The culmination of an extraordinary literary project that Herbert Hoover
launched during World War II, his "magnum opus"--at last published
nearly fifty years after its completion--offers a revisionist
reexamination of the war and its cold war aftermath and a sweeping
indictment of the "lost statesmanship" of Franklin Roosevelt. Freedom
Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and
Its Aftermath originated as a volume of Hoover's memoirs, a book
initially focused on his battle against President Roosevelt's foreign
policies before Pearl Harbor. As time went on, however, Hoover widened
his scope to include Roosevelt's foreign policies during the war, as
well as the war's consequences: the expansion of the Soviet empire at
war's end and the eruption of the cold war against the Communists.
On issue after issue, Hoover raises crucial questions that continue to
be debated to this day. Did Franklin Roosevelt deceitfully maneuver the
United States into an undeclared and unconstitutional naval war with
Germany in 1941? Did he unnecessarily appease Joseph Stalin at the
pivotal Tehran conference in 1943? Did communist agents and sympathizers
in the White House, Department of State, and Department of the Treasury
play a malign role in some of America's wartime decisions? Hoover raises
numerous arguments that challenge us to think again about our past.
Whether or not one ultimately accepts his arguments, the exercise of
confronting them will be worthwhile to all.
