After the House approved the extension of the draft by a single vote, Lindbergh declared “the greatest danger to this country” posed by its Jewish citizens “lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government”. There was much he didn’t like in the world, but “over a period of years there is not as much difference in philosophy as we have been led to believe”. One of the biggest problems Roosevelt faced in 19 was how to counter isolationists like Lindbergh, whose affection for the Nazis and hatred for the Jews made him as popular in some quarters as he was despised in others.īefore Congress, Lindbergh denounced the bill that gave Britain resources to survive the Blitz. It turns out almost all of the answers are in Simpson’s diary, including this key sentence: “The question was how we should maneuver into the position of firing the first shot, without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” There has been a raging debate for decades about how the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor came about, and whether Roosevelt and his aides ignored information from Japanese diplomatic cables because they wanted to bring America into the war. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Black activist A Philip Randolph are two of the most important heroes while Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated solo pilot to Paris who became a fierce isolationist and a virulent antisemite, is one of its principal villains. Not only did he play a vital role in practically every important military decision from 1940 to 1945, he also kept an extremely detailed diary, which makes it possible for Shinkle to tell us exactly what he was thinking.īesides canny portraits of Roosevelt, Stimson and George Marshall, the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there are a host of subsidiary characters. There are two big reasons for focusing on Stimson. Shinkle does a splendid job mining for new nuggets of information and fresh perspectives. There are probably more books written about the second world war than any other 20th-century event, but every generation needs to be reminded of its triumphs and tragedies. But his new volume is broader and more important. That book also combined political and social history. Shinkle is a veteran reporter who has written another fine book, Ike’s Mystery Man, about Robert Cutler, the closeted gay man who was Dwight Eisenhower’s right-hand man for foreign policy in the White House. ![]() ![]() Practically the only important social impact Shinkle omits is the war’s effects on gay and lesbian Americans, a subject covered best by Allan Bérubé’s definitive book, Coming Out Under Fire. It also offers brisk accounts of all US campaigns in Africa and Europe, a detailed description of how Pearl Harbor happened, and the best explanation I have read of why the government pursued its disastrous policy of interning Japanese Americans.īesides all that, there is terrific social history of the ways the war changed the status of women and African Americans. ![]() Those appointments came five weeks after the king asked Winston Churchill to form a unity government in Great Britain, two weeks after 338,000 French and British troops were rescued at Dunkirk, and four weeks before Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented third term, all events featured in this compelling volume.īut Peter Shinkle’s book is a great deal more than a celebration of the bipartisanship that was a key factor in American success.
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