Original subtitles

Franklin Roosevelt was the president

who had to face the Great Depression and World War II.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

He was ambitious and active.

Incredibly privileged, but he suffered.

You've contracted infantile paralysis.

And he's had setbacks.

But through pain can come wisdom.

The country is on the edge of a cliff,

but we're not going to let it fall.

What do you plan to do with this policy?

He has a vision to change the very soul of America.

I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people.

American democracy was literally

resting on his shoulders.

This was zero hour.

[speaking german]

Get everybody in here.

He knew that he needed to project real strength.

He is the dealer in hope for the entire free world.

An invasion of France is courting disaster.

He took risks.

Again and again, you see these moments of great daring.

Success may not come with rushing speed,

but we shall return again and again.

Roosevelt led the grand alliance to victory

over fascism.

This was a tumultuous, complicated period of time.

It's a mistake to think that he somehow got everything right,

but there was something about that voice,

there was something about that smile.

That empathy, that humility, that resilience,

all those qualities that FDR just had triumphantly

built into his character.

Take a deep breath, Franklin.

It's perfectly natural to feel anxious.

Oh, I'm not anxious about getting married.

I'm very lucky.

So what has you so nervous?

[wedding march playing]

He does.

Take care of her.

I will, Mr. President.

Call me Uncle Ted.

It's March 17th, 1905.

The Roosevelts are probably the most prestigious

of the New York elite families.

Teddy Roosevelt is president of the United States.

His niece, Eleanor, is marrying Franklin Roosevelt.

Eleanor and Franklin are fifth cousins once removed,

and they are so in love at this point.

She's 20 years old.

He's 23 years old.

And he tells his mother that he's the happiest man alive.

Eleanor wasn't simply part of the debutante world that he was

used to.

She was working in a settlement house in New York,

finding a sense of great fulfillment

by helping other people.

She had ambitions to do something with her life,

and he too had them, but there's no question

that knowing Teddy Roosevelt was her uncle

was part of his attraction to Eleanor.

The rock star in the United States was Theodore Roosevelt.

Every minute of his adult life, FDR

was always modeling himself after Theodore Roosevelt.

We see FDR as this iconic, universally

beloved, majestic figure, but he was a man

before he was a monument, and Franklin Roosevelt

did have something to prove.

He wanted to achieve, but it wasn't foreordained.

Franklin Roosevelt is born on January 30th, 1882

during the Gilded Age.

It is a time of massive economic expansion marked

by incredible technological innovation.

The great expansion of the railroad,

the telegraph, the introduction of electricity.

It was an age of progress, progress, progress.

And Franklin Roosevelt's family is wealthy, privileged,

and he has two parents, James and Sara Roosevelt,

who absolutely adore him and surround him with love

and affection and attention.

To call Sara Delano Roosevelt a doting mother is an insult

to doting mothers everywhere.

She was an extremely stubborn and willful mother,

who gave orders all the time, loved him dearly,

which he knew, but at the same time,

unless he developed a will of iron,

he was going to grow up being her vassal.

He grew up on this magnificent property in Hyde Park, New York

right on the Hudson River, where he

could walk through the woods.

He was a naturalist.

He loved birds.

He was very, very curious as a young boy.

Franklin later said that, "All that is in me

goes back to the Hudson."

And he meant the unbounded love that he

got from both of his parents.

It's where his confidence came from, his trust in people

came from, his optimism came from.

But when he was eight, his father had a heart attack.

After the heart attack, it was very important

that he not trouble his father.

He would put it facade on so that his father wouldn't know

that anything was wrong, and I think this is something that he

carried on later into his life.

There's no question that that projection of confidence

and optimism and things are going to be all right

later became an enormous part of his leadership strengths.

But for a man who became the greatest vote

getter in the history of the American presidency,

he was not a universal favorite.

Some people thought he was too fancy.

Some people thought of him as a lightweight.

When he goes off to Harvard, he's pretty bright,

but it's not like he's particularly studious.

He was a flirt.

He was a good golfer.

He was a Harvard pretty boy.

After Harvard, he goes to Columbia Law School.

He ends up practicing law for a while,

but he's not all that interested in it.

He's sort of bored, not sure what his next step is

going to be, fantasizing about following in his cousin Teddy's

footsteps.

In 1910, there's a group of law clerks

that are sitting around his firm when he's 28 years old

and they're all speculating what they might want to be in life.

Franklin comes up with, I'd like to I think become

a member of the state legislature,

and then maybe I'd like to be Assistant Secretary

of the Navy, and then maybe governor,

and then maybe if I'm lucky, I could be president.

Exactly the path that Teddy Roosevelt had taken.

Franklin believed he'd been born to serve.

Someone who believed that who much is given, much

is expected.

And I think that's a key part of Roosevelt's ambition.

And for Franklin Roosevelt, the Roosevelt name was useful,

because at that point in 1910, it's the most potent name

in American politics.

Because of his name, the Democratic Party in New York

comes to him and says, we want you to run for the state

legislature.

It wasn't because the Democratic bosses saw in him

the makings of a leader.

They saw in him somebody whose mother was wealthy

and who could support the campaign

and maybe fund the Democratic Party.

His mother is horrified at the idea

that he's going to become a politician.

Sara thinks that Franklin should just be a landed gentleman

in Hudson Valley.

In 1910, he runs for state senate in New York.

And it's at the time not the sort of thing

where people are, you know, knocking on doors,

but he gets himself this big Maxwell touring car

and starts campaigning.

He was the first person to use this newfangled gadget,

the car, during the campaign.

He loved to break precedent.

Franklin Roosevelt ran on a campaign of cleaning up

the government, having an honest government.

But what he's really out there doing,

he's just convincing people that he cares about them.

Hello there.

Franklin D. Roosevelt running for state senate.

Eleanor said when he first started speaking,

he spoke so slowly that there were

big pauses between everything he said,

and she was afraid he would never go on with the speech.

Hello. How are you?

- This is my niece. - Your niece?

Hello.

But then after a while, when he got comfortable

and he kept talking and talking, she

was afraid he'd never stop speaking.

Hello, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: He not only found his voice

in that campaign, but he found his vocation.

He knew there was something inside of him that

wanted to make other people's lives better.

Roosevelt managed to win as a Democrat

although this was a very conservative Republican area.

Roosevelt was not expecting to serve in the New York State

Senate for the next 40 years.

What he was doing was following in the footsteps of Uncle

Teddy.

Roosevelt realized that to be successful in American policy,

you have to show that you can do something

for the national party.

So in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson has running for president,

in those pre-radio, pre-television days, when

candidates required proxies, Franklin Roosevelt

is promoting Woodrow Wilson.

And he's campaigning against his cousin Teddy, the man

that he idolizes.

He realized this was a great opportunity for the Democrats

to win the election, but more importantly, that this would

give him an inside track into getting it into Washington

and getting out of the state legislature.

In 1912, there were three candidates.

William Howard Taft, who was the incumbent president,

former president Theodore Roosevelt, and governor

of New Jersey Woodrow Wilson.

The Democrats win the election, Woodrow Wilson

becomes president, and now Franklin D. Roosevelt,

having supported Wilson, gets a slot in the Wilson

administration.

FDR supports Woodrow Wilson without infuriating Uncle Teddy

and pleases Wilson to such an extent

that Wilson is willing to give him his wish

to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

That's political talent at a very young age.

As the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the same position

his cousin Teddy Roosevelt had, Franklin

is elevated to the national stage at a crucial point

in history.

In August 1914, World War I breaks out in Europe.

And it's hard to imagine in 1914 that the US would ever

get involved.

As Assistant Secretary of the Navy,

Franklin is perpetually impatient.

He's convinced during the early years of World War I

that America in general, and the Navy department in particular,

are just not doing enough to get ready for war.

Franklin is constantly pushing to expand the Navy,

sometimes going around his superiors' instructions

to do so.

In 1915, the Germans sink the Lusitania,

one of the most famous and luxurious passenger liners

of the time, and there's nearly 2,000 people onboard,

and nearly 1,200 of those perish,

including 123 Americans.

This almost causes war, but there's,

you know, a real pushback inside the United States

about going to war.

Then in 1917, the Germans send a telegram to the government

of Mexico, saying, if you declare war in the United

States, we will give you support to take back the lands you lost

in the Mexican-American War.

Woodrow Wilson finally was out of options for neutrality,

and the United States joined World War I in April of 1917.

But there's a lot of pressure on FDR to go to war the same

way Teddy Roosevelt had done during the Spanish-American

War.

Franklin wanted desperately to be a soldier himself

and went to Wilson and asked the president, can I go?

And he said, no, you're more important than staying here.

So even so, he wanted at least to be able to go over and visit

the troops.

When Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt move to Washington

D.C., Eleanor was a little overwhelmed.

Eleanor had to take care of five very dynamic children,

so she decided to hire a social secretary, a young woman named

Lucy Mercer.

She's very organized, she's very pretty, the children loved her,

but Eleanor's own insecurities came out,

and Eleanor eventually ended up firing Lucy.

And then Lucy went to work in the Navy department.

Oh, wait, your tie.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Working under Roosevelt.

Let me, Eleanor.

What would Franklin do without you?

Be wandering the streets, I think.

So in 1918, FDR arrives in France

and tours a number of these battlefields

and was immersed in the horrors of the war.

NEWSREADER: And saw with his own eyes

and heard with his own ears the savage onslaughts

of the Germans against the allies.

There are a lot of weapons systems that are introduced

in World War I for the first time.

Airplanes, tanks, machine guns, and the other artillery pieces,

which are so powerful and so destructive

that they can literally vaporize people.

It's an unprecedented level of killing and an unprecedentedly

gruesome level of killing.

He describes being on the battlefield

and hearing the whistle of German shells

flying overhead and exploding nearby.

VOICEOVER: We passed on to the south slopes of Fort Duama.

A quarter of a mile beyond.

And sure enough, the long, winding whistle of a shell

was followed by the dull boom of the explosion.

This was a deeply moving experience for him.

Franklin Roosevelt truly believed that America

had a moral responsibility as well

as a political responsibility to be a player on the world stage.

In 1918, as FDR is returning to the United States,

he has a slight fever, he gets on a boat

and comes down with a very, very serious cases of pneumonia

caused by the Spanish flu.

More American soldiers died of the Spanish flu than in combat.

It must have been terrifying for Eleanor

to have this young husband who was so very sick.

And she took care of him.

She was there day and night.

When Eleanor was unpacking the suitcase,

she came upon love letters that Lucy had written to him.

Imagine the sense of betrayal she must have felt.

It must have been devastating.

Thanks, Babs.

There's something--

Is it about Elliott?

I hear he's been a right devil while I was gone.

Do you love her?

Then we must get a divorce.

I believe I love her.

That's very sweet, but you sound like an idiot.

I've spent my life doing everything that was asked me,

but Lucy makes me happy.

It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I feel free.

Louis Howe is Franklin Roosevelt's closest

political advisor.

He is in so many ways Franklin's opposite.

He's small, he's perpetually dirty,

his hands are blackened from cigarette ash and newsprint.

And FDR really relied on Louis Howe as a great confidant,

a great advisor to him.

You want to talk about being free?

Right now you have the freedom to do whatever

you want with your career.

Run for office, build a reputation.

The sky's the limit.

If you do this, if you leave your wife,

there'll be a scandal.

It'll be all over the papers.

You'll have to resign.

I'll survive all that.

Besides, it's Eleanor who's asking for a divorce.

What about your mother?

You think she'll accept a divorced Roosevelt?

She's going to cut you off, disown you.

You'll be on your own.

Think about that, Frank.

Really think about what that means.

You may be in love, Frank, but you've got to make a choice.

Do you want to be happy or do you want to be the president

of the United States?

