Recently we noted that there was little if any dissent when it came to the efficacy of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies as portrayed in Ken Burns’ “The Roosevelts” series, providing several titles challenging the pollyannaish view put forth. Amity Shlaes, an author of one of the books on our list, “The Forgotten Man,” followed up with two recommendations of her own, including Gene Smiley’s “Rethinking the Great Depression” and “The Great Depression: A Diary” by Benjamin Roth.

In response to our post, one reader, Diana West, Blaze contributor and author of the groundbreaking and highly controversialAmerican Betrayal,” suggested several books on FDR and his administration during World War II that similarly challenge the perspective put forth in “The Roosevelts.”

The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. From left to right: Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Premier Josef Stalin. (Image Source: Wikipedia)

The major thrust of the books on West’s list — namely that Roosevelt’s cabinet and much of the federal bureaucracy was filled with Communists, fellow travelers, dupes and “useful idiots,” and that at the very least this influenced an FDR agenda that proved heavily favorable towards “Uncle Joe” Stalin and the Soviet Union, enabling its expansion and increasing its sphere of influence well beyond its borders — leads to a total paradigm shift when thinking about the World War II era. It bears noting that in “American Betrayal,” West herself seeks to draw a parallel between the modern-day whitewashing of Islamic supremacism, and influence of Islamic supremacists internal and external on America’s government, and that of the Communists and their sympathizers in Roosevelt’s day.

Below are West’s five book recommendations, which may challenge your perspective on and interpretation of the major events, figures and policies implemented during World War II. These titles provide context missing from not only Ken Burns’ documentary, but nearly all popular chronicles of this period of American history.

1. Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein

Stalin's Secret Agents

2. Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR’s White House Triggered Pearl Harbor by John Koster

Operation Snow

3. The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy by John Dietrich

The Morgenthau Plan

4. American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character by Diana West

American Betrayal

5. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath by Herbert Hoover

Freedom Betrayed

 

 

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