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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (30 January 1882 - 12 April 1945) was the 32nd President of the United States, serving from March 1933 until his death in office in April 1945 - the longest tenure of any U.S. president. A member of the Democratic Party and member of a prominent New York family, Roosevelt led the country through two of the most consequential crises of the 20th century: the Great Depression and World War II. His administration produced a substantial expansion of federal authority and social insurance programs collectively known as the New Deal, and his wartime leadership shaped the Allied coalition that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Roosevelt remains one of the most studied, debated, and consequential figures in American political history.

Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York, into a wealthy patrician family. He attended Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School, and entered politics as a New York state senator in 1910. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1920, and was stricken with poliomyelitis in 1921, which left him with permanent paralysis of the legs. He served as Governor of New York from 1929 to 1933 before winning the presidency in a landslide over incumbent Herbert Hoover in November 1932. He won reelection in 1936, 1940, and 1944, breaking the unwritten two-term tradition dating to Washington - a precedent later codified in the Twenty-Second Amendment (1951). For a fuller account of his life and administration, see Franklin Roosevelt - History.

Roosevelt took office at the depth of the Great Depression, with unemployment near 25 percent and the banking system in acute crisis. His administration enacted the New Deal in successive waves, establishing agencies and programs including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Social Security Act (1935), and large-scale public employment programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Whether these measures shortened or prolonged the Depression, and whether they represented sound governance or a dangerous centralization of federal power, remains a subject of active scholarly and political debate. See Franklin Roosevelt - New Deal Debate.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Roosevelt led the United States into World War II as part of the Allied coalition with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. His administration directed an unprecedented mobilization of industrial and military resources. Among the most contested acts of his presidency was Executive Order 9066 (February 1942), which authorized the forced relocation and internment of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans - an action widely condemned by subsequent historians and formally acknowledged as a grave injustice by the U.S. government in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Roosevelt also authorized the Manhattan Project, the secret program that produced the first atomic weapons, though he died before any device was tested or used. His conduct of wartime diplomacy, including his approach to Joseph Stalin and the postwar order negotiated at Yalta (February 1945), has generated persistent debate over his strategic judgment and geopolitical legacy. See Franklin Roosevelt - Foreign Policy Debate.

Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia, on 12 April 1945, less than a month before Germany's surrender. He was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.

There is broad consensus among historians that Roosevelt was a transformative president whose administration fundamentally altered the relationship between the federal government and the American economy, and that his leadership was central to the Allied victory in World War II. Historians have consistently ranked him among the top three U.S. presidents in professional surveys. The breadth of that consensus, and the interpretive frameworks underlying it, are examined on the Franklin Roosevelt - Historical Assessment Consensus page. Contested questions - including the economic effects of the New Deal, the morality and legality of Japanese American internment, and the wisdom of his wartime diplomacy - remain active areas of debate.

Viewpoints on Roosevelt divide across several dimensions: his domestic economic legacy, his expansion of executive and federal power, his civil liberties record, and his foreign policy and wartime conduct.

• Progressive/liberal: Roosevelt is viewed as a pragmatic reformer who saved capitalism from itself, alleviated mass suffering, and built the institutional foundations of the modern welfare state. See Franklin Roosevelt - Progressive Viewpoint.
• Conservative/free-market: Roosevelt is viewed as having extended the Depression through market intervention, establishing a damaging precedent for federal overreach, and centralizing power in ways inconsistent with constitutional governance. See Franklin Roosevelt - Conservative Viewpoint.
• Civil libertarian: Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans and his use of executive power in domestic surveillance and press management are seen as serious abuses that complicate any uncritical assessment of his legacy. See Franklin Roosevelt - Civil Liberties Viewpoint.
• Revisionist/non-interventionist: Some historians and commentators argue that Roosevelt maneuvered the United States into war against public opinion, that his diplomatic concessions to Stalin enabled Soviet expansionism, and that his foreign policy legacy is more ambiguous than the triumphalist narrative allows. See Franklin Roosevelt - Foreign Policy Revisionist Viewpoint.

• Franklin Roosevelt - History
• Franklin Roosevelt - New Deal Debate
• Franklin Roosevelt - Foreign Policy Debate
• Franklin Roosevelt - Historical Assessment Consensus
• Franklin Roosevelt - Progressive Viewpoint
• Franklin Roosevelt - Conservative Viewpoint
• Franklin Roosevelt - Civil Liberties Viewpoint
• Franklin Roosevelt - Foreign Policy Revisionist Viewpoint
• New Deal
• Great Depression
• World War II
• Japanese American Internment
• Manhattan Project
• Yalta Conference

1. Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956); Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (1970). Harcourt Brace.
2. Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. Harper & Row, 1963.
3. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Roosevelt, 3 vols. Houghton Mifflin, 1957-1960.
4. Powell, Jim. FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. Crown Forum, 2003.
5. Shlaes, Amity. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. HarperCollins, 2007.
6. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
7. Persico, Joseph E. Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage. Random House, 2001.
8. Daniels, Roger. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. Hill and Wang, 1993.
9. Steil, Benn. The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. Simon & Schuster, 2024. (Soviet influence and postwar order.)
10. C-SPAN Presidential Historians Survey, 2021. https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/