FDR makes a practical decision that he will stay

in the marriage so as to not lose his social status

and his political career, and Eleanor goes along with it.

I think for the sake of the family,

divorce was a huge scandal at that time,

she agreed to stay with him in marriage.

Evidently they would never really

have intimate relationships again.

Shortly after the affair was discovered,

the war came to an end.

In 1918, the Allies win World War I,

and the impact was felt most severely in Europe,

where you're looking at 40 to 50 million casualties.

About half of those are deaths and about half

of those are wounded.

The Americans come back from World War I

and they see Europe descending into violence.

There's outbreaks of near revolution in most

of the European countries.

And they say, what did we intervene in this war for?

But at the same time, a lot of the unsolved problems

of America remain below the surface.

Men have to return to jobs.

Some of these jobs are still available.

Some of them aren't.

And labor wars are erupting all over manufacturing centers

in the United States.

And for returning African-Americans, what they

discovered was that the reign of Jim Crow

was even more entrenched.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffers a terrible stroke

and he's essentially incapacitated

for the rest of his term.

Franklin's hero Teddy Roosevelt has recently died,

and Franklin is looking at what is his next step.

In 1920, women had just gotten the vote.

FDR was good looking.

The Democrats wanted a good-looking guy

to run for vice president, and so FDR got on the ticket

with Governor Cox in Ohio, the Democratic candidate, who

probably knew he was going to lose.

For a young Assistant Secretary of the Navy to leap

from that job to the national ticket as candidate for vice

president, this was the gift of all times,

because Roosevelt knew that even if Cox lost,

FDR would be a well-known presidential figure

of the future.

This is also a moment when Eleanor emerges as something

of a political observer, because Louis Howe,

FDR's political advisor, has Eleanor traveling with him

on the train on this whistle stop tour.

The 1920 campaign is Franklin Roosevelt traveling

the country, places he's never been,

giving speech after speech, thousands of speeches

over the course of three months.

So he can try things.

He can be bold.

He can really test his message and evolve and improve.

It's all the skills that he's going to need later

on in his political career.

It's the perfect testing ground for him.

He's learning what works and that he genuinely liked people.

I am certain that America will choose the path of progress

and set aside the doctrines of despair.

May the guiding spirit of our land

keep our feet on the broad road that leads to a better tomorrow

and gives us the strength to carry on.

[applause]

What do you think?

Me?

Yes, you.

Do you like the speech?

It was good.

You think it could have been better?

It was a little vague.

Yeah?

Well, I suppose he should consider his audience.

I imagine that people from farms and small towns

might feel rather distant from what happens in Washington

or New York City.

People want to feel special.

They want to know that they've been understood.

What is it?

Maybe I have the wrong candidate.

Don't be so ridiculous.

Eleanor Roosevelt had a comfort with everyday people,

an ability to connect to people who were really living

at the very margins of American society,

and so Eleanor Roosevelt is key in the presidential campaign

of 1920.

Eleanor becomes more involved, but it's also important

because FDR now starts listening to Eleanor in a different way.

James Cox loses.

It was a disaster for the Democrats,

but Roosevelt comes out, he's now this national figure

and everybody knows him, and he is

seen as one of the most appealing Democrats

in the country.

In the summer, after the Democrats lose the election,

FDR is deeply involved with the Boy Scouts of America

and he goes to the jamboree that they're having in upstate New

York.

He then continues on up to his family's vacation home up

in Campobello.

What's all this yelling about?

Come on.

Dinner is ready.

August of 1921 was going to be this rare treat

for an extended family holiday, and in the end

they got one day.

Franklin?

Franklin?

Are you all right?

All right, let's try the left one.

That's fine.

Mr. Roosevelt, you've contracted infantile paralysis.

Polio.

I don't believe it.

Polio is contagious, isn't it?

Should we be worried about the children?

Your husband's been sick for weeks already.

If they were going to get it, they

would have gotten it by now.

This can't be right.

FDR got sick in 1921, and it was a mysterious disease.

They didn't really know what caused it.

They didn't know how to cure it.

It seemed to affect children, which, of course, is

terrifying.

When this strange new disease spread

throughout American cities in the first decades

of the 20th century, it's terrifying to people.

There were 6,000 deaths in the United States,

2,000 in New York City alone, and tens of thousands

of children who are infected with it.

It was very much seen as a children's disease,

not something a healthy, vigorous adult

would have to worry about.

What can I do?

Nothing.

It's fine, Babs.

Everything will be fine.

When Franklin Roosevelt is struck down by polio,

he is 39 years old.

He never walks again unaided.

He goes from being totally in control of everything

to being dependent at all times.

FDR felt physical pain, and worse than physical pain,

terror, the terror of never knowing

if you're going to walk again.

Here's a guy with enormous political ambitions,

he's got a large family, everybody's

expecting great things from him, and he's

lying in a darkened room and he can't move.

He fell into a deep depression upon discovering that he no

longer had the use of his legs.

In those days, people weren't used to seeing folks

with disabilities.

They didn't see people in wheelchairs.

And he feared that his public life was over.

In the beginning they weren't even sure

that he could recover the upper body,

but he did everything he could.

He experimented with every new gadget that came along

that might help him walk better, and that's what he would do

when he becomes a leader.

I'm going to experiment with this one.

If it doesn't work, I'm going to admit it,

and then I'll try something else.

FDR's effort in the wake of polio is to remake himself,

and against the advice of many of his friends and family,

including his mother, to not retire to Hyde Park

and live as a country gentleman but to get back into politics

and back into leadership.

His experience of being paralyzed

gave him a sense of setting one's mind to achieve goals,

and understanding how to overcome adversity

becomes a key part of his makeup.

In 1924, Al Smith, a fairly powerful politician

in New York, asked FDR to become the chairman of his campaign

for president committee, and then asked

FDR to place his name in nomination

at the Democratic National Convention.

FDR was taking a big gamble.

