Author : David Mayers
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 387 pages
File Size : 15,91 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1107031265
A fascinating history of American diplomacy in the Second World War and the ways US ambassadors shaped formal foreign policy.
Author : David McKean
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 42,80 MB
Release : 2021-11-09
Category : History
ISBN : 1250206987
A gripping and groundbreaking account of how all but one of FDR's ambassadors in Europe misjudged Hitler and his intentions As German tanks rolled toward Paris in late May 1940, the U.S. Ambassador to France, William Bullitt, was determined to stay put, holed up in the Chateau St. Firmin in Chantilly, his country residence. Bullitt told the president that he would neither evacuate the embassy nor his chateau, an eighteenth Renaissance manse with a wine cellar of over 18,000 bottles, even though “we have only two revolvers in this entire mission with only forty bullets.” As German forces closed in on the French capital, Bullitt wrote the president, “In case I should get blown up before I see you again, I want you to know that it has been marvelous to work for you.” As the fighting raged in France, across the English Channel, Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy wrote to his wife Rose, “The situation is more than critical. It means a terrible finish for the allies.” David McKean's Watching Darkness Fall will recount the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and the road to war from the perspective of four American diplomats in Europe who witnessed it firsthand: Joseph Kennedy, William Dodd, Breckinridge Long, and William Bullitt, who all served in key Western European capitals—London, Berlin, Rome, Paris, and Moscow—in the years prior to World War II. In many ways they were America’s first line of defense and they often communicated with the president directly, as Roosevelt's eyes and ears on the ground. Unfortunately, most of them underestimated the power and resolve of Adolf Hitler and Germany’s Third Reich. Watching Darkness Fall is a gripping new history of the years leading up to and the beginning of WWII in Europe told through the lives of five well-educated and mostly wealthy men all vying for the attention of the man in the Oval Office.
Author : Seth Jacobs
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 24,49 MB
Release : 2020-05-21
Category : History
ISBN : 1107079470
This book explores a crucial feature of U.S. foreign policy: the extent to which many of America's greatest triumphs resulted from diplomats disobeying orders.
Author : Dennis J. Dunn
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 374 pages
File Size : 22,52 MB
Release : 2014-10-17
Category : History
ISBN : 0813158834
On November 16, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov signed an agreement establishing diplomatic ties between the United States and the Soviet Union. Two days later Roosevelt named the first of five ambassadors he would place in Moscow between 1933 and 1945. Caught between Roosevelt and Stalin tells the dramatic and important story of these ambassadors and their often contentious relationships with the two most powerful men in the world. More than fifty years after his death, Roosevelt's foreign policy, especially regarding the Soviet Union, remains a subject of intense debate. Dennis Dunn offers an ambitious new appraisal of the apparent confusion and contradiction in Roosevelt's policy one moment publicizing the four freedoms and the Atlantic Charter and the next moment giving tacit approval to Stalin's control of parts of Eastern Europe and northeast Asia. Dunn argues that "Rooseveltism," the president's belief that the Soviet Union and the United States were both developing into modern social democracies, blinded Roosevelt to the true nature of Stalin's brutal dictatorship despite repeated warnings from his ambassadors in Moscow. Focusing on the ambassadors themselves, William C. Bullitt, Joseph E. Davies, Laurence A. Steinhardt, William C. Standley, and W. Averell Harriman, Dunn details their bruising arguments with Roosevelt over the president's repeated concessions to Stalin. Using information uncovered during extensive research in the Soviet archives, Dunn reveals much about Stalin's policy toward the United States and demonstrates that in ignoring his ambassadors' good advice, Roosevelt appeased the Soviet leader unnecessarily. Sure to generate new discussion concerning the origins of the Cold War, this controversial assessment of Roosevelt's failed Soviet policy will be read for years to come.
Author : Waldo Heinrichs
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 31,12 MB
Release : 1990-03-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0199879044
As the first comprehensive treatment of the American entry into World War II to appear in over thirty-five years, Waldo Heinrichs' volume places American policy in a global context, covering both the European and Asian diplomatic and military scenes, with Roosevelt at the center. Telling a tale of ever-broadening conflict, this vivid narrative weaves back and forth from the battlefields in the Soviet Union, to the intense policy debates within Roosevelt's administration, to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, to the precarious and delicate negotiations with Japan. Refuting the popular portrayal of Roosevelt as a vacillating, impulsive man who displayed no organizational skills in his decision-making during this period, Heinrichs presents him as a leader who acted with extreme caution and deliberation, who always kept his options open, and who, once Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union stalled in July, 1941, acted rapidly and with great determination. This masterful account of a key moment in American history captures the tension faced by Roosevelt, Churchill, Stimson, Hull, and numerous others as they struggled to shape American policy in the climactic nine months before Pearl Harbor.
Author : Gaynor Johnson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 32,51 MB
Release : 2024-01-25
Category : History
ISBN : 1350227846
Written in tribute to the work of Professor Alan Dobson, this collection of essays brings diplomacy and the Anglo-American relationship together, considering politics and foreign policy in tandem with cultural interactions. Uniquely placed to define exactly what transatlanticism is, and to explore the ways in which this idea has evolved in the last 150 years, this book asks to what extent can it be argued that there was a transatlantic world, how can it be defined and what was unique about it? With contributions from leading scholars it offers an overview of the field as well as a comparative exploration of Anglo-American relations. From emotion in foreign policy decision making, to the RAF in the Vietnam War, as well as leader personalities and transatlantic reactions to women's rights in China, Transatlanticism and Transnationalism since the First World War explores this 'special relationship' at many levels and from many angles. It further asks how this relationship has evolved over the years, and considers how it might survive in a globalized, post-industrial world.
Author : Marco Maria Aterrano
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 14,93 MB
Release : 2020-05-04
Category : History
ISBN : 1351329987
From the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 through to the waning months of the World War II in 1945, Fascist Italy was at war. This Fascist decade of war comprised an uninterrupted stretch of military and political engagements in which Italian military forces were involved in Abyssinia, Spain, Albania, France, Greece, the Soviet Union, North Africa and the Middle East. As a junior partner to Nazi Germany, only entering the war in June 1940, Italy is often seen as a relatively minor player in World War II. However, this book challenges much of the existing scholarship by arguing that Fascist Italy played a significant and distinct role in shaping international relations between 1935 and 1945, creating a Fascist decade of war.
Author : Anne Sharp Wells
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
Page : 567 pages
File Size : 36,80 MB
Release : 2013-12-24
Category : History
ISBN : 0810879441
This dictionary covers the complex and costly conflict that began when Germany, ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, invaded neighboring Poland on 1 September 1939; and concluded when Germany surrendered on 7–9 May 1945, leaving much of the European continent in ruins and its population devastated. The war against Germany, Italy, and the other European Axis members was fought primarily in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, East and North Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean. The Axis powers were defeated by the Allies, led by the “Grand Alliance” of Great Britain, the United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Historical Dictionary of World War II: The War against Germany and Italy relates the history of this war through a chronology, an introductory essay, maps and photos, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries on the countries and geographical areas involved in the war, as well as the nations remaining neutral; wartime alliances and conferences; significant civilian and military leaders; and major ground, naval, and air operations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about World War II.
Author : P. Peter Sarros
Publisher : University of Notre Dame Pess
Page : 601 pages
File Size : 21,91 MB
Release : 2020-01-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0268106835
This book explores the bilateral relations between the United States and the Vatican from 1975 to 1980, a turbulent period that had two presidents, three presidential envoys, and three popes. This previously untold story shows how the United States and the Vatican worked quietly together behind the scenes to influence the international response to major issues of the day. Peter Sarros examines the Iran hostage crisis, the tensions of the Cold War, the Helsinki process, and the Beagle Channel dispute, among other issues. These interactions produced a tacit alliance in the foreign policies of the United States and the Vatican even before the establishment of full diplomatic relations. This unique book is based largely on official documents from the archives of the Office of the U.S. Special Envoy of the United States to the Vatican, supplemented by Sarros's contemporaneous diaries, notes, and other unpublished sources. The confidential consultations at the Vatican by three special envoys and by Sarros in his role as chargé and ambassador at the Vatican were critical in obtaining Vatican support on major international issues. The Vatican also derived substantial benefits from the partnership through U.S. support of Vatican initiatives in Lebanon and elsewhere, and by U.S. policies that gave Vatican diplomacy the flexibility to play a larger role in the international sphere. Sarros concludes that American diplomacy was successful at the Holy See during this period because it took advantage of the Vatican's overarching international strategy, which was to increase its influence through support for the global balance of power while blocking the expansion of Soviet power and communism in Europe. U.S.-Vatican Relations, 1975–1980 will be of interest to students and scholars of history and political science, especially in the fields of diplomatic relations and church history.
Author : Bernadette Whelan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 35,19 MB
Release : 2020-12-10
Category : History
ISBN : 1108904998
How did Irish and American diplomacy operate in Washington DC and Dublin during the 1930s era of economic depression, rising fascism and Nazism? How did the Anglo–American relationship affect American–Irish diplomatic relations? Why and how did Éamon de Valera and Franklin D. Roosevelt move their countries towards neutrality in 1939? This first comprehensive history of American and Irish diplomacy during the 1930s focuses on formal and informal diplomacy, examining all aspects of diplomatic life to explain the relationship between the two administrations from 1932 to 1939. Bernadette Whelan reveals how diplomats worked on behalf of their governments to implement Franklin D. Roosevelt and Éamon de Valera's foreign policies – particularly when Éamon de Valera believed in the existence of a 'special' transatlantic relationship but Franklin D. Roosevelt increasingly favoured a strong relationship with Britain. Drawing on a wide range of under-used sources, this is a major new contribution to the history of American and Irish diplomacy and revises our understanding of the importance of Ireland to a US administration.
