Rating: 
Summary: The light dawns; additional comments
Review: I lived through WWII so I have memories of the things covered in the book. Fleming clarified them for me, though. One of them was the Jones-Wallace feud, which was just a blur, but is now clear. Another was the deception plan to conceal FDR's decrepitude from the public. It was rumored at the time and there was plenty of comment about his famous five-hour ride through New York in the rain, but Fleming goes into detail. One of the most important clarifications was on the Hitler declaration of war against America. It wasn't just loyalty to an ally - the publication of the US war plans by the Chicago Tribune had convinced him that we'd be ready by 1943, so he should strike in '42. It almost worked for him, too, as witness the success of the U-boat campaign on the East Coast in the first half of 1942. A boy I knew was walking on the Rockaway Beach boardwalk one day that winter when suddenly there was an explosion and a ship on the horizon went down. The next thing he saw was the planes flying over from Floyd Bennett Field, but though they probably claimed a U-boat sinking, we now know that it was months into the war before even one was sunk. Another semi-deception, not mentioned by Fleming, was the suppression of news of our Midway victory in June 1942. I saw a story on it in the New York Sun, but no pictures and no follow-up. The blackout was so complete that at the end when the Daily News printed a chronology of the war on V-J Day, Midway wasn't even mentioned. The reason was obvious: people would have relaxed and stopped knocking themselves out to win the war. So the deception can perhaps be excused, if you accept the idea that Japan was an enemy that had to be crushed at all costs. Like everyone else at the time, I thought this. Today I wonder. Today I've returned to my roots, which were Irish-American and isolationist, like Fleming's. As a lifelong media buff I got detached from them through the massive influence of the public opinion industry in this country. But now, reverting as I said, I question whether any of America's wars since the Revolution made any sense at all. I can't find a decent excuse for them, right up to Vietnam, which was the real Roosevelt Memorial War, instigated by people with isolationist roots who had been corrupted by interventionism as practed by the two Roosevelts and Woodrow Wilson. Well, never again, I hope. Let Roosevelt's memorial continue to be the 22nd Amendment, which reflects the opinion of those who knew him best - the so-called Greatest Generation. Roosevelt himself seems to have considered them the Gullible Generation, with his phony "Nazi" maps and his indignation against U-boat attacks made against American ships attacking them but, as Fleming shows, he wasn't going anywhere with his hype until he managed to bring about the Pearl Harbor attack. Claire Booth Luce summed it up best: "He lied us into war". Other books worth reading about this period are "A Senate Journal" by Alan Drury (McGraw-Hill Co., NY, 1963) and a novel "Caroline Hicks" by Walter Karig (Rinehart Books, NY, 1951). Add: I left out a couple of things when I first wrote, but have time to add them now. One of them was a note about the venue Roosevelt used for his famous "Agayn and agayn and agayn" [I say...your boys won't be sent into any foreign war]speech was Boston, the biggest Irish-American and anti-British community in America. Talk about sticking your head in the lion's mouth. But it was the way for him to have maximum impact on a bloc of voters he needed. They half-believed him and he won Boston. No one fully believed him, and for years after, just pronouncing the word "again" in the FDR way was all that was needed to remind people of the way they'd been taken into camp. In my review I also omitted to thank Mr. Fleming for his hilarious description of Roosevelt's formula for ridding himself of inconvenient people he didn't want around Washington. He had a place for them to go -- China. China needed inspection, of a high-level kind. It was just the place for people like Henry Wallace and Donald Nelson, so off they went. Things got to the point where Budget Director Smith begged to be informed immediately if any White House conversation was overheard in which the words "China" and "Smith" were both used. Some of the reviewers have been pretty bitter about Mr. Fleming's debunking job, but even they should be willing to admit that stories like that are just too good to miss even if the author doesn't worship at their shrine.
Rating: 
Summary: Fleming had an ax to grind. It is very dull
Review: One of the major theses of this book is that FDR unwisely insisted on a policy of unconditional surrender, which not only prolonged the war, but resulted in millions of additional deaths not only on the battlefield but in the concentration camps. This premise can be challenged on two counts. The first is that there were enough good Germans, with sufficient power, to overthrow Hitler. Recent studies show, that despite their political leanings, average Germans enthusiatically embraced Hitlers regime and his removal before defeat would have resulted in another generation of "a stab in the back" paranoia. Which brings us to the second count...only 20 years before we agreed to a negotiated peace and the ambiguity that that engendered led directly to another, more devasting war. For a historian to neglect to place events within a historical context, especially within the span of one generation, calls into question his creditials as a historian. Obviously Fleming had an ax to grind. It is very dull. By now, all you crazed Roosevelt haters should see the value of FDR's unconditional surrender policy. George Bush did not insist on it in 1991 and we are paying dearly for it now. It's incredible that some people think we could have made a deal with the "good" Nazis. I suppose these same people now advocate a deal with the "good" terrorists! The only way to combat evil is to destroy it completely.
