Franklin Roosevelt short biography interesting facts. Biography of Roosevelt. National Economic Recovery Act

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the most outstanding, powerful and effective US politician in the 20th century. He was a wartime president. The most severe economic crisis from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present day, the largest war in world history, gave him a double chance for historical greatness.

At one time, his contemporaries not only respected him boundlessly, but also sharply criticized and even hated him, but in the light of distance, his weight increases for three reasons: firstly, with rare unanimity, historians and political scientists share the point of view that “F.D.R. " is the founder of the modern American Institute of Presidents. Second: Since his presidency, the interventionist state and the mixed economy, in which the federal government in Washington intervenes to regulate, correct, plan and manage, belong to the everyday life of Americans. Third: in foreign policy, with an unbending will, he accepted the challenge of German National Socialism, Japanese imperialism and Italian fascism earlier than most Americans. When the future of Western civilization was at stake in 1940/41, he was the Democrats' last hope and a direct alternative to Hitler. Through an unusual combination of sense of power and calling, strong nerves and tactical subtleties, he prevented the United States from becoming isolated in the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt was the great winner of World War II, and when he died, the United States became the world's new superpower.

His plans for a post-war order failed. Neither the United Nations, nor cooperation with the Soviet Union, nor the cooperation of the four "policemen of the world" of the USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and China became the determining factors of post-war politics. Likewise, the indivisible, liberal-capitalist world market remained an illusion.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, on the sunny side of society. The house where he was born was in Hyde Park, a spacious estate on the Hudson River between New York and Albany. Franklin was the only child of his then 54-year-old father James Roosevelt's second marriage to Sarah, who was 26 years younger than her husband and brought a dowry of one million dollars. The father led the measured life of a rural nobleman from the best New England families of Dutch origin. He was at once a farmer, a merchant and a socialite who was as fond of opera and theater as he was of regular trips to Europe. Although the Roosevelts' wealth did not compare with the newly rich Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, their social position among the leading families of New England was invulnerable.

James and Sarah gave their only and beloved son an upbringing appropriate to his position, careful and at the same time rich in events and ideas. The natural reliability that radiated from the parents and the parental home carried over into the son's perception of life and laid the foundation for his unshakable confidence in himself and the world.

This self-confidence and extreme self-discipline helped him when he became seriously ill with polio in 1921. Despite vigorous efforts over many years to overcome the disease, Roosevelt remained paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Without the help of ten-pound steel tires, he could not stand; he could only move slowly and little by little on crutches. No matter how inwardly he grumbled at fate, outwardly he put on an impeccable mask, full of hope and confidence. He forbade himself any thought of disappointment and self-pity, and his surroundings - any sentimental gesture.

The disease also changed his wife Eleanor and the nature of their marriage. Roosevelt married Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant fifth-degree relative from the Hudson Valley and niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1905. The first child, a daughter, was born in 1906; over the next 10 years, 5 more sons were born, one of whom died at the age of 8 months. From an initially shy and modest housewife and mother, step by step, "Eleanor" was shaped into perhaps the most admired woman in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Along with her many-sided socio-political activities, her tireless advocacy for women's equality and the trade union movement, in general for the oppressed, humiliated and poor in American society, along with her activities as a teacher, editorial writer, speaker and organizer, she to 1928, became Roosevelt's deputy and contact person with the Democratic Party. The marriage turned into a political workers' community in which Eleanor, guided by Christian social convictions, embodied Roosevelt's “left conscience” and in which her own authority increased over the years, but she always recognized the political primacy of her husband. For Eleanor, this change of role simultaneously meant an escape from inner loneliness. Because Roosevelt's World War I affair with Lucy Mercer, Eleanor's attractive secretary, caused a crack in their marriage that was never mended. With her assumption of the presidency in 1933, Eleanor was forced to abandon hope that her husband would carve out for her the place in his life that she so desired: a place as an equal confidant and partner who shared her deepest hopes and disappointments. Brilliant, witty and charming, Roosevelt, who even before his presidency attracted men and women like a magnet, used them for his political ambitions and expected absolute loyalty from them, revealing his innermost feelings to no one, not even his wife.

After attending one of the country's finest private schools in Groton, Roosevelt attended Harvard College from 1900 to 1904 and then was a law student at Columbia University from 1904 to 1907.

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He abandoned the academic completion of his studies, passed the New York bar examination and entered the service of a famous New York law office as a moderately paid trainee. Since he had no desire to delve into the details of economic and cartel law and already had financial security and social recognition, politics became the only object of his pronounced ambition. In addition, there was the example of Theodore Roosevelt, whom Franklin and Eleanor visited many times in the White House. Without any irony during the conversation, Roosevelt developed a clear timetable for moving up: in a favorable election year for the Democratic Party, he wanted to try to become a member of the House of Representatives in New York State, then his career should follow the path of Theodore Roosevelt: Secretary of State in the Department of the Navy , Governor of New York State, President.

His career developed according to this pattern. In November 1910, he became secretary of the state of New York, in whose parliament he cast in his lot with the “progressive” Democrats. In March 1913, A was appointed Secretary of State for the Ministry of the Navy, a position which he filled with enthusiasm for seven years. In 1920, the Democratic Party even nominated him as a candidate for vice president. A year after the Democratic presidential defeat and his bout with polio, he tied his hope for a final recovery to a plan to return to politics. Roosevelt became governor of New York in 1928 and 1930, and on November 8, 1932, after a bitter election battle against incumbent President Herbert Hoover, he was elected president of the United States.

"This election fight is more than a fight between two men. It is more than a fight between two parties. It is a fight between two points of view about the purpose and objectives of government." This election statement by President Hoover could, word for word, belong to Roosevelt, since in essence he stated the same thing during his election campaign. In a passionate debate about the causes and overcoming of the economic crisis, which the Hoover government clearly failed to cope with, the question is whether the federal government, led by the President, has the right and responsibility, and to what extent, to intervene to regulate and restore order in the US economy with the goal of eliminating crisis and need, was the decisive contrast between both candidates. The question touched on the core of American self-understanding. The deep and lifelong antagonism between Roosevelt and Hoover was based on their incompatible views on the function of government.

While Hoover appealed to the classic American virtues of individualism and voluntariness and warned against the tyranny of the state, Roosevelt was agitating for the most radical state-interventionist planning program yet to be articulated in peacetime by a presidential candidate. Already in the spring of 1930, he wrote: “For me there is no doubt that the country must be quite radical, at least for one generation. History teaches that nations in which this happens from time to time are spared revolutions.” He understood himself as a preserver and an innovator, as a supporter of tradition and progress at the same time. I never intended to question the fundamentals of the American system such as private property, the profit motive, regional and functional division of power, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Despite his sharp attacks against the self-interested people at the top of the social pyramid, he was not an ideologist of class struggle. This would be deeply at odds with his core belief that the president is a champion of the public interest. He was certainly not a Marxist or a socialist, as Hoover claimed in the final phase of the election campaign. Just as little wanted to be classified as a capitalist. When asked about his political beliefs, he could say with disarming simplicity that he was a Christian and a democrat. But if the American system cannot do what Roosevelt thought it should do, which is to serve the common good and provide every American with a decent food supply, then the government must intervene. Common sense and human decency require this. Hoover's deeply un-American government philosophy spreads only doubt, hopelessness and fear among millions of people who languish at the bottom of the social pyramid without money, power or social status. Roosevelt promised a “new course” in the election campaign and meant by this concept from the vocabulary of card players that the United States was facing a new beginning.

