Background
Franklin Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York, of his father's second marriage, to Sara Delano, the daughter of a prominent family. His parents were sixth cousins and both were from wealthy old New York families.
1884
A young, unbreeched Roosevelt at the age of 2.
1893
Roosevelt at the age of 11
1900
Roosevelt at the age of 18
1908
Eleanor and Franklin with their first two children.
1913
Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
1920
Ohio, United States
Cox and Roosevelt
1930
Gov. Roosevelt with his predecessor Al Smith
1930
Roosevelt
1933
Outgoing president Herbert Hoover and Roosevelt on Inauguration Day.
1935
Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law.
1936
Brazil
Roosevelt with Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas and other dignitaries.
1939
The Roosevelts with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, sailing from Washington, D.C., to Mount Vernon, Virginia on the USS Potomac during the first U.S. visit of a reigning British monarch.
1941
Rare photograph of Roosevelt in a wheelchair, with Fala and Ruthie Bie, the daughter of caretakers at his Hyde Park estate.
1941
Roosevelt and Winston Churchill aboard HMS Prince of Wales for Atlantic Charter meeting.
1941
Roosevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan (left) on December 8 and against Germany (right).
1941
Roosevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan (left) on December 8 and against Germany (right).
1945
st. Baturina, 44-a, Livadia, 98655
Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
1945
Washington, D.C., United States
Roosevelt's funeral procession watched by 300,000 spectators.
1948
49 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London W1K 3EP, United Kingdom
FDR Memorial in Grosvenor Square
1989
U.S. Dime with a portrait of Roosevelt; popularly known as the Roosevelt dime.
1997
Washington, D.C., United States
The Four Freedoms engraved on a wall at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
282 Farmers Row, Groton, MA 01450, United States
Franklin studied at Groton School
Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
In 1903 Franklin studied at Harvard College at the faculty of history.
435 W 116th St, New York, NY 10027, United States
In 1904 Franklin studied at Columbia Law School.
From March 4, 1933, to April 11, 1945, Franklin was the 32nd President of the United States.
From March 4, 1933, to April 11, 1945, Franklin was the 32nd President of the United States.
From March 4, 1933, to April 11, 1945, Franklin was the 32nd President of the United States.
From March 4, 1933, to April 11, 1945, Franklin was the 32nd President of the United States.
Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet (a key advisory group on race relations).
Franklin Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York, of his father's second marriage, to Sara Delano, the daughter of a prominent family. His parents were sixth cousins and both were from wealthy old New York families.
Academically, Roosevelt was an average student. He attained his preliminary education from Groton School, after which he enrolled at Harvard College graduating from the same in 1903 with an A.B. in history.
In 1904, Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School but dropped out of the same as he had cracked the New York Bar exam.
In 1910 Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination for the New York Senate and was elected. Although his backing had come from Democrats affiliated with New York City's notorious Tammany Hall, he joined a group of upstate legislators who were setting out to oppose the election of Tammany's choice for U.S. senator. The rebels were successful in forcing acceptance of another candidate.
Much of Roosevelt's wide publicity from this struggle was managed by Albany reporter Louis McHenry Howe, who had taken to the young politician and set out to further his career. The Tammany fight made Roosevelt famous in New York, but it also won him the enmity of Tammany. Still, he was reelected in 1912. That year Woodrow Wilson was elected president; Roosevelt had been a campaign worker, and his efforts had been noticed by prominent party elder Josephus Daniels. When Daniels became secretary of the Navy in Wilson's Cabinet, he persuaded Wilson to offer Roosevelt the assistant secretaryship.
As assistant secretary, Roosevelt began an experience that substituted for the naval career he had hoped for as a boy. Before long he became restless, however, and tried to capture the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator from New York. Wilson and Daniels were displeased.
America soon entered the war and Roosevelt could work for a cause he believed in. At that time there was only one assistant secretary, and he had extensive responsibilities. Howe had come to Washington with him and had become his indispensable guardian and helper. Together their management of the department was creditable.
Though Roosevelt tried several times to leave his civilian post to join the fighting forces, he was persuaded to remain. When the war came to an end and Wilson was stricken during his fight for ratification of the Versailles Treaty, there was an obvious revulsion throughout the United States from the disappointing settlements of the war.
The Allied leaders had given in to Wilson's insistence on the creation of the League of Nations only to serve their real interest in extending their territories and in imposing reparations on Germany. These reparations were so large that they could never be paid; consequently the enormous debts the Allies owed to the United States would never be paid either. The American armies had saved Europe and the Europeans were ungrateful. Resentment and disillusion were widespread.
The Republican party had the advantage of not having been responsible for these foreign entanglements. In 1920 they nominated Warren G. Harding, a conservative senator, as their presidential candidate. The Democrats nominated Governor James Cox of Ohio, who had had no visible part in the Wilson administration; the vice-presidential candidate was Roosevelt.
He made a much more noticeable campaign effort than the presidential candidate. He covered the nation by special trains, speaking many times a day, often from back platforms, and getting acquainted with local leaders everywhere. He had learned the professional politician's breeziness, was able to absorb useful information, and had an infallible memory for names and faces. The defeat was decisive; but Roosevelt emerged as the most representative Democrat.
Roosevelt retreated to a law connection in New York's financial district again and a position with a fidelity and deposit company. But in the summer of 1921, vacationing in Canada, he became mysteriously ill. His disease, polio-myelitis, was not immediately diagnosed. He was almost totally paralyzed, however, and had to be moved to New York for treatment. This was managed with such secrecy that for a long time the seriousness of his condition was not publicized. In fact, he would never recover the use of his legs, a disability that seemed to end his political career.
Roosevelt's struggle during the convalescence of the next few years was agonizing and continually disappointing. Not much was known then about rehabilitation, and he resorted to exhausting courses of calisthenics to reactivate his atrophied muscles. In 1923 he tried the warm mineral waters of Warm Springs, Ga., where exercise was easier. He was so optimistic that he wrote friends that he had begun to feel movement in his toes. It was, of course, an illusion.
While at Warm Springs in 1928, Roosevelt was called to political duty again, this time by Al Smith, whom he had put in nomination at the Democratic conventions of 1924 and 1928. Almost at once, however, it became clear that Smith could not win the election. He felt, however, that Roosevelt, as candidate for governor, would help to win New York. Roosevelt resisted. He was now a likely presidential candidate in a later, more favorable year for the Democrats; and if he lost the race for the governorship, he would be finished. But the New Yorkers insisted, and he ran and was narrowly elected.
Roosevelt began the 4 years of his New York governorship that were preliminary to his presidency, and since he was reelected 2 years later, it was inevitable that he should be the candidate in 1932. Since 1929 the nation had been sunk in the worst depression of its history, and Herbert Hoover's Republican administration had failed to find a way to recovery. This made it a favorable year for the Democrats.
It would be more true to say that Hoover in 1932 lost than that Roosevelt won. At any rate, Roosevelt came to the presidency with a dangerous economic crisis at its height. Industry was paralyzed, and unemployment afflicted some 30 percent of the work force. Roosevelt had promised that something would be done, but what that would be he had not specified.
Roosevelt began providing relief on a large scale by giving work to the unemployed and by approving a device for bringing increased income to farmers, who were in even worse straits than city workers. Also, he devalued the currency and enabled debtors to discharge debts that had long been frozen. Closed banks all over the country were assisted to reopen, and gradually the crisis was overcome.
In 1934 Roosevelt proposed a comprehensive social security system that, he hoped, would make another such depression impossible. Citizens would never be without at least minimum incomes again. Incidentally, these citizens became devoted supporters of the President who had given them this hope. So in spite of the conservatives who opposed the measures he collectively called the New Deal, he became so popular that he won reelection in 1936 by an unprecedented majority.
