Aidan Campbell – Page 4 – The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation

Coronavirus: Amid crisis, challenges faced by FDR resonate on 75th anniversary of death

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Aidan Campbell in News

By: Paul M. Sparrow, For the Poughkeepsie JournalPublished 6:00 a.m. ET April 9, 2020 | Updated 11:24 a.m. ET April 9, 2020

Editor’s note: Paul M. Sparrow is the director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. He wrote this article for the Journal in recognition of the anniversary of Roosevelt’s death on April 12.

As America and the world confront the deadly COVID 19 pandemic, we should all take a moment to remember the inspirational legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the 75th anniversary of his death.

The society we live in today is based on his vision of global cooperation and economic equality — Social Security, minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, child labor laws, the World Bank, NATO and the United Nations are all just a small part of the Roosevelt legacy. But it is his inspiring leadership in the face of global catastrophe, and his ability to speak hard truth and instill confidence in the future that are most relevant today.

Paul Sparrow, Director of the FDR Library and Museum in Hyde Park on May 31. (Photo: Patrick Oehler/Poughkeepsie Journal)

During his 12 years as president FDR confronted first the Great Depression and then the rise of fascism and totalitarianism. Yet he never wavered in his belief that the American people could overcome any challenge.

It was April 12, 1945. President Roosevelt was recovering at the polio rehabilitation center he created in Warm Springs, Georgia, on that early spring day. His exhausting travel to the military conference in Yalta with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill had taken a toll on his already poor health.

World War II was nearing its end in Europe and FDR was focusing on…

Read more at: PoughkeepsieJournal.com

Today’s problems demand Eleanor Roosevelt’s solutions

Posted on November 19, 2019 by Aidan Campbell in News

By Mary Jo Binker

November 15, 2019

In this Oct. 18, 1944, photo, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, left, buys a $100 war bond from Venus Ramey of Washington, D.C., crowned winner of the 1944 Miss America pageant, at the White House. (Herbert White/AP)

The 2020 election is just a year away, and the list of issues facing Americans is both lengthy and daunting: possible presidential impeachment, income inequality, immigration, global warming, increasingly invasive technology and crumbling infrastructure, just to name a few. Trying to build consensus to address any, let alone all, of these issues seems daunting, if not impossible, given the fears that surround our options and cloud our thinking. Fear may in fact be the greatest challenge we face.

That was the philosophy of Eleanor Roosevelt, one of America’s most significant first ladies. She, too, knew what it was like to live in trying times. Whether American democracy would survive the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthyite Red Scare or the Cold War were real questions for her. She could not be sure of the outcome.

However, Roosevelt firmly believed that fear was a dangerous response to a world in constant turmoil. It robbed individuals and societies of their ability to speak out and act. It was the reason nations stockpiled armaments and closed their borders. Above all, fear destroyed the possibility of constructive action. “People who ‘view with alarm,’ ” she wrote at the end of her life, “never build anything.” Instead of giving into fear, Roosevelt pioneered a four-step process of citizen action that we can use today to combat contemporary problems.

Roosevelt’s process started with…

Roosevelt, Churchill And The Creation Of The United Nations

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Aidan Campbell in News

By: David Carlin

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945, left) with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) at the White House, Washington DC, December 1941. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) GETTY IMAGES

Today opens the 74th UN General Assembly. For many New Yorkers, mentioning the General Assembly evokes images of a Manhattan traffic apocalypse. Traffic notwithstanding, the United Nations reflects the remarkable vision of two great leaders: Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

It was December 1941. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, America had entered WWII and immediately experienced a series of setbacks in the Pacific. The war in Europe and Africa was going nearly poorly too. Nazi troops were on the outskirts of Moscow and British forces faced losses in Libya. Amid this gloom, Churchill arrived at the White House. He and Roosevelt met extensivelyon the military situation and Anglo-American cooperation. Several months prior, the two had issued the Atlantic Charter. When the war’s outcome remained uncertain, this landmark document dared to imagine a free and peaceful future. The charter asserted the rights of self-government as well as economic and social freedom for all. It also laid the groundwork for international collaboration on a variety of topics from trade to defense.

Now, Churchill and Roosevelt sought to formalize their war aims and clarify the relationship between the numerous allied nations. Yet, they struggled to find a suitable name for their coalition. The name came to the president in a flash of inspiration. He raced to Churchill’s bedroom and announced: “the United Nations!” Roosevelt quickly realized that his guest was stark naked and begged his pardon. Churchill allegedly replied: “the prime minister of Great Britain has nothing to hide from the president of the United States!”

Tall tale or not, both men were unswervingly committed to building a better world from the ashes of WWII. On New Year’s Day 1942, Roosevelt and Churchill…

Jean Edward Smith, biographer who reassessed presidential reputations, dies at 86

Posted on September 16, 2019 by Aidan Campbell in News

By Matt Schudel

September 14, 2019 at 8:55 p.m. EDT

Jean Edward Smith. (Christine Smith)

Jean Edward Smith, a scholar who was one of the most admired biographers of his time, the author of smoothly written accounts of several presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, that became prizewinning bestsellers, died Sept. 1 at his home in Huntington, W.Va. He was 86.

He had complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Christine Smith.

Dr. Smith, a Washington-born political scientist who spent seven years as an Army officer, was a faculty member at the University of Toronto for many years and later taught at Marshall University in West Virginia. His first books were on German politics, but beginning in the 1990s, he became a prolific chronicler of the lives of major figures in U.S. history, and was praised by historians and everyday readers alike.

In 2012, Columbia University historian Henry F. Graff called Dr. Smith “indubitably America’s most distinguished biographer.”

His 2001 study of Grant, the Civil War general who later served two terms as president, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and helped raise scholars’ estimation of Grant’s effectiveness as president.

Grant was a failure in business — “He was too…

War Comes to Warsaw: September 1939

Posted on September 4, 2019 by Aidan Campbell in News

BY RAY WALSER

Staff members drape a large American flag over the roof of the embassy in Warsaw in anticipation of German air attacks. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum / Julien Bryan Archive

U.S. Consulate General Warsaw on Sept. 1, 1939. U.S. Library of Congress

Warsaw, Sept. 1, 1939, 5:30 a.m. The shriek of air raid sirens awakens Ambassador Anthony “Tony” J. Drexel Biddle Jr. Troubled by heightened German-Polish tensions, Adolf Hitler’s demands for territorial rectifications and the recent mobilization of the Polish Army, Biddle calls the duty officer at the Polish Foreign Ministry.

Is this an attack? The answer: Yes, there are numerous reports of German incursions onto Polish soil. Electing to telephone rather than cable flash news, Biddle manages to reach Ambassador William C. Bullitt in Paris. Bullitt, in turn, places a trans-Atlantic call.

2:55 a.m., Washington time. A sleeping President Franklin Roosevelt awakens to Bullitt’s call. After weeks of tension, a war of nerves is now a shooting war. The president alerts Secretary of State Cordell Hull and other senior officials. In the pre-dawn hours, lights suddenly begin to burn at the State Department. Twenty years after the peace settlement of Versailles, Europe again plunges into general war.

The German attack does not catch Ambassador Biddle or the department entirely by surprise. In March 1939 the department had…

How Franklin Roosevelt learned of the start of the Second World War

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Aidan Campbell in News

In the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, President Roosevelt was awakened in his bedroom at the White House by a telephone call from his Ambassador in Paris, William C. Bullitt, who advised the President that Germany had invaded Poland and that several Polish cities were being bombed. Roosevelt understood immediately that this meant a larger war, for Great Britain and France had pledged to come to Poland’s defense if Germany attacked. World War II had begun. The President wrote this unique “bedside note” documenting for posterity how and when he had received the news of the outbreak of World War II.

Transcription:

“The President received word at 2:50 am, by telephone by Ambass. Biddle through Ambass. Bullitt that Germany has invaded Poland and that several cities are being bombed. The President directed that all Navy ships and Army commands be notified by radio at once. In bed 3:05 am, September 1, 1939. FDR”

On September 3, FDR went on national radio to speak to the American people about the crisis in Europe. “This nation will remain a neutral nation,” he declared, “but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well. . . . Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or his conscience.”

In the crucial months that followed, the President would demonstrate that his sympathies lay with the victims of Axis aggression. Yet America’s isolationist mood limited FDR’s freedom to act. In particular, the country’s Neutrality Acts prohibited the sale of American weapons to warring nations.

Complied by Cynthia M. Koch, August 29, 2019

Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, “Found in the Archives, FDR’s Bedside Note, and the special exhibition, “Freedom From Fear: FDR, Commander in Chief,” September 2, 2005- November 5, 2006 (compiler’s files).