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1944 : FDR and the year that changed history / Jay Winik.

by Winik, Jay, 1957-

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Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 -- Influence.

World War, 1939-1945 -- United States.

Political leadership -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)

9781439114087 (hc.)

1439114080 (hc.)

9781501125362 (pbk.)

1501125362 (pbk.)

Alternate title:

FDR and the year that changed history

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

xiii, 639 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prelude: The sphinx -- Part I. Spring 1944: everything all at once -- Tehran -- "I want to sleep and sleep twelve hours a day." -- Escape -- Escape, part two -- "This is the year 1944" -- "Could we be granted victory this year, 1944?" -- Part II. The road to 1944 -- Beginnings -- Mills of the gods -- Giant cemeteries -- Riegner -- 1943 -- "The acquiescence of this government in the murder of Jews" -- Part III. The fateful decision -- Trapped between knowing and not knowing -- The wind and the silence -- Part IV. 1945 -- Reckoning.

It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did, or that it would even end well. 1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler's waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies -- but with a fateful cost. 1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion and the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But on the way, millions of more lives were still at stake as President Roosevelt was exposed to mounting evidence of the most grotesque crime in history, the Final Solution. Just as the Allies were landing in Normandy, the Nazis were accelerating the killing of European Jews. Winik shows how escalating pressures fell on Roosevelt, whose rapidly deteriorating health was a closely guarded secret. Was winning the war the best way to rescue the Jews? Was a rescue even possible? Or would it get in the way of defeating Hitler? In a year when even the most audacious undertakings were within the world's reach, including the liberation of Europe, one challenge -- saving Europe's Jews -- seemed to remain beyond Roosevelt's grasp.

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