More than 70 years have passed since the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, but the public controversy surrounding our 32nd president continues to intensify.
Roosevelt’s critics claim that if he had utilized the full extent of U.S. power, many European Jews could have been saved from the mass murders carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Holocaust.
FDR’s supporters remind us that America was rife with anti-Semitism even during World War II, and while the president in 1942 was fully aware of Hitler’s genocidal war against the Jews, Roosevelt believed the best way to save Jewish lives was a laser-like maximum military effort that would force Germany’s “unconditional surrender” as quickly as possible.