Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.
32nd President of the United States
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 WWII.

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” a parody of Roosevelt's 'New Deal'.

Life

U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin during the Tehran Conference in 1943

Roosevelt is an Anglicized form of the Dutch Jewish surname 'van Rosevelt,' or 'van Rosenfeld', meaning 'from field of roses.' Although some use an Anglicized spelling pronunciation of /ˈruːzəvɛlt/, that is, with the vowel of ruse, FDR himself used [ˈroʊzəvəlt], with the vowel of rose. (The last syllable was pronounced by him with a schwa, or nondescript vowel, almost as vult.)

The family were one of the oldest in New York, arriving in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1649. One ancestor, Isaac Roosevelt, had served with the New York Militia during the American Revolution. (Franklin D. Roosevelt attended events of the New York society Sons of the American Revolution, and joined the organization while he was President.) The Roosevelts became friends and supporters of Abraham Lincoln and were abolitionists. The family were wealthy, and Cornelius van Schaack Roosevelt (1794-1871), father of President Theodore Roosevelt, was listed as one of Manhattan's ten millionaires. Their wealth came primarily from real estate though they had also gone into business importing plate glass for New York's builders..

Roosevelt was born on 30 January 1882 in the Hudson River Valley township of Hyde Park, New York. His mother, Sara Ann née Delano (1854-1941), named him after her favorite uncle Franklin Delano. His father, James Roosevelt (1828-1900), and his mother were sixth cousins and both were from wealthy old New York families. They were of mostly English descent; Franklin D. Roosevelt's great-grandfather, however, another James Roosevelt (1760-1847), was of Dutch ancestry, and his mother's maiden name, Delano, originated with a French Huguenot immigrant of the 1600s. Franklin was their only child, and he shared common ancestors with his fifth cousin President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) in Nicholas Roosevelt (1658-1742) and his spouse Heyltje Jans née Kunst (d.c1730). Nicholas was the younger son of the original immigrant.

Roosevelt grew up in an atmosphere of Protestant privilege. Sara was a possessive mother; James, 54 when Franklin was born, was considered by some as a remote father, though biographer Burns indicates James interacted with his son more than was typical at the time. Sara was the dominant influence in Franklin's early years; she once declared: "My son Franklin is a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all". Frequent trips to Europe made Roosevelt conversant in German and French. He learned to ride, shoot, row, and play polo and lawn tennis. Roosevelt also took up golf in his teen years, becoming a skilled long, hitter. He learned to sail; his father gave him a sailboat which he named "New Moon".

Roosevelt attended Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Massachusetts; ninety percent of the students were from families on the social register. He was heavily influenced by the headmaster, Endicott Peabody, who preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service. Forty years later Roosevelt said of Peabody, "It was a blessing in my life to have the privilege of [his] guiding hand." Roosevelt was a "B" student.

Roosevelt nevertheless went to Harvard College and lived in the Adams House, part of the "Gold Coast" area, reserved for wealthy students. Though he was there a "C" student, he was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, and also editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper. Roosevelt later declared:

"I took economics courses in college for four years, and everything I was taught was wrong."

While he was at Harvard, his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt became President, and the President's vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model and hero. In 1902, he met his future wife Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore's niece, at a White House reception (they had previously met as children). Eleanor and Franklin were also fifth cousins, once removed. At the time of their engagement Roosevelt was age twenty-two and Eleanor nineteen.

Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School in 1904 until 1907, and passed the New York State Bar exam. In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious Wall Street firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, dealing mainly with corporate law. He was first initiated in the Independent Order of Oddfellows and was initiated into Freemasonry on 11 October 1911 at Holland Lodge No. 8 in New York City.

In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, Roosevelt contracted an illness diagnosed then as polio which resulted in permanent paralysis from the waist down; this diagnosis was later questioned. For the rest of his life, Roosevelt refused to accept that he was permanently paralyzed. He tried a wide range of therapies, including hydrotherapy, and, in 1926, he purchased a resort at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he founded a hydrotherapy center for the treatment of polio patients which still operates as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. After he became President, he helped to found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now known as the March of Dimes).

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.

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 as well as 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 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.”"

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. William C. Bullitt 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.

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 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."

Family

Eleanor Roosevelt

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

• Roosevelt’s Catos (Archive)
• The Roosevelts were Jewish!? The letters which supposedly prove it at Winston Smith Ministry of Truth

Revisionist journals

• America's "Second Crusade" in Retrospect
• President Roosevelt's Campaign to Incite War in Europe: The Secret Polish Documents
• The Jewish Hand in the World Wars, Part 1
• The Jewish Hand in the World Wars, Part 2

Article archives

• Codoh: World War II: Prelude: USA/Japan

Sources

• 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].