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The Strange Death of Franklin Roosevelt: A History of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty: America's Royal Family
Computer enhanced reprint of the 1948 edition.
Textbook Binding
First published January 1, 1959
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August 4, 2025
I finished the book and will stick with 4 stars.
I am a patsy for contemporary accounts of happenings in the early 20th Century.
I didn’t see any compelling arguments that FDR was slow-poisoned during meetings with Stalin.
It's not like he didn’t give the Soviets everything they wanted, including the poor folk of Eastern Europe. They were of course enslaved, and America gets a black eye IMO for not sticking up for them. He and Churchill could have been lightly poisoned but this book does not convince me of it.
I think the author sort of overdoes it on how much power the Rockefeller Empire had. He did do a service in highlighting the rampant corruption of those New Deal years. Wilson gets slammed hard too, and deservedly so, in my opinion.
Update August 18, 2024.
I made it thru the boring lineage, and everything is the fault of the Rockefeller interests or of the JP Morgan interests (not the one on Hollywood Squares). FDR is related to about every prominent person in early America, though he is actually more closely related to US Grant than Teddy Roosevelt. Martin Van Buren too. I am not putting much faith in 4th cousins and such, as meaning much. Ezra Pound the American poet, turned fascist mouthpiece in WW2 was a big fan of Martin Van Buren. Pound admired Andy Jackson for shutting down the Bank of the US in the early 1830s, and Van Buren was his VP.
Author Josephson is an MD. He is very harsh in his depiction of the secrecy and corruption at FDRs Warm Springs Georgia polio spa. It seemed to be more about monetary profit and political play than helping anybody, especially the poor.
There is corruption in government and spa involvement in the polio serum scam that did much more harm than good in the authors opinion. It was often very dangerous and caused some deaths.
I saw parallels to Covid policy in our time.
Dr. Josephson was in the raw milk crowd and bemoans the big increase in the price of milk due to the extra cost of pasteurization. Of course, FDR and his cronies that enforced this change in milk laws in New York raked in big money.
Chapter XIV pg 161 Dr Josephson expresses his disdain for the common man in America when he points out how they were completely flim-flammed by FDR and his machine.
"depends on its effectiveness solely upon the uncritical gullibility, the defective memory and pathetic dullness of the average citizen". Wow, that is really harsh Doc...
UPDATE MARCH 2024. This is a 1948 hardback.
Page 281 talk of Standard Oil and IG Farben agreement that hindered US war effort in regards to synthetic rubber development being delayed.
I read the Trial of IG Farben, a much later work and the accounts are basically in agreement.
Page 283. After the Teheran Conference with Stalin, both Churchill and FDR were very ill, and FDR never really got better. Author claims they were poisoned in a 'silver cord' sort of way (slow acting) by Stalin and his crew.
Claims Stalin did it to Lenin when he was on the hot seat. Mentions Gorki as a victim too.
My ORIGINAL review:
I still have this book.
I think I at least skimmed it when I bought it for a buck on 9.1.89.
I don't like either Roosevelt so I'll probably like this book if I re-read it. I did like it.
Honestly, it kind of seems "out there" but you often get more truth out of those type of accounts than from the mainstream accounts.
I've been on a JFK jag lately and have come to feel that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction (official Warren Commission is fiction mixed with some facts...they were given the conclusion and told to work backwards).
The fact that mass murderer Stalin was called Uncle Joe as our ally in WW2 and was Time Magazine Man of the Year twice speaks volumes.
.. I am on page 72. AUGUST 2024...DB.
I will say that Josephson was correct on the Germans sending a sealed train through their territory during WW1 with Lenin and his fanatic friends aboard. I just finished Lenin in Zurich by Solzhenitsyn that goes into this.
Also, Josephson seems to be very cynical towards the Christian religion.
LIfted:
Lifted from Amazon below
Once described as a "paranoid's paranoid", Dr Emanuel Josephson was a conspiracy theorist and commodity money advocate writing in 1948, his "The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt" discusses now largely forgotten conspiratorial explanations around FDR's demise. (It is possible Josephson's title was inspired by the bestselling "The Strange Death of Warren Harding" (1930) by "spectacular rogue" Gaston Means and his ghostwriter May Dixon Thacker, who later exposed the book as a fraud). Interestingly the mainstream publication `Salon' in 2009 published an article questioning the standard account of FDR's death, so perhaps Josephson's ideas may see a revival. Josephson's book however, despite it's title, only assigns one chapter to FDR's death. He is more interested in the FDR's life and family.