The severity of the crisis and Roosevelt's convictions led to a quantitative and qualitative leap in the importance of the institution of presidents. On a larger scale than even under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the White House became the energy center of the entire American governmental system, the source of new ideas, the engine of commerce, the engine of social transformation and thus, in Roosevelt's vision, the embodiment of the common good. For the mass of the American population, the federal government and the President became for the first time a recognizable part of their daily lives, the center of their expectations and hopes.

The formation of the modern American institution of presidents is explained by the fact that Roosevelt consistently led the entire country out of the global economic crisis and out of the greatest war in history. In a sense, the United States was constantly at war these twelve years, first with economic need, then with external enemies. The double emergency became the hour of executive power. It is noteworthy that in overcoming economic distress, the metaphor of “war” played a paramount role.

“Roosevelt carried the matter” to the limits of the possible that the American constitutional system sets even for a strong president. He was an artist in the politics of power. Like no other president before him, he wrested the legislative initiative from Congress and, in this sense, expanded the legislative function of the institution of presidents. Roosevelt broke all records for using the power of veto, vetoing a total of 635 times. He courted and cajoled key deputies and senators in private conversations, exploited the possibility of official patronage and, if necessary, put pressure on Congress through public opinion. Roosevelt focused public expectations on the institution of presidents because he knew how to use both media of the time, the press and radio, in an incomparable way as instruments of his politics. Roosevelt was the first media president. He dominated major newspaper headlines, not least because of his sovereign "open door" policy towards journalists working in Washington. Year after year, the president, paralyzed from the waist down, gathered up to 200 journalists around his desk twice a week. They could ask him any question without a prior written request. These conferences were masterpieces of handling a free press. They were compared in importance to the question and answer hour in the British House of Commons. The secret of the success of his casual fireside chats on the radio, which won an audience of millions, was that this dialogue with the people was not a manipulative ploy for Roosevelt, but concerned the essence of his understanding of democracy.

The shift in the center of gravity of politics to the executive branch was also evident at the personnel and institutional levels. Especially between 1933 and 1935, and then again since 1939, all new institutions, departments, committees, commissions grew like mushrooms, were in constant transformation, dissolution and reorganization, often overlapped and could drive adherents of clearly demarcated competencies and an orderly path through the authorities to despair . During Roosevelt's presidency, the executive branch workforce doubled and even tripled: in 1933, the federal government employed exactly 600,000 people, and in 1939, before the outbreak of the European War, about 920,000 people. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the number increased to more than 1.5 million, only to increase dramatically again as a result of the war. Under none of his followers did the number drop below 2 million.

Finally, the reorganization and staffing of the presidential office were themselves supposedly one of the major impacts of the global economic crisis on the US political system. After 1933, Roosevelt quickly realized that his office was institutionally unable to cope with the enormous tasks and demands. He appointed a committee, the famous Brownlow Committee. This committee concluded in 1937: "The President needs help." He proposed the creation of an executive service of the president, under whose roof the White House service should be staffed with competent, energetic employees who should be distinguished by only one thing: “a passion for anonymity.” After a bitter political tug-of-war, Congress passed the Presidential Reorganization Act in 1939, which Roosevelt implemented through Executive Order 8248.

This gave the President an independent bureaucracy that enabled him to compete with the also greatly expanded Congressional bureaucracy. At the same time, this reform was fraught with the possibility of abuse, the temptation to gather in the White House a power elite insufficiently controlled by Congress and the public, and thus establish an “imperial presidency.”

Constant new formations and crossing of authorities brought Roosevelt the reputation of a bad administrator. And to a certain extent this is correct, but there was a method hidden in this process. Roosevelt relied on spontaneity, strong initiative, improvisation, the desire to experiment, competition and rivalry as the driving force of the New Deal and, later, the war economy. The division of power below the level of the President was consistent with the technique of “divide and conquer”, which he mastered.

He maintained his freedom of decision-making and ultimate responsibility only by leaving alternatives open in business, personnel and institutional terms, always using many information channels, giving no one a monopoly on access to the president, and forcing arguing ministers and advisers to ever new compromises. . Behind the justifiable complaints of politicians around Roosevelt about his unorthodox and unpredictable ways of obtaining information and making decisions, there was also often a wounded vanity.

The transformation of the presidential institution and the strengthening of the Washington bureaucracy were both a prerequisite and a consequence of the state-interventionist policy of the “New Deal,” the goals, scope, and contradictions of which were revealed in rough outline already in the election struggle. In Roosevelt's understanding of power as an amalgamation of interested parties, policy follows a "diagonal" that will attempt to help all groups and involve all areas of the economy. Roosevelt promised short-term crisis relief, economic recovery, and long-term reforms that would make it impossible for the unprecedented disaster to repeat itself. The legislation of the “New Deal” reflected these goals in various mixtures; they often tried to simultaneously implement two or even three goals with one measure.

Roosevelt entered the national stage on March 4, 1933, as a healer and left it only after being re-elected three times in 1936, 1940, and 1944, along with his death on April 12, 1945. Even without taking into account the famous first 100 days of his presidency, in which Washington nearly exploded with activity and Congress passed most bills at a record pace, Roosevelt, despite some setbacks and despite growing opposition from left and right, almost always had the initiative.

When Roosevelt took office, the United States was in an unprecedented crisis. In February 1933, the entire banking industry was in danger of collapsing, and there were several cases of starvation in a country suffering from a food glut. One of the areas where the Roosevelt government intervened immediately after taking office by declaring a four-day “bank holiday” was the US monetary and credit system. All activities in this area served three purposes: a radical reform of the rather chaotic banking industry, supervision and control of securities trading and, what was especially important in the initial phase, the creation of a legal basis for the state's inflationary policy to overcome deflation through new money issues.

Along with opening the banks, Roosevelt, if he wanted to restore public confidence in government, had to urgently address a pressing social problem - massive unemployment. It was impossible to wait until the legislative reform brought the expected economic results. The means of temporary improvement were direct payments of Union welfare benefits to individual states and communities, but most of all a broad government employment program, which began in March 1933 as a temporary emergency measure and ended, contrary to original plans, only with the entry of the United States into the Second World War.

No matter how confusing the external picture of successive and complementary programs and organizations may be, no matter how capital- and labor-intensifying projects compete with each other, Roosevelt’s main idea was simple: he wanted to remove from the streets those able-bodied unemployed who had not found a job in private economy, to save them from impoverishment and despair and to restore a sense of self-worth through the confidence that they will earn their living by consciously working for the common good. If you add in family members, 25-30 million people benefit from, albeit modest, salaries for government jobs. The administration, led by Roosevelt confidant Harry Hopkins, built 122,000 public buildings, 664,000 miles of new roads, 77,000 bridges, and 285 airports. Even teachers, artists and writers got jobs, thereby winning over the opinion-shaping stratum for the New Deal.

Some of the deepest government interventions in the market economy include support measures in agriculture, which was by far the hardest-hit sector of the economy. Relying on laws urgently passed by Congress, the Roosevelt government launched a sweeping attempt to regulate production and price. The curse of overproduction also encouraged intervention in the industrial sector. The federal Industrial Recovery Act was hoped to replace "destructive competition" with "fair competition" through a kind of loosely supervised, government-assisted cooperative self-regulation. The government, entrepreneurs, and working class had to cooperate voluntarily to stabilize production, prices, and wages.

The working class in this concentrated action, for the first time in US history, was rewarded with the right to free organization above the enterprise and the right to collectively bargain over tariffs. Further, the maximum working day and the lowest wages were agreed upon, and the labor of children under 16 years of age was completely prohibited.

The union's decisive step towards a welfare state was marked by the Social Security Act of 1935, which introduced unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. But Social Security's beginnings were extremely modest. Almost half of Americans were still unable to benefit from the already meager benefits. Health insurance was not introduced. The New Deal legislation, however, still determines the dual structure of federal-state social policy today. Both basic principles of the welfare state, contribution-financed social insurance and tax-financed social assistance or social security, have their roots in the 1930s.

It is still debatable how successful the New Deal was. It is true that the New Deal was able to alleviate, but not eliminate, unemployment and poverty, and socio-political laws did not go beyond modest beginnings. Only the war brought full employment and record-breaking production. Disorganized groups and socially declassed minorities, as well as blacks, remained on the margins of the New Deal, unequal patterns of opportunity and income changed little, and monopolies and concerns lost influence but not size. No one knew the limits of the New Deal better than Roosevelt himself, because in his second term he proclaimed a struggle against the poverty of the lower third of the nation. What he did not achieve depended not on him, but on the insurmountable barriers that the political-economic system The United States faced even strong presidents. His two severe domestic political defeats, the attempt to reorganize the Supreme Court, which resisted the centralizing tendencies of the New Deal, and the exclusion of the conservative opposition in his own party after the outstanding victory in the 1936 elections are clear examples of this. which Roosevelt believed would secure and advance the New Deal failed because he overestimated the capabilities and power of the President.

The decisive point was that Roosevelt gave new hope to a disheartened, unsure and directionless nation. The only thing the nation had to fear, as he declared upon his inauguration, was fear itself.

Interdependence, understood as the mutual dependence of all sections of the American people, was a central concept in domestic political thinking; interdependence, understood as the mutual dependence of all states of the world, was a central concept in Roosevelt's foreign policy thinking. The United States must not isolate itself from the rest of the world, because the future security and common good of the country are inextricably linked to the fate of Europe and Asia. True, in order to be elected and not lose domestic political support for the “new course,” Roosevelt was forced in the 30s to make concessions to the prevailing isolationist sentiment in the United States, which, under any circumstances, wanted to protect America from a new war in Europe and Asia. But the limitation of isolation he never shared national interests in the Western Hemisphere and half of the Pacific Ocean. His internationalist worldview led him, due to the expansive foreign policies of Germany, Italy and Japan in 1941, to a dilemma from which he was freed only by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the announcement of Hitler. US wars.

During the 1930s, there was growing concern in the United States that perhaps the supposed "Trojan horse" of the NSRPG in the United States, the Alliance of Friends of the New Germany, would threaten US internal security. At the same time, fears grew that the foreign policy of the Third Reich posed a threat to world peace. This double fear did not lead to a preventive interventionist policy in Europe, but, on the contrary, to an increase in the isolationist mood of the American people in view of these signals of the danger of isolating themselves even more decisively from Europe. Traditional foreign policy prescriptions, supposed lessons from the failed "crusade" of 1917-18, and a narrow understanding of US national interests were the most important determinants of American foreign policy until the outbreak of the European War in 1939. What Hitler tried in vain to achieve in 1940 with the Three Power Pact, the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 and the alliance with Japan - namely, to keep America away from Europe and scared back into the Western Hemisphere - the American Congress did itself by passing the Neutrality Act. . The international political situation began to develop in the opposite direction. At a time when aggression and expansion were increasing in Europe and Asia, Congress, with the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1937, added to the list of foreign policy activities prohibited for the Roosevelt government during periods of war and crisis. At the level of official foreign policy, supported by Congress, legislation and public opinion, Roosevelt was, at the outbreak of the European war in 1939, an unarmed prophet of infinitesimal magnitude, and as such he was treated accordingly by Hitler.

Roosevelt knew all too well that he would win freedom of action and the ability to act in world politics to the extent that he could change the “threat sense,” the American people’s perception of the threat potential of National Socialist Germany and the United States. He had to explain and demonstrate to the American people that limiting national interests to the Western Hemisphere, isolating itself in Fortress America and leaving events in Eurasia to their own course is a dangerous illusion for the United States. Preparedness—industrial, economic, and psychological preparation for possible war—was the overriding goal of his foreign policy until 1941. In this sense, foreign policy was largely domestic.

Methodologically and institutionally, Roosevelt was extremely skillful. To avoid being suspected of spreading his worldview through government propaganda, which would only strengthen the accusation that Roosevelt's haters wanted to make himself the "dictator of America," he relied, as in the New Deal years, on an informal but extremely effective strategy . In the White House, in numerous ministries and agencies, so-called “information departments” were created, which supposedly had only one goal - to inform the American people about the international situation. After the French incident in 1940, Hollywood, a large number of documentary and newsreel studios, radio stations, newspapers and magazines cooperated with the government to force isolationists and non-interventionists to go on the defensive. In this educational campaign, Roosevelt developed his internationalist vision of the world, the basic views on the future role of the United States in the world. And on this fundamental level, Roosevelt was extremely constant, he was neither a consoler, nor a juggler, nor an opportunist, nor a swindler who, by promising not to go to war, only dragged the United States into it - all this was only on a tactical level. In the domestic political conflict with the isolationists, he deployed the dialectic of US globalism in its both components: a warning against the world domination of the enemy and a global definition of US national interests, namely, in relation to the content and scope of the national interest.

He shared the view of Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan that the balance of power on the European continent was a vital interest for the United States. Along with Woodrow Wilson, he believed in the ideal of “that kind of peace,” in which the self-determination of a nation and the principles of collective security should guarantee peace. With his Foreign Secretary, Cordell Hull, he shared the belief that only a free world economy could produce the goods and services needed to maintain world peace in the long term. Hitler and the "Third Reich" clearly threatened everything at once: the balance of power in Europe, world peace and a free world economy. Therefore, Roosevelt framed his warnings, his globalism, as a triple warning of the future.

With every military success of the aggressors in Europe and Asia, according to the president and his supporters, a future was approaching, the implementation of which would mean disaster for the American economy: the victory of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, Japan in the Far East would force both regions to a system almost independent of imports , a planned economy, which would mean the end of the liberal, indivisible world market and a serious threat to the American economic and social system. If the United States and its allies lose control of the world's oceans, according to Roosevelt, it could be used by the Axis powers to attack the Western Hemisphere. But control of the seas cannot be exercised only by the US fleet; it is possible only if the Axis powers do not dominate in Europe and Asia and it is possible to have the shipbuilding capacities of two continents. France, the British Empire and China, and from mid-1941 the Soviet Union, must be supported because they indirectly protect the United States.

