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Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the lead-up to the U.S. entry into World War II, F.D.R. had to jump some big hurdles: he had to convince his fellow Americans of the necessity of getting involved, and he had to support Britain's efforts to keep Hitler from overwhelming the U.K.'s skies and shores. In 1940, Roosevelt enlisted five capable men to cross the Atlantic to visit, negotiate, observe the war-weary British, and assess how the U.S. could help. Fullilove, a senior fellow at Washington, D.C.'s Brookings Institution, fills his story with fascinating diplomatic details: Henry Hopkins quotes the Bible to Churchill; "Wild Bill" Donovan maneuvers and flirts his way through British high society; Wendell Wilkie pulls drinks for patrons at an English pub and almost gets betrothed to an African chief's daughter. These extraordinary anecdotes are plentiful, and they combine to offer readers a fascinating display of different styles of American diplomacy in action. Unfortunately, stiff, dated prose slows the narrative-Harriman's a "handsome devil," Wilkie "jawboned with a native chieftain," and Lord Halifax "was still open to treating with Hitler rather than licking him." Nevertheless, this is a fascinating account of the men who paved the way for the Lend-Lease Act. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
A hallmark of FDR's leadership style was his aversion to operating through bureaucratic channels, as Fullilove's book illustrates. Focusing on FDR's diplomacy of 1940-41, it features the president's penchant for relying on personal representatives, who bypassed the Department of State and reported directly to FDR. In this case, their task was to see if Britain in 1940 and the Soviet Union in 1941 could withstand German attack and would, therefore, be worth supporting. After biographical summaries of five envoys Sumner Welles, William Donovan, Harry Hopkins, Wendell Willkie, and Averill Harriman Fullilove propels them on their missions to London and Moscow, dwelling almost as much on the details of airplanes, ships, and office decor as on the substance of their talks with Churchill and Stalin. In passing, Fullilove alludes to America's isolationist sentiment (see Those Angry Days, by Lynne Olson, 2013), which induced FDR to use indirection, as in the deployment of these unofficial emissaries, to lead America toward intervention in the war. With his focus on personalities, Fullilove will hook readers interested in the leading figures of WWII diplomacy.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Each time an American president sends soldiers, mercenaries, jets or drones to fight abroad, those of us whose historical knowledge or memories reach back to the last century recall when this nation entered into armed conflict the old-fashioned way, by declaring war on an enemy. Americans appear to have an endless appetite for stories about World War II, perhaps because it was the last war "declared" by Congress and the only war of the 20th century that continues to be viewed sympathetically by a majority of every segment of the population. In "Rendezvous With Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America Into the War and Into the World," Michael Fullilove, an Australian writer on foreign affairs (with whom I share an American publisher), tells the familiar story of how Franklin Roosevelt cajoled, frightened and ultimately persuaded the American public and Congress to aid the British in their war against Germany, then to fight alongside them. He does so by focusing on the missions of five men he identifies as Roosevelt's "personal envoys," Sumner Welles, William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan, Wendell Willkie, Harry Hopkins and Aver-ell H arriman. Roosevelt had little faith in the competence or loyalty of his appointed ambassadors and the State Department's career diplomats, most of whom, he thought, were Republicans and out of tune with his priorities. To gather intelligence and administer his foreign-assistance programs, he substituted his own representatives for State Department officials, thoroughly disrupting established lines of authority. In early 1940, six months after Britain and France declared war on Germany in response to the Nazis' invasion of Poland, Roosevelt instructed the only man in the State Department whose counsel he sought, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, to travel to Europe to ascertain whether there was any hope of initiating peace talks. Welles confirmed what the president had feared: that a broader war was much more likely than a negotiated peace. Within weeks of Welles's mission, the Germans had invaded Denmark and Norway and then slashed their way through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. In mid-June 1940, France surrendered. "Only Britain and her empire," Fullilove writes, "remained standing - and who knew for how long?" What was Roosevelt to do? The United States ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, urged him not to get involved. The German military machine was invincible, Kennedy insisted. American military equipment sent to Britain would, after