http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ImwBG8ods

FDR addresses a raucous crowd defending a false accusation about using a U.S. Navy Destroyer to recover his beloved dog Fala.

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FDR on his Dog and Re-Election appeared first on Witnify.

“I don’t know very English, but I know as much as write to you…”

Read an amazing letter from a 12-Year-Old Fidel Castro to just recently re-elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Castro writes “My very good friend Roosevelt: I don’t know very English, but I know as much to write you.” The future leader of the Cuban Revolution, goes on to casually request a ten spot from the U.S. President:
“If you like, give me a ten dollar bill green american (sic), in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars green american and I would like to have one them…”
The young Castro goes on to give the President his address and highlight that he may not know English that well, but the President probably doesn’t speak Spanish all that great either. Unclear if Roosevelt ever responded, but have to give the young Cuban some credit. No harm in asking.

Castro developed a famously fraught relationship with the United States during his 52-year period in political office between 1959 and 2011–the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Castro’s nationalization of United States owned businesses were among the catalysts for the long term antagonism between the two nations. However, the letter to Roosevelt in 1940 reveals that Castro once idolized a leader of the country he grew to detest. In broken english, he even writes that he is “very happy” that Roosevelt “will be President”:

“Santiago de Cuba.
Nov 6 1940.
Mr. Franklin Roosvelt,
President of the United States. 

My good Roosvelt
I don’t know very English, but I know as much as write to you.
I like to hear the radio, and I am very happy, because I heard in it, that you will be President a new (periodo)
I am twelve years old.
I am a boy but I think very much, but I do not think that I am writting to the President of the United States.

If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american, in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them.
My address is:
Sr. Fidel Castro
Colegio de Dolores
Santiago de Cuba
Oriente.  Cuba.
I don’t know very English but I know very much Spanish and I suppose you don’t know very Spanish but you know very English because you are American but I am not American.

(Thank you very much)
Good by.  Your friend,
Fidel Castro

If you want iron to make your sheaps ships I will show to you the bigest (minar) of iron of the land.  They are in Mayarí.  Oriente Cuba.”

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Young Fidel Castro Wrote Fan Mail to FDR appeared first on Witnify.

“I found this data of such import that I have convened a Board…”

The following letter was written by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to Leó Szilárd and Albert Einstein’s letter about creating a program–what will later be known as the “Manhattan Project”–for the creation of atomic bombs in order to compete with Nazi Germany’s efforts to do the same. Roosevelt thanks Einstein for the useful information and explains the precautionary steps he is taking to investigate whether or not Germany is actually using uranium in dangerous ways:

The White House
Washington

October 19, 1939

My dear Professor:

I want to thank you for your recent letter and the most interesting and important enclosure.

I found this data of such import that I have convened a Board consisting of the head of the Bureau of Standards and a chosen representative of the Army and Navy to throughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion regarding the element of uranium.

I am glad to say that Dr. Sachs will cooperate and work with this Committee and I feel this is the most practical and effective method of dealing with the subject.

Please accept my sincere thanks.

Very sincerely yours,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Read the Einstein-Szilárd letter here and for more information, please visit the Argonne National Laboratory website.

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[Text] President Roosevelt’s Response to Einstein on Atomic Bombs appeared first on Witnify.

“Some recent work …leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future…”

The following is a letter authored predominantly by Hungarian-American physicist Leó Szilárd, but signed by Albert Einstein. It is known as the Einstein-Szilárd letter and was sent to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939. Its main goal was to warn Roosevelt about the threat of Nazi Germany’s intentions to develop atomic bombs out of uranium ores. The letter ended up prompting Roosevelt to take precautionary actions, which resulted in the start of the Manhattan Project, a program that did go on to develop the world’s first atomic bombs in 1945:

Albert Einstein
Old Grove Rd.
Nassau Point
Peconic, Long Island
August 2nd, 1939

F.D. Roosevelt,
President of the United States
White House
Washington, D.C.

Sir,

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilárd, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations.

In the course of the last four months it has been made probable–through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America–that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable- though much less certain- that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.

In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an unofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following:

a.) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States.

b.) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, though his contacts with private persons who are wiling to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories which have the necessary equipment.

