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Franklin D. Roosevelt
416px-FDR 1944 Color Portrait
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.

In office
March 4, 1933 – April 12, 1945
Vice President John Nance Garner (1933–1941)
Henry A. Wallace (1941–1945)
Harry S. Truman (1945)
Preceded by Herbert Hoover
Succeeded by Harry S. Truman

44th Governor of New York
In office
January 1, 1929 – December 31, 1932
Lieutenant Herbert H. Lehman
Preceded by Alfred E. Smith
Succeeded by Herbert H. Lehman

Assistant Secretary of the Navy
In office
March 17, 1913 – August 26, 1920
President Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by Beekman Winthrop
Succeeded by Gordon Woodbury

Born January 30, 1882(1882-01-30)
Hyde Park, New York
Died April 12, 1945 (aged 63)
Warm Springs, Georgia
Resting place Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York
Birth name Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Political party Democratic Party (United States)
Spouse(s) Eleanor Roosevelt
Alma mater Harvard College
Columbia Law School
Occupation Corporate lawyer.
Religion Episcopalian
Nickname(s) FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (real name Rosenfeld; b. 30 January 1882; d. 12 April 1945), also known by his initials, FDR, was President of the United States (1933–1945) during the Great Depression and World War II.

Roosevelt enjoyed the overwhelming support of American Jews during his presidency. In his three-plus terms from 1933 to 1945, he led the war against Hitler, supported the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, appointed a Jew to the Supreme Court, chose another to be his Secretary of the Treasury and surrounded himself with Jewish advisers who helped shape the laws that revolutionized the role of government in American life — what some critics called the “Jew Deal”[1] a parody of Roosevelt's 'New Deal'.

Life[]

Childhood[]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park, New York, to businessman James Roosevelt I and his second wife, Sara Ann Delano. His parents, who were sixth cousins, both came from wealthy, established New York families, the Roosevelts, the Aspinwalls and the Delanos, respectively. Roosevelt's paternal ancestor migrated to New Amsterdam in the 17th century, and the Roosevelts succeeded as merchants and landowners. The Delano family patriarch, Philip Delano, traveled to the New World on the Fortune in 1621, and the Delanos thrived as merchants and shipbuilders in Massachusetts. Franklin had a half-brother, James Roosevelt "Rosy" Roosevelt, from his father's previous marriage.

Franklin D

Roosevelt in 1893, at the age of 11

Franklin-Roosevelt-1884

Roosevelt's father, James, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1851 but chose not to practice law after receiving an inheritance from his grandfather. James Roosevelt, a prominent Bourbon Democrat, once took Franklin to meet President Grover Cleveland, who said to him: "My little man, I am making a strange wish for you. It is that you may never be President of the United States." Franklin's mother, the dominant influence in his early years, once declared, "My son Franklin is a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all." James, who was 54 when Franklin was born, was considered by some as a remote father, though biographer James MacGregor Burns indicates James interacted with his son more than was typical at the time.

Education and early career[]

As a child, Roosevelt learned to ride, shoot, and sail; he also learned to play polo, tennis, and golf. Frequent trips to Europe—beginning at age two and from age seven to fifteen—helped Roosevelt become conversant in German and French. Except for attending public school in Germany at age nine, Roosevelt was home-schooled by tutors until age 14. He then attended Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts. He was not among the more popular Groton students, who were better athletes and had rebellious streaks. Its headmaster, Endicott Peabody, preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service. Peabody remained a strong influence throughout Roosevelt's life, officiating at his wedding and visiting him as president.

Like most of his Groton classmates, Roosevelt went to Harvard College. He was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and the Fly Club, and served as a school cheerleader. Roosevelt was relatively undistinguished as a student or athlete, but he became editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper, a position that required ambition, energy, and the ability to manage others. He later said, "I took economics courses in college for four years, and everything I was taught was wrong."

Roosevelt's father died in 1900, causing great distress for him. The following year, Roosevelt's fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States. Theodore's vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model and hero. He graduated from Harvard in three years in 1903 with an A.B. in history. He remained there for a fourth year, taking graduate courses and becoming an editor of the Harvard Crimson.

Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School in 1904 but dropped out in 1907 after passing the New York Bar Examination. In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, working in the firm's admiralty law division.

