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Key Allied Figures
Neville Chamberlain

(1869-1940), British prime minister (1937-40), known for his appeasement policy in the immediate pre-World War II period.

The son of Joseph Chamberlain and half brother of Sir Austen, he was born and educated in Birmingham and after a successful business career became lord mayor of the city in 1915. Elected to Parliament in 1918, Chamberlain served as postmaster general (1922-23), minister of health (1923, 1924-29, and 1931), and chancellor of the Exchequer (1923-24 and 1931-37) before he succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister. In that office his major aim was to avoid a European war at all costs.

His policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler's Germany culminated in the MUNICH PACT, of September 1938, after which Chamberlain returned home proclaiming "peace in our time." Later he recognized the failure of his policy and vowed support for Poland. After Germany's invasion of the country, Chamberlain led Great Britain into the war against the aggressor. After the British debacle in the first few months of the war, Chamberlain was forced to resign in May 1940 and was succeeded by Sir Winston Churchill. He served in Churchill's cabinet as lord president of the council until October 1940, when illness forced his resignation. He died the following month.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

(1874-1965), Great Britain's greatest 20th-century statesman, best known for his courageous leadership as prime minister during World War II. Churchill, born Nov. 30, 1874, was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and the American heiress Jennie Jerome (1854-1921). He graduated from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, but having served in India and the Sudan he resigned his cavalry commission in 1899 to become a correspondent during the Boer War. A daring escape after he had been captured made him a national hero, and in 1900 he was elected to Parliament as a Conservative. Despite his aristocratic background, he switched in 1904 to the Liberal party. In 1908 he became president of the Board of Trade in Herbert Henry Asquith's Liberal cabinet. Then, and later as home secretary (1910-11), he worked for special reform in tandem with David Lloyd George. As first lord of the admiralty (1911-15), Churchill was a vigorous modernizer of the navy.Churchill's role in World War I was controversial and almost destroyed his career. Naval problems and his support of the disastrous GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN forced his resignation from the admiralty. Following service as a battalion commander in France, he joined Lloyd George's coalition cabinet, and from 1917 to 1922 he filled several important positions, including minister of munitions and secretary for war. The collapse of Lloyd George and the Liberal party in 1922 left Churchill out of Parliament between 1922 and 1924. Returning in 1924, he became chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government (1924-29). As such he displayed his new conservatism by returning Britain to the gold standard and vigorously condemning the trade unions during the general strike of 1926.

During the depression years (1929-39) Churchill was denied cabinet office. Baldwin-and later Neville Chamberlain, who dominated the national government from 1931 to 1940-disliked his opposition to self-government for India and his support of Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936. His insistence on the need for rearmament and his censure of Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938 also aroused suspicion. When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, however, Churchill's views were finally appreciated, and public opinion demanded his return to the admiralty.Churchill succeeded Chamberlain as prime minister on May 10, 1940. During the dark days of World War II that followed-Dunkirk, the fall of France, and the blitz-Churchill's pugnacity and rousing speeches rallied the British to continue the fight. He urged his compatriots to conduct themselves so that, "if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'!" By successful collaboration with President Franklin D. Roosevelt he was able to secure military aid and moral support from the U.S. After the Soviet Union and the U.S. entered the war in 1941, Churchill established close ties with leaders of what he called the "Grand Alliance." Traveling ceaselessly throughout the war, he did much to coordinate military strategy and to ensure Hitler's defeat. His conferences with Roosevelt and Stalin, most notably at Yalta in 1945, also shaped the map of postwar Europe. By 1945 he was admired throughout the world, his reputation disguising the fact that Britain's military role had become secondary. Unappreciative of the popular demands for postwar social change, however, Churchill was defeated by the Labour party in the election of 1945.Churchill criticized the "welfare state" reforms of Labour under his successor Clement Attlee. He also warned in his "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Mo., in 1946, of the dangers of Soviet expansion. He was prime minister again from 1951 to 1955, but this time age and poor health prevented him from providing dynamic leadership. Resigning in 1955, Churchill devoted his last years to painting and writing. He died on Jan. 24, 1965, at the age of 90. Following a state funeral he was buried at Bladon near Blenheim Palace.

Churchill was also an able historian. His most famous works are The World Crisis (4 vol., 1923-29), My Early Life (1930), Marlborough (4 vol., 1933-3 cool , The Second World War (6 vol., 1948-53), and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (4 vol., 1956-5 cool . He received the Nobel Prize for literature and a knighthood in 1953.Churchill's death in 1965, like that of Queen Victoria in 1901, marked the end of an era in British history. Born into a Victorian aristocratic family, he witnessed and participated in Britain's transformation from empire to welfare state, and its decline as a world power. His true importance, however, rests on the fact that by sheer stubborn courage he led the British people, and with them, the democratic Western world, from the brink of defeat to a final victory in the greatest conflict the world has ever seen.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

(1890 - 1969), American military leader, whose great popularity as Allied supreme commander during World War II secured him election as the 34th president of the U.S. (1953 - 61).
Early Life

Born in Denison, Tex., on Oct. 14, 1890, Eisenhower grew up on a small farm in Abilene, Kans. His devout and industrious parents, David (1863–1942) and Ida (1862–1946), raised six sons. Interested in sports and history, young Dwight went to West Point for the free education. Eisenhower was commissioned an infantry officer upon graduation in 1915 and married Mamie Doud (1896–1979) the following year. They had two sons, one of whom died in childhood.

Eisenhower did not see combat duty during World War I, but he was decorated and promoted to lieutenant colonel for his administrative skills in commanding a tank corps training center. In the interwar years, he was recognized as a promising leader at the Command and General Staff school and served as an industrial mobilization planner and as aide to the army chief of staff and later military adviser to the Philippines, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Service in World War II

During training exercises in 1940–41, Eisenhower won praise in several army staff positions, culminating in that of chief of staff of the Third Army; at the same time he was promoted to brigadier general. Called to the War Department as a Philippines expert a few days after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, he won further promotion to major general and was named chief of the newly organized Operations Division of the General Staff three months later. By this time the army's top planner, he then prepared plans for the European theater of operations, and in June 1942 he was given command of U.S. forces in Europe by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. Subsequently as Allied commander in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, he demonstrated outstanding skill in forging the allies into an effective fighting force and managing the large – scale operations.

World War II Eisenhower Takes Command
On June 25, 1942, Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower takes command of U.S. forces in Europe.

Speech: Eisenhower Broadcasts D-Day Invasion Orders
On June 5, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower ordered the massive Allied Expeditionary Force into action.

Appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force for the invasion of France, Eisenhower, by then a full general, began his new assignment in January 1944. In the months prior to the invasion, on June 6, 1944, he supervised the preparation of air, sea, and land forces and all other strategic planning and made the crucial decision on the date of the assault. During the fighting that ensued until the end of the war in Europe, Eisenhower, who became General of the Army in December 1944, had the overall responsibility of strategic and administrative control of an Allied force that eventually numbered more than 4,500,000. Because it was strategically safer and logistically sounder, Eisenhower employed a broad - front strategy, requiring all his armies to advance more or less simultaneously. This caused disagreement with the British commander, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who favored the risky single – thrust theory of concentrating the attack in one area. As supreme commander, Eisenhower prevailed, skillfully using his knowledge and experience combined with charm and tact to achieve success in his task, which involved not only fighting the Germans but also dealing with sometimes difficult allies and troublesome subordinates.

In the fall of 1945, Eisenhower became army chief of staff. During his tenure in that office – slightly more than two years – he had the dual role of demobilizing the wartime army while maintaining a suitable defense force. Although he accepted the presidency of Columbia University in 1948, he still served as a military adviser, and, some three years later, he returned to Europe as supreme commander for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Eisenhower as President

Although he had previously rejected numerous overtures from members of both parties to run for the presidency, Eisenhower yielded to the appeal of liberal Republicans in 1952. As a war hero of enormous popularity, he appealed to many Democrats as well, and he handily defeated Adlai Stevenson by more than 6.6 million votes. When he ran again in 1956, the margin was 9.5 million.
Domestic Policy

