Web Site of the Month: December 2000

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Library, Museum, and Digital Archives

When the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library was first dedicated, on June 30, 1941, Roosevelt himself commented:

It seems to me that the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith. To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgement in creating their own future.

Since its creation in 1941, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library has grown to encompass a museum and, most recently, an online digital archives. Through its Web site, in particular, the Roosevelt Library goes a long way toward fulfilling Roosevelt's goal of making the records of the past available "for the use of men and women in the future," providing access via the Web to a growing portion of the rich collection of documents, photographs, recordings, and other primary source materials found at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York.

Materials currently available online include:

• The German Diplomatic Files: An important collection of documents concerning governmental dealings between the United States and Germany over the course of Roosevelt's tenure in office, from 1933 to 1945.
• The Vatican Files: Drawn from the Diplomatic Series in the President's Secretary's File, this collection consists of wartime reports, memoranda, and correspondence between FDR, Pope Pius XII, Myron Taylor (Roosevelt's special envoy to the Vatican), Harold Tittman and others.
• The Safe Files: Roosevelt's Safe Files, dating from 1933-1945, consist of formerly National Security Classified materials, mainly from the World War II period. The correspondence, reports, and memoranda in this collection cover topics such as the Manhattan Project; the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations; the War, Navy, Treasury and State Departments; Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, China, Great Britain and France; General George Marshall; Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek; the American-British Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Pacific War Council; and "Plan Dog."
• Photos: Also available from this site are thousands of online, copyright-free photos, covering topics such as the Roosevelt family, the Great Depression and the New Deal, and World War II. The pictures at the left, just a tiny sample of those available, depict (from top to bottom):
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt with Admiral Byrd in Albany, NY, June 24, 1930.
  • Breadline in New York City during the Depression, February 1932.
  • Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941.
  • Eleanor Roosevelt visiting the Japanese-American Internment Center at Gila River, Arizona, 1943.