Roosevelt Franklin (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882-1945) – 32nd American president, an outstanding statesman. He headed the United States of America from 1933 to 1945, the only president who was elected for more than two terms. He carried out the “New Deal” reforms, made a significant contribution to the development of the anti-Hitler coalition, and is the author of the idea of ​​​​creating the UN.

Childhood and young years

Roosevelt was born on the family estate in Hyde Park, New York. His parents were of aristocratic origin, a strong position in society and owned shares in coal companies.

He was the only child in the family. Throughout his childhood, Franklin traveled with his parents to European countries, which allowed him to master several languages. Regular holidays on the sea coast aroused his interest in sailing.

Roosevelt received his education at home until he was 14 years old. Then he studied for three years at the prestigious school in Groton, Massachusetts. Then, from 1900 to 1904, he received his education at Harvard University, and after law school at Columbia University in 1907, he became a lawyer in a large New York firm.

Development of a political career

From the very beginning of his work in law, Roosevelt did not have a keen interest in law. He considered the possibility of entering big politics, having before him the example of Theodore Roosevelt. It was along his path that Franklin’s career developed. It began in 1910, when Franklin Roosevelt ran for the post of senator from the Democratic Party in New York State. Then he won his first political victory.

After actively supporting Thomas Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential election, Roosevelt joined the Presidential Administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He worked enthusiastically to strengthen the American Navy, develop foreign policy, and strengthen the country's defense capabilities.

In 1920, Roosevelt ran for the post of vice president, but the Democratic Party was defeated, and after some time he himself was struck by a serious illness. Polio forced Franklin to temporarily suspend his political activities. It was not until 1928 that he returned to politics, becoming governor of New York. He served two terms in this position and gained invaluable experience. It was then that Roosevelt established the tradition of communicating with the electorate through radio.

President of the U.S.A

In a closely fought presidential election in 1932, Roosevelt beat then-incumbent President Herbert Hoover. It was a difficult time for the United States, the country was suffering from an economic crisis, and the new head immediately implemented a number of reforms, called the “New Deal.” Thanks to the innovations there were:

• leading sectors of the economy have been restored;
• measures have been taken to provide social protection to vulnerable groups of the population;
• American banks were reanimated;
• changes have been introduced in labor legislation.

Foreign policy was characterized by caution and flexibility. In the pre-war years, ties were established with the USSR and Latin American countries. At the same time, the United States, in the context of the internal economic crisis, maintained a neutral position on all foreign policy issues.

Roosevelt saw Hitler as a threat to his country. He understood that if the Nazis won in Europe, the American economy would face disaster, so it was necessary to assist countries in the fight against Germany. In addition, following his convictions, he did not recognize violence and dictatorship. But for a long time it was not possible to limit ourselves to only supplying weapons to the front. In December 1941, after the events at Pearl Harbor, the United States was forced to declare war on Japan. Soon Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Speech in Congress in which Roosevelt promised to defeat Hitler's coalition

The President, fulfilling the duties of Commander-in-Chief, made a significant contribution to the work of the anti-Hitler coalition and made efforts to create the UN. Roosevelt saw in the USSR a power capable of playing a decisive role in the victory over fascism, so in 1943 at the Tehran Conference he did not support Churchill, who did not want to open a second front. He was aimed at the course of cooperation with the USSR in the post-war period, took an active part in the Quebec Conference, and influenced the adoption of significant decisions at the Yalta Conference. Roosevelt was concerned about maintaining peace and restoring it after the end of the war. But his health did not allow him to implement his plans; he died on April 12, 1945 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

The difficult economic situation and the Second World War allowed Roosevelt to prove himself as an active politician who, under his leadership, was able to lead the country through these trials. Despite serious health problems, he was always in touch with the media. In the eyes of the people, the president was the personification of hope, and he was re-elected three times.

Family life

Franklin's chosen one was his distant relative, Theodore Roosevelt's niece Eleanor. The wedding took place in 1905. They had six children, one daughter and five sons. One son died at eight months of age. At first, a seemingly modest housewife, Eleanor later became an active public figure, a fighter for rights and had a significant influence on her husband's career.

