This book examines the internal controversies of the Roosevelt administration in connection with Spain during World War II, the role of the President in these controversies, and the foundations of the policy that was followed from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War until the launching of Operation Torch in 1942.

This book is a study of the relations between the US and Spain, particularly during the period from 1943 to 1945, when the Roosevelt Administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to challenge the Pro-Franco Regime, culminating in the Battle of Wolfram and the embargo of petroleum products.

Was Franco sympathetic to Nazi Germany? Why didn't Spain enter World War II? In what ways did Spain collaborate with the Third Reich? How much did Spain assist Jewish refugees? This is the first book in any language to answer these intriguing questions. Stanley Payne, a leading historian of modern Spain, explores the full range of Franco’s relationship with Hitler, from 1936 to the fall of the Reich in 1945. But as Payne brilliantly shows, relations between these two dictators were not only a matter of realpolitik. These two titanic egos engaged in an extraordinary tragicomic drama often verging on the dark absurdity of a Beckett or Ionesco play. Whereas Payne investigates the evolving relationship of the two regimes up to the conclusion of World War II, his principal concern is the enigma of Spain’s unique position during the war, as a semi-fascist country struggling to maintain a tortured neutrality. Why Spain did not enter the war as a German ally, joining with Hitler to seize Gibraltar and close the Mediterranean to the British navy, is at the center of Payne’s narrative. Franco’s only personal meeting with Hitler, in 1940 to discuss precisely this, is recounted here in groundbreaking detail that also sheds significant new light on the Spanish government’s vacillating policy toward Jewish refugees, on the Holocaust, and on Spain’s German connection throughout the duration of the war.

What was the relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt, architect of America’s rise to global power, and the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, which inspired passion and sacrifice, and shaped the road to world war? While many historians have portrayed the Spanish Civil War as one of Roosevelt’s most isolationist episodes, Dominic Tierney argues that it marked the president’s first attempt to challenge fascist aggression in Europe. Drawing on newly discovered archival documents, Tierney describes the evolution of Roosevelt’s thinking about the Spanish Civil War in relation to America’s broader geopolitical interests, as well as the fierce controversy in the United States over Spanish policy. Between 1936 and 1939, Roosevelt’s perceptions of the Spanish Civil War were transformed. Initially indifferent toward which side won, FDR became an increasingly committed supporter of the leftist government. He believed that German and Italian intervention in Spain was part of a broader program of fascist aggression, and he worried that the Spanish Civil War would inspire fascist revolutions in Latin America. In response, Roosevelt tried to send food to Spain as well as illegal covert aid to the Spanish government, and to mediate a compromise solution to the civil war. However unsuccessful these initiatives proved in the end, they represented an important stage in Roosevelt’s emerging strategy to aid democracy in Europe.

"The story of Spain during World War II has largely been viewed as the story of dictator Francisco Franco's foreign diplomacy in the aftermath of civil war. Wayne H. Bowen now goes behind the scenes of fascism to reveal less-studied dimensions of Spanish history. By examining the conflicts within the Franco regime and the daily lives of Spaniards, he has written the first book-length assessment of the regime's formative years and the struggle of its citizens to survive." "Examining the effects of World War II on key facets of Spanish life - Catholicism, the economy, women, leisure, culture, opposition to Franco, and domestic politics -Bowen explores a wide range of topics: the grinding poverty following the civil war, exacerbated by poor economic decisions; restrictions on employment for women versus the relative autonomy enjoyed by female members of the Falange; the efforts of the Church to recover from near decimation; and methods of repression practiced by the regime against leftists, separatists, and Freemasons. He also shows that the lives of most Spaniards remained apolitical and centered on work, family, and leisure marked by the popularity of American movies and the resurgence of loyalty to regional sports teams."--BOOK JACKET.

