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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)US president. Born on 30 January 1882, at Hyde Park, New York, to a wealthy family, he studied law at Harvard and Columbia universities. In 1905, he married his cousin Eleanor, who became an important public figure alongside her husband. In 1910, Roosevelt was elected to the New York state senate and, three years later, became assistant secretary to the US navy under Woodrow Wilson. In 1921, he caught polio and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. However, he carefully kept this disability from the public, ensuring that he was never photographed in the chair, and making many public appearances strapped into a frame that allowed him to stand. In 1928, he was elected governor of New York, and five years later, in 1933, he was inaugurated as US president. A reforming Democrat, he tackled the Great Depression by means of the New Deal, a series of policies designed to reduce unemployment and restore hope to the nation. By extending the role of the federal government, he raised people's expectations of what could be done to make life better. Using the new medium of radio, he held regular avuncular 'fireside chats', which increased his popularity. In 1936, he was re-elected with a huge vote. Although he failed to pack the US Supreme Court with liberal judges, and many of his economic policies had only short-term effects, he was successful in overcoming isolationist influences. After the fall of France in 1940, he supported Winston Churchill and Britain in the war against Hitler. In the same year, he became the first president to win three elections in a row, and – after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 – took the United States into World War II. As a result of his wartime leadership, he won an unprecedented fourth term as president in 1944. Although he was criticised for trusting Stalin too much and allowing the Soviet Union excessive postwar influence in Eastern Europe, he triumphantly extended the United State's role as a major global power. The strain, however, told on his health, and he died on 12 April 1945, soon after attending the Yalta conference. |
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