The gamble was that he could appear in public,

give a stirring speech nominating Al Smith,

and look like someone who is in no way being held back

by the fact that he had had polio.

Giving a speech on the convention floor

means Franklin needs to somehow move across a stage apparently

walking.

This was not something that he could do.

He had these incredibly heavy braces.

It was excruciating to just take a step.

And yet he would practice day after day after day.

He would have his son hold him and then

he would have his braces locked in place.

He wasn't sure that he could do it.

That's 15 feet.

It's the distance to the podium.

It doesn't seem so far.

Can't we just wheel Pa onto the platform?

I walk or I back out altogether.

All right, now let's give it a shot.

Pa!

[groans]

I'm all right.

Again.

Want a break?

No, it's just I need to be able to walk alone.

Elliott, grab me the other crutch.

That's a good boy.

NEWSREADER: There never was a political convention

to match the Democratic National gathering in 1924

in New York with drama and color.

Imagine the scene.

Thousands of people packing this auditorium

at Madison Square Garden.

It took extraordinary courage, and if he fell,

it could really end his hopes of going into public life.

It would be a huge humiliation, an embarrassment,

and yet he dared.

And now please welcome Franklin Delano Roosevelt

of New York.

[applause]

We forgot to check the podium.

What do you mean?

Someone needs to make sure it's strong enough

to support him.

Joe, do me a favor and shake the podium.

Give it a shake now, will you?

Good.

[applause]

And when he got to the podium, he gripped that podium

so hard that his hand was shaking

and his knuckles were white, and yet he wore a huge smile.

It gives me great pleasure to meet again so many friends whom

I have not seen since the last Democratic National gathering.

[applause]

America needs a pathfinder, a blazer of the trail

to the high road, to stand upon the ramparts

and die for our principles.

We offer one who has the will to win,

who not only deserves success but commands it.

The happy warrior, Alfred E. Smith.

[applause]

The whole place erupts.

And when he describes Alfred Smith as the happy warrior,

it's really he who comes off as the happy warrior,

and by the end of the convention,

the press about his speech is glowing

and he has put himself back on the map

as a possible future presidential contender.

There was that great sense of accomplishment.

I think this was a huge moment for him.

He comes home that night and he said, we did it.

I did it.

After the success of the convention,

FDR absolutely is committed to recovering from polio,

to being able to walk again, to continuing

his political career.

His good friend George Foster Peabody

tells him about this resort down in Georgia that

has a reputation for miraculous cures for polio survivors,

and he feels that, OK, now I finally have a path forward.

1924, Franklin makes his first trip

to Warm Springs with his personal valet

and with Missy LeHand.

Missy LeHand was initially hired

to help with the vise presidential campaign in 1920.

She was also this wise cracking, extremely confident Irish girl

from Boston, who didn't take crap from anybody.

She was as close to a chief of staff

as you can be in those days when women weren't allowed to hold

those kinds of positions.

In the fall of 1924, Franklin is swimming around

in the water at Warm Springs, and it does feel magical.

He feels this power that he hasn't felt at any point

since his polio infection.

Franklin decides, you know what, I can use this resort

to benefit all polio survivors, and he purchases it

with about 50% of his entire net worth

and transforms it into the preeminent rehabilitation

center in the world.

He becomes a leader among the polio patients there.

He was their camp counselor.

He was Doc Roosevelt. He would exercise with them in the pool,

and he made them feel that they had a purpose again in life.

He made them feel that they could have joy in life

once again, and experiencing that kind of leadership

really made him feel, I can be a leader.

It doesn't matter if I can't walk again.

I can do this.

The area around Warm Springs was poor.

It was poor white people and poor Black people,

and that was a good thing for him

to see how the other half lived.

He was sensitive to their suffering.

And he would drive all around the area.

When he talked to the local farmers,

he could see that they had no running water.

They had no electricity.

They had no food to eat sometimes.

And he understood what it would do to your daily lives.

Warm Springs is really the path that leads to his leadership.

That's the place where he truly found a deeper sense

of purpose, not just wanting a series of titles

to become a politician, but wanting to do something

with that leadership where you could make people feel that you

would change their lives.

In the '20s, while Franklin Roosevelt is recovering

and plotting his comeback into public life,

it just seems America's soaring into prominence.

America is fast becoming the world's dominant economy.

And it's a time of tremendous economic growth and also

profound cultural changes.

Investments are through the roof,

and it seems like the good times are here and here to stay

and that everybody's going to make bank in the 1920s.

It feels at one point like money is falling from trees.

The roaring '20s is described as euphoric.

Lip rouge, cigarettes, and silk stockings

were no longer the sine of a hussy.

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR: People are engaging in decadent behavior.

Social mores are changing.

Hemlines are getting shorter.

People are buying stock.

They're borrowing to buy stock, but there's

this kind of giddy euphoria that seizes really

the whole country.

There's a sense in America in the late 1920s

that the party's never going to end.

But it all crashes.

1928, Al Smith's going to run for president again,

but he still has plans for Franklin.

He's governor of New York, and if he's going to be president,

he wants Franklin Roosevelt to take over

as governor of New York.

Al Smith was also sort of thinking, well,

if I lose the presidency, then, you know,

FDR would just be a puppet and I'll still

be power behind the throne as the ex-governor of New York.

When Roosevelt agreed to run for governor

of New York in 1928, it was something

of a testing of the waters.

He wanted to know if he had the energy to be the kind of leader

he had been before, and it turned out that the Roosevelt

political skills, the ability to tell a story, the ability

to convey a vision, that was still there, and in some ways

it was more persuasive than before.

He seemed to be a deeper soul.

He had the maturity of having suffered through hard times.

As it happened, Smith loses the presidency,

but Roosevelt wins the governorship.

Al Smith also thought that FDR was a lightweight whom he could

control.

"New York Times" wants to know,

should they refer to you as Governor Roosevelt or Governor

Franklin Roosevelt?

Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Oh, by the way, remember, Al Smith is still waiting for you.

