Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1995. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down, but he concealed the extent of his disability from a public that was never permitted to see him in a wheelchair. FDR's Secretary of State was old and frail, debilitated by a highly contagious and usually fatal disease that was as closely guarded a state secret as his wife's Jewish ancestry. The undersecretary was a pompous and aloof man who married three times but, when intoxicated, preferred sex with railroad porters, shoeshine boys, and cabdrivers. These three legendary figuresFranklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Wellesnot only concealed such secrets for more than a decade but did so while directing United States foreign policy during some of the most perilous events in the nation's history. Irwin Gellman brings to light startling new information about the intrigues, deceptions, and behind-the-scenes power struggles that influenced America's role in World War II and left their
Trade ReviewGellman's research is solid, as is his grasp of both the detail and the outlines of American foreign policy in the 1930s and World War II years.
—Warren F. Kimball,
Journal of American HistoryThe thoroughness with which Gellman deconstructs Hull . . . can be appreciated only by those of us old enough to recall Hull's overriding popularity . . . Gellman has combined meticulous research with Washington gossip for a fascinating piece of history.
—
American SpectatorCordell Hull seemed the safest of bets . . . just about right, come to think of it, for a really solid burst of revisionist history. This he has now got, and in heaping measure, from Irwin F. Gellman.
—Christopher Hitchens,
Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsPreface
Dramatis Personae
Chapter 1. The Chief Sets the Tone
Chapter 2. Enter Hull
Chapter 3. Welles in Cuba
Chapter 4. The Balance of the First Term
Chapter 5. The Bloodiest Bureaucratic Battle
Chapter 6. Reorganizing the Department
Chapter 7. The Welles Mission
Chapter 8. The Sphinx, Hull, and the Others
Chapter 9. An Incredible Set of Circumstances
Chapter 10. Provoking War
Chapter 11. Hull Loses Control
Chapter 12. Working for Victory
Chapter 13. Ruining Welles
Chapter 14. Resi gnation
Chapter 15. Hull's Last Year
Chapter 16. Roosevelt's Last Months
Chapter 17. Those Who Survived
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