Although his cabinet featured prominent businessmen, and his own desire was for less government involvement in society and the economy, Eisenhower pursued a moderate course in domestic affairs to the evident satisfaction of most Americans. Throughout all but the first two years of his administration, his power was limited by the Democrats' control of Congress. He did trim some government activities but also expanded the Social Security program, aid to education, and the Interstate Highway System. Nevertheless, in his farewell address, he returned to his concern about the dangers of big government with a strong warning against the "military – industrial complex." During his administration, critics pointed out his failure to oppose Senator Joseph McCarthy's smear tactics against alleged subversives in government and his lack of support for the emerging civil rights movement. McCarthyism soon collapsed without presidential intervention, however, and Eisenhower did send federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce school integration in 1957.Foreign Policy

As was natural for a man of his background, Eisenhower took particular interest in military and diplomatic affairs. This led him to invigorate the National Security Council, bring a quick end (July 27, 1953) to the stalemated war in Korea, and reduce the strength of the conventional forces. His emphasis on airpower, which meant nuclear weapons – a strategy of massive retaliation rather than response tailored to the specific situation - evoked strong dissent from army leaders. Despite temporary thaws, the cold war with the Soviet Union continued throughout his presidency. Eisenhower supported the strong moralistic, anti - Communist stance of his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. Although Dulles talked of "going to the brink" of war to gain diplomatic ends, his rhetoric outstripped the administration's actions. Eisenhower did not intervene militarily in Vietnam to save the French (1954) or in Eastern Europe to aid German and Hungarian revolts against Soviet domination (1953 and 1956). He did, however, dispatch a small expedition to Lebanon in 1958, and he built up alliances with Third World nations. Soviet threats, as well as such technological and psychological coups as the launching of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in October 1957, drew a typically cautious response from him. In the spring of 1960, his acceptance of responsibility for a U - 2 plane's spy flight over the USSR brought a temporary end to hopes for harmonious relations with the Soviet Union. In retirement, the former president wrote several volumes of memoirs and enjoyed his hobbies of golf and painting. Both presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson consulted the still popular elder statesman. He died on March 28, 1969, in Washington, D.C

Douglas MacArthur

(1880-1964), American general, who commanded Allied troops in the Pacific during World War II, supervised the postwar occupation of Japan, and led UN forces during the Korean War.

He was born in Little Rock, Ark., on Jan. 26, 1880, the son of Gen. Arthur MacArthur (1845-1912), a hero of the American Civil War who was later military governor of the Philippines.

In 1903 he graduated with highest honors from the U.S. Military Academy and became an engineer officer. During the next 14 years, besides some routine assignments, he toured the Orient as his father's aide, served as aide to President Theodore Roosevelt, and was the army's first public relations officer.

In World War I, he reached the rank of general and won numerous honors for his heroism and his leadership of the 42d (Rainbow) Division. From 1919 to 1922, as superintendent of West Point, he revitalized the military academy. After other assignments, including the command of the Philippine Department, he was made army chief of staff in 1930 and held the post for five years, longer than any predecessor.

During the Great Depression, he fought hard for army personnel but was pilloried for using force to drive disgruntled veterans, known as the Bonus Army, from Washington, D.C. After his retirement in 1935, he was given the rank of field marshal in the Philippine army and served as military adviser to the Philippines from 1936 to 1941.
World War II

Recalled to active duty to command American troops in the Philippines in July 1941, MacArthur jettisoned a plan that called for U.S. forces to withdraw to Bataan in case of a Japanese attack and to go on the defensive until help arrived; he optimistically hoped to stop the Japanese on the beach. When war came, however, he soon reverted to the original plan.

World War II Speech: MacArthur Receives the Japanese Surrender
On Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, World War II officially ended as the Japanese signed the unconditional surrender of Japan.

In response to orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he left the Philippines for Australia before the U.S. defenders surrendered to the invading Japanese in 1942. MacArthur was embittered and frustrated by the Allied strategy that gave priority to Europe and forced him to share the Pacific command with Adm. Chester W. Nimitz. As supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur led a combined American and Australian force in a series of brilliant victories, gradually retaking the islands seized by Japan at the beginning of the war. The campaign culminated with the reconquest of the Philippines (October 1944-July 1945), during which he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army. He was at work on plans for the invasion of Japan when the Japanese asked for peace.
The Postwar Period and Korea

Appointed supreme commander for the Allied powers, he accepted the surrender of Japan on Sept. 2, 1945. During the Allied occupation of Japan, he demilitarized the former enemy power and implemented a comprehensive policy of social, economic, and political reforms with the goal of liberalizing that nation. Although he won praise from some American liberals, his serious bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1948 made little headway. Politically, his basic appeal was to ultraconservatives.When Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, the U.S. entered the war with the support of the UN. Named the UN commander, MacArthur hastily dispatched U.S. occupation troops from Japan to Korea. By September he had sufficient reinforcements to take the offensive. After a daring amphibious landing at Inch'ón[dcl020], he drove the invaders out of South Korea and pursued them to the Chinese border. In effect, he had won that war by late October, when Communist China initiated a new conflict by sending troops into Korea. MacArthur wanted to expand the limited war into a general war against China. In a letter publicized by a Republican congressman, he criticized the policy of his civilian and military superiors and advocated a change. For this reason President Harry S. Truman relieved him of his command in April 1951.
Retirement

MacArthur returned home to a tumultuous welcome. Although he delivered the keynote address at the next Republican presidential convention, his popularity was not enough to gain him the nomination. In retirement he served as chairman of the board of the Remington Rand Corp. He died on April 5, 1964, in Washington, D.C. A man who inspired extreme emotions among admirers and critics alike, MacArthur was a brilliant soldier who played a crucial role in American military affairs for more than three decades.

George Catlett Marshall

(1880-1959), American military commander, army chief of staff during World War II; as secretary of state (1947-49) he played an important role in aiding the postwar economic recovery of Western Europe.

Marshall was born on Dec. 31, 1880, in Uniontown, Pa., and was educated at Virginia Military Institute. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry in 1901 and served in the Philippine Islands from 1902 to 1903. During World War I he served as chief of operations with the U.S. First Army in France and received wide recognition for his handling of troops and equipment during the Saint Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne operations. From 1919 to 1924 he was aide to the U.S. commander in chief, Gen. John Pershing, and during the next three years he saw service in China. Marshall taught in various army schools and organizations from 1927 to 1936.

In 1939 Marshall was appointed U.S. army chief of staff with the rank of general. He directed U.S. preparations for war over the next two years, and after the nation's entry into World War II in December 1941 he was chiefly responsible for the training, organization, and deployment of U.S. troops in all sectors of the fighting, and for the appointment of commanders in all major operations. As one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's principal advisers on strategy, Marshall participated in the Allied conferences at Casablanca, Québec, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. In 1944 he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army. When he retired in 1945, President Harry S. Truman appointed him special representative, with the rank of ambassador, to China.

He spent two years in China attempting to mediate the differences between the Chinese Communist and Nationalist leaders, but was unsuccessful. In 1947 Marshall succeeded James Francis Byrnes as U.S. secretary of state and initiated the so-called Marshall Plan, by which the U.S. provided economic assistance to strengthen anti-Communist elements in the war-torn countries of Western Europe. Marshall was secretary of defense in 1950-51. He won the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to European recovery. Marshall died in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 16, 1959.

Bernard Montgomery

(1887-1976), British military leader, who played a prominent role in the Allied victories in Africa and Europe during World War II.

He was born in London on Nov. 17, 1887, and educated at the Royal Military College. He entered the British army in 1908 and served in World War I as a captain. In 1942, during World War II, he was appointed commander of the British Eighth Army in Africa; two months later he began an offensive at al-Alamayn (el-Alamein), Egypt, which resulted in the expulsion of the German-Italian forces under the German general Erwin Rommel, first from Egypt and then from Cyrenaica and Tripolitania in Libya.

In 1943 he gained another victory over Rommel at the Battle of the Mareth Line in southern Tunisia. As commander in chief of the British armies on the western front, he served under the supreme commander of Allied forces, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, from December 1943 to August 1944, when he was promoted to field marshal in command of English and Canadian troops.

In 1946 Montgomery was created viscount and made chief of the imperial general staff. He was deputy supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces from 1951 to 1958. Montgomery died in Alton, England, on March 25, 1976. His writings include his memoirs, published in 1958, and The Path to Leadership (1961).

