Harry Hopkins

Harry Lloyd Hopkins in January 1941

Harry Lloyd Hopkins (born August 17, 1890 in Sioux City , Iowa , † January 29, 1946 in New York , New York ) was one of the most important advisors to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt . His name is particularly linked to the New Deal from 1933 and the Loan and Lease Act in World War II .

Hopkins was the fourth child of his parents. He attended Grinell College in Iowa . He then worked at the Cristodora House in New York. In 1915, New York Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed him head of the Bureau of Christian Welfare . In 1916 he worked for the Red Cross in New Orleans , then in Atlanta in 1921 . In 1924 he came back to New York and became director general of the New York Tuberculosis Association . In 1923 he became chairman of the American Association of Social Workers (AASW). The then governor of New York State, Franklin D. Roosevelt, made him head of the TERA ( Temporary Emergency Relief Administration ) in 1929 .

After the death of Louis McHenry Howe in 1936, Hopkins became Roosevelt's closest confidante, who had since become president. He remained one of Roosevelt's most important advisors during World War II.

Hopkins headed the United States' largest job creation program in the 1930s as director of the Federal Emergency Relief Agency , which employed 8 million people between 1935 and 1941, with a monthly average of over two million as of August 1935. If one adds their relatives, then 25 to 30 million people benefited from the wages from public work. The Hopkins Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed 122,000 public buildings, built 664,000 miles of new roads, 77,000 bridges and 285 airfields.

From 1938 to 1940 he was Minister of Commerce . In this role he came under public criticism, among other things because he made clear claims to the successor to Roosevelt. When Hopkins officially resigned in 1940 for health reasons, Roosevelt used him for economic diplomatic missions in Great Britain . Hopkins thus had a significant share in the conclusion of the lending and leasing law , through which the United States supported its allies with essential supplies. Hopkins also played an important role at the conferences after the USA entered the war in late 1941. He also took on diplomatic missions under Roosevelt's successor Harry S. Truman , including in the Soviet Union . He died of stomach cancer a year after the war ended .

Harry Hopkins was married three times and had five children.

literature

• June Hopkins: Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer , St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 9780312212063
• George McJimsey: Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor, Defender of Democracy , Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1987, ISBN 9780674372870
• Robert E. Sherwood : Roosevelt and Hopkins, Wolfgang Krüger Verlag, Hamburg 1950, 795 pages
• Hopkins - What a lonely job . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1950 ( online ).
• Doris Kearns Goodwin : No Ordinary Time . Simon & Schuster , 1994, ISBN 9780684804484 .
• James MacManus: Sleep in Peace Tonight , Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014, ISBN 9781250051974

Web links

Commons : Harry Hopkins  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• Biography
• Harry Hopkins in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• Newspaper article about Harry Hopkins in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .