The World in Time

Nigel Hamilton

Friday, May 17, 2019

Marshall Josef Stalin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Russian Embassy in Tehran, Iran, 1943. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Office of War Information Collection.

“Many historians—too many—have judged Franklin Roosevelt’s military role in World War II,” Nigel Hamilton writes in the prologue to War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945, “on the basis of his final year in the Oval Office”—a period of time when he was gravely and terminally ill—“entirely misconstruing his singular, overarching contribution to victory over the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan.”

 

“My aim,” Hamilton continues, “has been not only to chart with fresh clarity how dire was his affliction, but how exactly it affected his decisions and once masterly performance as commander in chief of the Western Allies in World War II after Pearl Harbor. It was a record that Winston Churchill—who had been a great national leader, but a deeply flawed commander in chief of British Empire forces—was only too happy to take from him in literary retrospect.”

 

The award-winning historian joins Lewis H. Lapham on the podcast to discuss the third and final volume of his biography of the U.S. president, detailing FDR’s legacy and his last moments.

 

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Nigel Hamilton, author of War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945.

 

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Discussed in this episode

More Podcasts

President Gerald Ford taking questions from reporters during a press conference at the White House, 1975. Photograph by Marion S. Trikosko.

January 01, 2021

The World in Time:

Harold Holzer

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media—from the Founding Fathers to Fake News. More

September 15, 2011

The World in Time:

Green Mountain Boy

Willard Sterne Randall and Lewis Lapham talk about the life and adventures of Ethan Allen.  More

November 12, 2021

The World in Time:

Nicholas Crane

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Latitude: The True Story of the World’s First Scientific Expedition. More

Slumbering Fog

December 08, 2017

The World in Time:

Gordon S. Wood

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Gordon S. Wood, author of Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. More

March 18, 2022

The World in Time:

Oliver Milman

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World. More

Barricades during the Paris Commune, near the Ministry of Marine and the Hotel Crillon, 1871. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959.

September 01, 2017

The World in Time:

Peter Brooks

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Peter Brooks, author of Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year. More