Franklin D. Roosevelt

The US president from the Depression to Allied aid and world war

1882–1945

Franklin D. Roosevelt became US president in 1933 during the Great Depression. His administration combined the New Deal with later assistance to countries fighting the Axis powers. After December 1941 he led the United States at war. His story also includes decisions that deprived Japanese Americans of their freedom.

From New York to the White House

Born in Hyde Park, New York, on 30 January 1882, Roosevelt studied at Harvard and then Columbia Law School, passing the bar examination in 1907. In 1910 he was elected to the New York State Senate as a Democrat. He later became governor of New York and won the presidential election in November 1932.

The Depression and the New Deal

When he took office on 4 March 1933, banks were closing, unemployment was rising and businesses and farms were failing. The New Deal expanded federal action through relief, employment programmes, bank-deposit insurance and financial regulation. It was a collection of measures rather than a single remedy, and both its policies and the scope of government intervention prompted political disputes.

Assistance before entry into the war

After war began in Europe, Roosevelt sought assistance for Britain, France and China. Lend-Lease became an instrument of that policy in March 1941. Following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union he sent Hopkins to Moscow. Supply and diplomacy connected distant theatres before the United States itself entered the war.

A wartime president and civil liberties

After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt helped decide strategy and military command as commander-in-chief. On 19 February 1942 he issued Executive Order 9066. Although its text named no ethnic group, subsequent measures led to the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans, including US citizens. His wartime leadership belongs in the same account as responsibility for these decisions.

He did not see the end of the war

Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia, on 12 April 1945, before the war ended in Europe or the Pacific. His life therefore ended before the alliance and war he helped direct reached their conclusion.

Explore further

• Moscow

  Negotiations over aid in 1941.