Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Thirty-second President of the United States . One of the brightest of North American politicians, he guided the nation in the most turbulent time in its history when, to the greatest economic crisis, World War II was added . He applied the so-called New Deal and fought decisive battles to moderate the power of the monopolies and succeeded in establishing state control over important economic areas.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 2 Actions taken by Roosevelt
- 3 Political career
- 1 Governor of the State of New York
- 2 President
- 4 Death
- 5 Sources
Biographical synthesis
He was born in Hyde Park ( New York ), on January 30 , 1882 . It was also a relative of the president Theodore Roosevelt , and, like him, had studied at Harvard (also at the University of Columbia) and had been assistant secretary of the Navy ( 1913 -20); but, unlike him, Franklin aligned himself with the Democratic Party. He was a lawyer, although he left the profession very young to dedicate himself to politics. He was elected senator ( 1911 ) and governor of the State of New York ( 1928 ), highlighting his policy of fighting poverty.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the deep economic depression that it caused gave him the definitive boost to defeat Hoover in the presidential election of 1932 , the first that the Democrats had won since Wilson’s time. Breaking with the principle imposed by Washington that the presidents resign to be reelected for more than two terms, Roosevelt returned to appear successfully in the elections of 1936 , 1940 and 1944 ; he himself proposed shortly before his death the constitutional amendment that prohibited a third presidential re-election (in force since 1951), for which he was the only North American president to govern for four consecutive terms ( 1933 -45), although death prevented him from completing the last one.
Faced with the challenge of the “great depression,” Roosevelt launched a political program known as the New Deal. Advised by an environment of progressive intellectuals and technicians, this program intuitively applied the prescriptions of economic policy that John M. Keynes theorized in the same years . He promoted State intervention to bring the economy out of stagnation and to alleviate the social effects of the crisis, even if it was at the cost of increasing the public deficit and breaking with some the taboo of market freedom. Thus ended the golden age of American ultraliberalism, opening that of the welfare state.
Actions taken by Roosevelt
Its initial measures include the Agrarian Reform ( 1933 ), the Industrial Reconstruction Act, and the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (which involved an ambitious public works program, assuming the state for the first time a planning function). During a second phase, from ( 1935 – 1936), regulated labor relations in favor of workers, guaranteed freedom of association, created unemployment, retirement and disability pensions, established the 40-hour workweek and the minimum wage. This public interventionism and the president’s own popularity made him accumulate great power, which his adversaries tried to stop; some of his measures were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Roosevelt succeeded in creating a social security system and reforming American capitalism in a modern sense, which prevented social outbreaks and allowed the country to regain confidence; but in the strictly economic field, it did not succeed in relaunching growth until the Second World War ( 1939 – 1945), launched the North American rearmament.
Indeed, after overcoming the economic crisis, Roosevelt’s great challenge was the fight for supremacy on a world scale. It established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and established a policy of good neighborliness with the traditionally subject countries (renouncing control of Cuba , the Philippines and Haiti ). But, faced with the aggressiveness shown by Nazi Germany since Hitler’s rise to power in (1933), Roosevelt faced the dominant isolationism in Congress, launched rearmament in ( 1938 ) and aligned the United States with the Allied side. in defense of freedoms (Credit and Lease Law and Atlantic Charter, both of 1941).
Thus he prepared the North American intervention in the war, which took place after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941). It established a war economy regulated by the federal government, thanks to which it mobilized all the country’s resources and ended up imposing its demographic and industrial superiority over Germany and Japan . With the Axis powers defeated, Roosevelt negotiated with his allies Churchill and Stalin the organization of the postwar world at the Tehran ( 1943 ), Dumbarton Oaks ( 1944 ) and Yalta ( 1945 ) Conferences .
In accordance with his ideas of peaceful understanding between nations, Roosevelt carried out his project to create a United Nations (UN) and was conciliatory towards Stalin; but it could not prevent the latter from adopting a position of strength, consolidating the world power of the Soviet Union and determining the bipolarization of the immediate “Cold War.” Held to the end by his wife Eleanor (who assisted him as a close political collaborator).
Political career
In 1910 , Roosevelt ran for the New York State Senate for the Hyde Park district, which had not elected a Democrat since 1884 . The Roosevelt surname, the Roosevelt money and the Democratic current of that year, led him to the state capital Albany, where he led a group of reformists who opposed the Manhattan machine of Tammany Hall that dominated the state Democratic Party. When Woodrow Wilson was elected president in 1912, Roosevelt assumed the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In 1914 , he ran for the Democratic election for the United States Senate, but was heavily defeated in the primaries by Tammany Hall-Backed James W. Gerard.
