Reading FDR and Churchill WWII

     I haven't been around the last week and but hopefully starting Monday it will be back to normal. I miss you guys and am not happy I haven't been able to blog lately.

     I do have the good news of a new job as I mentioned in my last post.

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/01/sorry-ive-been-out-few-days-got-job.html

    I have my first job as a security job-it's at a gated community. Guess if I can't be part of the 1 percent I can at least work for them... I saw one guy who is a famous lawyer-for John Gotti.

    This job is not paying much-if only the GOP had not obstructed Obama's idea to let people continue to collect UI for their first eight weeks of employment.

    Oh well you got to start somewhere.

     I've been on an FDR kick, I read two biographies about him by Nathan Miller and Ted Morgan. They were both written in roughly the same time span-1986 for Miller, 1983 for Morgan. Now I'm actually reading a book by Cornell Barnett called "The Lost Victory British Dreams, British Realities 1945-50."

     It really kind of picks up where the FDR books left off-FDR of course died in 1945 at the end of WWII. What becomes clear in reading about FDR during WWII is that Winston Churchill doesn't necessarily come off that well.

     To be sure he was a hero in Britain where the disastrous appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s was turned around. Still in many ways Britain's policy under Churchill may have prolonged the war. While FDR wanted to launch an cross Atlantic attack from Britain on Germany making it a two front war-and so assist Stalin in Russia and wear down the Germans.

    Churchill however resisted this obvious strategy desiring a more peripheral strategy focused in the Middle East. FDR's Secretary of War Henry Stimson describes it this seemed to be Britain's strategy: like a general Lincoln described in Civil War-not much use in skinning the chicken but able to hold one of it's legs. Churchill's strategy amounted to letting Stalin skin the chicken-and suffer all those causalities in Russia-while he and FDR would each hold a leg.

    It was not until 1944 with V-Day that the Americans were able to win this argument and launch the trans Atlantic bombing.

    In The Lost Victory we get the background of this weak British strategy. What concerned British policy during the war was two things-to limit causalities after losing 700.000 in World War I; and protecting the British Empire. In this FDR and Churchill were at cross purposes as FDR wanted to liquidate the British and French empires.

   As Barnett shows this British vanity was a problem for years-Britain had a hard time adjusting to 20th century reality where they were no longer the leading world power, that indeed they were a second rate power-tough pill to swallow.

   Barnett has written extensively about this British problem-in The Audit of War and elsewhere. Certainly a very good read for those interested in this period at it pertains to history and Britain.

   I will write more staring on Monday. Scott Sumner at Money Illusion has been going off tilt and needs to be called out. Go Giants! They beat Green Bay who can't they beat?!!