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FDR at War #3
War and Peace: FDR's Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945
The stirring climax to Nigel Hamilton’s three-part saga of FDR at war—proof that he was the Second World War’s key strategist, even on his deathbed “A first-class, lens-changing work.” —James N. Mattis, former US secretary of defense Nigel Hamilton’s celebrated trilogy culminates with a story of triumph and tragedy. Just as FDR was proven right by the D-day landings he had championed, so was he found to be mortally ill in the spring of 1944. He was the architect of a victorious peace that he would not live to witness. Using hitherto unpublished documents and interviews, Hamilton rewrites the famous account of World War II strategy given by Winston Churchill in his memoirs. Seventy-five years after the D-day landings we finally get to see, close-up and in dramatic detail, who was responsible for rescuing, and insisting upon, the great American-led invasion of France in June 1944, and why the invasion was led by Eisenhower. As FDR’s D-day triumph turns to personal tragedy, we watch with heartbreaking compassion the course of the disease, and how, in the months left him as US commander in chief, the dying president attempted at Hawaii, Quebec, and Yalta to prepare the United Nations for an American-backed postwar world order. Now we even on his deathbed, FDR was the war’s great visionary.
1008 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 7, 2019
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About the author
Nigel Hamilton
41 books86 followersNigel Hamilton is an award-winning British-born biographer, academic and broadcaster, whose works have been translated into sixteen languages.
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March 30, 2023
Basically, up to Yalta, this was a 4-star book. The chapters about Yalta are about 3.25 stars. The post-Yalta stuff is 2 stars. If that. I may have been generous. (This is updated in light of some yet more recent WWII reading and a second wave of thought. If I come across yet more, the book overall loses another star.)
Even though those portions of the book are shorter, I’m still averaging it down to a 3-star overall, as Hamilton gets more blatantly hagiographic of Roosevelt than in his second volume. (I haven’t read the first one.)
First, on the good stuff in the first 2/3-3/4 of the book?
Hamilton rightly eviscerates Churchill’s attempted blocking of Overlord. He does this in context of Churchill’s senseless pinpricks in the eastern Mediterranean, while noting that more of the same plus Italy to the mythical Ljubljana Gap would have had almost as many casualties. He then puts this in context of Churchill at Gallipoli in WWI and Dieppe in WW11.
He also shows how Churchill rushed Shingle into place with no beach trials, no real preparation (while not acknowledging that with both more prep and more daring, it could have worked).
Also explains how Churchill’s insistence on Anzio helped delay Overlord by a month.
And he — and rightly so — does all this more thoroughly and vigorously than the typical WWII history or even WWII military history.
That said, while not over the top, his Churchill-bashing was a bit strained at times. Dieppe was not intended to be an invasion, and it was seen as being in part a learning experience. After all, no major contested amphibious operation had been attempted up to that time in the history of mechanized warfare. Before that, the British at both the Crimea and before that at New Orleans were not opposed at the time of landings.
Even within its parameters, it was arguably more a failure than a success tactically.
That then said, Hamilton also nowhere mentioned that Churchill pushed for Dieppe in part due to Uncle Joe pushing for a second front already then. Nor does he mention that some lessons were learned from Dieppe in time for Torch. (Not having Dieppe listed in the index when I was writing up this review didn't help my take on the book.)
Beyond THAT, which Hamilton (I presume deliberately) doesn't tell the reader is that in the last few weeks before Dieppe was launched, German counterintelligence in France had rolled up British SOE agents and uncovered all the main points of the Dieppe plan.
But, there was plenty of bad outside of this.
First, he has NO look at FDR’s military options on Hungary after Nazi takeover and no asking why he didn’t. Briefly brings up Hungary again in the second half of the book, but still doesn't address these issues. Many military historians today believe that rail line bombing could have at least slowed the transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and that it was even feasible, even without Russian help, to take a shot at bombing Auschwitz itself. BIG failure for Hamilton to not discuss this issue.
Even people who give FDR a pass on pre-US entry into the war tightfistedness on Jewish refugees, but who are thoughtful historians, struggle with the Hungarian Jews issue.
But Hamilton doesn’t “struggle” at all.
Second, he repeats that FDR had polio even though this is being more and more questioned, with many forensic medical historians believing Guillain-Barré syndrome felled him instead.
That’s why the pre-Yalta stuff is 4.25 star, no more.
The Yalta chapters themselves aren’t horrendous. I’ve never thought we really “lost” a lot at Yalta. But, FDR could have tried to have been firmer. And, contra the UN, the spheres of influence that Churchill and Stalin had agreed to DID keep Greece non-communist.
The biggest black mark is that Hamilton is already trying to whitewash Stalin here. And it gets worse in the post-Yalta chapters, to which I now head.
First, 480ff claims, or seems to, that Hitler was behind Operation Sunrise. This is not true, nor is the claim that Hitler was behind Himmler’s late attempts to negotiate a separate piece. And, there simple IS NOT an “Operation Wool” that was a grand plan for this, despite his claim on 481. I have NO idea where this came from. I did a Google because I had NEVER heard of such a thing, and I’ve read Hastings, Kershaw and many other modern WWII historians.
But, the ultimate goal of Hamilton’s inaccurate slant here seems to be what it had been at Yalta — throw Churchill further under the bus, wrongly as well as rightly, and then türd-polish Stalin, mostly wrongly.
On 485, appears to blame Truman, of all things, for FDR not meeting with him privately to inform him more on serious issues, starting with the bomb. Hamilton knows FDR held one-on-ones with few people even when he was in good health. And, this totally tries to otherwise whitewash FDR. If his musings about resigning in just months were truly meant, then he should have truly sat down with Truman.
I directly quote:
"Why, then, in the circumstances, did he not summon Harry Truman, his chosen vice president, to come and discuss, in private, the challenges the former senator would soon enough have to face. This was something no biographer or historian would ever be able to comprehend ...
"Yet in the subsequent four weeks before he left the capital he met with Truman only once, for ninety minutes, and that was in the company again of Speaker Rayburn [and others]. ...
Truman had NOT [emphasis added) complained. Highly intelligent, a quick study and a bon viveur when it came to whiskey and cards, Truman had not thought to request a private meeting."
Other than throwing Truman under the bus, this is a failure as an argument from silence. How do we KNOW Truman never requested a private meeting? There's no footnote here citing a Truman diary entry that says something like "Asked Pres. 3 days ago for private meeting. Still no response."
There was one just plain weird thing, from FDR’s last State of the Union.
Halifax wasn’t one-armed; he was missing his left hand, and the arm higher up was at least somewhat atrophied; also, calling him such out of the blue on 467 came off as irrelevant to the narrative and jarring.
Had other parts of the book not been so well, the last 60 pages were enough I might have two-starred it. The book is simply marred at the end. As though Nigel Hamilton had hit his own medical wall or something.
==
UPDATE: I am now reading James Bradley's "China mirage." As I think on this and Hamilton's second first volume as well (I didn't read the first second, but am about to remedy that), his refusal to write about FDR's willful ignorance about China — and Churchill calling him out on it — comes off as mendacious. And with that, the rating does fall another star.
Update 2: Upon finishing the second volume of the trilogy, the last of the three I read, there's an even bigger reason to ding this. This is not the final volume in a biographical trilogy of FDR as commander in chief, but as half commander in chief, as Hamilton nowhere in these volumes discusses the Pacific war, and there's plenty to critique FDR on.
Even though those portions of the book are shorter, I’m still averaging it down to a 3-star overall, as Hamilton gets more blatantly hagiographic of Roosevelt than in his second volume. (I haven’t read the first one.)
First, on the good stuff in the first 2/3-3/4 of the book?
Hamilton rightly eviscerates Churchill’s attempted blocking of Overlord. He does this in context of Churchill’s senseless pinpricks in the eastern Mediterranean, while noting that more of the same plus Italy to the mythical Ljubljana Gap would have had almost as many casualties. He then puts this in context of Churchill at Gallipoli in WWI and Dieppe in WW11.
He also shows how Churchill rushed Shingle into place with no beach trials, no real preparation (while not acknowledging that with both more prep and more daring, it could have worked).
Also explains how Churchill’s insistence on Anzio helped delay Overlord by a month.
And he — and rightly so — does all this more thoroughly and vigorously than the typical WWII history or even WWII military history.
That said, while not over the top, his Churchill-bashing was a bit strained at times. Dieppe was not intended to be an invasion, and it was seen as being in part a learning experience. After all, no major contested amphibious operation had been attempted up to that time in the history of mechanized warfare. Before that, the British at both the Crimea and before that at New Orleans were not opposed at the time of landings.
Even within its parameters, it was arguably more a failure than a success tactically.
That then said, Hamilton also nowhere mentioned that Churchill pushed for Dieppe in part due to Uncle Joe pushing for a second front already then. Nor does he mention that some lessons were learned from Dieppe in time for Torch. (Not having Dieppe listed in the index when I was writing up this review didn't help my take on the book.)
Beyond THAT, which Hamilton (I presume deliberately) doesn't tell the reader is that in the last few weeks before Dieppe was launched, German counterintelligence in France had rolled up British SOE agents and uncovered all the main points of the Dieppe plan.
But, there was plenty of bad outside of this.
First, he has NO look at FDR’s military options on Hungary after Nazi takeover and no asking why he didn’t. Briefly brings up Hungary again in the second half of the book, but still doesn't address these issues. Many military historians today believe that rail line bombing could have at least slowed the transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and that it was even feasible, even without Russian help, to take a shot at bombing Auschwitz itself. BIG failure for Hamilton to not discuss this issue.
Even people who give FDR a pass on pre-US entry into the war tightfistedness on Jewish refugees, but who are thoughtful historians, struggle with the Hungarian Jews issue.
But Hamilton doesn’t “struggle” at all.
Second, he repeats that FDR had polio even though this is being more and more questioned, with many forensic medical historians believing Guillain-Barré syndrome felled him instead.
That’s why the pre-Yalta stuff is 4.25 star, no more.
The Yalta chapters themselves aren’t horrendous. I’ve never thought we really “lost” a lot at Yalta. But, FDR could have tried to have been firmer. And, contra the UN, the spheres of influence that Churchill and Stalin had agreed to DID keep Greece non-communist.
The biggest black mark is that Hamilton is already trying to whitewash Stalin here. And it gets worse in the post-Yalta chapters, to which I now head.
First, 480ff claims, or seems to, that Hitler was behind Operation Sunrise. This is not true, nor is the claim that Hitler was behind Himmler’s late attempts to negotiate a separate piece. And, there simple IS NOT an “Operation Wool” that was a grand plan for this, despite his claim on 481. I have NO idea where this came from. I did a Google because I had NEVER heard of such a thing, and I’ve read Hastings, Kershaw and many other modern WWII historians.
But, the ultimate goal of Hamilton’s inaccurate slant here seems to be what it had been at Yalta — throw Churchill further under the bus, wrongly as well as rightly, and then türd-polish Stalin, mostly wrongly.
On 485, appears to blame Truman, of all things, for FDR not meeting with him privately to inform him more on serious issues, starting with the bomb. Hamilton knows FDR held one-on-ones with few people even when he was in good health. And, this totally tries to otherwise whitewash FDR. If his musings about resigning in just months were truly meant, then he should have truly sat down with Truman.
I directly quote:
"Why, then, in the circumstances, did he not summon Harry Truman, his chosen vice president, to come and discuss, in private, the challenges the former senator would soon enough have to face. This was something no biographer or historian would ever be able to comprehend ...
"Yet in the subsequent four weeks before he left the capital he met with Truman only once, for ninety minutes, and that was in the company again of Speaker Rayburn [and others]. ...
Truman had NOT [emphasis added) complained. Highly intelligent, a quick study and a bon viveur when it came to whiskey and cards, Truman had not thought to request a private meeting."
Other than throwing Truman under the bus, this is a failure as an argument from silence. How do we KNOW Truman never requested a private meeting? There's no footnote here citing a Truman diary entry that says something like "Asked Pres. 3 days ago for private meeting. Still no response."
There was one just plain weird thing, from FDR’s last State of the Union.
Halifax wasn’t one-armed; he was missing his left hand, and the arm higher up was at least somewhat atrophied; also, calling him such out of the blue on 467 came off as irrelevant to the narrative and jarring.
Had other parts of the book not been so well, the last 60 pages were enough I might have two-starred it. The book is simply marred at the end. As though Nigel Hamilton had hit his own medical wall or something.
==
UPDATE: I am now reading James Bradley's "China mirage." As I think on this and Hamilton's second first volume as well (I didn't read the first second, but am about to remedy that), his refusal to write about FDR's willful ignorance about China — and Churchill calling him out on it — comes off as mendacious. And with that, the rating does fall another star.
Update 2: Upon finishing the second volume of the trilogy, the last of the three I read, there's an even bigger reason to ding this. This is not the final volume in a biographical trilogy of FDR as commander in chief, but as half commander in chief, as Hamilton nowhere in these volumes discusses the Pacific war, and there's plenty to critique FDR on.
May 1, 2019
War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey is the third and final installment in Nigel Hamilton’s FDR at War trilogy. It is a fitting and poignant end to a series which highlights FDR as Commander in Chief during WWII. Its main aim was to show how FDR was as much a military commander as a politician, and Nigel Hamilton certainly accomplished this.
Unlike almost everyone else involved in WWII, President Roosevelt had not been able to write his own account of the war, and this is what Nigel Hamilton has been trying to do for him. Undoubtedly Roosevelt would have written his own story, just as Churchill and many of his contemporaries had done, but in his efforts to lead the war to its conclusion, Roosevelt inadvertently became one of its final casualties. Roosevelt died on April 12th 1945, just days before the war in Europe was over. It is a consolation to know that he was aware the war would be over soon, predicting the dates with remarkable accuracy to Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King at the end of March 1945.
War and Peace deals with the final two to three years of the President’s life, focusing on how he guided the Allies from the first attacks in North Africa, through D-Day and so to the conclusion of the war. A main point of focus is FDR‘s health, which steadily deteriorated from mid-1944 on. Having read many books on FDR over the years, it was never more apparent than from reading War and Peace how very aware Roosevelt was himself of his impending death. Hamilton does a great job telling FDR’s story by weaving together eyewitness accounts and diary entries of all the major players involved, from Mackenzie King, to Lord Moran and many of the president’s doctors and confidantes.
When it comes to military matters, the story focuses on Roosevelt’s insistence on a Second Front, having to fight his own staff and Winston Churchill, who insisted on attacking Germany’s ‘soft underbelly,’ in the process. The book gives a good idea of the decisions which had to be made, and the process FDR went through to reach those while at the same time getting others in line behind him. Certain aspects about the war are more talked about than others, such as FDR’s decision to make General Eisenhower Supreme Commander and the final meeting of the Big Three at Yalta in February 1945, but in general no stone is left unturned. The book comprises about ninety short chapters, each dealing with a specific moment in time, and chronologically organized.
At 500 pages the book is a wonderful and fast read, even though it has a tendency to fall into repetition at certain times. It is evident from the very beginning that Mr. Hamilton is no fan of Winston Churchill, and sometimes this gives the feeling that the book is a little one-sided. Churchill might not have been the best military strategist, but if one were to base one’s opinion of Churchill solely on this book, he would barely get a passing grade! However, as a history of Roosevelt’s military leadership during WWII, War and Peace does a superb job. Having read both The Mantle of Command and Commander in Chief, this was a fitting end and a real tribute to the courage and visionary leadership of President Roosevelt.
Unlike almost everyone else involved in WWII, President Roosevelt had not been able to write his own account of the war, and this is what Nigel Hamilton has been trying to do for him. Undoubtedly Roosevelt would have written his own story, just as Churchill and many of his contemporaries had done, but in his efforts to lead the war to its conclusion, Roosevelt inadvertently became one of its final casualties. Roosevelt died on April 12th 1945, just days before the war in Europe was over. It is a consolation to know that he was aware the war would be over soon, predicting the dates with remarkable accuracy to Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King at the end of March 1945.
War and Peace deals with the final two to three years of the President’s life, focusing on how he guided the Allies from the first attacks in North Africa, through D-Day and so to the conclusion of the war. A main point of focus is FDR‘s health, which steadily deteriorated from mid-1944 on. Having read many books on FDR over the years, it was never more apparent than from reading War and Peace how very aware Roosevelt was himself of his impending death. Hamilton does a great job telling FDR’s story by weaving together eyewitness accounts and diary entries of all the major players involved, from Mackenzie King, to Lord Moran and many of the president’s doctors and confidantes.
When it comes to military matters, the story focuses on Roosevelt’s insistence on a Second Front, having to fight his own staff and Winston Churchill, who insisted on attacking Germany’s ‘soft underbelly,’ in the process. The book gives a good idea of the decisions which had to be made, and the process FDR went through to reach those while at the same time getting others in line behind him. Certain aspects about the war are more talked about than others, such as FDR’s decision to make General Eisenhower Supreme Commander and the final meeting of the Big Three at Yalta in February 1945, but in general no stone is left unturned. The book comprises about ninety short chapters, each dealing with a specific moment in time, and chronologically organized.
At 500 pages the book is a wonderful and fast read, even though it has a tendency to fall into repetition at certain times. It is evident from the very beginning that Mr. Hamilton is no fan of Winston Churchill, and sometimes this gives the feeling that the book is a little one-sided. Churchill might not have been the best military strategist, but if one were to base one’s opinion of Churchill solely on this book, he would barely get a passing grade! However, as a history of Roosevelt’s military leadership during WWII, War and Peace does a superb job. Having read both The Mantle of Command and Commander in Chief, this was a fitting end and a real tribute to the courage and visionary leadership of President Roosevelt.
July 5, 2019
Here is another superb addition to the literature on Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II. Not a dry military tome, but an absorbing account of the final year of a war weary President in a dying body. It was plain to everyone who saw him-Churchill and his entourage-and those who lived with him-wife Eleanor, daughter Anna, devoted companion Daisey Suckley, and great love Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd-that F.D.R. was declining and could not take much more. He was rarely honest to others about this, and chose not to probe his doctors' findings closely. As questions of D-Day and whether to seek an unprecedented fourth term hovered about, F.D.R. gradually withdrew from duty laden days, and sought rest from Warm Springs to the coast of South Carolina to Hyde Park. The press would not allow such seclusion today. And all the while he was refereeing Churchill and Stalin as allied victory loomed more clearly; caution to fans of Churchill as he is here portrayed as more hindrance to than architect of victory. I own Hamilton's first volume in this trilogy, and have read Meecham and Lash on F.D.R. and Churchill, Daisey Suckley's absorbing diary, and the great biographies by Ward and Lash and Brands. (And Elizabeth Shoumatoff's memoir of painting F.D.R. at his death, and Persico's volume on F.D.R. and Lucy.) Hamilton gives us a welcome study into Roosevelt's relationships and struggles during his last year as he faces both victory and death in very human terms. (A tiny error in the text has Eleanor's sharp tongued cousin Alice Longworth as divorced; though suffering for years in an unhappy marriage she and husband Nicholas toughed it out until his death.)
July 17, 2019
This is an excellent conclusion to Nigel Hamilton’s account of FDR as a war leader. The book chronicles Roosevelt’s objectives and illustrates his accomplishments, the primary one being D-Day. The book also provides an account of how Roosevelt’s health declined through most of 1944-45 and how this was successfully concealed from most of the public. Finally the book raises some interesting questions about Churchill as a tactician. However, while I think many of Churchill’s tactical initiatives were questionable, I am not sure the book addressed their motivations in sufficient detail.
January 13, 2023
Extraordinary in its emotionally exhaustive detail, this is a stunning piece of work that lays bare facts and information that shred commonly-held perceptions about the war (and particularly Churchill) while showcasing just how magnificent a wartime leader FDR actually was. It's end with his death is like hitting a brick wall, especially as his long hidden medical conditions are finally highlighted for the general public...which only serves to make his leadership appear even more unbelievable in its power. I really have no words for this...it has left many of my own long-held beliefs as dust on the ground.
September 9, 2019
FDR's true role as Commander in Chief and leader of the Allies during World War II has been shrouded for many Americans. The personal memoirs of Winston Churchill and questions of FDR's health and performance at Yalta have obscured just how vital he was to the overall outcome of the war and the shape of the postwar. Mr. Hamilton has done a great job of fleshing out FDR's World War II leadership and he concludes his three-volume biography/history superbly in this final volume.
In the previous two volumes, Hamilton's FDR comes off as a brilliant strategist and wrangler of disparate personalities. FDR asserted his authority over strategy with his military chiefs in the first volume and held Churchill's feet to the flame when it came to committing to the cross-channel invasion of France in the second volume, despite Churchill's penchant for diversionary, and disastrous, operations in the Mediterranean. This third volume shows FDR at his best once again at the Tehran conference, holding Churchill accountable and even dealing well with Marshall Stalin in their first face-to-face meetings. The cross-channel invasion gets set in stone and Churchill's desires for further Mediterranean operations are halted. This leads to the D-Day invasions and the ultimate demise of the Third Reich.
However, Hamilton is not completely blinded by FDR's brilliance. As FDR's physical health and mental acuity begin to decline in the weeks and months following the Tehran conference, Hamilton gives the most detailed descriptions of what was going on that you are likely to find. FDR was very sick and could have easily died in early 1944 were it not for the brave intervention of a junior naval officer at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and the renewed relationship between FDR and his former flame, Lucy Rutherford. Had FDR died in 1944, history and the outcome of World War II could have been very different.
In spite of the President's declining health, Hamilton makes clear that, on the most important issues, FDR was as engaged as ever. This comes through at the Yalta conference, a rather divisive moment in U.S. foreign relations history. Hamilton shows that on the key issues, such as the creation of the United Nations and securing Russian entry in the war against Japan after the fall of Germany, FDR was completely focused and in charge. However, FDR focusing his energies on these important strategic goals meant he was not as attentive to the details, which is where Yalta gets controversial. By the end of the book, Hamilton's FDR is the most exhausted person you have ever met, but he has achieved his most important goals as Commander in Chief and they cannot be undone by his death.
