The Mantle of Command

A dramatic, eye-opening account of how FDR took personal charge of the military direction of World War II
Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving Roosevelt aides and family members, "The Mantle of Command" offers a definitive account of Franklin Delano Roosevelt s masterful and underappreciated leadership of the Allied war effort. Nigel Hamilton brings readers inside FDR s White House Oval Study his personal command center and inside the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war. Time and again FDR was proven right and his allies and generals were wrong. When the generals wanted to attack the Nazi-fortified coast of France, FDR knew the Allied forces weren t ready. When Churchill insisted that his Far East colonies were loyal and would resist the Japanese, Roosevelt knew it was a fantasy. As Hamilton s account reaches its climax with the Torch landings in North Africa in late 1942, the tide of war turns in the Allies favor and FDR s genius for psychology and military affairs is clear. This intimate, sweeping look at a great president in history s greatest conflict is essential reading.

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