My Amazon Review of Henry Hemming's "Agents of Influence...."

Churchill’s Man in New York

On the 36^th floor in the Rockefeller Center International Building (630 5^th Avenue) at the elevator bank for the offices of Capital Research there is a small plaque commemorating the work of William Stephenson for his efforts to bring the United States into the war against Nazi Germany. It was out of those offices in 1940 and 1941 that Stephenson ran a vast apparatus to influence an isolationist America to enter the war. 

Henry Hemming tells the story of how a boy who was born in Winnipeg, Canada’s red-light district grew up to be a World War I ace flier, established a successful business in the booming 1920s British radio industry which then morphed into a European-wide investment company. The information network that he established caught the eye of MI-6 led to his recruitment to head-up British efforts in the United States. What makes the book especially interesting is that William Stephenson was the author’s grandfather’s godfather. So in a way through family lore, Hemming is connected to his protagonist.

It is in New York that Stephenson establishes a far reaching network that encompasses the pro-intervention Century Group, Wendell Willkie and future advertising mogul David Ogilvy who was then working for the Gallup Poll. His most important connection was with Bill Donovan whom he convinces of the need for the U.S. to establish a centralized intelligence agency and it is with that connection Stephenson gets access to the White House. Stephenson schools Donovan on the art of intelligence. Donovan initially establishes the Office of Information Coordination, which morphs into the Office of Strategic Services and then in 1947 becomes the CIA.

Stephenson faces off against his German counterpart Hans Thomsen who out of the German Embassy was in the business of funding pro-German groups, funding supportive Congressmen, most notably Hamilton Fish of New York and feeding speech and newspaper article ideas to the pro-German aviator Charles Lindbergh.  

We see that in 1941 Stephenson engaged in the same tricks that the Russians used in the 2016 elections.  He generates “fake news”, funds pro-intervention groups, sabotages pro-German and anti-intervention groups, forges documents and plants articles in the New York Herald Tribune which for all practical purposes became an arm of British intelligence. Along the way we meet song writer and expert forger Eric Mashwitz and Ian Fleming who would later write the James Bonds spy novels.

Hemming, utilizing recently declassified sources, tells Stephenson’s life story with great verve. It still remains a wonder how Stephenson pulled everything together and managed to move American public opinion, along with the facts on the ground and in the Atlantic, towards intervention prior to Pearl Harbor.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R17KRNE7A0VOBM/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Eric Rauchway's "Winter War: "Hoover, Roosevelt and the First Clash Over The New Deal"

Not Quite a War

UC Davis economic historian Eric Rauchway elevates the personal dislike between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt into a war that would determine the future of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Simply put, he way overstates his case and demonstrates his very clear left-liberal bias. To be sure Hoover is a sore loser and acts that way, but their disagreements can hardly be characterized as “a war”.

Rauchway’s thesis is that Hoover consciously acted to abort the New Deal in the womb.  To me the disagreement was far more personal than political and given the economic crisis it would have been far better for both of them to work together the way George Bush and Barack Obama did in 2008, but alas that was not the case. Beneath the surface while Hoover and Roosevelt were having their spat Hoover treasury officials Ogden Mills and Arthur Ballantine were working hand-in-glove with income treasury secretary William Wooden to deal with the banking crisis. In fact Jonathan Alter in his "Defining Moment" noted that “the Hoover men essentially designed the blueprint of FDR’s rescue of the banks.” Thus if the generals were at war the lieutenants certainly were were not.

Rauchway argues that Hoover’s ideas were a precursor to the Republican southern strategy of the 1960s. To his credit he does note that the African-American vote began deserting the party of Lincoln in response to Hoover’s treatment of them during the 1927 Mississippi River Flood and his failed supreme court nomination of the racist John Parker in 1930. That is all true, but the fact remains Roosevelt sold out to the southern barons of the Senate to pass his program and it was the Republican Party that was the party of civil rights well into the 1960s and especially with the nomination of Wendell Willkie in 1940.

He also argues that Roosevelt as early as 1932 was well aware of the threat that the rise of Hitler presented to the democracies. Yet he blew up the 1933 World Economic Conference that sent a clear signal to Hitler that the U.S. was abandoning Europe. Indeed from 1933-38 was probably the most isolationist period of the 20^th Century. Being worried about Hitler and acting are two different things.

Moreover while Roosevelt was worried about fascism abroad he was implementing it at home. What else can you make of the cartelization caused by the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act, if not a form of proto-fascism? Moreover it was hardly progressive to plow under crops and slaughter piglets to prop up farm prices during a period of real starvation. Thankfully the Supreme Court saved us from these failed experiments.

Rauchway conveniently leaves out the crackpot ideas of Cornell economist George Warren who influenced Roosevelt on farm and monetary policies. He also ignores that one of the causes of 1920s farm crisis was the mechanization of agriculture as 40% of cropland was devoted to forage crops that were no longer needed.

Let me say that this review is not intended to be an all-out attack on the New Deal. Much good came from leaving the gold standard, banking and securities reforms and the beginning of massive public works projects. The country was in a crisis and we have to put ourselves into the shoes of the decision makers of the time, but we also have to heed Keynes admonition that “reform is the enemy of recovery.” I wish Rauchway would see things that way.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1VJ9V9PPKXS9F/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv