ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO. - President of the United States of America, b. Jan. 30, 1882 at Hyde Park (New York), d. Apr. 12, 1945 at Warm Springs (Georgia). He began his political career in 1910, as the Democratic candidate for the New York State Senate, although this was considered at the time a political suicide, because for fully 32 years the Republicans had held the seat that R. wanted to win. Thanks to his promise to support legislation that would defend farmers against wholesale merchants, he was elected on Nov. 8, 1910, with 15,708 votes against 14,568 for the Republican Schlosser.

In 1912 he supported the nomination of W. Wilson as the Democratic presidential candidate, and the latter, having become president, entrusted him with the undersecretaryship of the Navy, which R. he held until 1920. In that year the Democratic party acclaimed R. as its candidate for the vice-presidency, but the resounding victory of the Republicans removed him from all political activity. In Aug. 1921 R. was struck by poliomyelitis and never fully recovered from it. Governor of the State of New York in 1928, he was elected president in 1932 and took office in the supreme post in the following March with a resounding victory, carrying a majority in 42 States out of 48.

ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO - Portrait.(phot. Usin)

After the crisis of the American economic system during the Hoover administration, R. set out to implement a new policy, the New Deal, with highly social aims. To individualism he opposed the principle of cooperation and he genuinely strove, during the twelve years in which he held power (he was in fact victorious also in the elections of 1936, 1940 and 1944), to achieve an economic equilibrium that would guarantee all citizens of the United States a sufficient standard of living and the means to enjoy the fundamental rights assured by the Constitution. The New Deal, while it constituted a decided stand against the profiteers of human labor, against monopolists and against all those who in any way exploited the toil of others, helped to eliminate unemployment to a notable extent, to raise the standard of living of the working classes, to secure a greatly advanced social legislation, and to promote the regulated development of natural resources. The financial market was regulated and the way was opened to grandiose public works (the greatest being the reclamation and irrigation of the Tennessee River basin, with the establishment of the "Tennessee Valley Authority"), agriculture was protected against the various forms of speculation, the tax system was perfected with particular regard to direct taxation, and the protectionist policy was abandoned to give rise to a more intense flow of commercial exchanges with the rest of the world.

R.'s foreign policy, of the "good neighbor" and of the intensification of friendly relations with all States ready to respect the other members of the international community and to honor the obligations contracted, assumed, following the Hitlerian aggressions, a line of conduct decidedly adverse to the totalitarian regimes and favorable to the democratic powers, which, until the entry into the war of the United States (Dec. 1941), enjoyed American aid (Lend-Lease Act, March 1941) and, subsequently, the direct contribution of the economic and military potential of the U.S.A. Opposed on principle to war (ever since 1920, in the tour as candidate for the vice-presidency, he upheld the necessity of ratification by the Senate of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Covenant of the League of Nations), which constituted an obstacle to the constant perfecting of his New Deal, R. addressed himself on 23 Dec. 1939 to the heads of the various religious confessions to propose that the political and religious forces work for the triumph of peace and for an assiduous work of comfort, spiritual and material, to the victims of the war. This began an exchange of letters between R. and Pius XII, which continued until the President's death, and the sending of a personal representative of his to the Holy See "to concert and develop common initiatives for the return of peace and the relief of sufferings." The myth of universal peace, alive in R.'s mind, prevented him from glimpsing, beyond ideological constructions, the reality of facts, as the text of the Atlantic Charter and the decisions of the Yalta Conference prove.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: sources: F. D. R., The public papers and addresses 1928-29, 13 vols., New York 1938-50; The R. letters being the personal correspondence of F. D. R. 1887-1945, 3 vols., London 1949-51; La corrispondenza fra il presidente R. e papa Pio XII durante la guerra, introd. and notes by My. C. Taylor, Milan 1948. From the biographical point of view, in the absence of an exhaustive and objective work, cf. R. E. Sherwood, R. and Hopkins, New York 1948, Italian trans. Milan 1949 and J. Gunther, R. in retrospect., London 1950 (of an anecdotal character). On the candidacies and the outcome of the elections cf.: S. Lorant, The presidency. A pictorial history of presidential elections from Washington to Truman, New York 1951, in particular pp. 577-673. On the New Deal v.: E. Fossetti, New Deal. Il nuovo ordine economico di F. D. R., Padua 1937; M. Pierro, L'esperimento R. e il movimento sociale negli Stati Uniti d'America, Milan 1937. On foreign policy: T. A. Bailey, A diplomatic history of the American people, 4th ed., New York 1940, p. 732 ff. (with bibl.); S. F. Bemis, A diplomatic history of the United States, 3rd ed., ibid. 1950, pp. 830-99. On the Yalta Conference: E. R. Stettinius jun., R. and the Russians, London 1950.

Silvio Furlani

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Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

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