Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR’s masterful—and underappreciated—command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes readers inside FDR’s White House Oval Study—his personal command center—and into the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war.
Time and again, FDR was proven right and his allies and generals were wrong. When the generals wanted to attack the Nazi-fortified coast of France, FDR knew the Allied forces weren’t ready. When Churchill insisted his Far East colonies were loyal and would resist the Japanese, Roosevelt knew it was a fantasy. As Hamilton’s account reaches its climax with the Torch landings in North Africa in late 1942, the tide of war turns in the Allies’ favor and FDR’s genius for psychology and military affairs is clear. This intimate, sweeping look at a great president in history’s greatest conflict is must reading.
A BOOK THAT WILL COMPLETELY CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT ROOSEVELT AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF
Hamilton writes with insight, passion, and a great grasp of history. I believe this book will become the standard by which other books about FDR s role in World War II will be measured. Carlo D Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War and Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874 1945
FDR has frequently been underestimated as a military leader, yielding, in the historical imagination, to George Marshall and Winston Churchill, among others. Nigel Hamilton attacks this view with his characteristic verve, portraying a president with the reins of war fully, if often subtly, in his hands. The conventional wisdom will never be the same. H. W. Brands, author of Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
This is not the Roosevelt (or Churchill) you d expect. From the start, an aggressive, in-charge FDR emerges from a wonderful weaving of established scholarship and the fascinating bits and pieces that make history live. A key entry into the ongoing debate over who made grand strategy in the early war years Roosevelt or Churchill? Warren F. Kimball, author of Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War
Nigel Hamilton has written a spirited and thoughtful revisionist study of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as commander in chief during the first phase of U.S. involvement in the Second World War. Hamilton s narrative skill brings alive the human dramas, logistic hurdles, and strategic debates to show how FDR s indispensable drive and forward-looking leadership tamed his own team of rivals and set the United States and its Allies on the road to victory over the Axis. Michael Schaller, Regents Professor of History, University of Arizona, author of Douglas MacArthur
