Contents
Overview
Born: January 30, 1882; Hyde Park, New York... Franklin Delano Roosevelt was found to have been related, by blood or through marriage, to eleven former presidents. The policies and persona of Franklin Roosevelt set the cast of the "modern" presidency. He was unquestionably the most vital figure in the nation, and perhaps the world, during his 13 years in the White House. Engendering both admiration and scorn, FDR exerted unflinching leadership during the most tumultuous period in the nation's history since the Civil War...Died April 12, 1945.
Did you know? - Read some fun facts about Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Frances Perkins becomes the first woman cabinet member (1933)
- Mao Tse-Tung leads Communists on a "Long March" across China (1934)
- Josef Stalin launches a Great Purge in the Soviet Union (1934)
- The Boulder (Hoover) Dam is completed (1935)
- Spanish Civil War begins (1936)
- Joe Louis becomes the world boxing champion (1937)
- Orson Welles broadcasts The War of the Worlds (1938)
- Steinbeck writes The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
- Japanese Americans are sent to internment camps (1942)
- World War II rages (1939-1945)
World Timeline - See a timeline of world events during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration.
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Howe interviewed Roosevelt about the Sheehan uprising for the New York Herald. The newspaperman left the interview with a story, and with a sense of Roosevelt's political potential. Howe, it seemed, impressed Roosevelt as well. The men became friends, and FDR called on Louis Howe to help his campaign. Mutual respect aside, they made the oddest of couples.
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Louis Howe came of age with ink and politics in his veins. Short, skeletal, and by his own admission "one of the four ugliest men... in the state of New York," Howe seemed like he might die at any moment -- an opinion his physician shared. A heart murmur, asthma, and bronchitis plagued Howe, but he chain-smoked Sweet Caporal cigarettes and seldom backed away from an editorial fight. At 17, he had covered the political beat for his father's Saratoga Sun. Later, he worked as a stringer for the New York papers and as an operative for the Democratic political machine of Thomas Mott Osborne. Howe earned his reputation as a relentless, talented reporter, but he earned little else. Now 40, he scrapped for every penny and lived at poverty's edge.
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With a voice as sound as bedrock itself, Roosevelt announced an end to the bureaucratic stagnation that had plagued the administration of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. "The Nation asks for action, and action now," Roosevelt said. The New Deal -- and the incredibly productive period of legislative and administrative action that became known as the Hundred Days -- had begun.
First, Roosevelt tackled the most pressing crisis: the insolvency of the banks. Since the start of the Depression, 11,000 of the nation's 25,000 banks had failed, and millions of Americans had lost their life's savings. Roosevelt realized that if he kept the banks open, panicked depositors would withdraw their money and more banks would fail. On March 6, FDR declared a "bank holiday." Meanwhile, he and his so-called Brain Trust, a group of academics and economic theorists he had brought to the White House, crafted the Emergency Banking Act, a plan which would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen those banks strong enough to survive.
The speed with which the Emergency Banking Act bill was written, passed by Congress, and put into practice typified the frenetic pace of the Hundred Days. Roosevelt delivered a draft of the act to the House of Representatives on March 9. The House passed the bill in less than 40 minutes, without any debate. By evening, the bill had passed the Senate as well, and was delivered to the White House for Roosevelt's signature. Newly reorganized banks began opening on March 12; by the following day, deposits at these banks exceeded withdrawals. The banking system had been saved.
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These early economic reforms did little to solve the problem of massive unemployment. Shuttered-up businesses lined America's main streets. The smokestacks of the factories and mills, which had provided a day's work and a steady paycheck to millions of workers, lay dormant. But back in Washington, the Brain Trust crafted a bill that would put able-bodied men to work and pay them three square meals and a dollar a day. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) bill sailed through the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. Soon, thousands of men across America packed up and moved to rural work camps, where they planted trees, fought forest fires, repaired trails, and built flood control levees.
While programs like the CCC helped ease the immediate pain of the Depression, Roosevelt worked to effect more permanent changes on the economy. In May, Congress passed FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Act. The AAA provided subsidies to farmers who decreased the production of various commodities, which, the president hoped, would cause farm prices to rise. In June, Roosevelt sent Congress his National Industrial Recovery Act, which set fair-practice codes for business and industry, established minimum wages and maximum hours, and gave labor the guaranteed right to bargain collectively. The bill quickly became law.
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The Roosevelt legislation machine could stop a bank panic, put thousands of Americans back to work, and give people the right to have a drink, but it could not end the Depression. In fact, the pace with which legislation was crafted during the Hundred Days made some New Deal programs ungainly, ineffective, and susceptible to court challenge. In 1935 the Supreme Court struck down the National Recovery Administration, a morass of more than 700 business codes that hamstrung business people and proved difficult to enforce. In 1936 the Court invalidated the Agricultural Adjustment Act, declaring that the regulation of agriculture was the domain of the individual states. AAA was modified to suit the courts and reenacted, but it never achieved the rise in farm prices for which it was created.
