POL 499: Senior Seminar in Political Science: FDR: The Winds of War

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in March 1933, he initially devoted most of his attention to finding a solution to the Great Depression. But the pull of war and the results of FDR's foreign policy ultimately had a deeper and more transformative impact on U.S. history. The Triumph of Internationalism offers a fresh, concise analysis and narrative of FDR's foreign policy from 1933 to America's entry into World War II in 1941. David Schmitz covers the attempts to solve the international economic crisis of the Great Depression, the Good Neighbor Policy in Latin America, the U.S. response to war in Europe and the Pacific, and other topics of this turbulent era. Schmitz describes Roosevelt as an internationalist who set out to promote U.S. interests abroad short of direct intervention. He tried to make amends for past transgressions with the nation's southern neighbors, eventually attempted to open and promote international trade to foster economic growth, and pursued containment policies intended to halt both the Japanese threat in the Pacific through deterrence and German aggression in Europe through economic appeasement. When his policies regarding the Axis powers failed, he began educating the American public about the dangers of Axis hegemony and rearming the nation for war. This effort required a profound shift in the American mind-set, given the prevailing isolationism, the disillusionment with America's involvement in World War I, and the preoccupation with domestic problems. A less powerful president would likely have failed, or perhaps not even attempted, to alter the prevailing public opinion. FDR revived American internationalism and reshaped the public's understanding of the national interest and defense. Roosevelt's policies and the outcome of World War II made the United States a superpower without equal.

Anew and original analysis of the mission undertaken by FDR'sSecretary of State during the Phoney War, Rofe's work explains the motivationsand goals of Rooseveltthrough an analysisthe president's foreign policy and of the nature of the Anglo-American relationship of the time."

Andrew Crawley examines US non-intervention in another country's affairs, and how it could be detrimental both to the United States and to the country in question - in this case, Nicaragua. He analyses the relations between the United States and Nicaragua during the Depression and the Second World War - the period of Franklin Roosevelt's good neighbour policy- and challenges theories about the role of the United States in the creation and consolidation of one of Latin America's most. enduring authoritarian regimes. -;Franklin Roosevelt's good neighbour policy, coming in the wake of decades of US intervention in Central America, and following a lengthy US military occupation of Nicaragua, marked a significant shift in US policy towards Latin America. Its basic tenets were non-intervention and non-interference. The period was exceptionally significant for Nicaragua, as it witnessed the creation and consolidation of the Somoza government - one of Latin America's most enduring authoritarian regimes, . which endured from 1936 to the sandinista revolution in 1979. Addressing the political, diplomatic, military, commercial, financial, and intelligence components of US policy, Andrew Crawley analyses the background to the US military withdrawal from Nicaragua in the early 1930s. He assesses the motivations for Washington's policy of disengagement from international affairs, and the creation of the Nicaraguan National Guard, as well as debating US accountability for what the Guard became under Somoza. Crawley effectively challenges the conventional theory. that Somoza's regime was a creature of Washington. It was US non-intervention, not interference, he argues, that enhanced the prospects of tyranny. -

