FDR did one thing right.
He dumped Henry Wallace from his vp slot...
He dumped Henry Wallace from his vp slot…
I forget who it was, but a Texas politician - maybe a senator - wanted it put on his headstone that he prevented the renomination of Henry Wallace for VP in 1944.To me the tragic figure of the era was Herbert Hoover, who turned a Recession into the Depression with high tax rates. FDR loudly condemned Hoover, for the rest of FDR’s life - but the reason the Great Depression was “great” was just that FDR did exactly the same sort of foolish economic policies that Herbert Hoover did. Hoover was anti-communist, but his policies led directly to the FDR pro-Soviet administration.
It is not too much to say to claim that FDR was pro-Soviet; his first foreign policy inititative was to recognize the USSR, which America had never done. And FDR’s closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, was every bit the socialist that Wallace was. And FDR’s naval strategy in the Atlantic prior to US entry into WWII got really aggressive towards the U-boats precisely when Hitler invaded the USSR in late June of 1941.
The reality of WWII was that the Germans would not have been defeated - at least not until the A-bomb - if not for the opposition of the USSR, their ally before that invasion.