From the distance of the years, from all that you see and hear about a man who has grown into something of a legend, the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR was one of the great presidents. He was one of the Big Three leaders of World War II, along with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.

It’s not easy to get a view out of the ordinary view that we always hear about about FDR, one that looks at the failings of this man on the world stage. The serious flaws he had that betrayed the high ideals on which the United States of America was founded, but the book by Sean McMeekin, “Stalin’s War”, written with the benefit of access to records of the former Soviet Union that were opened up for many years, and now are substantially sealed again. This is a chilling book showing a side of FDR’s character that you won’t have heard about before anywhere. It tells you about how FDR helped to make the world safe for Communism. The results of his failings, as seen through the perspective of our world today, are disturbing and ongoing.

So I’ll stop waffling and get down to the bones looking at what happened from 4 March 1933 when FDR was inaugurated as 32nd President of the United States of America. Perhaps a date that may turn out to be one that will live in infamy.

Tag words: Franklin Delano Roosevelt; FDR; Robert F. Kelley; Comrade Litvinov; Stalin; American Communist Party; Laurence Duggan; Michael Straight; Alger

Hiss; Harry Dexter White; Henry Morgenthau; William Bullitt; Third Comintern