Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Franklin D. Roosevelt
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32nd President of the United States
Term of office March 4, 1933 - April 12, 1945
Political party	Democratic
Vice Presidents	John N. Garner (1933-1941) Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945) Harry Truman (1945)
Preceded by	Herbert Hoover
Succeeded by	Harry Truman
Born	January 30, 1882 Hyde Park, New York
Died	April 12, 1945 Warm Springs, Georgia
Spouse	Eleanor Roosevelt
Religion	Episcopalian

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States of America, following Herbert Hoover and preceding Harry Truman. Roosevelt was a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected four times and served a few months longer than 3 terms, from 1933-1945, the longest any one man has been president of the United States. He was elected amidst the uncertainty of the Great Depression.

On April 12, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage, due partly to the crippling disease, poliomyelitis, which physically disabled him during his presidency.

Although Mr. Roosevelt was very popular in his time, it has been argued by scholars and analysts then and now that many New Deal relief efforts actually helped to prolong the Great Depression. Mr. Roosevelt started the second wave of the massive expansion of the Federal Government and greatly increased American foreign aid. Some of these policies were viewed as necessary due to the incredibly high level of unemployment in the 1930s and later US involvement in WWII..

Reflections on Christianity

Franklin D. Roosevelt, commonly known as "FDR", said this about the Bible in an address on October 6, 1935:

• "We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic."

• "Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity."

FDR became famous for delivering "fireside chats" over the new medium of radio, and on March 9, 1937 he declared:

• "I hope that you have re-read the Constitution of the United States in these past few weeks. Like the Bible, it ought to be read again and again."

As World War II broke out in Europe, FDR warned:

• "Those forces hate Democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization."

First Term

On November 16, 1933, when the Roosevelt administration granted diplomatic recognition to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union pledged itself to refrain "from interfering in any manner in the internal affairs of the United States." That occurred three weeks after the founding of the Comintern affiliated American League for Peace and Democracy. Other Comintern affiliates sprung up in the ensuing years, including the American Youth Congress in 1934 and the League of American Writers in 1935. NKVD officers traveled the country in the guise of diplomatic and consular officials, conducting espionage activities freely and offering bribes. On 28 February 1934 Elliott Roosevelt, son of the President, and Anthony Fokker each received half a million dollars for selling fifty military aircraft to the Soviet government.

Harold Ware was a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) official in the federal government who founded the Washington D.C. group of United States government employees belonging to the underground network called the Ware group. The group had about 75 members in 1934 and was divided into about eight cells. The Ware group initially consisted of young lawyers and economists hired by the newly created Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), a New Deal agency later found unconstitutional that reported to the Secretary of Agriculture but was independent of the Department of Agriculture bureaucracy. Alger Hiss, Lee Pressman, John Abt, Charles Kramer, Nathan Witt, Henry Collins, George Silverman, Marion Bachrach, John Herrmann, Nathaniel Weyl, Donald Hiss and Victor Perlo were all members. Harry Dexter White, who became Director of the Division of Monetary Research in the Treasury Department, also was affiliated with the group. The Ware group was the CPUSA's covert arm. Each of these agents not only provided classified documents to Soviet intelligence, but was involved in political influence operations as well.

By 1935 membership in labor unions had sunk to a low figure as a result of the depression. There were men around the President at this time that saw the tremendous possibilities of organizing labor as a political force. An industrial union is one in which all the people engaged in a single industry are included without regard to the type of skills at which they work. The industrial union was the one great instrument by which all labor could be organized and the President was urged to promote this idea as the starting point in building up a powerful political labor movement. There were three large industrial unions at that time, John L. Lewis’s United Mine Workers (UMW), the International Ladies Garment Workers Union of David Dubinsky and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of Sidney Hillman.

