The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II

by Thomas Fleming

Book Overview

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 U.S. Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader inside the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465024653
• ISBN13: 9780465024650
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 672 Pages
• Weight: 2.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great!

I have just had the unique pleasure of reading Thomas Fleming's New Dealer' War and am singularly impressed with the work. Fleming essentially holds that FDR and his cabal of New Dealers sought war with Germany for years before its offical outbreak in 1941. In this, Fleming's thesis affirms that of Charles Tansill, author of "Back Door To War". In fact, Fleming also used the term "back door" to describe the administration's strategy of maneuvering the Japanese, allies of Germany, into firing the first shot, thereby justifying American entry of the European war. Within the pages of this excellent history, we are also treated to much insider information relative to the infighting and machinations of FDR's administrations. It is fascinating to note in this how he treated Secretary of State Hull as pretty much of a figure head, whilst relying on his friend of long standing, Sumner Welles, as Hull's nominal deputy. Equally interesting is FDR's reliance on men later revealed to be Soviet agents, Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. The writing is excellent, and the overall thesis is brilliantly portrayed. There is an important aspect in which we differ strongly with Fleming's representations relative to one specific matter. But that is not relevant enough to the entire story nor damaging enough to the overall presentation to merit further comment. We recommend this excellent history highly to all who would know the background of our involvement in World War II and the operation of FDR's presidency.

Seldom-told history

The Second World War, moreso than almost any other event, has a special place in our history. The shocking surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, our total involvement, and the atrocities committed by our foes have made this into a black-and-white conflict rivaled only by the Revolution. Almost as strong as our reverence for WW2 is our reverence for our leader at the time, FDR, the man who led us through the Depression and to victory against the enemy. FDR consistently scores very highly in polls of "Greatest President". there have been innumerable books written about the war and FDR. So why one more? This book is an anomaly. It puts FDR under a microscope and looks at his every action with a critical eye. The portrait we are left with is of a leader much less a saint than a typical politician. Since such things are not often said of FDR, the information will be news to most people. The author has been accused of villifying FDR. Did he? The book doesn't paint a flattering picture, but all of his assertions are parenthetically documented. He indulges in some conjecture, but it is supported by the evidence. This book is unique in its genre. There are a plethora of books that glorify the war years and FDR. Fleming tells the other (not frequently repeated) side of the story. This does nothing to diminish my gratitude to the Greatest Generation, but it does provide a more historically accurate context with which to view the earlier half of the 20th century. Fleming's motto is "history is not memory", and this book (and his other works) are examples of this maxim. If you have an interest in history, WW2, or FDR, read this book. It may surprise you, shock you, or enrage you, but you will emerge having learned some unique bits of history.

'Memory isn't history' ... but this sure is

This summer, millions of American filmgoers will see, in the new 'Pearl Harbor' movie, a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt so hagiographic that even many of his supporters are embarrassed. For anyone willing to expend a little effort to find a more accurate portrait of That Man in the White House, I hugely recommend this huge book.Fleming's philosophy, explained early on, is that 'memory is not history.' Although many Americans -- particularly members of the so-called 'greatest generation' and their children -- still have fond memories of FDR, rank him among history's great leaders in war and peace, and defend his memory and legacy, Fleming argues that these rose-colored memories are not substitutes for fact. FDR was not a demigod. He was a man: a fallible man, a devious man, an arrogant and ambitious man, a political man in both the best and worst senses of that term, and -- for the last years of his life -- a very seriously ill man.FDR, Fleming argues, embodied both sides of 'the profound dichotomy in American life,' the tension between the idealism of the Declaration of Independence and the myth of the Founding, and 'the often brutal realism' and hard-edged practicality that Americans have shown in times of crisis and opportunity like the settling of the frontier. Fleming argues Roosevelt manipulated both sides of the dichotomy to maneuver America into the war on the side of the Allies. The New Dealers in his administration supported him in this, hoping to make the war a crusade for a 'New Deal for the World,' the way the First World War was a crusade for democracy.Once America was in the war, Roosevelt vacillated between the two poles of the 'profound dichotomy.' On the one hand, he publicly declared that 'Dr New Deal' had been replaced by 'Dr Win-The-War' as the physician who could cure the nations' ills, and sometimes seemed to have viewed the New Deal more as an electoral ploy than an ideological commitment (After one Roosevelt decision, New Dealer Harry Hopkins tellingly fumed, 'The New Deal has once again been sacrificed to the war effort.' Hopkins wanted the war to serve his ideological goals, not come ahead of them.)On the other hand, Roosevelt clung with grim tenacity to his 'unconditional surrender' formula, despite anguished pleas from his military commanders, Winston Churchill, the anti-Hitler German resistance, and even the Pope that all he was doing was fueling the Nazis' propaganda machine, undermining any hope of an effective resistance, and guaranteeing millions of additional casualties.Fleming traces the administration's internal battles between the New Dealers and the pragmatists -- battles that climaxed, in his view, in the 1944 jettisoning of Henry Wallace from the Democrats' vice-presidential nomination, the fight over the Allied terror-bombing of German and Japanese civilians (The Allies 'must exceed the Nazis in fury, ruthlessness, and efficiency,' Hopkins wrote.) culminating in the decision to use the atomic bomb, and Roo

Highly recommended

As the son of a WW2 veteran, I grew up with all the conventional wisdom about the war. Still, something didn't seem right. How, for example, did the Soviets take such advantage of the US? How did they gain control of E. Europe? Much of this has remained obscure, and few dissenters from the "party line" have appeared on the scene. One reviewer urges all to bypass this book and read the slavishly liberal New Deal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Anybody who has seen her on MAcNeil Lehrer newshour knows that she is a "professional liberal" and hardly creditable as an historian. Several years ago I read David Fromkin's book, "In the Time of the Americans", which is mere New Deal political correctness, and doesn't answer any questions. Finally, Thomas J. Fleming has delivered a book that gives the explanations. He demythologizes FDR and his administration...although he is much too kind about FDR's performance during the Great Depression, and also much to kind to the fatally altruistic Herbert Hoover, who was really just a Democrat in Republican clothing. This book will deeply offend any New Deal Democrat, because it exposes the New Deal as failure and fakery...anyone who has been to college knows that New Dealers took over most faculties and we're not rid of them yet...so it's hard to get anything objective on modern history from academia. The history that Fleming is writing needed to be written long ago, and this is the history that will survive, once all the New Deal historians have finally been exposed for charlatans. Don't waste your time reading Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Dallek, or David Fromkin. Read this book. It's extremely well written, too. Well worth the price.

Blatant Truth Telling

... First, Fleming not only does NOT join the conspiracy buffs (which, by the way, include the prestigious John Toland) who say that FDR planned Pearl Harbor, Fleming actually DEBUNKS those theories somewhat.Fleming interviews the captain of an obsolete warship who was sent out on what the captain describes as a "suicide mission" by Presidential order to try to provoke an incident with the Japanese. He was saved by the Pearl Harbor raid because he was called back to port. If FDR knew the Pearl Harbor raid was coming, there would have no point to doing this. Fleming shows that the racist attitudes toward the Japanese-- don't forget, our Liberal ICON FDR is the ONLY American president in this century to round people up solely because of their race imprison them-- meant that no one in the American chain of command believed that the Japanese were capable of such a raid. (Don't forget, Billy Mitchell was court martialed for saying it would happen.)On the subject of FDR's health, even the FDR worshippers will tell you that the Democrat party bosses insisted on Truman because they knew FDR was dying, and were afraid of being stuck with Henry Wallace as their 1948 nominee. The pro-FDR crowd make this deception of the American electorate proof of FDR's brillance. Fleming merely says that the people had a right to know, and that perhaps FDR was starting to believe his own press clippings when he thought that the country would not survive without his election.Fleming also exposes the fact that McCarthy was not the first to say that people who opposed them politically were sympathetic to America's enemies. FDR tried to jail some of his opponents, and was slaughered in the 1942 election when his hubris led him to say that Republicans and those who were not pro-war before Pearl Harbor were fascists.Fleming is the first in a long time to discuss how the leaking of the Rainbow Five war plans in December of 1941 affected Hitler to declare war on the US. These plans were considered a huge factor at the time, but the incident was forgotten in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. However, German documents reveal that the fact that Amercian newspapers reported that the US was planning a ten million man army to invade Europe led Hitler to declare war on the US while it was still reeling from Pearl Harbor rather than wait for a build up.Here is where Fleming engages in some speculation. No one KNOWS who leaked Rainbow Five. But in interviewing General Wedemeyer who WROTE it, Fleming does the Sherlock Holmes routine of eliminating all the other suspects leaving only FDR as a logical choice. Fleming plays fair here by showing his method and letting us draw our own conclusion.This book will undoubtedly give Doris Kearns Goodwin a heart attack. Though even in her worshipful book "No Ordinary Time" she admits much of the facts that Fleming lays out, her spin is that all of this deception was "leadership" and it showed FDR's brilliance. Fleming thinks that 50 yea