Changes

[[Image:Dcrosmor.jpg|right|thumb|330px]]

[[Image:Dcrosmor.jpg|right|thumb|330px]]

It is highly questionable whether FDR would have chosen to run for a third term had the [[Nazis]] not experienced such great success early in World War II, particularly in overrunning [[France]], which had been expected to hold out longer.  Historian [[Doris Kearns Goodwin]] has explored the implications of triumphant Nazism for FDR's decision in her book ''No Ordinary Time''.  While FDR had inaugurated the first system of peacetime [[conscription]] just after France fell, Congress had agreed to conscript men for one year only, and the frontrunner for the [[Republican]] Presidential nomination in 1940, [[Wendell Willkie]], was an isolationist.  It was therefore entirely possible that both conscription and the war would end in 1941 with the Nazis in control of all [[Western Europe]] except for [[Britain]], which would be dangerously isolated.  FDR's [[Democratic]] [[heir apparent]], [[Vice President]] [[John Nance Garner]] of [[Texas]], was at best lukewarm on both the war and the [[New Deal]].  To avoid this outcome, FDR probably decided to enter the war at the same time he decided to run again, although he was politically unable to do so until the [[Japanese]] attacked [[Pearl Harbor]] in December 1941.

As the election of 1940 approached FDR considered several candidates to replace him.  Among the names Democratic National Committee Chairman [[James Farley]], whom FDR rejected because he was [[Roman Catholic]]. <ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948, Book 1, Ch. 6, http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Seven___The_Third_Term.htm  The Third Term].</ref> It is highly questionable whether FDR would have chosen to run for a third term had the [[Nazis]] not experienced such great success early in World War II, particularly in overrunning [[France]], which had been expected to hold out longer.  Historian [[Doris Kearns Goodwin]] has explored the implications of triumphant Nazism for FDR's decision in her book ''No Ordinary Time''.  While FDR had inaugurated the first system of peacetime [[conscription]] just after France fell, Congress had agreed to conscript men for one year only, and the frontrunner for the [[Republican]] Presidential nomination in 1940, [[Wendell Willkie]], was an isolationist.  It was therefore entirely possible that both conscription and the war would end in 1941 with the Nazis in control of all [[Western Europe]] except for [[Britain]], which would be dangerously isolated.  FDR's [[Democratic]] [[heir apparent]], [[Vice President]] [[John Nance Garner]] of [[Texas]], was at best lukewarm on both the war and the [[New Deal]].  To avoid this outcome, FDR probably decided to enter the war at the same time he decided to run again, although he was politically unable to do so until the [[Japanese]] attacked [[Pearl Harbor]] in December 1941.

 

== Fourth Term ==

== Fourth Term ==