Moreover, the approaching war had a moral dimension for Roosevelt even before the mass destruction. For him it was a crusade to defend freedom from aggressors and dictators. Almost obsessively repeating, Roosevelt constantly explained: the right of peoples to free self-determination and the duty of states to submit in international politics to the principles of international law are inseparable. Violence and aggression as a means of changing the status quo are illegal. Even before 1941, he interpreted the war as an epochal struggle for the future image of the world between aggressors and peaceful nations, between liberal democracy and barbarism, between citizens and criminals, between good and evil. For Roosevelt there could be no peace with the aggressors. The worst possibility, from his point of view, was a "super-Munich" in Europe and Asia, which would give Hitler a free hand for his racial empire in Europe, and the Japanese for their empire in East Asia. While he took into account public opinion and Congress, until the fall of 1941, adhered to the fiction that the measures provided by the United States to its allies should protect the country itself from the war, Roosevelt knew even before Pearl Harbor that the United States should enter it, however, the claim that he was informed in advance about the attack. the Japanese to the Pacific Fleet and deliberately did not take any measures, belongs to the realm of legends.

With the entry of the United States into the war, the 61-year-old Roosevelt faced challenges that sapped his strength so that, from 1944, physical destruction was visible to everyone. In addition, there was the transition to a war economy, military and allied-political problems of the “grand coalition” against the powers of the “Wasp” and Japan, the new diplomacy of conferences in the war, Roosevelt’s selflessly fulfilled role as commander-in-chief of all American armed forces, since 1943, problems of relations with enemy states after the expected victory, which he tried to postpone for a long time and, finally, the big question of how to create a lasting peaceful order after this second world war. Roosevelt was forced to solve all these problems, constantly making excuses to a society that did not give the president freedom of action even in war, but at the same time left the institutions of criticism to exist. Public opinion. Congress, party-political contradictions between Democrats and Republicans, and finally, the presidential election of 1944 remained during the war as factors that Roosevelt had to take into account in word and deed. In this respect, he was more dependent than Winston Churchill, not to mention Stalin and Hitler.

Along with the variety of problems, their global scale was also evident. During the war, what Roosevelt had formulated back in 1941 was at work with greater force: the tasks of American foreign policy are so enormous and intertwined with each other that every attempt to even imagine them forces him to think of two continents and seven seas. In the World War, the United States, as Roosevelt predicted, became the "arsenal of democracy." In 1943 and 1944, the country produced 40% of all military goods in the world. Both the main enemies Germany, Japan and Italy, and the main allies England and the British Empire, the Soviet Union and China forced Roosevelt to think on a global scale. Major decisions in Europe were made with Asia in mind, and vice versa. Hitler's Germany was the main enemy number one, however, since the looming defeat, it played a less significant role in the president's plans for the future.

Two days before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt ended a fireside chat with the hopeful phrase: “We will win the war, and we will win the peace.” But during the war, for him the second goal was subordinated to the first. Roosevelt's foreign policy in the war was, first of all, a policy for its successful completion. The highest military and political goals were identical, namely the destruction of the enemy, although the President took very seriously the principles for the future of peace, which he proclaimed back in January 1940 in an address to Congress and clarified in August 1941 at a meeting with the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Charter. From this, for Roosevelt, it followed as basic principles of action - to oblige his alliance partners before the public to the implementation of these general principles and to prevent possible political conflicts on specific issues of the post-war order, such as borders and reparations, from blowing up the larger Anglo-Saxon- Soviet-Chinese coalition. In case of conflict, these general principles should have been invoked, compromises made, or controversial decisions postponed until victory was achieved.

Roosevelt's policy towards the Soviet Union, often criticized after 1945, had no alternative. He needed the Soviet Union because Roosevelt would fight and win the American War, that is, with unprecedented use of technology and relatively few casualties. The US needed Russian soldiers to defeat German and Japanese forces. For every American who died in the war, 15 Germans and 53 Russians died. Already in 1942, Roosevelt knew "that the Russian army would kill more people of the Axis powers and destroy more military equipment than all 25 united nations combined." The inevitable conclusion followed from this that the power and influence of the Soviet Union after a joint victory would be incomparably greater than in 1939. No one could prevent victory in World War II from making the Soviet Union a Euro-Asian world power, and as a consequence, after the most murderous war in history, the world would depend on cooperation with the Soviet Union. It was impossible to escape this logic of power, which Roosevelt and Churchill understood very clearly. But at the beginning of this causal chain stood Hitler.

Roosevelt's illusion was the belief that, with all the recognition of the Soviet Union's security needs, cooperation with the Atlantic Charter could be achieved on American terms. He did not understand that the imperial-hegemonic need of the Soviet Union for security did not go so far in Eastern and Southern Europe as to encroach on the international legal independence of these states and annex them to the union of states of the USSR, that from the very beginning it was aimed at to break the independent will of these states through transformation into “anti-fascist democracies of a new type,” into “people's democracies,” which, in Soviet opinion, represented an intermediate step on the path to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Sources do not answer the question whether the skeptical Roosevelt continued to hope in the last months before his death, contrary to all expectations, or whether, taking into account the public opinion of his country after the Yalta conference (February 4-11, 1945), he was only pretending that believes in common goals among allies so as not to jeopardize US entry into the United Nations.

Objectively, however, immediately after his death due to a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, everything that Roosevelt wanted to achieve simultaneously fell apart: political cooperation with the Soviet Union "and the American vision of a better world. He also could not combine realistic and idealistic components American foreign policy, power and imagination could be spoken of as tragic if these categories were not deeply at odds with Roosevelt’s unshakable optimism and healthy faith in the progress of the New World.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt went down in history as the 32nd President of the United States, elected for 4 consecutive terms. The politician led the country out of the Great Depression, participated in the creation of the Anti-Hitler Coalition, and contributed to the birth of the UN.

The future politician was born on January 30, 1882 in the Hyde Park estate in New York. The family belonged to respectable circles in the capital. Father James Roosevelt, a descendant of the Dutch Rosenfeld family, who moved to the New World at the end of the 17th century, was engaged in commerce, farming, and owned several transport and coal mining companies. Mother, nee Sarah Delano, also belonged to an old European family of French Huguenots, settlers of de la Noix. The difference between the spouses was 26 years. This was James's second marriage after being widowed. From his first wife, Roosevelt Sr. had a son, the same age as his second wife.

Little Franklin was born when his father was 54 years old. The parents tried to give the child the best. In addition to visiting the opera and ballet theaters, the Roosevelts and their son often traveled to Europe, to the sea coast of Maine, where they were engaged in shipping on their own yachts. Having received an excellent education at home, at the age of 14 Franklin entered the Groton School in Massachusetts, where he studied for 3 years. The young man received his higher education and bachelor's degree at Harvard, after which he became a student at Columbia University Law School. After completing his studies, Roosevelt began practicing law in a law office in Manhattan.

Policy

Being a relative of the 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin himself aspired to politics. And such an opportunity presented itself in 1910, when the young lawyer was offered a position as a senator in the New York State Legislature. Roosevelt won the local elections and became the representative of the Democratic Party in the local government legislature. A year after taking office, Franklin accepted an invitation from the Holland Masonic Lodge and became a member of the organization. Roosevelt would subsequently reach the 32nd Degree of the Scottish Rite and enter the Grand Lodge of Georgia.

In 1912, Roosevelt distinguished himself in the US presidential elections and, after the victory of the Democratic candidate Thomas Woodrow Wilson, received the position of Deputy Secretary of the Navy. The politician worked in this post until 1921. He dealt with strengthening the US Air Force flotilla, improving the combat capability of warships, and also supported the political line of the president.

Young politician Franklin Roosevelt

Continuing to work in the government apparatus, Roosevelt ran for the Senate in 1914, but did not pass the vote. In 1920, Franklin suffered another setback. This time in the presidential election, in which he participated as a vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic team led by James Cox. The political situation did not favor the democratic bloc, and the conservatives won. For 8 years, Roosevelt went into the shadows. This was also facilitated by the onset of disability, which occurred after suffering from polio in 1921.

Franklin Roosevelt's illness confined him to a wheelchair

The illness did not break Franklin, and already in 1928 the politician won the election for governor from the state of New York, where he managed to hold out for two terms. Roosevelt used the acquired leadership experience in his further presidential work.

Before the presidential election in 1932, the governor of New York creates a government agency that provides temporary emergency assistance to those affected by unemployment during the years of economic crisis, thereby earning the sympathy of future voters. In addition, a well-conducted PR campaign, which consisted of daily “Fireside Chats” radio broadcasts with the participation of candidate Franklin Roosevelt, made his personality popular among the entire US population. Later all the recordings were published in the form of small books.

President of the U.S.A

The main elections in Roosevelt's biography - the US presidential elections - took place in 1933. They were preceded by an election campaign, as a result of which Roosevelt developed and presented the theses of the New Deal. The reform program was aimed at eradicating the shortcomings of the US economy that had developed at the beginning of the 30s and entailed a global commodity and monetary crisis.

Voters believed the politician and were not mistaken in their choice. In the first three months of his administration, Roosevelt put the banking system in order. One of the president's first laws was a decree on refinancing farm debts. Franklin took state control of the agricultural complex, additionally passing the Agricultural Recovery Act.

Participation in reforming the country's industrial complex played a major role in the president's domestic policy. Necessary laws to improve the investment climate in the country were also adopted in the first days of the presidency. The new representative of the White House will stabilize the situation in the country, reduce unemployment, and tame the dissatisfied masses of farmers, workers and bank clerks.

Roosevelt began to introduce programs that were designed to improve the condition of socially vulnerable children and the elderly. Trade unions are being created, mechanisms for stabilizing wages are being developed, and the tax system is being brought into a reasonable framework. Within six months, Roosevelt restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

Personal life

While studying in his last year at Harvard University, Franklin married his distant relative Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, who was two years younger than the young man. Over the course of 10 years, the Roosevelt family had 6 children, one of whom died in infancy. In 1906, daughter Anna appeared, followed by sons James, Elliot, Franklin Delano and John Aspinwall. The wife gradually turned from a housewife and caring mother into Franklin's personal assistant, and then, due to her husband's illness, Eleanor had to take on a lot of her husband's political and social responsibilities.

Eleanor Roosevelt participated in the propaganda of her husband's first presidential election campaign, defending and explaining the reform course. The president's wife dealt with issues of employment and social protection of women, becoming a prominent representative of the first wave of feminists. Madame Roosevelt came under the care of vulnerable layers of citizens: the unemployed, teachers, journalists. At the end of the 30s, the popularity ratings of the president's wife were an order of magnitude higher than those of the head of state.

Franklin Roosevelt with his wife and 13 grandchildren

During the tense confrontation with fascism, Eleanor took the post of Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States. Roosevelt contributed to the creation of the UN, and the first lady made a great contribution to the development of the organization’s provisions for the protection of human rights, including those of non-white US citizens. After the death of her husband, Eleanor continued her political career in the administrations of subsequent presidents. The experience and analytical skills of Roosevelt's wife were valued by the state apparatus of Truman and.

The Second World War

With the states of Europe and Latin America, Roosevelt chose a neutral line of foreign policy. This position was dictated by the US President’s reluctance to intervene in global interstate conflicts, but ultimately led to a decrease in arms exports, which had a negative impact on the barely strengthened US economy. Therefore, with the emergence of the Blitzkrieg in Germany, Roosevelt creates a military alliance with Great Britain and begins to supply weapons to the European partner.

With the outbreak of World War II, the Americans delayed open conflict with Japan, but after the December 7, 1941 attack by Japanese military aircraft on a US Air Force base in the Pacific, Franklin Roosevelt jointly declared war on the land of the rising sun. Three days later, Germany and fascist Italy declared war on the North Atlantic coalition. For three years, Roosevelt did not dare to take military action on the European continent, and only after the obvious victories of the USSR, which turned the tide of hostilities, did the American president and his allies open the Western Front.

One of the responses to the aggression of fascism was the idea of ​​​​creating an organization consisting of representatives of four police states who would guard peace throughout the world. Roosevelt nurtured the idea of ​​uniting Great Britain, the USA, the USSR and China from the first days of the war, and in January 1942 Franklin managed to create the UN by signing a declaration of alliance.

Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

Roosevelt repeatedly participated in joint meetings with Churchill, which took place in Tehran, Quebec, Moscow and Washington. At the 1945 conference of three world leaders in Yalta, Roosevelt managed to gain the support of the Soviet leader for joint operations against Japan, as well as advance the Soviet-American friendship. The famous photos of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at their dacha in Crimea spread around the world and became harbingers of a warming in relations between countries.

Death

After returning from the Yalta Conference to Washington, Roosevelt continued to work on preparing the opening of the UN Assembly, as well as the conference in Potsdam. But unexpectedly, on April 12, 1945, the president suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, which took the life of Franklin Roosevelt. According to his will, the grave of the head of the United States is located in Hyde Park, not far from the places where the 32 US presidents spent their happy childhood years.

Despite the fact that most of Franklin’s abandoned affairs were not completed (the alliance of four was not created, the strengthening of ties with the USSR was not achieved, the world market did not begin to develop according to liberal capitalist laws), Roosevelt’s name is on a par with outstanding US leaders , such as , and .

• Not many people know that Roosevelt also tried his hand at writing. In early 1945, the US President completed the literary work “The Baker Street Folio: Five Notes on Sherlock Holmes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” which was based on the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle.
• From the age of 8, Franklin Roosevelt was interested in collecting postage stamps. The future politician was instilled with a love of philately by his parents, who traveled all over the world. Every day before going to bed, Roosevelt looked at the collection of memorabilia collected over several decades.

• After death, an autopsy of Franklin Roosevelt's body, contrary to the laws, was not performed, and the burial itself was carried out in a closed coffin. The grave of the 32nd US president was guarded by an armed escort for many months after the funeral.
• The Virgin Islands annually celebrates Franklin Roosevelt's birthday; this holiday has been an official holiday for more than half a century.
• Franklin Roosevelt more than once became the hero of Soviet films about the war. 6 films were shot, among which the most famous are “The Battle of Stalingrad”, “The Fall of Berlin”, “Liberation”, “Selecting a Target”. The American president was played by Nikolai Cherkasov, Oleg Frelikh, Stanislav Yaskevich,.

Quotes

• Having a little inflation is like being a little pregnant.
• Kindness has never taken away the strength and strength of free people. To be strong, a nation does not have to become cruel.
• The only obstacle to the implementation of our plans for tomorrow can be our doubts today.
• Give me $10 million and I will defeat any constitutional amendment.
• War is a crude, inhumane and completely impractical method of sorting out relations between governments.
• We have always known that reckless selfishness is a sign of bad character; and now we realized that this is also a sign of a bad economy.

The Delano Roosevelt family is one of the oldest in New York State. The ancestors of the future US president come from the Netherlands and France. One of his ancestors, Philip de la Noy, was the first Huguenot to sail to the New World.

