Robert Dallek

Robert Dallek's massive two-volume biography of President Lyndon Baines Johnson is a monumental accomplishment of research and insight. This volume, Flawed Giant, picks up with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Johnson's ascension to the presidency. As in the first volume (Lone Star Rising), Dallek integrates mountains of detail into his narrative without ever overwhelming the reader. Johnson, a wonderfully real human being in Dallek's telling, reveals himself as a tragic, show more misunderstood, bold man of unlimited concern for the mistreated and underprivileged, yet one whose flaws, as the title suggests, were writ large. I grew up during LBJ's career and fought in what was called Lyndon Johnson's War, Vietnam. Reading this book at last clarified for me how we came to be enmired there and why it was so difficult to free ourselves from the conflict. For that illumination alone, I am deeply grateful for this book. But as a gateway for understanding one of our most misunderstood presidents, it is hard to think of a better job of shedding light. Highly recommended. show less

This biography of William E. Dodd, American Ambassador to Germany during the years leading up to the start of World War II, was originally published in 1968. As such, it reflects not only the era it's about, but also the era its author grew up in. Consequently, there are times when commentary on race relations in he US will read oddly and be a bit shocking to modern sensibilities.

That gave me pause at certain points. However, while it's well to bear such limitations in mind, this is overall show more 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. show less

How did the Cold War start? Could it have been avoided? The paths taken from the end of WWII to the death of Stalin and the conclusion of the Korean War seem to us looking back now to have been inevitable. Dalleck analyzes the choices made by leaders and nations and concludes that the options chosen by the super powers were by no means the only ones available to them. He suggests that a number of factors - largely domestic in nature - led to the hardening of attitudes between the east and show more west and the resultant diplomatic and military courses taken. At the core of the two nations' schism was, of course, the abhorrence each held for the other's political ideology, but did this mean that no accommodation was possible? The US failed, Dalleck concludes, to recognize that Stalin's intent to buffer Russia from future attacks from Western Europe was a prime motivating imperative in installing satellite regimes in the Eastern European nations that his armies controlled. The enormous sacrifices experienced by Russia compelled Stalin to ring his country with friendly allies that separated Germany from access to Russian soil. Did Stalin have intentions, given any opportunity, to push further west? Dalleck argues that Stalin was aware of how weak his country was after the war and that he knew that aggression against Western Europe was foolhardy. Stalin was a despicable autocrat whose repression of his people exceeded that even of Hitler's, but he was a brilliant strategist in securing his country's interests. Russia's vehement anti-western aggressive blustering and his overt deceit and manipulation hardened western views about his intentions. Dalleck draws attention to the thinking of George Kennan, the pre-eminent thinker on Soviet matters who understood what was driving Stalin's decisions, but whose ideas were largely rejected by policy makers in the executive branch.

In the US the force of domestic political dynamics, especially from the right wing, compelled Truman to take a hard line and to eschew any overtures to the USSR that could be seen as coddling the communists. Dalleck points out how the near hysterical and nonsensical allegations that communists were subverting the US from inside the government constrained the more subtle positions the administration could have taken toward the Soviets. The right wing's distorted, but powerfully effective, position on China shows how domestic currents had a profound affect on the government's policy. The false hope that the Nationalist regime could ever have prevailed led to charges that it was our diplomats who were responsible for the communist take over and foreclosed exploration that understandings with Mao could have been in our national interest.

Could the nuclear arms race have been avoided? At the advent of the development of nuclear weapons there were many people who felt that there were opportunities to control the spread of these weapons, whose principal use (especially the H-bomb) was not military, but clearly genocidal. The decision by Roosevelt and Churchill, later upheld by Truman, to withhold weapons technology from the Soviets heightened Stalin's suspicions that the west was determined to align against his country. Like the world's treatment of gas warfare following WWI, it was entirely possible that another course could have been followed to ban the use of nuclear weapons and their stockpiling. These weapons became a tool of power diplomacy between the opposing nations, a dangerous game since several times their use came awfully close.

Dalleck reviews the thinking of war time leaders about the wisdom of a world body that could bring about collective action to prevent war. Given the deep suspicions held by the major nations and their sharp focus on preserving their national interests, it is not surprising that this lofty aim was never achieved. show less

The second World War was destruction on a scale not previously seen in history. Was it possible that, given such a frenzy of brutality and atrocity, mankind might have turned from its warlike ways and sought a true end to all wars? Alas, it's a moot point as we know the history that followed. Although no global conflicts on a similar scale have occurred since, the respite has hardly been peaceful.

The back of this book calls it "a striking reinterpretation of the postwar years." I wondered, show more did "reinterpretation" mean "revisionist," which has become just another byword for those who blame the United States for all the woes of the world? I was encouraged by the Preface in which Mr. Dallek says: "While I highlight the failings of the notable men who dominated the scene during this time, I am not intent on denying them their due, or in the case of the greatest villains of the day, revising their reputations for wrongdoing" (pg xi). And indeed, he seems blunt in his denouncement of the duplicitous dealings of Stalin with his allies, declaring he had little intention of keeping his word when signing treaties. His assessment of the situation in China is interesting - suggesting we might have done better opening a dialog with Mao Tse-tung, who was very reluctant to join the Soviet orbit and made overtures to the U.S., than clinging to the corrupt and unpopular regime of Chiang Kai-shek. His description of the atmosphere in America is likewise interesting, saying those on the left were naïve in their faith in communist benevolence, while decrying the provoking militancy of the right. Such uncompromising ideologues as Joseph McCarthy left few political options for American leaders who had to be mindful of public opinion.

Mr. Dallek has written a fascinating and thought-provoking book, but I went from marking what seemed to be brilliantly insightful passages to marking ones that strained the limits of credibility. In an effort to appear balanced, Dallek is highly critical of Western leaders for reacting to Stalin and Mao with "knee-jerk anticommunism." He is hard on comments by Western leaders but soft on Soviet and Chinese rhetoric. He justifies Stalin's paranoia as "Russian fear of invasion from the West" (pg 246) and dismisses Soviet espionage and foreign manipulations as "the greatly exaggerated threat of Communist subversion" (pg 269). Even while he explains Western needs to avoid the kind of appeasement that enabled Hitler's murderous spree, he suggests Truman should have met with Stalin and "candidly explained America's reluctance to build weapons of such destructive power and invited the Soviets to join him in a shared effort to ban" them (pg 297). He downplays Soviet involvement in instigating the Korean conflict and blames it on "America's inattentiveness" (pg 314). And even though "Mao, like Stalin, didn't hesitate to sacrifice lives for the sake of communism and his personal rule" (pg 327), he seems to advocate that the West should have negotiated with such leaders in good faith. (Can you say "appeasement?!?") And for all his lamentations over atomic weapons, he credits them with being an ironic deterrent to further large-scale conflict (pg 364-5).

He is also embarrassingly fawning over George Kennan, a diplomat who - according to Dallek - had the best understanding of Soviet thinking. Yet he quotes Kennan as dismissing the "Czech coup and the Berlin blockade as 'just the predictable baring of the fangs'" (pg 263) as though such events were harmless and inconsequential. His acknowledgements that Stalin and Mao were responsible for the deaths and brutal oppression of millions (!!!) of their own people seem lost in the jumble of so much history, almost dismissed as unimportant.

And yet... there was a good deal to like here. Dallek's study can be intriguing - and it's certainly well-written. He is mindful that his analysis has the benefit of historical hindsight, but that's the point and he claims the historian's responsibility to render judgments and offer alternatives - a not unreasonable premise. But while I admire much he had to say, I was deeply troubled by his uneven judgments and minimizing the threat of Soviet communism. To suggest that Stalin might have been neutralized (or "rehabilitated"?) with plain and simple honesty is disturbing and seems the pinnacle of naïveté. Still, a worthwhile read for those interested in the mistakes of leadership that led to the Cold War. Just don't take everything at face value. show less