I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, Von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhem-Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.

Yours very truly,
Albert Einstein

Read President Roosevelt’s response here.

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[Text] Einstein’s Letter to Roosevelt on an Atomic Program appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKr4Px8h6uc

Watch rare color footage of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral on April 12, 1945. That same day, Vice President Harry S. Truman was sworn into office as the 36th President of the United States.

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Footage of FDR’s Funeral appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdl0LXuFwKY

John H. Gooden recalls his memory of the day he found out about the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945.

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John Gooden Remembers the Day Roosevelt Died appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Ben Nussbaum

President Roosevelt delivered his first fireside chat on March 12, 1933. It addressed the banking crisis that Roosevelt encountered on first taking office. Due to the Depression, banks were running out of funds. Panicked account holders were withdrawing their money – making the banks’ problems worse.

In that first address to the nation, Roosevelt calmly explained the crisis and the steps he was taking to address it. Here are nine facts about the fireside chats:

1. By speaking directly to the American people through radio, Roosevelt took advantage of a new technology. Radios in homes had only become commonplace in the 1920s; by the 1930s over 90 percent of homes had a radio.

2. Roosevelt modeled his presidential chats after similar addresses he gave as the governor of New York. Facing a heavily Republican legislature, Roosevelt appealed directly to voters on the critical issues facing the state.

3. The fireside chats were informal affairs. Roosevelt often began the speech saying “Good evening, friends,” and spoke in a friendly, colloquial manner.

4. The actual term “fireside chat” was coined by reporter Harry Butcher of CBS–even if the talks did not actually occur by fireside. The term quickly caught on, and Roosevelt himself began to use it.

5. The fireside chats were far from a weekly occurrence, with only 30 ever given. Roosevelt often addressed the nation on a Sunday evening for maximum impact.

6. Roosevelt would often ad-lib, causing discrepancies between the printed text of the speech—given in advance to reporters—and the actual words delivered on air.

7. Roosevelt gave the speeches behind a microphone-covered desk on the first floor of the White House. About 30 invited guests would be sitting in front of him, but Roosevelt ignored them as he did his best to have a one-on-one conversation with each listener.

8. Most of the fireside chats ended with the invocation of God and then the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner.

9. Roosevelt did not give a fireside chat in 1945 (he died in April of that year) and gave only one in 1935 and 1939. The most he gave in a year was four, hitting that mark in 1933, 1942 and 1943.

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[Blog] 9 Facts About FDR’s Fireside Chats appeared first on Witnify.

“Whatever these paintings may have been to men who looked at them generations back—today they are not only works of art. Today they are the symbols of the human spirit…”

It is with a very real sense of satisfaction that I accept for the people of the United States and on their behalf this National Gallery and the collections it contains. The giver of this building has matched the richness of his gift with the modesty of his spirit, stipulating that the Gallery shall be known not by his name but by the Nation’s. And those other collectors of paintings and of sculpture who have already joined, or who propose to join, their works of art to Mr. Mellon’s—Mr. Kress and Mr. Widener-have felt the same desire to establish, not a memorial to themselves, but a monument to the art that they love and the country to which they belong. To these collections we now gratefully add the gift of Miss Ellen Bullard and three anonymous donors, which marks the beginning of the Gallery’s collection of prints; and also the loan collection of early American paintings from Mr. Chester Dale.

There have been, in the past, many gifts of great paintings and of famous works of art to the American people. Most of the wealthy men of the last century who bought, for their own satisfaction, the masterpieces of European collections, ended by presenting their purchases to their cities or to their towns. And so great works of art have a way of breaking out of private ownership into public use. They belong so obviously to all who love them—they are so clearly the property not of their single owners but of all men everywhere- that the private rooms and houses where they have lovingly hung in the past become in time too narrow for their presence. The true collectors are the collectors who understand this- the collectors of great paintings who feel that they can never truly own, but only gather and preserve for all who love them, the treasures that they have found.

But though there have been many public gifts of art in the past, the gift of this National Gallery, dedicated to the entire Nation, containing a considerable part of the most important work brought to this country from the continent of Europe, has necessarily a new significance. I think it signifies a relation—a new relation here made visible in paint and in stone—between the whole people of this country, and the old inherited tradition of the arts. And we shall remember that these halls of beauty, the conception of a great American architect, John Russell Pope, combine the classicism of the past with the convenience of today.

In accepting this building and the paintings and other art that it contains, the people of the United States accept a part in that inheritance for themselves. They accept it for themselves not because this Gallery is given to them—though they are thankful for the gift. They accept it for themselves because, in the past few years, they have come to understand that the inheritance is theirs and that, like other inheritors of other things of great value, they have a duty toward it.

There was a time when the people of this country would not have thought that the inheritance of art belonged to them or that they had responsibilities to guard it. A few generations ago, the people of this country were often taught by their writers and by their critics and by their teachers to believe that art was something foreign to America and to themselves—something imported from another continent, something from an age which was not theirs—something they had no part in, save to go to see it in some guarded room on holidays or Sundays.

But recently, within the last few years—yes, in our lifetime-they have discovered that they have a part. They have seen in their own towns, in their own villages, in schoolhouses, in post offices, in the back rooms of shops and stores, pictures painted by their sons, their neighbors—people they have known and lived beside and talked to. They have seen, across these last few years, rooms full of painting and sculpture by Americans, walls covered with painting by Americans- some of it good, some of it not so good, but all of it native, human, eager, and alive- all of it painted by their own kind in their own country, and painted about things that they know and look at often and have touched and loved.

The people of this country know now, whatever they were taught or thought they knew before, that art is not something just to be owned but something to be made: that it is the act of making and not the act of owning that is art. And knowing this they know also that art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all the living and creating peoples—all who make and build; and, most of all, the young and vigorous peoples who have made and built our present wide country.

It is for this reason that the people of America accept the inheritance of these ancient arts. Whatever these paintings may have been to men who looked at them generations back—today they are not only works of art. Today they are the symbols of the human spirit, symbols of the world the freedom of the human spirit has made—and, incidentally, a world against which armies now are raised and countries overrun and men imprisoned and their work destroyed.

To accept, today, the work of German painters such as Holbein and Durer, of Italians like Botticelli and Raphael, of painters of the Low Countries like Van Dyck and Rembrandt, and of famous Frenchmen, famous Spaniards—to accept this work today for the people of this democratic Nation is to assert the belief of the people of this democratic Nation in a human spirit which now is everywhere endangered and which, in many countries where it first found form and meaning, has been rooted out and broken and destroyed.

To accept this work today is to assert the purpose of the people of America that the freedom of the human spirit and human mind—which has produced the world’s great art and all its science shall not be utterly destroyed.

Seventy-eight years ago, in the third year of the War Between the States, men and women gathered here in the Capital of a divided Nation, here in Washington, to see the dome above the Capitol completed and to see the bronze Goddess of Liberty set upon the top. It had been an expensive and laborious business, diverting money and labor from the prosecution of the war, and certain critics—for there were critics in 1863—certain critics found much to criticize. There were new marble pillars in the Senate wing of the Capitol; there was a bronze door for the central portal and other such expenditures and embellishments. But the President of the United States, whose name was Lincoln, when he heard those criticisms, answered: “If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign that we intend this Union shall go on.”

We may borrow the words for our own. We too intend the Union shall go on. We intend it shall go on, carrying with it the great tradition of the human spirit which created it.

The dedication of this Gallery to a living past, and to a greater and more richly living future, is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on, too.

To view the original speech and learn more about President Franklin D. Roosevelt, visit the America Presidency Project’s website.

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FDR’s Speech Opening the National Gallery of Art appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArSbNfoLWJI

David Brinkley discusses the Franklin D. Roosevelt press conferences given from behind his oval office desk and explains how the fireside chats, which did not actually take place in front of a fireplace, were so effective. The first fireside chat was on March 12, 1933 about the banking crisis.

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David Brinkley on FDR’s Press Confrences & Fireside Chats appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9CBpbuV3ok

Hear the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first fireside chat on March 12, 1933 to the nation on the subject of the banking crisis. Roosevelt used the 30 fireside chats to explain his proposals directly to the American people during his first term.

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FDR's First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis appeared first on Witnify.