Marriage, family, and marital affairs[]

During his second year of college, he met and proposed to Boston heiress Alice Sohier, who turned him down. Franklin then began courting his child-acquaintance and fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, a niece of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903 Franklin proposed to Eleanor, and after resistance from his mother, they were married on March 17, 1905. Eleanor's father, Elliott, was deceased, and her uncle Theodore, then the president, gave away the bride. The young couple moved into Springwood, and Franklin and Sara Roosevelt also provided a townhouse for the couple in New York City, where Sara built a house alongside for herself. Eleanor never felt at home in the houses at Hyde Park or New York, but she loved the family's vacation home on Campobello Island, which Sara also gave the couple. Burns indicates young Roosevelt was self-assured and at ease in the upper class, while Eleanor was then shy and disliked social life, and initially stayed home to raise their children. As his father had, Franklin left the raising of the children to his wife, and Eleanor delegated it to caregivers. She later said she knew "absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby." Although Eleanor thought sex was "an ordeal to be endured", she and Franklin had six children. Anna, James, and Elliott were born in 1906, 1907, and 1910, respectively. The couple's second son, Franklin, died in infancy in 1909. Another son, also named Franklin, was born in 1914, and the youngest child, John, was born in 1916.

Roosevelt had several extra-marital affairs, including with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer, soon after she was hired in 1914, and discovered by Eleanor in 1918. Franklin contemplated divorcing Eleanor, but Sara objected, and Mercer would not marry a divorced man with five children. Franklin and Eleanor remained married, and Franklin promised never to see Mercer again. Eleanor never forgave him, and their marriage became more of a political partnership. Eleanor soon established a separate home in Hyde Park at Val-Kill, and devoted herself to social and political causes independent of her husband. The emotional break in their marriage was so severe that when Franklin asked Eleanor in 1942—in light of his failing health—to come back home and live with him again, she refused. He was not always aware of when she visited the White House and for some time she could not easily reach him on the telephone without his secretary's help; Franklin, in turn, did not visit Eleanor's New York City apartment until late 1944.

Franklin broke his promise to Eleanor as he and Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd maintained a formal correspondence, and began seeing each other again in 1941 or earlier. Roosevelt's son Elliott claimed that his father had a 20-year affair with his private secretary, Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. Another son, James, stated that "there is a real possibility that a romantic relationship existed" between his father and Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, who resided in the White House during part of World War II. Aides began to refer to her at the time as "the president's girlfriend", and gossip linking the two romantically appeared in the newspapers.

Early political career (1910–1920)[]

Criticisms[]

Conservatives/libertarians have criticized the expansion of the size and the power of the government during Roosevelt. The Roosevelt (and other) administrations have been argued to have been extensively infiltrated (including at very high levels) by Communist agents with effects such as moving American foreign policy in pro-Soviet directions.[2] Various World War II revisionists have questioned the causes and effects of United States participation in World War II. Revisionists critical of the orthodox view on the attack on Pearl Harbor have argued that Roosevelt and/or members in the Roosevelt administration deliberately incited and even had foreknowledge of/enabled the attack in order to bring the United States into the war. Before this, Roosevelt has been argued to have played an important role in starting the war in Europe by inciting other countries against National Socialist Germany. A large Jewish influence anti-German influence during the Roosevelt administration and Roosevelt himself being of (partially) Jewish ancestry have also been argued. The very influential Jewish financier Bernard Baruch[3] had powerful positions during both WWI and WWII. He was also a "prominent confidant" of both Churchill and Roosevelt.

"As Sherwood (1948: 111) recounts, Churchill—then still First Lord of the Admiralty—said this to Baruch: “War is coming very soon. We will be in it and you (the United States) will be in it. You (Baruch) will be running the show over there, but I will be on the sidelines over here.”"

[4]

In a report from Count Jerzy Potocki, the Polish Ambassador in Washington DC, he warned his government in 1939 of the campaign there that was being organised pressing for war with Germany in which various Jewish intellectuals took part, such as Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter, a Justice of the Supreme Court, Morgenthau, Secretary of the US Treasury, and others linked to President Franklin D Roosevelt, some of whom held many of the highest posts in the American Government.[5] William C. Bullitt[6] who worked in the Roosevelt Administration, and who had been the USA's first ambassador to the Soviet Union, then France, had been working to convince Poland not to negotiate with Germany while also pressuring the British government to take pro-active steps against Germany. It has been argued that the Jewish community in America and Britain was determined to drive Britain into a war with Germany and used all of their financial and political leverage in order to bring about that very eventuality - Hollywood being a good example of how anti-German propaganda was spread. Potocki sent a report to the Polish Foreign Minister in Warsaw dated 12 January 1939 in which he said:

