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Harry Hopkins

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Politician

The Resume

    (August 17, 1890-January 29, 1946)
    Born in Sioux City, Iowa
    Birth name was Harry Lloyd Hopkins
    Close adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
    Former social worker, affiliated with the Bureau of Child Welfare, later the American Red Cross
    Main architect of the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal policies, particularly the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)
    Head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
    Head of the short-lived Civil Works Administration
    Appointed to Secretary of Commerce by President Roosevelt
    Main implementer of the Lend-Lease program during WWII
    Top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II
    Interfaced with Soviet officials ranging from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Josef Stalin

Why he might be annoying:

    He was married three times.
    He was described as cagy and antisocial.
    Historians have likened him to Valerie Jarrett.
    Republicans continue to push a conspiracy theory that he was a Soviet double agent.
    His opponents characterized him a free-spending squandermaniac with no fiscal responsibility.
    He considered suing the Chicago Tribune after it compared him to Rasputin.
    He opposed appointing General Eisenhower to lead Operation Overlord.
    He has been accused of selling Eastern Europe out to the Soviets post-WWII.
    He was accused of ratting out the FBI to the Soviets about their surveillance techniques.
    George Racey Jordan testified to HUAC, in 1949, that he passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
    He lived alongside FDR in the White House for three and a half years, which struck many as suspicious.
    When reporters asked President Roosevelt if Hopkins was to be the next ambassador to Great Britain, he answered, ‘you know Harry isn’t strong enough for that job!’
    He initially struck Eleanor Roosevelt as standoffish, usually brushing her off during their interactions (she reportedly also envied his closeness to her husband).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was a dead ringer for Richard Widmark.
    He combined diplomacy and strategy on missions in a way that was crucially invaluable.
    The evidence used to prove his alleged treasonous activities is largely unreliable and chronologically inconsistent.
    His second wife died of cancer six years into their marriage, and his son was killed in the Pacific, serving with the Marines in WWII.
    He was one of Franklin Roosevelt's few close companions, and among them the only one with whom was trusted responsibility to effect policy.
    He was a social worker who became on of the most powerful men in the country (back when that would have been seen as unusual).
    He was the Roosevelt Administration's personal (unofficial) representative to both Winston Churchill, who took an immediate liking to him and took him under his wing.
    It has been argued that the Allied War Effort would not have been won as quickly as a was without Hopkins.
    He accompanied Roosevelt and Churchill as an advisor on their international dealings, including in Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca, and, most notably, the 1945 Yalta Conference.
    In his last service, a trip to Moscow, he probably saved the United Nations from collapsing in on itself (or delayed it, anyway).
    It was common knowledge that President Roosevelt was grooming him as his successor in the 1940 election.
    A series of illnesses and operations occurring at the same time as the 1940 Democratic National Convention killed these hopes before he could be nominated, leaving people to wonder 'what might have been.'
    He did, however, make it possible for President Truman to make the effective transition to the job, in the wake of FDR's death in office.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 70.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 8 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 14 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 36 Votes: 47.22% Annoying