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Cargando... Democrat and Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd (edición 2012)por Robert Dallek
Información de la obraDemocrat and Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd por Robert Dallek
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Robert Dallek exposes the dark underbelly of 1930s Germany and explores the terrible burden of those who realized the horror that was to come. William Dodd was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, arriving in Berlin with his wife and daughter just as Adolf Hitler assumed the chancellorship. An unlikely candidate for the job Dodd quickly came to realise that the situation in Germany was far grimmer than was understood in America. Finding unwilling listeners back in the U.S., Dodd clashed repeatedly with the State Department, as well as the Nazi government, during his time as ambassador. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)973.917History and Geography North America United States 1901- Roosevelt Through Truman Administrations F.D. RooseveltClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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That gave me pause at certain points. However, while it's well to bear such limitations in mind, this is overall an excellent book.
William E. Dodd, born a few years after the end of the Civil War, was the son of a struggling farmer who got by with help from wealthier relatives. Those same relatives encouraged and supported young William's education, which opened the path for him to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and then to further education in Germany, to study with the then most respected scholars of history in the world. Returning to the US, and making a fairly humble start at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, his dedication to facts and serious research, as well as his willingness to fearlessly attack Confederate sacred cows in the course of honestly assessing the South's role in US history, built up his reputation as an historian. As he moves on to the University of Chicago, greater prominence, and greater influence, he also becomes more deeply and actively involved in politics. That involvement is as a Democrat and a Progressive. (Those who insist on talking about "the Democrat party" rather than the Democratic party, will be appalled to discover that that same party, for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, was routinely referred to as "the Democracy.")
Dodd is an active, if often frustrated, supporter of Woodrow Wilson, through the trials of the years leading up to and encompassing World War I. Remaining active and connected through the twenties and then the Depression, he's there, a known and respected quantity, when Franklin Roosevelt is having difficulty finding any qualified man willing to take on the job of Ambassador to Germany in 1933. It's here that we get to the heart of the book, which everything prior is preparation for. In his sixties, with his health starting to decline, Dodd takes his wife and two children to Germany, where Adolph Hitler has recently become Chancellor. Arriving full of the conviction that reasonable men can find ways to resolve difficulties, but also deeply committed to the principles of progressive democracy, Dodd is somewhat quicker than many of his professional diplomatic colleagues to recognize that something truly foul is afoot in Hitler's Germany. Dodd's strengths and weaknesses are all on display here, as mutual misunderstanding between him and the State Department's foreign service professionals creates conflict and limits his influence and effectiveness, while his astute attention to events, nuances, and all available information made him an invaluable observer and source of information and understanding of events in Germany for Roosevelt. It's possible, though by no means certain, that had the influence of America First isolationism been weaker, he might have changed the course of events.
This is not a book without flaws, but it's a fascinating look at American and world history during a crucial era.
Recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )