PUBLISHED/Turner WWII/history
The Eleventh Hour: How Great Britain, The Soviet Union and the U.S. Brokered the Unlikely Deal that Won the War
L. Douglas Keeney
President Franklin Roosevelt spent more time in office than any other president in American history, yet there are ten days of his presidency that are a black hole in his biography. In historian L. Douglas Keeney’s meticulously researched The Eleventh Hour: How Great Britain, The Soviet Union and the U.S. Brokered the Unlikely Deal that Won the War, Keeney fills in that hole and paints a dramatic picture of FDR and his closest military advisers as they plot and plan during a ten day crossing of the Atlantic on the battleship Iowa en route to the Tehran Conference to meet with Winston Churchill, and, for the first time, Joseph Stalin. Leaving Washington under the cover of fog and rain in late November 1943, the men on the Iowa with the president include his entire Joint Chiefs of Staff—George Marshall, Hap Arnold, Ernest King and William Leahy as well as FDR’s close personal adviser, Harry Hopkins. And each of these men as well as others present on the voyage, left behind personal diaries, private papers, notes from the meetings, letters home—a treasure trove of material scattered throughout archives across the country and never before mined by historians that help illuminate the events of these ten important days.
While the Tehran Conference itself has been widely written about, little is known about the dangerous and secret voyage that brought FDR first to North Africa, and then to Iran. Yet it is onboard Iowa that the major set pieces of the end of WWII and the beginnings of the Cold War are put into place—including the appointment of Dwight Eisenhower as the Supreme Allied Commander for the Normandy invasion over George Marshall (which puts Marshall into position to come up with the Marshall Plan under President Truman), the setting of the date for D-Day, the plan to clear the Luftwaffe from the sky above the landing beaches, and the post-war partitioning of Germany among others.
Of course it isn’t all high level meetings—there are movies every night—mostly escapist Hollywood musicals except for one very serious documentary about the Russian front. There are also card games, practical jokes, and meals. There is time for the men to be candid, to build friendships, and to be themselves away from the prying eyes of the press and the official trappings of Washington. There is the ever-present danger of German U-boats lurking below the surface. And there’s the near-disaster during a demonstration of antiaircraft fire for the president when a live torpedo is accidentally dropped in the water and heads for the Iowa…while the presidential convoy is maintaining strict radio silence. It is an extraordinary journey that truly changes the course of history, all culminating in the meetings with Churchill and Stalin—a man the American delegation both fears and is fascinated by
While the Tehran Conference itself has been widely written about, little is known about the dangerous and secret voyage that brought FDR first to North Africa, and then to Iran. Yet it is onboard Iowa that the major set pieces of the end of WWII and the beginnings of the Cold War are put into place—including the appointment of Dwight Eisenhower as the Supreme Allied Commander for the Normandy invasion over George Marshall (which puts Marshall into position to come up with the Marshall Plan under President Truman), the setting of the date for D-Day, the plan to clear the Luftwaffe from the sky above the landing beaches, and the post-war partitioning of Germany among others.
Of course it isn’t all high level meetings—there are movies every night—mostly escapist Hollywood musicals except for one very serious documentary about the Russian front. There are also card games, practical jokes, and meals. There is time for the men to be candid, to build friendships, and to be themselves away from the prying eyes of the press and the official trappings of Washington. There is the ever-present danger of German U-boats lurking below the surface. And there’s the near-disaster during a demonstration of antiaircraft fire for the president when a live torpedo is accidentally dropped in the water and heads for the Iowa…while the presidential convoy is maintaining strict radio silence. It is an extraordinary journey that truly changes the course of history, all culminating in the meetings with Churchill and Stalin—a man the American delegation both fears and is fascinated by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. Douglas Keeney, a co-founder of The Military Channel, is the author of the recent Cold War history 15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation, which was called “one of the most revealing works on the atom bomb ever written” by the Sarasota Herald Tribune and “brilliantly written, and engrossing…a must-read” by the Portland Book Review.Publishers Weekly called it a “detailed, often squirm-inducing account;” Kirkus Reviews praised “the author’s information-gathering skills, especially his unearthing and decoding of previously classified documents;” Library Journal called it “…a chilling and unsettling account of accidents, oversights, errors in planning, and other mistakes and misjudgments by the military and its civilian masters” while Booklist said “Keeney…has utilized great amounts of recently declassified documents to tell a fascinating, often chilling story of the policies, technologies, and men responsible for maintaining our nuclear defense posture in that period.” And retired Air Force colonel and former director of the National Air and Space Museum Walter Boyne, wrote, “Having participated in Operation Dominic, the last nuclear air drop in history, I can attest that this is the best book ever written on the political and military influence that nuclear weapons have had on American policy.”
