In 1944, he was elected president of the United States for a fourth term, but died on April 12, 1945, struck by a cerebral hemorrhage. He is the only US president elected for four consecutive terms, this due to the state of war, which is foreseen in the American constitution, but in the meantime he is the president who brought America victorious from both the economic crisis of the 1930s and the war.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, into a Protestant family of early Dutch descent, who had emigrated to North America in the 17th century. His father, James, was a classic gentleman of the European upper middle class. In this climate of solid well-being, Franklin spent the first years of his life traveling in Europe and receiving an extremely meticulous aristocratic education from his mother and private tutors in Hyde Park. When he was a teenager, his parents enrolled him in the most prestigious school in America, Groton, in Massachusetts; it was an institute that was strictly administered and had strict and disciplined teachers.
The Groton experience, with its iron discipline, also constituted a school of character for Franklin, which made him grow up prematurely and have a determined nature. In 1900, following this experience, he enrolled at Harvard, where he graduated after three years.
Neither his studies nor the profession of lawyer, however, were able to fully satisfy him, because he was increasingly attracted to political life. His passion for the political arena led him to run for the Senate as a representative of the US Democratic Party. As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Forests, Game and Fisheries, he fought with great energy for the rescue and preservation of the country’s natural resources. The following year he was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Navy, a position he held for several years. After the end of World War I, Roosevelt closed the first period of his political life by withdrawing into private life (despite the fact that he was given the pleasure of seeing himself proposed as a candidate for vice president of the United States of America).
In 1921 he fell seriously ill with polio, completely losing the function of his legs; from then on he was forced to walk with crutches. Everyone thought that the inability to move represented an insurmountable obstacle in all the activities of his life, especially the political one, but with great strength of spirit he counteracted and found the strength to return to politics. In 1928 the Democratic Convention nominated him as a candidate for governor of the State of New York, a task which he carried out with complete success. After that, he launched his campaign for president of the United States, a campaign that required him to exert himself mentally and, above all, to endure considerable physical exhaustion. At the end of the 1932 elections, he was victorious, albeit by a narrow margin.
In the first hundred days of his term, Roosevelt proposed a radical program to revitalize agriculture and to support the unemployed, the homeless, and the bankrupt; the plan also included reforms that were first implemented in the constitution of the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1935, the country began to recover, but the industrial and banking classes did not support Roosevelt’s program, called the New Deal. They feared the effects of his “experiments” (higher taxes on wealth, new control over banks and their public functions, and a broad program of work for the unemployed, etc.).
It was a period characterized by a large number of contradictions (such that they cause disagreements even among today’s historians), but the New Deal undoubtedly marked the beginning of a period of economic and social reforms that brought a level never before reached by the progressive and democratic forces of the United States of America. Meanwhile, the dramatic events of World War II were at his doorstep. On December 7, 1941, following the battle for Pearl Harbor, which was a true shock to America, he declared war on Japan, while on December 11, 1941 he declared war on Germany. The USA thus entered the world conflict and determined the fate of victory for the Allies and defeat for Hitler. In 1944 he was elected US president for the fourth term, but died on April 12, 1995, struck by a cerebral hemorrhage. He is the only US president elected for four consecutive terms, this due to the state of war, which is foreseen in the American constitution, but in the meantime he is the president who brought America victorious from both the economic crisis of the 1930s and the war.
We bring to the readers the historical document of the Atlantic Charter signed by Roosevelt and Churchill.
THE ATLANTIC CHARTER
Signed Franklin D. Roosevelt & Winston S. Churchill
August 14, 1941 – F.D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America and Mr. Churchill, Prime Minister, representing Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, meeting together, have deemed it proper to make known certain common principles of national policy of their two countries on which they base their hopes for a better future in the world.
First, their countries do not seek any territorial or other aggrandizement; Second, they desire that there shall be no territorial changes inconsistent with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;
Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they desire to see the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples from whom those rights have been forcibly taken away;
Fourthly, they will endeavour to respect their obligations, and to support the will of all States, large or small, victorious or defeated, to enter on an equal footing on the world market, for the provision of the raw materials necessary for their prosperity;
Fifthly, they wish to secure full co-operation between all nations in the economic field with a view to the attainment for all of improved standards of labour, economic progress and social security;
Sixthly, after the final destruction of Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will enable all nations to live in security within their own borders, and which will enable all men to live their lives free from fear and want;
Seventhly, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the open seas and oceans without hindrance;
Eighth, they believe that all the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, should come to the renunciation of the use of force.
While a future peace cannot be assured if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be used by nations which threaten or may threaten aggression beyond their borders, they believe in the establishment of a permanent system of general security, in which the disarmament of such nations would be essential. They will also aid and abet all other practical measures which will relieve peace-loving peoples from the heavy burden of armaments.