I love how the book was organized. Though the font is rather small, Mr. Hamilton's chapters are very short, no more than 10-pages, but usually around 5 pages. And there are a lot of chapters, 91 to be precise, so organizing one's reading of this rather dense book should be not be a problem. Furthermore, Mr. Hamilton's writing style is just as enjoyable as ever. He deftly uses repeated phrases and rhetorical questions throughout to ram home important points in the story. Thus, even if you are skimming parts of this book, you should be able to pick up on the key thoughts by taking note of those repeated phrases and rhetorical questions. I will say that, unlike the previous two volumes, Mr. Hamilton does seem to skim over far more than he did before. For example, when writing about post-Tehran FDR in early 1944, Mr. Hamilton focuses exclusively on the President's health, which is important to his overall story. However, there is a chunk of about a month and a half, roughly January and February 1944, where Hamilton says nothing about any of FDR's major decisions during that time. Mr. Hamilton also does this when he skims over the details of the 1944 presidential election as well. Admittedly, these details may not have been important to the overall story Mr. Hamilton was trying to tell, but it is noticeable nonetheless.
In short though, Mr. Hamilton makes an excellent case for considering FDR to be one of America's most successful wartime and diplomatic leaders on a par with Lincoln's leadership during the Civil War. Like Lincoln, FDR was able to focus the nation's wartime and diplomatic leaders on the most essential goals of the war, while rallying the nation to a vision for the nation that stretched beyond the war itself. In Lincoln's case, it was emancipation; in FDR's case, it was the creation of a proactive America in world affairs and the creation of a stable and successful international organization to maintain the peace, the United Nations. Hamilton does a tremendous job of putting FDR in his rightful place as one of our greatest presidents and I would highly recommend this volume, and this entire series, to anyone who is interested in learning more about FDR and his leadership in World War II.
In the previous two volumes, Hamilton's FDR comes off as a brilliant strategist and wrangler of disparate personalities. FDR asserted his authority over strategy with his military chiefs in the first volume and held Churchill's feet to the flame when it came to committing to the cross-channel invasion of France in the second volume, despite Churchill's penchant for diversionary, and disastrous, operations in the Mediterranean. This third volume shows FDR at his best once again at the Tehran conference, holding Churchill accountable and even dealing well with Marshall Stalin in their first face-to-face meetings. The cross-channel invasion gets set in stone and Churchill's desires for further Mediterranean operations are halted. This leads to the D-Day invasions and the ultimate demise of the Third Reich.
However, Hamilton is not completely blinded by FDR's brilliance. As FDR's physical health and mental acuity begin to decline in the weeks and months following the Tehran conference, Hamilton gives the most detailed descriptions of what was going on that you are likely to find. FDR was very sick and could have easily died in early 1944 were it not for the brave intervention of a junior naval officer at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and the renewed relationship between FDR and his former flame, Lucy Rutherford. Had FDR died in 1944, history and the outcome of World War II could have been very different.
In spite of the President's declining health, Hamilton makes clear that, on the most important issues, FDR was as engaged as ever. This comes through at the Yalta conference, a rather divisive moment in U.S. foreign relations history. Hamilton shows that on the key issues, such as the creation of the United Nations and securing Russian entry in the war against Japan after the fall of Germany, FDR was completely focused and in charge. However, FDR focusing his energies on these important strategic goals meant he was not as attentive to the details, which is where Yalta gets controversial. By the end of the book, Hamilton's FDR is the most exhausted person you have ever met, but he has achieved his most important goals as Commander in Chief and they cannot be undone by his death.
I love how the book was organized. Though the font is rather small, Mr. Hamilton's chapters are very short, no more than 10-pages, but usually around 5 pages. And there are a lot of chapters, 91 to be precise, so organizing one's reading of this rather dense book should be not be a problem. Furthermore, Mr. Hamilton's writing style is just as enjoyable as ever. He deftly uses repeated phrases and rhetorical questions throughout to ram home important points in the story. Thus, even if you are skimming parts of this book, you should be able to pick up on the key thoughts by taking note of those repeated phrases and rhetorical questions. I will say that, unlike the previous two volumes, Mr. Hamilton does seem to skim over far more than he did before. For example, when writing about post-Tehran FDR in early 1944, Mr. Hamilton focuses exclusively on the President's health, which is important to his overall story. However, there is a chunk of about a month and a half, roughly January and February 1944, where Hamilton says nothing about any of FDR's major decisions during that time. Mr. Hamilton also does this when he skims over the details of the 1944 presidential election as well. Admittedly, these details may not have been important to the overall story Mr. Hamilton was trying to tell, but it is noticeable nonetheless.
In short though, Mr. Hamilton makes an excellent case for considering FDR to be one of America's most successful wartime and diplomatic leaders on a par with Lincoln's leadership during the Civil War. Like Lincoln, FDR was able to focus the nation's wartime and diplomatic leaders on the most essential goals of the war, while rallying the nation to a vision for the nation that stretched beyond the war itself. In Lincoln's case, it was emancipation; in FDR's case, it was the creation of a proactive America in world affairs and the creation of a stable and successful international organization to maintain the peace, the United Nations. Hamilton does a tremendous job of putting FDR in his rightful place as one of our greatest presidents and I would highly recommend this volume, and this entire series, to anyone who is interested in learning more about FDR and his leadership in World War II.
August 11, 2024
War and Peace: FDR's Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943-1945 is a tremendously informative book about the closing stages of the Second World War.
Historian Nigel Hamilton set out to create an FDR-centric book which focused on his Commander-In-Chief role and was crafted around military strategy. He mentioned that there were a dearth of these; most books on him were either broadly biographic or political while books about World War Two often cast him as on the periphery of martial decision making.
While most focused on the European theater, War and Peace does talk about FDR's involvement in Pacific operations. (This could honestly have merited another, separate book-length recounting.) As with the Europe fighting, however, much of this is filtered through the lens of his relationship with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
Although the U.S. was carrying most of the burden in the Pacific, both with regard to there and in Europe the president is often shown trying to balance the concerns and needs of Great Britain and Russia, the other two major Allies with wildly divergent systems of government.
Churchill comes across as a terrible military tactician.
Hamilton shows him to be frequently planning operations in the Adriatic and Mediterranean theaters that would have little bearing on the ultimate goal: defeating the Wehrmacht. Not only would these operations produce almost useless fighting in a marginal theater, they would divert resources from the planned invasion of France and would actually be quite costly in and of themselves.
Allied, and particular American casualties, at battles like Anzio in 1944 showed how this was likely to be the outcome.
The British Prime Minister's puzzling reasoning is never fully resolved, as he appears concerned with not repeating a Gallipoli-style debacle and wanting to hold onto and protect as much as the British Empire as possible. The Atlantic Charter, agreed to between FDR and Churchill, contained provisions which would have seemed to make Britain's maintenance of a postwar colonial empire quite problematic.
The 1943 Cairo meeting between FDR, Churchill, and Chaing Kai-shek, which took place prior to a broader war conference alongside Stalin in Tehran, made clear some of the disagreements between the U.S. and Britain. This was one of several conferences covered at length in War and Peace: there were also meetings in Casablanca and Yalta whose wartime machinations were covered in-depth by Hamilton.
Key figures at these conferences featured commanders like George Marshall and Dwight Marshall for the U.S., Sir Alan Brooke for the British, and FDR civilian confidants like Harry Hopkins and Charles Bohlen.
