Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers during World War II

by John Strausbaugh

Overview

From John Strausbaugh, author of City of Sedition and The Village, comes the definitive history of Gotham during the World War II era.

New York City during World War II wasn't just a place of servicemen, politicians, heroes, G.I. Joes and Rosie the Riveters, but also of quislings and saboteurs; of Nazi, Fascist, and Communist sympathizers; of war protesters and conscientious objectors; of gangsters and hookers and profiteers; of latchkey kids and bobby-soxers, poets and painters, atomic scientists and atomic spies.

While the war launched and leveled nations, spurred economic growth, and saw the rise and fall of global Fascism, New York City would eventually emerge as the new capital of the world. From the Gilded Age to VJ-Day, an array of fascinating New Yorkers rose to fame, from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes to Joe Louis, to Robert Moses and Joe DiMaggio.

In Victory City, John Strausbaugh returns to tell the story of New York City's war years with the same richness, depth, and nuance he brought to his previous books, City of Sedition and The Village, providing readers with a groundbreaking new look into the greatest city on earth during the most transformative -- and costliest -- war in human history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455567461
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	12/04/2018
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	33 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

John Strausbaugh has been writing about the culture and history of New York City for a quarter of a century. City of Sedition, his singular history of New York City's role in and during the Civil War, won the Fletcher Pratt Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 2016; The Village, his epic history of Greenwich Village, has been widely praised and was selected as one of Kirkus Review's best books of the year (2013). His previous books include Black Like You, a history of blackface minstrelsy; and E: Reflections on the Birth of the Elvis Faith.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 Storm Clouds Gather

