Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment
Review: Roy Jenkins, in his biography of Churchill, characterized the Morgenthau Plan as a "fairly crack-brained plan." It hardly seems worth all the research and effort to write a book in which the central figure is Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and the central matter is his plan to make post-war Germany into an agrarian country. It turned out to be full of sound and fury, but signified nothing.Readers of Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919" will have some idea of the background for the resurgence of Germany militancy and, probably, the problems arising out of the fact that World War I was not "taken to the Germans." The idea of requiring unconditional surrender was thus a good one. The issue of the holocaust was certainly a great influence on most of the allied participants (although probably not Stalin), but the real story here was not the debate about the Morgenthau Plan, it was the story on the ground as World War II was ending and thereafter, and that story was told only in a brief last chapter. It may sell more books to purport to deal with the activities of Roosevelt and Truman, and Michael Beschloss obviously enjoyed exposing the faults of each of them, but ultimately the story told was tangential to the real one, and was not worth the time spent to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Engrossing, A Different Take on WWII
Review: I enjoyed "The Conquerors" and Beschloss's narrative voice. Most WW II tomes tackle the entire war or one of the major players. "The Conquerors" instead tells the story of one piece of the WW II puzzle: how the Allies planned to handle Germany after the War. From this vantage point, you view the different personalities and events of the War. I have read many books on WW II; yet I learned many new things from this book. FDR's manipulative and controlling managerial style truly came through as you see different individuals trying to push their "German plans" through the political machinations of the administration. Stalin's brilliance and cruelty come through in the descriptions of his reaction to various plans. As other reviewers have noted, this book focuses a great deal of its attention on Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury, whose lapsed faith in Jewish traditions was restored by the horrors of the Holocaust. I would have given the book 5 stars; however, I felt that Beschloss could have discussed the Marshall plan and its impact on post War Germany in greater details.
Still I would recommend "The Conquerors" to history and WW II buffs. Most likely, you will learn something new.
Rating: 
Summary: The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hit
Review: Creating government policy is not easy. Decisions result from consideration of many shifting factors and many different perspectives. Beschloss has written a superb account of the creation of one of the decisive US government policies of the 20th century--what to do with Hitler's Germany after WW II. The author traces the evolution of Roosevelt's thought, the intricate trail of policy input resulting from Roosevelt's chaotic management of his staff, the massive effort made by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to impose a harsh peace, the president's interplay with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, and the effects of FDR's flagging mental and physical abilities on eventual decisions. Beschloss also recounts Harry Truman's efforts to master large amounts of information about formal and informal agreements among the Big Three allies when he suddenly became president upon Roosevelt's death. The final chapter assesses the result of Roosevelt's and Truman's policies, concluding that their decisions to rebuild Germany as a strong pro-democracy bulwark in the heart of Europe affected the history of the Cold War, and indeed the contemporary world.
Rating:
Summary: Great reading, explores WWII History in a wonderful way
Review: Michael Beschloss, in his new book The Conquerors, tells the tale of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and their roles in the defeat of Hitler's Germany during World War II. The book focuses on the period 1941-1945, and Beschloss' writing style makes for easily understood reading. Although the book seems to spend a tremendous amount of time discussing Henry Morgenthau (Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury), this is easily understood as the plot unfolds. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to everyone interested in the political history of the World War II era. I feel that the only drawback to the book is that there is an entire chapter devoted to post wartime activities in Germany. In my opinion, this chapter is unnecessary, since neither Roosevelt nor Truman was strongly involved in the daily operations in Germany after the war ended.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've ever read on World War II
Review: I've read many books on World War II and the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and I've never had as wrenching and exciting a history reading time as I had from reading The Conquerors.
The Conquerors begins with an assassination plot that almost worked against Adolph Hitler and tells that British secret conspirators working for Winston S. Churchill were trying to do the same thing (which I didn't know).
The author tells that Franklin D. Roosevelt at the time was thinking of castrating Germans and turning Germany after World War II was won by the British and Americans and Russians into "scorched earth."
This was amazing because Roosevelt was also not doing very much about the Holocaust, despite that many Jews and others had asked him to try to help Jewish refugees into the United States and to ask the Pentagon to see "what might be done" to help stop the murder of the Jews in Europe.
Also F.D.R. was in terrible physical shape and was thinking of quitting being President and going to the U.N. Interestingly enough, Eleanor Roosevelt did not intercede to try to stop the murder of Jews, which surprised me a lot.
In the end, Harry S. Truman becomes President and despite his anti-Semitic remarks against Jews, he decides that the best way to make sure that there won'ty be any more Holocausts or world wars from Germany will be to punish those Nazis and try to get the Germans to be like us Americans.
It's probably a very good lesson for all of us as President George W. Bush thinks of bringing the United States into a war against Iraq.
In this way, The Conquerors is history but it also tells us something about the times that we live in. I couldn't forget the characters in this book and it seemed like I was living through a theater play.
I wish more historians wrote their books this way because not only do you learn a lot but also it is like watching a film or an exciting TV show.
Rating:
Summary: Book about Henry Morgenthau
Review: This is a book about Henry Morgenthau and his plan to make Germany an agricultural country after the war, and to take away all German industry.
It is also about Morgenthau and his conversion from an accounting type to one that wanted to help his fellow Jews after he found out about the German death camps. Roosevelt and Truman are included as supporting actors in this book about Morgenthau.
The book probably took 11 years to write because the author must have been as bored writing it as I was reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Superb research, enlightening story...
Review: I don't have much new to add to these other well done reviews. This is very interesting and not often discussed period of history. The characters are vivid and Beschloss writes quite well. We learn about the incredible divisions in FDR's cabinet and you can't help but think of the Bush war cabinet. While not setting the world on fire, this book is a piece of excellent history. I would have liked more on Truman and his struggles in his early days, but overall the book is fair, interesting, and taught me many things.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: The Conquerors by Michale Beschloss is one of my new faviort books on the market. If you are a history buff like myself i highly recomand this book for you. The book starts a bit slow but soon explodse with the first atempt to kill Adof Hitler.The book starts off with the United States Presendint Roosevelt and soon leads into Trumans Rain. I really could go on for hours about this great read but i dont whant to spoile the whole book for you. i highly recomand this read for a history buff like myself. plez give it a chance you will love it.
Rating:
Summary: Morgenthau Plan
Review: "The Conquerors" by Michael Beschloss.
As so many of my fellow Amazon reviewers have noted, this book ought to be entitled, "The Morgenthau Plan". The celebrated Historian, Michael Beschloss, has produced a well-written volume documenting the in-fighting of the Roosevelt Administration on this plan for dealing with Germany after the war was won. The events after the cessation of hostilities show that the Morgenthau Plan was really implemented. Mr. Beschloss , as with so many American historians, has neglected, or at least, minimized reporting what happened to the eastern part of Germany. In the west, Allied bombing had destroyed most of the German industry, In the east, the Red Army did the same. Towards the end, Adolph Hitler issued orders to destroy everything in the path of the on-coming Soviets. Some fanatical German units did just that, while others ignored the Fuhrer's orders. Thus, in May 1945, Germany was fundamentally devoid of industry, with the only untouched areas being small farming towns and villages. The Soviets then forced Germans to leave East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania, and, in turn, forced the Poles west to these now unoccupied lands. This has been called the greatest forced migration in history. Beschloss briefly mentions this on page 258, where he reports that Stalin "... insisted that giving German land to Poland should be no problem because no Germans were in the region." The result was a de facto implementation of the Morgenthau Plan: the reduction of Germany into an agricultural nation, struggling to feed its people. It seems that it was not until the 1949 Berlin Blockade and the subsequent Berlin Airlift that Americans, British and French began the re-vitalization of German industry and the re-birth of the German nation. Self-interest? Or Christianity and Kindness"? (p.105). One has to wonder if Stalin had been more subtle or more surreptitiously clever, if the Iron Curtain would have reached west to the Rhine and Germany would have disappeared. Five stars for excellent writing; three stars for addressing a different subject in a somewhat incomplete fashion: four stars average.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad, Nice Book, Not 5 Stars.
Review: As a reader one tries to pick and choose books and learn something as they read. The problem with the WW II books now, such as this book, is that it is all or mostly secondary sources. These sources are old documents, tapes, films, and literally hundreds if not thousands of other books on the subject. Plus we are talking about old stuff, that is now pretty well forgotten and the original authors are for the most part dead. We cannot go back and talk to people to see if indeed these are the proper conclusions that are more accurate or would have changed anything in the way the war was run. I suspect not. The book on the surface is well done. It is well researched and nicely organized and presented. It has some good photographs. But I remember as a child in the fifties of seeing and reading series after series of WWII books such as Churchill's own series and others. These were being written by the living participants. Now we have more books with "fresh" material. I think it is a nice book of moderate length and nice photos and lots of tidbits of information. But it is just one more book in a long series of post war analysis. Churchill I recently read has 67 biographies in print. For that reason I think it merits just 3 or 4 stars. Three stars. Recommendation: neutral Jack in Toronto
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