George Smith Patton

(1885-1945), American army officer, born in San Gabriel, Calif., and educated at the U.S. Military Academy.

On his graduation in 1909 he was commissioned a second lieutenant; he advanced in rank to full general by 1945. He served as aide-de-camp to the American general John Joseph Pershing on Pershing's expedition to Mexico in 1917.

In France during World War I, Patton established a tank training school and commanded a tank brigade. In 1942 and 1943, during World War II, he commanded U.S. forces in Morocco, Tunisia, and Sicily. Early in 1944 he was given command of the Third Army.

Controversial throughout the war for his personal flamboyance, outspokenness, uncompromising standards, and aggressive combat strategy, he played a key role in the headlong Allied armored thrust to Germany after D-Day.

In the summer of 1944 the Third Army broke through the German defenses in the Normandy campaign and advanced rapidly across France; in March 1945 it crossed the Rhine River into Germany and also moved toward Austria.

After the war Patton served as military governor of Bavaria, but because of criticism of his lenient policy toward the former enemy, he was relieved of the post. He was named head of the Fifteenth Army late in 1945, shortly before he was fatally injured in a traffic accident. Patton's career is portrayed in the motion picture Patton (1970).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

(1882-1945), 32d president of the U.S. (1933-45); elected for an unprecedented four terms, he was one of the 20th century's most skillful political leaders.

His New Deal program, a response to the Great Depression, utilized the federal government as an instrument of social and economic change in contrast to its traditionally passive role. Then, in World War II, he led the Allies in their defeat of the Axis powers.
Early Life

Born at Hyde Park, N.Y., on Jan. 30, 1882, he was the only child of James Roosevelt (1828-1900) and Sara Delano Roosevelt (1855-1941). His father, a semiretired railway executive, was a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the U.S. Although they were not wealthy by late 19th-century standards, the Roosevelts of Hyde Park led a comfortable, gracious existence, and young Franklin's life was sheltered; he was educated by governesses and indulged by his father. A handsome youth, he was an excellent athlete, expert at boating and swimming, and he also collected stamps, birds, and ship models—hobbies that he pursued all his life.

His formal education began at the Groton School in Massachusetts, where the headmaster, Endicott Peabody (1857-1944), stressed to his affluent young students their obligation toward those who were less fortunate in society. After graduation from Harvard University in 1904, Roosevelt attended Columbia University Law School without taking a degree and was admitted to the New York State bar in 1907.

In 1905, despite his widowed mother's objections, he married a distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, in a gala society wedding at which President Theodore Roosevelt gave the bride away.
The Beginning of Roosevelt's Political Career

Franklin Roosevelt's political career began with his election to the New York State Senate as a Democrat in 1910. He quickly gained attention as the leader of an upstate coalition that fought the influence of New York City's Democratic machine. His support of Woodrow Wilson's candidacy as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1912 resulted in his appointment to the post of assistant secretary of the navy, which he held during World War I. James M. Cox of Ohio, the party's 1920 nominee for the presidency, chose Roosevelt as his running mate because of his family name, but the Cox-Roosevelt ticket proved to be no match for the Republicans under Warren G. Harding.

Roosevelt faced the greatest personal crisis of his life when he was stricken by poliomyelitis at his Canadian summer home on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, in 1921. He veiled his deep physical agony with a cheerful demeanor and rejected his mother's advice that he abandon politics and become a country squire at Hyde Park. Encouraged by Eleanor and his dedicated political mentor, Louis McHenry Howe (1871-1936), he resumed his career by nominating Alfred E. Smith for the presidency at the Democratic convention in 1924 and again in 1928, when Smith won the party's nomination. The Democratic party of the 1920s was deeply divided between Protestant, rural voters, who favored Prohibition, and urban Roman Catholics, who opposed it. Anxious to win the New York State electoral vote, Smith persuaded Roosevelt to campaign for the governorship, given the latter's strong upstate appeal. Roosevelt, deeply in debt and disabled by polio, won a narrow victory, while Smith was defeated by Herbert Hoover.
Governor of New York

During two terms as governor of New York (1929-33), Roosevelt established a reputation as a reforming progressive in the Theodore Roosevelt tradition and as a champion of relief for impoverished upstate farmers. His greatest struggle—for control of the Saint Lawrence River waterpower resource by the state rather than private utilities—aimed at providing cheaper electricity for the rural consumer. With the outbreak of the Great Depression, he identified himself with the urban relief cause by appointing Harry Hopkins to head the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. As the depression deepened, he assembled the "Brain Trust," a group of faculty members from Columbia University, to formulate with him a comprehensive program for resolving the economic collapse that had begun in 1929. With the aid of a progressive-southern Democratic coalition in 1932, Roosevelt won the party's presidential nomination, then easily defeated Hoover in the national election.
Roosevelt as President

Roosevelt's promise of "a new deal for the American people" foreshadowed a revolutionary extension of federal power into the nation's everyday life.The Effort to Restore Prosperity

His first three months in office, known as the Hundred Days, were marked by innovative legislation originating in the executive branch. In a period of massive unemployment (25 percent of the work force), a collapsed stock market, thousands of bank closings for lack of liquidity, and agricultural prices that had fallen below the cost of production, Congress, at Roosevelt's request, passed a series of emergency measures calculated to provide liquidity for banking institutions and relief for the individual and to prevent business bankruptcy. Further, abandonment of the gold standard in 1933 had the effect of devaluing the dollar in international markets.

In addition to relief measures, such as creation of the Works Progress Administration under the direction of Harry Hopkins, the NEW DEAL, aimed at long-range economic solutions to problems stemming from World War I. The farm depression, a result of overproduction, had begun in 1921 and sent millions to the cities during the 1920s; Roosevelt regarded it as the root cause of the economic collapse of the late 1920s. He responded with a broad agricultural program framed by the Agricultural Adjustment Acts of 1933 and 1938. This legislation introduced production controls for certain basic commodities in order to create a balance between supply and demand; it promoted reforestation and conservation; and it provided subsidy payments for curtailed planting. The program of the Tennessee Valley Authority, created in 1933, included construction of dams to produce hydroelectric power, water management, improvement of farming techniques and river navigation, and construction of hospitals and schools. New industries attracted by low-cost electricity and labor diversified the southern economy and benefited an impoverished area.
The New Deal Coalition

Although Roosevelt's ties to the city and organized labor were never strong, many New Deal measures alienated the business community; at the same time, they attracted blacks and other urban minorities and the labor movement into the Democratic party, thus forming the New Deal coalition. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA, 1933) began as an industrial stabilization scheme designed to eliminate cutthroat practices and maintain prices. Section 7a of the law, which promoted labor unionization, alienated conservative businesspeople, however. Strict securities-issuance and stock exchange regulation, enforced by the new Securities and Exchange Commission, intensified business opposition. Benefits provided by the Social Security Act, by unemployment insurance legislation, and by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 attracted workers' support. In 1935 and 1936 the traditional-minded U.S. Supreme Court struck at key New Deal measures by declaring provisions of both the NIRA and the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional.
Second term
After winning a resounding victory over Alfred M. Landon in the 1936 presidential election, Roosevelt tried to neutralize the Court by proposing the appointment of new justices, but Congress rejected this "court-packing" plan in 1937. In the ensuing years a congressional coalition of conservative Republicans and Democrats, fearful of growing federal spending in the 1937-38 depression and anxious to curtail expansion of federal power into areas traditionally reserved to the states, checked the New Deal's momentum. The imminence of war in Europe, followed by U.S. involvement, drew attention away from the president's domestic defeats and made possible his victories over Republican candidates Wendell L. Willkie in 1940 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1944.
Prewar Foreign Policy

Roosevelt was a pragmatist in his diplomatic views in the interwar period. Although he had been a supporter of Woodrow Wilson, he abandoned Wilson's internationalist ideas when the country turned to isolationism in the 1920s. Then, in the late 1930s, spurred by Adolf Hitler's aggression in Europe and Japanese expansionism in the Pacific, Roosevelt moved the U.S. back toward engagement in world affairs. He was restrained, however, by the persistence of strong isolationist sentiment among the voters and by congressional passage of a series of neutrality laws intended to prevent American involvement in a second world war. Roosevelt won the contest when, alarmed by Germany's defeat of France in 1940, Congress passed his LEND-LEASE, legislation to help Great Britain's continued resistance to the Germans. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, brought the U.S. into the war on the side of Britain and the Soviet Union.World War II

