Franklin Delano Roosevelt By Roy Jenkins, Macmillan, ? 9.00

Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR as he was popularly known, the United States of America became the greatest power in the globe and continues to remains so. Scholars still debate whether it was FDR?s creative leadership or the international strategic scenario which was responsible for the rise of the US. The British historian, Roy Jenkins, in this slim biography, attempts to assess the achievements of FDR.

FDR?s rise to fame revolves around two themes: his New Deal and wartime leadership. Though Jenkins does not mention it, there is a certain parallel between FDR and Hitler. Both came to power in 1933 and were able to put their respective country?s economy out of depression. Once Hitler and FDR came to power, economic depression vanished and unemployment declined. Both Hitler and FDR argued for state spending for creating more jobs.

Jenkins argues that FDR had no concrete programme for solving the US?s stock market crash. The difference between President Hoover and FDR was not in substance but in style. Armed with a political background, Jenkins argues that in politics, style matters. While campaigning, FDR talked about increasing government expenditure but after coming to power, he cut the budget. And, FDR was no moralist. Although he suffered from polio, he was a womanizer and changed parties. In politics, assures Jenkins, if one has to survive, then changing camps is a necessity and not a luxury.

The other theme over which a lot of ink has been poured concerns FDR?s effectiveness as a war leader. A.J.P. Taylor, in The War Lords, gives low marks to FDR vis-?-vis the likes of Stalin and Churchill. Jenkins takes the line that FDR was an effective war lord who concerned himself only with grand strategy. Unlike Churchill and Hitler, he did not feel that the head of state should get bogged down in details of military operations.

There is a theory that FDR knew about the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but did not inform the US Navy in order to push the US into the war. Jenkins challenges this view. FDR?s greatest contribution was the ?Hitler First? strategy. Being in charge of a democratic country, he had to take into account public opinion. To the American public, Hitler?s European war was of less importance than the Japanese expansion in the Pacific. However, FDR emphasized that Nazi Germany was the principal threat to the Western democracies. And once Germany was defeated, the other two Axis partners would collapse like a house of cards.

Many historians have criticized FDR for appeasing Stalin, arguing that FDR surrendered Poland to the USSR. Jenkins feels that FDR had no alternative: the Red Army had advanced into Warsaw and the Western Allies could not throw them out. At Yalta (February 1945), FDR did not capitulate to Stalin but like a pragmatic politician, acquiesced to what Stalin had already obtained. It must be remembered that the US military brass had told FDR that the war with Japan would last for another year, and for conducting it successfully, cooperation with the Soviets was a necessity.

It is a challenge to write a biography of a controversial world figure in 150 pages. Jenkins has done a good job within the constraints. However, his suggestion, that the Cold War could have been averted were FDR alive, is to stretch the imagination a bit too far.