Rating:
Summary: FDR: worse than we ever thought!
Review: This book is what we Roosevelt haters have longed for for half a century. No hater of "that man in the White House" and his awful wife could have thought in fantasy half as much as Thomas Fleming demonstrates in fact. This book should be required reading for all liberals, Democrats, and leftists, and for all Jews I would recommend mandatory reading or a period of mandatory community service if they refused! Jews in America think FDR saved them from Hitler. In fact he prolonged Hitler's reign long enough to allow him to finish off the Jews he had not yet begun to kill in massive numbers. Without FDR, as without Woodrow Wilson, the 20th Century would have been less violent and less disastrous. And what about poor Joseph McCarthy? He was only a couple of years out of date! Fleming shows that there were over 300 Communist spies in the New Deal administration working directly for Stalin, unknown to FDR but clear evidence that FDR & Co. were themselves security risks.
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Summary: Why this book hasn't been reviewed by the NY Times yet.
Review: A carefully documented and very critical review of FDR's 3rd and 4th term. A very nice read. No new information but organized and presented in way that is devastating to FDR'd reputation as a war leader. With this in hand we can be thankful that the Constitution has been amended to prevent more than two terms per President. Left wingers will consider this libelous or even treasonous. Read with an open mind and you will understand how the power of the President can be used to fool the people.
Rating:
Summary: FDR Book Assessment
Review: Very interesting! Key aspects are: 1. Properly de-canonizes St. Franklin. (Where was the Devil's Advocate when we needed him?) This deed and no. 2 are worth the book's price! 2. Properly de-canonizes, again, the Soviets & Communism - yet those zombies still walk about. 3. White-washes the Japanese & Germans. "The-Devil-Made-Me-Do-It" defense is tough to gag down. 4. Repeatedly, I caught myself losing lock- the book is really about Franklin & Eleanor, right? Not Bill & Hillary? That's right, isn't it? 5. The author's arguments are very questionable, heaping so much blame on FDR for how we got into WWII and unconditional surrender on the ending. He uses a lot of card stacking & info cherry picking; correlation not proving causality & fails to give due credit to Japan's & Germany's ability to get into trouble entirely on their own. He fails to credit the war for helping to cause subsequent good changes in Europe/Asia. 6. Best quote -Re: Chinese Communists & Nationalists:(circa 1949) "Much too late, Secretary of State Dean Acheson admitted that the U.S. had sought "the reconciliation of irreconciliable factions"". In 2001, how does that apply? -try, e.g., Chinese Communists & Nationalists, Middle East, Yugoslavia, Africa, No. Ireland, Indian sub-continent. 7. On 2nd thought, we ought to give Franklin his sainthood back - we owe him big-time for the 22th amendment; president term limits!
Rating: 
Summary: Revisionism for its own sake
Review: There is no doubting that Thomas Fleming is a thorough historian with all the necessary qualifying criteria - good research, valid sources, critical acceptance by colleagues. Nevertheless any author that is promoted by his publisher as revisionist and controversial is always under pressure to prove it. With THE NEW DEALERS WAR Mr Fleming certainly goes about living up to the billing with gusto; the individual and historical role that is revisited with zeal is Franklyn D Roosevelt and his third term, specifically his leadership just prior to our entry into WWII. I certainly don't prefer hagiography as a form of biography but the problem with this revisionist portrait is this: just as worshipful analyses look at only one dimension of a person, this book also offers only a limited perspective. While the portrait that emerges here is true and shows FDR as a terminally ill, fumbling, and sometimes cynically political man, it is still only one dimensional. By focusing on FDR's third term, Mr Fleming completely ignores the innovative, motivational and inspirational person that FDR was in his earlier terms. This book is well written, thoroughly researched and certainly offers a new perspective on FDR. Read it certainly but then don't stop there, read another. A balanced analysis still remains the best biographical methodology.