And Stalin's insistence on a second front in Western Europe was a major source of these disagreements. While Churchill was frequently proposing operations of dubious value in places like the Balkans (where he wanted to bring Turkey into the war for opaque reasons) and outlying areas of the Mediterranean, Stalin-who was losing millions of men fighting the Wehrmacht in the east-wanted a concrete date for when a cross-Channel invasion would take place.
Stalin's interactions with FDR and Churchill are recorded in the book and made for compelling reading.
The president was more on Stalin's side when it came to the need for urgency on a cross-Channel invasion. He had previously overruled his generals when it came to rushing one early on in the war and deciding to attack through north Africa and allow the U.S. military to cut their teeth there first against the JV of the Axis Army. But as 1944 neared he was the one standing strong on committing to a firm date for D-Day (he originally targeted May of that year) while Churchill seemed to be doing all he could to wriggle out of making a definite promise to Stalin.
Given the huge casualties being absorbed by the Russians and the possible need for their cooperation in Manchuria against Japan once the Germans surrendered, FDR had to take into account the possibility the Soviets would eventually make a separate peace with Hitler if his Allied partners kept dragging their feet on opening up a Western front.
Poland, as well as the areas liberated from Germany thus far by the Soviets during the war, were sticking points which were unable to be resolved prior to FDR's death in April 1945. But the U.S. president was cognizant of the importance of the Soviets joining the United Nations he was intent on seeing (alongside the First Lady Eleanor) come into existence. Too much alienation of Stalin over issues like Poland, he knew, might cause the Russians to boycott the nascent U.N. and render it the same fate as the League of Nations a decade prior.
It was considerations like these which he had to juggle throughout the timeframe of D-Day planning until the Yalta Conference.
Ultimately, FDR saw to it that the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern and cross-Channel commands were split up among two separate generals.
Although George Marshall was the general that the smart money thought FDR would pick for the latter command, he went against the consensus and kept Marshall in D.C. to coordinate war planning from there. He instead picked Dwight Eisenhower to plan the D-Day invasion. By making this a separate post from Sir Henry Maitland Wilson's in the Mediterranean, he could ensure Churchill did not meddle and delay the launch date further.
The image of Roosevelt produced by Hamilton is one of a wartime leader whose personal relationship with both Stalin and Churchill was the glue which held the Big Three together. His view of himself as the one person who could maintain this alliance was held up as the main motivation to his decision to run for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944.
The other aspect of FDR which comes through is his failing health during the last few years of his life.
By the time of the Yalta conference two months before he breathed his last, numerous testimonials (made public only after his death) by physicians like Admiral Ross McIntyre and Howard Bruenn left the impression that he was going to be dying before long. From high blood pressure to extreme fatigue that left him bedridden quite often (and the polio he had been stricken with for two decades), the president, who was in his early 60s, was battling a number of health problems which were making the carrying out of his executive branch duties during wartime extremely difficult.
There was a clear effort made to hide his decline from the public. But hiding this was made more difficult by public appearances like his August 1944 address to the Puget Sound Navy Yard. This was carried via radio to millions of listeners months before that year's presidential election, and in it FDR's declining health came through for all to see and hear.
Although the book focuses on FDR's role as head of the armed forces during World War Two, there is a good bit about his personal life. His affair with Lucy Mercer-and her role in bringing him joy through her friendship during a time of trying health and major international concerns-gets covered by Hamilton.
When he passed away at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat, he had just finished posing for a portrait by Lucy's friend Elizbeth Shoumatoff; Elizabeth and Lucy would be two of the last people he spoke with before dying later that day.
War and Peace is an outstanding military biography of Franklin Roosevelt. It does discuss operations like Torch, Husky, Dragoon, D-Day, Anvil, and Market Garden, but the author does not go off into in-depth strategic battle discussions. He instead keeps the focus on the Big Three's efforts to maintain solidarity at their various conferences, explaining at the same time how Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were hoping for a split between the Allies which they could take advantage of for a separate peace.
Hitler was banking on the alliance against his war machine falling apart thanks to the drastically differing economic, social, and political systems of Britain, America, and the Soviet Union.
But this never took place, and Hamilton credits much of this to FDR's talent in managing the various personalities and interests involved in maintaining the Grand Alliance. He writes about Roosevelt's ability to do this with a clarity and in a manner that all readers will be able to appreciate.
War and Peace accomplishes its task of laying out FDR's role in bringing about a victory in World War Two, albeit one he was not able to revel in on account of his death just prior to its conclusion.
It is a great book and belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who appreciates high value content on the Second World War.
-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado
Historian Nigel Hamilton set out to create an FDR-centric book which focused on his Commander-In-Chief role and was crafted around military strategy. He mentioned that there were a dearth of these; most books on him were either broadly biographic or political while books about World War Two often cast him as on the periphery of martial decision making.
While most focused on the European theater, War and Peace does talk about FDR's involvement in Pacific operations. (This could honestly have merited another, separate book-length recounting.) As with the Europe fighting, however, much of this is filtered through the lens of his relationship with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
Although the U.S. was carrying most of the burden in the Pacific, both with regard to there and in Europe the president is often shown trying to balance the concerns and needs of Great Britain and Russia, the other two major Allies with wildly divergent systems of government.
Churchill comes across as a terrible military tactician.
Hamilton shows him to be frequently planning operations in the Adriatic and Mediterranean theaters that would have little bearing on the ultimate goal: defeating the Wehrmacht. Not only would these operations produce almost useless fighting in a marginal theater, they would divert resources from the planned invasion of France and would actually be quite costly in and of themselves.
Allied, and particular American casualties, at battles like Anzio in 1944 showed how this was likely to be the outcome.
The British Prime Minister's puzzling reasoning is never fully resolved, as he appears concerned with not repeating a Gallipoli-style debacle and wanting to hold onto and protect as much as the British Empire as possible. The Atlantic Charter, agreed to between FDR and Churchill, contained provisions which would have seemed to make Britain's maintenance of a postwar colonial empire quite problematic.
The 1943 Cairo meeting between FDR, Churchill, and Chaing Kai-shek, which took place prior to a broader war conference alongside Stalin in Tehran, made clear some of the disagreements between the U.S. and Britain. This was one of several conferences covered at length in War and Peace: there were also meetings in Casablanca and Yalta whose wartime machinations were covered in-depth by Hamilton.
Key figures at these conferences featured commanders like George Marshall and Dwight Marshall for the U.S., Sir Alan Brooke for the British, and FDR civilian confidants like Harry Hopkins and Charles Bohlen.
And Stalin's insistence on a second front in Western Europe was a major source of these disagreements. While Churchill was frequently proposing operations of dubious value in places like the Balkans (where he wanted to bring Turkey into the war for opaque reasons) and outlying areas of the Mediterranean, Stalin-who was losing millions of men fighting the Wehrmacht in the east-wanted a concrete date for when a cross-Channel invasion would take place.
Stalin's interactions with FDR and Churchill are recorded in the book and made for compelling reading.
The president was more on Stalin's side when it came to the need for urgency on a cross-Channel invasion. He had previously overruled his generals when it came to rushing one early on in the war and deciding to attack through north Africa and allow the U.S. military to cut their teeth there first against the JV of the Axis Army. But as 1944 neared he was the one standing strong on committing to a firm date for D-Day (he originally targeted May of that year) while Churchill seemed to be doing all he could to wriggle out of making a definite promise to Stalin.
Given the huge casualties being absorbed by the Russians and the possible need for their cooperation in Manchuria against Japan once the Germans surrendered, FDR had to take into account the possibility the Soviets would eventually make a separate peace with Hitler if his Allied partners kept dragging their feet on opening up a Western front.
Poland, as well as the areas liberated from Germany thus far by the Soviets during the war, were sticking points which were unable to be resolved prior to FDR's death in April 1945. But the U.S. president was cognizant of the importance of the Soviets joining the United Nations he was intent on seeing (alongside the First Lady Eleanor) come into existence. Too much alienation of Stalin over issues like Poland, he knew, might cause the Russians to boycott the nascent U.N. and render it the same fate as the League of Nations a decade prior.
It was considerations like these which he had to juggle throughout the timeframe of D-Day planning until the Yalta Conference.
Ultimately, FDR saw to it that the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern and cross-Channel commands were split up among two separate generals.
Although George Marshall was the general that the smart money thought FDR would pick for the latter command, he went against the consensus and kept Marshall in D.C. to coordinate war planning from there. He instead picked Dwight Eisenhower to plan the D-Day invasion. By making this a separate post from Sir Henry Maitland Wilson's in the Mediterranean, he could ensure Churchill did not meddle and delay the launch date further.
The image of Roosevelt produced by Hamilton is one of a wartime leader whose personal relationship with both Stalin and Churchill was the glue which held the Big Three together. His view of himself as the one person who could maintain this alliance was held up as the main motivation to his decision to run for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944.
The other aspect of FDR which comes through is his failing health during the last few years of his life.
By the time of the Yalta conference two months before he breathed his last, numerous testimonials (made public only after his death) by physicians like Admiral Ross McIntyre and Howard Bruenn left the impression that he was going to be dying before long. From high blood pressure to extreme fatigue that left him bedridden quite often (and the polio he had been stricken with for two decades), the president, who was in his early 60s, was battling a number of health problems which were making the carrying out of his executive branch duties during wartime extremely difficult.
There was a clear effort made to hide his decline from the public. But hiding this was made more difficult by public appearances like his August 1944 address to the Puget Sound Navy Yard. This was carried via radio to millions of listeners months before that year's presidential election, and in it FDR's declining health came through for all to see and hear.
Although the book focuses on FDR's role as head of the armed forces during World War Two, there is a good bit about his personal life. His affair with Lucy Mercer-and her role in bringing him joy through her friendship during a time of trying health and major international concerns-gets covered by Hamilton.
When he passed away at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat, he had just finished posing for a portrait by Lucy's friend Elizbeth Shoumatoff; Elizabeth and Lucy would be two of the last people he spoke with before dying later that day.
War and Peace is an outstanding military biography of Franklin Roosevelt. It does discuss operations like Torch, Husky, Dragoon, D-Day, Anvil, and Market Garden, but the author does not go off into in-depth strategic battle discussions. He instead keeps the focus on the Big Three's efforts to maintain solidarity at their various conferences, explaining at the same time how Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were hoping for a split between the Allies which they could take advantage of for a separate peace.
Hitler was banking on the alliance against his war machine falling apart thanks to the drastically differing economic, social, and political systems of Britain, America, and the Soviet Union.
But this never took place, and Hamilton credits much of this to FDR's talent in managing the various personalities and interests involved in maintaining the Grand Alliance. He writes about Roosevelt's ability to do this with a clarity and in a manner that all readers will be able to appreciate.
War and Peace accomplishes its task of laying out FDR's role in bringing about a victory in World War Two, albeit one he was not able to revel in on account of his death just prior to its conclusion.
It is a great book and belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who appreciates high value content on the Second World War.
-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado
November 9, 2022
I made it through 200 pages but just couldn't take any more. This is not history, it's hagiography. One wonders why FDR took a ship across the Atlantic when he could have simply walked on the water. The author's contempt for Winston Churchill drips from just about every page - the Prime Minister appears more an adversary to the Americans than did the Germans. And Stalin, oh Stalin - Hamilton could hardly say enough good about Uncle Joe.
Seriously, this is history written purely from the perspective of end results, with no consideration given to the moment. Thus Overlord was a foregone success and the British reluctance to go through with the Normandy landings was nothing less than incompetence and idiocy. Never mind the assessment of B. H. Liddell-Hart, no mean historian himself, "Before its launching, the invasion of Normandy looked a most hazardous venture." Never mind the fact that the Wehrmacht was poised to throw the Allies back into the Channel, and might have done so if only they had followed Rommel's placement of the Panzers rather than Rundstedt's. The British had good reason to fear a great catastrophe from Overlord, though happily their fears turned out to be unfounded.
Anzio, of course, was a disaster and therefore we knew all along it would be a disaster and only idiots like Churchill would support such a folly (and, oh, are we reminded of Churchill's past follies by Hamilton - lest we forget Gallipoli). But Anzio was a classic end-around to get in the rear of the German Gustav Line...and might have worked if American General Mark Clark had been more aggressive in expanding his beachhead. But Anzio was a failure, and thus another of Churchill's follies.
This is not a history, this is a paean of praise to the memory of FDR. I have only stopped reading one other book - a biography of Lafayette in which the author managed to give William Pitt the Younger a wife (!). I tried hard to slog through this one, but finally had to give it up.
Seriously, this is history written purely from the perspective of end results, with no consideration given to the moment. Thus Overlord was a foregone success and the British reluctance to go through with the Normandy landings was nothing less than incompetence and idiocy. Never mind the assessment of B. H. Liddell-Hart, no mean historian himself, "Before its launching, the invasion of Normandy looked a most hazardous venture." Never mind the fact that the Wehrmacht was poised to throw the Allies back into the Channel, and might have done so if only they had followed Rommel's placement of the Panzers rather than Rundstedt's. The British had good reason to fear a great catastrophe from Overlord, though happily their fears turned out to be unfounded.
Anzio, of course, was a disaster and therefore we knew all along it would be a disaster and only idiots like Churchill would support such a folly (and, oh, are we reminded of Churchill's past follies by Hamilton - lest we forget Gallipoli). But Anzio was a classic end-around to get in the rear of the German Gustav Line...and might have worked if American General Mark Clark had been more aggressive in expanding his beachhead. But Anzio was a failure, and thus another of Churchill's follies.
This is not a history, this is a paean of praise to the memory of FDR. I have only stopped reading one other book - a biography of Lafayette in which the author managed to give William Pitt the Younger a wife (!). I tried hard to slog through this one, but finally had to give it up.
November 16, 2019
War and Peace is the third installment of Nigel Hamilton’s FDR at war series and covers the Tehran conference through FDR’s death after Yalta. The book mostly is divided into two pats. One is FDR’s strategic brilliance in managing the British and the Soviets to get an outcome to defeat the Nazi’s and the second is his knowledge that in the face of his death he had to focus on certain goals to get America across the finish line. FDR had clearly resigned himself to his fate even if he thought he would at least make it to the opening of the UN talks (he died while prepping for that meeting). His condition while hidden from many is captured in shocking detail here using the diaries of his caretakers. Hamilton is at his best capturing the essence of his subject and putting it in a wider global/national context of how this person shaped history. From FDR’s handling of the last democratic convention to his counterbalance between Nimitz and MacArthur his skills as an administrator are show cased while in this book. Hamilton skillfully manages his narrative of FDR and despite the book coming in at almost 500 readable pages you find yourself engaged and looking to see what comes next. Even as someone who has read extensively on FDR I found new things to appreciate in this book and Hamilton’s perspectives on Churchill are enlightening.
March 4, 2020
This is the third volume of Nigel Hamilton's epic biography of FDR, focusing on his WWII years. Hamilton initially intended this to be a one-volume assessment, but as so many of us learned, FDR's life and times were both too epic to be contained.
"War and Peace" is a sad but triumphant book, as arguably America's greatest President leads America to victory in World War II while his health crumbles. Hamilton focuses closely on FDR's contentious relationships with both Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, and many readers will be surprised at how hostile and difficult Churchill was for the American leader. (Old Winston may be adored now as a brilliant bulldog of a leader, but in Hamilton's telling Churchill was a greater threat to Operation Overlord and D-Day than the Germans ever were.)
Eleanor, sadly, does not feature much in these pages, as by this time she and Franklin were more or less partners in a joint enterprise. FDR's heart, according to Hamilton, continued to be bound to Lucy Rutherford, the gorgeous, lithesome love of his life . . . and as FDR gets closer to death he sought to spend more time with her.
Careening from the epic summits at Teheran to Yalta to intimate moments at Hyde Park and Warm Springs, "War and Peace" tells a very human story of a true giant of a man. Highly recommended, but only after you read the other two books.
"War and Peace" is a sad but triumphant book, as arguably America's greatest President leads America to victory in World War II while his health crumbles. Hamilton focuses closely on FDR's contentious relationships with both Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, and many readers will be surprised at how hostile and difficult Churchill was for the American leader. (Old Winston may be adored now as a brilliant bulldog of a leader, but in Hamilton's telling Churchill was a greater threat to Operation Overlord and D-Day than the Germans ever were.)
Eleanor, sadly, does not feature much in these pages, as by this time she and Franklin were more or less partners in a joint enterprise. FDR's heart, according to Hamilton, continued to be bound to Lucy Rutherford, the gorgeous, lithesome love of his life . . . and as FDR gets closer to death he sought to spend more time with her.
Careening from the epic summits at Teheran to Yalta to intimate moments at Hyde Park and Warm Springs, "War and Peace" tells a very human story of a true giant of a man. Highly recommended, but only after you read the other two books.
August 21, 2020
Hamilton finishes his three-volume epic with the year before Operation Overlord, D-Day, as Roosevelt continually battles with Churchill, who is trying everything he can to derail or postpone the Allied amphibious invasion at Normandy. FDR's single-mindedness propels the plan for invasion, against the proposals from many of his own staff, including the Secretary of War Henry Stimson and high-ranking generals in the Joint Chiefs. History has shown that even Churchill would later bask in the glory of the astonishingly successful invasion, but the credit was Roosevelt's alone. From that peak, Hamilton shows us FDR's world travels to Teheran to meet with Allied leaders, his tour of the still-raging Pacific zone, where he brokered a working relationship between MacArthur and Nimitz which held to victory, to his conference at Yalta, where, visibly near death, he kept the Allies together and forged the foundation agreement for the United Nations. Roosevelt lived only a few months past this meeting, dying just weeks before the collapse of Nazi Germany he had done so much to bring about. These books bring a completely new perspective to the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt; while it's impossible to imagine Allied victory without them both, the bulk of the credit goes to Roosevelt's visionary planning and steering of the many egos involved in bringing the war to a conclusion.
March 24, 2025
I was hopeful that this might be the best of the three volumes in the FDR at War series. This was not the case. All three have earned 3 stars in my opinion.
This book covers FDR’s role Commander in Chief for the last year and a half of World War II. Much of it dwells on the many conferences with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin that were conducted during the war. It also deals briefly with FDR’s meeting with Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur. And finally, much space is devoted to Roosevelt’s declining health.
On the plus side, this was a fairly enjoyable read. And provided a fair amount of information, some of it new. The downside includes the author’s seeming love for his subject. And Mr. Hamilton bills this as a book about Roosevelt’s in running the war. But very little is mentioned about the Pacific War and virtually nothing about the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany or Japan.
Finally, much is made about FDR’s declining health. Probably too much. Yes, FDR passed away but the author continually describes him as barely alive and yet constantly downgrades the president’s condition. Just seems like the author might be over dramatizing for effect. Still, I would recommend reading this series, just with an open mind.
This book covers FDR’s role Commander in Chief for the last year and a half of World War II. Much of it dwells on the many conferences with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin that were conducted during the war. It also deals briefly with FDR’s meeting with Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur. And finally, much space is devoted to Roosevelt’s declining health.
On the plus side, this was a fairly enjoyable read. And provided a fair amount of information, some of it new. The downside includes the author’s seeming love for his subject. And Mr. Hamilton bills this as a book about Roosevelt’s in running the war. But very little is mentioned about the Pacific War and virtually nothing about the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany or Japan.
Finally, much is made about FDR’s declining health. Probably too much. Yes, FDR passed away but the author continually describes him as barely alive and yet constantly downgrades the president’s condition. Just seems like the author might be over dramatizing for effect. Still, I would recommend reading this series, just with an open mind.
December 15, 2020
This third book of Nigel Hamilton's FDR at War trilogy is an interesting and enjoyable read. I am not a history buff, and I do not normally read historical non-fiction books. However, I was taking a class: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Leadership of the Democracies in World War II, and this third book in the FDR at War series was required reading. This is a long book, having 854 pages (pages 669 - 854 are Acknowledgments, credits, etc...).
Nigel writes in a narrative that is very easy to read, and this book reads like a thriller; it literally kept me up at night to finish a chapter. One of the things that makes this book special is the detailed references to journals apparently kept by almost everyone during WWII; any given meeting or situation being described has journal quotes from the major parties, including Stalin, Winston Churchill, and even Dr. Goebbels (Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945). I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in discovering how America went from an isolationist country to the most powerful country in the world.
Nigel writes in a narrative that is very easy to read, and this book reads like a thriller; it literally kept me up at night to finish a chapter. One of the things that makes this book special is the detailed references to journals apparently kept by almost everyone during WWII; any given meeting or situation being described has journal quotes from the major parties, including Stalin, Winston Churchill, and even Dr. Goebbels (Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945). I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in discovering how America went from an isolationist country to the most powerful country in the world.
February 28, 2023
Should really be called the Crusade Against Churchill. Much of the book is spent dealing with problems of Churchill which are definitely warranted in the later years of the war. I wish more time was spent delving into the relationship of Churchill and FDR given their profuse amount of correspondence journey the war instead of lambasting Churchill's diplomatic talks. It is really a saga of sickness describing the constant bouts of illness FDR faced during the later years of his life, highlighting his insane ability to push through it all, run for election, travel constantly between summits, and manage the large personalities all around him constantly vying for attention. This is an extremely factual account (with the only real opinions directed at Churchill especially in the beginning) and took me a while to get through, but I enjoyed reading it and it made me contemplate my own mortality reading about a man struggle through the final years of his life and ultimately power through his hindrances. I am amazed at how he kept his sickness, disability, and extramarital affairs out of the public eye.
January 6, 2022
A book you will surely enjoy if you are interested in WWII and/or presidential biographies. Although I have read a fair amount on both WWII in Europe and of FDR, I learned much reading this book. It would be hard not to in 498 pages (of small print) covering essentially the last 16 months of Roosevelt as Commander-in-Chief. Therein lies the 4 star rating, rather than a 5 star rating. It was interminably detailed, and the author was compulsively obsessive about the health of FDR upon his return from the Tehran Conference in late 1943. Certainly FDR's health was an important topic to explore and relate, but the author could have easily conveyed the seriousness of the health issues and the impact upon the president and those around him with less emphasis. Good Lord, I could have done without the constant references and quotes from the number of people who were "shocked" at FDR's rapid "decline". Although I am not a big fan of FDR's domestic programs, I am glad he was president and commander-in-chief during WWII.
