How Roosevelt Failed America in World War II

Reeling from the devastation of World War I, many Americans vowed never again to become involved in European conflicts. This stance was formalized in 1935 when Congress passed the first Neutrality Act, which was not only designed to keep America out of foreign wars but also called for the president to declare an immediate embargo of arms and munitions to all belligerent countries. As war loomed and eventually erupted in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted several policies that aided the Allies, and American neutrality was questionable many months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This work examines how Roosevelt navigated prewar neutrality to push the United States toward intervention on the side of the Allies in World War II, and considers critically his wartime policy of unconditional surrender and his unprecedented acceptance of a fourth term. It covers his prewar policies that sidestepped neutrality, including covert submarine warfare, air patrol of the North Atlantic, the Lend Lease Act and coordination between the American and British navies, and critiques his plans for rebuilding postwar Europe. Thirteen appendices parallel prewar planning by Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and reproduce such key documents as the Atlantic Charter and the Potsdam Declaration.

The late Stewart Halsey Ross was a mechanical engineer and history professor. He spent two years analyzing bomb accuracy tests for the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps. He lived in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Stewart Halsey Ross
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 254
Bibliographic Info: appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2006
pISBN: 978-0-7864-2512-9
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vi
Preface      1
Introduction      5

1. FDR’s Undeclared War in the Atlantic      15
2. FDR’s Personal Fifty-Destroyers-for-Bases Deal      23
3. Lend-Lease: To the Brink of War      30
4. Charles A. Lindbergh and the America First Committee      38
5. FDR’s Expendable “Three Small Vessels”      55
6. Pearl Harbor: FDR’s Monstrous Conspiracy      60
7. FDR’s Tomfoolery: Unconditional Surrender      85
8. FDR Ignores Die Schwarze Kapelle      103
9. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr.’s Scorched-Earth Plan      120
10. Roosevelt: Feeble and Dying      135
11. Was Adolf Hitler Planning to Attack the United States?      150

Epilogue      177
Appendices
A. President Grover Cleveland’s “Toothache,” 1893      179
B. The Zimmermann Telegram, January 17, 1917      181
C. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, January 18, 1918      182
D. The Portentous Lie of Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr., 1918      184
E. Conspiracy in President Woodrow Wilson’s White House, 1919-1920      191
F. Key Excerpts from the Nye “Munitions Hearings” Report, February 24, 1936      195
G. America First Committee: Principles and Membership, 1940      200
H. The Atlantic Charter, August 14, 1941      201
I. Key Excerpts from a Charles A. Lindbergh Speech, September 11, 1941      203
J. United Nations Declaration, January 1, 1942      206
K. U.S. Mustard Gas at Bari, Italy, 1943      207
L. Memorandum by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., on the Scorched-Earth Plan      209
M. The Potsdam Declaration, July 26, 1945      213

Notes      215
Bibliography      235
Index      241