The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II

Rating:
Summary: It Would be Funny, if it Weren't so Pathetic
Review: There have been worse books about Franklin Roosevelt. I remember reading some particularly loony items during the fifteen years following his death, which included the accusations that his death was a suicide, and that his paralysis was not caused by Polio, but by Syphilis! Thomas Fleming doesn't go that far in this very unbalanced appraisal, but one gets the feeling that if he could get away with such accusations, he would make them.

The problem with this book is that Fleming doesn't approach the evidence as an impartial historian, but rather as a frustrated politician with an ax to grind. The bulk of his research is from secondary sources, which he regularly misquotes, and he fails to list plainly speculative statements as such. For example, he states that FDR, in the last year of his life, suffered from periodic transient ischemic attacks--mini-strokes, in effect. But this has been flatly contradicted by Dr. Howard Bruenn, his cardiologist. As an earlier reviewer noted, FDR's was in very poor health in his last year--he had an enlarged heart and high blood pressure--but there is no concrete evidence of mini-strokes, and Fleming should have noted that his statement was speculative.

One of Fleming's contentions is that Roosevelt's New Deal policies were a failure and that he "got us into the war" to end the Great Depression. But economists define a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. By that definition, recovery had begun within nine months of FDR taking office. True, the recovery was slow, halting, and the economy briefly slumped again in 1938, when FDR suddenly became antsy about continued deficit spending and slashed federal expenditures. But few of us who lived through those years will deny that things were better in 1939 than they were in 1932. There was recovery, if not prosperity.

Fleming also claims that FDR's administration became haphazard and disorganized during the last year of his life. The fact of the matter is that FDR deliberately cultivated conflict in his administration--that was his "management style" and it ensured that all disagreements came to his attention. Even in failing health, Roosevelt ran his administration with more eye to detail than did Ronald Reagan. Naturally, the old "Roosevelt gave Eastern Europe away at Yalta" myth comes up once again even though the Yalta accords contradict this. The problem with Yalta was that Stalin broke the agreements regarding free elections in Eastern Europe, as well as other agreements. Perhaps the most absurd claim in the book is Fleming's contention that when FDR "maneuvered" America into World War II, he failed to prepare the military. I doubt whether ever Goebells would have tried that one! For even he would have known that FDR was asking for higher defense appropriations that the Congress would approve.

Despite this book, and books like it, such as Robert Ferrell's The Dying President and Pat Buchanan's loony A Republic, Not an Empire, Franklin Roosevelt's reputation remains intact. Historians, the real kind, not the revisionists, recently rated FDR as American's second greatest President--behind Lincoln and ahead of Washington. Fleming's book will not change that rating.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: As the son of a WW2 veteran, I grew up with all the conventional wisdom about the war. Still, something didn't seem right. How, for example, did the Soviets take such advantage of the US? How did they gain control of E. Europe? Much of this has remained obscure, and few dissenters from the "party line" have appeared on the scene. One reviewer urges all to bypass this book and read the slavishly liberal New Deal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Anybody who has seen her on MAcNeil Lehrer newshour knows that she is a "professional liberal" and hardly creditable as an historian. Several years ago I read David Fromkin's book, "In the Time of the Americans", which is mere New Deal political correctness, and doesn't answer any questions. Finally, Thomas J. Fleming has delivered a book that gives the explanations. He demythologizes FDR and his administration...although he is much too kind about FDR's performance during the Great Depression, and also much to kind to the fatally altruistic Herbert Hoover, who was really just a Democrat in Republican clothing. This book will deeply offend any New Deal Democrat, because it exposes the New Deal as failure and fakery...anyone who has been to college knows that New Dealers took over most faculties and we're not rid of them yet...so it's hard to get anything objective on modern history from academia. The history that Fleming is writing needed to be written long ago, and this is the history that will survive, once all the New Deal historians have finally been exposed for charlatans. Don't waste your time reading Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Dallek, or David Fromkin. Read this book. It's extremely well written, too. Well worth the price.

Rating:
Summary: Blatant Truth Telling
Review: ... First, Fleming not only does NOT join the conspiracy buffs (which, by the way, include the prestigious John Toland) who say that FDR planned Pearl Harbor, Fleming actually DEBUNKS those theories somewhat.

Fleming interviews the captain of an obsolete warship who was sent out on what the captain describes as a "suicide mission" by Presidential order to try to provoke an incident with the Japanese. He was saved by the Pearl Harbor raid because he was called back to port. If FDR knew the Pearl Harbor raid was coming, there would have no point to doing this. Fleming shows that the racist attitudes toward the Japanese-- don't forget, our Liberal ICON FDR is the ONLY American president in this century to round people up solely because of their race imprison them-- meant that no one in the American chain of command believed that the Japanese were capable of such a raid. (Don't forget, Billy Mitchell was court martialed for saying it would happen.)

