Franklin D. Roosevelt is the most sainted president of the 20th century. You have to look far and wide to discover the truth about his character and policies. But as John T. Flynn noted in this landmark 1948 volume, FDR actually prolonged the Great Depression and deliberately dragged the country into a war that seriously compromised American liberties.

What's more, he did this despite campaign promises to slash bureaucracy and cut spending. He ran as a small-govenment liberal, a fact (among a million) that has been completely forgotten today.

"Flynn's book is a careful account of Roosevelt's presidency. Flynn was no businessman, no Republican shill. He was a respected, old- line liberal journalist who made his name with a series of books attacking big business. That's what makes his indictment of Roosevelt all the more notable." INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY

This new edition has an introduction by historian Ralph Raico, who shows that this work still remains the best overall book on the FDR era. Flynn wrote a devastating indictment. If the contents of the book were widely known, the monuments erected in FDR's honor would be torn down forthwith.

So crucial is a proper understanding of the 1930s to applying Austrian School theory today that this work is highly recommended as a part of every Austrian library.

Download The Roosevelt Myth by John T. Flynn

PDF format, 35MB, 446Pages. Provided by Mises.org.

    * Introduction (Ralph Raico)
    * Book One: Trial--And Error
          o 1.The New Dealer Takes the Deck
          o 2. The Hundred Days
          o 3. The Banking Crisis
          o 4. The New New Deal
          o 5. The Rabbits Go Back in the Hat
          o 6. The Dance of the Crackpots
          o 7. An Enemy is Welcomed
          o 8. The Ride of the Wild Rabbit
    * Book Two: Confusion
          o 1. The Coming American Boom
          o 2. War on the Courts
          o 3. The Forgotten Depression
          o 4. Harry the Hop and Happy Hot Dogs
          o 5. The Dance of the Philosophers
          o 6. War Clouds
          o 7. The Third Term
          o 8. The Shock Troops of the Third New Deal
          o 9. Roosevelt Breaks with the Past
          o 10. Henry Wallace
    * Book Three: Betrayal
          o 1. A New Show Opens
          o 2. The White House Gose into Business
          o 3. What Manner of Man?
          o 4. Toward the Precipice
          o 5. The Atlantic Charter
          o 6. A Boondoggler's Dream
          o 7. The Happiest Years of Their Lives
          o 8. The Thought Police
          o 9. The Great Conferences
          o 10. Politics, Disease, and History
          o 11. How Germany's Fate Was Settled
          o 12. The Atlantic Charter Is Scrapped
          o 13. The Final Betrayal
          o 14. The President's Death
          o 15. The Roosevelt Myth
    * References
    * Bibliography

ISBN 0930073282

FORWARD:

THIS BOOK IS IN NO SENSE A BIOGRAPHY OF FRANKLIN D. ROOSEvelt. It is rather a critical account of that episode in American politics known as the New Deal. As to the President, it is an account of an image projected upon the popular mind which came to be known as Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is the author's conviction that this image did not at all correspond to the man himself and that it is now time to correct the lineaments of this synthetic figure created by highly intelligent propaganda, aided by mass illusion and finally enlarged and elaborated out of all reason by the fierce moral and mental disturbances of the war. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to present the Franklin D. Roosevelt of the years 1932 to 1945 in his normal dimensions, reduced in size to agree with reality.

The war played havoc with history-writing after 1940. Not only did a great curtain of secrecy come down upon performers in the drama of the war, but their portraits and their actions were presented to us through the movies, the radio and the press upon a heroic scale as part of the business of selling the warriors and the statesmen and the war to the people. Their blunders and their quarrels were blotted out of the picture. Only the bright features were left.

The casual citizen saw them as exalted beings moving in glory across the vast stage of war, uttering eloquent appeals to the nation, challenging the enemy in flaming words, striding like heroes and talking like gods.

The moment has come when the costumes, the grease paint, the falsely colored scenery, the technicolored spotlights and all the other artifices of make-up should be put aside and, in the interest of truth, the solid facts about the play and the players revealed to the people.

A whole 20-foot shelf of books has appeared glorifying the character and career of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In addition a large number of men and women who were associated with his administrations have published their own versions of their several parts in those administrations. And while these contain some incidental criticisms, the chief effect of all these books is to feed the legend of the world conqueror and remodeler. Curiously, only two or three critical works have appeared and these touch only special sectors of the whole story. It seemed to me there was room for at least one critical book covering the whole period of Roosevelt's terms as President.

There is much to this story with which I have not attempted to deal either because it is not provable or, if provable, is not yet believable or because it belongs to a domain of writing for which I have neither taste nor experience. I have omitted any account of the bitter struggle which attended our entry into the war or any attempt to determine whether or not we should have gone into the war. That is another story which is reserved for a later day. Similarly no account of the military conduct of the war is included. The facts about that are even more obscure than the political facts and must await the release of a mass of documents still under official lock and key. I have, however, sought to clear up from the recently offered testimony of the chief actors, the diplomatic performances in that shocking and pathetic failure during and after the war. And I have included some account of the incredible mismanagement of our economic scene at home during the war. ...

In addition to all this I may be permitted to observe that during the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt I was an active journalist and as such very close to the events described in this volume. For most of the time I wrote a daily column which appeared in a large number of American newspapers, a weekly column in an American magazine of opinion and I contributed to numerous national magazines literally hundreds of articles dealing with these events. This work brought me close to the stage of affairs and into intimate touch with the leading characters on both sides.

No small part of the material which appears in this volume, therefore, is the product of my own researches and observations at the time the events described occurred.

JOHN T. FLYNN
BAYSIDE, L. I.
JULY, I948

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