Franklin D. Roosevelt

Life and legacy

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in 1882 into one of America's most privileged families at their estate in Hyde Park, New York. Educated at Groton, Harvard, and Columbia Law School, he entered politics following the path of his distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt, winning a New York State Senate seat in 1910 as a Democrat. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson and ran as the vice presidential candidate in 1920, losing alongside James Cox.

In August 1921, at age thirty-nine, Roosevelt was stricken with polio, which left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Many assumed his political career was over, but with the fierce support of his wife Eleanor and his political adviser Louis Howe, Roosevelt spent years in rehabilitation and learned to stand with leg braces and a cane. He was elected Governor of New York in 1928 and won the presidency in 1932 in a landslide over Herbert Hoover as the Great Depression devastated the nation.

Roosevelt's first hundred days in office produced an avalanche of legislation unprecedented in American history. The New Deal programs - the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and dozens more - put millions to work, regulated financial markets, and created a social safety net that endures to this day. His fireside chats, broadcast by radio into millions of homes, established a direct, reassuring connection with the American people that restored confidence during the darkest economic crisis in the nation's history.

As war engulfed Europe and Asia, Roosevelt navigated a deeply isolationist nation toward supporting the Allies. The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 provided vital aid to Britain and the Soviet Union. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt led the United States into the largest military mobilization in history. He forged the Grand Alliance with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, oversaw the strategy that led to D-Day and the liberation of Europe, and laid the groundwork for the United Nations.

Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in November 1944 but was visibly exhausted. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945 - just weeks before Germany's surrender. Historians consistently rank him alongside Washington and Lincoln as one of the three greatest American presidents. His legacy - the welfare state, American global leadership, and the modern presidency - defines the world that followed.

Key accomplishments

• Led the United States through the Great Depression with the New Deal, creating Social Security and major federal programs
• Served an unprecedented four terms as president, the only person to do so in American history
• Guided American strategy in World War II as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces
• Signed the Lend-Lease Act, providing critical military aid to Britain and the Soviet Union
• Established the framework for the United Nations and the postwar international order

Quotes

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

Address to Congress, December 8, 1941

Related figures