looming defeat, it played a less significant role in the president's plans for the future.
Two days before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt ended a fireside chat with the hopeful phrase: “We will win the war, and we will win the peace.” But during the war, for him the second goal was subordinated to the first. Roosevelt's foreign policy in the war was, first of all, a policy for its successful completion. The highest military and political goals were identical, namely, the destruction of the enemy, although the President took very seriously the principles for the future of peace, which he proclaimed back in January 1940 in an address to Congress and clarified in August 1941 at a meeting with English Prime Minister Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland, in the Atlantic Charter. From this, for Roosevelt, it followed as basic principles of action - to oblige his alliance partners before the public to the implementation of these general principles and to prevent possible political conflicts on specific issues of the post-war order, such as borders and reparations, from blowing up the larger Anglo-Saxon -Soviet-Chinese coalition. In case of conflict, these general principles should be referred to, compromises should be made, or controversial decisions should be postponed until victory.
Roosevelt's policy towards the Soviet Union, often criticized after 1945, had no alternative. He needed the Soviet Union because Roosevelt was to fight and win the American War, i.e., with unprecedented use of technology and relatively minor casualties, the United States needed Russian soldiers to defeat German and Japanese forces. For every American who died in the war, 15 Germans and 53 Russians died. Already in 1942, Roosevelt knew “that the Russian army would kill more people of the Wasp powers and destroy more military equipment than all 25 united nations together. From this the inevitable conclusion followed that the power and influence of the Soviet Union after a joint victory would be incomparably greater than in 1939. No one could prevent victory in World War II from making the Soviet Union a Euro-Asian world power, and as a result, after the most murderous war in history, much would depend on cooperation with the Soviet Union. It was impossible to escape this logic of power, which Roosevelt and Churchill understood very clearly. But at the beginning of this causal chain stood Hitler.
Roosevelt's illusion was the belief that, with all the recognition of the Soviet Union's security needs, cooperation with the Atlantic Charter could be achieved on American terms. He did not understand that the imperial-hegemonic need of the Soviet Union for security did not go so far in Eastern and Southern Europe as to encroach on the international legal independence of these states and annex them to the union of states of the USSR, that it was there from the very beginning aimed at breaking the independent will of these states through transformation into “anti-fascist democracies of a new type,” into “people's democracies,” which, in Soviet opinion, represented an intermediate step on the path to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Sources do not answer the question whether the skeptical Roosevelt continued to hope in the last months before his death, contrary to all expectations, or whether, taking into account the public opinion of his country after the conference in Yalta (February 4-11, 1945), he was only pretending , which believes in the common goals of the allies so as not to jeopardize the US entry into the United Nations.
Objectively, however, immediately after his death due to a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, everything that Roosevelt wanted to achieve simultaneously fell apart: political cooperation with the Soviet Union and the American vision better world. He also could not reconcile the realistic and idealistic components of American foreign policy, power and imagination. One could talk about tragedy if these categories did not deeply contradict Roosevelt’s unshakable optimism and healthy faith in the progress of the New World.
In preparing the material, we used Detlef Juncker’s article “The Dreamer and the State Politician.”
Franklin Roosevelt is a long-lived political Olympus. He is the only person in US history to serve as president four times. Moreover, at the most difficult time for the state. His name is strongly associated with the New Deal reforms, the formation and strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition, the military successes of the Allies, plans for the post-war world order and the idea of creating the UN. His life is a great feat of fighting his own illness. His death is one of the most mysterious mysteries of the 20th century.
Born in a shirt
The future leader of America was lucky with his birth. His family was rich and respectable. Franklin's ancestors, wealthy Jews, emigrated to the New World from Holland, where they became the ancestors of two branches of this famous family, one of which brought the world US President Theodore Roosevelt, and the other - Franklin Roosevelt. His father owned the Hyde Park estate on the Hudson River and was a shareholder in a number of coal and transportation companies. The mother also belonged to the local aristocracy. Therefore, family fortune and connections provided the future political leader with a place in the sun. It was therefore not surprising that he received his primary education under the supervision of private teachers and attended a preparatory school in elite Groton. And after graduating from the forge of the American ruling class, Harvard University, in 1904, he returned to New York, where he entered Columbia University Law School. Three years later, Roosevelt passed the legal exam and joined a well-known New York law firm.
Then there was the post of senator, the post of assistant secretary of the navy.
While in law school, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, his fifth-generation cousin and niece of Theodore Roosevelt, for whom Franklin had deep personal affection and respect. The marriage turned out to be successful. According to eyewitnesses, the president’s wife was the “eyes and ears” of her husband, participated in election campaigns, published articles and books in the American and foreign press, and contributed in every possible way to the development of the women’s movement. Eleanor Roosevelt played a significant role in her husband's political career.
In 1914, he tries to get a seat as a senator in the US Congress, but fails. In 1920, at the Democratic Party Convention, Roosevelt was nominated as a candidate for the post of Vice President of the United States. But the Democrats lost that time. After the election, Roosevelt becomes vice president of one of the large financial corporations in New York.
Everything changed overnight. In 1921, while on vacation, a young and full of energy Roosevelt swam in cold water... and a day later he could no longer get up. My whole body ached, and by evening my legs stopped working. He was paralyzed from the chest down and couldn't even pick up a pencil. The wife rushed to find doctors. It turned out that the famous diagnostician, Dr. Keene from Philadelphia, was vacationing nearby. The venerable, gray-haired doctor examined the patient and found thrombosis of the vessels of the lower torso. He recommended an intensive massage, and two days later he sent a bill for the visit - $600! The massage caused Franklin unbearable suffering and only worsened the course of the disease. Many years later, Roosevelt admitted to his loved ones that in the first days of his illness he was on the verge of despair: God had abandoned him. At last he consoled himself with the thought that Providence had struck, but had left him alive for an unknown purpose.
And only a few days later doctors were able to find the cause of the disease.
The doctors' verdict was disappointing - polio. Terrible disease, which at that time no one was able to defeat. This disease can cause complete paralysis within a few hours as the disease affects the spinal cord or brain. After the doctors’ diagnosis, Roosevelt’s brilliant career could have been put to rest. Ahead of him awaited a wheelchair, crutches, a nurse, the sympathy of his loved ones and the secret glee of his enemies.
But the future president entered into a mortal battle with the disease. The first thing he did when he found himself in a wheelchair was to order wooden beams to be laid along the walls of his house at the level of his hands. Franklin decided that it was important for him to use as little help as possible from nurses and other guardians imposed on him.
Several months of such exercises developed Franklin's muscles so much that he began to look like Atlas from the waist up. But the legs, despite all the efforts of the doctors and their patient, remained lifeless.
However, limited physical capabilities did not narrow his range of interests. Roosevelt maintained extensive correspondence with political figures in the Democratic Party and tried to engage in entrepreneurial activities. However, he could not appear in public in a wheelchair for a very long time.
Before speaking at the podium in front of a large number of people, Roosevelt resorted to various tricks. For example, he could arrive in advance at the place of a political meeting, climb the fire escape on his own hands to the floor on which the hall was located, and take a place behind the podium.
However, he also appeared on crutches. As he returned to active politics, his physical handicap became less of an embarrassment for both Roosevelt and his electorate. In 1928, Roosevelt was already able to abandon crutches during his public appearances. When he was persistently asked to run for governor of New York, Roosevelt doubted for a long time, but then agreed.
Leader of the Nation
The 1932 presidential election was America's response to the disaster that befell the country. The anger and frustration of the people forced into poverty by the economic depression drove the Republican Party out of power. Roosevelt won 42 states, receiving 472 electoral votes to Hoover's 59 (exclusively in the northeastern states). The winner's advantage was more than seven million votes.
Voters were not impressed by his rivals' attempts to resort to dirty tricks, proving that a weak person could not rule the country, especially in such a difficult period that he would become a puppet in the wrong hands. It is possible that it was the man in the wheelchair who aroused more trust among millions of disappointed unemployed people than his completely healthy, well-fed and indifferent to other people’s problems.
He was able to generate public support unprecedented in American history for a program aimed at achieving what its initiators called “a more democratic economic and social system.”
Then there were numerous economic and political reforms and transformations, the establishment of “good neighborly” relations with the countries of Latin America and the USSR. The same man also played the role of commander-in-chief of US troops in World War II.
In 1944, Roosevelt was re-elected to a fourth term. Despite his poor health and physical weakness, throughout the entire period the president actively participated in the negotiations, and it was he who made a significant contribution to the historical decisions of the Yalta Conference.
Strange death
The man who became president of the United States four times died suddenly in 1945, according to the official conclusion - from a cerebral hemorrhage. But for some reason the body was not autopsied. A personal doctor President, Dr. McIntyre, testified that Roosevelt’s regular examinations did not show any signs of sclerosis of the cerebral arteries.
In 1948, researcher Emmanuel Josephson writes in his book that, according to the testimony of a priest who was next to the president, Roosevelt was killed by a bullet in the back of the head - apparently an explosive one, which disfigured his entire face as it exited the skull. That's why he was buried in a closed coffin. And that is why the President's grave in Hyde Park was guarded day and night for several months by armed guards, apparently to prevent a possible exhumation.
The assassination of Roosevelt certainly changed the entire situation in the world... now nothing stopped the American oligarchy from starting the Cold War.
Although this version was considered implausible, doubts about Roosevelt's natural death remain to this day.
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Roosevelt Franklin Delano (1882-1945), 32nd President of the United States
from 1933 to 1945 (elected to this post 4 times). Came to power at the height of the Great Depression with the support of the most far-sighted sections of the bourgeoisie in order to prevent the development of a social revolution. Conducted a number of reforms (“New Deal”). In 1933, the Roosevelt government established diplomatic relations with the USSR. Since the beginning of World War II, he supported Great Britain, France and the USSR (from June 1941) in their fight against Nazi Germany. He made a significant contribution to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition. Gave great value the creation of the UN and post-war international cooperation, including between the USA and the USSR.
ROOSEVELT Franklin Delano (January 30, 1882, Hyde Park, New York - April 12, 1945, Warm Springs), US statesman, US President 1933-45. He graduated from a privileged private school in Groton (1899), Harvard (1904) and Columbia (1907) universities. In 1907-1910, a lawyer at the Carter, Ledyard & Milburn firm, which served largest corporations. In 1910 he was elected to the state senate. New York from the Democratic Party.
In 1913-20 pom. Secretary of the Navy, advocated strengthening US naval power.
Roosevelt Franklin Delano (January 30, 1882, Hyde Park, New York - April 12, 1945, Warm Springs, Georgia), statesman, 32nd President of the United States of America (1933-45). Roosevelt is the only person in US history to be elected president four times. His name is strongly associated with the New Deal reforms, the formation and strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition, the military successes of the Allies, plans for the post-war world order and the idea of creating the UN.
Early life
The future president was born into the wealthy and respectable family of James Roosevelt, whose ancestors emigrated from Holland to New Amsterdam in the 1740s. Their descendants became the ancestors of two branches of this family, one of which produced US President T. Roosevelt, and the other - Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt's father owned the Hyde Park estate on the Hudson River and substantial stakes in a number of coal and transportation companies. Roosevelt's mother, Sarah Delano, also belonged to the local aristocracy. As a child, Roosevelt traveled every summer with his parents in Europe (so he had a good command of foreign languages) and vacationed on the New England coast or on the Canadian island of Campobello (near East Port, Maine), where he became interested in sailing.
Until the age of 14, Roosevelt was educated at home. In 1896-99 he studied at one of the best private schools in Groton (Massachusetts). From 1900-04, Roosevelt continued his education at Harvard University, where he received a bachelor's degree. From 1905-07 he attended Columbia Law School and was admitted to the bar, which he began at a respectable law firm on Wall Street.
In 1905 he married his fifth cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962). Her father was the younger brother of President T. Roosevelt, who was Franklin's idol. The Roosevelts had six children, one of whom died in infancy. Eleanor Roosevelt played a significant role in her husband's political career, especially after 1921, when he contracted polio and was no longer in a wheelchair.