November 27, 2023
An all-around excellent biography. Informative and highly readable. Englishman Nigel Hamilton's goal is to elevate FDR to his rightful position as the unquestioned leader of the Western Alliance during WWII, as opposed to the common belief that Churchill filled this role. A perception created by Churchill himself, as he authored numerous post-war books on the subject, whereas FDR did not, as he died before the war ended.
Churchill is not only portrayed as clearly the junior partner to the magisterial FDR, but also a conniving, deceitful, bungler; almost a traitor in his attempts to undermine the Normandy Invasion. The question is how much of this is true? It is hard to reconcile Hamilton's blistering assessment of Churchill with his near god-like reputation, particularily in the U.S. In contrast Hamilton portrays FDR as almost infallible in his political and military skills. As is usually the case, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
Churchill is not only portrayed as clearly the junior partner to the magisterial FDR, but also a conniving, deceitful, bungler; almost a traitor in his attempts to undermine the Normandy Invasion. The question is how much of this is true? It is hard to reconcile Hamilton's blistering assessment of Churchill with his near god-like reputation, particularily in the U.S. In contrast Hamilton portrays FDR as almost infallible in his political and military skills. As is usually the case, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
November 27, 2019
This is the third book chronicling FDR's leadership in WW2. For those who read Churchill's many books on that same history it provides a different view, a very different view. I found myself often angry and shocked with Churchill's mistakes in strategic planning. I have no doubt that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour won the war for the Allies by bringing the US aboard with crucial leadership. The personalities of FDR, Churchill and Stalin are well drawn and their relationships riveting. Prime Minister MacKenzie King features as a dear friend and confidante of FDR from his diary reflections. I also understand hims in more depth.
January 19, 2024
He saved the world…
This trilogy has revealed the myth that Churchill’s persona actually was. FDR revealed him to be a die hard imperialist, and perpetuated the accusation that his primary aim was to retain control of Britain’s colonies. For me this was possibly the main reason why he lost the general election immediately after the war. The demographic was not fooled. FDR saved the world for us. The ultimate politician always working for the good of everyone in a world that he would not live to see. Where in the world today can we look for a world leader of FDR’s calibre to save us from the political ne’re do wells of today. Brilliant read 5 stars.
This trilogy has revealed the myth that Churchill’s persona actually was. FDR revealed him to be a die hard imperialist, and perpetuated the accusation that his primary aim was to retain control of Britain’s colonies. For me this was possibly the main reason why he lost the general election immediately after the war. The demographic was not fooled. FDR saved the world for us. The ultimate politician always working for the good of everyone in a world that he would not live to see. Where in the world today can we look for a world leader of FDR’s calibre to save us from the political ne’re do wells of today. Brilliant read 5 stars.
May 25, 2019
The final volume War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey 1943-1945 of Nigel Hamilton’s trilogy debunks Churchill’s self serving six volume history of WWII. Hamilton convincingly makes the case for FDR as a brilliant and intuitive C of C from the beginning through the end of the conflict whereas Churchill was a disaster in strategy and tactics. His bumbling and interference in D-Day and his erroneous fixation on the Mediterranean and Balkans could have cost the Allies the war but certainly could have dragged it out for years.
February 24, 2020
I rarely read biographies, and even rarer, enjoy them. Mr. Hamilton's 3 volume bio of FDR I found difficult to get through the 1st vol as it was extremely pro FDR and so anti-Churchill. Once it became clear (I also dislike introductions in books) the authors intent to set the record straight in regard to FDR vs Churchill as far as strategy development for WWII was concerned the series grew on me. Due to the absence of FDR's memoirs, I found this enlightening and a great source for how an FDR memoir might have turned out. The 5 stars is for the 3 volumes as a whole.
June 1, 2020
Riveting
Written like a thriller, this book and it's predecessors, kept me flipping pages like I did not know what was to happen even when I did. But this was not a rehash for me but a fascinating introduction to incidents I was ignorant of (but may be more well known to WII and FDR scholars). For instance, I knew Churchill had a misguided desire to attack the soft underbelly of Europe. I did not know he violently opposed the D Day invasion with the support of the British high command.
I read all three volumes in a week.
Written like a thriller, this book and it's predecessors, kept me flipping pages like I did not know what was to happen even when I did. But this was not a rehash for me but a fascinating introduction to incidents I was ignorant of (but may be more well known to WII and FDR scholars). For instance, I knew Churchill had a misguided desire to attack the soft underbelly of Europe. I did not know he violently opposed the D Day invasion with the support of the British high command.
I read all three volumes in a week.
September 15, 2019
Without a doubt this is one of the greatest series of books I have ever read. F.D.R. lives within the pages and the author is more than equal to the task of making him come alive. Not only that, but he makes the greatness of this president, equal to any other in this nation's history, but a great leader to be admired the world over. No doubt the future has been blessed by F.D.R. as are readers of these three great books.
May 21, 2020
Monumental work. So much of what we know about the allied strategy in WWII is from Winston Churchill”s powerful writing. This presents Roosevelt as a master strategist and skilled diplomat who set the grand strategy and kept an alliance of such diverse personalities together and functioning in war and the ensuing peace. The author states in the Forward that he hopes the three volume series are the books Roosevelt would have written. This reader believes he succeeded in that hope.
February 3, 2020
This is a remarkable end to a 3 volume set. It is truly a wonder that FDR was able to manage the war almost to its end, while literally dying himself in much of the last year. One is left wondering how things could have been different if he had lived another year or if the US would have entered a year earlier.
September 17, 2021
A great book about a great man
This book gives details of how president Roosevelt as commander and chief chief helped us to win World War II it shows how that was how he worked with Stalin is Stalin and Churchill to make a plan that would work to beat Hitler and to beat the Japanese it's in to give us United Nations I did nations so we could try to avoid wars in a few
This book gives details of how president Roosevelt as commander and chief chief helped us to win World War II it shows how that was how he worked with Stalin is Stalin and Churchill to make a plan that would work to beat Hitler and to beat the Japanese it's in to give us United Nations I did nations so we could try to avoid wars in a few
May 29, 2025
Great book and series. Learned many details and insights about navigating the challenges from Churchill in particular and his various strategy rabbit holes. Very interesting seeing the birth of some of the geopolitical decisions. Incredibly startling how ill Roosevelt was and the efforts to keep it hidden prior to reelection number 4.
Highly recommend this!!
Highly recommend this!!
September 5, 2025
The unique perspective that Hamilton utilized to tell the story of FDR's leadership as Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces during WWII makes this book completely worthwhile as an important read for WWII history buffs. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and, despite its more than 500 pages, practically raced through it.
July 5, 2019
A most fascinating read on a man who's vision, hard work, personality touched American lives forever. FDR defined what a President is all about and Nigel has an outstanding talent in bringing this great American to life. A pure joy to read!
August 30, 2019
Ought of the series I think this was my least favorite, yet still a good read. Reason being it really kept drivibg the point home that the british were ineffective, i am not british i am American i dont like it because he will often repeat things unnecessarily.
November 23, 2021
The whole series was great, I highly recommend them. This the third volume of the trilogy takes the reader through to FDRs death. It documents what went on at Yalta and the president's condition. It shows just how back stabbing Churchill was. Well researched and very readable.
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