Eisenhower Dwight David - American warlords: how Roosevelts high command led America to victory in World War II

T HERE WAS A TIME WHEN A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT, A CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN, a general who served both parties, and an admiral who served none set aside profound differences and led America through historys greatest bloodletting.

Through nostalgias myopic lens, it is easy to see a united nation, its resolve hardened by Pearl Harbor, swept inexorably to victory on the broad shoulders of the GI, the wings of the B-29, and the buoyant spirit that brought the world baseball, Duke Ellington, the Ford Model A and the Lone Ranger. A nation to whom triumph came as naturally as manifest destiny. Yet these images tell only a small part of the story.

The vast mural of World War IIwaves of heavy bombers, marines raising Old Glory, snaking lines of deuce-and-a-half truckshas become part of the American legacy. But that mural was not painted overnight. In 1939 Rosie was a homemaker, not a riveter. Black sailors served as butlers, not gunners, and America reposed its safety in a handful of green, ill-equipped divisions led by untested middle-aged officers.

From May 1940 until the wars end, the American war machine lurched forward, determined but not sure-footed, ensnared by material shortages and enmeshed in bare-knuckle politics. To break the empires of Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini, liberals compromised with big business and Republicans compromised with Democrats. The Army cut deals with the Navy, and both swallowed trade-offs with unions, farmers, miners and factory owners. American generals and admirals horse-traded with their British cousins, and commanders of all branches courted congressional chairmen, business leaders and, journalists.

In Washingtons marble corridors, the United States entrusted four men with the prosecution of Americas war. General George Catlett Marshall, the Armys top soldier, won the admiration of Churchill, Stalin and Truman. Admiral Ernest J. King, a Porthos of the sea, saw in the oceans the key to Americas global power. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, an old-line Republican from old-moneyed Long Island, distrusted the rapidly changing world, yet he championed futuristic weapons to prevent future wars.

And over these men hovered Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal Democrat thrown into a war where his friends became enemies, his enemies trusted allies. He had staked his legacy on domestic reform, yet found himself shaping the world alongside Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill. A devious, self-described juggler, Roosevelt would shift his political base, draw his nation toward war, weld an alliance with a dictator and an imperialist, and found a global institution dedicated to peace.

Roosevelt, Marshall, Stimson, and King are now ghostly images of our past, men who speak to us through grainy black-and-white newsreels and scratchy archived recordings. We see them through a glass darkly: Roosevelt, a rakish cigarette holder clenched between broad white teeth, assures the nation the only thing it has to fear is fear itself. Marshall, a constellation of stars on each shoulder, stares inscrutably into the distance as he ponders global strategy. A mustachioed Stimson and a bald, scowling King, giants behind the curtain, stand in the background, barely remembered faces in a faded gray photograph.

But in 1941, these ghosts lived in a world bursting with fire and fear. A world unraveling along two seams, where America could peer over either shoulder and see bubbling lakes of red. A nation unaware that it was on the road to a golden age that would be purchased with rivers of blood, mountains of treasure, and years of suffering.

A road that would begin with a strange sound rippling over a tropical paradise.

PROLOGUE

THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE