diplomatic history

Traces the history of Vietnam from 1940 to 1960, discussing the involvement of France and then America that led to the Vietnam War. Draws from newly accessible diplomatic archives.

Nazi Germany and Facist Italy were united in a "brutual friendship." Both had savage racial laws: both Hitler and Mussolini viciously denounced the 'Jewish menace'".

Hitler's Reich spawned a welter of organizations that conducted espionage and counterespionage. As was often the case in the Nazi bureaucracy, these secret services rarely cooperated with one another and frequently worked at cross-purposes. The leaders of these clandestine organizations were complex, ambitious men who vied for power, scarcely hesitating to discredit a rival in the Machiavellian struggle for supremacy in the German shadow world.

During World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt seized presidential powers like no president since Abraham Lincoln. FDR assumed the role of strategist-in-chief and though surrounded by star-studded generals and admirals, he made clear who was in command. The Roosevelt who emerges from these pages is a wartime chess master, guiding America's armed forces to a victory that was anything but foreordained.

Discusses the contrary opinions of ordinary Europeans to those of their political and military leaders over the start of World War I, describing the Great War as a sudden, unexpected event, and sharing the shock, revulsion, and fear that was expressed in letters, diaries, and memoirs.

Tells the story of the personal and political relationship formed between United States President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II, discussing their roles in the conflict, and looking at some of the struggles faced by the two leaders in their private lives.