Roosevelt framed his diplomatic objectives as wartime leader in a series of wartime conferences. In collaboration with Winston Churchill he explained Anglo-American war aims in August 1941 in the form of the Atlantic Charter. It denied territorial ambitions, favored self-government and liberal international trade arrangements, and pledged freedom from want and permanent security against aggression. At Casablanca, Morocco, in January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill insisted on Germany's unconditional surrender as a means of preventing the enemy's future military resurgence. The Québec Conference (August 1943) planned the Normandy invasion. At Moscow (October 1943) the Allied foreign ministers approved in principle a postwar organization for world security. Military strategy and the problem of postwar Germany came under discussion at Cairo (November-December 1943) and Québec (September 1944). Finally, at Yalta in the USSR (February 1945), Roosevelt, Churchill, and Joseph Stalin broached their plans for a postwar world. In the process, Roosevelt pressed for admission of China to the Allied councils as a major power, liberalization of international trade as a means of preventing future wars, and creation of a United Nations organization as a mechanism for preserving peace. He did not, however, see the end of the war. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Ga., on April 12, 1945.

Roosevelt's vision of a peaceful and stable postwar world foundered on national ambition. Although he bypassed Churchill and a weakened Great Britain to deal with Stalin at Yalta, it became apparent on the eve of his death that Soviet ambitions included the occupation of eastern and central Europe. His faith in the ability of the UN to keep the peace through the collaboration of the former wartime Allies proved unworkable in the era of the cold war.

The New Deal coalition lasted for many years after Roosevelt's death. In addition, his long tenure in office during the crisis years of the Great Depression and World War II laid the groundwork for what later became known as the "imperial presidency."

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum (1940), the nation's first presidential library, is located in Hyde Park.

Josef Stalin

(1879-1953), Soviet Communist leader, the longtime ruler who more than any other individual molded the features that characterized the Soviet regime and shaped the direction of post-World War II Europe; in this regard, Stalin is considered by many to be the most powerful person to live during the 20th century.

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, as he was originally named-he adopted the pseudonym Stalin, meaning "a man of steel," only about 1910-was born on Dec. 21, 1879, in Gori, now in the Republic of Georgia. Both his parents were Georgian peasants. Neither of them spoke Russian, but Stalin was forced to learn it, as the language of instruction, when he attended the Gori church school in 1888-94. The best pupil in the school, Soso (his schoolboy nickname) earned a full scholarship to the Tbilisi Theological Seminary.
The Revolutionary

While studying for the priesthood, Stalin read forbidden literature, including Karl Marx's Das Kapital, and soon converted to a new orthodoxy: Russian Marxism. Before graduation he quit the seminary to become a full-time revolutionary.

Stalin began his career in the Social-Democratic party in 1899 as a propagandist among Tbilisi railroad workers. The police caught up with him in 1902. Arrested in Batum, he spent more than a year in prison before being exiled to Siberia, from which he escaped in 1904. This became a familiar pattern. Between 1902 and 1913 Stalin was arrested eight times; he was exiled seven times and escaped six times.

The government contained him only once; his last exile in 1913 lasted until 1917. On his return from Siberia in 1904 Stalin married. His first wife, Yekaterina Svanidze, died in 1910. A second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva (1902-32), whom he married in 1919, committed suicide in 1932.

In the last years of czarist Russia (1905-17) Stalin was more of an up-and-coming follower than a leader. He always supported the Bolshevik faction of the party, but his contribution was practical, not theoretical. Thus, in 1907 he helped organize a bank holdup in Tbilisi "to expropriate" funds. Lenin raised him into the upper reaches of the party in 1912 by co-opting him into the Bolsheviks' Central Committee. The next year he briefly edited the new party newspaper, Pravda (Truth), and at Lenin's urging wrote his first major work, Marxism and the Nationality Question. Before this treatise appeared (1914), however, Stalin was sent to Siberia.

After the Revolution of March 1917, Stalin returned to Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), where he resumed the editorship of Pravda. Together with Lev Kamenev (1883-1936), Stalin dominated party decisions in the capital before Lenin arrived in April. The two advocated a policy of moderation and cooperation with the provisional government. Although he played a not insignificant role in the armed uprising that followed in November, Stalin was not remembered as a revolutionary hero. In the words of one memoirist, he produced the impression of a "grey blur."
The Administrator

As the Bolsheviks' expert on nationalism, Stalin was Lenin's choice to head the Commissariat for Nationality Affairs. Together with Yakov Sverdlov (1885-1919) and Leon Trotsky, he helped Lenin decide all emergency issues in the difficult first period of the civil war. Stalin participated in that war as a commander on several fronts. Within the party Stalin strengthened his position by dogged organizational work and devotion to administrative tasks. He was commissar for state control in 1919-23, and-more important-in 1922 he became secretary-general of the party. As Stalin converted this organizational base into a source of political power, he came into conflict with Lenin on several minor but ultimately telling issues.

Before his death, Lenin came to regard the flaws in Stalin's personality and conduct as political liabilities. In his political "testament" Lenin doubted whether the party's general secretary would use his great power with sufficient caution. He also attacked Stalin as being "too rude" and called for his removal. Luck and adroit maneuvering enabled Stalin to suppress Lenin's testament.The Despot

After Lenin's death Stalin joined in a troika with Grigory Zinovyev (1883-1936) and Kamenev to lead the country. With these temporary allies, Stalin acted against his archrival Trotsky, the foremost candidate for Lenin's mantle. Once the threat of Trotsky was eliminated, however, Stalin reversed course, aligning himself with Nikolay Bukharin and Aleksey Rykov (1881-193 cool against his former partners. Trotsky, Zinovyev, and Kamenev in turn challenged Stalin as the "left opposition." By skillful manipulation and clever sloganeering, but especially by interpreting Lenin's precepts to a new generation coming of age in the 1920s, Stalin bested all his rivals. By his 50th birthday (1929), Stalin had cemented his position as Lenin's recognized successor and entrenched his power as sole leader of the Soviet Union.

Stalin reacted to lagging agricultural production in the late '20s by a ruthless, personally supervised expropriation of grain from peasants in Siberia. When other crises threatened in late 1929, he expanded what had been a moderate collectivization program into a nationwide offensive against the peasantry. Millions were displaced, and unknown thousands died in the massive collectivization. The industrialization campaigns over which Stalin presided in the 1930s were much more successful; these raised the backward USSR to the rank of the industrial powers.

In the mid-1930s Stalin launched a major campaign of political terror. The purges, arrests, and deportations to labor camps touched virtually every family. Former rivals Zinovyev, Kamenev, and Bukharin admitted to crimes against the state in show trials and were sentenced to death. Untold numbers of party, industry, and military leaders disappeared during the "Great Terror," making way for a rising generation that included such leaders as Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Fear instilled by a political secret police formed an essential part of the system called Stalinism.
The War Leader

In part because the purges stripped the military of its leadership, the Soviet Union suffered greatly in World War II. Stalin personally directed the war against Nazi Germany. By rallying the people, and by his willingness to make great human sacrifices, he turned the tide against the Germans, notably at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Stalin participated in the Allies' meetings at Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945), where he obtained recognition of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and after the war he extended Communist domination over most of the countries liberated by the Soviet armies. His single-minded determination to prevent yet another devastating assault on the USSR from the West had much to do with the growth of the cold war. In his last years, increasingly paranoid and physically weak, Stalin apparently was about to start another purge. In January 1953 he ordered the arrest of many Moscow doctors, mostly Jews, charging them with medical assassinations. The so-called Doctors' Plot seemed to herald a return to the 1930s, but Stalin's sudden death on March 5, 1953, in Moscow forestalled another bloodbath.
Evaluation

Although the ironfisted ruler of a mighty nation, Stalin has remained an enigmatic figure and his role in history a controversial one. Soviet historians assess his regime as a great one, although marred by some errors, but Western scholars assail the bloody terror of his rule. The question is whether or not the Soviet Union would have made the same progress under less despotic leadership. Three years after his death, the 20th Party Congress denounced Stalin and much that he represented.