On the subject of FDR's health, even the FDR worshippers will tell you that the Democrat party bosses insisted on Truman because they knew FDR was dying, and were afraid of being stuck with Henry Wallace as their 1948 nominee. The pro-FDR crowd make this deception of the American electorate proof of FDR's brillance. Fleming merely says that the people had a right to know, and that perhaps FDR was starting to believe his own press clippings when he thought that the country would not survive without his election.

Fleming also exposes the fact that McCarthy was not the first to say that people who opposed them politically were sympathetic to America's enemies. FDR tried to jail some of his opponents, and was slaughered in the 1942 election when his hubris led him to say that Republicans and those who were not pro-war before Pearl Harbor were fascists.

Fleming is the first in a long time to discuss how the leaking of the Rainbow Five war plans in December of 1941 affected Hitler to declare war on the US. These plans were considered a huge factor at the time, but the incident was forgotten in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. However, German documents reveal that the fact that Amercian newspapers reported that the US was planning a ten million man army to invade Europe led Hitler to declare war on the US while it was still reeling from Pearl Harbor rather than wait for a build up.

Here is where Fleming engages in some speculation. No one KNOWS who leaked Rainbow Five. But in interviewing General Wedemeyer who WROTE it, Fleming does the Sherlock Holmes routine of eliminating all the other suspects leaving only FDR as a logical choice. Fleming plays fair here by showing his method and letting us draw our own conclusion.

This book will undoubtedly give Doris Kearns Goodwin a heart attack. Though even in her worshipful book "No Ordinary Time" she admits much of the facts that Fleming lays out, her spin is that all of this deception was "leadership" and it showed FDR's brilliance. Fleming thinks that 50 years after the fact, it might be time to cut through the war time propaganda and take a clear eyed look at FDR. It was certainly controversial at the time-- so much so that FDR barely hung on to power within his own party and lost it in the Congress for the last term of his presidency. But as Fleming points out, when Roosevelt died, and especially after a brilliant bureaucrat added his name to the day's casualty list, talking about all this became thought of as bad form.

It is forgotten in the haze of wartime propaganda, Norman Rockwell paintings, and Hollywood movies, that this country was as politically divided during WWII as it is today, and that there were legitimate arguments against the say FDR conducted his policies-- both domestic AND foreign. A 1944 poll showed that if the war ended before the election, FDR would get only 30% of the vote!

The biggest of these, and the one that really justifies the title of the book, is the policy of Unconditional Surrender. While it was well sold to the American public (and to school textbook writers) this policy undoubtedly lengthened the war, and caused hundred of thousands of extra Allied casualties. The driving force behind the policy was the vision of the New Dealers for a worldwide order, which could live with a Soviet empire, but NOT a British Empire, or a democratic industrialized Germany. The New Dealers' plan was to divide Germany into seven little demilitarized agrarian states, in a Carthigian sort of eternal subjugation. That, of course, was just fine with Stalin.

Luckily, Truman became president before this kind of insanity could take place, or Stalin would have been the next dictator to roll his tanks down the Champs Elyses. But lots of people died for this policy before Truman nixed it-- including, Fleming shows, a bevy of German Resistance leaders who, as Churchill later admitted, were betrayed by the Allies, and who rank as some of the 20th Century's greatest heroes.

If this book is "revisionist" than it is revisionist in the finest tradition-- challenging the consensus opinion. It is NOT, however, revistionist in the postmodern, truth is what you make of it, sense that defiles the study of history, rather than enlightening it.

"The New Dealers' War" is a great book by one of our very finest historians-- who, by the way, did not try to "rehabilitate the villanous Aaron Burr," but showed the WHOLE person of Burr, not just the cartoon, and who illuminated Jefferson and Hamilton's slanderous role in pushing Burr in the unfortunate roar he chose. Instead of ad hominem, this book should-- and will-- provoke legitimate discussion. Good!

Rating:
Summary: The Wonderful World of Opposing Points of View
Review: Having read most of Tom Fleming's historical books over the last 40 years, I have found him to be one of the most accurate researchers of all the historians I have read. Fleming's views coincide with my opinions of what FDR was truly like. As a WWII veteran who spent much time in the Pacific fighting the Japanese, I later became intensely interested in what was behind the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Independent of Fleming's views, I truly believe FDR was a master schemer and wanted this war for reasons only he would know. "The New Dealers War: FDR and the War within World War II" is stimulating and highly entertaining. As the poem goes, "If you look up and I look down" say it all about points of view. I plan to order another book to present to a friend whose views may very well be opposite of my own.