During the Hundred Days, Congress passed more than a dozen significant pieces of reform and relief legislation. Never again would Roosevelt's New Deal carry so much momentum or have so much bipartisan support. In the years that followed, Roosevelt clashed with big business and conservative groups over his increasingly interventionist legislation, and the New Deal fizzled. But the Hundred Days would become an American political legend, and would be used even decades later as the yardstick by which to measure a new president. None who took the office would achieve the early and dramatic legislative success of Franklin Roosevelt's Hundred Days.
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Roosevelt understood early on that territorial concessions would not satisfy Adolf Hitler and his fascist counterparts, Benito Mussolini of Italy and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. In 1931, Japan took Manchuria. In 1935, Mussolini took Ethiopia. In 1936, Nazi troops swept into the Rhineland. In 1938, Hitler annexed Austria, and at the Munich conference, Britain and France surrendered Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to the Germans.
Roosevelt condemned international aggression, but could do little else. The American public was decidedly isolationist and antiwar. Memories of the expense of World War I -- in lives and money -- were still fresh. In 1934, Congress passed the Johnson Act, which prohibited loans to nations behind on World War I debt repayment. The Neutrality Act of 1935 forbade the export of arms, ammunition or implements of war to belligerent nations; a 1937 amendment to the act forbade American citizens and ships from entering war zones or traveling on belligerents' ships.
In early 1939, Roosevelt asked Congress to repeal the Neutrality Act, so the U.S. could sell arms to the free European forces. Congress refused. In September, World War II began as Germany invaded Poland. Roosevelt spoke before Congress again, and on November 4, it approved the Pittman Bill, which allowed America to sell arms to nations who could pay for their weapons in cash.
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Roosevelt dramatically increased the defense budget from 1939 on and began to convert America to a military economy. Using powerful industrialists who could skillfully cut through governmental red tape, Roosevelt began to build the "Arsenal of Democracy."
In early 1940, Roosevelt stacked his cabinet with interventionists like Henry Stimson and Frank Knox, who took over the Navy and War departments. He named Harry Hopkins, an avid anti-Nazi, Secretary to the War Cabinet.
When France fell to the Nazis in May 1940, Britain stood alone. Roosevelt began a remarkable and voluminous secret correspondence with Britain's prime minister, Winston Churchill. Although Churchill desperately needed American troops, he asked only for arms and ammunition. Roosevelt responded, using his presidential powers to circumvent the Neutrality Act. The U.S. swapped 50 aging U.S. destroyers in return for British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. The British saw the trade as unfair. But Churchill needed all the help he could get.
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In a December "fireside chat" on national radio, Roosevelt condemned Axis aggression, insisting that its objective was no less than world domination. He asked for military aid for Britain, which was rapidly running out of money to buy arms. Behind the scenes, FDR moved even closer to war. He secretly sent Harry Hopkins to London to plan an Anglo-American war against Germany.
In March of 1941, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act. The act allowed the U.S. to lend the Allies war materials in return for repayment after the war. FDR, understanding Britain's desperation, began Atlantic transshipment of materials days before signing the bill.
Using all of his political ingenuity, Roosevelt struggled against the constraints of neutrality. In April, he gave the Navy permission to attack German submarines west of 25 degrees longitude. That same month, the U.S. and Denmark agreed to place Greenland under American protection. In July, the U.S. occupied Iceland. On August 14th, the Selective Service Act, which allowed a peacetime draft, passed Congress by a single vote.
That same August day, theAtlantic Charter was made public. Signed during a secret five-day conference at sea between Roosevelt and Churchill, the charter called for national self-determination and stated that aggressor nations should be disarmed. If this was not a declaration of war, it was close. Roosevelt hoped it would provoke the Germans to war on America.
On September 4, 1941, the first clash came. The Greer, a U.S. destroyer, spotted a German submarine and called in a British plane to bomb it. The sub and the destroyer exchanged fire, with little result. But Roosevelt used the incident to further his intention to get America into the war. On October 17, German subs attacked the U.S. destroyer Kearney as it escorted a British convoy. Several crewmen were injured. On October 31, Nazi subs sank the U.S. destroyer Reuben James, killing 115 men.
A little over a month later, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would overshadow America's first Atlantic battles. The U.S. would declare war. But in no small way would the Allies' eventual victory in the declared war be attributable to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's prosecution of the unofficial one. With years of public speaking, private maneuvering, political lobbying and presidential action, FDR had helped save Britain and perhaps the world from Nazi domination, all while his country remained at peace.
