8/24/2023 0 Comments Attended state survived![]() Roosevelt also fancied himself as a supreme manager of people. As for the Soviet Union, Roosevelt “knew little and feared even less.” And it had many varieties, some of which were relatively benign. Communism, so the theory went, was an understandable reaction to poverty and oppression. ![]() The historian David Reynolds characterises this thinking as typical of American liberal opinion at the time. Let’s begin by acknowledging that Roosevelt was personally relaxed about Communism, at least as long as it was confined to distant, foreign countries. Would the combination of his diplomatic skill and strategic clarity been sufficient to manage Stalin and prevent the downward spiral in international relations? Still, that leaves open the question of whether the Cold War could have been avoided had Roosevelt lived. The unlikely pair who defrosted the Cold War by Pat Murphy On election night, he polled less than 3 percent of the national vote, only New York gave him more than 5 percent, and he barely got above a single percentage point in his native Iowa. In addition to the normal challenges inherent in a third-party run, Wallace was hampered by the visible Communist Party influence in his campaign. Rather than attempting the herculean task of wresting the 1948 Democratic nomination from Truman, he instead went straight to the general election, running for president on the Progressive ticket. ![]() The contentious issue between them was Truman’s policy towards the Soviet Union. Politically, this disaffection found its spokesman in Henry Wallace, who’d been Roosevelt’s third term vice-president and who subsequently served as Secretary of Commerce before being fired by Truman in 1946. To them, he was a warmonger whose anti-Soviet behaviour betrayed Roosevelt’s legacy and kick-started the Cold War. Considered inexperienced and ill-informed, he was suddenly catapulted into the hot seat and forced to address a host of difficult issues ranging from winning final victory against Japan in the Pacific to dealing with Josef Stalin in post-war Europe.Īnd some on the American Left didn’t like how Truman went about it. Roosevelt’s vice-president and successor, Harry Truman, was a simpler man. ![]() In an era before the presidency was subject to term limits, he’d been elected to the White House four times, leading America through both the Great Depression and the Second World War. Although he’d been in failing health for some time, the details of his condition had been carefully kept from the general public and his passing from a massive stroke on April 12, 1945, thus came as a shock. It was 70 years ago this April that Franklin D.
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