Roosevelt Administration Quotes

“MENS REA”:
On January 16, 1944, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and one of his deputies, Randolph Paul, personally visited the President Franklin D. Roosevelt in order to coerce him to finally act and do something to help refugees escaping The Holocaust. More diplomatic efforts had failed, so Morgenthau's approach strengthened. The report brought to the President reveals a desperate and necessary act to coerce a response from an administration that was systematically and overtly preventing both private and official help for the victims escaping Hitler. The report documents a pattern of attempts by the State Department to obstruct rescue opportunities and block the flow of Holocaust information to the United States. Morgenthau warned that the refugee issue had become “a boiling pot on [Capitol] Hill,” and Congress was likely to pass the rescue resolution if faced with a White House unwilling to act. Roosevelt understood the deep implications and pre-empted Congress by establishing the War Refugee Board. The result was “Executive Order 9417” creating the War Refugee Board, issued on January 22, 1944.”
― A.E. Samaan, From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848

“They made an extraordinary team. She was more earnest, less devious, less patient, less fun, more uncompromisingly moral; he possessed the more trustworthy political talent, the more finely tuned sense of timing, the better feel for the citizenry, the smarter understanding of how to get things done. She could travel the country when he could not; she could speak her mind without the constraints of public office. She was the agitator; he was the politician. But they were linked by indissoluble bonds and they drew strength from each other.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II