Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States)

The one thing that remains constant as I continue my march through the ages of history of the United States, is that America is a nation that continues to transform and change. The two extraordinary events of the Great Depression and World War II helped transform the nation its people. The leader though both of these great crises was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Not since George Washington led us through both the American Revolution and the early days of the national government had one leader impacted the nation's destiny by shaping the country's response to two great national events.Economic 'depressions' had happened before in our country, in the late 1830s, late 1870s, and mid-1890s. However the event we now know as the 'Great Depression' lasted longer than any other and came as a great shock because the twenties had been such a boom time. Kennedy traces the source of the severity of this depression to the international factors that emerged from World War I. In this analysis, Herbert Hoover had been more of a victim of events than the cause of them. Nevertheless, Hoover no longer had the public's trust nor confidence and the electorate turned him out of office in 1932. What I learned from this book was how the Depression came in waves. That it was not right after the stock market crashed that things went bad, but a series of events that continued to torpedo the U.S. Economy until it collapsed.When Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor move into the White House, the President brought with them Harry Hopkins and Frances Perkins. While in Washington they begin to set up the New Deal. Kennedy spends a great deal of time discussing the New Deal and its impact. The New Deal benefited and continues to benefit the nation. Its immediate impact with programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps provided the unemployed temporary employment. The New Deal continues to impact us today with Social Security, banking reforms, a minimum wage, and safety regulations for workers. Kennedy explains clearly that the New Deal did not end the depression. What it did do however, was provide security for the American people from the rough waves of the market. The same reason levies are built to protect against floods, the New Deal gave security to so the common people were not completely left exposed to the economic forces beyond their control."Roosevelt had prepared the ground well. His transparent allusions to less responsible schemes helped convince congressional doubters that the president's measured radicalism was far preferable to the dread Long and Townsend alternatives--or the even more dread option of a bill introduced by Minnesota representative Ernest Lundeen, which called for unemployment compensation at full wages to all jobless workers, paid for out of general tax revenues and administered by local workers' councils. After lengthy hearings through an exceptionally crowed legislative season, the Social Security Act became law on August 14, 1935." (p.271)Roosevelt was not without his faults however, and those faults were exposed with the Court-packing scheme. His fault was not an attempt to reform the Court, for the Court for the fifty years prior had been acquiring quite an infamous reputation as the enemy of reform. It would impose its own narrow view of the U.S. Constitution and use it to undermine progressive legislation that the people had been trying for years to achieve through their elected representatives. Roosevelt was able to get the Court to change its tune but the unwise manner in which he did it cost him a great deal of political capital.Then of course comes World War II, with American isolationism at an all-time high, Roosevelt did what he could to aid the allies with the Land Lease deal, turning America into an 'arsenal for democracy'. However, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America could no longer turn its back on the war.World War II had some of the history's most affective leaders. From the heroic Roosevelt, Churchill, and DeGalle on the allies; to the more villainous Stalin--who fought with the good guys--, Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo; no side in this conflict lacked for effective leadership. There was also a great deal of talented generals and admirals. Although having a great deal of talent is nice problem to have it, in part, made Roosevelt's job harder as he had to choose who would lead Operation Overlord and liberate Europe. Roosevelt felt that justice demanded that he use George Marshall, however, in the end he felt the right man for the job was Dwight D. Eisenhower."Eisenhower's studied geniality found an appreciative admired in Franklin Roosevelt, himself an adept scholar of the human psyche and virtuoso practitioner of the recondite craft of leadership. Now, flying from Tunis to Sicily for an inspection tour of American troops, Roosevelt the accomplished master instructed Eisenhower the sedulous apprentice in the arts that he must summon and home in his new assignment. Huddling in a seat alongside the general as their aircraft droned over the Mediterranean, the president dwelt on the teeming difficulties that awaited Eisenhower in London. There he would confront head-on, day in a day out, the full majesty of the British Government and the seductive personality of Winston Churchill. Churchill still believed, Roosevelt warned, that a failed Channel attack could cost the allies the war--and that the risk of failure was large. Despite his assurances at Quebec and his submission at Teheran, Churchill had not laid to rest his gnawing anxieties about Overlord. It would take all of Eisenhower's skill and resolution, Roosevelt advised, to keep Overlord on schedule." (p.690)On the Pacific front Fleet Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur had their hands full with Japan. Kennedy describes the War in the Pacific as one brutal blood bath. The amount of blood and gore that went on in this side of the war played as a major factor for Harry S. Truman to use the Atomic Bomb."When the battle officially ended on June 22, only some 7,000 of the original 77,000 remained alive. The fighting had also killed over 100,000 Okianawan civilians. The Americans suffered 7,613 killed or missing, 31,807 wounded, and 26,211 non-battle casualties on the island, a nearly 35 percent casualty rate, in addition to the nearly 5,000 who dies and 4,824 who were wounded at sea. Among the dead were Buckner, his chest sundered by a Japanese shell fragment, as well as the celebrated war correspondent Ernie Pyle, felled by a sniper's bullet. The awful carnage on Okinawa, like that on Iwo Jima, weighed heavily on the minds of American policymakers as they now contemplated the war's endgame." (p.834)This book is covers so much in under a thousand pages. One thousand seems like a lot, but for the amount of information the reader receives it is actually quite a low number. Kennedy does not go into a great deal about the Holocaust primarily because this book is about the United States, but he does discuss how the people in the United States had a difficult time in the absorbing what was actually happening to the Jews and other 'undesirables' of Germany. The book also covers the American home front, the status of African-Americans and other racial minorities, and the changing attitudes about the role of women as a result of the war. Kennedy goes over the horrible internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the tragic case of Fred Korematsu. I really appreciate Kennedy's take on the 'average American' before and after these two events.On a technical side note I would once again say that I appreciate the Oxford series for leaving the footnotes at the bottom of the pages they are on and not at the end of the book. It makes looking at sources easy and does not distract from the general narrative.Freedom from Fear is a wonderful book which I highly recommend to anyone. Like the rest of this series I find its depth incredible without being overwhelming.

