Video: 'Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1945 Presidential Inauguration'

(Saturday, January 20 1945, shortly after noon EWT) — Franklin Delano Roosevelt, nearing his sixty-third birthday, stood today at the White House bareheaded and without an outside coat, despite raw, wintry weather, to become the nation’s first fourth-term President (click here for a clip from Jan. 20, 1945, at 3:46:36 from “American Experience: FDR”).

Roosevelt took the oath of office from Chief Justice Harian F. Stone about two minutes after Harry S. Truman of Missouri had been sworn in as Vice President by his predecessor, Henry A. Wallace.

Due to the privations caused by the Second World War, the inauguration was held on the South Portico of the White House, rather than the Capitol. The Parades and other festivities were canceled. This was the only time where a “regularly scheduled” inauguration ceremony wasn’t either held or repeated the next day at the Capitol.

Roosevelt and Truman, Democrats, had defeated the Republican ticket of Thomas Dewey-John Bricker in the November 1944 general election.

Video: 'Franklin D. Roosevelt - Inaugural, 1945'

Video: 'Inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1945'