Al, good to see you.

Thought I'd stop by and hand over your speech.

I'm sure this is swell, but I've already written my speech.

You know, Frank, you should take it easy.

Let me handle things.

I actually think I can do some good up here.

Well, that's funny.

You didn't even want to run.

Yet here I am.

And that's my chair you're sitting in.

This isn't about whose chair it is.

This is about doing my duty to the people of New York.

Now, I've got a pile of problems left over

from your administration, so if you'll excuse me,

I've got a lot of work to do.

Roosevelt was elected governor in 1928,

and he is following his plan just like Uncle Teddy.

He's been in the state legislature, Assistant

Secretary of the Navy, and now governor of New York.

But suddenly comes the stock market crash.

NEWSREADER: The tremendous crowds, which you see gathered

outside the Stock Exchange, are due to the greatest crash

in the history of the New York Stock Exchange

in market prices.

The stock market crashed in 1929 because Americans believed

in fairy tales.

People get invested with unreasonable

hope that they can keep on making money for nothing.

When it crashed, it took down millionaires,

but it also took down plumbers, carpenters, manufacturing

workers, farmers, and many others.

And there's a lot of fear.

People are worried.

They're worried about a lot of things.

And what follows is a steadily worsening economic situation

with high unemployment and then sky high unemployment.

Business failures, bank failures.

It's a real crisis.

And the mood of the country, 1929 on

forward is one of bleakness and despair.

And at the beginning of the Great Depression,

we have a president, Herbert Hoover,

who firmly believes that it's not the government's job

to take care of the American people.

He says, this is the job of aid societies,

the Red Cross and food banks.

But as governor of New York, FDR says,

this is a unique and tragic circumstance

and the government has to do something

to help the people who are suffering.

FDR believed in bold experimentation.

He would try anything, and he would say repeatedly,

try something.

If it doesn't work, try something else,

but do something.

He understood that the nation was in crisis.

And so some leaders would think that that was the moment

to be timid, but he understood that this was a call

to be bold.

So he brought in academics to talk to him, to help

him explain what was going on.

This was somewhat of a radical proposal,

because most politicians, they brought in political advisors,

not academics, and they were nicknamed the Brains Trust.

I'm sure you're wondering why you're here.

I need your help.

I need to know what you know about the current economic

situation.

Today would be nice.

Some think the decline is a result of under consumption

and inadequate demand, and this has

led to a decline in industrial production

as manufacturers experience an unintended surplus.

Whoa, whoa, I need you to speak my language.

Sir?

If I can't understand it, how are the American people

going to?

The bottom line is, people are buying less stuff,

so factories are making less stuff.

And if they're making less, they don't need as many workers.

And if a man's not working, he's not buying.

There's your real problem, unemployment.

Franklin Roosevelt doesn't read book after book

to learn about a subject.

He listens to people.

He'll ask really probing questions

and try to get to the heart of the matter that way.

One thing has never been clear to me.

If the people are expected to follow laws and do their duty

to the country, why doesn't the country have a duty to them?

The country has a duty to JP Morgan.

[laughter]

That's the problem.

Think about your forgotten man.

Been working his whole life.

Now just when he needs some help, he's out of luck.

Yeah, but people don't want handouts.

Well, that's right Frances.

They want jobs.

They want to earn their money.

But there are no jobs.

So we'll create jobs.

FDR is challenging the core assumption that government has

no role in helping the common man,

that the government's role is to help banks and big business,

and he is saying that the forgotten man is

who the government should be helping.

This is his motivation for what he's trying to do in New York

State to provide relief.

More importantly, it forms the foundation of everything

he does after.

How do you think you're going to convince Albany to put up

that kind of money?

They can say no to me, but they

can't say no to the people.

FDR is a great political leader in a sense

that he understands how to read the public mood, how

to motivate people.

And FDR realizes that if he wants

to reach the great masses, that the radio provides

an incredible opportunity to do that.

I don't have to tell you how important the speech is.

Just relax.

Talk just like you're in their living rooms, because you are.

It's time.

In my judgment, my friends, my calm judgment,

the nation faces today a more grave emergency than in 1917.

It has been said that Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo

because he forgot his infantry.

Roosevelt had the perfect conversational voice, a voice

that seemed intimate, could make people feel he was talking

directly to them.

The present administration in Washington provides, I think,

a close parallel.

It has forgotten the infantry of our economic army,

but I say we must put our faith once more in the forgotten man

at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

It is high time to admit, with courage, that we

are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war.

Let us mobilize to meet it.

You can't overemphasize how important this speech is

to his entire career.

When you talk like that, you sound like a president, Frank.

I don't think you can escape being

the next Democratic nominee.

If I'm throwing my hat in, I intend to win.

First we take care of the opposition.

You know what to do.

Let them have it.

As the New York governor, Roosevelt

had an opportunity to test drive ideas at the state level

to see if they work, to see if they're popular.

Franklin Roosevelt launched a number of programs.

One of the most famous was called TERA, the Temporary

Emergency Relief Act, which put money into the hands

of the unemployed.

And so when he announces that he's running for president

of United States in 1932, he can point

to a record of accomplishment.

Roosevelt could not have been better positioned

to get the Democratic nomination for president.

And he ran against a president, Herbert Hoover,

very conservative Republican.

We have a perfect day for this trip,

and I'm very happy to be going out to Chicago,

and everybody knows the reason why I'm so happy.

When Roosevelt goes to the convention

and shows up where no other nominee had shown up

in the past to accept the nomination,

this is something that is unprecedented.

It's because he wants to make a statement to say,

I've been hobbled by my physical constraints,

but I'm going to be your president.

I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people.

Give me your help not to win votes alone

but to win in this crusade to restore America

to its own people!

[applause]

In that nominating speech, he says, I pledge a New Deal

for the American people.

He means he's going to change the relationship

between the federal government and the common man,

the common woman.

Policy needs to be dominated by the realities that we

discover and by the national services that we seek.