Start of a career
In 1910, Roosevelt accepted a tempting offer from the US Democratic Party in his home district to run as a senator in the New York State Legislature and won. In the 1912 presidential election campaign, he actively supported the Democrat T.W. Wilson. In the administration of President Wilson, Roosevelt was offered the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Before completing his third term in the state legislature, Roosevelt moved to Washington. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913-21), he advocated for a stronger navy, stronger U.S. defenses, a strong presidency, and an active foreign policy.
In 1914 he attempted to become a senator in the US Congress, but failed. In 1920, under the slogan of the United States joining the League of Nations, Roosevelt ran from the Democratic Party for vice president of the United States together with presidential candidate J. Cox. The defeat of the Democratic Party amid growing isolationist sentiments and a serious illness temporarily removed Roosevelt from active political activity. But in 1928 he was elected governor of the economically and politically influential state of New York, which opened the way to the White House.
Having served two terms as governor, Roosevelt acquired very valuable experience that was useful to him during his presidency. In 1931, at a time of worsening economic crisis, he created the Temporary Emergency Administration in the state to provide assistance to the families of the unemployed. The tradition of communicating with voters via radio (the famous “fireside chats”) also dates back to Roosevelt's governorship.
White House
In the 1932 presidential campaign, Roosevelt won an impressive victory over H. Hoover, who failed to lead the country out of the economic crisis of 1929-33 (the “Great Depression”). During election campaign Roosevelt outlined the main ideas of socio-economic changes, which, on the recommendation of his advisers (the “brain trust”), received the name “New Deal”.
In the first hundred days of his presidency (beginning in March 1933), Roosevelt implemented a number of important reforms. The banking system was restored. In May, Roosevelt signed legislation creating the Federal Emergency Hunger and Unemployment Relief Administration. The Farm Debt Refinancing Act was passed, as well as the Agricultural Recovery Act, which provided for government control over the volume of agricultural production. Roosevelt considered the most promising Industrial Recovery Act, which provided the whole complex government measures to regulate industry.
In 1935, important reforms were carried out in the field of labor (see Wagner Law), social security, taxation, banking, etc.
The impressive victory in the 1936 election allowed Roosevelt to advance in the areas of civil engineering, wages, and labor laws in 1937–38. The laws adopted by Congress on the initiative of the president were a bold experiment in government regulation with the aim of changing the distribution mechanism of the economy and social protection of the population.
Roosevelt's pre-war foreign policy was distinguished, on the one hand, by flexibility and realism, and on the other, by inconsistency and extreme caution. One of the foreign policy initiatives in the first months after Roosevelt came to power was the diplomatic recognition of the USSR in November 1933. In relations with Latin American countries, the “good neighbor” policy was proclaimed, which contributed to the creation of an inter-American system of collective security.
However, fear for the fate of domestic political reforms and the reluctance to bind the United States with any obligations in a difficult international situation contributed to the fact that Roosevelt’s foreign policy was of a neutral nature (i.e., it ignored the differences between the aggressor and the victim). As a result of non-intervention in the Italo-Ethiopian conflict (1935) and civil war in Spain legitimate governments were prevented from purchasing American weapons and ammunition in the fight against the well-armed powers of the Berlin-Rome Axis. Only in November 1939, when the war in Europe was already raging, Roosevelt achieved the lifting of the arms embargo and began to pursue a policy of helping victims of aggression.
World War II
Hitler's blitzkrieg in Europe and Roosevelt's third consecutive victory in the 1940 elections intensified American aid to Great Britain. At the beginning of 1941, the President signed an “Act for Further Strengthening the Defense of the United States and Promoting Other Purposes” (see Lend-Lease). The Lend-Lease Law applied to the USSR, which was granted an interest-free loan in the amount of $1 billion.
US President F. Roosevelt signs the amendments
to the law on neutrality. November 4, 1939
Roosevelt sought to limit himself to arms supplies for as long as possible and, if possible, to avoid large-scale US participation in the European war. At the same time, under the slogan of “active defense,” an “undeclared war” with Germany was going on in the Atlantic since the fall of 1941. It was allowed to conduct targeted fire on German and Italian ships that entered the US security zone, and articles of neutrality legislation that prohibited the arming of merchant ships and the entry of American ships into combat zones were repealed.
