As I have noted in this space before, I generally take the opportunity of long plane rides to read long books which I feel like I should probably read but whose length deters me from ever starting them. One of the few nice things about flying is that there isn’t much to do except read while on a plane. I like that part of flying.
So, faced with a long trip to and from California last weekend, I needed a book. One arrived hand-delivered shortly before I left, so I figured the trip was a great opportunity to read it.
Herbert Hoover (you may have heard of him) lived a long time after he was President. Little known fact—he wrote a lot of books in his later years. One book, his self-labeled magnum opus, occupied 20 years of his life. That alone is pretty staggering—he spent 20 years writing this book. He came close to finishing it shortly before he died. And…it was never published. Until now. Why? One might think it is because the book was on a topic which was not particularly interesting. One would be wrong for thinking such a thing. The topic? Hoover’s history of the Second World War, containing an impressive condemnation of just about everything FDR did before and during the war, and just about everything Truman did during and after the war. The book is not without some historical interest.
What happened? We don’t know. What we do know is that not too long ago, the Hoover Institute which had the secret manuscript nobody was ever allowed to see, contacted George Nash, a Hoover biographer (or probably more properly the Hoover biographer (though he is too modest to claim such an honorific himself)), and asked him if he would edit the manuscript for publication. As it turns out, editing this manuscript was no small feat. The book is long—really, really long. And there are multiple drafts of this very long book. And there are handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of the drafts. And there are footnotes in the book which are incomplete. And…well, suffice it to say, it was a lot of work to edit this book.
The book was published last week. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath. I took it on the plane to California. And I read it. All of it: 909 pages, plus the 88 page Editor’s Introduction.
Should you read it? Well, since George is a friend of mine, and in fact gave me my copy of the book, part of me wants to say that everyone should rush out and buy a copy and read it. But, honesty (a virtue in blogging to be sure) compels me to say that this book is not for everyone.
The book is certainly of stunning historical interest. And there are parts of it that will be fascinating to anyone interested in World War II or FDR or Truman or the Cold War. But, in a 909 page book, there are also parts which will be of interest to precisely nobody. I will do my best to convince George to convince the Hoover Press to publish a condensed version, containing not only the best parts of this book, but all the really juicy anti-FDR passages Hoover decided were just too harsh to include in the revised versions. That next book would merit a very large readership. This book merits reading if you are interested in the era. (It would also make an excellent Christmas gift for the World War II buff on your list.)
So, what’s worth reading? George’s introduction is, as anyone who has ever read anything he ever wrote will know, a masterpiece of scholarship. One of the nice things about everything George writes is that if he writes it, you can be certain it is meticulously researched and as close to Truth as it is possible to be this side of Paradise. (That’s no exaggeration, by the way—ask anyone who has ever read anything he ever wrote and you will hear the same thing.) Also worth reading is the set of 28 documents in the appendix—these are all things related to the publication of the book (e.g. earlier drafts or letters to and from assorted people). The Appendix is the starting point for the much desired condensed version.
What of the book as a whole? Unfortunately for the general reader, the best parts aren’t all lumped together in one place. The book is a constant mix of tedium interrupted by really thought-provoking arguments or stories or facts. For the most part, the interesting stuff shows up often enough to keep the narrative flow lively. The section in which Hoover begins to document the endless array of conferences of the major powers nearly had me toss aside the book, but Hoover’s indignation at the conference in Tehran revived the story. If you want a selection to read in order to get a flavor of the whole book, I’d suggest the Case History of Poland. (Volume 3 of the work is case histories of Poland, China, Korea and Germany—all four are interesting in their own ways, but the one on Poland gives a good feel for the rest of the book.)
The thesis of the book: There were mistakes made—lots and lots of mistakes. Hoover listed them in an earlier draft (included as an appendix in this book, but oddly deleted from the final version of the manuscript). Hoover lists 19 mistakes made in seven years—which is a pretty remarkable record if you agree with Hoover than all of these are mistakes. They are:
1. The World Economic Conference of 1933
2. The Recognition of Communist Russia in 1933
3. Munich
4. The British-French Guarantee of Poland and Rumania in 1939
5. United States Undeclared War
6. Failure in Watchful Waiting
7. Alliance with Stalin
8. The Economic Sanctions on Japan in July, 1941
9. Refusal to Accept Konoye’s Peace Proposals
10. Refusal to Accept a 3 Months’ Stand-Still Agreement with Japan
11. The Demand for Unconditional Surrender
12. The Sacrifice of the Baltic States and East Poland at Moscow, October 1943
13. Tehran and Its Sacrifice of Seven More Nations
14. Yalta—the Secret Agreements on the Downfall of Nations
15. Refusal of Japanese Peace Proposals on May-July, 1945
16. Potsdam
17. Dropping the Atomic Bomb
18. Giving China to Mao Tse-Tung
19. The Dragon’s Teeth of World War III
(You can read the document explaining the items on that list here if you are curious. (Actually, come to think of it, you can read it there even if you aren’t curious.))
All in all, the book is pretty interesting revisionist history. FDR comes across as particularly feckless, but I already thought that about him. More surprising is that Churchill also comes off pretty poorly. In large part, though, Churchill’s portrayal is a mix of the fact that Churchill did agree to sell out Eastern Europe and Hoover’s insistence that appeasing Germany would have been the best option before the War. Only the first one of those is, I think, a legitimate criticism of Churchill. Hoover is convinced that Hitler had no designs on Western Europe, that he and Stalin would have engaged in a process of mutual destruction if only the West had stayed out of the way, and that Japan was never really all that imperialistic. I wasn’t persuaded, but Hoover made a good attempt to convince everyone of those counterfactuals. Honestly, I was surprised that the case could be made so well, even if in the end I wasn’t convinced.
I’m glad I read this book; it made me think. But, I also am pretty sure I wouldn’t have made it all the way through if I wasn’t reading it on a plane. That’s unfortunate—there are many things in here that deserve a wider readership than they will get.
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