Roosevelt was campaigning on this New Deal.

It was saying that, I as governor was able to deliver

for the people of my state.

What if we did that across the country?

It was a campaign of optimism, of hope about what can be done,

rather than Hoover saying, I feel your pain,

but we're going to let someone else manage how we come out

of this.

Herbert Hoover was completely at a loss

as how to deal with the Depression.

He believed in laissez-faire, just let the government step

back.

He was negative, he was pessimistic.

He refused to acknowledge that there were things

that the government should be doing.

He was unlike FDR, who was confident and vibrant.

Every photograph you see him in campaigning,

he's standing tall.

He projects absolute optimism that the American public just

flocked to him.

And he wins the election in a landslide.

Franklin Roosevelt, he was elected in an hour of crisis.

Our fundamental economic infrastructure had fallen apart

and we were only, what, 150 years old at that point.

And then, on January 30th, 1933, FDR celebrates his birthday,

and Adolf Hitler comes to power in Germany.

So in that season you have Hitler and the Depression.

In the 1930s, people are looking

for solutions to the problem, not only here,

but also in Europe.

It's a global depression.

In Germany and Italy, Hitler and Mussolini said,

there's a Great Depression, people are suffering.

It shows that democracy is not a great idea.

You need a strong leader managing the economy

and telling people what to do.

There were many in the United States who thought, well, maybe

Hitler and Mussolini have something.

FDR knew enough about world history

to know that if he as president did not pretty quickly solve

the Great Depression or at least give people the idea

that help was on the way, that they might turn to fascism.

He knew that American democracy was literally

resting on his shoulders.

Those weeks before he takes the inauguration are

extraordinarily filled with panic.

Somebody said to FDR, if you make this work, if you get

through the Depression, you'll be one of the great presidents.

If you don't, you'll be one of the worst.

He said, no, if it doesn't work, I will be the last.

After Franklin Roosevelt's landslide victory in November

of 1932, there's this long period before he's actually

inaugurated in March of 1933, and during this period,

the country is suffering catastrophic losses.

By 1933, thousands of banks have failed,

thousands of businesses have failed, thousands of farms

have been foreclosed upon, prices have collapsed,

incomes have collapsed.

It is an absolute economic catastrophe,

and people are experiencing real suffering.

You seen vast encampments of homeless people.

They call these Hoovervilles.

It hit old people, it hit young people,

it hit rural people, it hit urban people,

and the people were afraid.

They had no idea that it would ever end.

They couldn't see where it was going to change.

There was a feeling of hopelessness,

that people who lost jobs would never work again,

that their children would always go hungry.

There was no reason to believe that it

was going to get better.

The charities in the United States were bankrupt.

There is no functioning relief system.

People don't have money to buy food.

You'd see thousands of people in breadlines every day

in cities waiting for handouts for food.

There were many Americans living like scavengers

in the cities, who would follow vegetable trucks as they made

their rounds in the hope that a cabbage or a head of lettuce

would fall off the truck.

Children were malnourished.

They sat glassy-eyed in classrooms in the schools that

were open.

Immigrants were returning to their home countries.

100,000 Americans applied for work in the Soviet Union.

This is how dire the circumstances were.

And Americans also were dealing

with a lot of terrible confusion,

because most Americans are able to say, but I was honest,

I was hardworking, I was sober, I pinched my pennies,

I worked really hard I overcame adversity,

and here I am without a job, without income,

hungry children, losing my home, losing my car.

What?

What has happened?

Something has gone terribly wrong.

Roosevelt realized that the American people needed

to see that there were people in Washington who were paying

attention to them, who were trying to fix things.

I think he recognized in some sense

that results were important, but they were less important,

at least in the short term, than the impression

that he could give that the government cared,

that Washington cared about people who lived

in the parts of the country that were hardest

hit by the Depression.

March 4th, 1933.

FDR is finally going to be inaugurated as president

of the United States.

400,000 people come out for this transition.

It was an existential hour, as important as 1861,

and what FDR brought is what Lincoln brought to some extent,

which was a conviction that democracy and capitalism must

survive, but a profound flexibility on the means

to achieve those ends.

He was not ideologically rigid.

He was a juggler, he was an improviser,

and it's what we needed.

But there's no escaping the reality of disability

for Franklin.

From the moment he wakes up, someone

has to pull him out of bed.

He needs help getting dressed.

He needs help getting his braces on.

Big day.

That's for sure.

And his son Jimmy is his constant source

of literal physical support, the person whose arm he leans on.

I do sometimes wonder if I'll have the strength

to do the job.

You'll do great.

I know everything will be fine.

Don't worry.

In the 1930s, in the Great Depression,

there's a lot of fear in the air,

but there's a lot of questions in the air too about,

is he up to the task?

Come here.

I'll pray for strength.

I'll pray for guidance to do the job and do it right.

I know you will.

NEWSREADER: The cars proceeded down toward the Capitol,

bearing with them the hopes of the country for a New Deal.

The Depression was a tumultuous, complicated period

of time, but Franklin Roosevelt's

fundamental conviction was that you

had to show that the system could respond

and that therefore the system was worth defending.

The fate of democracy hangs in the balance.

This is not an understatement.

This is a moment in which leadership is vitally

important.

This is a day of national consecration.

First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing

we have to fear is fear itself.

This nation asks for action, and action now.

The people of the United States have not failed.

In their need they want direct, vigorous action.

[applause]

His first inaugural, he talks about how we cannot let

the Depression paralyze our efforts or convert advance

into retreat.

I've always thought it was fascinating that he used

the word paralyze, and I don't know how conscious it was,

but it was a sign that he saw the world as motion,

and he no longer could move literally,

so he would use all of his energies to help the country

move figuratively.

He sets up a expectation for the American public

that you have to help me.

If you want to get through this problem, I can do some things,

but you have to do other things.

And the most important thing he did was to say,

the people are not responsible for this depression.

The failure of leadership is responsible,

and I am here to give that leadership.

And with that leadership, there would be hope.

There would be jobs.

Here is this paralyzed man who was making the people who feel

paralyzed feel hope once again.

And he said, we need action and we need action right now.

And if the Congress will not give me what I need,

I will use the broad powers of the executive

as if we were at a war.

It wasn't quite clear what he was going to do,

but in that period he and his brain trust,

the experts that he was assembling around himself,

worked out a plan of bold, unprecedented action.

His cabinet includes Louis Howe

as chief of staff, Democratic Party leader Steve

Early as press secretary.

For secretary of labor, Franklin brings in Frances Perkins,

the first ever female cabinet member.

He also brings in a progressive Republican named Harold Ickes

to be secretary of the interior, and Jim Farley

is postmaster general.

You all look great from where I'm sitting.

Then you need glasses.

[laughter]

We all know what we're up against,

but now it's our turn to fix it.

The economy has been plunging for three years,

and it still hadn't found bottom.

And the critical thing at that particular moment

was that the banking system had seized up.

One of the reasons the banks failed

is the banks had taken that money

and invested it in the stock market.

And so when the stock market went down,

they didn't have enough money to pay their depositors,

so banks were simply closing.

They had already closed by the thousands,

and it looked as though America's

national financial system was on the verge of utter collapse.

It's important to realize there was no safety

net in those days.

If a bank collapsed, the federal government

wasn't going to help you.

It is a real crisis, a crisis that no one could ever

have imagined hitting one of the wealthiest

countries in the world.

Was capitalism failing?

Had capitalism actually failed?

Many people thought the United States of America

as a political entity was over, that our capitalist system was

over.

The country's on the edge of a cliff,

but we're not going to let it fall.

The first thing we're going to do

is to declare a banking holiday.

It'll prevent further runs and buy time for Secretary Woodin

to draft some legislation.

You're going to have to expand presidential authority if you

want to get anything done.

Precisely.

But first we have to figure out which banks can be saved

and which have to close.

My team put this together.

Arrows are the banks.

Color denotes its status.

But where do we start?

Let's start in New York.

March 5th, essentially his first act

as president of the United States

is to close every bank in America.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: The banks were going to close for a week.

They're going to open Monday morning.

And he uses a wonderful phrase.

He calls it a bank holiday.

And that gave Franklin a chance to call Congress

into an emergency session.

And incredibly, in the space of several hours,

they passed this huge emergency banking bill.

Divide up the banks into three categories.

Those banks that are healthy enough to reopen,

those banks that can reopen but are going to need help

from the federal government, and those banks that

are so bad that there's not much we can do about them.

NEWSREADER: New money back buy real assets

from Uncle Sam's Treasury to revitalize the country's

commerce.

This emergency banking bill will

allow them to have currency shipped to the banks that

are stable enough to handle it.

Planes are on the tarmac ready to fly the currency

to each one of the banks.

Before Roosevelt, before this moment in American history,

the federal government had never taken it upon itself to bolster

an industry the way the federal government

was bolstering the banking industry.

It was quite a striking, even a revolutionary thing

for the government to undertake.

Franklin is afraid that once they've opened the banks again,

that people will then rush to take their money out

because they haven't had it for a whole week,

and then the whole system would collapse.

This was zero hour.

So FDR has got the biggest challenge for a leader, which

is make people feel a little bit reassured,

and at the same time, get them to do something

that their instincts tell them not to, which is keep

your money in the banks.

Franklin decides on a Sunday night

before the Monday opening, he's going to give a fireside chat

to the people.

This is really the first presidential fireside chat.

Nervous?

What's there to be nervous about?

I just have to convince the entire American public to trust

me with their life savings.

In 13 minutes.

[phone rings]

Got it.

NBC says ready to go.

CBS is live.

10 seconds, Mr. President.

In 5, 4.

Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.

My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people

of the United States about banking.

I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days

and why it has been done, and what the next steps are going

to be.

This bank holiday, while resulting

in great inconvenience, is affording us the opportunity

to supply the currency necessary to meet the situation.

It is possible that when the banks resume,

people who have not recovered from their fear

may again begin withdrawals.

Let me make it clear that the banks will

take care of all needs.

I can assure you that it is safer

to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.

80% of the adult radio audiences are listening,

and it was said that streets were empty at the time

because everybody is sitting staring at their radio.

We have provided the machinery to restore

our financial situation.

It is up to you to support and make it work.

It is your problem no less than it is mine.

Together we cannot fail.

Remarkable piece of work in a space

of just less than 15 minutes.

He calls on the American people and he says,

basically, we have done what we can do here in Washington.

Now we look to you, and with your support,

our work will succeed.

And so he puts the American people

essentially into potential cooperation

with the administration.

Franklin gives his address on Sunday night,

and the big question is, what's going to happen tomorrow

morning when we reopen the banks?

The next day would be the true test.

Did this work?

If it fails, then it will mean, the whole financial system

will fail in the very first week of his presidency.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the country is

on the verge of collapse.

Miss LeHand, today's lunch menu.

Jellied bouillon.

Mrs. Nesbitt says it's nutritious.

Don't like it.

Have you heard anything?

Not yet.

Maybe we should cancel the president's lunch.

Because of the bouillon?

Well, now there's two reasons.

No, I'm concerned if things don't go our way with banks.

They will.

They have to.

It's Monday morning and there's long lines at the bank

again, and they panic.

Maybe they've come to take their money out.

Did this work?

We should have heard something by now.

Do you think it's a bad sign?

No news is no news.

[phone rings]

Yes?

I see.

Thank you.

They're standing in line.

They're bringing their money back.

We're going to be OK.

They're actually carrying satchels of money

to bring their money back to the banks.

So that night, headlines, confidence in banking system

resume.

Banking crisis over.

And the only thing that has changed

is FDR's leadership and his ability

to convince the American public that he has solutions

that things will get better, and it is an extraordinary moment

in American history.

