Mark A. Stoler - Böcker

Focusing on the 'special relationship' between the United States and Britain, this book examines the war these two powers fought against Germany, Italy and Japan. This account sees the struggle as a coherent whole, as it would have appeared to Churchill, Roosevelt and their military advisers. Emphasizing the unprecedented co-operation between Britain and the USA, Mark Stoler undermines the standard Churchillian view of the essential smoothness of this process. There were many, often substantial, disagreements between the two allies, and occasionally formal agreement masked continuing dispute in practice, notably over the understanding that the priority was to defeat Nazi Germany. This is a fully rounded history of the British-American effort and makes compelling reading for those who want to understand the intricacies and complexities of this unique relationship>

Formed soon after Pearl Harbor, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were officially responsible only for the nation's military forces. Their functions grew to encompass a host of foreign policy concerns during World War II, however, when the military voice assumed an unprecedented importance. Analysing the wartime rise of military influence in US foreign policy, Mark Stoler focuses on the evolution of and debates over US and Allied global strategy. In the process, he examines military fears regarding America's major allies - Great Britain and the Soviet Union - and how those fears affected President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies, interservice and civil-military relations, military-academic relations, and post-war national security policy.

Elected an unprecedented four times to the presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt led the United States through some of the most dramatic and trying foreign and domestic episodes in its history. Coming to power in the throws of a crippling depression, Roosevelt quickly found himself having to juggle the need for tremendous domestic revitalization in a world menaced by burgeoning aggressor states. In Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, noted historians Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler offer differing perspectives on the Roosevelt years, finding disparate meanings from common data. Finding Roosevelt astute at choosing the most effective option of those available, Stoler generally defends FDR's policies against their traditional critics. Conversely, Doenecke emphasizes a dangerous shallowness and superficiality in FDR's approach to foreign affairs, particularly in his first two terms. The contrary viewpoints of the authors, supplemented by carefully chosen documents, provide an ideal introduction allowing readers to examine the issues and draw their own conclusions about Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy.

George Catlett Marshall's two years as secretary of state, from January 1947 to January 1949, remain among the most eventful in the history of both the State Department and American foreign policy in general. The period covered in volume 6 of "The Papers of George Catlett Marshall" saw the formal break between the United States and its Soviet wartime ally and the beginning of the cold war; civil wars in Greece and China; decolonization and independence for India, Pakistan, and Israel; the Truman Doctrine; the Marshall Plan; the Berlin blockade and airlift; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; and the Organization of American States. Secretary of State Marshall played a pivotal role in the transformation of American relations with the rest of the world during these years. Not only was he President Harry S. Truman's key adviser in foreign affairs, he also proposed the European Recovery Program that bears his name. Implementing this and other U.S. foreign policies required attendance at a large number of international conferences in 1947 and 1948 and an even larger number of Senate and House committee hearings.His testimony at these hearings - and his close relations with legislative leaders-proved crucial to establishing the extraordinary bipartisan congressional approval of his proposals, and so, too, did his numerous public appearances to cultivate broad public support for his programs. Marshall retired at the beginning of 1949, but his respite from public service would be short-lived.