1944

Zusatztext Given the recent tragedies relating to Syrian and other refugees from around the world! Jay Winik's 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History is a timely read. You will also find confirmation that history does repeat itself! tragically in this case. -- Orange County Register Informationen zum Autor The author of the #1 and New York Times bestselling April 1865 and the New York Times bestsellers 1944 and The Great Upheaval , Jay Winik is renowned for his creative approaches to history. The Baltimore Sun called him one of our nation's leading public historians. He is a popular public speaker and a frequent television and radio guest. He has been a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal book review section, as well as to The New York Times . His many national media appearances include the Today show, Good Morning America , World News Tonight , NPR, and FOX News. He is a former board member of the National Endowment for the Humanities and was the historical advisor to National Geographic Networks. Klappentext It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did, or that it would even end well. 1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler's waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies -- but with a fateful cost. 1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion and the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But on the way, millions of more lives were still at stake as President Roosevelt was exposed to mounting evidence of the most grotesque crime in history, the Final Solution. Just as the Allies were landing in Normandy, the Nazis were accelerating the killing of European Jews. Winik shows how escalating pressures fell on Roosevelt, whose rapidly deteriorating health was a closely guarded secret. Was winning the war the best way to rescue the Jews? Was a rescue even possible? Or would it get in the way of defeating Hitler? In a year when even the most audacious undertakings were within the world's reach, including the liberation of Europe, one challenge -- saving Europe's Jews -- seemed to remain beyond Roosevelt's grasp. Zusammenfassung Jay Winik brings to life in gripping detail the year 1944! which determined the outcome of World War II and put more pressure than any other on an ailing yet determined President Roosevelt. ...

Auteur

The author of the #1 and New York Times bestselling April 1865 and the New York Times bestsellers 1944 and The Great Upheaval, Jay Winik is renowned for his creative approaches to history. The Baltimore Sun called him “one of our nation’s leading public historians.” He is a popular public speaker and a frequent television and radio guest. He has been a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal book review section, as well as to The New York Times. His many national media appearances include the Today show, Good Morning America, World News Tonight, NPR, and FOX News. He is a former board member of the National Endowment for the Humanities and was the historical advisor to National Geographic Networks.

Texte du rabat

It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did, or that it would even end well. 1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler's waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies -- but with a fateful cost. 1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion and the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But on the way, millions of more lives were still at stake as President Roosevelt was exposed to mounting evidence of the most grotesque crime in history, the Final Solution. Just as the Allies were landing in Normandy, the Nazis were accelerating the killing of European Jews. Winik shows how escalating pressures fell on Roosevelt, whose rapidly deteriorating health was a closely guarded secret. Was winning the war the best way to rescue the Jews? Was a rescue even possible? Or would it get in the way of defeating Hitler? In a year when even the most audacious undertakings were within the world's reach, including the liberation of Europe, one challenge -- saving Europe's Jews -- seemed to remain beyond Roosevelt's grasp.

Résumé
Jay Winik brings to life in gripping detail the year 1944, which determined the outcome of World War II and put more pressure than any other on an ailing yet determined President Roosevelt.

Échantillon de lecture
1944

1

Tehran

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT HAD NEVER wanted to travel to Tehran. Throughout the fall of 1943, the president used his vaunted charm and charisma to push for the three Allied leaders—himself, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin—to meet almost anywhere else. The conference, their first ever, had been a year in the making, and now, before it even commenced, it seemed on the brink of failure over the thorny question of where it would take place.

Dispatched on a visit to Moscow, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had proposed the Iraqi port city of Basra, to which Roosevelt could easily travel by ship. Roosevelt himself suggested Cairo, Baghdad, or Asmara, Italy’s former Eritrean capital on Africa’s east coast; all these were locations, the president pointed out, where he could easily remain in constant contact with Washington, D.C. as was necessary for his wartime stewardship. But the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, was unmoved. He countered that as commander of the Soviet armed forces he could not be out of contact with his deputies in Moscow. He maintained that Tehran, at the foot of the Elburz Mountains, had telegraph and telephone links with Moscow. “My colleagues insist on Teheran,” he bluntly cabled to Roosevelt in reply, adding that he would however accept a late-November date for the meeting and that he also agreed with the American and British decision to exclude all members of the press.

Roosevelt, still hoping to sway the man he referred to as “Uncle Joe,” cabled again about Basra, saying, “I am begging you to remember that I also have a great obligation to the American government and to maintain the full American war effort.” The answer from Moscow was brief and direct: no. Stalin was adamant, and he now hinted that he might back out of the entire arrangement for a tripartite conference. Not until Roosevelt was preparing to set sail across the Atlantic en route to the Mediterranean did Stalin, having gotten his way on Tehran, finally acquiesce. Roosevelt promptly cabled to Winston Churchill, “I have just heard that Uncle J will come to Teheran. . . . I was in some doubt as to whether he would go through with his former offer . . . but I think that now there is no question that you and I can meet him.”

So it was that at the Cairo West Airport a little past 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 27, Roosevelt boarded the Sacred Cow, a gleaming silver Douglas C54 Skymaster that could carry forty-nine passengers and a three-man crew, for the final leg of his momentous journey; in total, he would travel 17,442 miles, crossing and recrossing nearly eight time zones. For his part, Joseph Stalin simply had to travel due south from Moscow; his round-trip would be only 3,000 miles. But all this seemed forgotten as, for the first time in over four years of war, the leaders of the three great powers were at last to meet, face-to-face, to establish policies designed to bring the carnage to a close. This would be the most important confere…