1882-1945 · Thirty-second president of the United States, serving from 1933 to 1945
About Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) was born to a wealthy Hudson Valley family, educated at Groton, Harvard, and Columbia Law School, and served as assistant secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson. In 1921 an illness diagnosed as poliomyelitis left him unable to walk unaided. He returned to public life as governor of New York (1929-1932) and was elected president four times, leading the country through the Great Depression with the New Deal and through the Second World War until his death at Warm Springs, Georgia, on 12 April 1945.
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on Saturday, 4 March 1933, at the low point of the Great Depression. About a quarter of the work force was unemployed, farm prices had collapsed, and in the weeks before the ceremony a wave of bank runs had led governors in most states to close or restrict their banks.
On Sunday morning, 7 December 1941, Japanese carrier aircraft struck the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, damaging or sinking all eight battleships in the harbor, destroying much of the aircraft on the island, and killing more than 2,400 Americans. That evening Roosevelt dictated a short draft to his secretary Grace Tully and then revised it by hand.