The attack on December 7, 1941 by Japanese planes on the American air base at Pearl Harbor in the Pacific Ocean came as a surprise to Roosevelt, who in the last months of 1941 tried to delay the inevitability of war with Japan through diplomatic negotiations. The next day, the United States and Great Britain declared war on Japan, and on December 11, war was declared on the United States by Germany and Italy. Roosevelt, in accordance with the Constitution, assumed all the responsibilities of commander in chief in wartime. He made a lot of efforts to strengthen the anti-Hitler coalition, attaching great importance to the creation of the United Nations.
On January 1, 1942, the United Nations Declaration was signed in Washington, establishing this union in the international legal order. At the same time, Roosevelt for a long time took a wait-and-see position on the issue of opening second front. But after the impressive victories of the Red Army at Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge, he became increasingly convinced that the USSR was the decisive factor in the defeat of the Axis powers in Europe and that active cooperation with it was necessary in the post-war world. At the Tehran Conference of the “Big Three” (1943), Roosevelt did not support W. Churchill, who shied away from addressing specific issues about opening a second front.
Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Tehran Conference
Showing special attention to issues of post-war peace settlement, Roosevelt for the first time Quebec Conference(1943) outlined his project for the creation of an international organization and the responsibility of the USA, Great Britain, the USSR and China (the “four policemen”) for maintaining peace. Discussion of this topic was continued at the Moscow Conference, the Tehran Conference and at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, Washington (see Dumbarton Oaks Conference 1944).
Roosevelt (center) during the Crimea Conference
Re-elected in 1944 for a fourth term, Roosevelt made a significant contribution to the historical decisions of the Crimean Conference (1945). His realistic position was dictated by a sober consideration of the current military-strategic and political situation in connection with the successful advance of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, the desire to negotiate the USSR's entry into the war with Japan and the hope for the continuation of post-war American-Soviet cooperation.
Upon returning from Yalta, Roosevelt, despite fatigue and malaise, continued to study state affairs and prepared for the April 23 opening of the United Nations conference in San Francisco. However, on April 12, the president died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was buried in Hyde Park. In historiography, he is invariably placed on a par with the most outstanding US presidents John Washington, T. Jefferson and A. Lincoln.
N. I. Egorova
________________________________________ ___________________
ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO (1882–1945), 32nd President of the United States, was born in Hyde Park (New York) on January 30, 1882. Received his elementary education under the supervision of private teachers, often with his parents been to Europe. Attended prep school in elite Groton. After graduating from Harvard University in 1904, he moved to New York, where he studied at Columbia University Law School. In 1907, he passed the exam for the right to practice law and joined a well-known New York law firm.
In 1910, Roosevelt ran for the state Senate from his Hudson River district. He won because he campaigned hard, and Democrats were doing well that year everywhere. In Albany, he led a small group of them that opposed the party political machine in order to block the election of one of the leaders of Tammany Hall to the Senate by the state legislature. Soon after this, he organized a group of anti-Tammany Democrats in support of Wilson.
From 1913 to 1920 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in Wilson's cabinet. In 1914, Roosevelt sought nomination to the Senate from New York State, but was defeated. Cooperation with the Wilson administration and belonging to the Roosevelt family played a role in the Democrats' decision to nominate him as the running mate of presidential candidate J. Cox in 1920. Although Republicans Harding and Coolidge won landslide victories, Roosevelt established important contacts throughout the country and rose to prominence in the party.
In 1921 he contracted polio and was partially paralyzed. Limited physical capabilities did not narrow his range of interests. Roosevelt maintained extensive correspondence with political figures in the Democratic Party and tried to engage in entrepreneurial activities. At the party's national conventions in 1924 and 1928, he nominated New York Governor A. Smith for the presidency.
