Rating: 
Summary: Don't attack the author's bias...
Review: ...attack your own. The back cover clearly shows that Fleming does not agree with FDR's policies, so why are some of these reviewers shocked at Fleming's views? It is because they are biased. When writing about politics it is almost impossible to remain unbiased; therefore, to understand history it is up to the reader to read works that cover the entire spectrum. Fleming shows that FDR wanted to go to war and his policies did exactly that. It is not that hard to see: Japan believed we were unprepared for war (which is true), so cutting off their supply of raw materials and oil would lead to two options: either Japan backs down or they attack. And if Japan believed we were weak, why would they not attack, especially since they have shown their aggressive nature during the time. Fleming relies on personal memoirs, interviews, as well as contemporary newspapers and other publications to argue against the pro-FDR sources. The author does use, in my opinion, the benefits of hindsight to attack FDR unfairly at times. However, one thing is for sure: FDR wanted to go to war, his policies clearly imply this, and we were unprepared; and this book does an excellent job of putting forth evidence to prove this. Fleming can be labeled a "FDR hater," but given the numerous "FDR lovers" this book is necessary and beneficial to any historian or history buff interested in this era of American history. Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, read this book; and when doing so, focus on your on views and biases instead of the author's.
Rating: 
Summary: FDR REVISIONISM
Review: Thomas Fleming's work of conservative historical revisionism is valuable and at the same time disturbing. FDR was a highly flawed preson but a great man. It is good to have some conservative balance to the Roosevelt myth. Roosevelt's flaws are documented in this book such as the manipulation a president can do to get America into a war. But that is one the reasons it is disturbing. If FDR can do such manipulation, conservative revisionists should ask can other -more recent (Republican ) presidents do the same type of manipulation ? Roosevelt can be faulted for interment camps and as Fleming does very well documents the presence of Soviet agents such as Hiss in his administration. This reviewer wished there was more liberal (too many right wing attacks without the other side being presented) balance for this book can be used by isolationists for their own ends. If the author's thesis was that WW2 was not a noble cause then that is disturbing. Many antisemites and Hitler apologists make similiar claims. If the author thinks we should have fought Hitler then some balance should be included how Roosevelt 's actions were necessary. The book is well documented but needs more of an objective look in order to claim the mantle of scholarship.Fleming's claims that unconditional surrender caused the war to be extended is not proveable.Also attacking Roosevelt for not disclosing the Holocaust and doing more about it is somewhat fallacious. People on the right (Lindberg) would probably prefer that we didn't fight in WW2 ,so if we listened to the right wing back then the Holocaust would have continued unabated. FDR deserves the crefit for recognizing the evils of naziism .As said previously more objectivety is needed or this book starts to become right wing propaganda.
Rating: 
Summary: Conservative Propaganda
Review: I am an avid WWII reader/amateur historian and was very anxious to read this book when it was released. However, after I reached somewhere around page 30 I quickly realized this book was a attempt to manipulate facts in order to put down liberalism and instead actually encourage isolationism. I found Fleming's non-stop attack on FDR as arrogant and petty. I also thought of FDR as an arrogant man who manipulated situations and people but Fleming takes this theory and simply makes every situation appear that FDR was not a great leader instead of one of the reasons the world is safe today. I would highly recommend passing over this book, unless you are a conservative looking for false justification for why World War II was not a noble cause.