Franklin Roosevelt's parents belonged to the new American aristocracy. His father, James Roosevelt, and his mother, Sarah Delano, were very rich people. They not only owned land, but also held shares in the large coal and transportation companies that their ancestors founded.

Childhood and youth

Franklin Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882. Until the age of 14, he was raised at home, receiving a decent education. He traveled a lot with his mother and father, visiting Europe every year. These trips allowed him to learn many European languages.

In 1896 he began his studies at Groton School, the best school in the country. In 1900 he entered Harvard, and in 1905 he entered Columbia University Law School. Upon completion of his studies, having received permission to practice law, he began working on Wall Street.

In 1911, Roosevelt was initiated into the Freemasons. In the fraternity, his career developed rapidly. Roosevelt became a 32nd degree initiate, which entitled him to represent the Master of the Grand Lodge of Georgia in New York.

Family

Franklin Roosevelt was married to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, his distant relative. She was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, whom Franklin considered the best politician of his time. Their marriage produced six children, of whom five survived. Eleanor Roosevelt played an important role in her husband's political career.

Political career and domestic political reforms from 1910 to 1940

Roosevelt began his political career in 1910, becoming a senator from New York. During the presidential campaign of 1913, he supported Woodrow Wilson, and after his victory he became Deputy Secretary of the Navy.

From 1914 to 1921, his political career did not develop, but in 1928 he became governor of New York, in fact, this was what opened the way for him to the White House.

In 1932, Roosevelt won the presidential election. Almost immediately, he carried out a series of reforms, called the “New Deal,” which helped bring the country out of a protracted economic crisis.

In 1936, Roosevelt was re-elected to a second term and continued reforms, mainly in the field of social protection of citizens.

Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy from 1932 to 1940

In foreign policy, Roosevelt the President was extremely cautious. On the one hand, he decided to take such important steps as recognizing the USSR in 1933 and normalizing relations with Latin American countries. On the other hand, he did not interfere in European affairs for a long time. Only after 1939, when it became clear that war in Europe was inevitable, Roosevelt decided to create the world's largest military-industrial complex.

Third presidential term and World War II

In the context of a global political crisis and a brewing global conflict, Roosevelt's victory in the 1940 presidential election is more than understandable. Almost immediately, his government began to provide all possible military assistance to Great Britain, and then the Lend-Lease law was signed. But until January 7, 1941 (that is, before Pearl Harbor), America did not officially enter the war, although military operations against Germany were carried out in the Atlantic. After the death of the Pacific squadron (for Roosevelt, the Japanese strike came as a surprise), the United States entered the war.

Roosevelt did everything to strengthen the Anti-Hitler coalition, was one of the founders of the UN, met with I. Stalin and W. Churchill in Tehran and Yalta. By the way, in Tehran he advocated the early opening of the Second Front, without supporting W. Churchill, who wanted to postpone this issue.

Last presidential term and death

In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt became American president for the fourth time, but on April 12, 1945, he died of a stroke.

Other biography options

• Americans still put Franklin Roosevelt on a par with outstanding political figures of the past, such as George Washington, T. Jefferson and A. Lincoln.
• It is known that Roosevelt was a big fan of the work of Arthur Conan Doyle and even tried to write detective stories himself.
• Even a short biography of Franklin Roosevelt is of interest, since he was a direct participant in all the most important events of the 20th century, which still influence the situation in the world.

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The content of the article ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO

In 1910, Roosevelt ran for the state Senate from his Hudson River district. He won because he campaigned hard, and Democrats were doing well that year everywhere. In Albany, he led a small group of them that opposed the party political machine in order to block the election of one of the leaders of Tammany Hall to the Senate by the state legislature. Soon after this, he organized a group of anti-Tammany Democrats in support of Wilson.

From 1913 to 1920 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in Wilson's cabinet. In 1914, Roosevelt sought nomination to the Senate from New York State, but was defeated. Cooperation with the Wilson administration and belonging to the Roosevelt family played a role in the Democrats' decision to nominate him in 1920 as the running mate of presidential candidate J. Cox. Although Republicans Harding and Coolidge won landslide victories, Roosevelt established important contacts throughout the country and rose to prominence in the party.

In 1921 he contracted polio and was partially paralyzed. Limited physical capabilities did not narrow his range of interests. Roosevelt maintained extensive correspondence with political figures in the Democratic Party and tried to engage in entrepreneurial activities. At the party's national conventions in 1924 and 1928, he nominated New York Governor A. Smith for the presidency.

In 1928, Roosevelt was already able to abandon crutches during his public appearances. When Smith began persistently inviting him to run for governor of New York, Roosevelt doubted for a long time, but then agreed. As governor, Roosevelt anticipated many of the policies of his future New Deal. He fought for the conservation of natural resources and rational use of the land fund, for government control over public services and the adoption of social welfare laws. Authorized unemployment insurance and stated in the state legislature on August 28, 1931 that assistance to the unemployed should be considered by the government not as charity, but as a duty to society. Roosevelt founded the first state social assistance agency, headed by G. Hopkins, who later became his closest adviser.

In the fourth round of voting at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1932, Governor Roosevelt was nominated as a presidential candidate. Under the able leadership of J. Farley, his candidacy received the largest number of votes in each of the ballots, but, according to the then rules of the Democratic Party, a two-thirds majority was required for nomination. It was received when W. Hurst and Speaker of the House of Representatives J. Garner secured the votes of California and Texas for Roosevelt. Garner became a candidate for vice president.

The 1932 elections were America's reaction to the misfortune that befell the country. The anger and frustration of a vibrant people forced into idleness and poverty as a result of the economic depression drove the Republican Party out of power. Roosevelt won 42 states, receiving 472 electoral votes to Hoover's 59 (exclusively in the northeastern states). The winner's advantage was more than 7 million votes.

It was in the first hundred days after the inauguration that, at the insistence of the White House, Congress passed a significant part of the New Deal bills, and after this period, Roosevelt turned into a real leader of the nation. He was able to generate public support unprecedented in American history for a program aimed at achieving what its initiators called “a more democratic economic and social system.”

Before campaigning for re-election in 1936, Roosevelt added to the accomplishments of the New Deal with congressional approval of dollar devaluation and stock market regulation (1934), as well as Social Security and the Wagner Labor Relations Act (1935). Promising a continuation of the New Deal policies and condemning the “economic royalists” for establishing economic tyranny, Roosevelt and Garner inflicted a crushing defeat on Kansas governor A. Landon and Illinois publisher F. Knox, winning in all states except Maine and Vermont.

By 1936, Roosevelt had recruited into the Democratic Party many who had previously voted Republican or had not voted at all. He enjoyed the support of almost all groups of the population, except representatives of big business. During Roosevelt's second term, Congress advanced the New Deal program by creating the US Housing Administration (1937) to provide credit to local agencies and passing the Second Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1938 and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage for workers.

The Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional some of the New Deal laws, including the first Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act. Roosevelt decided to make changes to the composition of the court. He asked Congress to grant him the power to appoint new judges once members of the court reach 70 years of age. This proposal caused widespread protest and was rejected. But before it was rejected, the Supreme Court itself upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act.

