An investigation of the response of American Jews to Nazism and the extermination of European Jewry. The demand for Jewish statehood politicized the rescue issue and made it impossible to appeal for American aid on purely humanitarian grounds. Berman tries to understand the constraints within which American Jews operated. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This study examines FDR's motives in confronting the Axis powers and especially Adolf Hitler. The author examines the Roosevelt-Chamberlain rivalry which got in the way of establishing early cooperation in confronting the Axis allies and places the major blame for this on the "Tory" element in Britain's leadership with Chamberlain bearing the prime responsibility. It also includes perceptive assessments of Roosevelt's foreign policy by two of the outstanding women of the 20th Century, Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins both of whom were interviewed by the author.
Not only does Keyserlingk show that Great Britain and the US recognized the Anschluss both in fact and in law throughout the war, he also reveals the growing importance of propaganda as a tool of government.
The names of most of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet members are well known. Anyone familiar with FDR’s administration will remember Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Cordell Hull, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, and James Farley. One member of that circle, however, has remained a virtual unknown: Harry H. Woodring, the recalcitrant Secretary of War who was forced by Roosevelt to resign from the cabinet. It is doubtful that the story of any of Roosevelt’s cabinet members is more interesting than that of Woodring. With the breakdown of world peace in the 1930s, the matter of national defense became a major concern, and the United States military establishment became increasingly important. Woodring’s role in Washington during this time was a critical one; his dealings with Roosevelt were extensive, and on many key issues his influence was considerable. Why, then, his lack of notoriety? The simple fact is that until now almost nothing has been written of Woodring’s service as Secretary of War. He was one of the few individuals closely associated with Roosevelt who did not write an autobiography, memoirs, or some other personal account of what took place during those years. Keith D. McFarland is the first scholar to have had access to Woodring’s personal papers. Drawing from this new material, as well as from Woodring’s official correspondence and from personal interviews with the members of Woodring’s immediate family and dozens of Woodring’s associates, he provides in this volume the careful study that has long been needed. McFarland first traces Woodring’s early political career in Kansas. As a Democratic Governor from 1931 to 1933, Woodring worked successfully with the Republican-dominated legislature to alleviate many of the physical and economic hardships facing residents of the state during the Depression, Nevertheless, he lost his bid for re-election to Alf M. Landon. When Roosevelt won the presidency that same year, he appointed Woodring as Assistant Secretary of War. Woodring served the country well on the national level. He was influential to expanding the Army Air Corps and in making practical the Army’s industrial and military mobilization plans. After the death of George Dern in 1936, Roosevelt demonstrated his confidence in Woodring by appointing him Secretary of War. The conflict between Woodring and the President arose over the sending of American military supplies and equipment to foreign nations. It was Woodring’s job as secretary of War to see that the War Department adhered to the neutrality legislation of the 1930s. Roosevelt believed that the United States should aid the enemies of Hitler, even if such action did not adhere to the spirit of the neutrality legislation. Upon the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, FDR did everything he could to supply Britain and France with American arms and munitions. Woodring was caught between is loyalty and devotion to the President and his sincere belief that the chief executive’s program would endanger the nation’s security. Maintaining that it was tactically unsound to give away supplies at a time when the U.S. Army was in desperate need of such items, Woodring made concerted efforts to prevent the implementation of FDR’s program. The President was forced to ask him to resign. Few American Presidents have been more respected and admired than Frankoin D. Roosevelt. There has been a tendency to disregard, ignore, or ridicule those administrative officials who disagreed with his actions and objectives. In relating the viewpoint of a distinguished, patriotic American who strongly opposed FDR’s policies and tried to change them, this book provides a clearer understanding of politics and government in pre-World War II America.
This study, a realist interpretation of the long diplomatic record that produced the coming of World War II in 1939, is a critique of the Paris Peace Conference and reflects the judgment shared by many who left the Conference in 1919 in disgust amid predictions of future war. The critique is a rejection of the idea of collective security, which Woodrow Wilson and many others believed was a panacea, but which was also condemned as early as 1915. This book delivers a powerful lesson in treaty-making and rejects the supposition that treaties, once made, are unchangeable, whatever their faults.
From 1899 until the American entry into World War II, U.S. presidents sought to preserve China's territorial integrity in order to guarantee American businesses access to Chinese markets -- a policy famously known as the "open door." Before the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Americans saw Japan as the open door's champion; but by the end of 1905, Tokyo had replaced St. Petersburg as its greatest threat. For the next thirty-six years, successive U.S. administrations worked to safeguard China and contain Japanese expansion on the mainland. The Currents of War reexamines the relationship between the United States and Japan and the casus belli in the Pacific through a fresh analysis of America's central foreign policy strategy in Asia. In this ambitious and compelling work, Sidney Pash offers a cautionary tale of oft-repeated mistakes and miscalculations. He demonstrates how continuous economic competition in the Asia-Pacific region heightened tensions between Japan and the United States for decades, eventually leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Pash's study is the first full reassessment of pre--World War II American-Japanese diplomatic relations in nearly three decades. It examines not only the ways in which U.S. policies led to war in the Pacific but also how this conflict gave rise to later confrontations, particularly in Korea and Vietnam. Wide-ranging and meticulously researched, this book offers a new perspective on a significant international relationship and its enduring consequences.
Nothing embodied Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign to lastingly embed the New Deal in the major institutions of American government more than his effort to pack the Supreme Court. Vaulting Ambition, the inaugural volume in the Landmark Presidential Decisions series, presents a balanced assessment of FDR’s 1937 effort to fundamentally change the highest court in the land. Unlike most work on the subject, Michael Nelson centers his study on the president’s series of decisions to reform the Court, rather than on the Court’s responses. At the heart of the book is an analytical narrative of FDR’s crusade to expand the Court and pack it with those sympathetic to his cause. While keeping this story front and center, Vaulting Ambition also presents the Court-packing effort as part of FDR’s larger campaign to shape the executive branch bureaucracy, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Democratic Party all in service to enduringly entrench the New Deal into US government and politics. Although FDR never achieved the mastery over the entire federal government that he sought, his efforts to expand and transform the three branches of government and the Democratic Party were of great consequence and endured long beyond his tenure. Nelson offers a clear understanding of how FDR’s campaign sheds essential light on today’s raging controversy over changing the Supreme Court.
When A.J.P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War appeared in 1961 it made a profound impact. The book became a classic and a central point of reference in all discussion on the Second World War. The second edition of this distinguished collection, written by leading experts in the field, is designed to bring the state of the argument up to date. The issues discussed include: * the legacy of the Treaty of Versailles * Hitlers foreign policy * Appeasement * AJP Taylor and the Russians * the treatment of the crises leading up to war including the Anschluss, Danzig, Abysinnian crises and the Spanish Civil War. This second edition will ensure that The Origins of the Second World War will remain a high priority student and scholarly reading lists.
How history's only five-star admirals triumphed in World War II and made the United States the world's dominant sea power. Only four men in American history have been promoted to the five-star rank of Admiral of the Fleet: William Leahy, Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and William Halsey. These four men were the best and the brightest the navy produced, and together they led the U.S. navy to victory in World War II, establishing the United States as the world's greatest fleet. In The Admirals, award-winning historian Walter R. Borneman tells their story in full detail for the first time. Drawing upon journals, ship logs, and other primary sources, he brings an incredible historical moment to life, showing us how the four admirals revolutionized naval warfare forever with submarines and aircraft carriers, and how these men -- who were both friends and rivals -- worked together to ensure that the Axis fleets lay destroyed on the ocean floor at the end of World War II.