Rating:
Summary: FDR: "A second-rate intellect but a first-rate temperament"
Review: FDR: "A second-rate intellect but a first-rate temperament" Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous characterization above is far from the common memory of FDR, both on the part of his greatest admirers and worst detractors. For the former FDR was a real giant astride the great crises of the last century, molding and shaping events by dint of an enormous reservoir of altruistic personal and mental energies. For the latter FDR was an evil genius working malevolence with unparalleled skill according to an insidious master plan. I believe the great service of this book is that it begins to cut through the great fog of memories that enshrouds the actual person of FDR. What really emerges from this work is a portrait of a man who, despite his admittedly prodigious political and personal skills, is actually otherwise quite small both spiritually and intellectually. Far from being the great war-leader of the last "good war", FDR in my opinion proved himself to be quite out of his depth. To make matters worse he seems to often to have been driven to policies out of no better motivation than his own personal and petty predilections and prejudices. Japan, for example, was indeed led by a vicious military clique that had to be stopped, but the Japanese people were not the inherently evil race of inferior buck toothed, bottle-glass-wearing yellow monkeys of common prejudice. FDR's war policy with respect to Japan should have been the total defeat of the militarists and not the "only good Jap is a dead Jap" travesty that led ultimately to the atrocious firebombing raids on Tokyo and other cities and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that would have required a leader with real vision. Instead we got a total war of vengeance against the Japanese people as well as concentration camps on our own soil filled with tens of thousands of U.S. citizens (!) without even the pretense of judicial proceedings or even a scintilla of evidence as to even a single act of espionage or sabotage. Likewise we can see in FDR's policy for the war in Europe a narrow vindictiveness totally out of synch with the great humanistic image commonly held of him. Not content to destroy fascism in all its forms, FDR was driven by a subjective and anachronistic hatred of "Prussian militarists" as well as a general antipathy towards all things German. As pointed out in the book, the Junker elites that haunted FDR's imagination had long since passed as a dominant or even important force in German politics and "war loving" German generals had actually opposed every pre-war aggression perpetrated by Hitler (much to his fury), tried to overthrow him both before and during the war, and even made several assassination attempts against him. Nevertheless, according to FDR's post-war vision Germany was to be dismembered and de-industrialized in accordance with a sort of Anti-Marshall Plan, even if this meant the starvation of millions of German civilians. Some other of FDR's wartime imbecilities: - Set the pre-war goal of 50,000 warplanes to be produced per year because the number 50,000 "sounded good". We spent half of our huge armaments budget during the war on aircraft, cranking out ten of thousands of clunkers like the P-39 and P-40 when superior aircraft (like the P-51, in limited production before Pearl Harbor and actually cheaper and easier to build) were pushed to the side for years. The tens of thousands of heavy bombers we built at enormous cost had to justify their existences so we pretty much bombed haphazardly with no appreciable effect on enemy war production, but with a decided negative (from our standpoint) effect on enemy morale. If you read any military history of the German Army from their viewpoint you will discover that the common soldier often felt that their country was undergoing "9/11's" on a regular basis, and this led many of them to fight furiously to the bitter end. - At minimum stumbled into war in 1941 when our policy was to avoid war until at least April of 1942 due to our lack of preparedness. What was he expecting when we organized a worldwide oil embargo against a militaristic country at war and totally dependent on imports for its energy needs? - The invasion of French North Africa (adamantly opposed by most American generals) was based largely on the naïve premise that the French would not resist and would even welcome their American "friends". This actually only resulted in enabling the Africa Corps to hold out for months longer than they would have been able to otherwise (since they were able to retreat into the rugged terrain of Tunisia) with no offsetting benefit for the Allied cause. This also led to the utterly pointless invasions of Sicily and Italy, which nevertheless caused hundreds of thousands of Allied casualties. - And by far the worst: our "see no evil" alliance with Stalin. Remember we actually signed on with the Soviets before Hitler had even begun the Holocaust. At the time Stalin was the undisputed mass murderer of all time (actually Hitler never actually "caught up" with him in terms of raw numbers murdered) and had even joined in on the spoils with Hitler in the invasion of Poland as well as conquering/making war on Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania. Even considering that we had no choice to ally ourselves with the Soviets, we ought to have done so with our eyes open not with the sickening "Uncle Joe" sycophantism of FDR's true blue New Dealers and without the pathetic and sophomoric antics employed by FDR to "get at" Stalin (as if he were some sort of back-woods congressional hick that could be schmoozed into agreement). Perhaps some or even many of the mistakes and miscalculations would have been made by any number of contemporary American politicians. FDR, however, has been held up as a "great" war leader. I believe that this excellent book goes a long was towards correcting this memory with some actual history.
Rating:
Summary: Flogging the Old Dead Horse
Review: In "Pearl Harbor: The Untold Story," Gordon Prange and his co-authors spoke of the rancor some conservatives and isolationists felt for Roosevelt as something "so deep they could not bury their hate." I am afraid that Mr. Flemming, going over the same ground as covered by Flynn and Barnes and Toland still finds it far to much fun to hate Roosevelt then to dispassionately view him as a man with weaknesses and strengths, but who nevertheless was a genuine patriot, who like Lincoln was more controlled by events then controlling them. This type of book with its invective and use of half-truths and out of context facts gets on my nerves, almost a much Doris Kearns Goodwin's hagiographical treatment of the Roosevelts. There is an a lot of legitimate criticism that can be aimed at Roosevelt and how his love of ambiguity and disorganization in his administration aggravated the 1941 crisis with Japan and created the two front war he and his military advisors were in fact desperate to avoid. Other people and nations have wills of their own, decisions that they make and must be responsible for finally. The Japanesee militarists were the ones that attacked and chose war with the United States and Great Britain, a war they knew was a desperate chance so that they could continue their costly war against China. Hitler was not provoked by something that was already obvious to him. But he was impulsive and Japan's great victory at Pearl Harbor and his sublime underestimation of the United States are the best documented reaasons for his declaration of war against the United States in December 1941. Skip this book and read Prange and others and get the full story.
Rating:
Summary: Never has so much been written by one man on so little.
Review: But I'm a sucker for World War II & FDR minutiae & I liked this book. Thomas Fleming has a problem with FDR & he has found his niche-writing revisionist history.
It is true that FDR did little to advance the cause of civil rights. But he was a man of his time: white, wealthy & paternalistic towards blacks, in particular. He was in fact more enlightened (with the help of Eleanor) than most of the power elite of the day. He also had to have the support of the white, southern bigots. That's called compromise. You get the best deal possible or nothing.
His treatment of Jews was way ahead of the American public. Internment of Japanese-Americans was inexcusable by any standards.
Mr. Fleming biggest problem with FDR is his insistence on unconditional surrender of Germany & Japan. In my view he misses the bigger, global picture of that strategy that could take another book to refute. But the effect of it on Germany, on military conspirators in Germany, on the Soviet Union & Japan have had repercussions even to this day. Any deal for less than
unconditional surrender with anyone in Germany might have triggered a cease fire agreement between Hitler & Stalin. It almost happened anyway given Stalin's paranoia.
In any case FDR had a war to win. He had a job that could have killed a healthy man, which he wasn't. Mr. Fleming writes with the 20/20 politically correct hindsight of a 21st century historian. It is still good reading.
Rating:
Summary: America's role in World War II, flaws and all
Review: Thomas Fleming writes a new WWII book from a fresh perspective, from the home front. Books, politicians, headlines, and characters that never make it into generalized historical volumes on the war are focused on here. In FDR's struggles, one can easily see a modern Republican or Democrat president operating under similar constraints and uncertain allies. An early theme of the book is how FDR looked for excuses to lure America into a war with Japan, to then do battle with Germany. Fleming does not explore what would have happened had America delayed entry into this war, obviously what happened was better for our country and the world. Similarly, Fleming condemns Roosevelt for pursuing an "unconditional surrender" with the Germans. He conveniently forgets that such a policy settled the Civil War in our country decisively, compare that to civil wars being mediated right now that have lasted for decades. More importantly, Fleming does not explore what could have happened had german plotters overthrown the Reich and brokered peace with the Allies. FDR knew the germans were racing to develop atomic weapons, the clock was ticking. Had FDR followed Fleming's advice, WWII might have ended with the United States, the UK, and Russia home to smoking irradiated craters. Great plan! The book does have its good points, but again and again one must come to the conclusion that a monday-morning quarterback will always have better plays than the team who performed on sunday. Fleming's book does a great job of focusing on the home front during the war, and that is the best reason to read it. His predilection for "what if?" scenarios should have been edited out.
Rating: 
Summary: An Alternative Interpretation
Review: Of little doubt is Fleming's credentials, nor does one call into question that the specific events described in "The New Dealers War," did actually unfold during the Roosevelt years. Regretfully, however, Fleming's narrow-minded and vitriolic presentation of FDR and his "New Deal Philosophy," make his historical account difficult to swallow for even the amateur historian. The list of subjective assertions and "half-truths" are numerous, yet I will attempt to contain my comments to those of particular denigration. First is the assertion that Roosevelt lied his way into World War II in order to promote the New Deal ideology world-wide. Most historians have long asserted that Roosevelt and his administration supported policies (the Japanese oil embargo being one) in a surreptitious attempt to lure the Axis powers into declaring war on America. However, the rationale behind this deception is conspicuously absent from Fleming's account. Remember, the 30's were a time of global depression-an economic catastrophe never seen before. Roosevelt was faced not only with spiraling unemployment rates, inflation and internal unrest, but also with tyrannical forces abroad. Like his mentor, Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt realized quickly that he presided over a pivotal yet precarious time in history. The forces of evil (in Europe and Asia) were challenging representative democracy and popular sovereignty while intangible market forces threatened the essence of market capitalism. Perhaps another argument could be made, contrary to Fleming's assertion that FDR was bent on entering the war in order to promote the liberalism of the New Deal, that Roosevelt and other moderate New Dealers wanted to be a player in the post war New World Order. Had the United States not entered the war, and for the record, the conflict was called appropriately, World War II, rather than The New Dealers War, America would have had NO voice in rebuilding a paralyzed Europe and Asia, leaving both regions, as well as the former European colonies in Africa & Southeast Asia even more vulnerable to Communist influences. Because of isolationist tendencies in Congress as well as the electorate (and do not forget these forces kept the U.S. out of the League of Nations after WWI), FDR did, in fact, have to "lure" the Axis into conflict so that he could justify a declaration of war. While it is unsightly and could be argued, "un-American" or "anti-New Deal idealism," the reality of the time necessitated such action. Imagine a world in which the Soviet Union (already under attack by and at war with Germany) would have dictated the terms of surrender and post war occupation. Would Britain, France, West Germany and Japan have become the thriving market capitalist economies that they are today? Would the United States have prospered from their consumerism? Secondly, Fleming spends a great deal of time and ink on the idea of "unconditional surrender" and it's failure in achieving the objectives of the war, which according to Fleming, was the "New Deal's" global permeation. However, if one relates the policy of unconditional surrender to the political, economic & historical environment, one can clearly see that unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers was the only option to make the world safe for democracy. Just as Lincoln sought to destroy the South through a war of attrition after 1863, Roosevelt recognized the necessity in defeating the old world order-a goal that was laid out during the First World War but was unfortunately shorted in the end. Preserving democratic institutions and self-government were inherent in the New Deal policies. While some "alphabet" bureaucratic institutions went a bit far in their reach into the economy, the essences of the policies were altruistic. Finally (for this review..there are plenty of other contentious issues in Flemings work), is the negative connotation associated with The New Deal. Ignoring the last half-century and the various abuses and failures in the social welfare system, imagine what may have happened had Roosevelt not initiated and supported these "socialist" and "liberal" programs. The 30s became a staging area for the greatest crisis to hit capitalism since it's inception. While other parts of the world reacted to the same forces by rising up in bitter and bloody class warfare or turned to totalitarian dictatorship and racial bias, the United States turned to her tried and true democratic institutions to mitigate the economic suffering of her people. While many of these programs proved unconstitutional and perhaps were not as successful as historians such as Fleming would like, America never did dissolve into social revolution. Rather, America's people were given hope that the tomorrows may be a bit better than the todays. Sadly, this is a point often missed among learned historians evaluating the time period. It is by far, one of the most important and significant aspects of the Roosevelt years. The beauty of historical reflection is it's artful nature; completely devoid of scientific or empirical evidence. History's impact is left solely to the interpreter and his/her interpretation. The historian's responsibility is to interpret events objectively; to do so, one must put aside political or other compromising persuasions to view the entire historical, economic and political environments of the era being studied. While this venue is not an appropriate one to refute Mr. Fleming's grotesque and often sophomoric partisan viewpoints of FDR's leadership, it is important to differentiate between historical reality and the historian's fiction, the later based on preconceived notions while the former is inveterately rooted in fact. Given the fluidity of the period coupled with the complexity and intermingling of the key issues, it is of little wonder why events and motives appear skewed. For one to hone in on the abstractions or idiosyncrasies of the individual (FDR),would minimize the integrity and significance of historical reflection. While Mr. Fleming's piece does have it's place in history, of that there is no doubt, it should not be the sole reference point for individual study of the New Deal or World War II. To do so would undermine the significance of the era.
Rating: 
Summary: Thank God for Harry Truman!
