Skip to main content

Untitled

March 2023
1min read

An entry from the same volume, same toaee, after June 22, 1941

ROOSEVELT, Franklin (born 1882)—outstanding American statesman. From 1907—an active Democratic [party] leader. Became a member of the New York State Senate in 1910; Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, 1913-21; Governor of the State of New York, 1928-32. Became President of the U.S.A. in 1933. Having become President under conditions of a severe economic crisis that had greatly affected the American economy, Roosevelt proclaimed the socalled New Deal, consisting of the passage of a number of laws designed to regulate industrial and agricultural production, and in the creation of a number of organizations aimed at combatting the aftereffects of the crisis (NIRA and others). In foreign affairs Roosevelt’s most outstanding achievements were the establishment of normal diplomatic relations between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. (November 16, 1933), and the proclamation of the Good Neighbor policy toward Latin American countries. Roosevelt’s measures met with the approval of the American people, thus assuring his re-election in 1936. Having survived the most critical years of the crisis, the reactionary circles of financial capital now came out against Roosevelt’s policy, pressuring the Supreme Court into declaring the New Deal unconstitutional. However, later on, under the influence of the movement of the masses who supported Roosevelt, the Supreme Court ceased its opposition to Roosevelt’s measures.

From the very beginning, Roosevelt took up a conspicuously hostile position with regard to Hitlerite Germany and other fascist powers. In 1937 Roosevelt urged a “quarantine for the aggressors,” but isolationist developments in the United States impeded his efforts to wage a struggle against the preparaions for aggression. After fascist Germany unleashed the war in Europe, Roosevelt promoted active aid to the democratic countries, considering their fate to be closely tied to the security of the United States. At his urging, Congress appropriated huge sums of money for the defense of the U.S.A. Roosevelt’s popularity with the broad masses assured his re-election for a third term in 1944, despite the tradition according to which a President could not serve for more than two terms. After his re-election, Roosevelt still further accelerated America’s preparations for a struggle against the aggressors.

At the very inception of Roosevelt’s Presidency, Comrade Stalin, in a conversation with the English writer [H. G.] Wells in 1934, emphasized Roosevelt’s most outstanding personal qualities—his initiative, courage, and resoluteness.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "October 1960"

Authored by: Albert Castel

On the flaming Kansas-Missouri border the name of Quantrill struck terror in men’s hearts. He was a cruel and ruthless guerrilla who burned, robbed, and killed without mercy; but legend made of him a hero dashing and bold

Authored by: Samuel Shapiro

A long and arduous voyage around the Horn made a man of a sickly socialite and gave literature an enduring classic

Authored by: Warren G. Magnuson

Egypt’s locusts could not have been more terrible than those which blighted the Great Plains for four summers, then vanished as mysteriously as they had come

Authored by: Louis W. Koenig

A loophole in the Constitution made it possible for the winner of the popular majority in 1876, Tilden, to lose to Hayes in the electoral college amid bitterness, fraud, and chicanery. It could happen again

Authored by: Allan Nevins

His shrewd handling of the Radical Republican bid for power at the end of 1862 established him as the unquestioned leader of the Union

Authored by: Thurman Arnold

First among all nations the United States made “restraint of trade” a crime, and voted an economic ideal into law. One of its most energetic exponents looks back on that unique, vague, and unenforceable bit of legislation: the Sherman Antitrust Act

Authored by: Eric W. Barnes

They marched across a bridge at Salem —and then marched right back again

Authored by: Alvin M. Josephy Jr.

To David Thompson—who died blind, penniless, and bypassed by history—we owe our first knowledge of the American continent’s rugged Northwest

Authored by: The Editors

BOL’SHAYA SOVETSKAYA ENTZIKLOPEDIYA, VOLUME VII, PAGE 70

Authored by: The Editors

Comment by Marcus Cunliffe, author of George Washington, Man and Monument:

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

Often thought to have been a weak President, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or political fallout.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.