The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War within World War II - Hardcover

Fleming, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465024645 ISBN 13: 9780465024643

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

Controversial and revisionist to the core, a sweeping re-examination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's handling-and mishandling-of World War II. Acclaimed historian Thomas Fleming brings to life the flawed and troubled FDR who struggled to manage WWII. Starting with the leak to the press of Roosevelt's famous Rainbow Plan, then spiraling back to FDR's inept prewar diplomacy with Japan, and his various attempts to lure Japan into an attack on the US Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader inside the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation, and the world as the New Dealers, led by FDR, strove to impose their will on the conduct of the War. Unlike the familiar yet idealized FDR of Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, the reader encounters a Roosevelt in remorseless decline, battered by ideological forces and primitive hatreds which he could not handle-and frequently failed to understand-some of them leading to unimaginable catastrophe. Among FDR's most dismaying policies, Fleming argues, were an insistence on "unconditional surrender" for Germany (a policy that perhaps prolonged the war by as many as two years, leaving millions more dead) and his often uncritical embrace of and acquiescence to Stalin and the Soviets as an ally. For many Americans, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is a beloved, heroic, almost mythic figure, if not for the "big government" that was spawned under his New Deal, then certainly for his leadership through the War. The New Dealers' War paints a very different portrait of this leadership. It is sure to spark debate.

About this title

Review:

"A gripping, controversial, informative, and at times infuriating look at FDR's leadership as the nation entered and fought World War II." "It would be a gross understatement to call The New Dealers' War a revisionist history of World War II. Thomas Fleming has...entered the Roosevelt Wing of the American Pantheon with a sledgehammer and reduced it to shambles." "A revisionist blockbuster by a real historian who has an old-fashioned concern with what actually happened in the past, with causes and effects." "Sure to be the most controversial history book of the year.... A scathing commentary that will have partisans howling in protest."

About the Author:

Thomas Fleming is the author of more than forty books, including The New Dealers' War, Duel, and Liberty! The American Revolution, as well as best-selling novels about America's war experience such as Time and Tide and The Officers' Wives. Fleming is a frequent guest on and contributor to NPR, PBS, A&E, and the History Channel. He lives in New York City and Westbrook, Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0465024645
• ISBN 13: 9780465024643
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 640