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| − | '''Franklin Delano Roosevelt''' was the 32nd [[President of the United States of America]] 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]]. | + | '''Franklin Delano Roosevelt''' was the 32nd [[President of the United States of America]] 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]]. He is widely considered one of the greatest presidents. |
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| − | On April 12, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage, due partly to the crippling [[disease]], [[polio]]myelitis, which physically disabled him during his presidency.<ref>http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/fr32.html</ref>
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| − | Although Mr. Roosevelt was very popular at first, 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 controversially coupled with persistent high level of unemployment in the 1930s as a result and later US involvement in WWII.<ref>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/32_f_roosevelt/printable.html</ref>
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| − | From his second term on the people were told that Roosevelt was the only man who could keep the US out of war; later that he was the only man who could successfully fight the war which he alone could keep the US out of; then that he was the only man who was capable of facing [[Josef Stalin]] on equal terms; and finally the only man who could guarantee against the ruthlessness of Stalin in the post-war era.
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| − | ==Early life==
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| − | Franklin Roosevelt studied law at Columbia University where he failed to graduate. Secretary of Labor [[Frances Perkins]], the first woman ever appointed to a cabinet post and knew FDR from his early manhood up to his death, says he was not a student, that he knew nothing of economics and that he admitted he had never read a book on the subject. <ref>''The Roosevelt I Knew,'' Frances Perkins, New York, Viking Press, 1946. p. 34.</ref>
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| − | == Election of 1932 ==
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| − | {{stub|section}}
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| − | The Democrats made Government expansion under the Hoover administration an issue in the campaign of 1932, charging that Hoover was promoting socialism. After Roosevelt had taken office, former Democratic New York Governor Al Smith, saw Roosevelt's ultimately expansive policies as a betrayal of the true ideals of the Democratic party and supported Republican candidates in subsequent elections.
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| − | While the Democrats were damning Hoover as a big spender, at the same time he was refusing to be drawn into big spending, the Democratic House passed a bill appropriating $1,500,000,000 for old-fashioned [[pork-barrel]] outlays.
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| − | Roosevelt won a lanside victory in the presidential election of 1932, winning 472 electoral votes (nearly 90% of the total) and 22,800,000 popular votes (57% of the total) to defeat incumbent president Herbert Hoover.<ref>1932 Presidential Election Results http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?f=0&year=1932</ref> He was running primarily on the platform that he would help the country recover from the Great Depression with his New Deal.
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| − | == First Term ==
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| − | ===Foreign policy===
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| − | On November 16, 1933, when the Roosevelt administration granted diplomatic recognition to the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]], the USSR pledged itself to refrain "from interfering in any manner in the internal affairs of the United States." This occurred three weeks after the founding of the [[Comintern]] affiliated [[American League for Peace and Democracy]]. The process of Communist “influence” in American life was accelerated. This “influence,” as described by [[Communist party]] defector [[Louis Budenz]], was to “infiltrate key government posts, undermine the patriotism of wellmeaning people in strategic or confidential positions, and win over those whose words, spoken and written, have an effect on American [[public opinion]];” it was checked “partially during the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact|Hitler-Stalin alliance]], it went all out in the course of the [[Second World War]]."<ref>Men Without Faces, The Communist Conspiracy in the U. S. A., By Louis Budenz,New York Harper & Brothers, 1950, [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=//PDFsml_AD/Men_Without_Faces-Louis_Francis_Budenz-1950-315pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=238&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 pg. 2] pdf.</ref>
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| − | Numerous [[Attorney General's list|Comintern affiliate]] organizations sprung up in the ensuing years, including the [[American Youth Congress]] in 1934 and the [[League of American Writers]] in 1935. [[KGB]] officers traveled the country in the guise of diplomatic and consular officials, conducting [[espionage]] activities <ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/10.gif Anonymous letter to Hoover], undated (received 7 August 1943), National Security Agency Venona Collection. "[[SEMENOV]] works in AMTORG, is robbing the whole of the war industry in America. SEMENOV has his agents in all the industrial towns of the U.S.A., in all aviation and chemical war factories and in big industries."</ref> freely and offering bribes.
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| − | On February 28, 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. <ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,756770-2,00.html ''Son's Scheme''], Time magazine, Oct. 19, 1936,</ref>
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| − | ===New Deal===
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| − | :''For Main Article see '''[[New Deal]].'''''
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| − | [[Image:Flatgrowth.JPG|thumb|300px|right|Real Output and Growth remained stagnant throughout the New Deal largely due to government interference. The Depression came back with a vengence in 1937-1938 because of the [[economic planner]]s over emphasis on consumption, and de-emphasis and persecution of producers--the people who make the economy work. <br>''Source:New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression.''<ref>''New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis, ''Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, Journal of Political Economy, volume 112 (2004), pages 779–816.</ref>]]
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| − | FDR is also famous for his [[New Deal]], a set of [[economic planning]] experiments that were meant to bring about the end of the [[Great Depression]], but instead prolonged it and caused American citizens to be burdened with unnecessary government programs for decades to come. [[Economic growth]] was negligible to non-existent, and what growth did occur was consumed by an every swelling bureaucracy.
