A Blueprint for War: FDR and the Hundred Days That Mobilized America

by Susan Dunn

Overview

In the cold winter months that followed Franklin Roosevelt’s election in November 1940 to an unprecedented third term in the White House, he confronted a worldwide military and moral catastrophe. Almost all the European democracies had fallen under the ruthless onslaught of the Nazi army and air force. Great Britain stood alone, a fragile bastion between Germany and American immersion in war. In the Pacific world, Japan had extended its tentacles deeper into China. Susan Dunn dramatically brings to life the most vital and transformational period of Roosevelt’s presidency: the hundred days between December 1940 and March 1941, when he mobilized American industry, mustered the American people, initiated the crucial programs and approved the strategic plans for America’s leadership in World War II. As the nation began its transition into the preeminent military, industrial, and moral power on the planet, FDR laid out the stunning blueprint not only for war but for the American Century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300203530
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	04/17/2018
Series:	The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Susan Dunn, the Massachusetts Professor of Humanities at Williams College, is the author of a dozen books, including 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm.

Table of Contents

1 The God of No Foreign War 1

2 Lousy November 13

3 Plan Dog 31

4 Cruising in December 50

5 The Arsenal of Ideas 73

6 Make the Army Roll 101

7 Have We the Vision? 122

8 Joint Talks 144

9 The Flames of World Conflagration Lick Everywhere 158

10 The Third Hundred Days 176

Notes 183

Acknowledgments 237

Credits 239

Index 241

Editorial Reviews

"Susan Dunn is one of the great Roosevelt historians of our time, and with this fresh and fascinating book, she has proven it once again.  Especially in these times, it is inspiring to read this story of a President surely exercising moral leadership at a moment of looming world crisis.”  — Michael Beschloss, author of Presidential Courage
 

Michael Beschloss

A superbly researched and written history of how FDR and his top aides moved decisively after the 1940 election to provide massive American aid to Great Britain to support its lonely fight against Hitler, and how FDR set forth an enlightened and lasting vision of America's international responsibilities in the future.”—James T. Patterson, Bancroft Prize-winning author of Grand Expectations

James T. Patterson

A Blueprint for War should become the definitive telling of a pivotal episode in American history.”—Edward J. Larson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return of George Washington

Edward J. Larson

“In the first ‘hundred days,’ Roosevelt proposed but Congress disposed. In the hundred-day crisis of late 1940-41, it was the opposite, as Susan Dunn persuasively demonstrates.  FDR had no master plan, but his instincts proved unerring. Dunn has given us a thoughtful, readable examination of presidential leadership.”—Warren Kimball, author of Forged in War:  Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War

Warren Kimball

"Dunn rightly calls this [sense of purpose] ‘a decisive, irreversible shift in national consciousness,’ transforming America from isolationist into internationalist. . . . Much of this had only been half explained, and Dunn’s achievement is to make the view of FDR’s accomplishment clear."—David M. Shribman, Boston Globe

“A concise and engaging retelling of the prelude to US involvement in WW II.”—A.J. Falk, Choice

“A taut, lean narrative account of [a] critical turning point in US history. . . . Gripping. . . . [Dunn’s] fresh, and lasting, contribution to historiography is to identify a brief time period during which Roosevelt turned America decisively towards the war. . . . Roosevelt emerges from Dunn’s electrifying account as a supremely confident commander-in-chief—in turn inspired, strategic, cunning even, ingenious, gregarious, and most of all tenacious.”—Theo Zenou, The Journal of History

“Susan Dunn is one of the great Roosevelt historians of our time, and with this fresh and fascinating book, she has proven it once again.”—Michael Beschloss, author of Presidents of War

“A superbly researched and written history of how FDR and his top aides moved decisively after the 1940 election to provide massive American aid to Great Britain to support its lonely fight against Hitler, and how FDR set forth an enlightened and lasting vision of America's international responsibilities in the future.”—James T. Patterson, Bancroft Prize-winning author of Grand Expectations

“A Blueprint for War should become the definitive telling of a pivotal episode in American history.”—Edward J. Larson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return of George Washington

“Susan Dunn has written a wonderful book about an important and, until now, under-examined chapter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. In A Blueprint for War, we see Roosevelt at his best—the skilled navigator of domestic politics and the visionary shepherd of U.S. foreign policy. Dunn shows how FDR’s Third Hundred Days were critical to overcoming isolationism and rebuilding American leadership in age of global turmoil.”—E.J. Dionne Jr., co-author of One Nation After Trump
 

From the Publisher