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 from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present day, the largest war in 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.

Second: Since his presidency, the interventionist state and the mixed economy, in which the federal government in Washington intervenes to regulate, correct, plan and manage, belong to the everyday life of 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 the same time 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 give up 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, the profit motive, regional and functional division of power, 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 thought it should do, which is to 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 governmental philosophy spreads only doubt, hopelessness and fear among the millions of people who languish at the base of the social pyramid without money, power or social status. Roosevelt promised a “new course” in the election campaign 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 governmental system, the source of new ideas, the driving force of commerce, the engine of social transformation and thus, in Roosevelt's vision, the embodiment of the common good . For the mass of the American population, the federal government and the President became for the first time a recognizable part of 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 in overcoming economic distress, 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 sovereign "open door" policy towards 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 question-and-answer hour 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. During Roosevelt's presidency, the executive branch staff doubled and even tripled: in 1933, exactly 600,000 people were employed in the federal government, 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 office were themselves supposedly one of the major consequences of the global economic crisis on the US political system. 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 for the unprecedented catastrophe to repeat itself. 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 goals: a radical reform of the rather chaotic banking sector, supervision and control of the trade in monetary securities and, what was especially important in the initial phase, the creation of a legal basis for the inflationary policy of the state in order to overcome deflation through a new deed. -gentle 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, a broad government employment program, which began in March 1933 as a temporary emergency 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 employment 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. The federal Industrial Recovery Act was the hope of replacing "destructive competition" with "fair competition" through a kind of loosely supervised, cooperative self-regulation with government assistance. 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 of the welfare state, contribution-financed social insurance and tax-financed social assistance or social security, have their roots in the 1930s.

It is still debatable 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 1936 elections are clear 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 outlook 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 out of Europe and 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. Preparedness - industrial, economic and psychological preparation for 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 the Far East would force both regions to the system an almost import-independent planned economy, 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 as 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 Germany, Japan and Italy, and the main allies England and the 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 combined. 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 of a 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.”

The content of the article

ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO(Roosevelt, Franklin Delano) (1882–1945), 32nd President of the United States, was born in Hyde Park (New York) on January 30, 1882. He received his primary education under the supervision of private teachers, and often visited Europe with his parents. 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 for the conservation of natural resources and rational use of the land fund, for government control over public services and the adoption of social welfare 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 social assistance agency, 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 the largest number of votes in each of the ballots, but, according to the then rules of the Democratic Party, a two-thirds majority was required for nomination. It was received when W. Hurst and Speaker of the House of Representatives J. 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 a vibrant people forced into idleness and poverty as a result of 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 7 million votes.

It was in the first hundred days after the inauguration that, at the insistence of the White House, Congress passed a significant part of the New Deal bills, and after this period, Roosevelt turned into a real leader of the nation. 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.”

Before campaigning for re-election in 1936, Roosevelt added to the accomplishments of the New Deal with congressional approval of dollar devaluation and stock market regulation (1934), as well as Social Security and the Wagner Labor Relations Act (1935). Promising a continuation of the New Deal policies and condemning the “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. His nomination 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 range of US military patrol vessels escorting merchant ships to Iceland and ordered US warships to open fire on Axis ships in those 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 debates, Roosevelt refused to discuss this issue and insisted that it was a matter of national security. 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 fastest route 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 was 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 Eastern European countries 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 the 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 that strong borders and membership in an efficient world organization would put an end to Russian expansion were dashed.

Roosevelt's health became a national concern during the 1944 reelection 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.

APPLICATION

F.D. ROOSEVELT'S "NEW COURSE"

F.D. ROOSEVELT'S MESSAGE TO CONGRESS

Before the end of the special session of Congress, I recommend two further measures in our national campaign to provide jobs for the people.

My first request is that Congress provide the machinery necessary to bring about a concerted industry-wide (with a view to achieving greater employment) shortening the work week, while maintaining adequate wages for the shortened week, and preventing unfair competition and disastrous overproduction [...].

Another proposal gives the executive branch the authority to embark on a large "direct employment" program. A careful study convinces me that approximately $3,300,000,000 could be invested in useful and necessary public works and at the same time provide employment to the largest possible number of people.

Printed by: A Documentary History of American Economic Policy since 1789. N.Y., 1961. P. 364–365.

NATIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY ACT

It is hereby acknowledged that the country is in a state of general distress, which is liable to further widespread unemployment and industrial disorganization, which in turn will weigh heavily on interstate and foreign commerce, injure the public welfare and undermine the standard of living of the American people. It is also hereby declared that Congress will pursue a policy designed to remove the difficulties which stand in the way of the free development of interstate and foreign commerce, which tends to relieve this strained situation; to achieve the general welfare by encouraging the organization of industry and the cooperative action of the various occupational groups; to encourage and support the joint action of labor and enterprise on the basis of equal recognition by the government and under its supervision; to eliminate unfair business practices; to encourage the fullest use of existing production capacities; to avoid unnecessary restrictions on production (except in cases where this is temporarily necessary); to increase the consumption of industrial and agricultural products by increasing the purchasing power of the population; to reduce unemployment and provide the necessary assistance here and to improve working conditions; as well as by any other means to strive for the improvement of industry and the preservation of natural resources. [...]

Art. 3(a). Upon receipt of appropriate petitions from one or more professional or industrial associations or groups addressed to the President, the President may approve a code or codes of fair competition for the profession or industry or its individual organizations in accordance with the proposals made by the petitioner or petitioners if he finds: 1 ) that these associations or groups do not impose unequal restrictions on anyone in the admission of their members and that they are truly representatives of the professions or industries specified in the petition or their affiliated organizations; 2) that the proposed code or codes on fair competition are not aimed at the development of monopolies or at the destruction or suppression of small business and that they will contribute to the implementation of the policies provided for in this law. [...]

Upon approval by the President of any of the above-mentioned fair competition codes, the provisions of that code will be deemed to govern fair competitive practices for that profession or industry or its constituent organizations. Any violation of these regulations in or affecting any interstate or foreign commerce shall be considered unfair commercial competition, as that term is defined under applicable Federal Trade Commission law. [...]

All fair competition codes and agreements or licenses approved, entered into or issued pursuant to this law shall provide: 1) That all employees have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through their own chosen representatives. and that employers or their representatives may not interfere with, coerce or otherwise restrain their collective action in their selection of their representatives or self-organization for the purpose of negotiating a collective agreement or taking other measures of mutual assistance or protection; 2) that no person working or seeking employment will be required as a condition of his being at work to join one or another company union or to refrain from joining, organizing or providing assistance to a work union chosen by him at his own discretion; 3) that employers agree to maximum hours of work, minimum wages and other terms and conditions of employment approved or prescribed by the President. [...]

In pursuance of this Act, the President is hereby authorized to create a Federal Emergency Public Works Administration, all powers of which shall be exercised by a Federal Emergency Public Works Administrator. [...]

Printed by: Reader on modern history, vol. 1. M., 1960.

The politician has a number of important historical achievements, including the withdrawal of the United States from the Great Depression, which had dire consequences for society, the creation of the foundations for the country's economic prosperity, victory in World War II, the establishment of a special organization to strengthen peace, which he, as one of the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition , suggested calling it the UN.

Franklin Roosevelt's childhood and family

From an early age, relatives paid maximum attention to the development of their child, introduced him to the study of history, music, fine arts, literature, languages, and often took him on trips abroad.

Until 1896, he received his primary education, studying on the estate with visiting teachers. He was then sent to an elite boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts. Due to his high level of knowledge, he was immediately enrolled in the 3rd grade. There, along with the compulsory subjects, he finally acquired life principles (including denial of the possibility of mutual concessions with evil, the desire to acquire new knowledge, hard work), which, according to biographers, allowed him to subsequently achieve such large-scale success in repelling crisis phenomena.

In 1900, Franklin Roosevelt became a student at Harvard, where he continued to study the fundamentals of natural sciences, mastered jurisprudence, economic theory, rhetoric and other subjects. At the university, he was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper and the organizer of the Fund for Assistance to the Descendants of Dutch Settlers. Having received a basic higher education, in 1905 Franklin became a student at Columbia University Law School.

The beginning of Franklin Roosevelt's career

1910 marked the start of his career in big politics. His debut took place as a Democratic candidate for the New York State Legislature. Franklin Roosevelt with great zeal began a new interesting business, tirelessly traveled around his district, speaking to voters, and, as a result, won. While a senator, in 1911 he joined one of the Masonic lodges.

Since 1913, he was assistant to the head of the Department of the Navy under Democratic President Wilson for 7 years. During a dramatic period of world development, in a difficult international situation, Franklin was constantly on the move, visiting military bases, places of military clashes with the participation of the US fleet, dealing with issues of strengthening it, gaining authority among allies and compatriots.

In 1920, Roosevelt became the Democratic nominee for vice president. However, victory went to their Republican rivals. After this, the young politician, who became known to the general public during the election campaign, took the position of deputy head of a large financial company.

In 1921, his voyage in the Atlantic Ocean off Campobello at low water temperatures led to the most difficult results. Full of strength and ambition, the 39-year-old man lost the ability to walk after contracting polio. The illness did not break him, but, on the contrary, transformed him into an incredibly resilient person, capable of understanding the suffering of another person. Treatment and hard training did not lead to a final recovery; Franklin Roosevelt could hardly move without a wheelchair, but remained unusually active.

One evidence of the growth of his authority was the number of public posts he held (in addition to his business responsibilities). He served on the Harvard Board of Overseers, the Near Eastern Relief Committee, headed the New York Naval Club, and was among the organizers of the Wilson Foundation and members of the National Geographic Society.

Twice, in 1928 and 1930, Roosevelt was elected leader of New York State. Historians especially noted his creation of an administration of special assistance to victims of the economic crisis, invitation to management of professionals from Columbia and Harvard, and confidential radio speeches.

President Franklin Roosevelt

The situation in the USA was catastrophic. Industrial production was 1/2 the level of 1929, corporate incomes more than halved, over one hundred thousand businessmen went bankrupt, losses of banking institutions reached $2.5 billion, farmers' debt (due to a decrease in purchasing power) - $12 billion, unemployment rose to 25 percent - the number of citizens capable of radical action and riots has reached 12 million people.

In the first 100 days of the reign of the leader of the nation, called by Thomas Mann the “tamer of the masses,” the most important reforms of the New Deal, developed by a “brains trust” of attracted university professors, were implemented. The banking system was restored, legislation was adopted on the revival of industry, agricultural production, on the refinancing of farm debt, and a fund to help the unemployed was created.

Franklin Roosevelt's reforms

The president's forte was his open radio communications with Americans, later published as a pamphlet called Fireside Chats. In November, the owner of the presidential residence restored diplomatic relations with the USSR.

Personal life of Franklin Roosevelt

The life partner of the head of state was a prominent social activist, self-sufficient and independent. She considered it her duty to live in the interests of her husband and played a significant role in his career. The First Lady took part in political debates and election campaigns, spoke in the press in support of her husband’s endeavors, met with publicists, visited prisons, and contributed to the formation of the women’s movement.

In 1974, Elliot's son made his memoirs public, where he announced his mother's sexual coldness, which became the reason for his father's infidelities, first with Lucy Page Maser, and later with Margaret Le Hand, who worked in the White House secretariat. There were also rumors about the president's affair with his relative Margaret Suckley.

According to information contained in the letters of Lorena Gicoc, who was engaged in journalism, she was a lesbian who allegedly had an affair with the wife of the head of state.

The First Lady passed away in 1962 at the age of 78.

The last years of life and death of Franklin Roosevelt

Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt divided Crimea (Stalin's joke)

In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt decided to resign from high office, which he announced at a meeting of his party. However, after the Democrats unanimously nominated him as their candidate, he agreed to run for a 3rd term. During the war period, he turned away from the “new course”, focusing his efforts on the task of winning the war, and introduced a policy of prioritizing government funding for the defense industry.

In 1944, being commander in chief and considering it impossible to leave this post, Roosevelt agreed to participate in the elections for the post of head of state for the 4th time, and won again. Historians have noted his invaluable contribution to the process of post-war peace settlement, the implementation of the idea of ​​​​establishing the UN, and to the historical decisions of the conference in Yalta.

Franklin Roosevelt's Four Victories

In early April 1945, Franklin decided to relax at the Warm Springs resort, where he was being treated for polio. There he contemplated his speech in San Francisco at the upcoming meeting of the United Nations, scheduled for the 23rd, believing that this structure would be a means of uniting countries and a guarantee of strengthening peace. However, on April 12 he died from a stroke. According to his will, he was buried in his homeland, in Hyde Park, where he spent his childhood.

The life of every great person is shrouded in many secrets, speculations, intrigues and understatements. With famous names, gossip and rumors, hidden facts and obvious absurdities have always gone side by side. What then can we say about death, which in itself is the greatest mystery? The death of the 32nd US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one of the strangest and most mysterious stories of the 20th century, which continues to disturb inquisitive minds today...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the only person in US history to be elected president for four consecutive terms. He became perhaps the greatest US president of the 20th century. His name entered not only American, but also world history. Roosevelt's entire life was a life-affirming hymn to courage and daily feat. He was naturally endowed with rare qualities - a fierce thirst for life and undying optimism. These character traits helped his country, which was going through the incredibly difficult Great Depression and then the bloodiest world war, regain its lost confidence.

So, the circumstances of the death of this great man were so mysterious that only the global and unconditional subordination of all media to authorities at the “highest level” could hide them from the public. Adherents of mystical interpretations especially emphasize the fact that death overtook the president on Friday the 13th. However, the secret should undoubtedly be sought in life...

Franklin 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 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. Roosevelt's mother, Sarah Delano, also belonged to the local aristocracy. Parents often took their only son with them on trips around Europe, introducing him to the study of foreign languages, history and art. Until the age of fourteen, the boy studied with teachers at home. He was interested in reading, collecting stamps, dreamed of sea voyages, and loved sailing on a yacht. In 1896–1899 he studied at one of the best private charter schools in Groton (Massachusetts). He was accepted straight into third grade. At the same time, young Franklin forever learned clear moral principles: to achieve everything with your own hard work, constantly increase your knowledge, never compromise with your own conscience and, to the best of your ability, fight any manifestation of evil. In 1900–1904, the future president continued his education at Harvard University, where he received a bachelor's degree. He then attended Columbia Law School and was admitted to the bar, which he began in a reputable law firm.

While attending law school, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, his fifth cousin and niece of Theodore Roosevelt, for whom Franklin had deep personal sympathy and respect. 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, especially after 1921, when he contracted polio and was no longer in a wheelchair. She herself went down in history as a prominent public figure. The Roosevelts had six children, one of whom died in infancy.

In 1910, the aspiring lawyer agreed to a tempting offer from the US Democratic Party in his home district to run as a senator in the New York State Legislature. He wins and gets down to business energetically. His political debut was brilliant. During the 1912 presidential campaign, Franklin actively supported Democrat T.W. Wilson. In the administration of President Wilson, Roosevelt was offered the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy and, not completing his third term in the state legislature, he moved to Washington. He does business with interest and passion and communicates with representatives of business and political circles in different states. The young, energetic deputy minister is rapidly gaining authority. Having already served in this post for seven and a half years, in the most tense time - on the eve and during the First World War - he advocates strengthening the fleet, strengthening US defense capabilities and a constructive foreign policy.

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. The young politician clearly and clearly stated his position in one of his election speeches: “We are against the influence of money on politics, we are against the control of private individuals over the finances of the state, we are against treating a person as a commodity, we are against starvation wages, we are against the authorities.” groups and cliques.” But the Democrats lost that time. After the election, Roosevelt becomes vice president of one of the large financial corporations in New York.

August 1921 proved fatal for the promising politician. During a summer vacation on a yacht, Franklin swam in cold water, after which his legs gave out. A few days later, doctors announced the verdict: polio. Roosevelt was partially paralyzed. According to his relatives, he did not give up, showed remarkable willpower and made great efforts every day to engage in physical exercise. But he was never able to walk on his own again. They made special orthopedic devices for his legs, and only after that, with the help of a cane and with the support of one of his sons, he was finally able to move around without a wheelchair. But at the same time, those around him did not feel his illness. Roosevelt remained friendly, active, open to communication, without making any allowances for himself either in work or in life. The sudden terrible illness that befell him did not dampen his thirst for life and did not limit his range of interests. Roosevelt corresponded extensively with political figures in the Democratic Party, was engaged in business, and at the same time held various public positions.

His authority and popularity are steadily growing. In 1928, he was elected governor of New York State. Having served two terms in this post, Roosevelt acquired very valuable experience, which was very useful to him during his presidency. The famous “fireside conversations,” for example, originate precisely during his governorship. Already as president, Roosevelt would sit in front of the radio microphones in the White House room, where there was a fireplace, and slowly begin a conversation. He masterfully knew how to create the impression on everyone who listened to him that he was talking to everyone as an equal, as a close friend, and spoke in simple, accessible language. Tens of millions of Americans sincerely perceived the president's words as an appeal to them personally and to the nation as a whole.

In the 1933 presidential election, Roosevelt received an overwhelming majority of the vote and became the 32nd president of CTTTA. No US president has ever received such a heavy inheritance. America was experiencing the deepest and most widespread economic crisis in its entire history. When Roosevelt took office, the US banking and financial system was a complete fiasco. And during his second term as president, the bloodiest war in the entire history of mankind begins - World War II.

After intense months of continuous work, in April 1945, Roosevelt decided to relax in his beloved Warm Springs. There, on a sunny spring day, he died - according to the official conclusion, from a cerebral hemorrhage. On Thursday, April 12, 1945, at 5:45 p.m., the CBS radio network (Columbia Broadcasting Systems) began broadcasting the popular radio series "The Desert Road" as usual. But almost immediately the broadcast was interrupted by the famous radio commentator John Daly, who, in a voice interrupted by excitement, conveyed a stunning message - President Roosevelt had died.

The book “In Memory of Franklin Roosevelt,” published on April 18, 1945, describes something like this: “Eleanor Roosevelt called Vice President Truman to the White House and herself informed him of her husband’s death. "How can I help?" – Truman asked her. And the widow Roosevelt sadly but firmly objected: “No, how can I help you?” Then the mother informed the children about what had happened: “The President fell asleep forever tonight. He did his duty to the end and would like you to do the same. With love. Mother".

On the morning of April 14, Roosevelt's coffin was delivered to Washington. At the station, he was hoisted onto a gun carriage, covered with the stars and stripes, and seven gray horses drove the funeral chariot through the streets of the capital, crowded with people, to the White House. According to the police, the crowd of people was unprecedented - 300-400 thousand. Combat aircraft patrolled the air above the funeral procession. At 10:45 a.m. the cortege arrived at the White House, eight officers removed the coffin from the carriage and carried it into the building. He was taken to the Eastern Hall, where relatives, friends, associates, and envoys of foreign leaders gathered. They were joined by the new President Truman and the widow of President Wilson. Next to the coffin stood Roosevelt's empty wheelchair - a symbol of the serious illness that caught up with him, but did not defeat him.

At 4 p.m., a minute of silence was declared throughout America, and the Bishop of Washington began the funeral service. After 23 minutes, Mrs. Roosevelt, who stood stoically at her husband’s coffin without shedding a single tear, was the first to leave the hall, followed by the rest. The coffin was placed back on the carriage, and it made its way back to the station and was loaded onto a special train, which departed for Roosevelt's Hyde Park estate at 10 p.m.

The next day, in clear sunny weather, the coffin with the body of the late president was lowered into the grave, the location and design of which he had specified in detail in his will, drawn up back in 1937. The cadets of the West Point Academy fired a three-shot salvo, the band played a funeral march, and the cadets holding the national flag over the grave folded it and gave it to the widow. At 10.00 a cannon salute rang out: a battery placed in the garden near the library fired. The guard of honor froze. Planes flew over the burial. The priest served a short funeral service, and at 10.45 it was all over.”

In general, everything looks decent and decent. However, questions immediately arose about some inconsistencies and inconsistencies. Why, having generously filled the book “In Memory of Franklin Roosevelt” with speeches of various statesmen, journalists and ordinary people, for some reason the compilers did not even name the artist in whose presence Roosevelt allegedly died. There is no medical report on death - the family allegedly considered the cause of death obvious. Nowhere is the opinion of Roosevelt's personal physician, Admiral McIntyre, given. The behavior of people at the funeral also seems very strange, in particular, Roosevelt’s widow, who did not allow the coffin to be opened for farewell.

Here is what was written about the circumstances of the president’s death in Douglas Reed’s book “The Dispute over Zion”: “Despite the long-term illness of the president, the death that overtook Roosevelt at his Warm Springs estate in Georgia, where he was accompanied by Henry Morgenthau, was completely unexpected. The death certificate, signed by one M.D. Brunn of the Bethesda Naval Hospital... stated the cause of death as “cerebral hemorrhage,” as a consequence of “arteriosclerosis.” But American laws, both federal and individual states, require autopsies in cases of unexpected death, especially when it comes to officials, not to mention presidents. In addition, according to American tradition, the bodies of deceased presidents are displayed in an open coffin to bid farewell to them. Following Roosevelt's death, there was no autopsy or display of the body. The president's corpse was transported in a sealed coffin to another of Roosevelt's estates, Hyde Park in New York State, where he was buried. The coffin was accompanied by armed soldiers, who received orders to shoot anyone who tried to open the coffin. After the funeral, the grave in Hyde Park was guarded day and night for several months by armed guards, apparently to prevent possible exhumation."

Already in 1948, E. Josephson’s book “The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt” reported details of the president’s death along with truly sensational, but thoroughly confirmed information from the close circle of the president in whose hands he was. The diagnosis of arteriosclerosis and the stroke allegedly caused by it, signed by a certain Dr. Brunn from the Bethesda Naval Hospital, from whose window on the 16th floor four years later Secretary of Defense Forrestal would “throw himself out,” is completely refuted by the testimony of the president’s personal physician, Vice Admiral Dr. Mack -Intire, who did not accompany Roosevelt to Warm Springs on that fateful day: “Regular examinations of the president showed no signs of sclerosis of the cerebral arteries.”

Josephson is convinced that the reason for preventing the autopsy and exhibition of the body is obvious: according to the testimony of the priest who was in Warm Springs that day, the president was killed by a bullet in the back of the head, most likely an explosive one, which disfigured the entire face as it exited the skull. The president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, explained to everyone that the body was not exhibited by the fact that it allegedly “was not in the custom of the Roosevelt family.” This is categorically not true. After all, the body of Roosevelt's mother Sarah Delano was exhibited for farewell by order of Franklin himself! Forgetting her statement, Eleanor would write years later in the Saturday Evening Post that the day after the burial, their son Jimmy discovered in the safe the personal instructions of the President, which specifically stipulated that, in the event of death, his body should be displayed in Capitol in Washington. She will write that “strangely” all the other posthumous orders of the president, except this one, were carried out to the letter... Incredibly, not only the leaders of the Nazi Reich, holed up underground in the center of burning Berlin, but also the president’s closest associates, with whom he once began “ New Deal,” rejoiced and indulged in copious libations after the death of President Roosevelt. They began to feast already on the funeral train coming from Hyde Park after the burial of the chief. Chief White House correspondent M. Smith writes: “Alcohol flowed like a river in every compartment and every salon. The curtains on the windows were drawn, and from the outside the train looked like any other, carrying mourning guests home. But behind these curtains, Roosevelt's henchmen were having fun in full swing... Waiters rushed along the corridors with trays of spilling glasses. Not being familiar with the audience in the salons, one could mistake them for fans returning home from the football field ... "

The above makes us suspect some kind of mystery associated with the last minutes of Roosevelt’s life and the circumstances that actually forced him to leave this world.

Almost immediately after Roosevelt's death, a version was put forward, which was immediately recognized as ridiculous and implausible.

In February 1945, after the Yalta Conference, the American delegation led by Roosevelt flew to Egypt, where the heavy cruiser Quincy was waiting for it. There, the president met with three leaders of Middle Eastern states: King Farouk of Egypt, Emperor Haile Selasi of Ethiopia and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Roosevelt was amazed by his conversation with the King of Saudi Arabia. By his own admission, he learned more about Palestine from Ibn Saud in five minutes than in his entire life.

Initially, the president was going to convince Ibn Saud to agree to the resettlement of several tens of thousands of restless European Jews expelled from their homes to Palestine. Ibn Saud responded with a categorical refusal, saying that there was “already a heavily armed Palestinian army of Jews, not intending to fight the Germans, but clearly aimed at the Arabs.” Then Roosevelt suddenly made a statement that some historians believe put his life in danger: he guaranteed Ibn Saud that as President of the United States he would never take any action hostile to the Arab people.

The first sign that he had done something wrong and violated some secret condition was the behavior of the president’s closest aide, Harry Hopkins, who had served Franklin faithfully for ten years. The key to this faithful service was the fact that Roosevelt, in the words of Hopkins, "was fully committed - officially, privately and by his own conviction - to promoting Zionism." Hopkins was amazed and shocked by the president's promise. He immediately left the negotiations, locked himself in his cabin and three days later got off in Algiers, informing the President through a third party that he would get to America by another route. After this, their paths with Roosevelt diverged forever. Having previously been the president's devoted shadow, Harry Hopkins never met him again until his death!

But Roosevelt lost his sense of reality. On February 28 he arrived in Washington. On March 28, Ibn Saud sent him a letter in which he confirmed in writing his warnings about the dangerous consequences that would become inevitable if the United States supported the Zionists. On April 5, Roosevelt sent a response to Ibn Saud, confirming the oral version: “As the head of the American government, I will not take any action that could be hostile to the Arab people.” With this, the president signed his own death warrant. A week later he was dead.

Another likely version that explained some of the oddities associated with Roosevelt’s death was the need to preserve family secrets. In 1966, Presidential Aide-de-Camp J. Daniel published a book about Roosevelt’s carefully hidden novel during his lifetime. In 1913, his wife took on a beautiful young woman, Lucy Mercier, as her secretary. Franklin was smitten at first sight. Lucy's beauty captivated him. When their connection was discovered, Franklin was ready to leave his family and start his life anew with his beloved. But Roosevelt’s mother prevented this, threatening to deprive her son of financial support in this case. And Lucy was probably afraid to connect her life with the father of five children. In 1920, she got married, and the Roosevelts’ life seemed to be gradually getting better.

But few were aware that the passionate romance did not end in 1920. Arriving in Warm Springs after the death of her husband, Eleanor immediately came across facts that had nothing in common with what was subsequently told to journalists and the public...

Going to rest in his beloved Warm Springs, Roosevelt, as usual, invited Lucy, and she took with her her friend, the artist Elizaveta Shumatova. The reason was the president’s desire to present his portrait to his daughter Lucy. Knowing how busy the president’s schedule was, the prudent Shumatova took with her a photographer, Russian emigrant N. Robbins.

April 12 was no different from ordinary days. There were no signs of tragedy. The artist painted a portrait of Franklin. They were getting ready to have breakfast, and Roosevelt reminded Shumatova: “We have fifteen minutes left.” I lit a cigarette. Suddenly he rubbed his forehead and neck. He jerked his head. He complained: “I have a terrible headache,” and lost consciousness. Two hours later, without regaining consciousness, he died. Eleanor Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs, where the shocking truth was revealed to her - all these years, the hated Lucy had been invisibly next to her husband...

So how did Franklin Delano Roosevelt end his life? There are many guesses, but the truth remains hidden. Will we ever recognize it or will the mystery of the death of this great man remain unsolved, beckoning and bewitching new generations from the depths of a bygone century with its apparent simplicity and inaccessibility...