Roosevelt tried to sell the plan to John L. Lewis of the UMW, and William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.). Green and the A. F. of L. opposed the idea of industrial unions and refused, but under the leadership of Lewis, a new group of unions was formed called the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The year 1936 was a period of furious organizing work by it among the unskilled workers of the country. As Lewis, Dubinsky, and Hillman set about organizing millions of workers they were immediately up against the problem of finding skilled organizers to promote and manage the new unions.

There had been in the United States a Communist labor organization known as the Trade Union Unity League which took its instructions directly from Moscow. It is estimated that ten or fifteen thousand Communists were in these unions. In 1934, Moscow directed the Communist party in the United States to dissolve the Trade Union Unity League unions and to march the members of those unions into the American Federation of Labor. The purpose was not to advance the cause of labor unions or to get better working conditions for the members, but to use the apparatus of the labor union as an instrument of revolution. The Communist leaders saw in the rise of the CIO a better opportunity for their own revolutionary objectives than in the A. F. of L. and instructed their members to withdraw from the A. F. of L. and go into the CIO.

Lewis was interested in bringing into existence industrial unions like his own, in which he had always believed. Roosevelt was interested in bringing into American labor unions as many voters as possible and in capturing their leadership to be used to build up a powerful labor faction which could control the Democratic party and which he and his allies could control through the vast power of the government and the vast powers of the labor leaders, along with the immense financial resources that so great a labor movement would have. The Communists were interested in getting into key positions as union officers, statisticians, economists, etc., in order to utilize the apparatus of the unions to promote the cause of revolution.

Second Term

“

Planning will become a function of the federal government; either that or the planning agency will supersede the government, which is why, of course, such a scheme will be assimilated to the State.

”

On August 13, 1938, John P. Frey, president of the Metal Trades Department of the AFL, appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Frey, in a presentation lasting several days, laid before the Committee a completely documented account of the penetration of the CIO by the Communist Party. He gave the names of 280 organizers in CIO unions under salary who were members of the Communist Party. He charged that John Brophy who was the director of the CIO, was expelled by the United Mine Workers some years before for disloyal activities and while he was not directly a member of the Communist Party, he was assisted in his work by two active members of the Party. He had gone to Russia as a member of a delegation sponsored by the Party and approved by Moscow and when he returned the UMW accused him of being a paid agent of the Soviet government. Brophy at a meeting said that the condition of workers in the Soviet Union "should be a source of inspiration to workers in America."

Frey named union after union in the CIO, giving names of the Communists who were holding positions of leadership and trust. He charged, for instance, that they dominated the United Office and Professional Workers Union, that the president of that organization was a member of the Communist Party and through that organization they had infiltrated the government with numerous Party members in almost all the bureaus in Washington.

Third Term

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

Had FDR chosen not to run in 1940, he would quite likely have lived longer (the impact of the presidency on its occupants' health is infamous, and FDR eventually confided at least to his wife Eleanor Roosevelt that he wished to live beyond his term). The 22nd Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, if any, would have dealt with something besides term limitation of the President. FDR's reputation would, however, have been determined by the same factors that determined it in real life: the outcome of World War II, the ability of his party to cement its majority, and in the short term, the willingness of his successor to follow his policies. One of these, the close alliance with the Soviet Union, was repudiated almost immediately by Truman, and as a result, Roosevelt is remembered by conservatives as at best a qualified success. A Republican 33rd President, however, would most likely have appointed anti-New Deal Justices to the U. S. Supreme Court (particularly had he been elected in 1940), with the result that Roosevelt today would be roundly condemned as a demagogue, notwithstanding his decision to respect George Washington's two-term precedent. Since the Republicans did not actually retake the White House until the 1952 Presidential election (and then through a candidate who was perceived as being above politics), the New Deal had time to be embraced by a new generation of politicians and constitutional scholars of both parties, although not universally (see Constitution in exile movement). This may have been an equally important factor in Roosevelt's decision. Strom Thurmond was a supporter of the President's decision to seek a fourth term, and referred to Roosevelt as having been the world’s greatest leader.

