Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as president from 1933 until his death in April 1945, winning four elections. A former New York governor and assistant secretary of the navy, he entered office amid the Great Depression and later directed American participation in the Second World War. His administration greatly expanded federal economic responsibilities and the United States’ role in international security. ¹

The New Deal sought relief, recovery, and reform through banking stabilization, public employment, agricultural programs, labor protections, and Social Security. Its measures transformed expectations of federal responsibility but did not fully end the Depression before wartime mobilization. Many programs accommodated racial exclusion, and Roosevelt avoided a direct confrontation with the southern Democrats whose votes supported much of his agenda. ³

In foreign affairs, Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union in 1933, pursued reciprocal trade agreements, and adopted the Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America. As Germany and Japan expanded, he moved from neutrality toward assistance to Britain and China. Lend-Lease in 1941 supplied countries whose defense he considered essential to American security. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war brought the United States fully into the conflict. ²

Roosevelt worked with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to defeat the Axis while managing disagreement over strategy and the postwar settlement. American industrial mobilization supplied Allied forces, and summit diplomacy addressed military coordination and the future of Europe. He promoted the United Nations and supported the economic arrangements developed at Bretton Woods. He died before the United Nations conference opened and before victory in Europe or Asia. ^{2, 4}

Wartime policy also included the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066, a grave violation of civil liberties. Roosevelt’s administration retained restrictive immigration policies that limited refuge for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. In January 1944, he established the War Refugee Board, which undertook rescue and relief measures during the final stages of the war. Roosevelt and other Allied leaders treated military victory as the principal means of ending Nazi persecution, rather than making rescue a separate central military objective. ^{3, 1, 5}