“A most carefully written and thoroughly documented study of American foreign relations.... It is a book destined to be the standard authority on our war years.” – New Republic

Reprint of the 1952 edition. " Based on an examination of Department of State confidential correspondence and the manuscript collections of the National Archives and Library of Congress.

Discusses American foreign policy all around the world, argueing that neither Germany nor Japan wanted war with America. but that Roosevelt's foreign policy steadily moved the country in the direction of war with the axis powers, until finally Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Goes behind the newspaper propaganda, using official State Dept documents. Essential to the serious student."

Really Excellent!  4/22/2008  Michael Tozer
Charles Tansill's book on the Roosevelt Foreign Policy between 1933 and 1941 is really excellent. Author Tansill demonstrates quite convincingly his central theme: that FDR sought to include the United States in the Second World War on the side of the Soviet Union from the very beginning, and duped the Japanese into firing the first shot as a "back door" to war.

As the other reviewers have averred, these are facts not covered in most high school, or even university level history courses. And yet, facts they are. Tansill proves his premise by the usage of extensive primary material from US State Department files, current periodicals, and sound reasoning. His writing is economical, and compelling. Though a very long book of well over six hundred pages, Tansill make the long journey both enjoyable, and well worth the effort.

This is a very important, excellently crafted, and thoroughly enjoyable history. We strongly recommend it to all who would know justice and love mercy, while yet there is time.

Download Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941

PDF format, 34MB, 712Pages.

CHARLES CALLAN TANSILL
Professor of American Diplomatic History
Georgetown University
GREENWOOD

PREFACE
THE armistice of November 11 , 1918, put an end to World War I, but it ushered in a battle of the books that continues to the present day. Responsibility for the outbreak of that conflict was glibly placed by Allied historians upon the shoulders of the statesmen of the Central powers.

German historians replied with a flood of books and pamphlets that filled the shelves of many libraries, and the so-called “revisionists” in many lands swelled this rising tide by adding monographs that challenged the Allied war-guilt thesis.

While this historical argument was still being vehemently waged, World War II broke out in 1939 and academic attention was shifted to the question of the responsibility for this latest expression of martial madness.

There was little doubt in most American minds that Hitler had deliberately provoked World War II by his attack upon Poland. Since 1933 he had been caustically criticized in the American press. His unrestrained manner of speech, his dubious program for the regeneration of Germany, and the mad antics of some of his fanatical followers had created in numerous American circles a personal hatred of him that far exceeded the strong antipathy felt for Kaiser Wilhelm during the first decade of the twentieth century.

There is no doubt that, as far as America was concerned, Hitler was a liability that all the good intentions and the best brains of Germany could never liquidate. The immediate blight that he inflicted upon German-American relations can be readily appreciated when we contrast the friendly press notices of the Bruning government with the sharp attacks made upon the Nazi political groups after February 1933.

Each item in the Hitler program of expansion evoked columns of recriminations in many American newspapers. Distrust of Germany went so deep and spread so far that every vestige of American good will vanished from the pages of periodicals that once had been friendly.

Streams of refugees of different races and different creeds gave detailed testimony of widespread injustice and the denial of the freedoms that seemed so essential to the American way of life.

From 1933 to 1939 multitudes of Americans were being slowly conditioned for war along some foreign frontier. As Hitler rearmed Germany and prepared to put force behind his bold announcements, large numbers of persons in this hemisphere began to feel that his bid for power was a menace to them as well as to his European neighbors.

The old followers of Woodrow Wilson had never renounced their allegiance to a one-world ideal, and they were fervent in their belief that America should take an active part in the preservation of world peace.

They received strong support from many “liberals” and “intellectuals” who believed that modern science had banished the old barriers of time and space and had brought the peoples of the world into such close communion that some form of world government was an international imperative. ...

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment