Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) was an American statesman and politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945, the only president elected to four terms and the longest-serving in office. Born to a prosperous family in Hyde Park, New York, as the only child of James and Sara Delano Roosevelt, he graduated from Harvard College in 1903 and attended Columbia Law School without earning a degree before practicing law briefly and entering politics as a New York state senator in 1910. In 1921, at age 39, he contracted poliomyelitis, which paralyzed his legs, yet he adapted by using leg braces and a wheelchair in private while maintaining a public image of vigor through assistance and determination. Prior to the presidency, he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920 and as Governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, positions that built his reputation as a progressive Democrat addressing economic and social issues. Assuming office amid the Great Depression, Roosevelt launched the New Deal, enacting numerous federal programs for relief, recovery, and reform—including the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration, Agricultural Adjustment Act, and Social Security—that markedly expanded the federal government's role in the economy, regulated industries, and provided direct aid to the unemployed and farmers. These initiatives are often praised for alleviating immediate suffering, restoring banking stability, and fostering optimism, though unemployment remained above 14% by 1940 and some economists contend the policies hindered full recovery by imposing wage/price controls, cartelizing industries via the National Industrial Recovery Act, and generating policy uncertainty that deterred investment. Controversies marked his tenure, including a failed 1937 bid to "pack" the Supreme Court by adding justices to secure favorable rulings on New Deal laws, the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans in camps following Pearl Harbor under Executive Order 9066, and suppression of dissent through agencies like the Federal Communications Commission. In foreign affairs, he shifted from isolationism to aiding allies through the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, mobilized the nation after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and directed the U.S. war effort as Allied leader, contributing to victory over the Axis powers while conferring with Stalin and Churchill on postwar arrangements. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, shortly before Germany's surrender, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman to conclude the war and implement atomic bombings on Japan.