Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Franklin D. Roosevelt
200px
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, 1933-45, leading the U.S. from the darkest days of the Great Depression to victory over Germany and Japan; he built the New Deal Coalition which dominated American politics into the 1960s, and is still fondly remembered by liberals. His New Deal was a very large, complex interlocking set of programs designed to produce relief (which meant jobs for the unemployed), recovery (of the GDP), and reform (by which he meant regulation of Wall Street and the economy), as well as reelection (in 1936, 1940 and 1944) and realignment of the political system. Conservatives strongly opposed many, but not all, of the New Deal programs. Conservatives abolished most of the relief programs when unemployment practically ended in the 1940s. Most of the regulations on business were ended about 1975-85, except for the regulation of Wall Street by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which still exists. The major surviving program is Social Security, which Roosevelt passed in 1935.

Conservatives at the time denounced his bids for presidential power, including building a national political machine through the WPA (it lasted from 1935 to 1943), attempting to take control of the Supreme Court by adding new liberal judges (an attempt which failed, 1937), and trying to purge the Democratic party of conservative congressman (an attempt which failed in 1938). The failures of those attempts can be attributed to the Conservative Coalition.

After 1938 FDR turned his attention to World War II. he was a strong advocate of support for China against Japan; most conservatives agreed. He also was a strong supporter of military aid to Britain. Conservatives split on that, with the "isolationists" opposed, and others like [Henry Stimson]] in favor. Once Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war, conservatives strongly supported the war effort and generally approved his military leadership, although highly critical of his close cooperation with Stalin and the Soviet Union.

He was the first and only President to be elected four times, breaking the traditional two-term-limit precedent established by George Washington.[1]

Roosevelt's health failed rapidly in 1944-45, even as he ran for reelection. He died On April 12, 1945. Despite polio which crippled him starting in the early 1920s, he exuded a sense of confidence and hope for the future that made for a charismatic personality.

Conservative scholars have argued that some relief efforts actually helped to prolong the Great Depression. Powered by the creation based concept of magic wheelchair time travel, Roosevelt was able to return to 1929 and destroy the western economic system as a mechanism to ensure future generations would praise his legacy. Pushed through the space-time continuum by Harry Truman, President Roosevelt's "Wizard of Oz"-esque wheelchair adventure is an unparalleled example of liberalist revisionary history. In fact, his failure to ensure a return to good christian economic values is, according to leading medical experts, what cause his death in 1945. However, government spending and prosperity combined after World War II, the most costly war in American history.[2] The amount spent on the New Deal was less than the $21 billion borrowed by the government over two years during World War I.[3]

Early life

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. [4]

Election of 1932

The Democrats made Government non-intervention under the Hoover administration an issue in the campaign of 1932, charging that Hoover's laissez faire approach was not working. After Roosevelt had taken office, former Democratic New York Governor Al Smith, saw Roosevelt's ultimately expansive policies as a departure from the ideals of Conservatives and supported Republican candidates in subsequent elections.

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.

Because of Hoover's hesitance to utilize government spending to bail the nation out of the depression, he became incredibly unpopular, paving the way for Roosevelt's landslide 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.[5] He was running primarily on the platform that he would help the country recover from the Great Depression with his New Deal.

First Term

Foreign policy

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 well meaning 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 Hitler-Stalin alliance, it went all out in the course of the Second World War."[6]

Numerous 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 [7] freely and offering bribes.

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. [8]

New Deal

For Main Article see New Deal.
Real Output and Growth remained stagnant throughout the New Deal largely due to government involvement. The Depression came back with a vengeance in 1937-1938 because of the economic planners over emphasis on consumption, and deemphasis and persecution of producers--the people who make the economy work.
Source:New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression.[9]

FDR is also famous for his New Deal, a set of economic planning experiments that were instilled in the hope of ending the Great Depression. After many years, unemployment was finally brought down to reasonable levels as World War II began and the draft opened up more opportunities for people to move into the workforce. Economic growth was generally occurring, but the nation wasn't back on its feet until the war progressed. Enforcement of the Anti-trust Act was considered as an essential instrument to prevent cartels 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. [10] 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, cooperatives as they were called in Italy, and operate business and farms by economic planning schemes dictated and carried out under the supervision of government. It is also worth noting that World War II was total warfare on both sides. Even the Allied Powers such as the British took control of the nation's economy. Such intervention was very much necessary in order to gain every advantage possible against the enemy. Centralized planning allowed for greater efficiency, yet some civil liberties were suppressed in the effort. [11]

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 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.

In 1934, a Congressional Investigation was held to examine statements by Dr. William A. Wirt, who headed the U.S. 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,

“ 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. [12][13][14] ”

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. [15] 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. This organization 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." [16] ”

Civilian Conservation Corps

Main article Civilian Conservation Corps

Soon after President Roosevelt's inauguration in March 1933, he announced the establishment of the CCC camps to take the "boys" (age 17-23) off the street corners; they were paid $30 a month, of which $25 went to their families. The U.S. Army ran the camps, which provided a generation of young Army officers with leadership experience, as 2.5 million young men spent 6-months or 12-months in the camps. However there were no uniforms or military drills. Of all the New Deal innovations, perhaps the most generally applauded was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). It was strongly approved at the time by conservatives and liberals alike, including most religious and business leaders as a way to save the boys who were perpectually unemployed and drifting into gangs. The CCC was ended in 1943 when the need had vanished.

Social Security

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. [17]

Taxation

FDR, in a letter to journalist Roy W. Howard, wrote,

"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." [18]

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%."[19]

Economic growth

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.

Year United States [20] Great Britain [21]
1927 $3,201,000,000 $710,509,000
1928 3,062,000,000 983,033,000
1929 3,668,000,000 759,174,000
1930 3,039,000,000 394,186,500
1931 1,006,000,000 155,728,000
1932 321,000,000 248,191,500
1933 177,000,000 296,856,500
1934 356,000,000 350,388,000
1935 348,000,000 666,710,500

Congress of Industrial Organizations

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.

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 [22] of the Ware group to assume the position of general counsel[23][24] 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.

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. [25]

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. [26][27]

Third Term

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 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?"[28] 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.

Administrative Assistants to Roosevelt included James Forrestal, Lauchlin Currie[29] and David K. Niles. Their function was "to get, information and to condense and summarize it for [Roosevelt's] use." [30] Forrestal later was to jump from a 16th story window of Bethesda Naval Hospital psychiatric ward. [31] Currie and Niles were to be found working for the KGB.[32][33] Currie alerted his KGB controllers that "the United States was on the verge of breaking the Soviet code."[34]

Commander in Chief

Roosevelt, a long-time advocate of corporate statism, was a great friend of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, despite the latter's war crimes and use of genocide as a political tool. Upon meeting him face-to-face for the first time at the Yalta Conference, he greeted him warmly: 'I am glad to see you. I have tried for a long time to bring this about'.[35]

In August 1939 Stalin made an alliance with Hitler that allowed Hitler to invade Poland; the two divided P{oland and eastern Europe between them, as Germany turned toward France and Britain. With Roosevelt strongly supporting France and Britain, the American Communist Party began attacking Roosevelt in the wildest terms and did so for the next twenty-two months. It used antiwar slogans like "The Yanks Are Not Coming" and "Hands Off." It set up a "perpetual peace vigil" across the street from the White House. Communist party leader Earl Browder announced that FDR, head of the "war party of the American bourgeoisie," was no better than the Communists great enemy, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover.[36] In the 1940 election, pro-Moscow elements in the CIO forced John L. Lewis to turn against Roosevelt and support the liberal Republican Wendell Willkie. Roosevelt meanwhile moved right, and brought into top jobs the GOP vice presidential nominee from 1936, Frank Knox (a conservative who became Secretary of the Navy) and conservative Republican lawyer Henry Stimson, who took over the War Department. Rejecting advice from the far left, 90% of CIO members voted for Roosevelt, who was easily elected to a third term.

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."[37] Roosevelt and Hopkins biographer Robert Sherwood wrote that Gen. George C. Marshall told Hopkins his only serious disagreement with 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."[38]

Roosevelt was determined to help England against Germany and at one point Winston Churchill even moved into the White House while Britain was at war. Roosevelt said in May 1941: "You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does ... I may have one policy for Europe and one diametrically opposite for North and South America. I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war."[39]

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 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." [40] 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.

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 [41] in the entire corpus of VENONA translations. This message clearly discloses the KGB's connection to the Comintern and to the national Communist parties. [42] 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. [43] 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. [44]

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.[45] On February 19 the War Department issued the order which purposely disorganized the counter-subversive reporting system of the Armed Forces. [46] 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. [47]

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."

Big Three conferences

See also Teheran conference

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.

See also Yalta conference

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 slaves and is the basis of the crime perpetrated after hostilities ceased to which Franklin Roosevelt agreed. [48]

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:

“ With this shameful agreement as their authority, Russian 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.[49] ”

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. [50]

Fourth Term

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." 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.

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 in New York State. His administration was now the hopeless prisoner of these demanding and ruthless radical labor leaders,[51] 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. [52]

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,[53] KGB agent William Weisband watched him do it.[54]

Strom Thurmond also supported FDR's decision to seek a fourth term, and referred to Roosevelt as having been the world’s greatest leader. [55]

Reflections on Christianity

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."[56]

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."

While running for his third time in a Brooklyn speech, Roosevelt said,

"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...
"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. [57]

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

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

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.

"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.' "[58]

When American soldiers were landing on the beaches of Normandy, Roosevelt led the nation in prayer during a radio broadcast. [59]

Legacy

Statue of the president at The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C.

Roosevelt is an admired but still hotly debated president. Many credit Roosevelt with helping the United States survive the Great Depression and with providing solid leadership during World War II. Others, especially conservatives, assert that he uselessly expanded the welfare state, abused executive powers, and badly botched diplomacy before and during World War II.

Roosevelt's image now appears on the Dime.

