Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill's Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency [Paperback]

Robert Shogan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 1999

With Hard Bargain, Robert Shogan offers an account of one of World War II’s most dramatic chapters—the story of how Franklin D. Roosevelt secretly brokered a deal to provide the destroyers Winston Churchill needed to save Britain from destruction. At the center of the momentous events of 1940 are two extraordinary leaders: Churchill, the forthright pragmatist, and Roosevelt, the suave politician. As Hitler’s war machine threatened to starve England into submission, these two men initiated a complex negotiation that would shatter all precedents for conducting foreign policy. FDR yearned to enter the war, but was handcuffed by domestic politics. Churchill had to plead for American intervention at a time when the United States was intensely isolationist. Drawing on archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Shogan masterfully recreates the President’s maneuvers as FDR stepped around the Constitution in order to clinch the deal, a move that has had repercussions from Korea to the Persian Gulf.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hitler's U-boat offensive was on the point of starving the British into submission when, in May 1940, Churchill appealed to Roosevelt for "forty or fifty of your older destroyers." Shogan (Riddle of Power) tracks the tortuous negotiations between Washington and London, with FDR juggling strong domestic isolationist sentiment and the mandates of third-term politics before making a deal in which the British allowed the U.S. use of certain sea bases in exchange for 50 WWI warships. In the end the destroyers did not come up to expectations, and the bases were not as useful as had been hoped; nevertheless, the ships helped stave off Hitler's domination of the Atlantic shipping lanes. In this instructive account of how the president closed the deal without seeking congressional approval, Shogan argues that a pernicious precedent was set, enabling chief executives to override constitutional guidelines under the pretense of protecting national security. Urging total disclosure, increased candor and full accountability, Shogan contends that our presidents can cause harm with foreign policy prevarications: "Presidential lying is not only immoral, it is also impractical." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Journalist Shogan, the author of several books on the presidency, most recently Riddle of Power: Presidential Leadership from Truman to Bush (LJ 1/91), enters a crowded field writing about Franklin Roosevelt. As history of FDR's 1940 destroyers-for-bases deal, which was a key to the Anglo-American wartime alliance, his book is similar to Philip Goodhart's Fifty Ships That Saved the World (1965), another popular account deriving from facts established by William Langer's Challenge to Isolation (LJ 1/15/52), a scholarly landmark. As argument that FDR's diplomacy was unprincipled, the book likewise has ample company, for example Frederick Marks's Wind Over Sand: The Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt (LJ 5/1/88), which made similar points at length. As the FDR page-turner promised by an excited subtitle, finally, this is far outclassed by Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time (LJ 6/15/94). Shogan's latest is not bad; it simply doesn't offer enough to count as more than an optional purchase.?Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (September 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813336953
• ISBN-13: 978-0813336954
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,036,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Roosevelt & Churchill - what a duo!, January 3, 2003

By 

Eric Hobart (La Center, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill's Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency (Paperback)

The very title "Hard Bargain" leads one to believe that the book is going to focus on the negotiations that took place between Roosevelt and Churchill to obtain the desired result. The subtitle of "How FDR Twisted Churchill's Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency" begs for a somewhat different story.

In this book, Robert Shogan does a great job of explaining the deal that was struck between Roosevelt & Churchill to trade 50 aging US destroyers for leases on British posessions near the US. However, Shogan does not (in my opinion) do the subtitle of his book justice (with the exception of the "new" preface) until the very last chapter.

This book seems to paint FDR as an egocentric who was more concerned about his Presidency than the defense of Britain, and more concerned about keeping his nose clean in the eye of the public than consummating a deal that could greatly benefit the nation.

My recommendation is that anyone interested in the acts that brought about the idea of Lend-Lease read this book with a carefully inquisitive view about the author's treatment of FDR. Anyone interested in understanding how FDR really changed the Presidency to be the office held by Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush, really should skip this book and find one more focused on politics than the history of a single deal between two nations.