FDR's ambassadors and the diplomacy of crisis
Subtitle: from the rise of Hitler to the end of World War II
By: David Mayers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 372
ISBN-13: 9781107031265
Subjects: POLITICAL SCIENCE / International Relations / General; World War, 1939-1945; Diplomatic history; Ambassadors; Foreign relations; History
Description: "What effect did personality and circumstance have on US foreign policy during World War II? This incisive account of US envoys residing in the major belligerent countries - Japan, Germany, Italy, China, France, Great Britain, USSR - highlights the fascinating role played by such diplomats as Joseph Grew, William Dodd, William Bullitt, Joseph Kennedy and W. Averell Harriman. Between Hitler's 1933 ascent to power and the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki, US ambassadors sculpted formal policy - occasionally deliberately, other times inadvertently - giving shape and meaning not always intended by Franklin D. Roosevelt or predicted by his principal advisors. From appeasement to the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War, David Mayers examines the complicated interaction between policy, as conceived in Washington, and implementation on the ground in Europe and Asia. By so doing, he also sheds needed light on the fragility, ambiguities and enduring urgency of diplomacy and its crucial function in international politics"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Axis: 1. Rising sun; 2. Third Reich; 3. New Roman Empire; Part II. Victims: 4. Middle Kingdom; 5. France Agonistes; Part III. Victors: 6. Britannia; 7. Great Patriotic War; 8. Conclusions: US diplomacy and war; Bibliography.