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| − | Enforcement of the [[Anti-trust Act]] was considered as an essential instrument to prevent [[cartel]]s and trusts in restraint of trade which had been viewed as deadly to the system of [[free enterprise]]. On the campaign trail Roosevelt called loudly for its strict enforcement. Yet immediately upon Roosevelt's accession to office the Anti-trust Act was suspended in order to cartelize every industry in America on the Italian [[fascist]] corporative model. <ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948, Book 1, Chapter 4, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/cgi-bin/framed/2767/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Four___The_New_New_Deal.htm ''The New New Deal''].</ref> The National Recovery Act (NRA) and the [[Agricultural Adjustment Act]] (AAA) were plans to take the whole industrial and agricultural life of the country under the wing of the government, organize it into vast farm and industrial cartels, as they were called in Germany, corporatives as they were called in Italy, and operate business and farms by economic planning schemes dictated and carried out under the supervision of government. This is, in fact, the essence of [[fascism]]. In those days fascism was not defined as [[anti-Semitism]]. <ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', Book 1, Chapter 7, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Seven___An_Enemy_Is_Welc.htm ''An Enemy Is Welcomed''], Flynn, 1948.</ref>
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| − | The AAA reported to the Secretary of Agriculture but was independent of the Department of Agriculture bureaucracy. [[Harold Ware]] was a [[Communist Party USA]] (CPUSA) official in the AAA and founded the [[Ware group]]. The group consisted of young lawyers and economists, had about 75 members in 1934 and was divided into about eight cells. The AAA was later found [[unconstitutional]], but by that time the Communist operatives had established jobs in government employment. [[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 of the Ware group. [[Harry Dexter White]], who was involved in the most auspicious policy [[subversion (political)|subversion]] as Director of the Division of Monetary Research in the [[Treasury Department]], was also affiliated with the group. The Ware group was the CPUSA's covert arm at this time. Each of these agents not only provided classified documents to Soviet intelligence, but was involved in political influence operations as well.
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| − | In 1934, a Congressional Investigation was held to examine statements by Dr. William A. Wirt, who headed the U.S. [[Department of Education|Office of Education]]. Dr. Wirt had attended a dinner party with several Brain Trusters at the home of his secretary, [[Alice Barrows]]. Barrows began working for the Office of Education in 1919 and was secretly a member of the [[Communist Party of the United States]] (CPUSA) which advocated the violent overthrow of the United States Constitution. Several of the Brain Trusters present at the dinner revealed to Wirt they were CPUSA members. Wirt testified,
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| − | {{Cquote|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. <ref>Hearings, House Select Committee To Investigate Certain Statements of Dr. William Wirt, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, April 10 and 17, 1934. </ref><ref>''Dr Wirt faces the cameras and tells all'', Literary Digest v. 117 (April 21 1934) p. 7.</ref><ref>FBI Silvermaster file [http://education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster053.pdf Volume 53 June 1946], p. 78 pdf.</ref>}}
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| − | 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. <ref>Venona 3706 KGB Washington to Moscow, 29 June 1945.</ref> 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 [[Greg Silvermaster|Nathan Gregory Silvermaster]].
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| − | During [[World War II]] Barrows was the Executive Secretary of the the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. This organization was declared in 1953 to be a [[Glossary_of_espionage_terms#Fronts_and_cutouts|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,
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| − | {{Cquote|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." <ref>United States. Subversive Activities Control Board. [http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=usfexec;cc=usfexec;q1=Barrows;rgn=full%20text;idno=81242.0001.001;didno=81242.0001.001;view=image;seq=511;page=root;size=s;endseq=3;frm=frameset Reports of the Subversive Activities Control Board.] Washington. United States Government Printing Office. 1966. Vol. 1, p. 501.</ref>}}
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| − | ====Civilian Conservation Corps====
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| − | :''Main article [[Civilian Conservation Corps]]''
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| − | Soon after President Roosevelt's inauguration in March 1933, he announced the establishment of the CCC camps to take the boys off the street corners and out of the transient camps and to get money for their families. Of the New Deal innovations, perhaps the most generally applauded was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), adapted from German predecessors. That was a year after Hitler had coordinated all work camps under [[Nazi]] leadership. In 1934 the German university student organization voted that the work camps should be compulsory before matriculation and in 1935, Hitler decreed that the work camps be compulsory for both sexes. That same plan under the prompting of [[Harry Hopkins]] was announced by Roosevelt. <ref>''Getting Us into War'', Porter Sargent Publisher: P. Sargent, Boston, 1941. [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Getting_Us_Into_War-Porter_Sargent-1941-640pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=218&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 In the Footsteps of Hitler], pg. 492 pdf</ref> Ralph Ingersoll's ''PM'' newspaper reported the President's statement that training in the conscript camps will remove those elements in the thinking of youth which makes them "critical of their elders." <ref>''PM'', June 20, 1940. "that training in the conscript camps will remove those elements in the thinking of our youth which makes them 'critical of their elders'...We should hold little hope for the future of any nation whose young people had ceased to be critical of their elders."</ref><ref>''American Youth'', Kenneth Holland, Harvard University Press, 1940, pg. 103. "As the camps and resident centers are established on a permanent basis they should be carefully integrated with educational, vocational, employment and adjustment activities of institutions already in existence. It is to be hoped that established schools and other training institutions in the United States will see in the [[labor camp]]s a new technique for providing youth with practical experience better adapted to its needs and interests than the present academic school courses."</ref>
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| − | ===Social Security===
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| − | An Old Age Social Security Bill was passed during his first term which provided for workers who reach the age of 65 a pension of $8 a week at most. The plan had to be pushed through against his procrastination until finally in the 1934 congressional elections the Republicans denounced him for his tardiness. When he did finally consent to a bill, it contained a plan for building a huge reserve fund that would extract billions from the workers' payrolls without any adequate return. Over the protest of the President, the Congress finally took that provision proposed by Roosevelt out of the law. <ref> ''Roosevelt Myth'', Book 3, Chapter 14, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Fifteen___The_Roosevelt_.htm ''The Roosevelt Myth''], John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948.</ref>
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| − | ===Taxation===
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| − | FDR, in a letter to journalist Roy W. Howard, wrote,
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| − | :"What is known as consumer taxes, namely the invisible taxes paid by people in every walk of life, fall relatively much more heavily upon the poor man than on the rich man." <ref>Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Roy W. Howard, September 2, 1935. </ref>
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| − | [[Robert H. Jackson]], then serving as [[Internal Revenue Service]] General Counsel, observed in Congressional testimony that prior to FDR’s election, "we find those taxes bearing most heavily on the well-to-do contributed 68% per cent of the government's total internal revenue and customs receipts, while miscellaneous taxes and customs receipts, bearing most heavily upon the consumer contributed only 31.8%” By 1935 the situation was reversed with “taxes based on ability to pay contributed 38.7% . . . there has been an increase in the proportion of revenues contributed by taxes on consumption to 61.3%."<ref>Testimony of Robert Jackson, Assistant General Counsel, Treasury Department, Committee on Finance, U . S. Senate, August 6, 1985.</ref>
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| − | ===Economic growth===
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| − | New capital made available for investment amounted to $348,000,000 in 1935. This was less than 1/10th of the amount available in 1929. By contrast, the British economy had nearly recovered to its 1929 levels by 1935, and the amount available for investment was almost twice as much as the United States.
