William D. Pederson on Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Scholars consistently rank Franklin D. Roosevelt among the greatest presidents in American history and the greatest president of the twentieth century. ... His ranking is based, no doubt, on his successful leadership of the United States during the nation's two great, back-to-back crises of the twentieth century" the Great Depression and World War II.”

“The main Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, praised Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies, and "foresaw the United States as developing "toward an authoritarian state" ... By the mid-1930's, however, Nazi views of the New Deal and FDR began to change. As FDR grew increasingly alarmed by Hitler's rearmament and Mussolini's expansionism, his public speeches reflected more open disapproval of fascism, as in his speech in Chicago on October 5, 1937, when he called for an international "quarantine of the aggressor nations." Moreover, in response to the pogroms of Kristallnacht in November 1938, Roosevelt publicly stated his outrage to the German government about the manifest mistreatment of German Jews. In response, Nazi propaganda began to label the New Deal a "Jew Deal," and by 1939 the Völkischer Beobachter condemned the United States as a "Jewish Dictatorship".”