Josephson argues that almost half of all US presidents were drawn from the Roosevelt - Adams -Delano "dynasty" and the dynasty acquired ambitions to return the US to some kind of elected monarchy. FDR had absorbed from Germany the "Bismarxist ideology" and during his administration had entered alliance with the Rockefeller empire. This alliance, along with the long established naval interests of the Roosevelt-Delano branch of the dynasty, that accounts for US participation in the world wars and cold war.
These charges are, of course, absurd. But what can we say of them if we extend to Josephson the most generous interpretation possible? Is there anything we can learn here? After all, even crooked houses are often built from straight timber.
His genealogical arguments are probably correct. Whether connected family trees actually constitute a 'dynasty' of course is another question. Still it is interesting to find that FDR was actually more closely related (via the maternal line) to Ulysses S Grant than he was Theodore Roosevelt. That could just win you a trivia contest. I found Josephson's treatment of the Delano family, and they probably really were a 'dynasty', and their long involvement in the China trade, maritime and ship building issues, and their decades long influence over appointments to the Secretaryship of the Navy useful.
Still there may be more to this. Recent studies by economist Ernesto Dal Bo et al have shown that politics is a much more 'heritable' profession than most. In fact it is probably the most heritable profession. A career in politics is ten times more 'heritable' than a career in medicine, 45 times more than in carpentry and 60 times more than civil service. Their study that went back to 1789 found that being elected for more than one term increased the chances that a politician would have a relative entering Congress in the future by about 70 per cent. Democracy, in practice, if not in ideology, has definite dynastic leanings. I suspect one day some computer geek could earn his masters' degree by demonstrating a Josephson-ish style dynasty should eventually emerge eventually in every democracy. Josephson's "conspiracy theory" may have focused too much on one family tree, but that makes him closer to the mark than many "mainstream" writers who ignore democracies' dynasties altogether.
Josephson's "Bismarxism" charge is actually an unacknowledged compliment to the German anarchist Bakunin, a rival of Marx at the "First International". Bakunin taunted Karl Marx as a "Bismarxist" and accused him of pushing pan-German authoritarianism under a false proletarian banner. It is forgotten (or buried) that the Bismark actually offered Karl Marx the editorship of "Staatsanzeiger", the official organ of his regime. Marx rejected the offer but the fact that it was made is the real point. More can be made of this thread. Besides pioneering the welfare state in the 19th century, the 20th century's first real experiment with a planned economy was really Germany in WW1. And Lenin, during the early "War Communism" period, urged his followers to "learn from the Germans." Josephson credits the German state with subsidising communist agitation abroad as a way to undermine their rivals. A bit like the CIA subsidising radical islamists during the Cold War. This seems to have been confirmed, at least as far as German intelligence's "don't start the revolution without me" role in helping Bolsheviks get into post-Czarist Russia. Asking whether this this Reich / Bolshevik alliance was even older strikes me as a legitimate question. In all probability if there was any evidence at all it would have been looted by the Red Army, or buried by Hitler. Josephson's "Bismarxism" charge is perhaps not entirely crazy. Again whether this applies to FDR is another matter.
The Rockefeller charge is more interesting and here Josephson may be closer to the money. Rockefeller interests (like the Delanos) were definitely involved in China and the previously unmolested USS Panay was struck whilst convoying Standard Oil tankers. This was a major step on the road to war with Japan. During WW2 the US, and in particular Rockefeller "Aramco" interests, were able to displace the British from control of Saudi oil concessions. During the war and immediately after, these were brought on line thanks to large investments of US taxpayers money in projects like the "Tapline" pipeline system. Josephson calls this "FDR's New Deal for the Rockefeller Empire" and he is probaby right. Jospehson touches on Rockefeller influences on US policy as far back as Wilson.
Interestingly Josephson, says: "The instigators have paid little heed to the menace of a Holy War which might easily be stirred up among the ever-martial Mohammedans, that in years to come may threaten conquest of Europe and war on Christianity by them." Not a bad prediction for 1948.
Mixed with Josephson's grand conspiracy theory are numerous and usually unflattering details of the business and political shenanigans of many of Roosevelt's family and political inner circle. I was surprised some were left out. For example, FDR's son Elliot being identified by the Nye Congressional Committee investigation into "the munitions trust" as an agent for an (ultimately failed) deal to sell Fokker aircraft to the USSR in 1934. Being a popular book these incidents lack scholarly references. However I get the impression that these incidents may have been well covered in the press of the day but have been lost from historical rear view mirror by the glare of post war hero worship.
Josephson's grand conspiracy theory is no doubt mostly hot air, however this does not make an uninteresting read, and Josephson's writing style is better than most.
2nd half of an Amazon Review LIFTED above, but makes some good points....the first half were my own thoughts. I did read this book, just finished it.
The Bismarxian stuff was new to me, I enjoyed that take. I have read a lot of other negative takes on FDR and the New Deal, this was a good supplement to those. DB
I am a patsy for contemporary accounts of happenings in the early 20th Century.
I didn’t see any compelling arguments that FDR was slow-poisoned during meetings with Stalin.
It's not like he didn’t give the Soviets everything they wanted, including the poor folk of Eastern Europe. They were of course enslaved, and America gets a black eye IMO for not sticking up for them. He and Churchill could have been lightly poisoned but this book does not convince me of it.
I think the author sort of overdoes it on how much power the Rockefeller Empire had. He did do a service in highlighting the rampant corruption of those New Deal years. Wilson gets slammed hard too, and deservedly so, in my opinion.
Update August 18, 2024.
I made it thru the boring lineage, and everything is the fault of the Rockefeller interests or of the JP Morgan interests (not the one on Hollywood Squares). FDR is related to about every prominent person in early America, though he is actually more closely related to US Grant than Teddy Roosevelt. Martin Van Buren too. I am not putting much faith in 4th cousins and such, as meaning much. Ezra Pound the American poet, turned fascist mouthpiece in WW2 was a big fan of Martin Van Buren. Pound admired Andy Jackson for shutting down the Bank of the US in the early 1830s, and Van Buren was his VP.
Author Josephson is an MD. He is very harsh in his depiction of the secrecy and corruption at FDRs Warm Springs Georgia polio spa. It seemed to be more about monetary profit and political play than helping anybody, especially the poor.
There is corruption in government and spa involvement in the polio serum scam that did much more harm than good in the authors opinion. It was often very dangerous and caused some deaths.
I saw parallels to Covid policy in our time.
Dr. Josephson was in the raw milk crowd and bemoans the big increase in the price of milk due to the extra cost of pasteurization. Of course, FDR and his cronies that enforced this change in milk laws in New York raked in big money.
Chapter XIV pg 161 Dr Josephson expresses his disdain for the common man in America when he points out how they were completely flim-flammed by FDR and his machine.
"depends on its effectiveness solely upon the uncritical gullibility, the defective memory and pathetic dullness of the average citizen". Wow, that is really harsh Doc...
UPDATE MARCH 2024. This is a 1948 hardback.
Page 281 talk of Standard Oil and IG Farben agreement that hindered US war effort in regards to synthetic rubber development being delayed.
I read the Trial of IG Farben, a much later work and the accounts are basically in agreement.
Page 283. After the Teheran Conference with Stalin, both Churchill and FDR were very ill, and FDR never really got better. Author claims they were poisoned in a 'silver cord' sort of way (slow acting) by Stalin and his crew.
Claims Stalin did it to Lenin when he was on the hot seat. Mentions Gorki as a victim too.
My ORIGINAL review:
I still have this book.
I think I at least skimmed it when I bought it for a buck on 9.1.89.
I don't like either Roosevelt so I'll probably like this book if I re-read it. I did like it.
Honestly, it kind of seems "out there" but you often get more truth out of those type of accounts than from the mainstream accounts.
I've been on a JFK jag lately and have come to feel that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction (official Warren Commission is fiction mixed with some facts...they were given the conclusion and told to work backwards).
The fact that mass murderer Stalin was called Uncle Joe as our ally in WW2 and was Time Magazine Man of the Year twice speaks volumes.
.. I am on page 72. AUGUST 2024...DB.
I will say that Josephson was correct on the Germans sending a sealed train through their territory during WW1 with Lenin and his fanatic friends aboard. I just finished Lenin in Zurich by Solzhenitsyn that goes into this.
Also, Josephson seems to be very cynical towards the Christian religion.
LIfted:
Lifted from Amazon below
Once described as a "paranoid's paranoid", Dr Emanuel Josephson was a conspiracy theorist and commodity money advocate writing in 1948, his "The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt" discusses now largely forgotten conspiratorial explanations around FDR's demise. (It is possible Josephson's title was inspired by the bestselling "The Strange Death of Warren Harding" (1930) by "spectacular rogue" Gaston Means and his ghostwriter May Dixon Thacker, who later exposed the book as a fraud). Interestingly the mainstream publication `Salon' in 2009 published an article questioning the standard account of FDR's death, so perhaps Josephson's ideas may see a revival. Josephson's book however, despite it's title, only assigns one chapter to FDR's death. He is more interested in the FDR's life and family.
Josephson argues that almost half of all US presidents were drawn from the Roosevelt - Adams -Delano "dynasty" and the dynasty acquired ambitions to return the US to some kind of elected monarchy. FDR had absorbed from Germany the "Bismarxist ideology" and during his administration had entered alliance with the Rockefeller empire. This alliance, along with the long established naval interests of the Roosevelt-Delano branch of the dynasty, that accounts for US participation in the world wars and cold war.
These charges are, of course, absurd. But what can we say of them if we extend to Josephson the most generous interpretation possible? Is there anything we can learn here? After all, even crooked houses are often built from straight timber.
His genealogical arguments are probably correct. Whether connected family trees actually constitute a 'dynasty' of course is another question. Still it is interesting to find that FDR was actually more closely related (via the maternal line) to Ulysses S Grant than he was Theodore Roosevelt. That could just win you a trivia contest. I found Josephson's treatment of the Delano family, and they probably really were a 'dynasty', and their long involvement in the China trade, maritime and ship building issues, and their decades long influence over appointments to the Secretaryship of the Navy useful.
Still there may be more to this. Recent studies by economist Ernesto Dal Bo et al have shown that politics is a much more 'heritable' profession than most. In fact it is probably the most heritable profession. A career in politics is ten times more 'heritable' than a career in medicine, 45 times more than in carpentry and 60 times more than civil service. Their study that went back to 1789 found that being elected for more than one term increased the chances that a politician would have a relative entering Congress in the future by about 70 per cent. Democracy, in practice, if not in ideology, has definite dynastic leanings. I suspect one day some computer geek could earn his masters' degree by demonstrating a Josephson-ish style dynasty should eventually emerge eventually in every democracy. Josephson's "conspiracy theory" may have focused too much on one family tree, but that makes him closer to the mark than many "mainstream" writers who ignore democracies' dynasties altogether.
Josephson's "Bismarxism" charge is actually an unacknowledged compliment to the German anarchist Bakunin, a rival of Marx at the "First International". Bakunin taunted Karl Marx as a "Bismarxist" and accused him of pushing pan-German authoritarianism under a false proletarian banner. It is forgotten (or buried) that the Bismark actually offered Karl Marx the editorship of "Staatsanzeiger", the official organ of his regime. Marx rejected the offer but the fact that it was made is the real point. More can be made of this thread. Besides pioneering the welfare state in the 19th century, the 20th century's first real experiment with a planned economy was really Germany in WW1. And Lenin, during the early "War Communism" period, urged his followers to "learn from the Germans." Josephson credits the German state with subsidising communist agitation abroad as a way to undermine their rivals. A bit like the CIA subsidising radical islamists during the Cold War. This seems to have been confirmed, at least as far as German intelligence's "don't start the revolution without me" role in helping Bolsheviks get into post-Czarist Russia. Asking whether this this Reich / Bolshevik alliance was even older strikes me as a legitimate question. In all probability if there was any evidence at all it would have been looted by the Red Army, or buried by Hitler. Josephson's "Bismarxism" charge is perhaps not entirely crazy. Again whether this applies to FDR is another matter.
The Rockefeller charge is more interesting and here Josephson may be closer to the money. Rockefeller interests (like the Delanos) were definitely involved in China and the previously unmolested USS Panay was struck whilst convoying Standard Oil tankers. This was a major step on the road to war with Japan. During WW2 the US, and in particular Rockefeller "Aramco" interests, were able to displace the British from control of Saudi oil concessions. During the war and immediately after, these were brought on line thanks to large investments of US taxpayers money in projects like the "Tapline" pipeline system. Josephson calls this "FDR's New Deal for the Rockefeller Empire" and he is probaby right. Jospehson touches on Rockefeller influences on US policy as far back as Wilson.
Interestingly Josephson, says: "The instigators have paid little heed to the menace of a Holy War which might easily be stirred up among the ever-martial Mohammedans, that in years to come may threaten conquest of Europe and war on Christianity by them." Not a bad prediction for 1948.
Mixed with Josephson's grand conspiracy theory are numerous and usually unflattering details of the business and political shenanigans of many of Roosevelt's family and political inner circle. I was surprised some were left out. For example, FDR's son Elliot being identified by the Nye Congressional Committee investigation into "the munitions trust" as an agent for an (ultimately failed) deal to sell Fokker aircraft to the USSR in 1934. Being a popular book these incidents lack scholarly references. However I get the impression that these incidents may have been well covered in the press of the day but have been lost from historical rear view mirror by the glare of post war hero worship.
Josephson's grand conspiracy theory is no doubt mostly hot air, however this does not make an uninteresting read, and Josephson's writing style is better than most.
2nd half of an Amazon Review LIFTED above, but makes some good points....the first half were my own thoughts. I did read this book, just finished it.
The Bismarxian stuff was new to me, I enjoyed that take. I have read a lot of other negative takes on FDR and the New Deal, this was a good supplement to those. DB
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