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| − | {| style="background:white; color:blue" border="1" class="wikitable"
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| − | ! Year
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| − | ! United States <ref>Standard Statistics Co., ''New Honey for Operating and Producing.''</ref>
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| − | ! Great Britain <ref>Midland Bank, London, ''New Issues for British Companies,'' converted from £ to $ at $4.8665.</ref>
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| − | | 1927
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| − | | $3,201,000,000
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| − | | $710,509,000
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| − | | 1928
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| − | | 3,062,000,000
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| − | | 983,033,000
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| − | |-
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| − | | 1929
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| − | | 3,668,000,000
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| − | | 759,174,000
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| − | |-
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| − | | 1930
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| − | | 3,039,000,000
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| − | | 394,186,500
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| − | |-
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| − | | 1931
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| − | | 1,006,000,000
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| − | | 155,728,000
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| − | |-
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| − | | 1932
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| − | | 321,000,000
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| − | | 248,191,500
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| − | |-
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| − | | 1933
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| − | | 177,000,000
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| − | | 296,856,500
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| − | |-
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| − | | 1934
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| − | | 356,000,000
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| − | | 350,388,000
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| − | |-
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| − | | 1935
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| − | | 348,000,000
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| − | | 666,710,500
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| − | |-
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| − | |}
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| − | ===Congress of Industrial Organizations===
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| − | By 1935 membership in labor unions had sunk to a low figure as a result of [[unemployment]]. 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]].
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| − | Roosevelt tried to sell the plan to John L. Lewis of the UMW, and William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Green and the AFL 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 Comintern directed [[Lee Pressman]] <ref>FBI Report, [http://education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster082.pdf Underground Soviet Espionage (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government], October 21, 1946, United States Government, pgs. 298 - 300 pdf. "Leon Pressman, alias Lee Pressman, served as General Counsel for the [[Agricultural Adjustment Administration]] from 1933 to 1935; in 1935 he was appointed General Counsel for the [[Works Progress Administration]]. In 1937 he was appointed to the General Counsel for the National [[Congress of Industrial Organizations]] (CIO). Pressman was also associated with various Communist front organizations. Pressman was a known contact of [[Anatoly Gorsky]], New York [[KGB]] Rezident, and KGB Agents [[Alger Hiss]] and [[Harry Dexter White]]. </ref> of the [[Ware group]] to assume the position of general counsel<ref>FBI Silvermaster file, [http://education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster132.pdf Vol. 132, pg. 109] pdf. "Pressman is said to have run arms to Spain during the Civil War via Mexico and to have worked with General Mark Moren in the project. Moren was involved in the [[Rubens Robinson]] passport case in 1938." See also Underground Espionage Agent, Adolf Berle notes, September 2, 1939. [http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page100.html]</ref><ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789421,00.html ''32,000 & Mrs. Rubens''], Time magazine, Feb. 07, 1938. "In the first years of the Soviet Union, to escape from Russia was difficult and dangerous. Today it has become almost impossible, an attempt tantamount to suicide. Barbed and electrically charged wire, searchlight-equipped watch towers. 24-hour frontier patrols aided by bloodhounds and police dogs guard every mile of border. .... Weak from [[scurvy]] and [[dysentery]], Konarski told correspondents: 'The camp contains about 32,000 prisoners. They are kept there until [[death]] results from hard work, bad food and consequent sickness. I met two [[American citizen]]s in the camp, Arthur Hanley, a chemical engineer from California, and Edward Rose, a machinist from Boston, Mass. They said they came to Russia in 1921 as volunteer workers. Rose said he was [[arrest]]ed in Leningrad in 1923. Hanley was caught trying to escape from Russia to Latvia in 1925. Each was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, but, although they have served out their sentences, they are still being held. They told me they know of three other native-born Americans who are held prisoner in other Soviet camps.'...Mrs. Ruth Marie Rubens (alias Robinson), one U. S. citizen officially known to be in jail in Moscow (TIME, Dec. 27 [1938]). In Moscow on December 9 able, active U. S. Charge d'Affaires Loy W. Henderson learned that Mrs. Rubens had "disappeared"' from the big Hotel National next door to the U.S. Embassy. On January 18 the Soviet Foreign Office finally admitted that Mrs. Rubens was under arrest, failed to say on what charge.... hundreds of Germans are today in Soviet jails and for years German diplomatic & consular officials have not been allowed to see them."</ref> where he became known as "Comrade Big." 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.
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| − | 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 AFL and instructed their members to withdraw from the AFL and go into the CIO where they achieved disproportionate influence. <ref>''The Soviet World of American Communism'', Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, Yale University Press, 1998, Document 13, pp. 58-68. ISBN 0-300-07150-7. </ref>
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| − | 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 build 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 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. By the early part of 1938, over three million workers had been organized. Lewis was later to split with FDR. <ref>''Communists and the CIO: From the Soviet archives'', Harvey Klehr and John E. Haynes, Labor History, Volume 35, Issue 3 Summer 1994 , pages 442 - 446. [http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a772103056~db=all?tab=references]</ref><ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,788129-4,00.html ''Turning Point?''], Time magazine, Monday, Jul. 12, 1937.</ref>
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| − | == Second Term ==
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| − | {{Cquote|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. <ref>''The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez Faire,'' Rexford G. Tugwell, The American Economic Review, vol. 22, no. 1, March 1932. [http://www.bartleby.com/73/147.html]</ref>}}
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| − | 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 complete documented account of CPUSA penetration of the CIO. He gave the names of 280 organizers in CIO unions under salary who were CPUSA members. 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 CPUSA member, 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."
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| − | 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 CPUSA member and through that organization they had infiltrated the government with numerous Party members in almost all the bureaus in Washington.
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| − | [[Thomas Corcoran]] <ref>After World War II Corcoran employed Soviet agent [[Duncan Lee]] in his Washington law firm, Corcoran and Youngman. FBI Silvermaster file biographical details on [[Duncan C. Lee]], [[Elizabeth Bentley]]'s allegations concerning him, his contacts with [[Donald Wheeler]] and [[Mary Price]], [http://education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster092.pdf Vol. 92, pgs. 20 - 21] pdf, January 26, 1947. On June 6 1945, 6 persons, including U.S. government officials [[Andrew Roth]] and [[John Stewart Service]], were arrested on [[conspiracy]] and [[espionage]] charges related to possession of roughly 1000 stolen classified Government documents in the offices of ''[[Amerasia]]'' magazine. ''Amerasia'', edited by [[Philip J. Jaffe]], had published classified materials verbatim from the United States wartime intelligence service, the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS). ''Amerasia's'' chief financial benefactor was [[Frederick V. Field]]. [[Joseph Milton Bernstein]], a [[GRU]] contact between Soviet agents in the OSS and the [[Board of Economic Warfare]], was also an employee. Others connected with the ''Amerasia'' scandal were [[T.A. Bisson]] and [[Owen Lattimore]]. Corcoran worked with the [[Truman administration]] to cover up the scandal.</ref> moved from the [[Reconstruction Finance Corporation]] to the White House and was instrumental in securing numerous appointments for friends and colleagues to [[New Deal]] agencies. Eventually he was pushed out in favor of [[Harry Hopkins]] for the position of Roosevelt's right-hand man.
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| − | ===Court packing plan===
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| − | Tommy Corcoran was given the task by Roosevelt to persuade Congress to pass the proposed legislation. [[I. F. Stone]] of the ''New York Post'', who later was to agree to work for the [[KGB]], wrote speeches for Corcoran on this issue.
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| − | ===Crash of 1937===
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| − | When FDR was inaugurated for his second term [[national income]], [[payroll]]s, and [[industrial production]] <ref>League of Nations Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, June, 1936. Percentage change 1929 to March 1936, United States -21.8%, rank number 13.</ref> were still 20 per cent below the 1929 figure and construction was still only about one third what it had been in 1929. By June, 1937 the Treasury boasted relief payments were less than in the same period the preceding year. But this was not so. The Treasury made a practice of cooking the books and producing phony numbers. It merely shifted relief payments to other accounts. They were, in fact, larger than the year before. Stock prices declined and by September the reality could be no longer hidden. By the end of October the market crashed. The budget was running a [[deficit]] at the time $300,000,000 a month.
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| − | [[Robert H. Jackson]], Assistant Attorney General, and Secretary of the Interior [[Harold Ickes]] in December made speeches inspired by the President on the [[conspiratorial]] ''America's 60 Families.'' <ref>''New Deal Chorus'', Time magazine, [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758849-1,00.html pg. 1][http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758849-2,00.html pg. 2], Jan. 17, 1938.</ref> In January, John D. Biggers staggered the administration with a report Roosevelt had commissioned that stated there were 10,870,000 people out of work. <ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758790,00.html ''Two Schemes''], Time magazine, Jan. 10, 1938.</ref> Roosevelt realized that all the “pump priming” and spending $17 billion had failed. Despite the billions added to the debt, the Depression was back. He was now at the center of a tug-of-war with advocates of spending like [[Harry Hopkins]], [[Leon Henderson]] and [[Rex Tugwell]] on one side, and opponents like [[Henry Morgenthau]] on the other. DNC Chairman [[Jim Farley]] reports he had a talk on the subject with Roosevelt on March 28, 1938.
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| − | FDR told Farley he would have "to go in for pump priming or relief," then Roosevelt confessed to a difficulty that is little understood: what could he spend on? There is only a limited number of things which the federal government can spend. The federal government can build schools, hospitals, roads, institutions of all sorts. But they are built in cities, counties, states and the activities which go on in these buildings are within the jurisdiction of the states. And the continuing perpetual maintainance of such things, like payroll, is the in the purview of the states. The federal government can spend money on agricultural experimentation, on scientific research, on national parks, on power dams, etc. But in the end the outlays on these things are limited. The one big thing the federal government can spend money on is the army and navy. Roosevelt explained to Farley that he could not spend on local projects because the states and cities did not want any more buildings and institutions which they would have to support. They were having trouble enough paying the bills of those already built. Roosevelt revealed to Farley that many [[WPA]] projects approved by the government were abandoned because the states and cities could not raise the money to support them. In the 1938 Congressional elections Harry Hopkins was spending as fast as he could without any regard to utility to meet the immediate political necessities of an election but couldn't go on indefinitely. And the whole problem was complicated by pressure from within his own party to balance the budget.
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| − | The country now reached a greater crisis than in 1933. The public debt, which was $22 billion when Roosevelt took office and was a heritage of [[World War I]], now was $37 billion. Taxes had been more than doubled by Roosevelt. By April 1938 unemployment reached several thousand more than when Roosevelt was elected in 1932. This was not Hoover’s Depression but Roosevelt’s Depression. Voices began to speak up suggesting after all Hoover may have known what he was doing, but here, nine years after the Depression began the fundamental condition of the country was no further advanced than it was at the end of Hoover's three year struggle with it.
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| − | Making provision for war increased business profits. In 1936 Roosevelt had said, "If we face the choice of profits or peace, the nation will answer – must answer - 'We choose peace'. It is the duty of all of us to encourage such a body of public opinion in this country that the answer will be clear." <ref>''Getting Us into War'', Porter Sargent Publisher: P. Sargent, Boston, 1941. [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Getting_Us_Into_War-Porter_Sargent-1941-640pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=218&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 ''No More Millionaires''], pg. 372 pdf</ref> By 1938 Roosevelt embarked on a massive defense appropriations buildup; the Administration would advance 30% to a defense contractor when placing an order. The National City Bank reported an increase of overall business profits in the year 1939 over 1938 of 63.6%, and in its December 1940 Bulletin showed for 284 companies "directly affected by war and defense program" a rise of 79.2%. The ''Wall Street Journal'' reported, "Betterment in profits was naturally more pronounced, as a rule, in those industries benefiting directly or indirectly from the European conflict." <ref>''Wall Street Journal'', May 3, 1940.</ref>
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| − | [[Curtiss-Wright Aircraft]], to enlarge its plant, received a loan of $92 million at 4%. [[I. F. Stone]] of ''[[The Nation]]'' magazine wrote,
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| − | :"Offered as a non-recourse loan . . . the government would have no claim against the Wright company if it failed to repay the loan. All the government could do in that case would be to take the factory. Since the plant would be financed entirely by the government, the government would really be taking back its own property if the Wright company for some reason wanted to drop it. ...The ''Wall Street Journal'' reported on August 2 that while the loan was for $92,000,000, 'the cost of the proposed plant and its equipment is understood to be only $37,000,000 or $38,000,000'. When asked by the ''Journal'' correspondent about 'this apparent discrepancy', Jesse Jones said, 'We don't believe it would be in the public interest to break down that total at this time'....As this is being written, the Wright contract has yet to be signed. The company is now asking for five-year amortization instead of eight. Incidentally, a vice-president of this finicky company, T. P. Wright, was assigned to the Defense Commission on June 8 to help speed up production"
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| − | The Defense Commission was the same commission that would determine and approve the terms of the loan.<ref>''Getting Us into War'', Sargent, 1941, pg. 433.</ref> ''PM'' noted "For an $18,000,000 plant to command a $92,000,000 credit from any bank, including a federal one, may make financiers blink, but that is what has been arranged". The Curtiss-Wright loan was only a little over five times the value of the plant. But Boeing Aircraft, with a plant worth $3,000,000 was awarded a loan of $32,000,000, more than ten times. And Boeing was to own it in five years.<ref>Roger Ingersoll, ''PM'', August. 9, 1940.</ref>
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| − | == Third Term ==
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| − | It is fairly certain that early in 1939, if not a little sooner, FDR made up his mind to seek a third election in the [[United States presidential election, 1940|presidential election of 1940]]. FDR realized the political difficulties involved in a third nomination so he wanted to make it appear as a "draft Roosevelt" movement. He discussed other candidates with his aids, among the names were Democratic National Committee Chairman [[James Farley]], whom FDR rejected because he was [[Roman Catholic]]. The name of Paul McNutt was urged; FDR was angry McNutt would even permit his name to be discussed. FDR told Farley: "I consider it bad taste on his part to be letting his name be used when he is still a member of my administration." Roosevelt sent him as High Commissioner to the Philippines and jokingly asked: "Is that far enough?"<ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', Book 1, Ch. 6, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Seven___The_Third_Term.htm ''The Third Term''], John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948.</ref> Historian [[Doris Kearns Goodwin]] in her book ''No Ordinary Time'' explored the decision to seek a third time and concludes FDR probably decided to enter the war at the same time he decided to run again, although he was politically unable to enter the war until the [[Japanese]] [[attack on Pearl Harbor]].
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| − | Administrative Assistants to Roosevelt included [[James Forrestal]], [[Lauchlin Currie]]<ref>Committee on Un-American Activities, "The Shameful Years: Thirty Years of Soviet Espionage in the United States," 82d Congress, 2d Session, 1951, pp. 15-17; [http://www.counterintelligencetraining.com/BK/ci_centre_bibliography.htm Required Reading List for Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, Intelligence and Security Professionals,]The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Alexandria, VA.</ref> and [[David K. Niles]]. Their function was "to get, information and to condense and summarize it for [Roosevelt's] use." <ref>''Roosevelt and Hopkins : An Intimate History'', Robert E. Sherwood, New York Harper and Brothers, 1948, [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Roosevelt_and_Hopkins-An_Intimate_History-Robert_E_Sherwood-1948-1034pgs-GOV-POL.sml.pdf&id=252&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 pg. 226] pdf.</ref> Forrestal later was to jump from a 16th story window of Bethesda Naval Hospital psychiatric ward. <ref>''The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People'', John Loftus and Mark Aarons, New York : St.Martin's Press, 1994. [http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/vegyes_/secretwar_06.rtf]</ref> Currie and Niles were to be found working for the [[KGB]].<ref>''Uncovering Stalin's Spies'' Julius W. Friend, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, (2000) Vol. 13 No. 3, pgs. 381 - 384. [http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/UN1VH8U16UMXEFGF.pdf]</ref><ref>[http://www.nsa.gov/publications/publi00039.cfm ''The Venona Story''], Robert L. Benson, Center for Cryptological History, National Security Agency. One of the special reports issued in July 1948 (1948 was a presidential election year) gives the earliest translation found that mentions friends of [[David Niles]], an important advisor to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, "will arrange anything for a bribe." Venona message 786 New York KGB to Moscow, 1 June 1944, [http://www.nsa.gov/venona/releases/01_Jun_1944_R3_m1_p1.gif pg. 1], [http://www.nsa.gov/venona/releases/01_Jun_1944_R3_m1_p2.gif pg. 2]).</ref> Currie alerted his KGB controllers that "the United States was on the verge of breaking the Soviet code."<ref>''The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors'', Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, Washington, DC, Regnery, 2000, [http://books.google.com/books?id=mVpWH51F7toC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=lauchlin+currie+break+code&source=web&ots=Yj2NHYwgxB&sig=sbZ3789Tz0jd7xPRiC6EEdeuJ48 pg. 27.] Herbert Romerstein was the Chief, Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation and Active Measures, U.S. Information Agency from (1983-1989), Staff member, U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (1978-1983), and Minority Chief Investigator, House Committee on Internal Security (1971-1975). [http://www.iwp.edu/faculty/facultyID.9/profile.asp]</ref>
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| − | === Commander in Chief ===
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| − | [[John P. Davies]] was assigned to Gen. [[Joseph Stilwell]] as Stilwell's adviser in China. Hopkins made a note at the time: "The President indicated his strong dissatisfaction with the way the whole show was running in China. He stated that Stillwell obviously hated the Chinese and that his cablegrams are sarcastic about the Chinese and this feeling is undoubtedly known to the Generalissimo."<ref>Roosevelt and Hopkin, Sherwood, pg. 739.</ref>Roosevelt and Hopkins biographer [[Robert Sherwood]] wrote that Gen. [[George C. Marshall]] told Hopkins his only serious disagreement with
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| − | Hopkins was on the issue of Stilwell. Sherwood adds that "he was unquestionably a serious nuisance to Roosevelt and there were many times when he was on the verge of recalling him."<ref> Roosevelt and Hopkin, Sherwood, pg. 740.</ref>
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| − | On May 19, 1942, pressured by Communist union officials of the American Communications Association, [[CIO]], Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, informed Rear Admiral Adolphus Staton that Communist radio operators were not to be removed from their ships. Less than six months earlier, Congress, with the lone dissenting vote of [[Vito Marcantonio]], enacted Public Law 351, which authorized the Secretary of the Navy to have all radio operators with a [[subversion (political)|subversive]] background taken off their ships. Rear Admiral Staton had recommended the removal of a number of Communists. In the presence of Rear Admiral S. C. Hooper and others, Knox instructed Rear Admiral Staton "that, in the opinion of the President, membership or suspected membership in the CPUSA was not sufficient to deprive a radio operator of his job." <ref>''America's Tragedy-Today'', Major Hamilton A. Long, (NY: Post Printing), pgs. 15-25.</ref> Expounding a memorandum bearing President Roosevelt's initials, Knox brushed aside the objections of Staton and Hooper, declaring that the order came from the President himself. Because the presidential command defied the law of the land, it was not put into writing. Consequently, the Communist radio operators returned to their ships and Rear Admirals Hooper and Staton were put on the inactive list.
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| − | Stalin publicly disbanded the [[Comintern]] in 1943. A Moscow message to all stations on 12 September 1943, message number 142, relating to this event is one of the most interesting and historically important messages <ref>[http://www.nsa.gov/venona/venon00008.cfm Venona 142(a) Moscow to Canberra 12 September 1943]. Text reads: "change in circumstances - and in particular the dissolution of the [[Comintern]] - necessitates a change in the method used by the workers of our residencies to keep in touch with the leaders of the local [[Communist_Party_of_the_United_States_of_America#Secret_apparatus|Communist]] organizations on intelligence matters. <br/>
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| − | 2. Our workers, by continuing to meet the leader of the Communists, are exposing themselves to danger and are giving cause [''orgs of''] local authorities to suspect that the Comintern is still in existence. <br>
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| − | 3. We propose: <br/>
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| − | a. That personal contact with leaders of the local Communist organizations should cease and that Communist material should not be accepted for forwarding to the Comintern. <br/>
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| − | b. That meetings of our workers may take place only with special reliable undercover [ZAKONSPIRIROVANNYJ] contacts of the Communist [D% organizations], who are not suspected by the [''orgs of''] local authorities, exclusively about specific aspects of our intelligence work (acquiring [1 group unidentified] contacts, leads [NAVODKI], rechecking of those who are being cultivated, etc.). For each meeting it is necessary to obtain our consent. <br/>
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| − | Representative of the Soviet Union.<br>
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| − | No. 4084 <br>
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| − | Lt. Gen. [[P.M. Fitin]]. <br>
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| − | | |
| − | Notes: [a] This message is known to have been sent also to NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO, and OTTAWA.</ref> in the entire corpus of [[VENONA]] translations. This message clearly discloses the [[KGB]]'s connection to the Comintern and to the national Communist parties. <ref>''Counterintelligence Reader'', National Counterintelligence Center, United States, [http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/docs/ci2/2ch4_a.htm Vol. 2, Ch. 4], n.d.</ref> Shortly afterwards Rear Admiral Staton, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, was asked to testify before the Cox Committee of House of Representatives on the [[White House]] efforts to protect Communists in the Armed Forces. Staton complied in executive session. Before he could appear in public hearings, [[Adlai Stevenson]], assistant to Secretary Knox, instructed him that "there were White House orders" forbidding him to testify. <ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,777835,00.html ''Cox's Circus''], Time magazine, Monday, Jul. 19, 1943.</ref> By that time Counter-Intelligence officers had obtained irrefutable proof that the CPUSA had developed an extensive plan to abolish the Armed Forces' counter-subversive system. <ref>Long, op.cit., pg. 12.</ref>
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| − | Roosevelt himself was responsible for the order of January 1, 1944 which abolished the entire setup of the Counter-Intelligence Corps in the [[War Department]].<ref>Long, op.cit., pg. 12.</ref> On February 19 the War Department issued the order which purposely disorganized the counter-subversive reporting system of the Armed Forces. <ref>Long, op.cit., pg. 13</ref> On May 19, the day after learning of the secret order to destroy the War Department records on subversives, Senator [[StyIes Bridges]], a member of the Military Affairs Committee, demanded an explanation from Secretary of War [[Henry Stimson]]. Lieutenant General McNarney, Army Chief of Staff deputy, was "vague, evasive and obstructive." Bridges told McNarney "he could forgive an officer who makes a mistake or loses a battle, but that an officer who betrays the security of his country should be taken out and shot." McNarney admitted the order had been issued from "higher authority." After much wrangling, Secretary Stimson in a letter of May 27 promised to prevent the destruction of records on subversives. <ref>Long, op.cit., pgs. 28-31.</ref>
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| − | The War Department, on December 30, 1944, issued a secret order which expressly condoned "divided loyalty" and established as a guiding rule that "the subversive-suspect should be given the benefit of all reasonable doubt."
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| − | ===Big Three conferences===
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| − | :''See also '''[[Teheran conference]]'''''
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| − | At the [[Teheran conference]] it was secretly agreed to let the Soviet Union have not only eastern Poland but also part of Finland, the Baltic States and parts of Romania. It was secretly agreed to support the Yugoslav Communist, [[Joseph Broz Tito]], and desert the pro-Western, anti-totalitarian friend, General Mihailovich. Roosevelt told a joint session of Congress upon his return to the United States that no secret arrangements had been made.
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| − | :''See also '''[[Yalta conference]]'''''
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| − | At the [[Yalta conference]] a [[reparations]] commission was set up. The Soviet Union wanted the amount to be 20 billion dollars of which the USSR would take half. It was agreed that labor might be taken as a possible source of reparations. This was a way of authorizing the seizure of human beings to work as [[slave]]s and is the basis of the crime perpetrated after hostilities ceased to which Franklin Roosevelt agreed. <ref>''Speaking Frankly'', James F. Byrnes, New York: Harper & Bros., 1947, p. 29.</ref>
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| − | Roosevelt also agreed at Yalta to have all fugitive Soviet nationals or citizens of satellite nations and tens of thousands of [[POW]]'s who elected to stay this side of the [[Iron Curtain]], returned to the Soviet Union. This was in contravention of the Geneva Convention. The ''Saturday Evening Post'' commented:
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| − | {{Cquote|With this shameful agreement as their authority, Russian [[KGB|MVD]] agents strode through the displaced-persons camps after the war and put the finger on thousands who had managed to escape the Soviet tyranny. These miserable victims were herded into boxcars and driven back to death, torture or the slow murder of the Siberian mines and forests. Many killed themselves on the way. Also under a Yalta agreement, the Russians were permitted to use German prisoners in forced labor as an item in 'reparations account.' For such inhumanities there is no excuse.<ref>''Saturday Evening Post'', Editorial, April 11, 1953, pg. 12.</ref>}}
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| − | Roosevelt not only made agreements secret from the American people but secret from his closest advisers in the government. He made agreements with Stalin hostile to the objectives of Churchill and kept secret from Churchill. He made secret agreements with [[Chiang Kai-shek]] secret from both Churchill and Stalin. He made secret agreements in derogation of Chiang Kai-shek's interests without Chiang Kai-shek's knowledge. And he made many secret agreements which no one in the U.S. State Department knew about until after his death and then learned about only at embarrassing moments from Soviet Foreign Minister [[Vyacheslav Molotov]]. <ref>''Roosevelt Myth'', Book 3, Ch. 13, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Thirteen___The_Final_Bet.htm ''The Final Betrayal''], Flynn, 1948.</ref>
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| − | == Fourth Term ==
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| − | [[Image:Fbisilvermasterfilevol15p4.JPG|right|250px|thumb|CPUSA defector [[Louis Budenz]] testified he could name 400 individuals involved in the [[CPUSA#Secret_apparatus|Communist conspiracy]]; <ref>[http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft296nb15t&chunk.id=d0e6193&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e4718&brand=eschol FBI Headquarters File 100-63, Louis Francis Budenz, Internal Security—C, Serial 122.]</ref> others testified there may have been over 1000.<ref>Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations ([http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/McCarthy_Transcripts.htm McCarthy Hearings 1953-54]).</ref> The Silvermaster group had 27 high level infiltrators still employed in the US government well after the War ended.<ref>[http://education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster015.pdf FBI Silvermaster file Vol. 15, pg. 4 pdf.]</ref>
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| − | ]]
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| − | In February 1944 Congress rejected Roosevelt's demand for a $10,500,000,000 tax increase and cut it to $2,300,000,000. Roosevelt vetoed it saying this was a "bill not for relief of the needy but of the greedy."
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| − | Senator [[Alben Barkley]], Democratic leader, rose on the floor of the Senate to say the veto was "a calculated and deliberate assault upon the legislative integrity of every member of Congress." The entire Senate united in a roar of applause. Barkley declared that after seven years of carrying the [[New Deal]] banner for Roosevelt, he would resign his post as Democratic majority leader and he called on every member of the Congress to preserve its self respect and override the veto. The Senate overrode it 72 to 14 and the House 299 to 95.
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| − | After the [[Comintern]] was disbanded Roosevelt was offered the nomination of the [[Communist]] dominated [[American Labor Party]] and he had accepted their nomination in the [[Presidential election of 1944]]. It was 825,000 votes from [[Earl Browder]] and [[Sidney Hillman]]'s American Labor Party that gave him his majority. His administration was now the hopeless prisoner of these demanding and ruthless radical labor leaders,<ref>''Roosevelt Myth'', Book 3, Ch. 12, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Twelve___The_Atlantic_Ch.htm ''The Atlantic Charter Is Scrapped''], Flynn, 1948.</ref> who had shown their ability to elect or defeat the Democratic party, who had filled all the departments and bureaus with their agents and who had insinuated their experts into the CIO labor unions and their propagandists into the radio, the movies and all the great instruments of communication and opinion - a fact which Mr. Roosevelt's successors would have to face when the war ended. <ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060820054409/http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/review/2000/summer/re2-su0.htm ''The Venona Progeny''], Hayen B. Peake, Naval War College Review, Summer 2000, Vol. LIII, No. 3. "[[Venona]] makes absolutely clear that they had active agents in the U.S. State Department, Treasury Department, Justice Department, Senate committee staffs, the military services, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the [[Manhattan Project]], and the [[White House]], as well as wartime agencies. No modern government was more thoroughly penetrated." [[Hayden B. Peake]] is the curator of [[Central Intelligence Agency]]’s (CIA) Historical Intelligence Collection. [http://intellit.muskingum.edu/alpha_folder/P_folder/peake.html]</ref>
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| − | So thorough was [[KGB]] penetration of the Roosevelt Administration, that when [[Army Signals Intelligence]] cryptographer [[Meredith Gardner]] extracted the names of [[Hans Bethe]], [[Niels Bohr]], [[Enrico Fermi]], [[Harold Urey]], [[Edward Teller]] and 11 other scientists working on the [[Manhattan Project]] from a December 2, 1944 KGB encypherment,<ref>[http://www.nsa.gov/venona/venon00014.cfm Venona 1699 New York to Moscow, December 2, 1944].</ref> KGB agent [[William Weisband]] watched him do it.<ref>VENONA: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957, Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds., (Washington, D.C.: [[National Security Agency]], Central Intelligence Agency, 1996) [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/preface.htm]; The ''Baltimore Sun'' (Laura Sullivan, "SPY'S ROLE LINKED TO US FAILURE ON KOREA," 6/29/00) reported that a report newly declassified by the US National Security Agency (NSA) shows that [[William Weisband]] alerted the Soviets to extensive US eavesdropping in 1948, resulting in a complete blackout of information from the communist bloc for more than two years. This crippled the NSA's intelligence gathering efforts in the late 1940s and begins to explain why the US was caught unprepared for the [[DPRK]]'s 1950 invasion of the [[ROK]]. NSA historian David A. Hatch, who authored the report, said, "This report answers several significant questions. Up until now, there has been a great lack of knowledge surrounding some of these events ... and this should help sharpen [the public's] understanding." [Ed. note: This article was included in the US Department of Defense's Early Bird news service for June 29, 2000.] [http://www.nautilus.org/archives/napsnet/dr/0006/JUN29.html#item8] </ref>
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| − | [[Strom Thurmond]] also supported FDR's decision to seek a fourth term, and referred to Roosevelt as having been the world’s greatest leader. <ref>[http://www.kevinbaker.info/c_wtm.html What Trent Meant], Kevin Baker.</ref>
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| − | == Reflections on Christianity ==
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| − | FDR said this about the Bible in an address on October 6, 1935:
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| − | :"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."