Rating:
Summary: Blatant and Revisionist Character Assassination
Review: There are two ways to research a book:

1) Conduct your research with an open mind, let the evidence guide your conclusion, and let the chips fall where they may.

2) Stack the information to back up your prejudices.

Thomas Fleming has chosen the second path. Even worse, he goes beyond bending the research to suit his ideological slant, recklessly quotes various subjects out of context(or misquotes them altogether), and engages in blatant character assassination. He also relies on dubious sources of information, such as the numerous anti-Roosevelt newspapers of the time, quoting their headlines liberally.

Particularly galling is how he engages in speculation about Roosevelt's "role" in the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. The FDR-haters began this in the 1940s, first claiming that FDR "knew" of the impending attack. When their evidence was disproved, they revised their claim to the effect that Roosevelt "manipulated" the Japanese into attacking. Pretty soon, they'll be claming that FDR had his own hand-controlled plane!

Fleming is also innaccurate, perhaps intentionally so, on the issue of FDR's health. Make no mistake, the President was in a bad way physically fron the beginning of 1944 onward: he was suffering from congestive heart failure and hypertension. There is no evidence, however, that FDR sufferred from cancer, "mini-strokes," or the various other ailments that Fleming claims. Speculation is passed off as fact here.

If you want to read an objective book about FDR's role in World War II, read Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time.

Rating:
Summary: A reexamination of FDR and his presidential policies
Review: The underlying conventional belief is that the United States entered WWII as a direct result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Thomas Fleming's book "The New Dealers' War" makes a credible argument for the case that the attack on Pearl Harbor was carefully orchestrated by FDR and his interventionist administration to get America into the war. Fleming bases his argument on a number of key points that he painstakingly documents throughout his book. The cornerstone of his argument is based upon the revelation of a document known as Rainbow Five. The document revealed that FDR had plans to create a 10 million man army for the purpose of invading Europe in 1943 and defeating the Nazi war machine. Fleming maintains that the existence of Rainbow Five was deliberately revealed by FDR himself with the intention of having Germany declare war on the United States. At that time, Americans had strong pro-Eruopean sentiments and favored aid to the allies but they stopped short of supporting direct US involvement in the escalating war. The book maintains that FDR lacked the political strength to sway public opinion in support of the war so he masterminded a series of events and policies that resulted in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the eventual declaration of war against the United States by Germany.

Whether or not Roosevelt intentionally manipulated people and events to achieve such a result remains unproven but this book does and exceptional job of examining the political climate of the time. Roosevelt's leadership during the depression is shown to be particularly magnificent. His mentality that traditional government mechanisms were inadequate led to the creation of a series of alphabet soup federal agencies that were designed to intervene in the economic crises. The "New Deal" itself was a balanced mixture of both pragmatism and Idealism. Having the ideology is one thing but implementing these ideas into practical programs required the skills of a master politician such as FDR. The shortcomings of Roosevelt's foreign policy program are magnified and examined in close detail but one comes away with a strong appreciation of the complex circumstances which he faced on the world stage. "The New Dealers' War" certainly provides numerable thought provoking questions that inspire conjecture but it comes across as an excellent work of narrative history.

Rating:
Summary: When The Legend Conflicts With The Truth, Print The Truth
Review: There have been many excellent reviews already written about this remarkable book and all of them are worth your time. I, for may part, would just like to add this coda, quoted directly from the book itself, and a passage that I believe speaks volumes about America at war:

"Meanwhile, the mixture of memory and history that constituted America's vision of World War II underwent a remarkable transformation. Forgotten were the reluctance to take up arms, the double-talk Franklin D. Roosevelt used to conceal is intention to make war on Germany -- revealed so graphically in the leak of Rainbow Five - and the provocative politics that lured Japan into the attack on Pearl Harbor. Also lost to memory was the ferocious antagonism between Roosevelt and Congress. Perhaps most forgotten were the consequences of the policy of unconditional surrender and the hateful tactics it legitimized, terror bombing of civilians and the use of the atomic bomb.
Instead, the deepening realization of Hitler's campaign of extermination against the Jews, which only a few Americans understood during the war, justified in many people's minds unconditional surrender, the ruthless air war, and even the atomic bomb. The global conflict slowly became the Good War, something that few of its participants would have called it at the time."

Does this sound familiar? And yet it has been the underpinning of every American entry into war since (and including) the American Revolution. Reading this book made me shudder as to what might have happened if, say, we were not so successful in winning this war. Suppose it had bogged down over seven to eight years? And what if FDR, in spite of his chicanery, was not as resolute in pursuing his goal? FDR's only failure in handling the war came back to haunt his successor, Truman: the underestimation of Joseph Stalin. FDR though he could win Stalin over by dint of his forceful personality, the way he had with so many others. Fleming does a great job of pointing out the ability of Harry Truman in not only bringing peace, but in keeping the balance of power. Were it not for Truman's realization of the facts after Potsdam, Stalin might well have ended up as the hands-down winner. Keeping Stalin out of Japan turned out in retrospect to be one of the crucial events of the war. Fleming does every historian and would-be historian a solid turn by taking World War II from the clouds of myth and grounding it firmly in reality.

