Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

Roosevelt framed his diplomatic objectives as wartime leader in a series of wartime conferences. In collaboration with Winston Churchill he explained Anglo-American war aims in August 1941 in the form of the Atlantic Charter. It denied territorial ambitions, favoured self-government and liberal international trade arrangements, and pledged freedom from want and permanent security against aggression. At Casablanca, Morocco, in January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill insisted on Germany's unconditional surrender as a means of preventing the enemy's future military resurgence. The Quebec Conference (August 1943) planned the Normandy invasion. At Moscow (October 1943) the Allied foreign ministers approved in principle a post-war organization for world security. Military strategy and the problem of post-war Germany came under discussion at Tehran (November-December 1943) and Quebec (September 1944). Finally, at Yalta in the USSR (February 1945), Roosevelt, Churchill, and Joseph Stalin broached their plans for a post-war world. In the process, Roosevelt pressed for the admission of China to the Allied councils as a major power, liberalization of international trade as a means of preventing future wars, and creation of a United Nations organization as a mechanism for preserving peace. He did not, however, see the end of the war. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945.

Roosevelt's vision of a peaceful and stable post-war world foundered on national ambition. Although he bypassed Churchill and a weakened Great Britain to deal with Stalin at Yalta, it became apparent on the eve of his death that Soviet ambitions included the occupation of eastern and central Europe. His faith in the ability of the UN to keep the peace through the collaboration of the former wartime Allies proved unworkable in the era of the cold war.

The New Deal Coalition lasted for many years after Roosevelt's death. In addition, his long tenure in office during the crisis years of the Great Depression and World War II laid the groundwork for what later became known as the “imperial presidency”.