Chapter 1 Decades of Disaster 9

Chapter 2 Gotham Goes to Washington 17

Chapter 3 New Deal New York 25

Chapter 4 Franklin Rosenfeld of Jew York City 35

Chapter 5 If It Can Happen There… 46

Chapter 6 Life and Death 56

Chapter 7 Springtime for Mussolini 63

Chapter 8 Hitler's New York Friends 69

Chapter 9 The Rise and Fall of Fritz Kuhn 76

Chapter 10 Paradise for Spies 85

Chapter 11 Red, Pink, Pacifist 97

Chapter 12 Cinderella Men 104

Chapter 13 God Bless America 111

Part 2 The Storm Breaks

Chapter 14 Mr. New York's World's Fair 119

Chapter 15 Einstein's Cottage 135

Chapter 16 Treason 140

Chapter 17 Eagles and Doves 144

Chapter 18 Downward, Christian Soldiers 151

Chapter 19 Blitzkrieg 158

Chapter 20 The Last Time I Saw Paris 168

Chapter 21 Wendell Willkie vs. the Third Termites 175

Chapter 22 Hell No, They Won't Go 184

Chapter 23 New Yorkers and the Blitz 193

Chapter 24 Harry Who? 203

Chapter 25 Unlimited Emergency 211

Chapter 26 Spies, Traitors, and a Flying Ace 215

Chapter 27 Civil Defense and Amateur Intelligence 223

Chapter 28 Bums and Bombers 229

Chapter 29 The Mayor and Murder Inc. 235

Part 3 Boom Town

Chapter 30 Day of Infamy 243

Chapter 31 The City Mobilizes 254

Chapter 32 You're a Sap, Mr. Jap 263

Chapter 33 Lights Out 269

Chapter 34 You're in the Army Now 282

Chapter 35 Boom and Gloom 295

Chapter 36 Rosie, and Not So 303

Chapter 37 No-Good Thieving, Chiseling Tinhorns 311

Chapter 38 Women at War 318

Chapter 39 Buffaloed Soldiers and Conscientious Objectors 325

Chapter 40 Selling the War 332

Chapter 41 Zoot Suit Killers and a Bobby Sox Riot 339

Chapter 42 Banking on Hitler 345

Chapter 43 Murder and Massacre 354

Chapter 44 A Spy on Staten Island; a Riot in Harlem 363

Chapter 45 Ghosts 371

Chapter 46 The Manhattan Project and Its Moles 380

Chapter 47 Clear It with Sidney 392

Chapter 48 Endings 400

Chapter 49 To Trinity and Beyond 410

Part 4 The Big Bonanza

Chapter 50 The Wonder City 419

Chapter 51 Treason on Trial 428

Chapter 52 World Capital 436

Notes on Sources 445

Acknowledgments 459

Index 460

About the Author 488

Editorial Reviews

12/01/2018

Longtime New York City chronicler Strausbaugh (City of Sedition) has put together an ambitious book detailing life in the Big Apple during World War II. While focusing on the years 1939–45, the author dedicates plenty of space to the decades preceding and following the war. In doing so, he places both New York and World War II in context, culturally and politically. Highlighting both major and minor cultural and political events, the work's brief chapters offer anecdotes of New Yorkers. At times it's hard to see how some of the people featured fit into the larger narrative of wartime New York, especially when they're only mentioned once. But overall the book is readable and compelling and isn't bogged down by these divergent stories. VERDICT While academics might find the broad scope unsatisfying, this is nonetheless a captivating and well-researched New York history bound to please anyone interested in World War II, New York, as well as general popular history readers.—Timothy Berge, West Virginia Univ., Morgantown

Library Journal

Lots of characters here. Lots of agencies and initiatives and alphabet-soup abbreviations. But if the swirl never clarifies into a nice, clear, good-guys-versus-bad-guys narrative the way the war itself did, count that as a mark of this book's accuracy. Real history is rarely neat and tidy, and rarely morally uncomplicated. If our shorthand description of the war at this remove is "Allies defeat evil Axis," the journey to that endpoint was a jumble of major figures and bit players, noble efforts and vile intentions, cataclysmic events and quiet vignettes. Strausbaugh gives us history as crazy quilt rather than as the foregone conclusion it sometimes seems.

The New York Times Book Review - Neil Genzlinger

10/01/2018
From teenagers in zoot suits and bobby socks to New York–bred Soviet moles infiltrating the Manhattan Project and German U-boats lurking off the city’s shoreline, Strausbaugh (City of Sedition: A History of New York City during the Civil War) delivers a lively chronicle of New York City during the 1930s and ’40s. Strausbaugh highlights New York’s influential role in the war effort due to its sheer size, defense and auxiliary organizations (among them, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and USO), and political and economic clout—President Franklin Roosevelt, a native New Yorker, filled his cabinet and administration with influential New Yorkers. Entertaining and episodic, Strausbaugh’s work explores the cultural changes precipitated by the rise of women in the workforce; the racial discrimination black service members faced in the military and at home that led to the 1943 Harlem Riot; the corporations and banks that hid under a patriotic front while investing in Hitler’s regime; and the New York Jewish community’s deep divisions over Roosevelt’s slow and ineffective response to the Holocaust. The narrative sweeps in New York City’s larger-than-life mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Nazi spies and saboteurs, atomic scientists, poets, and gangsters. This well-informed and vibrant history captures a pivotal era in deep detail. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"With his previous books on Greenwich Village (The Village) and on New York in its paroxysm of copperhead treason during the Civil War (City of Sedition), John Strausbaugh has been taking a position as New York City's best biographer with a vengeance. VICTORY CITY as a work of scholarship and entertainment is the best victory yet in the series."—William Monahan, Academy Award-winning writer of The Departed and Kingdom of Heaven

"With vivid characters and much colorful detail, John Strausbaugh's account brilliantly illuminates New York's dynamic role in the Second World War, as well as the ways the war forever changed the city and its people."—Philip Dray, award-winning author of The Fair Chase: The Epic Story of Hunting in America

"Eight million stories and one war: The west side piers and the Jersey side of the Hudson and the Brooklyn docks are crowded with stevedores loading cargo ships, soldiers filing onto troop ships, wives and girlfriends waving goodbye. It's World War II in New York City, and John Strausbaugh carries us there in the pages of this extraordinary history."—Lucian Truscott IV, New York Times bestselling author of Heart of War

