Recounts the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and the road to war from the perspective of four American diplomats in Europe who witnessed it firsthand: Joseph Kennedy, William Dodd, Breckinridge Long, and William Bullitt, who all served in key Western European capitals―London, Berlin, Rome, Paris, and Moscow―in the years prior to World War II.
Oddly, Mr. McKean never mentions that Dodd’s daughter not only shared his disgust but also spied for the Soviet Union, falling in love with a Russian agent and feeding him information about her father’s activities and his correspondence with Roosevelt ... Mr. McKean tells his story easily and well, keeping the chapters brief and sprinkling them with telling quotes ... Mr. McKean also has a sharp eye for detail beyond diplomacy ... On the downside, Mr. McKean’s understanding of Adolf Hitler is a bit simplistic...Hitler’s grand strategy was always more consistent than Mr. McKean seems willing to credit.
Readers gain insight into the antisemitism that McKean says characterized upper-class society and often blinded prominent people to the dangers of Nazism. The author excels in recognizing that diplomatic translators can shade meanings, so he identifies interpreters in particular meetings and the countries that supplied them ... Felicitously written with an insider’s sensibility for international affairs, McKean’s investigation, comparing favorably with David Mayers’s similarly themed FDR’s Ambassadors and the Diplomacy of Crisis, will delight both specialists and generalists.
... a useful addition to the literature on the beginning of World War II ... Of considerable interest to students of modern European history and the Roosevelt era.