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But by 1936, the New Deal had begun to falter. Conservative businessmen, who found themselves heavily taxed and regulated by the new legislation, pushed a string of challenges to Roosevelt's programs through the courts. On January 6, the Supreme Court made a ruling that struck at the very heart of Roosevelt's reforms. FDR's response to the ruling would irreparably damage the New Deal.
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Roosevelt realized that if the court applied this states-rights reasoning across the board, the New Deal would crumble. The Depression, FDR believed, could only be defeated by sweeping federal reforms of the economy; changes cobbled together in often inefficient state legislatures would not be enough.
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In the AAA ruling, however, Roosevelt saw an ominous conservative turn on the part of the judiciary. And with the Supreme Court scheduled to rule on challenges to the Wagner Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Social Security Act, FDR knew the New Deal was in danger.
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In November 1936 voters gave Roosevelt a second overwhelming mandate at the polls. His New Deal policies, constitutional or not, had put millions of Americans back to work and given people hope. Now, mandate in hand, FDR would move to challenge the Supreme Court threat to the New Deal.
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It was an uncharacteristic political mistake for the usually astute Roosevelt. His plan to influence the Court provoked outrage nationwide. Many perceived it as an attempt to rig the American judiciary system and give the executive branch almost dictatorial power. In a public speech in March, Roosevelt managed to turn American opinion his way, but when the Supreme Court reported that it had no problem keeping up with its caseload, support for his plan declined.
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The attempt to influence the Supreme Court was one of the worst episodes of Roosevelt's presidential career. For the first time since his election, FDR had been publicly humiliated and utterly defeated -- in a battle he need not have fought.
Ironically, time would do what Roosevelt's court packing plan could not. By 1941, four Supreme Court justices had retired; two more had died. In total, seven of the nine justices on the court were Roosevelt appointees.
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When Roosevelt took the oath of office on March 4, 1933, America lay in the depths of the Depression. Between 12 million and 15 million Americans, about 25 percent of the work force, were unemployed. Millions of people had lost their life's savings. Many had lost their homes and lived in makeshift shacks. Many more stood in long lines for free soup and bread. Eleven thousand of America's 25,000 banks had failed. Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt's predecessor, had steered a mostly idle course through the crisis, waiting for the economy to correct itself, but the correction had not come.
Franklin Roosevelt was not the type of man who waited for events to happen. In his inaugural address, he swore to bring the nation a New Deal, and backed by a soundly Democratic Congress, he took Washington by storm. Within days of taking office, he closed the remaining banks, avoiding a run on deposits that would have finished them all. He set up a system for judging the soundness of banks and reopened the ones that were solid. He moved to put the government itself on a budget, freeing up federal dollars for relief and reform measures.
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FDR created programs on the fly, and not all of them worked as intended. In May, 1935, the Supreme Court struck down the regulatory business codes of the National Recovery Administration. The Agricultural Adjustment Act was ruled unconstitutional in 1936. Altered to suit the courts and reenacted, it still largely failed in its mission of increasing farm prices. Roosevelt programs paid Americans to do everything from building airport runways to writing local histories. Although the New Deal had its critics, Roosevelt's programs left an impression upon America that lasted for decades.
Under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration alone, Americans built 125,000 public buildings, 75,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, 800 airports, and more than 650,000 miles of roads, creating a modern American infrastructure and earning a paycheck all the while. Perhaps the most influential of Roosevelt's New Deal programs was the Social Security Act, which provided pensions to the elderly through a payroll tax. Altered over the years, Social Security has remained a significant source of support for elderly and disabled Americans.
Although the New Deal mitigated American misery, it would take another great tragedy to end the Depression -- World War II. While America struggled to repair its shattered economy, fascist dictators in Germany, Italy, and Japan built massive armies and began their quest for world domination. Franklin Delano Roosevelt would lead America in the fight to defeat fascism and keep democracy alive. But Roosevelt would wage two wars, one secret and the other official.
The Axis leaders -- Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Tojo Hideki in Japan -- went on the move toward the end of the 1930s, taking territory by threat or by force. Hitler led the fascists in aggression. By mid-1940, he had crushed most of Europe and brought England to the brink of collapse.
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Meanwhile, Roosevelt built his Army. With the help of industrial tycoons, Roosevelt oversaw the conversion of the United States into the biggest munitions producer the world had ever known. He pushed a draft bill through Congress so America could bring men to battle when it needed them.
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The voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt president four times. Only death, it seemed, could remove him from office. By the time he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, the nation had, on the strength of a wartime economic boom, emerged from the Depression. Germany was in ruins, and the victory of democracy over fascism was virtually assured. Many of the Americans who mourned the death of their president would remember him forever as the man who saved their jobs, their homes, their farms, and their way of life when America stood at the brink of disaster.
