Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1882–1945), thirty‐second president of the United States.Born to the Hudson River aristocracy of upstate New York, Roosevelt attended Groton, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School before marrying his distant cousin Eleanor Roosevelt in 1905. Following election to the New York State Senate (1911–13), he served as assistant secretary of the navy in Woodrow Wilson's administration (1913–21). A devotee of Alfred T. Mahan's writings, the young FDR championed “Big Navy” preparedness prior to American entry into World War I, instituted “Naval Plattsburg” battleship cruises to recruit civilian reservists, and advocated a system of universal military training. After a three‐month tour of the battle zones in 1918, he said that “the last thing this country should do is ever to send an army to Europe again.”

An unsuccessful candidate for vice president in 1920, Roosevelt overcame crippling polio to win the New York governorship in 1928 and attain the White House in 1932. Espousing isolationist views during his first two terms, FDR gave priority to New Deal reforms over foreign policy, accepted congressional revision of neutrality laws, and reacted hesitantly to Axis aggression in Asia and Europe. Notwithstanding his “Arsenal of Democracy” speech in December 1940, he had urged moderate rearmament until Adolf Hitler's conquest of France and supported the Selective Service Act of 1940 only after political opponents had introduced it. While promising to protect the hemisphere from war, he employed the neutrality patrol, the Destroyers‐for‐Bases Agreement, Lend‐Lease, and economic embargoes primarily to assist potential Allies (Britain, China, Soviet Union) in steps short of full belligerency. Emphasizing naval power and airpower instead of a second American Expeditionary Force, FDR proceeded to “wage war, but not declare it.”

After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 catapulted the United States into World War II, some isolationist historians later charged that Roosevelt had provoked the Japanese into firing the first shot so as to overcome American isolationism and thus ensure support, via the Pacific “back door,” for war against Japan's ally, Nazi Germany. Most scholars reject conspiracy and explain Pearl Harbor as the consequence of intelligence errors, missed clues, overconfidence, and plain bad luck. Nonetheless, Japan's attack and Hitler's subsequent declaration of war gave FDR the political leeway to implement a “Europe‐first” military strategy. Fearful that mounting American casualties in the Pacific would focus public resentment against Japan, the president reaffirmed Anglo‐American plans to defeat Hitler first. Against recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to concentrate forces in England for a cross‐Channel invasion by spring 1943, he accepted Winston S. Churchill's alternative plan, Operation Torch, for the North Africa Campaign in November 1942. This decision led logically to the invasion and conquest of Sicily and Italy in 1943 and effectively postponed the liberation of France (Operation Overlord) until 1944. Apart from Roosevelt's desire for Americans to fight Germans somewhere in 1942, British strategy predominated in the two years after Pearl Harbor because England had fully mobilized, whereas America had not, and any combined operation had to depend largely on British troops, shipping, and casualties.

Despite the European emphasis, Roosevelt did reinforce the Pacific theater after victories at the Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway (1942) and oversaw a controversial two‐prong strategy in which the navy and Marines “leapfrogged” toward Tokyo across Micronesian atolls while U.S.‐Australian forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur battled northward from New Guinea to the Philippines. FDR's expectation that China would figure decisively in defeating Japan and policing postwar Asia was undermined by Japan's conquest of Burma and internal bickering between Chinese Communists and Nationalists.

Because Roosevelt sought to win the war with minimal American casualties, the country never fully mobilized its population for military service. With no threat of invasion and the bulk of Axis forces engaged in Russia and China, the president gambled that “an air war plus the Russians” meant that ninety U.S. Army divisions would be sufficient for military and political goals.

Such calculations increased dependence on Soviet Russia. With the Red Army “killing more Axis personnel … than all other twenty‐five United Nations put together,” Roosevelt sent the Soviets $11 billion in Lend‐Lease supplies, made promises for an early second front, and used personal diplomacy at Teheran (November 1943) and Yalta (February 1945). “Unconditional Surrender” assured a suspicious Josef Stalin that there would be no separate peace with Hitler or his underlings. It also underscored FDR's belief that Germany deserved punishment for Hitler's crimes, including permanent partition, demilitarization, and dismantling of heavy industry. The president's postwar plans envisaged a disarmed, decentralized, and decolonized Europe initially policed by British and Soviet armies; U.S. forces would patrol the western hemisphere and replace Japanese power in the western Pacific. Because Red Army victories guaranteed Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe, FDR urged “open” spheres and free elections and hoped that increased contacts would make the Russians “less barbarian.”

Aiding the Soviets reflected Roosevelt's military advice. Despite “assured Russian military dominance” after the war, the joint chiefs invariably opposed “get tough” policies because of military necessity, including the need for Soviet help against Japan. According to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in 1945, “in the big military matters the Soviet Government have kept their word.” Only after the end of the war did the predominant U.S. military view of the Soviet Union change from ally to adversary.

That the cooperation with the Kremlin had limits was shown in the Manhattan Project, the secret Anglo‐American effort to acquire an atomic weapon before the Germans. Despite Danish physicist Niels Bohr's plea in 1944 that the Russians be brought into the partnership to prevent a postwar nuclear arms race, Roosevelt and Churchill chose to maintain their monopoly, partly as a hedge against Russian misbehavior.

The booming U.S. economy (the gross national product had jumped from $90.5 billion in 1939 to $211.9 billion in 1945) also provided insurance against future uncertainties, as did FDR's support for new international institutions—the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund—designed to maintain peace and prosperity after the war.

The commander in chief died of a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1945, shortly after the Yalta Conference, on the eve of final victory.
[See also Lend‐Lease Act and Agreements; World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

Eric Larrabee , Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War, 1987.
Frank Freidel , Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny, 1990.
Doris Kearns Goodwin , No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in World War II, 1994.
Warren F. Kimball , Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War, 1997.

J. Garry Clifford