Review: The Second World War is surrounded by a popular mythology: that of The Last Good War, fought by The Greatest Generation, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as its avuncular leader, who assured the American people in upbeat fireside chats that all they had to fear was fear itself. Trusted and beloved because his New Deal had pulled the country out of the Great Depression, his only critics were "economic royalists" and "isolationists" of implicitly crypto-Nazi sympathy. Thomas Fleming, in "The New Dealers' War," explodes one after another of these clichés. The New Deal failed to bring America back to prosperity. Our economy lagged behind recovery in the rest of the industrialized world. Roosevelt was elected on the Democratic ticket by a ramshackle coalition of southerners (who remembered that Lincoln and Grant were Republicans), big-city machine politicians (largely Irish-Catholic), labor unions (ranging from rather conservative trades unions to the Communist-tinged CIO), and left-wing intelligentsia types (many of whom looked to the Soveit Union as a moral model). These disparate constituencies were at war with each other almost from the start. Roosevelt mastered them because he was a consummate trimmer, and had instinctual charm and an ability to sense who could be useful to him. As Fleming amply documents, he ruthlessly disposed of subordinates and supporters when expediency demanded, despite their often touchingly naïve loyalty to him. These tactics began to wear thin as Roosevelt's second term drew to a close. Some New Deal measures had proven oppressive and unpopular, not just to big-business "economic royalists" that Roosevelt (himself a scion of inherited wealth) loved to disparage, but amongst farmers and shopkeepers. Southern Democrats grew restive and often allied themselves with Republican conservatives. As Roosevelt sought to take a more active rôle in the brewing European war, "isolationist" sentiment brewed not only among Republicans, but among liberals like Sen. Burton K. Wheeler (D., Mont.). After Pearl Harbor, war policy became a battlefield contested between those who focused purely on military goals, and liberal New Dealers who saw it as a means to extend the New Deal, with its aims of "economic democracy," to the entire world in a coming "Century of the Common Man." Principal among them was the teetotalling vegetarian Vice President Henry A. Wallace. Antagonists to the New Dealers included Jesse Jones, the Secretary of Commerce, numerous members of Congress, "dollar-a-year" men from big business corporations, and Democratic party leaders outside Washington. Roosevelt rode herd on the lot of them using his usual techniques, and was able to maintain what he most desired - his personal dominance. Roosevelt's usual methods of trimming and playing both ends against the middle were not as successful with foreign politicians like Churchill and Stalin. Roosevelt frustrated the former and was bamboozled by the latter. As the Venona decrypts show, the Soviets were successful in infiltrating the highest levels of the Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt was oblivious to this and wilfully turned a blind eye to Soviet treachery, deceit, and inhumanity - sending to Samoa, for example, the Navy liaison officer who brought him the news that the Polish army officer corps had been massacred at Katyn by the Russians. In this rosy view of the Soviets, Roosevelt was encouraged by Wallace and left-wing aides like Harold Ickes. Those who believe World War II was a moralistic crusade against Nazi inhumanity will be startled to read of Roosevelt's rôle in suppressing news of Nazi genocide for fear of feeding suspicion that the Allies were fighting "the Jews' war." Roosevelt also ignored considerable resistance to Hitler at the highest levels of the German military. Encouraged by his leftist New Dealer advisors, he believed that aristocratic militarists and "Prussian Junkers" were responsible for the ongoing war, just as Allied propaganda placed them behind World War I. In fact, the German nobility loathed Hitler. The regular officer corps, largely drawn from this class, regarded him as a disastrous commander who wasted the lives of their troops. Many had seen at first hand the atrocities committed by the SS in the rear guard of the eastern front. Honorable men and devout Christians amongst them - officers like Canaris, Witzleben, Stülpnagel, and Rommel - were sickened, and plotted constantly to depose or assassinate Hitler. Roosevelt rejected all efforts on the part of these decent Germans to communicate with the Allies. The policy of "unconditional surrender" and the publicity given the vindictive Morgenthau plan in the war's last months were highly counterproductive and served only to prolong fighting.
On the home front, Harry Truman, who had obtained re-election to the Senate without assistance from Roosevelt, was making a reputation for himself as a watchdog over the war effort, exposing waste and boodling by corrupt bureaucrats, contractors, and labor unionists. The machinations leading up to the dumping of Wallace and the nomination of Truman for Vice President in 1944 are fascinating to read. Roosevelt's usually successful trimming seems in this case to have spilt over into painful vacillation. He probably sympathized at his deepest level with the rhapsodic leftism of Wallace, but was shrewd enough ro realize Wallace would have been a liability to the ticket. He did not so much select Truman as his running mate, as he allowed him to be selected. Truman's success at the convention was a very near thing. Fleming's account is a worthwhile record of the days when nominating conventions had a substantial function instead of being publicity events as they are today. This book is not a reactionary Roosevelt-hater's polemic. The clear hero in it is no right-wing Republican, but Harry Truman - a pragmatic liberal and a canny politician who was at the same time a man of integrity and sound judgment. Most importantly, Truman harbored no illusions about communism. The nation - and the world - should be undyingly grateful for that.
Rating:
Summary: FDR without tears (Apologies to Tom Wicker) ;-)
Review: "The New Dealers' War" is a valuable history of "the last good war" AS IT ACTUALLY SEEMED TO THE PEOPLE LIVING IT, not by the hindsight most historians use. Invaluable, though some folks may have a problem with the somewhat less than reverent view of FDR held by the author.
|