In 1928, Roosevelt was already able to abandon crutches during his public appearances. When Smith began persistently inviting him to run for governor of New York, Roosevelt doubted for a long time, but then agreed. As governor, Roosevelt anticipated many of the policies of his future New Deal. He fought to save natural resources and rational use of the land fund, for state control over public services and the adoption of social security laws. Authorized unemployment insurance and stated in the state legislature on August 28, 1931 that assistance to the unemployed should be considered by the government not as charity, but as a duty to society. Roosevelt founded the first state department for the provision of social assistance, headed by G. Hopkins, who later became his closest adviser.
In the fourth round of voting at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1932, Governor Roosevelt was nominated as a presidential candidate. Under the able leadership of J. Farley, his candidacy received greatest number votes on each ballot, but under Democratic Party rules at the time, a two-thirds majority was required to nominate a candidate. It was received when William Hurst and Speaker of the House of Representatives John Garner secured the votes of California and Texas for Roosevelt. Garner became a candidate for vice president.
The 1932 elections were America's reaction to the misfortune that befell the country. The anger and frustration of an energetic people, forced into idleness and poverty as a result of economic depression, deprived of power Republican Party. Roosevelt won 42 states, receiving 472 electoral votes to Hoover's 59 (exclusively in the northeastern states). The winner's advantage was more than 7 million votes.
It was in the first hundred days after the inauguration, at the insistence of the White House, that a significant part of the New Deal bills was passed by Congress, and after this period, Roosevelt turned into a real leader of the nation. He managed to provide unprecedented American history public support for a program aimed at achieving what its initiators called “a more democratic economic and social system.”
Before campaigning for re-election in 1936, Roosevelt added to the New Deal accomplishments with Congressional approval of dollar devaluation and regulation stock market(1934), as well as systems social insurance and Wagner's law labor relations(1935). Promising a continuation of New Deal policies and condemning "economic royalists" for establishing economic tyranny, Roosevelt and Garner inflicted a crushing defeat on Kansas governor A. Landon and Illinois publisher F. Knox, winning in all states except Maine and Vermont.
By 1936, Roosevelt had recruited into the Democratic Party many who had previously voted Republican or had not voted at all. He enjoyed the support of almost all groups of the population, except representatives of big business. During Roosevelt's second term, Congress advanced the New Deal program by creating the US Housing Administration (1937) to provide credit to local agencies and passing the Second Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1938 and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage for workers.
The Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional some of the New Deal laws, including the first Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act. Roosevelt decided to make changes to the composition of the court. He asked Congress to grant him the power to appoint new judges once members of the court reach 70 years of age. This proposal caused widespread protest and was rejected. But before it was rejected, the Supreme Court itself upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act.
Roosevelt's position was complicated by the fact that at the end of 1937 the economic situation deteriorated sharply. By 1938 the number of unemployed had increased to 10 million people. The President managed to obtain $5 billion from Congress to create new jobs and carry out public works. At the end of 1938, the economic situation improved, but unemployment remained high until the outbreak of World War II, when large-scale purchases of American goods by Great Britain and France began, and the army began to rearm. Roosevelt's attempt in 1938 to remove several conservative Democrats from Congress almost completely failed, and the Republicans achieved significant success in the midterm elections.
The president's foreign policy received recognition in Congress much later than his domestic policies. The only exception was the approach to Latin American countries. In furtherance of President Hoover's efforts to improve relations with states south of the US border, Roosevelt proclaimed the “Good Neighbor Policy.” With the help of Secretary of State C. Hull and his assistant (and then deputy) S. Wells, interference in the affairs of Latin American countries was stopped. In 1933, the texts of new treaties with Cuba and Panama were developed, changing their status as US protectorates. Marine units were withdrawn from Haiti. The Monroe Doctrine was transformed from a unilateral US policy into a multilateral policy for the entire Western Hemisphere.
Since 1933, Roosevelt used the White House platform to influence public opinion. Through his speeches and appearances at press conferences, he gradually convinced the public that Germany, Italy and Japan posed a threat to US security. In October 1937, after Japan's attack on Northern China, Roosevelt insisted on the need to take measures to isolate the aggressor countries. However, the public reacted negatively, and the president had to again convince the country of the importance of moving from a policy of isolationism to a policy of collective security. Meanwhile, in 1938 and 1939, he managed to achieve an increase in funding for the needs of the army and navy.
In April 1940 Germany occupied Denmark. On May 10, its divisions invaded Holland. Five days later, German troops punched a hole in the French defense line and within a week reached the English Channel, cutting off Belgian and British troops in Flanders. On June 10, Italy joined Germany in the attack on France. After 12 days, France capitulated. Massive raids on London began in September. The President's most important steps to assist allies were taken through executive branch funds. He returned the military aircraft to their manufacturers so that they could sell them to Britain. In August 1940, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister William Churchill reached an agreement that for the supply of 50 American destroyers from the First World War, Great Britain would provide the United States with 8 naval and air bases in British possessions from Newfoundland to South America.
During the Battle of Britain, Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term as president. The nomination of his candidacy caused quite widespread, but impotent irritation among conservative Democrats, who were also dissatisfied with the nomination of Secretary of Agriculture G. Wallace for the post of vice president. Roosevelt was opposed by W. Wilkie, a lawyer and businessman, who wrested the Republican nomination from the hands of Senator from Ohio R. Taft, Senator from Michigan A. Vandenberg and T. Dewey from New York. Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the elections.
By December 1940, Great Britain found itself unable to pay cash for military goods. Speaking on the radio and at press conferences, Roosevelt actively promoted the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States could lease military equipment to Great Britain and receive payment for it after the end of the war. In March 1941, the corresponding law was approved by a significant majority in both houses of Congress. America's economic resources began to be used to defeat the Axis powers. Roosevelt also expanded the use of American military patrol vessels escorting merchant ships to Iceland and ordered American warships to open fire on Axis ships found in these waters.
During these months, Roosevelt's opponents, who created the America First Committee, accused the president of working to prepare the nation for war. During public debate, Roosevelt refused to discuss the issue and insisted that we're talking about about the security of the country. At the same time, he did everything through diplomatic channels to avoid war with Japan, which took advantage of the situation in Europe to invade French Indochina as a springboard for subsequent advances to Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. Negotiations were still ongoing when the Japanese attacked US forces at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Four days later, on December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
Two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill arrived in Washington. As a result of his negotiations with Roosevelt, a decision was made to organize joint Anglo-American military and economic planning and joint management of various activities. The difference in the positions of the United States and England manifested itself on the issue of actions in Europe. Roosevelt advocated a massive cross-Channel offensive as the most fast way to victory in the war. The British preferred an offensive through the Balkans - “the soft underbelly of Europe.” This strategy was of a military-political nature and was intended not only to defeat Hitler, but also to block the Soviets’ road to the Balkans. Ultimately, at the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the British were forced to agree that the invasion of Europe through Normandy more important than operations in Italy and the Mediterranean. Both Western leaders met with Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and at Yalta in February 1945.
There was a lot that spoke in favor of convening the Yalta Conference and the meeting of the Big Three. It seemed advisable to agree on concerted actions against Germany and Russia's entry into the war against Japan. In addition, the Big Three needed to agree on the structure of the UN, the attitude towards states liberated from Hitler's tyranny, and the question of the future of defeated Germany. By that time, Western troops had not yet crossed the Rhine. Moreover, the German counteroffensive in December 1944 drove the Allied forces back to the Meuse River and prevented the implementation of plans for the spring offensive. Meanwhile Soviet troops occupied all of Poland, most of the Balkan Peninsula and cut off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The advanced units of the Russian army were located only a hundred kilometers from Berlin.
Western leaders convinced Stalin to agree to free elections in Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe liberated by the Soviet army. Under the agreement on the Far East, Russia regained the territory that had passed to Japan after the end of Russo-Japanese War(1904–1905), and also received the Kuril Islands. This was the result of pressure from the American chiefs of staff, who demanded that the USSR be involved in the war with Japan. No one at that time had any idea about the real power of atomic weapons, and the chiefs of staff believed that without Russia's entry into the war it could last another two years and cost the United States 1 million human lives.
At Yalta, the Russians agreed to take part in the San Francisco conference on the establishment of the UN and withdrew some of their demands after Roosevelt said that the United States would not agree with them. There is no doubt that Roosevelt overestimated the possibilities of post-war cooperation with the USSR. His hopes are that strong borders and membership in an effective world organization will put an end to Russian expansion did not come true.
Roosevelt's health became a national concern during the 1944 re-election campaign, when he and vice presidential candidate Missouri Senator Harry Truman defeated New York Governor T. Dewey and Ohio Governor J. Bricker by 3.5 margins. million popular votes, receiving 432 electoral votes against 99 votes cast for rivals. Upon his return from Yalta, Roosevelt addressed Congress, and in early April he went on vacation to Warm Springs (Georgia). Roosevelt died in Warm Springs on April 12, 1945.
Materials from the encyclopedia "The World Around Us" were used
Literature:
Yakovlev N.N. Franklin Roosevelt is a man and a politician. Ed. 2nd. M., 1969;
Yakovlev N. N. FDR - a person and a politician. The mystery of Pearl Harbor // Fif. works. M., 1988.
Foster W. Essay on the political history of America. Per. from English Ed. 2nd. M., 1955;
Sh e p u d R. E. Roosevelt and Hopkins through the eyes of an eyewitness. Per. from English T. 1 - 2. M., 1958.
Malkov V. L. Franklin Roosevelt. Problems domestic policy and diplomacy: Historical and documentary essays. M., 1988.
Utkin A.I. Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt. Sverdlovsk, 1990.
Burns J. M. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox. New York, 1956.
Burns J. M. Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. New York etc., 1970.
Cole W. S. Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45. Lincoln ; London, 1983.
Davis K. S. FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933-1937. A History. New York, 1986.
Davis K. S. FDR: Into Storm, 1937-1940. A History. New York, 1986.
Freidel F. B., Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny. Boston etc., 1990.
Materials are presented on the website of the project "CHRONOS"
I’m sure similar topics have appeared in the headlines of magazines/newspapers before me, I’m writing about it because... I am interested in both politics and medicine. Due to the lack of material, it is impossible to write a serious work, but albeit superficially, I will describe the main provisions. I will write a series of short articles in which I will analyze political figures that interest me personally and the impact of their health on the political course of the country. You should not rely on them as officially confirmed material; they contain a lot of my personal assumptions/conclusions. The reasons for writing are motives in the political world, because often a serious illness serves as a kind of compromising evidence and having knowledge about the state of health we get a chance to manipulate people with to varying degrees intensity, depending on the disease. But manipulation will only be affected in those destinies where it took place and is confirmed by historical sources.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
32nd President of the United States (1932-1945).
In 1921, he fell ill with polio, which he tried to overcome in various ways, but despite attempts to overcome the disease, nothing worked. Roosevelt was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.
Poliomyelitis—infantile spinal paralysis, acute infectious disease caused by damage to the gray matter spinal cord poliovirus and is characterized primarily by pathology of the nervous system. (c) Wikipedia
Vaccines that prevent polio and often lead to a complete cure were developed only in the 50s XX century. Franklin had no chance to recover from the disease.
I suppose that Roosevelt had to go through a lot during the years of illness health treatments, in particular traditional for the treatment of polio: heat treatment, taking sedatives, painkillers, bed rest, spa treatment. He could only stand on crutches and moved slowly.
The feeling of inferiority - intense or not so intense - is something that occurs in every disabled person. He blamed fate for his terrible illness, but overcame himself and put on a cold mask of confidence. He forbade those around him to make any gestures of pity towards himself (the disease had weakened physical qualities, but she strengthened her spirit, because “everything that does not kill us makes us stronger”).
It can be concluded that the hard life of a wheelchair-bound patient greatly influenced the formation of an already strong character leader. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was the hope of the democrats of Western civilization in 1940 - 1941. So, through a combination of force, tactics, nerves of steel [which were largely shaped by the events described above], he prevented the United States from becoming isolated in the Western Hemisphere. Played a significant role in World War II. Thanks to him, in 1945, after his death, on the ground prepared for this, the USA became a superpower.
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