The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942
A popular biographer of various twentieth-century leaders, Hamilton here addresses a seemingly exhausted subject. Not so, he avers. FDR’s leadership as commander-in-chief is a space Hamilton offers to fill with this work. The first of two projected volumes, it chronologically extends from FDR’s August 1941 meeting with Churchill to the November 1942 Allied landings in French North Africa. Thematically, Hamilton depicts FDR’s assertion of his authority over American army and navy chiefs and, increasingly over time, Churchill. Palpably gleeful when pinpointing unflattering episodes these figures omitted from their memoirs, Hamilton is tantamount to the amanuensis for the memoir FDR never wrote. The portrait that emerges is complimentary and praises FDR as a strategist superior both to fellow Allies and to Axis enemies. He insisted MacArthur fight in the Philippines, he rejected British requests to defend India, he refuted his military officers’ proposals to invade France and to concentrate on Japan, and he ordered them to carry out Operation Torch, the North African invasion. Well researched and confident in its conclusions, Hamilton’s study ably augments the gallery of WWII leaders. --Gilbert Taylor