Roosevelt's position was complicated by the fact that at the end of 1937 the economic situation deteriorated sharply. By 1938 the number of unemployed had increased to 10 million people. The President managed to obtain $5 billion from Congress to create new jobs and carry out public works. At the end of 1938, the economic situation improved, but unemployment remained high until the outbreak of World War II, when large-scale purchases of American goods by Great Britain and France began, and the army began to rearm. Roosevelt's attempt in 1938 to remove several conservative Democrats from Congress almost completely failed, and the Republicans achieved significant success in the midterm elections.

The president's foreign policy received recognition in Congress much later than his domestic policies. The only exception was the approach to Latin American countries. In furtherance of President Hoover's efforts to improve relations with states south of the US border, Roosevelt proclaimed the “Good Neighbor Policy.” With the help of Secretary of State C. Hull and his assistant (and then deputy) S. Wells, interference in the affairs of Latin American countries was stopped. In 1933, the texts of new treaties with Cuba and Panama were developed, changing their status as US protectorates. Marine units were withdrawn from Haiti. The Monroe Doctrine was transformed from a unilateral US policy into a multilateral policy for the entire Western Hemisphere.

Since 1933, Roosevelt used the White House platform to influence public opinion. Through his speeches and appearances at press conferences, he gradually convinced the public that Germany, Italy and Japan posed a threat to US security. In October 1937, after Japan's attack on Northern China, Roosevelt insisted on the need to take measures to isolate the aggressor countries. However, the public reacted negatively, and the president had to again convince the country of the importance of moving from a policy of isolationism to a policy of collective security. Meanwhile, in 1938 and 1939, he managed to achieve an increase in funding for the needs of the army and navy.

In April 1940 Germany occupied Denmark. On May 10, its divisions invaded Holland. Five days later, German troops punched a hole in the French defense line and within a week reached the English Channel, cutting off Belgian and British troops in Flanders. On June 10, Italy joined Germany in the attack on France. After 12 days, France capitulated. Massive raids on London began in September. The President's most important steps to assist allies were taken through executive branch funds. He returned the military aircraft to their manufacturers so that they could sell them to Britain. In August 1940, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister William Churchill reached an agreement that for the supply of 50 American destroyers from the First World War, Great Britain would provide the United States with 8 naval and air bases in British possessions from Newfoundland to South America.

During the Battle of Britain, Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term as president. The nomination of his candidacy caused quite widespread, but impotent irritation among conservative Democrats, who were also dissatisfied with the nomination of Secretary of Agriculture G. Wallace for the post of vice president. Roosevelt was opposed by W. Wilkie, a lawyer and businessman, who wrested the Republican nomination from the hands of Senator from Ohio R. Taft, Senator from Michigan A. Vandenberg and T. Dewey from New York. Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the elections.

By December 1940, Great Britain found itself unable to pay cash for military goods. Speaking on the radio and at press conferences, Roosevelt actively promoted the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States could lease military equipment to Great Britain and receive payment for it after the end of the war. In March 1941, the corresponding law was approved by a significant majority in both houses of Congress. America's economic resources began to be used to defeat the Axis powers. Roosevelt also expanded the range of US military patrol vessels escorting merchant ships to Iceland and ordered US warships to open fire on Axis ships in those waters.

During these months, Roosevelt's opponents, who created the America First Committee, accused the president of working to prepare the nation for war. During public debates, Roosevelt refused to discuss this issue and insisted that it was a matter of national security. At the same time, he did everything through diplomatic channels to avoid war with Japan, which took advantage of the situation in Europe to invade French Indochina as a springboard for subsequent advances to Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. Negotiations were still ongoing when the Japanese attacked US forces at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Four days later, on December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill arrived in Washington. As a result of his negotiations with Roosevelt, a decision was made to organize joint Anglo-American military and economic planning and joint management of various activities. The difference in the positions of the United States and England manifested itself on the issue of actions in Europe. Roosevelt advocated a massive cross-Channel offensive as the fastest route to victory in the war. The British preferred an offensive through the Balkans - “the soft underbelly of Europe.” This strategy was of a military-political nature and was intended not only to defeat Hitler, but also to block the Soviets’ road to the Balkans. Ultimately, at the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the British were forced to agree that the invasion of Europe through Normandy was more important than operations in Italy and the Mediterranean. Both Western leaders met with Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and at Yalta in February 1945.

There was a lot that spoke in favor of convening the Yalta Conference and the meeting of the Big Three. It seemed advisable to agree on concerted actions against Germany and Russia's entry into the war against Japan. In addition, the Big Three needed to agree on the structure of the UN, the attitude towards states liberated from Hitler's tyranny, and the question of the future of defeated Germany. By that time, Western troops had not yet crossed the Rhine. Moreover, the German counteroffensive in December 1944 drove the Allied forces back to the Meuse River and prevented the implementation of plans for the spring offensive. Meanwhile, Soviet troops occupied all of Poland, most of the Balkan Peninsula, and cut off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The advanced units of the Russian army were located only a hundred kilometers from Berlin.

Western leaders convinced Stalin to agree to free elections in Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe liberated by the Soviet army. Under the agreement on the Far East, Russia regained the territory that had passed to Japan after the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), and also received the Kuril Islands. This was the result of pressure from the American chiefs of staff, who demanded that the USSR be involved in the war with Japan. No one at that time had any idea about the real power of atomic weapons, and the chiefs of staff believed that without Russia's entry into the war it could last another two years and cost the United States 1 million human lives.

At Yalta, the Russians agreed to take part in the San Francisco conference on the establishment of the UN and withdrew some of their demands after Roosevelt said that the United States would not agree with them. There is no doubt that Roosevelt overestimated the possibilities of post-war cooperation with the USSR. His hopes that strong borders and membership in an efficient world organization would put an end to Russian expansion were dashed.

Roosevelt's health became a national concern during the 1944 reelection campaign, when he and vice presidential candidate Missouri Senator Harry Truman defeated New York Governor T. Dewey and Ohio Governor J. Bricker by 3.5 margins. million popular votes, receiving 432 electoral votes against 99 votes cast for rivals. Upon his return from Yalta, Roosevelt addressed Congress, and in early April he went on vacation to Warm Springs (Georgia). Roosevelt died in Warm Springs on April 12, 1945.

APPLICATION

F.D. ROOSEVELT'S "NEW COURSE"

F.D. ROOSEVELT'S MESSAGE TO CONGRESS

Before the end of the special session of Congress, I recommend two further measures in our national campaign to provide jobs for the people.

My first request is that Congress provide the machinery necessary to bring about a concerted industry-wide (with a view to achieving greater employment) shortening the work week, while maintaining adequate wages for the shortened week, and preventing unfair competition and disastrous overproduction [...].

Another proposal gives the executive branch the authority to embark on a large "direct employment" program. A careful study convinces me that approximately $3,300,000,000 could be invested in useful and necessary public works and at the same time provide employment to the largest possible number of people.

Printed by: A Documentary History of American Economic Policy since 1789. N.Y., 1961. P. 364–365.

NATIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY ACT

It is hereby acknowledged that the country is in a state of general distress, which is liable to further widespread unemployment and industrial disorganization, which in turn will weigh heavily on interstate and foreign commerce, injure the public welfare and undermine the standard of living of the American people. It is also hereby declared that Congress will pursue a policy designed to remove the difficulties which stand in the way of the free development of interstate and foreign commerce, which tends to relieve this strained situation; to achieve the general welfare by encouraging the organization of industry and the cooperative action of the various occupational groups; to encourage and support the joint action of labor and enterprise on the basis of equal recognition by the government and under its supervision; to eliminate unfair business practices; to encourage the fullest use of existing production capacities; to avoid unnecessary restrictions on production (except in cases where this is temporarily necessary); to increase the consumption of industrial and agricultural products by increasing the purchasing power of the population; to reduce unemployment and provide the necessary assistance here and to improve working conditions; as well as by any other means to strive for the improvement of industry and the preservation of natural resources. [...]