Between 1913 and 1917 , Roosevelt worked to expand the Navy (with significant opposition from pacifists in the administration, such as Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan), and founded the United States Navy Reserve, to provide a reserve of trained men to be mobilized in times of war. Wilson sent the army and marines to Central America and the Caribbean to intervene in countries in those areas. Roosevelt, by his own testimony, he was responsible for drafting the Constitution of Haiti of 1915 , imposed by the United States. When the United States entered World War I , in AprilBy 1917, Roosevelt became the highest administrator of the United States Navy, as the Secretary of the Army, Josephus Daniels, had been elected for political reasons and served only representative functions.
Roosevelt demonstrated great administrative talent and quickly learned to negotiate with congressional leaders and other government departments to approve budgets and achieve rapid expansion of the military. He became a staunch defender of the submarine and of ways to combat the threat of German submarines to the Allied fleet. He proposed creating a mine barrier across the North Sea from Norway to Scotland . In 1918 , he visited England and France to inspect US naval facilities, on that visit he met Winston Churchill for the first time. With the end of the war in November of 1918, was in charge of the demobilization, although he opposed the complete dismantling of the Army.
In 1920 , the Democratic National Convention elected him as a candidate for Vice President of the United States in the candidacy headed by the Governor of Ohio, James M. Cox. Republican opponents denounced the eight years of lack of management and called for a “Return to Normalization.” The Cox-Roosevelt candidacy was widely defeated by Republican Warren Harding. So Roosevelt retired from legal practice in New York, but few doubted that he would soon return to the political career again.
Governor of the State of New York
He attended the 1924 Democratic Convention and made a speech in support of the candidacy for the presidency on behalf of New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. Although Smith was not elected, he was elected again in 1928and this time he also had the support of Roosevelt. This time he succeeded, proposing to Roosevelt that he run for Governor of New York. To win his nomination as a candidate, Roosevelt had to make peace with Tammany Hall, which he did with great qualms. In the November elections, Smith was widely defeated by Republican Herbert Hoover, but Roosevelt was elected Governor by a margin of 25,000 votes in a turnout of 2.2 million. Born in upstate New York, he had an easier time winning the vote of state residents who did not live in New York City with a far greater advantage than other Democratic candidates.
President
The economic crisis of 1929 and his commitment to a new policy, known as the New Deal (new deal), won him the confidence of Americans in the 1932 elections, defeating the Republican candidate Herbert C. Hoover, and becoming president. of the United States of America for the Democratic Party. His New Deal economic policy consisted of stimulating public spending through investment in infrastructure, during his first years of government he executed all kinds of projects such as hydroelectric plants, highways, schools and in general all kinds of public works, significantly modernizing the country.
There is no evidence that the New Deal was effective in fighting the crisis, which lasted until the United States mobilized its economy with World War II . Instead, its success is undeniable on the social level. The policy led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the country through reforms and not through revolution. On the other hand, the New Deal programs were openly experimental, manifestly perfectible, and given the costs of this process, a more comprehensive program of change might have been preferred. However, the imperfect nature of the New Deal allowed for constructive criticism and slower reflection that paved the way for an improvement in American democracy in subsequent years.
Roosevelt in 1937
In trade union matters, the adoption of the Wagner Act made it possible to make unions powerful groups. During his tenure, he promoted foreign policy fighting to achieve world primacy in the United States, establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933 . In response to the threat of Germany of Hitler , launched a series of preventive measures (rearmament, war economy, alignment with the democratic powers) who prepared his country for a possible armed conflict. The ghost of war was presented with the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese command to the military base in Oahu Pearl Harbor in the Pacific in 1941. Faced with this aggression, Roosevelt declared before Congress that that day would be known as the day of infamy and asked Congress for a state of war. He acted firmly and energetically in all aspects necessary to bring his country and its industry to an optimal war effort.
He ordered the internment of 110,000 Japanese in concentration camps on the west coast of the United States. He approved war budgets destined not only to rebuild the battleships sunk in Pearl Harbor but also to the deployment of a fleet superior to the one had to the entrance of the war. He proposed and supported the Doolittle Incursion as the first offensive response to Japanese territory in March 1942 and maintained a strong ascendancy over the high command of the armed forces.
A supporter of diplomatic channels and maintaining personal contacts with allied politicians, he met on several occasions, separately and jointly, with Winston Churchill and Stalin to reach agreements at the end of World War II at the so-called Yalta Conference . Along these lines and in accordance with his desire to achieve a peaceful understanding between the different countries, he promoted the creation of a United Nations (UN). In his political work, he also highlights the important role played by his wife Eleanor. Although he had knowledge of the Manhattan Project on the development of the atomic bomb , he was unable to manage its use.
Death
The advanced brain cancer that he suffered outweighed the strength and tenacity of the politician, dying at his desk in the residence in Warm Springs , Georgia , on April 12 , 1945 , at the gates of the end of the conflict, without seeing the end of the Second World War and without reaching an agreement with the increasingly powerful Stalin. Death prevented him from completing his last term following elections in November of 1944 .
