About this episode

This episode examines the hidden truths and darker aspects of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, including his physical condition and controversial policies.

He was elected President of the United States 4 times, and a whole generation of Americans grew up unable to remember anyone else in the office. In this episode of Disturbing History, we pull apart the myth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and look at what the textbooks leave out. For more than 2 decades, Roosevelt ran the most successful concealment operation in presidential history, hiding from the public the fact that he could not walk a single step unaided, with the full cooperation of a press corps that agreed never to photograph the wheelchair and Secret Service agents who ripped film out of cameras. But the deception about his legs might not even crack the top 3 most disturbing chapters of his time in power. We dig into the darker ledger of the New Deal, from the 6 million pigs slaughtered in 1933 while Americans stood in bread lines, to the Social Security carve-outs that cut roughly two-thirds of Black workers out of the safety net, to the federal redlining maps that still shape American neighborhoods today. We follow the SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 937 Jewish refugees turned back within sight of the Miami coastline in 1939, 254 of whom would die in the Holocaust, and the…

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