Watching Darkness Fall: FDR, His Ambassadors and the Rise of Adolph Hitler

McKean (Suspected of Independence), the former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, delivers a perceptive group biography of four American diplomats as they witnessed—and struggled to handle—the rise of fascism in Europe from 1933 to 1941. Drawing on diaries, letters, and meeting records, McKean reveals how much President Franklin Roosevelt relied on information collected on the ground by his ambassadors in France (William Bullitt), Germany (William Dodd), Great Britain (Joseph P. Kennedy), and Italy (Breckinridge Long). Dodd, a former history professor, was the first to warn about the dangers of Hitler and “the depraved” officials around him. Bullitt, who had been the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union before arriving in France, is credited with saving Paris from being bombed by the Germans in June 1940. Meanwhile, Long greatly admired Mussolini and urged the U.S. to stay out of the war in Europe, and Kennedy supported appeasement and sought ways to deepen the economic ties between Germany and the U.S. McKean illuminates the differences in his subjects’ backgrounds and temperaments, and lucidly documents Hitler’s relentless militarization and aggression and FDR’s struggles to convince a reluctant American public—and Congress—to come to the aid of its European allies. This is a lively, immersive history of a pivotal time. (Nov.)