Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles
538
Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles
538eBook
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Overview
Originally published in 1995. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down, but he concealed the extent of his disability from a public that was never permitted to see him in a wheelchair. FDR's Secretary of State was old and frail, debilitated by a highly contagious and usually fatal disease that was as closely guarded a state secret as his wife's Jewish ancestry. The undersecretary was a pompous and aloof man who married three times but, when intoxicated, preferred sex with railroad porters, shoeshine boys, and cabdrivers. These three legendary figures—Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles—not only concealed such secrets for more than a decade but did so while directing United States foreign policy during some of the most perilous events in the nation's history. Irwin Gellman brings to light startling new information about the intrigues, deceptions, and behind-the-scenes power struggles that influenced America's role in World War II and left their mark on world events, for good or ill, in the half-century that followed. Gellman had unprecedented access to previously unavailable documents, including Hull's confidential medical records, unpublished manuscripts of Drew Pearson and R. Walton Moore, and Sumner Welles's FBI file. Gellman concludes that while Roosevelt, Hull, and Welles usually agreed on foreign policy matters, the events that molded each man's character remained a mystery to the others. Their failure to cope with their secret affairs—to subordinate their personal concerns to the higher good of the nation—eventually destroyed much of what they hoped would be their legacy. Roosevelt never explained his objectives to his vice president, Harry Truman, or to anyone else. Hull never groomed a successor, and Welles kept his foreign assignations as classified as his sexual orientation. Gellman tells the dramatic story of how three Americans—despite private demons and bitter animosities—could work together to lead their nation to victory against fascism.
—William T. Walker, Presidential Studies Quarterly
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781421431376 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 538 |
| File size: | 23 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Irwin F. Gellman, a full-time historian and writer, is also the author of Roosevelt and Batista: Good Neighbor Diplomacy in Cuba, 1933–1945.
Irwin F. Gellman is the author of Roosevelt and Battista: Good NeighborDiplomacy in Cuba, 1933-1945 and Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Policies in Latin America, 1933-1945. An independent scholar, he lives in Corona Del Mar, California.
Table of Contents
Preface
Dramatis Personae
Chapter 1. The Chief Sets the Tone
Chapter 2. Enter Hull
Chapter 3. Welles in Cuba
Chapter 4. The Balance of the First Term
Chapter 5. The Bloodiest Bureaucratic Battle
Chapter 6. Reorganizing the Department
Chapter 7. The Welles Mission
Chapter 8. The Sphinx, Hull, and the Others
Chapter 9. An Incredible Set of Circumstances
Chapter 10. Provoking War
Chapter 11. Hull Loses Control
Chapter 12. Working for Victory
Chapter 13. Ruining Welles
Chapter 14. Resi gnation
Chapter 15. Hull's Last Year
Chapter 16. Roosevelt's Last Months
Chapter 17. Those Who Survived
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
What People are Saying About This
Irwin Gellman explores the little-known hierarchy of the State Department during the New Deal years and World War II, and brilliantly illuminates their impact upon Franklin D. Roosevelt and the conduct of foreign policy. A very different Cordell Hull appears than the good, gray Secretary of State who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Sumner Welles is portrayed as a prime policy maker until Hull and William Bullitt forced him out. This is a fascinating, often startling, account.
Gellman's findings corroborate the impressions I have formed in my own work on the formation of foreign policy in the Roosevelt years. Secret Affairs is not only an important contribution to the history of American foreign policy, but it is a good story, splendidly researched and well told.
Secret Affairs is a fascinating narrative whose pulse never quite detracts from the fact that this is serious history of a high quality. The dramas, ambiguities, and secrets of the relationship between Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles—three fascinating and vulnerable men—is superbly narrated. The vigor of Gellman's tale underlines the robust positions he takes on large issues to do with the Roosevelt era, in particular the question of the administration's level of knowledge regarding the fate of European Jews during World War II.
Irwin Gellman explores the little-known hierarchy of the State Department during the New Deal years and World War II, and brilliantly illuminates their impact upon Franklin D. Roosevelt and the conduct of foreign policy. A very different Cordell Hull appears than the good, gray Secretary of State who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Sumner Welles is portrayed as a prime policy maker until Hull and William Bullitt forced him out. This is a fascinating, often startling, account.—Frank Freidel, Harvard University.
Secret Affairs is a fascinating narrative whose pulse never quite detracts from the fact that this is serious history of a high quality. The dramas, ambiguities, and secrets of the relationship between Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles—three fascinating and vulnerable men—is superbly narrated. The vigor of Gellman's tale underlines the robust positions he takes on large issues to do with the Roosevelt era, in particular the question of the administration's level of knowledge regarding the fate of European Jews during World War II.—Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List.
Gellman's findings corroborate the impressions I have formed in my own work on the formation of foreign policy in the Roosevelt years. Secret Affairs is not only an important contribution to the history of American foreign policy, but it is a good story, splendidly researched and well told.—Arthur Schlesinger Jr.