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| − | :"Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity."<ref>Quoted in DeMar, ''The Untold Story'', p. 60 and Gabrial Sivan, ''The Bible and Civilization'' (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1973), p. 178.</ref>
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| − | FDR became famous for delivering "fireside chats" over the new medium of [[radio]], and on March 9, 1937 he declared:
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| − | :"I hope that you have re-read the [[United States Constitution| Constitution]] of the United States in these past few weeks. Like the Bible, it ought to be read again and again."
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| − | While running for his third time in a Brooklyn speech, Roosevelt said,
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| − | :"I am certain that the rank and file of patriotic Republicans do not realize the nature of this threat. They should remember, and we must remember, what the collaborative understanding between Communism and Nazism has done to the processes of democracy abroad...
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| − | :"Those forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy. Their objective is to prevent democracy from becoming strong. <ref>''Roosevelt and Hopkins'', Sherwood, 1948, pgs. 193-194 (pgs. 211 - 212 pdf).</ref>
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| − | As [[World War II]] broke out in Europe, FDR warned:
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| − | :"Those forces hate [[Democracy]] and [[Christianity]] as two phases of the same civilization."
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| − | The following year, on May 27, 1941, FDR stated in one of his radio addresses:
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| − | :The Nazis are as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God.
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| − | "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.' "<ref>God and George W. Bush (New York: Regan Books, 2004), p. 176</ref>
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| − | 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. <ref>Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, [http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odddayp.html Franklin Roosevelt's D-Day Prayer], June 6, 1944.</ref>
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| − | ==Legacy==
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| − | [[Image:Dcrosmor.jpg|right|thumb|330px]]
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| − | It was essential that he do everything in his power to reestablish confidence in the economic system. What the nation needed was more jobs at machines, in ships, in mines and stores creating and distributing goods that were needed and providing wages and profits with which these goods could be purchased. If there are to be jobs for all they must be jobs producing something - goods and services. He began with a sweeping attack upon business and kept it up until the end of [[World War II]]. When Roosevelt came into power business was regarded as some gigantic criminal conspiracy against the welfare of the nation.
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| − | Business cannot function at full measure unless consumption is held within total output, and savings are produced. Those savings then must regularly flow into new investment. New investment means the flow of economic resources into establishing new industries and the expansion of old ones. It means encouraging construction trades, manufacturing, producing and installing new equipment and tools. It means allowing the creation of new private businesses. Instead FDR carried on ceaseless attacks and denouncements of business, warned people against it, subjected businesses to dozens of absurd, semi revolutionary schemes, coupled with deficit financing which ate up all the savings, inflation, utopian panaceas, constant preaching that profit was evil, investors parasites, and businessmen scoundrels and enemies of the people. <ref>''Roosevelt Myth'', Book 3, Ch. 4, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/cgi-bin/framed/2767/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Four___Toward_the_Precip.htm ''Toward the Precipice''], Flynn, 1948.</ref>
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| − | Roosevelt's image now appears on the [[Dime]].
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| − | ==See also==
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| − | *[[New Ordeal]]
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| − | *[[Michael Whitney Straight]]
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| − | ==Further reading==
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| − | *Charles Maclaurin, ''Post Mortem'' and ''Mere Mortals'' (New York: Doran, 1923, 1925).
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| − | ==References==
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| − | <small>{{reflist|2}}</small>
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| − | | |
| − | == External Links ==
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| − | <small>* [http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=176 "The Mythology of Roosevelt and the New Deal," by Robert Higgs]
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| − | * [http://www.onpower.org/history_greatdepression.html/ Great Depression]
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| − | * [http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=12&articleID=139 "On the Brink of World War II: Justus Doenecke’s ''Storm on the Horizon''," by Ralph Raico]
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| − | * [http://www.independent.org/publications/working_papers/article.asp?id=1499 "Government and the Economy: The World Wars," by Robert Higgs]
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| − | * [http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=113 "How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century," by Robert Higgs]
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| − | * [http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=65 ''Depression, War and Cold War'', by Robert Higgs]
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| − | * [http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=138 "Wartime Prosperity?", by Robert Higgs]
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| − | * [http://www.independent.org/issues/article.asp?id=1431 Pearl Harbor]
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| − | * [http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1468 FDR: The Man, the Leader, the Legacy], Ralph Raico, Future of Freedom Foundation, April 1, 2001. Retrieved from The Independent Institute.org 06/17/07.
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| − | </small>
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| | {{DEFAULTSORT:Roosevelt, Franklin D.}} | | {{DEFAULTSORT:Roosevelt, Franklin D.}} |