Kennedy vindicates the editors' choice to devote an entire volume of the Oxford History series to the long decade of depression and war: 1929-1945. He demonstrates that the stresses and changes visited on the nation during this time are equally as profound as those experienced in the long decade of the Civil War era. It was during 1929-45 that the nation confronted the need to grow up -- the need to adopt the institutions and mind-set necessary to manage its economy and to accept its role in world affairs.The operative word for Kennedy is security. All of the contradictions of the New Deal can be reconciled with the observation that the goal was to find economic security and to become a more inclusive society that left no one behind. And in foreign affairs, Americans were made to realize that their domestic security depended on the ability to create a world where goods and ideas travelled freely across open borders.Kennedy's writing is endearing because he can empathize with his subjects while at the same time can bloodlessly expose their shabby underside. A wonderful and entertaining writer like Stephen Ambrose lost this gift, and his works suffered as a result. To appreciate the good that the United States has accomplished, one must first appreciate its dark side. And Kennedy lays it all out: the callous disregard for the dispossessed, the racism, the narrow insularity and cowardice of American diplomacy between the wars, the willingness to let the British and the Russians fight our battles, and the mean spiritedness of the race war with Japan.What is remarkable is that the nation emerged the better from all of this. The nation's ability after World War II to embrace its responsibilities to rebuild Europe and Japan, to promote European union, to contain the U.S.S.R., and to build a more inclusive society at home is a remarkable contrast to the mind-set of 1929.Kennedy rehabilitates Hoover's image. He's no hero, of course, but he's not the heartless free market idealogue portrayed in the popular literature. Hoover was a great man and a great progressive, but a poor politician ill suited to lead the country in a time of revolutionary change. Roosevelt comes off as a truly great political leader, but Kennedy pulls no punches in showing the equivocation and the at times bloodless political calculation that characterized Roosevelt.Kennedy has the judgment and erudition necessary to touch on all the great controversies about this period and to reach conclusions that are convincing. Roosevelt's New Deal, while a profound success in establishing the principle of government management of the economy and the twin governing principles of security and inclusiveness, was not sufficiently aggressive. Only with World War II do we finally emerge from the Depression, and Roosevelt perhaps went too far to accommodate big monied interests during World War II. And as for the war with Japan, it was a destructive race war that probably was avoidable. Roosevelt's handling of the European conflict was, on the other hand, exceptionally skillful, and Roosevelt did all that was politically possible in prodding the country from isolationism.Regarding the atomic bomb, Kennedy makes the point that there was no real debate about using it. It was a weapon that embodied and in some ways perfected the American approach to war as a war of great technology. The decision to use it was made years before when we chose to invest so much in its creation. In a passage that captures Kennedy's skill as a writer, Kennedy contrasts the tremendous industrial might of the superfortress bomber and atomic bomb with the pathetic Japanese effort to build balloon bombs that floated over the Pacific and then dropped into the American Northwest. The Japanese ability to mobilize and commitment to the war could not be equalled by the Americans. But the Americans were not fighting the same war as the Japanese -- they were fighting a war of industry and resources. And so the Japanese were smashed and suffered the first defeat in their long and glorious history.And yet, the nation emerges from all of this far better than it was in 1929 and the basic commitments to security at home and abroad were formed. This ability to transcend the dark side of the American character should be a source of great pride. Kennedy's love of country is a far more profound thing that the rah-rah approach of Ambrose or Brokaw.Until I read this book, I thought that David Potter's "The Impending Crisis", which dealt with the long decade of 1848-1861, was the greatest work of narrative American history. In some ways Kennedy betters Potter because he carries the story through the war (not just the lead-up) and because he incorporates the modern trend of emphasizing the experience of the common man, as opposed to writing history entirely through the eyes of political leaders. Potter, on the other hand, could write like a poet. On balance, I'd say that Kennedy is Potter's equal and has done for 1929-45 what Potter did for 1848-61.A very long book that is worth every page.

Who, living in the United States of 1929, could have foreseen how the country would develop over the next sixteen years? This book gives a survey of the dramatic transformations the United States underwent in these sixteen years, transformations that no one foresaw.It does so by focussing principally on social, political and economic developments during this time and I learned a lot of interesting things from reading it. Among them, Hoover, the President whose fate it was to preside over the beginnings of the Great Depression, has his reputation restored somewhat by this book. He was not the blinkered lasses-faire lame duck President of the stereotype. He was well aware of the nature of the economic calamity engulfing his county and much of what he did in response was to anticipate what Roosevelt was going to do; if he tarried, it was because contemporaries struggled to comprehend the magnitude of what was happening, and disagreed as the causes and proper remedy of the Great Depression.The book also offers a fair-minded summary of the achievements and shortcomings of the New Deal. Many of its ambitions were not realised. But during these years, many of the harsher features of the previous seven decades of capitalist expansion were ameliorated. Sustained economic growth was not achieved but, intriguingly, and with echoes of contemporary doubts about the necessity and sustainability of economic growth, the New Deal was not predicated on restoring growth as such. FDR ignored Keynes' advice to bolster government deficits to restore growth (this was of course to happen during the war, with phenomenal results). The object was stabilisation, and of ensuring greater economic and social security. It was assumed that the era of growth was over. Overall, the New Deal was too variegated and heterodox to be reduced to labels like `liberal fascism' - Jonah Goldberg in his book of the same name makes tendentious and specious comparisons to make this label stick. Military expenditures for example in the New Deal's heyday in the mid-1930s barely put flesh on the bones of a skeletal US military, not remotely comparable to Hitler's profligate military expansion during this time.The social history of these years and the impact of both the Great Depression and War on blacks and women again challenges some stereotypes: Rosie the Riveter, for example, was not typical of her sex; many American women did not join the production effort during the Second World War because they did not want to. The seeds of the Civil Rights era were sown during these years, partially due to the social changes of the 1930s, accelerated by war in the 1940s, which stimulated the rise of a more assertive black activism, especially in the latter years of the Second World War.The chapters on the Second World War describe some of the battles but without too much detail. They also show the US was remarkably unprepared for World War 2, and, for the first 18 months or so of America's participation in the conflict, Britain was the senior partner, not the United States. Mobilisation was at first a chaotic and haphazard affair. But of course, once the US galvinised itself, its productive capacities knocked spots of its opponents. The prodigious feats of production accomplished in the USA during WWII makes it all the more remarkable that anyone felt, just a few years before, that the era of economic growth and expansion was over.And of course, presiding over most of this, is the character of Roosevelt himself, a garrulous and loquacious politician, but who gave away few clues about the nature of his character and motivation. His coaxing of his country away from isolationism must serve as one of his key accomplishments (Americans were perhaps more open to persuasion to abandon their insularity than has been portrayed in many accounts). In FDR's eys, Hitler, not the Japanese militarists, was the greater of the two threats, and there is no doubt that the ideal war FDR would have wanted to have fought would have been a one-front war against Germany, with Japan held off on the back-burner, to be dealt with later. His political arts - necessary evasions and half-truths in order to purchase a greater good - are well brought here.The book is also well-written but occasionally prone to florid, pretentious flourishes which mean I would knock off a half a star, for the effect it has on readability. But I learned a lot, mostly enjoyed it, and appreciated the epic sweep of a narrative that traces with consummate skill the transformation of the US from 1929 to 1945. Short of going back in a time machine and experiencing it for oneself, this book is the next best thing. So it deserves five stars.

Recommended.

Great

I bought both part 1 and 2 in different books and then realized that the book above is both books together. So if you just want an all in one rather then multiple books, then this is the one! Excellent book couldn’t put it down.

AWESOME