Roosevelt and Hopkins an Intimate History

Harry Lloyd Hopkins (born August 17, 1890 died January 29, 1946) was an American social worker, the 8th Secretary of Commerce, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisor on foreign policy during World War II. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II, he was Roosevelt's chief diplomatic troubleshooter and liaison with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. He supervised the $50 billion Lend Lease program of military aid to the Allies. Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the executive director of New York's Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. His leadership of the program earned the attention of Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, and Roosevelt brought Hopkins into his presidential administration after his victory in the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration. He also served as Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940. Hopkins served as an important foreign policy adviser and diplomat during World War II. He was a key policy maker in the Lend-Lease program that sent $50 billion in aid to the Allies; Winston Churchill in his memoirs devotes a panegyric to this "natural leader of men" who had "a flaming soul". Hopkins dealt with "priorities, production, political problems with allies, strategy—in short, with anything that might concern the president". He attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference, the Tehran Conference, the Casablanca Conference, and the Yalta Conference. His health declined after 1939 due to stomach cancer, and Hopkins died in 1946 at the age of 55.