Throughout his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt was determined to pursue a peaceful accommodation with an increasingly powerful Soviet Union, an inclination reinforced by the onset of world war. Roosevelt knew that defeating the Axis powers would require major contributions by the Soviets and their Red Army, and so, despite his misgivings about Stalin's expansionist motives, he pushed for friendlier relations. Yet almost from the moment he was inaugurated, lower-level officials challenged FDR's ability to carry out this policy. Mary Glantz analyzes tensions shaping the policy stance of the United States toward the Soviet Union before, during, and immediately after World War II. Focusing on the conflicts between a president who sought close relations between the two nations and the diplomatic and military officers who opposed them, she shows how these career officers were able to resist and shape presidential policy-and how their critical views helped shape the parameters of the subsequent Cold War. Venturing into the largely uncharted waters of bureaucratic politics, Glantz examines overlooked aspects of wartime relations between Washington and Moscow to highlight the roles played by U.S. personnel in the U.S.S.R. in formulating and implementing policies governing the American-Soviet relationship. She takes readers into the American embassy in Moscow to show how individuals like Ambassadors Joseph Davies, Lawrence Steinhadt, and Averell Harriman and U.S. military attachs like Joseph Michela influenced policy, and reveals how private resistance sometimes turned into public dispute. She also presents new material on the controversial military attach/lend-lease director Phillip Faymonville, a largely neglected officer who understood the Soviet system and supported Roosevelt's policy. Deftly combining military with diplomatic history, Glantz traces these philosophical and policy battles to show how difficult it was for even a highly popular president like Roosevelt to overcome such entrenched and determined opposition. Although he reorganized federal offices and appointed ambassadors who shared his views, in the end he was unable to outlast his bureaucratic opponents or change their minds. With his death, anti-Soviet factions rushed into the policymaking vacuum to become the primary architects of Truman's Cold War "containment" policy. A case study in foreign relations, high-level policymaking, and civil-military relations, FDR and the Soviet Union enlarges our understanding of the ideologies and events that set the stage for the Cold War. It adds a new dimension to our understanding of Soviet-American relations as it sheds new light on the surprising power of those in low places.

Thomas Eakins was misunderstood in life, his brilliant work earned little acclaim, and hidden demons tortured and drove him. Yet, the portraits he painted more than a century ago captivate us today, and he is now widely acclaimed as the finest portrait painter our nation has ever produced. This book recounts the artist's life in fascinating detail, drawing on a treasure trove of Eakins' family correspondence and papers that have only recently been discovered. Never before has Thomas Eakins' story been told with such drama, clarity, and accuracy. Sidney Kirkpatrick sets the painter's life and art in the wider context of the changing world he devoted himself to portraying, and he also addresses the artist's private life - the contradictory impulses, obsessions, and possible psychological illness that fired his work. Kirkpatrick underscores Eakins's unflinching integrity as an artist and discloses how his profound appreciation of the beauty of the human form was both the source of his greatness and ultimately of his undoing. Nevertheless, the author observes, Eakins has had his 'revenge', inspiring a new generation of realist painters and gaining the recognition that eluded him in life.

From a World War II veteran and longtime journalist, a shocking expose, based on decades of passionate research, that will be the last-and most revolutionary-chapter in the story of Pearl Harbor.

Despite all that has already been written on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Persico has uncovered a hitherto overlooked dimension of FDR's wartime leadership: his involvement in intelligence and espionage operations. Roosevelt's Secret War is crowded with remarkable revelations: -FDR wanted to bomb Tokyo before Pearl Harbor -A defector from Hitler's inner circle reported directly to the Oval Office -Roosevelt knew before any other world leader of Hitler's plan to invade Russia -Roosevelt and Churchill concealed a disaster costing hundreds of British soldiers' lives in order to protect Ultra, the British codebreaking secret -An unwitting Japanese diplomat provided the President with a direct pipeline into Hitler's councils Roosevelt's Secret War also describes how much FDR had been told--before the Holocaust--about the coming fate of Europe's Jews. And Persico also provides a definitive answer to the perennial question Did FDR know in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor? By temperament and character, no American president was better suited for secret warfare than FDR. He manipulated, compartmentalized, dissembled, and misled, demonstrating a spymaster's talent for intrigue. He once remarked, "I never let my right hand know what my left hand does." Not only did Roosevelt create America's first central intelligence agency, the OSS, under "Wild Bill" Donovan, but he ran spy rings directly from the Oval Office, enlisting well-placed socialite friends. FDR was also spied against. Roosevelt's Secret War presents evidence that the Soviet Union had a source inside the Roosevelt White House; that British agents fed FDR total fabrications to draw the United States into war; and that Roosevelt, by yielding to Churchill's demand that British scientists be allowed to work on the Manhattan Project, enabled the secrets of the bomb to be stolen. And these are only a few of the scores of revelations in this constantly surprising story of Roosevelt's hidden role in World War II. From the Hardcover edition.