Harry Hopkins

Harry Hopkins (1890-1946), American government official and adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, closely associated with his New Deal program. Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Harry Lloyd Hopkins held several administrative social-work positions during the 1920s, most of them in New York City. In 1931 Roosevelt, then governor of New York, appointed him director of the New York State Temporary Relief Administration. After becoming president, Roosevelt named him head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration in 1933 and of the Works Progress Administration in 1935. From 1938 to 1940 he was secretary of commerce. During World War II Hopkins, by then an influential presidential assistant, administered the lend-lease program and sat on the War Production Board and the Pacific War Council. He accompanied Roosevelt to the wartime summit conferences at Tehrān (Teheran) (1943) and Yalta (1945) and, after Roosevelt's death in 1945, helped prepare the ground for the Potsdam Conference (1945) held after the unconditional surrender of Germany.