THE CONQUERORS

A lucid study of how FDR’s evolving vision of postwar Europe, enacted by Truman, prevented a recapitulation of Versailles and allowed for the rise of a prosperous, democratic, peaceable Germany.

Political historian Beschloss (Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965, not reviewed, etc.), both an able scholar and a gifted interpreter of the past for a popular audience, addresses episodes of wartime diplomacy that have been well studied in the professional literature. Even so, he turns up a few surprises, notably Roosevelt’s changing view of how Germany would best be kept from rearming itself after Hitler’s fall and starting trouble again, as seemed to be a well-established pattern. In 1943, Roosevelt was inclined to carve up postwar Germany into three or more states, “bound only by a system of common services, and strip those new states of ‘all military activities’ and ‘armament industries’ ”; two years later, having gained greater insight into Josef Stalin’s ambitions thanks in part to constant admonitions from Winston Churchill—who warned, presciently, “Sooner or later they will reunite into one nation. . . . The main thing is to keep them divided, if only for fifty years”—Roosevelt was inclined to a clement but firm peace that would draw the defeated nation into the Western camp. His view was sharpened when it became apparent that Stalin was eager to keep Germany whole so that it could be milked for billions of dollars in reparations and be drawn into the Soviet bloc. Roosevelt died just before Hitler’s regime ended—Beschloss offers the fascinating tidbit that FDR’s last act before expiring was to throw away his draft card—but the underestimated Truman did a remarkable job of negotiating a pact that “created the opportunity for the United States, Great Britain, and France . . . to create, at least in part of Germany, a democratic state whose system . . . would one day spread to the East.” As it did, Beschloss observes, in some measure because of the foresight of the American leadership.

An altogether valuable addition to the historical literature.