Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), widely known by his initials FDR, served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. Elected to an unprecedented four terms, he steered the nation through its two greatest twentieth-century crises: the Great Depression and World War II.

Triumph Over Paralysis and Rise to the Presidency

Born in Hyde Park, New York, and educated at Harvard University, Roosevelt entered public service and served capably as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson during World War I. In August 1921, at age thirty-nine, he was struck by a paralytic illness (diagnosed at the time as polio) that permanently paralyzed his legs. Refusing to retire from public life, and aided by his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, he taught himself to stand with heavy iron braces and returned to politics, winning election as Governor of New York in 1928.

The New Deal and Fireside Chats

Assuming the presidency at the nadir of the Great Depression in March 1933, when a quarter of the American workforce was unemployed, Roosevelt rallied the nation with the declaration that 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' During his first hundred days, he enacted sweeping New Deal legislation providing relief, public works jobs, banking reform, and the Social Security system, while speaking directly to millions of households over the radio in his reassuring 'Fireside Chats.'

The Arsenal of Democracy and Architect of Allied Victory

Recognizing the global danger posed by Axis expansion despite strong domestic isolationism, Roosevelt championed the 1941 Lend-Lease Act to supply Britain, the Soviet Union, and China with critical war matériel. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—a date he declared 'will live in infamy'—Roosevelt oversaw the full mobilization of American industry and approved the top-secret Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb.

Forging the 'Grand Alliance' alongside British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at the Tehran and Yalta conferences, Roosevelt also coined the name 'United Nations' and championed the creation of the postwar international organization. Exhausted by years of wartime leadership, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, less than a month before Nazi Germany's surrender.