FDR essentially ends the banking crisis

in one simple radio broadcast.

The immediate resolution of the banking crisis

instantly lifted spirits, and that

began to suggest that Franklin knew what he was doing

and that, in fact, the system would endure.

And then he decides, hey, this momentum is pretty good.

Maybe I'll keep Congress in session.

They stay for 100 days, and that's where the famous 100 day

marker comes, and every president has said, why do we

have to be compared to this?

It's not fair.

No president and no Congress had ever passed so much

legislation so quickly.

In those 100 days, FDR will sign into law 15 massive pieces

of legislation.

If you were somebody who paid attention to politics,

this was indeed the most exciting time in history,

because nothing had ever happened this fast.

Big programs were being passed, boom, boom, boom, boom.

FDR rolled out the New Deal really in three phases.

The first part was relief just to get people to survive,

and that meant unemployment insurance, immediate short term

jobs.

What the country was facing was a lost generation

of young people, so FDR came up with the CCC, the Civilian

Conservation Corps.

PAUL SPARROW: They would build roads and farms

and they would work on national parks.

I now take great pleasure in dedicating Shenandoah National

Park.

The idea was $1 a day.

So this immediately pushes money into the community,

and FDR loved the CCC.

He would go to their camps and he would visit with them.

The next thing was recovery which meant priming the pump

to get the economy going again, and those

were the big infrastructure projects.

But then the third part was reform,

and that meant that you had to change what it was that caused

the problems of the Depression in the first place.

So he regulated the stock market, he regulated the banks.

All of this was reforming the system itself.

The New Deal has given us a square deal,

and we're all back to work and we

hope we may be able to continue to do so

without any outside interference.

The first 100 days also saw HLC, the Homeowners Loan

Corporation.

This is an emergency program set up

to give people loans to help them stay in their homes.

FDR provides immediate satisfaction and relief

to the American people, and that is a defining moment and that

completely changes the role of the American federal

government.

The mood of the country changed overnight.

NEWSREADER: To this address every week

are delivered thousands of letters.

My favorite letter came from a guy

who said, "I've lost my dog.

I've lost my job.

My wife is mad at me.

But it's OK because now, Franklin Roosevelt,

you are there."

Franklin Roosevelt made government

an ambient force in the lives of people who might otherwise have

only encountered the government at the post office

or perhaps the subsidized railroad or something.

People felt that FDR had saved their lives, saved

their children's life, given them a chance, a chance

to go forward.

But in the early days of the New Deal,

when Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt moved to Washington

D.C., it was a difficult experience for Eleanor.

She was so worried that the ceremonial functions

of the first lady would overtake all the real work that she'd

been doing out in the field.

And she dreads being confined to a life of tea

and white glove tests.

But then she meets the great journalist

Lorena Hickok, who was the most significant woman journalist

of her era.

I think Lorena Hickok, her friend,

helped to make her know that she could change

the role of the first lady and it would be OK.

It was more than OK.

Lorena Hickok said to Eleanor, if you do press conferences,

you can get more jobs for women.

So Eleanor makes it very clear to every outlet that

wants to cover her that they must send a woman reporter.

Thank you all for coming.

Let me start by saying that the subjects I plan to cover

will not encroach on politics, or as I call it,

my husband's side of the news.

I plan to discuss my daily schedule,

prints on the White House walls, low cost recipes

for housewives, and other household matters.

What's your view on the subsistence homestead program?

Oh, I'm sorry, I said no political questions.

What about old age pensions?

And what do you think of women in the workforce?

I'm sure these questions would all be better suited

to the president.

We want to hear what you think.

Right now, legislation is being drafted to set fair labor

practices, but the wages being set for women

are far lower than those for men.

If you ask, me our jobs as teachers, nurses, homemakers,

and seamstresses have never been more important or more

in demand, yet we're not being fairly compensated.

This is especially true for colored women.

So what do you plan to do about it?

Well, that's the first really good question of the day.

Through the press conferences, Eleanor was really

finding her voice, and an entire generation

of female journalists got their start.

In the meantime, she was traveling around the country

inspecting the New Deal programs for her husband,

and she was able to find out which ones were working

and which ones weren't.

And the New Deal programs became better as a result.

That does not mean, my friends, that I am satisfied

or that you are satisfied that our work is ended.

We have a long way to go, but we are on the way.

FDR had tremendous success in restoring people's confidence.

But at the same time, both Hitler and Mussolini are also

responding to the Depression, to want and need,

but they're doing it through the mechanism of exciting fear

and division and hatred.

In Hitler's case, hatred of the Jews, and those

are powerful hatreds, and they work.

But Hitler and Mussolini also stimulate their economies

by building these magnificent war machines.

It means jobs, factory jobs building tanks and planes.

Roosevelt sees all this and he's deeply concerned.

He says, the state has to have a big role to impress voters

with what we're trying to do so that we can say, hey, look,

we're working just as hard as Nazi Germany or fascist Italy,

just in a more democratic way.

FDR sees this looming threat from totalitarianism,

from fascism, from Hitler, that the very end of democracy

is on the table, that if he can't put America back

on the global stage, that the fascists are going to take

control, and he dedicates himself

to not allowing that to happen.

[speaking german]

[speaking german]

Franklin hated what Hitler and Nazism was threatening

to produce, a world of tyranny, a world where democracy would

come to an end.

This is Western civilization at risk

right now from the greatest challenge that it's ever faced.

Going to be a tough campaign.

The Supreme Court wants to throw out the New Deal.

[people shouting questions]

Now, hold on, boys.

What are you planning to do with this power?

Roosevelt is deeply concerned about the rising tension

in Europe and the inevitability of a big war.

The situation in France changes everything.

I'd rather have a declaration of war from America

and no supplies for six months than double the supply

and no declaration.

He is the dealer in hope for the entire free world, not

an inconsequential responsibility.

Mr. President, we have intelligence

which suggests the Japanese fleet is on the move.

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date

which will live in infamy.