Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1969. In The Most Unsordid Act, Warren Kimball provides a history of the Lend-Lease idea. The genesis and development of the Lend-Lease idea, although spanning less than two years, offers a subject of the broadest significance for major questions of democratic government and society. The story begins with the United States' growing recognition of the British monetary and gold shortage and ends with the passage of the Lend-Lease Act and the American commitment that it involved. Dr. Kimball's narrativechronological, detailed, and dramaticincludes analyses of the domestic and international concerns on both sides of the Atlantic and of the roles of the leading protagonists: President F. D. Roosevelt and Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, as well as Stimson, Hull, Churchill, and key British representatives. He also examines the possibility that Lend-Lease was designed to benefit the American economy at Britain's expense. A central question animates Kimball's account: How
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
Part I. The Crisis Develops: September 1939-November 1940
Chapter 1. "A Terrible, Stultifying Vacuum"
Chapter 2. "God, Love and Anglo-American Relationa": The French Crisis
Chapter 3. Of Garden Hoses and Other Stories: Summer and Fall 1940
Part II. The Crisis Faced and Solved: November 1940=March 1941
Chapter 4. "Money-Above All, Ready Money"
Chapter 5. The "Shoot the Works" Bill: Lend-Lease, Inception to Proposal
Chapter 6. "God Save America From a King Named George"-Or Franklin: The Congressional Debate
Chapter 7. "From Something Like Disaster": The Passage of the Lend-Lease Ast
Chapter 8. "Like Hitting Wads of Cotton Wool": Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
