F.D.R.

John Nance Garner on F.D.R.
(Collier’s, 1948)

A printable article by John Nance Garner (1868 – 1967), FDR’s first Vice-President (1933 – 1941), who wrote a number of pieces for the readers of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE in 1948 outlining the various reasons for their contentious relationship.

Cactus Jack Garner bickered with F.D.R. on a number of issues; primarily supporting a balanced federal budget and opposing F.D.R.’s efforts to pack the Supreme Court. Within these attached pages, Garner tells how Roosevelt lost the support of his Democratic Congress.


Read about FDR’s African-American advisers here…

Inside Hyde Park
(Confidential Magazine, 1954)

Appearing in CONFIDENTIAL MAGAZINE during the early months of 1954 were these pages from a memoir that was written by the sergeant who rode herd on the New York Police Security Detail for President Franklin Roosevelt. As far as we can figure, Prisoner at Hyde Park by New York State Policeman Edward J. Dougherty was never published, but as you will soon read, it was full of many obscure and unheard of stories of FDR and the world he dominated while in the Empire State.

Roosevelt Takes Charge…
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

This 1933 magazine article anticipating the reign of FDR appeared on the newsstands on the same day as the man’s first inauguration. The article is composed of various musings that had been published in numerous papers across the economically depressed nation as to what manner of leadership might the Americans expect from their new President.

No President has ever inherited such a load of problems and responsibilities as Roosevelt.

Click here to read President Hoover’s
farewell warning to the nation.

The Navy Mourned
(Newsweek, 1945)

It was no secret around Washington that President Franklin Roosevelt was partial to the U.S. Navy. The admirals and other senior officers of the navy certainly knew – and loved it. The attached essay was an appreciative salute to FDR composed shortly after his death by Admiral William Pratt (1869 – 1957):

Other men, military in training and veterans of successful land campaigns, have sat in the White House, but never before in the history of our country has any man ever sat there whose instincts at heart were essentially those of a sailor.

A Day in the Life of F.D.R.
(Literary Digest, 1937)

The attached article presented a dusk till dawn account of one day in the life of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 – 1945).
Written during his first term (prior to the war), the journalist recounted who the reoccurring players in his life were, the time of his rising, the preferred meals, the length of the meetings, distractions, recreations and other assorted minutia -but you’ll not read the word wheelchair once. This is a fine example of the press black-out that was in place in order to prevent the public any knowledge whatever of Roosevelt’s paralytic illness, which rendered him paralyzed from the waist down (he suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome which he contracted in 1921).

Read a 1945 interview with FDR’s economic adviser, Bernard Baruch; click here.
Click here to read about the four inaugurations of FDR.

FDR’s Doctor Speaks
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Published ten months after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, Vice-Admiral Ross T. McIntire, Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, reminisced about Roosevelt’s illness and his observations of the man:

The Pearl Harbor attack put a pressure on the President that never lifted.


With the flower of American youth fighting and dying on land and sea, he looked on any sparing of himself as a betrayal…


From Amazon:


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FDR’s Doctor Speaks
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Published ten months after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, Vice-Admiral Ross T. McIntire, Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, reminisced about Roosevelt’s illness and his observations of the man:

The Pearl Harbor attack put a pressure on the President that never lifted.


With the flower of American youth fighting and dying on land and sea, he looked on any sparing of himself as a betrayal…


From Amazon:


FDR’s Deadly Secretstyle=border:none

Leon Trotsky Speaks About FDR and the Great Depression
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1938)

Two and a half years were left on the clock for the exiled Leon Trotsky (né Lev Davidovich Bronstein: 1879 – 1940) until he would have to keep his rendezvous with an icepick in Mexico – and while living it up on this borrowed time he granted an interview to this one correspondent from a Beverly Hills literary magazine in which he ranted on in that highly-dated and terribly awkward Bolsheviki language about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his social programs.


Click here to read an article about the NKVD agent who murdered Trotsky.

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