“Those Angry Days” by Lynne Olson; 2013 is a shocking account of the attitudes in the USA in the first years of WW2. Clearly, many years have to elapse before history can be written.
The first years (’40 –’42) the German armed forces were overpowering. The armies of France, Great Britain and the USA were no match. France was vanquished in a few days, Great Britain barely survived the air raids, mainly thanks to Polish pilots. The USA armed forces were too small for an adequate response. Moreover, isolationists prevented the US from helping Great Britain. Their mindset was “Let the European countries destroy each other as they always have been doing”. Even 50 years later some historians praise Roosevelt for his statesmanship. “Roosevelt let Britain and Germany destroy each other and the USA emerged as the premier power”.
Jews trying to escape Germany were not admitted. One senator proposed sterilization as a condition for Jews getting visa to the US; saying “They are free to choose”. Even after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt did not declare war against Germany. Hitler declared war against the USA, thinking that with the USA being preoccupied in the Pacific region, he could prevail in Europe. Europe was saved by Hitler’s megalomaniac stupidity.
For politicians power takes priority over morals. Apparently, Roosevelt's thinking was, "My morality is only relevant when I have the power to enforce it". Persons are free to follow their conscience.The responsibility of a politician goes further. Politicians have only have power in so far their constituents give it to them.
Lindbergh; the second prominent player in Olson’s book, presented himself as a paragon of morality; never beholden to anyone, always following his conscience. Thirty years after his death it turns out he had six children out of wedlock with three German women. Convinced of his superior genes, he saw siring twelve children as a duty. A peculiar sense of morality.
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND KIRKUS REVIEWS
“From the acclaimed author of Citizens of London comes the definitive account of the debate over American intervention in World War II—a bitter, sometimes violent clash of personalities and ideas that divided the nation and ultimately determined the fate of the free world.
At the center of this controversy stood the two most famous men in America: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed the interventionist cause, and aviator Charles Lindbergh, who as unofficial leader and spokesman for America’s isolationists emerged as the president’s most formidable adversary. Their contest of wills personified the divisions within the country at large, and Lynne Olson makes masterly use of their dramatic personal stories to create a poignant and riveting narrative. While FDR, buffeted by political pressures on all sides, struggled to marshal public support for aid to Winston Churchill’s Britain, Lindbergh saw his heroic reputation besmirched—and his marriage thrown into turmoil—by allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer.
Spanning the years 1939 to 1941, Those Angry Days vividly re-creates the rancorous internal squabbles that gripped the United States in the period leading up to Pearl Harbor. After Germany vanquished most of Europe, America found itself torn between its traditional isolationism and the urgent need to come to the aid of Britain, the only country still battling Hitler. The conflict over intervention was, as FDR noted, “a dirty fight,” rife with chicanery and intrigue, and Those Angry Days recounts every bruising detail. In Washington, a group of high-ranking military officers, including the Air Force chief of staff, worked to sabotage FDR’s pro-British policies. Roosevelt, meanwhile, authorized FBI wiretaps of Lindbergh and other opponents of intervention. At the same time, a covert British operation, approved by the president, spied on antiwar groups, dug up dirt on congressional isolationists, and planted propaganda in U.S. newspapers.
The stakes could not have been higher. The combatants were larger than life. With the immediacy of a great novel, Those Angry Days brilliantly recalls a time fraught with danger when the future of democracy and America's role in the world hung in the balance.”
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