FDR Out of Context

...Germany started both of the terrible European conflicts that made the last century such a bloody one, and long before World War I German militarism far exceeded that of the other major powers...

...And together with Churchill he rejected Stalin's demand that the Germans be required to make reparations to the Soviet Union...

...McCloy strongly opposed the plan, and when Roosevelt asked him who should command the military in the U.S...

...In the light of all this it seems reasonable to assume that despite FDR's many denunciations of the German national character, if worse came to worst he wanted a strong Germany on the Allied side...

...Throughout, too much weight is placed on FDR's failing health and not enough on his deviousness, although Beschloss is fully aware that Roosevelt was the most inscrutable of Presidents...

...His dubious point was made moot at the February 1945 Yalta Conference, where the Allies agreed to let East Germany, the country's agricultural heartland, become a Soviet occupation zone...

...Furthermore, Germany was the linchpin of Europe's economy...

...President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed on to the plan during the Quebec AngloAmerican conference in August 1943, and even dragged a reluctant Winston Churchill along-then later claimed to have no memory of any of this...

...But the foremost scholars, while not excusing FDR's failings, put them in context...

...FDR also refused to commit himself to continuing LendLease aid to the USSR after Germany fell, or to giving it postwar loans...

...Beyond the details there is little new in his book and little reason to have written it...

...that advocated breaking up and deindustrializing Germany...

...On the surface, Roosevelt's policy toward the Soviets was to be as open and cooperative as possible...

...it is the debate over the country's future during World War II, and in particular the steps taken subsequently to ensure that Germany would become peaceful and democratic...

...Since the Morgenthau approach was doomed from the start, FDR's obscurantism notwithstanding, one has to wonder why Beschloss has constructed his book around it...

...Grace Tulley, one of his two longtime secretaries, asserted flatly that no one knew FDR...

...Beschloss is familiar with Roosevelt's maddening habits, as well as his cunning and manipulativeness...

...This only makes the author's intense concentration on a failed and potentially disastrous proposal all the more curious...

...He did not write revealing letters, nor did he keep a diary, so if he had any confidants his secrets went to the grave with them...

...Instead of focusing on why the policies put into place were successful, however, Beschloss devotes most of his new book to a proposal by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr...

...without a revival of its industry the Continent's recovery from the War would have been difficult, if not impossible...

...He proved insatiable so the effort failed, but the logic behind it remained valid...

...FDR gave the impression that he agreed with everyone he talked to, contradicted himself incessantly, and pitted his civilian aides and appointees against one another on a regular basis...

...Without formally quashing the Morgenthau Plan, he named Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy the first American High Commissioner for Germany...

...In addition-although this was not to be discussed openly-if relations with the Soviets soured after the War, as seemed increasingly likely by late 1944, a strong West Germany would be an Allied asset...

...But despite these and other negative traits, he provided brilliant leadership during the two worst crises Americans experienced in the 20th century, the Great Depression and World War II...

...Another puzzling feature is that Beschloss appears to detest Roosevelt...

...True, it provides plenty of material...

...Allied leaders therefore spent a good deal of time discussing how to manage the postwar occupation so as to eradicate not only Nazism but what appeared to be a war loving culture...

...First, he valued his Hudson Valley neighbor's absolute loyalty, something that could not be counted on from many Cabinet members...

...Its strategic location between Western Europe and the Soviet Union was one of the reasons Britain and France sought to appease Adolf Hitler before the War...

...Yet as Beschloss admits in his Preface, the Morgenthau Plan never had a ghost of a chance and would have been disastrous if implemented...

...occupation zone McCloy chose General Lucius D. Clay, another Morgenthau critic...

...Meanwhile, Morgenthau was strung along by FDR for his usual Machiavellian reasons...

...He added to the chaos by thinking out loud, trying on ideas for size, and sometimes making statements for their shock value alone...

...Second, he did not want to antagonize American Jewry -already demanding revenge for the Nazi atrocities that would come to be called the Holocaust-any sooner than he had to...

...The undigested state of his frequently excellent material suggests that he probably should have started sooner...

...The outcome, which figures prominently in many histories of World War II, is well worth examining again...

...President Harry S. Truman inherited and implemented this policy, not only because he thought it was what Roosevelt wanted, but because "I was never in favor of that crazy plan...

...He represents him as a doddering old conniver much of the time, then concludes by writing that today's "democratic, decentralized Germany is largely the country that Roosevelt imagined and worked for...

...The author himself says in his Preface: "In the end, however, Roosevelt knew that while born out of justifiable anger at the Nazis and dread of a revived postwar Germany, Morgenthau's plan would violate old American traditions of magnanimity and that, by fueling German resentment, it might have created the conditions for another Hitler...

...That is doubtful, because the plan made no sense, as almost every high ranking official in the Administration understood...

...Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of history, Rutgers...

...Almost every serious student of FDR is critical of his underhanded methods, his deceitfulness and lack of loyalty...

...Stalin learned about the Manhattan Project from his spies anyway, which probably fed his paranoia and may have indicated to him that Roosevelt's velvet glove concealed an iron fist...

...This statement goes against practically everything else Beschloss has to say about FDR...

...Thus, while throwing various verbal and written sops Morgenthau's way, FDR ensured that the West German industrial economy would be rebuilt, a course Britain favored as well...

...But he did not inform Soviet Communist Party chief Joseph Stalin that Britain and the United States were engaged in developing an atomic bomb...

...author, "A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II" Michael Beschloss is a respected historian, better known than most because of his frequent appearances on public television and several well-received books...

...Roosevelt seldom showed his hand, but toward the end of the War certain decisions could not be put off...

...Beschloss goes on to say that breaking up Germany might have allowed Stalin to dominate postwar Europe, and that the Roosevelt-Truman design in fact thwarted the Soviets and gave the Germans "the chance to prove themselves...

...The only person to say in public that a turned around Germany could be a potent ally against the Soviets was General George S. Patton, who was promptly sacked...

...Nevertheless, the historian too often takes FDR's words at face value, attributing contradictions and the like to Roosevelt's mental lapses...

...As Beschloss points out, this was one of the greatest foreign policy achievements of the United States in the 20th century...

...And since democratizing Germany is the ostensible subject of The Conquerors, why does the actual process receive so little attention...

...It was, in short, a triumph...

...It is also true, making Beschloss' denigration of Roosevelt even harder to understand...

...Reconciling Roosevelt's dark side with his genius for leadership is never easy, especially because the two were so closely intertwined...

...Cutting Germany into pieces would have alienated the very people the Allies hoped to rehabilitate...

...As a result, historians and biographers have had to infer what Roosevelt thought at any given moment on the basis of what he did, a tricky business made no easier by his habit of deliberately spreading confusion...

...He knew a great many people, but he had few close friends...

...We are told, for example, that FDR's support of the Morgenthau Plan at Quebec and later can only mean he believed in it, at least for a time...

...What one almost never sees is a book like this one, where FDR's personal shortcomings dominate the narrative and are followed by extravagant praise...

...Morgenthau argued that the various new German statelets would still be able to feed themselves...

...Beschloss claims to have begun The Conquerors in 1992...

...His new work is very strange, though, beginning with its subtitle...

...As Commander m Chief of a nation at war he ranks among the best, which Beschloss freely concedes...

...Third, by seeming to back the Treasury's plan, so loathed by the State and War Departments, FDR made them antagonists, a situation he always relished and encouraged whenever he could...

...He adds a great many details to the fight over the Morgenthau Plan without changing what historians have long thought about the issue...

...For his real subject is not the destruction of Germany...