Nigel Hamilton's third and final volume on FDR's war leadership, War and Peace: FDR's Final Odyssey D-Day to Yalta, 1943-1945, is, like his earlier two books, an homage to the President's strategic sagacity. FDR's nemesis is Churchill, whose own strategic intuition is, for Hamilton, “deplorable.”
FDR never wrote any memoirs, while Churchill's multi volume WWII history is legendary, so Hamilton explains his narrative recounts FDR's under-appreciated war leadership. In his first volume, which I reviewed here, Hamilton recalled how FDR thankfully overruled generals like George Marshal who unwisely wanted an unprepared America to invade France in 1942. Instead, FDR insisted on more modestly invading North Africa, prompting his generals and war secretary to grouse he'd been manipulated by Churchill.
But Hamilton's latest volume recounts how FDR, this time in sync with his generals, repeatedly blocked Churchill's preference for military operations in the Mediterranean over any cross channel invasion of France in 1944. Churchill with his generals feared a reprise of WWI carnage in France and hoped to protect British imperial interests in the Mideast.
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