"A brilliant study telling the often sad and frustrating story of the no-holds-barred struggle over American intervention in World War II between the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the one hand and the national hero aviator Charles Lindbergh on the other. Each was genuinely convinced he was doing the best for the nation under desperate circumstances, and each brought out the very worst in each other. The quietly moving Chapter 24 can—appropriately enough—be read in isolation, apart from its context in the narrative. It's a stark revelation of just how far Lindbergh had fallen from greatness by 1941, with his utter inability to confront the degree to which he was fanning the flames of anti-Semitism or admit any possibility that he might be wrong. With its underlying issues of policy towards would-be refugees, and the degree to which the U. S. should engage with the wider world, this remains, unfortunately, a cautionary tale for our own times."
Publisher Random House Trade Paperbacks
Publication Date 2014-01-14
Section US History / All Staff Suggestions / Nonfiction Suggestions / Alan H.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780812982145
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.