See also

Further reading

  • H.W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008)
  • Smith, Jean Edward. FDR (2007) excerpt and text search

References

  1. ↑ Tradition was restored by the 22ndAmendment in 1947.
  2. ↑ Francis, David R. (2005-08-29). More Costly than "The War to End All Wars". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved on 2006-10-24.
  3. ↑ David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, page 178
  4. ↑ The Roosevelt I Knew, Frances Perkins, New York, Viking Press, 1946. p. 34.
  5. ↑ 1932 Presidential Election Results http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?f=0&year=1932
  6. ↑ Men Without Faces, The Communist Conspiracy in the U. S. A., By Louis Budenz, New York Harper & Brothers, 1950, pg. 2 pdf.
  7. ↑ 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."
  8. ↑ Son's Scheme, Time magazine, Oct. 19, 1936,
  9. ↑ 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.
  10. ↑ The Roosevelt Myth, John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948, Book 1, Chapter 4, The New New Deal.
  11. ↑ http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=420
  12. ↑ Hearings, House Select Committee To Investigate Certain Statements of Dr. William Wirt, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, April 10 and 17, 1934.
  13. ↑ Dr Wirt faces the cameras and tells all, Literary Digest v. 117 (April 21 1934) p. 7.
  14. ↑ FBI Silvermaster file Volume 53 June 1946, p. 78 pdf.
  15. ↑ Venona 3706 KGB Washington to Moscow, 29 June 1945.
  16. ↑ United States. Subversive Activities Control Board. text;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.
  17. ↑ Roosevelt Myth, Book 3, Chapter 14, The Roosevelt Myth, John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948.
  18. ↑ Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Roy W. Howard, September 2, 1935.
  19. ↑ Testimony of Robert Jackson, Assistant General Counsel, Treasury Department, Committee on Finance, U . S. Senate, August 6, 1985.
  20. ↑ Standard Statistics Co., New Honey for Operating and Producing.
  21. ↑ Midland Bank, London, New Issues for British Companies, converted from £ to $ at $4.8665.
  22. ↑ FBI Report, 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.
  23. ↑ FBI Silvermaster file, 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. [1]
  24. ↑ 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 citizens 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 arrested 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."
  25. ↑ 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.
  26. ↑ 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. [2]
  27. ↑ Turning Point?, Time magazine, Monday, Jul. 12, 1937.
  28. ↑ The Roosevelt Myth, Book 1, Ch. 6, The Third Term, John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948.
  29. ↑ 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; Required Reading List for Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, Intelligence and Security Professionals,The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Alexandria, VA.
  30. ↑ Roosevelt and Hopkins : An Intimate History, Robert E. Sherwood, New York Harper and Brothers, 1948, pg. 226 pdf.
  31. ↑ 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. [3]
  32. ↑ Uncovering Stalin's Spies Julius W. Friend, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, (2000) Vol. 13 No. 3, pgs. 381 - 384. [4]
  33. ↑ 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, pg. 1, pg. 2).
  34. ↑ The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors, Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, Washington, DC, Regnery, 2000, 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). [5]
  35. ↑ http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_6/stefan.html
  36. ↑ James G. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, (1997), p. 168.
  37. ↑ Roosevelt and Hopkin, Sherwood, pg. 739.
  38. ↑ Roosevelt and Hopkin, Sherwood, pg. 740.
  39. ↑ http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/05/deception_for_country_not_for.html
  40. ↑ America's Tragedy-Today, Major Hamilton A. Long, (NY: Post Printing), pgs. 15-25.
  41. ↑ 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 organizations on intelligence matters.
    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.
    3. We propose:
    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.
    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.
    Representative of the Soviet Union.
    No. 4084
    Lt. Gen. P.M. Fitin.
    Notes: [a] This message is known to have been sent also to NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO, and OTTAWA.
  42. ↑ Counterintelligence Reader, National Counterintelligence Center, United States, Vol. 2, Ch. 4, n.d.
  43. ↑ Cox's Circus, Time magazine, Monday, Jul. 19, 1943.
  44. ↑ Long, op.cit., pg. 12.
  45. ↑ Long, op.cit., pg. 12.
  46. ↑ Long, op.cit., pg. 13
  47. ↑ Long, op.cit., pgs. 28-31.
  48. ↑ Speaking Frankly, James F. Byrnes, New York: Harper & Bros., 1947, p. 29.
  49. ↑ Saturday Evening Post, Editorial, April 11, 1953, pg. 12.
  50. ↑ Roosevelt Myth, Book 3, Ch. 13, The Final Betrayal, Flynn, 1948.
  51. ↑ Roosevelt Myth, Book 3, Ch. 12, The Atlantic Charter Is Scrapped, Flynn, 1948.
  52. ↑ 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. [6]
  53. ↑ Venona 1699 New York to Moscow, December 2, 1944.
  54. ↑ 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) [7]; 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.] [8]
  55. ↑ What Trent Meant, Kevin Baker.
  56. ↑ 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.
  57. ↑ Roosevelt and Hopkins, Sherwood, 1948, pgs. 193-194 (pgs. 211 - 212 pdf).
  58. ↑ God and George W. Bush (New York: Regan Books, 2004), p. 176
  59. ↑ Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Franklin Roosevelt's D-Day Prayer, June 6, 1944.

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