The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

James David Robenalt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

Warren Harding fell in love with his beautiful neighbor, Carrie Phillips, in the summer of 1905, almost a decade before he was elected a United States Senator and fifteen years before he became the 29th President of the United States.  When the two lovers started their long-term and torrid affair, neither of them could have foreseen that their relationship would play out against one of the greatest wars in world history--the First World War.  Harding would become a Senator with the power to vote for war; Mrs. Phillips and her daughter would become German agents, spying on a U. S. training camp on Long Island in the hopes of gauging for the Germans the pace of mobilization of the U. S. Army for entry into the battlefields in France.

 

Based on over 800 pages of correspondence discovered in the 1960s but under seal ever since in the Library of Congress, The Harding Affair will tell the unknown stories of Harding as a powerful Senator and his personal and political life, including his complicated romance with Mrs. Phillips.  The book will also explore the reasons for the entry of the United States into the European conflict and explain why so many Americans at the time supported Germany, even after the U. S. became involved in the spring of 1917. 

 

James David Robenalt's comprehensive study of the letters is set in a narrative that weaves in a real-life spy story with the story of Harding's not accidental rise to the presidency.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Warren Harding's philandering while in the White House has already been documented, but Cleveland litigator Robenalt reveals an earlier, perhaps more unwise love affair by the Ohio politician and then U.S. senator. More than 100 love letters reveal Harding's jealous affair with Carrie Phillips—an alleged German spy—between 1905 and 1917. As Harding's political career rose, so too did his proximity to America's eventual Great War adversaries as Phillips's extended family was tried for espionage and suspicions alighted on her. This dangerous liaison illuminates a public figure at his most intimate, human and vulnerable, jealously begging for fidelity from his mistress even as he debated in letters her vocal pro-German stance and publicly addressed the nation to decry Germany's contempt for neutral rights and horrifying disregard of the rights of humanity. The richness of previously sealed, highly personal correspondence compensates for Robenalt's abrupt meandering between the history of Harding's affair and that of the espionage trial of Phillips's in-law, Baroness Iona Zollner. However, Robenalt fails to frame the Harding affair as one with political or historical repercussions. (Sept.)
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Review

"Intimate, revealing -- and sometimes downright embarrassing -- the newly revealed love letters at the heart of The Harding Affair provide an altogether fresh look at a future American President hopelessly in love with a woman not his wife."

--Geoffrey C. Ward, author of A First-Class Temperament and The War: An  Intimate History, 1941-1945

 

“A crackling history by Greater Cleveland lawyer James David Robenalt gives Ohioans a peek, five years early, at court-sealed love letters that Warren G. Harding, the last Ohioan elected president, sent to his long-time mistress, Marion neighbor Carrie Phillips. Considering that they deal with a presidency that ended 86 years ago, that's saying a lot… Hard to put down.”

–Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Warren Harding has always been ranked as one of the worst U.S. presidents. But [this] book might just boost his image. Readers will see a tender, human side of Harding and also learn about his opposition to President Woodrow Wilson's nation-building efforts abroad after World War I -- an issue that still resonates. If he had assumed the presidency in 1917 instead of 1921… [it may have] led to an outcome that would have drastically changed the course of the 20th century.” –The Columbus Dispatch

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230609643
• ISBN-13: 978-0230609648
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #714,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have written two books, and both are related. I was born in western Ohio in 1956 and grew up hearing about my great-grandfather, William W. Durbin, but we had few family archives. When my mother died in 1990, I began to research Durbin and what I found led to my first book, Linking Rings, W. W. Durbin and the Magic and Mystery of America (Kent State University Press 2004). Durbin was the first elected president of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and a leading Ohio Democrat. He helped Woodrow Wilson win the nomination in 1912 and FDR in 1932. When he died he was the register of the Treasury under Roosevelt.

Durbin grew up 30 miles west of Marion, Ohio, where Warren G. Harding was raised. He became friends with Harding because of magic, but the two were political enemies. Little did I know the book about Durbin would lead to my involvement with the Harding love letters, but like magic, the letters came into my possession resulting from an event I did to help publicize Linking Rings.

Harding's letters to his mistress, Carrie Phillips, are true national treasures. Rarely do we get a chance to enjoy such an intimate look into the private life of a public figure. The letters required a great deal of work to properly date and understand, but the journey was worth it.

In my professional life (as a lawyer in a Cleveland-based firm of over 400 lawyers) we teach our young lawyers how to deal with evidence and how to present cases in ways that are persuasive. But in the end, we are advocates, taking sides in a controversy. In writing history, I have tried to gather evidence, as I would as a lawyer (shifting through the written record and witness statements), but it is much more important to try to remain neutral and objective, letting the evidence take you wherever it goes. Avoiding advocacy is difficult, especially since there is a natural tendency to become engaged with the subject of your history. But the story, if is is genuine, should tell itself. I think great stories will make great reading, and it is important that a reader learn something about history in the process.

Harding's love letters raise two extremely important historical questions:

(1) Did Carrie Phillips convince him not to run for president in 1916? (If so, world history might have been changed. Harding likely could have prevailed had he obtained the Republican nomination (Charles Evans Hughes won the nomination), as he likely would have taken Ohio, which went for Woodrow Wilson by 90,000 votes. Harding then would have become the country's war president. And perhaps the United States may never have become involved in the war. Certainly the Versailles Treaty would have been handled differently. Counterfactual arguments abound.)

(2) Did Carrie Phillips become a German spy?

Read the book and decide for yourself.

I think she did become an agent for the German government. But I wrote the book in a way that allows the reader to decide.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Read, Lots of Interesting Characters, July 26, 2009

By 

Alan Dale Daniel (Carson City, Nevada, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

The Harding Affair

by James D. Robenalt

The time setting; an age of prim and proper people. Nice girls, and certainly upstanding gentlemen, simply did not have extra-martial affairs in 1905. Wanna bet? The future president of the United States of America will engage in just such an affair with the wife of one of his good friends. And he got away with it... kind of.

Carrie Fulton Phillips was the woman. On a couples trip to Europe with the future president,Warren Harding,and his wife and Carrie's husband, she managed to find romantic time alone with him. From that moment, until just before Harding took the stage as president, they enjoyed one another's intimate company - often. The affair was back dropped by World War I, and Harding's conflicted views about war with Germany while a US Senator.

So what, you say? The "so what" is, Carrie may have been a German spy. There is no doubt she was a German sympathizer. Her entire family enjoyed strong connections to Germany. And there was a bit more. A German-American baroness, daughter to Wilhelm Pickhardt, an American millionaire of German descent, somehow managed to take up residence near a US Army base while enjoying the company of many officers, some so much younger than the older, but still handsome, divorcee Baroness Iona Zollner. A Postmaster spotted the connection to Jim Phillips and his daughter Isabelle, to whom a navy lieutenant named Pickhardt was writing letters. The Postmaster informed higher authorities who then followed the trail to Carrie Phillips, and Harding. The Bureau of Investigation quickly uncovered rumors of the affair in Marion, Ohio.

Was the intriguing Carrie really a German spy? Did Baroness Iona Zollner have a connection to Harding's girlfriend? Was Carrie the key to Harding's ambivalence to US entry into WW I? After the Congress voted for war with Germany, Carrie's letters to Warren disclose her belief that this is the worst move possible for the United States, and the nation will regret its decision down the road. The estrangement got worse as time progressed. When Warren told her he might be chosen as the Republican nominee for president, she began to blackmail him with his passionate letters. She kept them. It was those letters, all 106 of them, 788 handwritten pages, that were found and form the basis for Robenalt's book.

Naturally, the letters simply do not disclose complete details (I will not give away the ending or the details). But what they do in spades, is give the reader an insight into the mind of Harding, and how he thought about the world around him. This is a 19th century mind, struggling with 20th century problems. Harding, often viewed as a footnote in the presidency, told the South, in Birmingham Alabama no less, that Jim Crow legislation was the wrong path to the future. He approved of other progressive legislation as well, but his death put an end to any chance for greatness.

As a story, the book is compelling. The author brings the reader along quickly, and keeps interest high by dealing with more than one story at once and pulling them closer together chapter by chapter. A good, fun read.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Harding's Story More Than Historical Footnote, September 10, 2009

By 

Sherry Hall - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War (Hardcover)

Through Jim Robenalt's book, Warren Harding becomes more than just a sentence in a history textook stating that, yes, he was president in 1921, and yes, he appointed a man to his cabinet who orchestrated the Teapot Dome oil scam. Warren Harding now emerges as a complex human being like any other human being, one who exhibits human emotions as he tries to make sense of the world in which he lives. The letters he wrote to Carrie Phillips demonstrate that she was the passion in his life, sometimes the sounding board in this life, and sometimes the curse in his life. I applaud the author for using the letters as a backdrop to a great story, rather than the story itself. He excruciatingly worked to plug the bits of information in the letters into a timeline, which is extremely valuable for the reader to see how Harding's thinking about world affairs evolved, how the Great War consumed everyone, and how a very complicated time in history is so little understood today. Harding's letter-writing was nothing atypical in that time in history -- it was an art, a pasttime, a gift to the recipient. The letters he wrote to family members and even constituents reveal the same careful thoughtfulness. If the book prompts readers to want to find the real Warren Harding and the real 29th president, rather than the myth and that scant sentence in the history text, then it has done its job.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Page-turner, August 24, 2009

By 

Susan L. Belman (cleveland, ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War (Hardcover)

This captivating book has all of the elements of a fictional page-turner: larger-than-life characters, steamy romance, espionage and politics-Yet, the amazing thing is that the book is all historical fact, thoroughly researched and beautifully written- Robenalt tells a great story that also gives the reader a rare glimpse into what was previously undisclosed American history-The author deftly weaves the tales of possible espionage, and the politics in America at the time of Harding's presidency with Harding's emotional-often erotic-letters to his mistress, Carrie Phillips-Through these letters, a picture of Harding emerges that few would have guessed existed- Quite simply, the stories are spellbinding- This book is a rare treat-It both entertains and educates the reader-