Wartime record

The following year, on May 27, 1941, FDR stated in one of his radio addresses:

The Nazis are as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God.

At the most difficult point in the War, when American boys were landing on the beaches of Normandy, FDR led the nation in prayer publicly during a radio broadcast.

"In his second inaugural address, FDR pledged to do his utmost by 'seeking Divine guidance.' He took that mission further on January 25, 1941, when he wrote a personal prologue to a special edition of the New Testament, which was distributed to millions of U.S. soldiers. 'As Commander-in-Chief,' Roosevelt wrote, 'I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States.' He believed that all American soldiers should have the opportunity to read the words of Christ in preparing for battle. Once, when joining those soldiers aboard a warship with Winston Churchill, FDR asked the crew and prime minister to join him in singing the hymn 'Onward Christian Soldiers.' In his final inaugural address, FDR affirmed, "So we pray to Him for the vision to see our way clearly ... to achievement of His will.' "

Handicap

Although FDR had difficulty walking and spent most of his time in a wheelchair, filmed images of his speeches hid this fact by focusing on his body from the waist up.

Recovery

FDR is also famous for his New Deal, a set of economic planning reforms that were meant to bring about the end of the Great Depression, but instead may have prolonged it and caused American citizens to be burdened with unnecessary government programs for decades to come.

In 1934, a Congressional Investigation was held to examine statements Dr. William A. Wirt, who headed the U.S. Office of Education in the early days of the New Deal. Dr. Wirt attended a meeting of his secretary, Alice Barrows a year earlier. Barrows had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States since 1919, the same year she began working for the Office of Education. The "Wirt Incident" was widely reported and provoked much controversy. Barrows and several other government employees revealed to Wirt they were members of the Communist party. Wirt testified,

“

I was told they believe that by thwarting our then evident economic recovery, they would be able to prolong the country’s destitution until they had demonstrated to the American people that the Government must operate business and commerce. By propaganda, they would destroy institutions making long term capital loans—and then push Uncle Sam into making these loans. Once Uncle Sam becomes our financier, he must also follow his money with control and management.

”

A June 1945 Venona project decryption of Soviet KGB wartime cables from the Washington D.C. KGB Office to Moscow's Eighth Department, the political intelligence wing, relayed information on matters regarding Attorney General Francis Biddle. KGB agent Charles Kramer, who served on the staff of several U.S. Senate Subcommittees, and Barrows are the sources of the information. Mary Van Kleek who headed the Russell Sage Foundation and also served on the Board of the National Council, visited Washington weekly to meet with Barrows and Nathan Gregory Silvermaster.

During World War II Barrows was the Executive Secretary of the the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. The organization Barrows served as Director was declared in 1953 to be a Communist front organization by the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB). In its Findings of Fact, the SACB said the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship,

“

advances positions...markedly pro-Soviet and...anti-United States Government...is a Communist-action organization which has as its primary purpose to advance the objectives of the world Communist movement under the hegemony of the Soviet Union; it has the policy to support and defend the Soviet Union under any and all circumstances...We conclude that the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, Inc., is substantially directed, dominated, and controlled by the Communist Party of the United States...and is primarily operated for the purpose of giving aid and support to...the Soviet Union, a Communist foreign government."

”

See also

• New Ordeal
• Harry Hopkins

External Links

• "The Mythology of Roosevelt and the New Deal," by Robert Higgs
• Great Depression
• "On the Brink of World War II: Justus Doenecke’s Storm on the Horizon," by Ralph Raico
• "Government and the Economy: The World Wars," by Robert Higgs
• "How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century," by Robert Higgs
• Depression, War and Cold War, by Robert Higgs
• "Wartime Prosperity?", by Robert Higgs
• Pearl Harbor
• FDR: The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Ralph Raico, Future of Freedom Foundation, April 1, 2001. Retreived from The Independent Institute.org 06/17/07.