"John Strausbaugh has woven a series of brilliant portraits -- isolationists, interventionists, pacifists, politicians, reporters, patriots, spies, and gangsters among them -- into a carefully detailed tapestry of New York from the 1930s through V-J Day. His vivid writing, sharp attention to detail, carefully modulated chapters, and sharp observations about the culture and the times combine to make Victory City an invaluable contribution to New York's and America's history."—Tom Lewis, author of The Hudson and Washington, a History

"The action-crackling tale of Gotham at war and the trials behind the triumphalism. It's a weirder, more raucous, inspiring and heartbreaking saga than most recall: Nazi spies, homegrown Hitlerlites, a confrontational mayor, patriotic gangsters, powerful gossip columnists, juvenile delinquents, radical women, rations for everything (though everything's corrupt), and dire warnings, repeatedly unheeded, about the plight of Europe's Jews. Written in swinging prose shorn of propaganda and cant, Strausbaugh hits like the Atom Bomb-and that's a New York story, too."—Brian Berger, co-editor with Marahall Berman of New York Calling and author of Brooklyn Confidential

"Strausbaugh gives us history as a crazy quilt rather than as the forgone conclusion it sometimes seems...[A] portrait of an amazingly dynamic, chaotic, trepidation-filled time."—The New York Times Book Review

"In VICTORY CITY, John Stausbaugh...brings a dizzying array of events to life through the individuals at their heart. The parade of New York's wartime characters seems unending and always fascinating....The book will delight armchair historians, providing an entertaining overview of the era...Strausbaugh's galloping prose makes VICTORY CITY a compulsively engaging read...[a] compelling ride through wartime New York and beyond."—The Washington Post

"[A] panoramic view of a great city at the height of its power. The parade of colorful anecdotes and character sketches, presented in a brash and sometimes sassy style, makes this an entertaining read. [VICTORY CITY] is a pleasant visit to a confident and powerful city helping to lead its nation to victory in a global conflict, conducted by a witty and knowledgeable guide. A passionate love letter to a city and era that have long since faded away."—Kirkus

"A compelling read about a fascinatingly rich period."—Booklist

"Strausbaugh likes to tell big stories about New York -- and he tells them very well. Victory City is grounded in the same thorough scholarly research and literary flair [as] The Village...remarkable."—New York Journal of Books

"Brilliantly evocative. Even people...who remember the wartime years will find fascinating new details on nearly every page. And for younger readers, the book will be a revelation."—Commentary Magazine

"Strausbaugh delivers a lively chronicle of New York City during the 1930s and '40s...The narrative sweeps in New York City's larger-than-life mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Nazi spies and saboteurs, atomic scientists, poets, and gangsters. This well-informed and vibrant history captures a pivotal era in deep detail."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2018-09-18

Strausbaugh (City of Sedition: The History of New York During the Civil War, 2016, etc.) presents a panoramic view of a great city at the height of its power.

In 1940, New York City was a demographic and cultural colossus; far more than today, what happened there mattered. It was the largest city in the world, its port was the busiest in the world, it employed more workers in manufacturing than any other city, and it was the nation's hub for merchandising, finance, media, theater, and fashion. The author, an expert on the history of New York, creates a suitably sprawling portrait of the city and its residents during the first half of the 20th century. Then, as now, it was a city of immigrants; it sometimes seems as though nearly everyone who lived there was, or was the child of, immigrants from central Europe with Anglicized names. In Strausbaugh's portrayal, Nazi and communist spies, mobsters and politicos rub elbows with Eleanor Roosevelt, zoot suiters, and bobby-soxers, Rosie the Riveter, war profiteers, and draft resisters, with the rumbustious mayor Fiorello LaGuardia roaring around throughout. Short chapters move the presentation briskly along; if one topic fails to engage, another will be along momentarily. The rapid pacing seems to mimic the frenetic energy of the city, while the familiar flow of the era's national and world events provides an orderly structure to the narrative. The parade of colorful anecdotes and character sketches, presented in a brash and sometimes sassy style, makes this an entertaining read. The author makes no claims to insightful social or historical revelation; the book is a pleasant visit to a confident and powerful city helping to lead its nation to victory in a global conflict, conducted by a witty and knowledgeable guide.

A passionate love letter to a city and era that have long since faded away.

Kirkus Reviews