a successful German invasion, end up part of the Nazi arsenal. Unwilling to give up on Britain, but wary of ignoring his ambassador's near-frantic warnings, the president endorsed the recommendation of Frank Knox, his secretary of the Navy, that William Donovan, Roosevelt's law school classmate and a war hero, be sent to Britain to verify or rebut Kennedy's claims. On concluding his mission, Donovan informed the president that the British had "excellent prospects of pulling through," but to do so, they needed American assistance. Roosevelt agreed to provide 50 over-age destroyers in return for long-term leases on British military bases. Congress and the 1937 Neutrality Act forbade him to do more. Only after his election to a third term in 1940 did Roosevelt come up with a brilliant new strategy for "lending" the British the military equipment they required but could not pay for in cash. In January 1941, he asked his friend and adviser Harry Hopkins to travel to Britain as his personal representative, confer with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and lay the groundwork for lend-lease. After lend-lease was approved by Congress in March, the individual Roosevelt put in charge of coordinating the program with the British was another personal envoy, Averell Harriman. That summer, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt again ignored established diplomatic lines of authority and dispatched Harry Hopkins to Moscow to meet with Joseph Stalin to discuss future American assistance. The fifth man in Fullilove's honor roll of presidential envoys is Wendell Willkie, who, only weeks after losing the presidential election to Roosevelt, decided to travel to London "to witness the conditions firsthand and get a perspective on the lend-lease issue." Willkie had endorsed the legislation (with minor revisions) in January, effectively deflating Republican opposition. Fullilove's decision to tell the story of America's entry into World War II through the missions of these men makes for an entertaining, if truncated history. We get fine capsule biographies of five remarkable Americans, accounts of their travels to and within war-torn Europe, intimate details of their lives and loves (including Harriman's affair with the woman who became his wife 30 years later, Pamela Churchill, the prime minister's daughter-in-law) and firsthand reports of Churchill's off-the-cuff monologues, culinary habits (he prized English mutton) and film-viewing preferences (he hated "Citizen Kane," but adored "Lady Hamilton," a Napoleonic war love story). We also gain a better understanding of how Churchill, recognizing the importance of American assistance to the survival of the British Empire, went out of his way to ingratiate himself with each of the president's men. Regrettably, in this, as in other histories written as collective biographies, the whole ends up being less than the sum of its parts. The fault is with the artificiality of Fullilove's "personal envoys" category. Welles was sent overseas in 1940 not simply as Roosevelt's envoy, but because, as under secretary of state, he was the logical choice for this particular diplomatic mission. Donovan was dispatched not by Roosevelt, but by the secretary of the Navy. Wendell Willkie went on his own. Harriman did not report to Roosevelt, but to Harry Hopkins. The only true personal envoy, the only man whom the president fully trusted to speak for him, was Hopkins. Fittingly, Hopkins's missions to London and Moscow dominate this book, as they should. There is a second, related problem with the architecture of Fullilove's history. By organizing his narrative around five men, four of whom were announced interventionists (Welles is the outlier), Fullilove misses much of the drama then playing out: back home, a sustained, vitriolic debate was going on over whether the United States had any obligation, moral or strategic, to come to the aid of the British. In the nation's elite colleges, in Congress, before standing-room-only crowds in lecture halls and to radio audiences in the tens of millions, isolationists were arguing that it was senseless, if not selfdestructive, for the United States to arm the British in what might very well end up being a losing cause. Every bomber, destroyer and rifle sent overseas was one less weapon available to defend the country against possible attack. The process through which Franklin Roosevelt led the nation from neutrality to war was not nearly as straightforward - "relentless" is the word used here - as Fullilove claims. Roosevelt was not dissembling when he declared during the 1940 campaign that he had no intention of sending American boys to fight in Europe. He delayed joining the battle as long as he possibly could, and asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany on Dec. 11, 1941, three days after the declaration of war against Japan - and only after Hitler had declared war on the United States. ? Roosevelt relied on 'personal envoys' because he had little faith in the State Departments diplomats. David Nasaw the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author, most recently, of "The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy."
Choice Review
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's preference for a seemingly disorganized administrative style to achieve a purpose that only he could see is well documented, and it served as one of the enabling characteristics of his administration that led to the events chronicled in this book. Fullilove (Lowy Institute, Australia) writes that FDR and five envoys whom he sent on missions to Europe outside normal diplomatic channels built a foundation for US involvement in WW II and in postwar international events, which Harry Truman and others later used for the country to assume leadership during the second half of the 20th century. Roosevelt sent Sumner Welles to London to investigate how the US could help defend democratic ideals during early 1940, followed by Bill Donovan's observation of Britain under attack. After Congress approved Lend-Lease, Roosevelt sent Harry Hopkins to London to explain the program, Wendell Willkie to observe conditions, and Averell Harriman to expedite delivery of goods. Fullilove uses archival resources in Australia, Canada, Britain, and the US as well as contemporary news reports, interviews, and secondary sources to create a new, useful, and well-written understanding of these trips and of their lasting importance. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries. J. P. Sanson Louisiana State University at Alexandria
Kirkus Review
An intriguing new angle to Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy leading up to and during World War II. The decisive period between the German invasion of Poland and the United States' entry into the war upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor provides rich fodder for Australian historian Fullilove (World Wide Webs: Diasporas and the International System, 2008, etc.). The author focuses on five trusted envoys sent by Roosevelt to Britain and elsewhere in Europe during this critical juncture. Their missions would help give the president a true idea of what was going on, whether Britain had the wherewithal to stand firm and what difference the U.S. could make. Trust and personal relations were key to FDR; with the death of his favored roving diplomatic envoy Edward M. House in 1938, and his relationship with ambassador to Britain Joseph Kennedy tense and mutually suspicious, FDR needed information about the darkening war in Europe, and he preferred to sidestep the State Department, which he believed to be full of "dead wood." Under Secretary of State Sumner, Welles, a Groton prep-school crony, was chosen for the first exploration of London and Rome, muddied by Welles' overweening ambitions but offering FDR a "colorful report" of Europe's precarious situation. "Wild Bill" Donovan's trip assured FDR that Britain held defensive capabilities, while Harry Hopkins' stays in London were enormously fruitful in helping solidify relations between Churchill and Roosevelt and render possible the Lend-Lease Act. Hopkins' extraordinary visit to Stalin after Operation Barbarossa reversed a defeatist regard about Russia's ability to withstand the Nazi onslaught. As emissary, FDR's choice of former GOP presidential opponent Wendell Willkie also proved terrifically astute. Fullilove's focus is admirable, and he even wonders about the possible outcome had Roosevelt also thought to send a timely envoy to Japan. Nicely drawn portraits by an authoritative historian.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
When Europe went to war in September 1939, the United States was militarily backward and deeply ambivalent about entering the conflict. Australian foreign policy expert Fullilove (Diaspora) argues that by sending a series of envoys-Sumner Welles, William Donovan, Harry Hopkins, Averill Harriman, and Wendell Willkie-to meet with Winston Churchill and then Joseph Stalin, FDR was able to assess and bolster the prospects of Britain and the Soviet Union, develop the means and political support to assist them, and buy time to rebuild the American military. Thoughtfully and clearly narrated by actor Andrew Garman, this work is thoroughly researched and rich in piquant anecdotes. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of history and politics.-Forrest Link, Coll. of New Jersey Lib., Ewing (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue: September 1939 | p. 1 |
| 1 "A One-Man American Mission of Curiosity": Sumner Welles in Rome, Berlin, Paris, and London, February-March 1940 | p. 17 |
| 2 "A Sensible Colonel House": Bill Donovan in London, July-August 1940 | p. 63 |
| 3 "History's Foremost Marriage Broker": Harry Hopkins in London, January-February 1941 | p. 103 |
| 4 "Sail On, Oh Ship of State!": Wendell Willkie in London and Dublin, January-February 1941 | p. 153 |
| 5 "To Keep the British Isles Afloat" Averell Harriman in London, Africa, and the Middle East, March-July 1941 | p. 199 |
| 6 "Mister Hurry Upkins": Harry Hopkins in London, July 1941 | p. 251 |
| 7 "Uncle Joe's Favorite": Harry Hopkins in Moscow and at Placentia Bay, July-August 1941 | p. 279 |
| Epilogue December 1941 | p. 337 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 357 |
| Abbreviations in Notes and Bibliography | p. 361 |
| Notes | p. 363 |
| Bibliography | p. 435 |
| Index | p. 455 |
| Credits | p. 467 |