There is a feeling now prevalent in the United States marked by a growing hatred of Fascism, and above all Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with National Socialism. Propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100 percent of the radio, film, daily and periodical press. This propaganda is extremely coarse and presents Germany as black as possible; it is extremely effective as the public here is completely ignorant and knows nothing of the situation in Europe.[7]

The German Embassy in Warsaw wrote to the Foreign Office in Berlin on 21 March 1939: "We have the impression here more and more that Biddle[8] the American Ambassador here, exercises an unfavourable influence on Polish policy. Biddle has the ear of Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, to a very considerable extent, and is a tool of Bullitt, the well-known American Ambassador in Paris, who is causing enough harm in any case. Biddle telephones Bullitt daily."[9]

Family[]

On 17 March 1905, Roosevelt married distant cousin Eleanor Roosevelt despite the fierce resistance of his mother. Eleanor's uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, stood in at the wedding for Eleanor's deceased father Elliott. (Eleanor had lost both parents by age ten). They had six children, the first four in rapid succession:

  • Anna Eleanor (1906–1975; age 69)
  • James (1907–1991; age 83)
  • Franklin Delano, Jr. (18 March 1909 – 7 November 1909)
  • Elliott (1910–1990; age 80)
  • a second Franklin Delano, Jr. (1914–1988; age 74)
  • John Aspinwall (1916–1981; age 65)

Eleanor Roosevelt[]

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (11 October 1884 – 7 November 1962) was First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. Shewas born at 56 West 37th Street in New York City, the daughter of Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Hall Roosevelt. She was named Anna after her mother and her aunt Anna Cowles; Eleanor after her father, and was nicknamed "Ellie" or "Little Nell". From the beginning, Eleanor preferred to be called by her middle name. She was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt.

She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and assumed a role as an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an internationally prominent author and speaker for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

In the 1940s, Roosevelt was one of the co-founders of Freedom House and supported the formation of the United Nations. Roosevelt founded the UN Association of the United States in 1943 to advance support for the formation of the UN. She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 and 1952, a job for which she was appointed by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed by the United States Senate. During her time at the United Nations she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.

See also[]

  • Attack on Pearl Harbor
  • Great Sedition Trial
  • McCarthyism - On the postwar investigations into some of the Communist spies and infiltrators.
  • Tyler Kent
  • William Stephenson‎‎
  • Winston Churchill - On various relationships between Churchill and Roosevelt such as their extensive efforts to bring the United States into the war.
  • Great Sedition Trial of 1944

External links[]

Revisionist journals[]

Article archives[]

References[]

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/books/review/fdr-and-the-jews-by-richard-breitman-and-allan-j-lichtman.html
  2. M. Tanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein: Stalin’s Secret Agents, The subversion of Roosevelt’s government, Threshold Editions, New York 2012
  3. Baruch was also closely associated with Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  4. The Jewish Hand in the World Wars, Part 2 http://codoh.com/library/document/3294/
  5. "Polish Documents on the Origin of the War", cited in State Secrets by Comte Léon de Poncins, UK edition, 1975, ISBN 0-85172-911-8, p.31.
  6. On his maternal side, Bullitt was descended from Haym Salomon, a Polish Jew who settled in Philadelphia in 1778.
  7. The German White Paper - the full texts of the Polish Documents, issued by the German Foreign Office with a Foreword by C. Hartley Grattan, published by Howell, Soskin and Company, New York City, 1940, p.29. These are some of the documents seized by the Germans after they occupied Warsaw the previous year.
  8. Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle, jr.
  9. German Documents, 1956, p.74.
  • Beard, Charles A., President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War 1941, Yale University Press, U.S.A., 1948.
  • Rosenau, James N., & Roosevelt, Elliott, editors, The Roosevelt Letters, George Harrap & co., London, 1950, vol.2, 1905-1929.
  • Lash, Joseph P., & Roosevelt, Elliott, editors, The Roosevelt Letters, George Harrap & Co., London, 1952, vol.3, 1928-1945.
  • Lash, Joseph P., Roosevelt and Churchill 1939-1941, Norton & Co., New York, 1976.
  • Charmley, Professor John, Churchill's Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940-57, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1995, ISBN: 0-340-59760-7 [This is a critical book].
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