Review: Franklin Roosevelt's Foreign Policy and the Welles Mission
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| Author | Andrew Preston |
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300124 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 239 |
| Reviews |
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’S FOREIGN POLICY AND THE WELLES
MISSION
J. Simon Rofe
New York: Palgrave, 2007. x, 270pp, US$69.95 cloth (ISBN 1-4039-8073-1)
In February and March 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent his clos-
est foreign policy adviser, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, on a
tour of four European capitals. Nazi Germany had conquered Poland the
previous September and, having secured its eastern flank through a non-
aggression pact with the Soviet Union, prepared to move west. In this tense
period of “phony war,” Europe, and with it the United States, held its breath
in dreaded expectation. Should the Nazis succeed in conquering western
Europe, the fate of the rest of the world—and certainly the United States—
would hang in the balance. Scarred from their experience in World War I
two decades earlier, Americans were not keen to join the fighting in Europe
this time. But with the Nazis’ surge to power in Germany and then increas-
ingly in Europe, the stakes had grown to a degree of importance that
Americans might not be able to ignore forever. Given these unprecedented
circumstances, it is understandable that FDR would seek to take advantage
of the phony war’s lull to send an emissary to Europe. What is surprising is
the lack of attention the Welles mission has received thus far from histori-
ans of World War II, American foreign relations, and the Anglo-American
“special relationship.”
J. Simon Rofe, a specialist in military and diplomatic history at the
University of Leicester, admirably fills this gap with this authoritative, and
undoubtedly definitive, account. The few historians who have previously
looked at the Welles mission have paid insufficient attention to its full con-
text and ambitions. Rofe addresses this problem with a fluid, compelling
examination of the full range of Roosevelt’s motives in sending Welles to
Rome, Berlin, Paris, and London in the fateful winter of 1940. Highlighting
pelling. Equally important, it sheds new light on the important role played
by the RCN in winning the war at sea, and is based on extensive research in
British, American, and German archives. I highly recommend it.
Shawn Cafferky/University of Victoria and Royal Military College of
Canada
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