Franklin D. Roosevelt

January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president and the only one to have served more than two terms. His first two terms focused on combating the Great Depression, while his third and fourth focused on U.S. involvement in World War II.

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Biography

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in 1882 into a wealthy New York family and was a distant cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the First World War and was the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1920. In 1921 he was paralysed from the waist down by an illness then diagnosed as polio, but he returned to politics and became Governor of New York in 1929.

Elected president in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression, he launched the New Deal: bank reform, public works, farm support, the right of workers to organise and Social Security. His radio "fireside chats" made him a familiar voice in American homes. He was re-elected in 1936, 1940 and 1944, the only president to serve more than two terms.

Before the United States entered the Second World War he sent aid to Britain through Lend-Lease. After Pearl Harbor in December 1941 he led the country in the war against Germany and Japan and met Churchill and Stalin at Tehran and Yalta to plan the war and the peace, including the United Nations. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in April 1945, weeks before Germany surrendered.