FDR: The War President, 1940-1943: A History (Hardcover)

by Kenneth S. Davis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The fifth volume of Kenneth S. Davis's magisterial, much-praised biography follows FDR from his re-election to an unprecedented third term in November 1940 through New Year's Eve, 1942, when he screened a brand-new film, Casablanca, at the White House. During the intervening 25 months, President Roosevelt prepared a reluctant nation for the war that he knew was coming, then struggled to maintain the government's commitment to his New Deal social programs, as well as the conflict overseas. Like its predecessors, this installment combines shrewd, intimate psychological insights into Roosevelt's character with a sweeping historical narrative of world events and a superbly detailed account of Washington political maneuvers--all three laid out in grave, elegant prose. Perhaps Davis's most notable achievement lies in tracing the links between FDR's personality and his leadership style: the unexpected benefits of his maddening indecisiveness, his ability to use even his crippling physical handicap to political advantage, the way in which the adult president cemented personal and professional ties with the evasive charm that he developed in adolescence to defend himself against a smothering mother. Admirers of serious yet accessible biography can regret only that the author's death in 1999 means that there will be no concluding volume to this magnificent series, which has shed so much light on one of the more complex men ever to inhabit the White House. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
Davis, who died in June 1999, was in his usual excellent form with this last book in his critically acclaimed, five-volume portrait of the man many consider our greatest 20th-century president. We can probably blame Davis's untimely end for an untimely conclusion to this volume, which wraps up its narrative in December 1942 (a year and a half before D-Day) rather than with FDR's death in April 1945, shortly before the close of the war. That excusable flaw aside, his account is brilliant and engrossing in its vibrant and carefully researched portraits of Roosevelt as war politician, diplomat and commander-in-chief. Davis skillfully narrates Roosevelt's subtle diplomacy (both domestic and foreign) before Pearl Harbor, when the president did an end run around isolationists by orchestrating what Davis describes as a "guided drift toward war." Later, Davis lets readers sit beside the commander-in-chief as he directs the movement of ships and men that resulted in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (May and June 1942, respectively), the long siege at Guadalcanal (August through December 1942) and the success of the invasion of French North Africa (Operation Torch) in November of '42. The narrative is similarly adept in its profiles of FDR's closest wartime associatesDMorgenthau, Stimson and Hopkins among them. In the end, however, one inevitably leaves this splendid book wishing for more and for a proper conclusion, and wishing as well that Davis had been granted the time to give it to us. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 864 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (November 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679415424
• ISBN-13: 978-0679415428
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #321,622 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #22 in

  Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( R ) > Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inscrutable mystery......, October 14, 2006

By	Mr Bassil A MARDELLI "Antoun" (Riad El-SOLH , Beirut Lebanon) - See all my reviews

To the layman, FDR's name is associated with Pearl Harbour dilemma and the consequential entry of USA into WWII.
We have read the memoirs of Winston Churchill and seen impassioned appeals (some were even desperate) by the Allied player (France's Reynaud and England's WC) to the American President to interfere. Yet the appeals never effectively addressed the American public opinion.
The French never understood how FDR could be a `leader' in his country and at the same time stood powerless to make decisions.
The French, in the bloody and crowded events that encroached them in first half of 1940, could not fully appreciate the American System.
But the British did.
The public opinion in the USA, during 1939 and 1940, was one that when the allied had an edge in any battle against the Germans `so what, you see anyway they can win without us (USA)' when Germany was winning, the thinking was `Okay, since it's all over we better stay out, there is nothing we can do anymore'.
American public opinion was divided and pacifists regarded the French appeals to `come to their rescue', emotionally hysterical. The French must have known how far was FDR bound by the congressional limits that formulated USA foreign policies.
FDR could not have possibly made his decision apart from the American system, based on personal whims, notably when re-elections were due. FDR was bound to make American voters to see how far he was not missing any opportunity-however small- to prevent an all-out war.
We should remember that before the war FDR had asked the Congress to approve his request for arms embargo to any country in a condition of `aggression' and the Congress refused unless the embargo applied to all countries concerned.
Many American felt the Nazi had been forced to fight a war they never wanted.
British propaganda machines were able to convince a big chuck of the public opinion in the USA that the Nazi had actually betrayed the Versailles Treaty (Post WWI). Wall Street and money mongers were also supporting this thesis. When Germany signed non-belligerent pact with USSR, many pacifists in America claimed that the war between the Europeans was imperialist in nature and urged FDR not to enter forcibly into it. FDR was even accused by the very few American Communists that he was indeed planning to do this.
Although the French wanted them to come sooner than later, Churchill was convinced that in the end America would go to war, and he knew how far FDR depended on the public opinions at home.
In his memoirs WC recounted that Lord Lothian (British Ambassador to USA) saw FDR and discussed `among other things, the danger facing America if a) some part of the British fleet fell to the Germans hand in the event of Nazi victory and 2) what are the chances of USA `being at war with Hitler' 3) FDR reiterated that `much depended not only on American Public Opinion but also on whether before that time dictators had taken some action which compelled the USA to go to war in self-defence' 4) only Congress could make commitments to war.

Was FDR aware of the Japanese attack (`sudden attack' as the world was led to believe at all times) before it happened?
Or had someone held from him the intelligence, which was then available that an air strike was forthcoming?

Pearl harbour was the real casus belli that justified to the American public opinion the urgency of their country to enter the war, after all this was the highly coveted compelling opportunity for USA to fight in self-defence.

When will historians be able to access the documents to sort out this inscrutable mystery?

It may remain a mystery though because the worst thing for any leader is to hurt the intelligent minds of his people.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good -- if cranky -- biography of FDR, June 22, 2001

By A Customer

Kenneth Davis (b. 1912) dedicated the last thirty years to his multi-volume biography of FDR. The current volume takes the story up to 1943 and there will be no concluding account, due to the author's death in 1999.

Davis, a skeptical admirer of the elusive FDR, has axes to grind. It is a pet thesis of his throughout the biography that humankind's technical wizardry has run far ahead of his social skills and that the result has been disaster. Humanity creates weaponry (e.g. nuclear weapons), the destructive potential of which exceed its political maturation. This is an historical cliche. Fortunately, such jejune "analysis" does not interfere with the narration: it is just the author's hobby horse.

Davis also believes that the great bane of the 20th century was the growth in private corporate power. He is, in this sense, a real New Dealer. His railings against Big Business would not be out of place at a Ralph Nader rally. He is skeptical of the great industrialists, such as Henry Kaiser, whose organizational skills are often credited with helping to win the war of production. For Davis, the capitalists simply feathered their nests and then extended their stranglehold on the economy into the postwar world. This, too, is pretty much a cliche and one that Davis does little to document.

The author does a good job at catching the president's shifty character and political opportunism. Observers sometimes wondered if there was a real FDR, or if he was all just sleight of hand. Davis also revels in the personal gossip that accompanied FDR's presidency, the most entertaining we ever had except for, perhaps, that of Bill Clinton.

The author grinds a few other axes, as well, in his analysis of Roosevelt's war presidency. He is convinced that the USA could, and should, have intervened earlier in the war. That it did not resulted, he claims, in the extended tragedy of 1939-45. This is unfair. Roosevelt was well-aware of the dangers posed by the Axis. However, he was also well-aware of the fiasco of Woodrow Wilson's postwar leadership and the corrosive skepticism of the public toward European politics. FDR tried, in the famous "Quarantine Speech," to move America toward some sort of collective security -- and the result was a political firestorm. As president of a democracy, FDR held no brief to shoehorn the United States into a war not wanted by its own people. (The subsequent lesson of LBJ should convince us of that.)

But, the Holocaust is the issue on which Davis really gets ahead of his evidence. He is adamant that FDR should have done something about it -- but has no idea what. In fact, the murder of the Jews was a tragedy that the United States was helpless to prevent or even mitigate. Consider, for instance, that nearly half the murdered Jews were killed by roving German killer squads in the vastness of the wartime USSR. What, precisely, could FDR do about that? There are many other such examples. The heart, understandably, cries out against the horror of the crime -- but a cri de coeur is not analysis. Until 1943, the allies were losing the European war. They were not in a position to do much of anything.

Davis has some rare harsh words for George Marshall, whom he accuses at one point of duplicity. Marshall's towering reputation, however, survives intact. Davis is, likewise, hard on Henry Stimson, whose integrity he doubts -- but doesn't tell us why.

The book is extensively detailed and reads well. Some editing would have useful as it simply meanders too much. This, however, may be a function of the writer's death, which may have robbed him of the full editing process.

There is more verve in this extended biography than in the late Frank Freidel's rather wooden account of FDR. There is, as well, less hagiography than in Schlesinger's mutli-volume account of the New Deal. FDR is, perhaps, our most fascinating president and certainly far and away the greatest of the twentieth-century. He is,in fact, the ONLY great one of the past hundred years. And, this is a good account.

Finally, Eleanor recedes somewhat into the shadows here, and that is all to the good. Compassionate, she was. But, FDR was in charge, not Eleanor. She is an icon of the feminist movement and this leads current histories to over-rate her influence. She was an attractive nag -- but not Roosevelt's conscience. He, and he alone, was the soul of the New Deal. The same was true of the war years. Harry Hopkins was the real alter ego. Davis gets this exactly right.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fifth volume in a magical FDR biography, January 20, 2001

By	Candace Scott (Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

I've purchased and enjoyed the four preceding Kenneth Davis studies on Franklin Roosevelt and this volume continues a masterful biographical effort. Davis' books are extremely detailed and if you have a peripheral interest in Roosevelt, he would probably not be the historian of choice. The minutiae he provides is a delight Roosevelt fans who love the slightest tid-bit on their hero. His research methods are sober, industrious and trustworthy, his FDR-bias generally masked.

The strength of this study is the focus upon FDR's masterful manner of maneuvering an isolationist power into war. The chapters on Lend-Lease, while not providing any new information, still make for riveting reading. The Churchill-FDR political and military partnership is also explored in depth, with Churchill justly taking some heavy criticism for some of his decisions and meddlesome efforts into the Allied offense against Hitler.

The only criticism is that Davis does not focus sufficiently on FDR as a human being and the vast importance of Eleanor Roosevelt is somewhat obsfucated. I would have liked to have seen some exploration into Eleanor's relationships with Lorena Hickock and Earl Miller, and a greater emphasis on FDR's relationship with Missy LeHand, his secretary.

Still, Davis' effort is an excellent continuation on his epic Roosevelt biography. I can't wait for the concluding volume.