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Work
Review: There are truths about Franklin Roosevelt that many, especially the American Left, just don't want to face. This astounding book will likely receive harsh criticism from the literary elite because it forces them to take a cold look at America's only president who found himself unable to let anything other than death loosen his grip on the reigns of power. For example, Fleming documents FDR insistence on putting Asians into concentration camps over the objection of J. Edgar Hoover. That's right, J. Edgar Hoover objected. Despite this, FDR sent Asian people to jail simply for being Asian. Doris Kearns Goodwin's apologetics notwithstanding, this was not the act of a "man of the people." Bravo to Mr. Fleming. Keep 'em coming.
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Summary: HERE IS THE FUNNIEST BIO SINCE 'DUTCH'
Review: You want a laugh? Borrow " The New Dealers' War" from your library . Not since Edmund Morris signed off on a fictional bio of Ronald Reagan in 'Dutch' has anyone produced such a hilarious piece of absolute nonsense .The style is that of an Australian tabloid writer .The thing is written from old clips and tongue-in-cheek stuff about Roosevelt's war .The language is that of Joe Sixpack.Look at the 6 paragraphcs of hype on the back cover and you'll catch on . This is for people who appreciate MAD magazine .
Rating:
Summary: An adult, clear -eyed view
Review: It is not surprising that this book, which seeks to apply adult and objective standards to events that have already assumed mythical proportions,has generated such fervid hair-tearing among those most entranced by the New Deal mythological mantra created (as Fleming clearly describes in the book) as part of the liberal wing of the Democratic party's attempt to deify itself and preserve the crumbling fabric of New Deal programs at the onset of WWII. Anyone with the remotest real world experience of politics and government will recognize the plausibility of Fleming's description of an administration in its third term trying to restrain the entropic forces that arise after eight years of largely unfettered power. I am astonished by both the stupidity and the political naivety of the editorial reviews cited from (apparently) academics (although one correctly raises concerns about over-reliance on secondary sources); the reader's reviews demonstrate a much more mature and intelligent understanding of this period. Despite the wailings of myth worshipping New Dealers and the (less prevalent) I-told-you-so's of conspiracy theorists, this book is NOT anti-FDR. If you hold your passions in check for even a moment, it becomes clear that this is a very clear-eyed picture of the forces acting on, and the responses of, a highly capable and intellectually devious man caught in the web spun by the history of his own time in office. He makes mistakes, serious ones, but the reasoning that led him to them is portrayed clearly and without passions; he was sick and declining (after all, he did die in office) and it is fair commentary (and vital history) to recognize the issues associated with his decline. Harry Truman looks very good, but it is clear that in part this is due to the fact that he did not depend upon Roosevelt for patronage and could afford (indeed required for survival) his independence. Wendell Willkie and Henry Wallace come out less well, but then again, both men were naive and more than a little foolish. This is an EXCELLENT book; complicated adult motives are attributed to complicated adults; complex and unpredictable results arise from complex situations. In short, this is history, not myth - the story has many eddies and cross currents and does not lend itself to tear-in-the-eye maudlinity aboout WWII. It demonstrates, in an adult fashion, why the war WAS so important - that despite doubts, political opposition, ideological posturing and mistakes of emphasis, timing and goals the administration recognized the fundamental correctness of the fight and saw it through to a triumphant conclusion.
Rating: 
Summary: Fleming's Political Instincts
Review: Thomas Fleming's credentials as a 21st century observer of times past, need no defense. He is an accredited historian, an award winning novelist, and an astute analyst of the geopolitical winds that inexorably sweep over us. His latest book, "The New Dealer's War...." is an insightful investigation of that fateful "FDR era", a period which has indelibly left its marks on the face of America and the world. Having lived through the period of the Great Depression, WWII and, quite obviously, what has ensued since, I take issue with those who would suggest that Mr. Fleming's book is "revisionist". To the contrary, in my view, he has expressed what so many have deeply and secretly felt for so long but, about which they have kept their own counsel---WWII and its after effects was not a matter of fate. Indeed, the the real revisionist would have us believe that FDR was "as pure as Pilate's wife". Mr. Fleming' book proves otherwise. And let us not overlook the unique political perspective that Mr. Fleming brought to bear in writing this book.As the son of a Democratic leader, his youth was spent in watching, learning and remembering the chicanery that emanated from the legendary reign of Frank "I am the law" Hague, in Jersey City, N.J. His ability to perceive the flaws in the FDA era, as presented in his book, was thus sharply honed by his experience in observing Democratic "politics" of the era. His leap from accurately analyzing the mentality of Frank Hague, to accurately analyzing that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a short one.
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