Category Archives: Reviews

Prophet in Politics: Henry A Wallace and the War Years, 1940-1965

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(This 1970 book by Edward L. and Frederick H. Schapmeier is out of print though available from libraries and used book sellers.)

I originally became interested in why FDR had three Vice Presidents, and Henry Agard Wallace was the second. The first was John Nance Garner, and FDR hadn’t won the Democratic nomination for the presidency until he persuaded Garner to drop out of the race and accept the vice presidency. Garner and Roosevelt disagreed widely on many issues, and their relationship soured irretrievably during their second term. Garner was quoted a characterizing the vice presidency as being “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” Wallace was different than Garner in many ways. He was a studious, deeply religious Progressive. He had been well suited to the position of Secretary of Agriculture that he held before FDR selected him to replace Garner. He had taught himself Spanish and made a very successful tour of Latin America as Germany was declaring war on the United States.

Reading about Wallace was often baffling. As Vice President he supported the Manhattan Project because he feared the Germans would develop the bomb first. He understood the Soviet Union possessed the capability to produce the weapon, but his actions indicated that he believed Stalin was a dependable ally who did not have subversive purposes.  Wallace said, “The future of the well-being of the world depends on the extent to which Marxism, as it is being progressively modified in Russia, and democracy, as we are adapting it…can live in peace.” Wallace went so far in his idealism to envision the United Nations would have sovereign powers over the United States through “…an international peace law, an international peace court and an international peace force…”   Continue reading →

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies–Part II

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Part one of the review of this book by Jared Diamond focused on the role of guns, germs and steel in the conquest of native peoples by invaders. This part focuses on the evolution of Europeans and Asians from being hunter-gathers to the domestication of wild plants and animals. The animals brought plentiful protein, and created the ability to farm much larger areas of land. Domestication of animals also brought the epidemic-causing germs, but the survivors developed immunity and grew to large populations supported by the ability to grow food. Technology advanced as people were freed from the continual search for food, more complex systems of government were developed, and armies could be formed, trained, and fed. Population densities increased, new lands were sought, germs were introduced to the new lands and caused marked reduction in the population of the natives who might not welcome the new settlers, and the well-armed settlers took over with the help of their armies.

I recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in horticulture, because there are detailed descriptions of the plants found in different areas of the globe, and how the Europeans and Asians had the advantage that they were able to domesticate plants that produced large grains with high levels of protein. Chapter 7, “How to Make an Almond,” describes how edible and harvestable foods evolved. The title refers to the fact that most almonds contain chemicals that make them too bitter to eat, but a non-bitter mutant was eventually domesticated. Many wild plants have specialized mechanisms to scatter seeds, and that prevented humans from being able to harvest them. A genetic mutation developed in some of the plants that prevented the seeds from being scattered. Humans harvested the seeds, ate some, planted some, and profited from the practice. Continue reading →

Gun, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies–Part I

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This book by Jared Diamond published in 1997 won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. I don’t often open a review by arguing with the author about the title, but I prefer the one that had the subtitle, “A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years.” It is an excellent book that deserved awards. It is easy to read, although I caught myself skimming in some sections where the author was describing, as an example, lengthy lists of food-producing plants. This part will focus on the role of guns, germs, and steel in the conquest of many native peoples.

The Prologue is titled “Yali’s Question, The regionally differing courses of history.” The author explains that New Guineans had tens of thousands of years of history and were still using stone tools when the Europeans showed up with all manner of manufactured goods, including steel axes. New Guineans called all those goods “cargo.” Yali was a New Guinean politician who inquired, “Why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?” The Europeans used their superior technology to impose a centralized government and dominate the New Guineans, who they considered to be primitive. Yali’s question is mentioned often in the author’s quest to understand how Europeans and Asians were able to dominate original occupants of many lands, such as Native Americans, despite having no genetic superiority. Continue reading →

FDR’s Personality

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This is the fourth and perhaps final posting of the review of Joseph E. Persico’s excellent book, “Roosevelt’s Secret War, FDR and World War II Espionage.” The author gives significant insights into FDR’s personality, especially his fascination with learning the secrets of others. One person observed, “Few leaders were better adapted temperamentally to espionage than Franklin Roosevelt.” In keeping with that observation, FDR authorized wire taps of people judged to be suspicious despite a Supreme Court ruling that banned wire taps and the advice of his Attorney General. He justified that authorization on the grounds of national security, but he took the liberty to go further.  He had J. Edgar Hoover investigate former President Herbert Hoover and opponent Wendell Wilkie. He also had Vice President Henry Wallace under surveillance. I’ve read in other accounts that he expanded far beyond political opponents and associates. It was said that he reveled in learning about skeletons in people’s closets gathered by Hoover. Perhaps he did some of this as a reflective action to an event early in his adulthood when he and a friend began consorting with two beautiful women. He was warned by a friend of his family that the two women were the “best known pair of international blackmailers in Europe,” and he and his friend were able to escape. The lesson in the value of suspicion may have stayed with him.

Roosevelt had a recording system installed inside a drawer of his desk in August 1940.  One recorded conversation was about Wendell Wilkie. FDR was recorded talking about Wilkie’s mistress, and how Wilkie’s wife had in effect, “…been hired to return to Wendell to smile and make his campaign with him.”  The recorder was removed almost immediately after FDR won reelection. 

 Continue reading →

Roosevelt’s Secret War–FDR, Stalin, and Churchill

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The interactions of the “Big Three” have inspired several books, but once again the book by Joseph E. Persico ties what I see as the complete story together nicely. FDR had a much stronger affinity for Stalin than to Churchill.  He confided to Joseph Kennedy, his ambassador to Great Britain, that he had never liked Churchill from the beginning.  Churchill was open in his desire to maintain the British Empire, and Roosevelt was strongly opposed to imperialism. I was startled to read a quote from him in the book that he told Admiral Godfrey, the U.S. is going “…to show the Brits, Portuguese, and Dutch how to take care of those West Indies Islands. Every n—-r will have his two acres and a sugar patch.” On the other hand Roosevelt was strangely able to overlook the atrocities committed under Stalin. He knew that large numbers of people Stalin decided he couldn’t trust were summarily executed and millions of Ukrainians were intentionally starved.  Both Roosevelt and Churchill knew that Stalin had ordered the execution of thousands of Polish officers, but covered it up. FDR was somehow persuaded that he could work with Stalin and trust him.

Roosevelt early and often acted according to Stalin’s wishes. He had established diplomatic relations with the Soviets, and apparently was willing to accept the large numbers of spies that action brought into the country and his administration. He released Earl Browder, the head of the U.S. Communist party who had been convicted of passport violations. He took that action to placate Stalin, and it restored a key link in Russia’s spy chain in America. One of the strangest actions he took involved 1500 pages of Soviet cryptographic material and a codebook that had been sold to the Office of Strategic Service by Finland. FDR ordered the information to be returned to the Soviets without copying it, and there is a dispute whether it was copied or not. There is no dispute the Soviets were absolutely baffled about why the Americans had returned the information.  Secretary of State Edward Stettinius was said to have explained that FDR ordered to action because he wanted to do nothing to arouse Stalin’s suspicions.  

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Roosevelt’s Secret War, FDR and World War II Espionage, Part II

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Part I of the review of this book by Joseph E. Persico was about how FDR prepared the country for war, and how he reacted to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This posting will focus on Roosevelt’s use of intelligence and intelligence services, and some of the impacts on the events of World War II.  Vincent Astor had become a friend and confidant of FDR after his crippling attack of polio. Astor and a group of wealthy friends had formed an organization to secretly collect gossip and informal intelligence that they called “The Room.”  One member was Kermit Roosevelt, the man who would engineer the CIA overthrow of the legitimate government of Iran in the early 1950’s.  Astor had done some amateur sleuthing in the Pacific for Roosevelt after FDR had become President, but the German attack of Poland brought Astor and The Room closer to FDR.  The group of adventure-seeking dilettantes reconstituted themselves as “The Club,” and began to increase their activities through various international banks.  This group appealed to FDR’s natural attraction to “cloak and dagger” intrigue.  FDR is characterized in the latter pages of the book as wanting to be like a secret agent who was “…a burglar with morals.”  He preferred to work with human sources over signals intelligence, or “humint” over “signit” in the shorthand of the trade.

Much of the book is about the various U.S. intelligence gathering services that seemed to spend almost as much effort trying to discredit the other organizations as they did trying to steal secrets from other countries.  Much of the in-fighting involved Bill “Wild Bill” Donovan. FDR had written a note in June 1941 authorizing a military central intelligence service with Donovan as the “coordinator of information,” or COI.  The organization was renamed Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.  It was the latest of 136 “emergency agencies” that FDR created.  However, this one began almost immediately to create friction with the other military intelligence agencies and J.Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Joseph Kennedy, Ambassador to Britain also wasn’t a fan of Donovan.  Continue reading →