One other note: the book's writing style is such that it is a sheer pleasure to read, which I attribute to the fact Fleming is also an accomplished novelist and thus has a way of making dry facts palatable to the mind. A must-have for anyone interested in American history.

Rating:
Summary: A reexamination of FDR and his presidential policies
Review: The underlying conventional belief is that the United States entered WWII as a direct result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Thomas Fleming's book "The New Dealers' War" makes a credible argument for the case that the attack on Pearl Harbor was carefully orchestrated by FDR and his interventionist administration to get America into the war. Fleming bases his argument on a number of key points that he painstakingly documents throughout his book. The cornerstone of his argument is based upon the revelation of a document known as Rainbow Five. The document revealed that FDR had plans to create a 10 million man army for the purpose of invading Europe in 1943 and defeating the Nazi war machine. Fleming maintains that the existence of Rainbow Five was deliberately revealed by FDR himself with the intention of having Germany declare war on the United States. At that time, Americans had strong pro-Eruopean sentiments and favored aid to the allies but they stopped short of supporting direct US involvement in the escalating war. The book maintains that FDR lacked the political strength to sway public opinion in support of the war so he masterminded a series of events and policies that resulted in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the eventual declaration of war against the United States by Germany.

Whether or not Roosevelt intentionally manipulated people and events to achieve such a result remains unproven but this book does and exceptional job of examining the political climate of the time. Roosevelt's leadership during the depression is shown to be particularly magnificent. His mentality that traditional government mechanisms were inadequate led to the creation of a series of alphabet soup federal agencies that were designed to intervene in the economic crises. The "New Deal" itself was a balanced mixture of both pragmatism and Idealism. Having the ideology is one thing but implementing these ideas into practical programs required the skills of a master politician such as FDR. The shortcomings of Roosevelt's foreign policy program are magnified and examined in close detail but one comes away with a strong appreciation of the complex circumstances which he faced on the world stage. "The New Dealers' War" certainly provides numerable thought provoking questions that inspire conjecture but it comes across as an excellent work of narrative history.

Rating:
Summary: Iconoclasm at its Best
Review: As a librarian, I read a lot of books and see even more. This book has influenced me as few before it have. Mr. Fleming makes points that few historians dare consider, and hence, few people are aware of.

The first point is that the decision to enter WWII is more popular today than it ever was when it was occurring. Not only did the vast majority of Americans initially oppose entry, but Roosevelt had to continuously engage in political contortions and distortions to ensure America continued to support it as it ensued.

Mr. Fleming doesn't explicitly state that the U.S. should have never entered WWII, but this book could sure be interpreted as such. My interpretation is that had FDR abandoned his absurd policy of unconditional surrender and cooperated with the clandestine Germans For Decency, that the Western front could've been closed in 1943 (saving countless millions of lives--including the majority of Holocaust victims). FDR's hatred for all things German led him to frivolously destroy a substantial part of the legacy of Western Civilization--much to the glee of Leftists and other enemies of the West.

One can draw numerous subsidiary points from this book. Had FDR decided to collaborate with Canaris, Nazi atrocities would've been brought to an immediate halt, leaving the combined forces, under allied control, to stop Stalin's reign of terror. Had this happened, countless lives would've been saved in addition to those lost to the war. The U.S. would've also been spared the tensions and prohibitive costs of a fifty-year cold war. This book supports contentions that FDR merely began WWII; it took Reagan to actually win it by defeating the Soviets.

Mr. Fleming also goes into great detail on FDR's naivete towards Stalin in particular, and communism in general. He deserves the full oppobrium that goes with being an acolyte and patsy to Stalin. As such, FDR's legacy also includes the enslavement of a quarter of the world's population under communism. This book is one more well-deserved nail in the coffin of FDR's favorable legacy.



Rating:
Summary: A bit of clarity in the fog of war
Review: A refreshing departure from the usual dose of idolatry and statist dogma which accompanies most accounts of presidential activities. The idea that US presidents are "great men" has got to go. Highlighting their salient flaws and errors is a necessary non-partisan activity which provides a corner stone for guessing the truth about the skills and motivations of our current leaders. We need a similar book on Woodrow Wilson, (an FDR favorite), who we may thank for the Federal Reserve system and US involvement in World War I, two of the greatest blunders ever committed in America.