How did FDR and the American public respond to the rise of dictators across Europe and Asia on the eve of World War II? The familiar narrative is that they reacted with indifference and embraced isolationism. Only with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were Americans reluctantly drawn into the global conflict.
But, says historian William I. Hitchcock, the story is a far more complex and surprising one.
From the time Mussolini came to power in 1922 to the United States’ entry into the war in 1941, Americans engaged in a fraught national debate over the rising threat—and for some, the lure—of fascism. At the center of this debate was Roosevelt himself. When he took office in 1933, he was determined to avoid foreign entanglements that would harm his ambitious domestic agenda of the New Deal. But over the course of Roosevelt’s first two terms, a network of journalists, activists, advisers, and diplomats gradually awakened him to the global dangers of fascism.
Roosevelt’s transformation was part of a larger national reckoning with authoritarianism around the world. Hitchcock shines a light on a time when a coalition of courageous humanists gathered around a visionary leader to forge a new purpose for America: to protect democracy, oppose imperialism, support human rights, and lead a global fight for freedom.
Hitchcock’s book A Shadow Over the World: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Rise of Fascism, and the Making of America's World War II (Simon and Schuster) is available for purchase.
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