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SocraticGadfly
, July 21, 2019
(view all comments by SocraticGadfly)
Good in the first half or so, then the wheels come badly off
This at first seemed a tough book to review. But O’Brien’s own hack job later on made it easier. I was first leaning four-star, but … finally settled on three, and, had it not been for the middle section of the book, I’m not sure I’d even give it that.
Fair chunks of it were solid four to four and one-half star quality. I am assuming all of Leahy’s childhood, his early military service, everything else is correct. His 1930s “battleships first, but don’t neglect naval air” attitude seems to be well summarized.
Everything within World War 2 up to 1944 seems correct. He is right about Marshall being wrong about an early Overlord. He is right that Leahy helped guide the Chiefs of Staff toward Torch, and rightly so. He is right about who had power, and who did not, within Roosevelt’s Cabinet and sub-Cabinet.
After that, the book is a mix of two, three, and four, star material, most of it two and three star level.
First, while FDR grew more distant from Harry Hopkins, there were other elements to what happened than Leahy cutting him out, or Hopkins being too “pink” for FDR or anything else. He ignores that Hop had faced GOP attacks claiming he was using his position for personal enrichment in 1943. Also, starting with the beginning of 1944, his health went seriously downhill and never fully recovered for the rest of his life, so he couldn’t serve FDR more. Third, other people, like Ickes, when they could, help cut Hop out of the loop.
And, the fact that FDR had originally intended Hopkins to help him write a speech about Yalta, but Hopkins wanted to, and did, stay in Morocco to rest, rather than return on the Quincy with FDR, should make it clear that, up until the last week’s of FDR’s life, when Hopkins’ health allowed, he was still indeed part of the inner circle.
It took me just 15 minutes of Googling to find that. At this point, O’Brien’s treatment of Leahy “versus” Hopkins looks uninformed at best and mendacious at worse.
Second, though he has James Frank’s “Downfall” in his bibliography, O’Brien appears to have ignored entirely its actually cogent findings, and along with that, ignored how Leahy was wrong on his stance. O’Brien also quotes not a word about Leahy’s opinion on the firebombings of Tokyo or Dresden, too, even though, near the end of the book, he claims Leahy would have considered these to also be weapons of mass destruction.
Next, the “Marshall Plan.” While Stalin may have agreed to uphold his 1945 agreement with Truman on Greece, such was not the case on Turkey, even if he wasn’t planning on invading in 1948. In late 1945, Molotov (at Stalin’s orders, of course), tried to force Turkey to surrender Turkish Armenia territory to it. It also tried to get a UN mandate over formerly Italian Libya.
Marshall and China? The issue is more complex than O’Brien paints. Many people, including “old China hands” at State, cautioned Chiang to settle for the rest of China and let Mao have Manchuria. There’s indications Stalin would have signed off on this. I’ve reviewed other books about post-WWII and pre-Revolution China; O’Brian is, as with Hopkins, either uninformed or mendacious.
O’Brien does correctly interpret that Anglo-American hard lines on “Bizonia” contributed to Stalin’s blockade of West Berlin, so one small kudo there.
Kirkus notes that this is an “opinionated” life of Leahy. It is indeed. No biography is neutral. But this one falls apart precisely at the point in history where Leahy becomes the central player in the White House.
And with that, three stars.
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