Roosevelt's second term began with a struggle between himself and the Supreme Court. The justices had held certain of his New Deal devices to be unconstitutional. In retaliation he proposed to add new justices who would be more amenable. Nevertheless in 1940 Roosevelt determined to break with tradition and run for a third term. The presidential campaign of 1940 was the climax of Roosevelt's plea that Americans set themselves against the Nazi threat. He had sought to prepare the way in numerous speeches but had had a most disappointing response. There was a vivid recollection of the disillusion after World War I, and a good many Americans were inclined to support the Germans rather than the Allied Powers. So strong was American reluctance to be involved in another world war that in the last speeches of this campaign Roosevelt practically promised that young Americans would never be sent abroad to fight. Luckily his opponent, Republican Wendell Willkie, also favored support for the Allies. The campaign, won by a narrow majority, gave Roosevelt no mandate for intervention.
Roosevelt was not far into his third term, however, when the decision to enter the war was made for him by the Japanese, whose attack on Pearl Harbor caused serious losses to American forces there. Though all American officials knew that the war was impending, none of them had anticipated the attack on Pearl Harbor. With more than 16 warships and battleships damaged and 3000 American military personnel and civilians killed, US’s involvement was obvious. With Germany’s and Italy’s declaration of war on US, Roosevelt, along with his military advisors, formed a war strategy with a couple of objectives. The first was to put an end to the German advances in the Soviet Union and in North Africa, to launch an invasion of western Europe with the aim of crushing Nazi Germany between two fronts; to save China and defeat Japan. With public sentiments high on defeating Japan, American forces were sent to the Pacific in 1942. The US Navy scored a decisive victory over the Battle of Midway. They then began the process of island hopping. This was with the aim of gaining bases from which strategic airpower could be used to finally invade Japan.
Roosevelt chose Harry S Truman as his Vice Presidential Candidate for 1944 elections. Together they won with 53% votes and carried 36 stated. Thus Roosevelt got elected for a record fourth term.
Roosevelt had gone to Warm Springs early in 1945, completely exhausted. He had recently returned from a conference of Allied leaders at Yalta, where he had forced acceptance of his scheme for a United Nations and made arrangements for the Soviet Union to assist in the final subjugation of Japan. The strain was visible as he made his report to the nation.
At Warm Springs he prepared the address to be used at San Francisco, where the meeting to ratify agreements concerning the United Nations was to be held; but he found himself unable to enjoy the pine woods and the gushing waters. He sat wan and frail in his small cottage, getting through only such work as had to be done. He finished signing papers on the morning of April 12, 1945. Within hours, he suffered the massive cerebral hemorrhage that killed him.
The importance of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Christian faith has been so rarely examined that many people don’t know he was religious at all. But his words, his political accomplishments, and the testimony of those who knew him well show that his political vision reflected the highest ideals embraced by Jesus. He had been taught from early childhood that Christians were meant to be instruments of God’s will.
The main foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was the Good Neighbor Policy, which was a re-evaluation of U.S. policy towards Latin America. The United States had frequently intervened in Latin America following the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, and the United States had occupied several Latin American nations in the Banana Wars that had occurred following the Spanish–American War of 1898. After Roosevelt took office, he withdrew U.S. forces from Haiti and reached new treaties with Cuba and Panama, ended their status as U.S. protectorates. In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries. Roosevelt also normalized relations with the Soviet Union, which the United States had refused to recognize since the 1920s. Roosevelt hoped to renegotiate the Russian debt from World War I and open trade relations, but no progress was made on either issue, and "both nations were soon disillusioned by the accord."
The rejection of the Treaty of Versailles during the Wilson administration marked the dominance of isolationism in American foreign policy. Despite Roosevelt's Wilsonian background, he and Secretary of State Cordell Hull acted with great care not to provoke isolationist sentiment. The isolationist movement was bolstered in the early to mid-1930s by Senator Gerald Nye and others who succeeded in their effort to stop the "merchants of death" in the U.S. from selling arms abroad. This effort took the form of the Neutrality Acts; the president asked for, but was refused, a provision to give him the discretion to allow the sale of arms to victims of aggression. Focused on domestic policy, Roosevelt largely acquiesced to Congress's non-interventionist policies in the early-to-mid 1930s. In the interim, Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini proceeded to overcome Ethiopia, and the Italians joined Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler in supporting General Francisco Franco and the Nationalist cause in the Spanish Civil War. As that conflict drew to a close in early 1939, Roosevelt expressed regret in not aiding the Spanish Republicans. When Japan invaded China in 1937, isolationism limited Roosevelt's ability to aid China, despite atrocities like the Nanking Massacre and the USS Panay incident.
Germany annexed Austria in 1938, and soon turned its attention to its eastern neighbors. Roosevelt made it clear that, in the event of German aggression against Czechoslovakia, the U.S. would remain neutral. After completion of the Munich Agreement and the execution of Kristallnacht, American public opinion turned against Germany, and Roosevelt began preparing for a possible war with Germany. Relying on an interventionist political coalition of Southern Democrats and business-oriented Republicans, Roosevelt oversaw the expansion U.S. airpower and war production capacity.
When World War II began in September 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland and Britain and France's subsequent declaration of war upon Germany, Roosevelt sought ways to assist Britain and France militarily. Isolationist leaders like Charles Lindbergh and Senator William Borah successfully mobilized opposition to Roosevelt's proposed repeal of the Neutrality Act, but Roosevelt won Congressional approval of the sale of arms on a cash-and-carry basis. He also began a regular secret correspondence with Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, in September 1939 — the first of 1,700 letters and telegrams between them. Roosevelt forged a close personal relationship with Churchill, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in May 1940.
The Fall of France in June 1940 shocked the American public, and isolationist sentiment declined. In July 1940, Roosevelt appointed two interventionist Republican leaders, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, as Secretaries of War and the Navy, respectively. Both parties gave support to his plans for a rapid build-up of the American military, but the isolationists warned that Roosevelt would get the nation into an unnecessary war with Germany. In July 1940, a group of Congressmen introduced a bill that would authorize the nation's first peacetime draft, and with the support of the Roosevelt administration the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 passed in September. The size of the army would increase from 189,000 men at the end of 1939 to 1.4 million men in mid-1941. In September 1940, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts by reaching the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which, in exchange for military base rights in the British Caribbean Islands, gave 50 WWI American destroyers to Britain.
Roosevelt did not join NAACP leaders in pushing for federal anti-lynching legislation, as he believed that such legislation was unlikely to pass and that his support for it would alienate Southern congressmen. He did, however, appoint a "Black Cabinet" of African American advisers to advise on race relations and African American issues, and he publicly denounced lynching as "murder." First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt vocally supported efforts designed to aid the African American community, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped boost wages for nonwhite workers in the South. In 1941, Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to implement Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial and religious discrimination in employment among defense contractors. The FEPC was the first national program directed against employment discrimination, and it played a major role in opening up new employment opportunities to non-white workers. During World War II, the proportion of African American men employed in manufacturing positions rose significantly. In response to Roosevelt's policies, African Americans increasingly defected from the Republican Party during the 1930s and 1940s, becoming an important Democratic voting bloc in several Northern states.
After Kristallnacht in 1938, Roosevelt helped expedite Jewish immigration from Germany and allowed Austrian and German citizens already in the United States to stay indefinitely. He was prevented from accepting more Jewish immigrants by the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924, the prevalence of nativism and antisemitism among voters and members of Congress, and some resistance in the American Jewish community to the acceptance of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Hitler chose to implement the "Final Solution"—the extermination of the European Jewish population—by January 1942, and American officials learned of the scale of the Nazi extermination campaign in the following months. Against the objections of the State Department, Roosevelt convinced the other Allied leaders to jointly issue the Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations, which condemned the ongoing Holocaust and promised to try its perpetrators as war criminals. In January 1944, Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board to aid Jews and other victims of Axis atrocities. Aside from these actions, Roosevelt believed that the best way to help the persecuted populations of Europe was to end the war as quickly as possible. Top military leaders and War Department leaders rejected any campaign to bomb the extermination camps or the rail lines leading to the camps, fearing it would be a diversion from the war effort. According to biographer Jean Edward Smith, there is no evidence that anyone ever proposed such a campaign to Roosevelt himself.
Quotations:
"We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions-bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities."
"We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests."
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little."
"Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country."
"Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself."
He was a Freemason.
Roosevelt was ebullient, charming, persuasive, gregarious, and genuinely interested in people and their problems. To some he seemed snooty as a young man; his habit of carrying his head back and literally looking down his nose at others through pince-nez reinforced this early image. According to his wife, being stricken with polio made him more sensitive to the feelings of other people. He was not the least bit sensitive about his handicap, however. While onlookers typically shifted about in discomfort as he was lifted in and out of automobiles or struggled with his ungainly braces, he invariably eased the tension with a joke or simply carried on a conversation as if nothing unusual were going on. As president during 12 of the most difficult years in American history, Roosevelt worked well under pressure. “His composure under stress was remarkable,” commented biographer James MacGregor Burns. “The main reason for Roosevelt’s composure was his serene and absolute assurance as to the value and importance of what he was doing.” A common complaint about Roosevelt, even among his admirers, was his devious nature. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes complained that he never spoke with complete frankness even to his most loyal supporters.
Physical Characteristics: Roosevelt stood 6 feet 1 inch tall and as president generally weighed in the 180s. Strikingly handsome, lean, and athletic as a young man, he had blue eyes, underscored by dark circles as he grew older, dark wavy hair, and a strong thrusting jaw. He was nearsighted and from age 18 wore eyeglasses. He contracted polio in 1921. After a day of sailing and fishing with his boys on Compobello Island, Roosevelt helped some local residents fight a forest fire and then took a cold dip in the Bay of Fundy. He jogged the mile back home, where, still in his wet trunks, he went through his mail. That night he went to bed with the chills. Two days later he could not move his legs. Dr. W.W. Keen (who had taken part in the cancer operation on President Grover Cleveland in 1893) of Philadelphia diagnosed some sort of temporary paralysis. Dr. Robert S. Lovett of Boston recognized the signs of poliomyelitis. Through rigorous exercise Roosevelt eventually learned to stand with braces and to walk briefly with crutches or canes. In deep water he was able to stand without braces. Except for polio and chronic sinus trouble, Roosevelt was strong and healthy. Although his lower limbs withered, he was muscular from the waist up.
Quotes from others about the person
"He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I have ever known." - Winston Churchill
"I must admit Roosevelt's leadership has been very effective and has been responsible for the Americans' advantageous position today." - Kantaro Suzuki
"I'm so sorry that Roosevelt is president – otherwise I would visit him more often." - Albert Einstein
Roosevelt was formally introduced to his future wife Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1902 on a train to Tivoli, New York. The two had built on a good rapport and understanding and soon walked the aisle in 1905.
The couple was blessed with six children, Anna Eleanor, James, Franklin Delano, Jr., Elliott, Franklin Delano, Jr. and John Aspinwall.
He was reported to have a number of romantic relationships outside marriage; the most prominent of them was with Eleanor’s secretary, Lucy Mercer. Other’s whom he was romantically linked to were Marguerite "Missy" LeHand and Princess Martha of Sweden.
Roosevelt’s adulterated behaviour resulted in Eleanor’s separate living. The marriage turned out to be more of a political partnership than an intimate relationship.