During World War II, Beaulac, as a member of the United States diplomatic mission to Spain, partici­pated in the delicate intrigue as Hitler tried to entice or coerce Spain into fighting for the Axis while the Allies sought to keep the Franco forces neutral. Spain's policy was aimed at frustrating German designs, which made it, in effect, pro-Allied. Yet for survival Franco had to maintain an overt attitude of friendship with the Axis as well as a posture of enmity toward Russia. This friendship that Franco, his aides, and the controlled media professed for Hitler provided Spain's sole defense against German invasion. Once Spanish policy became clear, the Allied poli­cy was to be as helpful as possible. Spain was starving, weary of war, divided politically and spiritually. The United States and Britain chose not to punish Spain for her avowed friendship with the Axis but instead to make it as easy as possible for Franco to stay out of the war. Both countries continued to trade with Spain and supply her with com­modities that would enable her to survive. That the Allies and the Spanish were able to carry out a policy that was often unpopular and difficult constitutes a great diplomatic victory-- one that may have altered the course of World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt pursued the U. S. presidency for more than 25 years. He served in that office longer than any other person, from 1933 until his death in 1945. To achieve the office of president of the United States, FDR practiced deception on a grand scale. He was a charming man, when he wanted to be, and he engaged the willing help of several specific individuals, as well as many others, in his quest for the presidency, and in his successful execution of the duties of that office. As president, FDR steered the U. S. ship of state (a deliberate metaphor) through two of its greatest crises: the Great Depression, and World War II, Roosevelts War. In doing so, FDR, more than any other person, created the Superpower that the United States is today. This book will tell you how it all happened.

The remarkable untold story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the five extraordinary men he used to pull America into World War II In the dark days between Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent five remarkable men on dramatic and dangerous missions to Europe. The missions were highly unorthodox and they confounded and infuriated diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. Their importance is little understood to this day. In fact, they were crucial to the course of the Second World War. The envoys were magnificent, unforgettable characters. First off the mark was Sumner Welles, the chilly, patrician under secretary of state, later ruined by his sexual misdemeanors, who was dispatched by FDR on a tour of European capitals in the spring of 1940. In summer of that year, after the fall of France, William “Wild Bill” Donovan—war hero and future spymaster—visited a lonely United Kingdom at the president’s behest to determine whether she could hold out against the Nazis. Donovan’s report helped convince FDR that Britain was worth backing. After he won an unprecedented third term in November 1940, Roosevelt threw a lifeline to the United Kingdom in the form of Lend-Lease and dispatched three men to help secure it. Harry Hopkins, the frail social worker and presidential confidant, was sent to explain Lend-Lease to Winston Churchill. Averell Harriman, a handsome, ambitious railroad heir, served as FDR’s man in London, expediting Lend-Lease aid and romancing Churchill’s daughter-in-law. Roosevelt even put to work his rumpled, charismatic opponent in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie, whose visit lifted British morale and won wary Americans over to the cause. Finally, in the aftermath of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Hopkins returned to London to confer with Churchill and traveled to Moscow to meet with Joseph Stalin. This final mission gave Roosevelt the confidence to bet on the Soviet Union. The envoys’ missions took them into the middle of the war and exposed them to the leading figures of the age. Taken together, they plot the arc of America’s trans¬formation from a divided and hesitant middle power into the global leader. At the center of everything, of course, was FDR himself, who moved his envoys around the globe with skill and élan. We often think of Harry S. Truman, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and George F. Kennan as the authors of America’s global primacy in the second half of the twentieth century. But all their achievements were enabled by the earlier work of Roosevelt and his representatives, who took the United States into the war and, by defeating domestic isolationists and foreign enemies, into the world. In these two years, America turned. FDR and his envoys were responsible for the turn. Drawing on vast archival research, Rendezvous with Destiny is narrative history at its most delightful, stirring, and important.

After Adolf Hitler attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, igniting World War II, it fell to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to keep his nation neutral while preparing it for war. When Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought that war to America, his strong, steady leadership guided it through all but four months of the most brutal war in the history of the world. Through full-color and black-and-white photos, informative sidebars, and engaging narrative, readers gain insight into Roosevelt’s administration and the people who advised him, as well as the combat and political strategies of the war itself and its legacy.