Prelude to War
America’s entry into the Second World
War has been told many times before, perhaps best in recent years by Michael
Fullilove and Susan Dunn. Thus historian Marc Wortman faced a difficult task to
add value. He partially succeeds and he does it with the writing style of a
novelist making the book easy to read. Where he is most interesting is in
presenting the very active American role in the famous sinking of the German
battleship Bismarck and his very lengthy discussion of Phillip Johnson who
would become a world famous architect, as a very active Nazi sympathizer who
was almost indicted for treason. He also covers the role of the young Nelson
Rockefeller as a state department official organizing our efforts to counter
Nazi influence in Latin America.
He leaves out Dean Acheson’s role in
coming up with the legal analysis that enabled FDR’s bases for destroyers deal
and the role of American communists in their shifting from being pro-war to
anti-war and back to pro-war as they cleaved to the party line coming out of
Moscow.
As a result if a reader is not familiar
with the history, Wortman’s book would be a good start in learning how
Roosevelt with starts and stops moved the Nation to face the reality of the
Nazi menace.
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