From Munich To Pearl Harbor Review - Book Report/Review Example

David Reynolds’ narrative in the book catches the attention of reader easily as like fictional account and shed lights on the complex workings of statesmanship, foreign policy and consensus building in critical historical junctures. The Great Shift from Isolationism to Interventionism As a methodology, to understand the origins of Second World War, Reynolds critically examines the events and political process within the United States in the proceeding years of America becoming a party in the war.

According to the author, the events from 1938 to 1941 discussed in the book have profound impacts on three counts: the policies of the Roosevelt government, the way Americans perceives world affairs, and the foreign policy precedents for the post World War II world. The major change occurred in this period was at the realm of foreign policy, especially towards the Europe in general and the Britain in particular. As a great statesman, Roosevelt overcome the hold of New Deal coalition in America which had already become a thing of past.

Reynolds characteristically asserts that "American perceptions of a cohesive totalitarian plot helped ease the United States into world war. But the reality of Axis divergence helped ensure eventual Allied victory" (170). And, the whole credit goes to Franklin Roosevelt as he helped the consolidation of this shift in the attitude of the American people and policy makers. Foreign aid too became central to the foreign policy narrative of the United States, which still governs the core thinking of American foreign policy makers.

The process of transition that eagerly pursued by Roosevelt from isolationism to interventionism was further assisted by the increasing German presence in the Atlantic Ocean. As a resistance to it, Roosevelt could further his actual war efforts in the Atlantic against the Germans. America’s undeclared naval war against the Germans in the Atlantic was, according to Reynolds, the result of Roosevelt’s frantic search for “epochal attitude change’ of the American people from strict hemispheric concerns to closely defined global engagements (26).

He beautifully traces the way Roosevelt create the discourse on the necessity for participation in the Second World War. From the time of Operation Barbarossa, the world war became a recurrent theme in the speeches of Roosevelt. Reynolds strongly held the view that “arguably the turning point in this story was the battle Franklin Roosevelt waged against the 'isolationists' before Pearl Harbor, when he redefined American security in global terms and promulgated a bipolar, Manichean view of the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism.

Cold War institutions such as a peacetime draft, the 'military-industrial complex', and even the 'imperial presidency' can be said to have their roots in 1940-I” (83). What made the United State into isolation were primarily the Great Depression of 1920s and 30s. The Neutrality Act passed by the congress itself is a proof to it. What made America to come out of it was the policies of the Roosevelt government and the consensus he impregnated into the American political establishment. Roosevelt’s New Deal policy was checked and countered by the conservatives from the very beginning.

It was over the foreign policy, the ruling coalition found much of its tensions and fractures. Still, Roosevelt was able find consensus which was premised on the need to aid Britain and it