Art. 3(a). Upon receipt of appropriate petitions from one or more professional or industrial associations or groups addressed to the President, the President may approve a code or codes of fair competition for the profession or industry or its individual organizations in accordance with the proposals made by the petitioner or petitioners if he finds: 1 ) that these associations or groups do not impose unequal restrictions on anyone in the admission of their members and that they are truly representatives of the professions or industries specified in the petition or their affiliated organizations; 2) that the proposed code or codes on fair competition are not aimed at the development of monopolies or at the destruction or suppression of small business and that they will contribute to the implementation of the policies provided for in this law. [...]

Upon approval by the President of any of the above-mentioned fair competition codes, the provisions of that code will be deemed to govern fair competitive practices for that profession or industry or its constituent organizations. Any violation of these regulations in or affecting any interstate or foreign commerce shall be considered unfair commercial competition, as that term is defined under applicable Federal Trade Commission law. [...]

All fair competition codes and agreements or licenses approved, entered into or issued pursuant to this law shall provide: 1) That all employees have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through their own chosen representatives. and that employers or their representatives may not interfere with, coerce or otherwise restrain their collective action in their selection of their representatives or self-organization for the purpose of negotiating a collective agreement or taking other measures of mutual assistance or protection; 2) that no person working or seeking employment will be required as a condition of his being at work to join one or another company union or to refrain from joining, organizing or providing assistance to a work union chosen by him at his own discretion; 3) that employers agree to maximum hours of work, minimum wages and other terms and conditions of employment approved or prescribed by the President. [...]

In pursuance of this Act, the President is hereby authorized to create a Federal Emergency Public Works Administration, all powers of which shall be exercised by a Federal Emergency Public Works Administrator. [...]

Printed by: Reader on modern history, vol. 1. M., 1960.

The 32nd President of the United States, four times elected to the presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the Hyde Park estate (New York) in the wealthy and respectable family of James Roosevelt and Sarah Delano Roosevelt.

His ancestors emigrated from Holland to New Amsterdam in the 1740s. Their descendants became the ancestors of two branches of this family, which gave rise to two US presidents - Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt's father owned the Hyde Park estate on the Hudson River and substantial stakes in a number of coal and transportation companies. Mother belonged to the local aristocracy.

Until the age of 14, Roosevelt was educated at home. In 1896-1899 he studied at a privileged school in Groton (Massachusetts). In 1900-1904 he continued his education at Harvard University, where he received a bachelor's degree. From 1905 to 1907, Roosevelt attended Columbia Law School and was admitted to the bar, which he began at a prominent Wall Street law firm.

In 1910, Roosevelt began his political career. He ran for the post of senator in the New York State Legislature from the Democratic Party and won.

From 1913 to 1920, he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.

In 1914, Roosevelt attempted to become a senator in the US Congress, but failed.

In 1920, Roosevelt was nominated for vice president against James Cox, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. The Democrats lost the election, and Roosevelt returned to practice as a lawyer.

In the summer of 1921, while vacationing on Campobello Island in Canada, Roosevelt contracted polio. Despite vigorous attempts to overcome the disease, he remained paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

In 1928, Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, where he served two terms. In 1931, at a time of worsening economic crisis, he created the Temporary Emergency Administration to provide assistance to the families of the unemployed.

In the 1932 presidential campaign, Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover, who failed to lead the country out of the economic crisis of 1929-1933 - the Great Depression.

“The New Deal” was how Roosevelt called his program to overcome the consequences of the Great Depression and solve social problems. The new course combined measures to strengthen state regulation of the economy with reforms in the social field.

In the first 100 days of his presidency, which began in March 1933, Roosevelt implemented a number of important reforms to restore the banking system, help the hungry and unemployed, refinance farm debt, and restore agriculture and industry. In 1935, important reforms were carried out in the fields of labor, social security, taxation, banking and other areas.

Roosevelt managed to secure public support for his program unprecedented in American history, and he became a true leader of the nation.

Promising a continuation of the New Deal policies, Roosevelt won the 1936 presidential election. During his second term, Congress advanced the New Deal agenda by creating the US Housing Administration (1937) to provide credit to local agencies and passing the second Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1938 and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage for workers.

One of the foreign policy initiatives in the first months after Roosevelt came to power was the diplomatic recognition of the USSR in November 1933. In relations with Latin American countries, the “Good Neighbor Policy” was proclaimed, which contributed to the creation of an inter-American system of collective security.

In October 1937, after Japan attacked North China, Roosevelt insisted on the need to take measures to isolate the aggressor countries. At the beginning of 1939, in his State of the Union address, Roosevelt named the aggressor nations by name, indicating that they were Italy, Germany and Japan. In 1938 and 1939, he managed to achieve increased funding for the needs of the army and navy.

On November 5, 1940, Franklin Roosevelt won the next election and was elected for the first time in US history to a third term.

The Second World War and Roosevelt's third victory in the British elections. In 1941, the President signed the Lend-Lease Act, which provided the USSR with an interest-free loan worth $1 billion.

Roosevelt sought to limit himself to arms supplies for as long as possible and, if possible, to avoid large-scale US participation in the war. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 came as a surprise to Roosevelt, who was trying to delay the war with Japan through diplomatic negotiations. The next day, the United States and Great Britain declared war on Japan, and on December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Roosevelt, in accordance with the Constitution, assumed all the responsibilities of commander in chief in wartime.

Roosevelt attached great importance to the creation of the United Nations to strengthen the anti-Hitler coalition.

It was he who proposed the name “United Nations” during the signing of the Declaration of the United Nations on January 1, 1942 in Washington, which consolidated this union in the international legal order.

For a long time, Franklin Roosevelt took a wait-and-see approach to the issue of opening a second front. But at the Tehran Conference of the Big Three (1943), Roosevelt did not support Winston Churchill, who shied away from addressing issues of opening a second front.

Showing special attention to issues of post-war peace settlement, Roosevelt for the first time at the Quebec Conference (1943) outlined his project for the creation of an international organization and the responsibility of the USA, Great Britain, the USSR and China (the “four policemen”) for maintaining peace. Discussion of this topic was continued at the Moscow Conference, the Tehran Conference and at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington.

Reelected to a fourth term in 1944, Franklin Roosevelt made significant contributions to the historic decisions of the Crimea Conference (1945). His position was dictated by the military-strategic and political situation in connection with the successful advance of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, the desire to negotiate the USSR's entry into the war with Japan and the hope of continuing post-war American-Soviet cooperation. Upon returning from Yalta, Roosevelt, despite fatigue and illness, continued to engage in government affairs and prepared for the opening of the United Nations Conference in San Francisco on April 23.

On April 12, 1945, the President died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia.

Since 1905, Roosevelt was married to his fifth cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962). Her father was the younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was Franklin's idol. The Roosevelt couple had six children - a daughter and five sons, one of them died in infancy. Eleanor Roosevelt played a significant role in her husband's political career, especially after 1921, when he contracted polio and was no longer in a wheelchair.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources