Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History

Selon la revue Foreign Affairs, « Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate story » est un des meilleurs livres sur la diplomatie américaine, publié il y a plus de 50 ans. En effet, ce livre est un incontournable pour tous ceux qui sont intéressés à la Deuxième Guerre mondiale et aux trois grands, Roosevelt, Churchill et Staline. Et c'est dans l'ombre du Président Roosevelt que se distingue un personnage d`exception : Harry Hopkins. Ami intime et confident de Roosevelt, cet homme, après avoir été un des grands architectes du New Deal, a réussi discrètement pendant toute la guerre à établir et à maintenir l'alliance entre les trois grands alliés, un véritable tour de force. Hopkins connaissait, comprenait et aimait Roosevelt et lui était entièrement dévoué. Il résidait à la Maison - Blanche et faisait partie de la famille. Homme d'action, il savait actualiser les pensées du Président rapidement. Premier émissaire américain auprès de Churchill et de Staline, Hopkins gagna et conserva leur confiance par sa sincérité et l'énoncé direct de sa pensée; Churchill le surnomma amicalement « Lord Root of the matter ». L'auteur de ce livre, Robert E. Sherwood, écrivain reconnu pour ses pièces de théâtre et ses scénarios de film (trois prix Pulitzer et un Oscar) se joignit dès le début de la guerre à l'équipe de rédaction des discours de Roosevelt sous la direction de son ami Hopkins. Il nous permet d'entrer dans la Maison Blanche et de vivre des moments impérissables par son style vivant et imagé. Sherwood a eu l'avantage d'être le premier à avoir accès aux archives de Hopkins immédiatement après sa mort en 1946 et de pouvoir interviewer à chaud les principaux acteurs. Paru en 1948, son livre donnait une première appréciation de l'activité intense qui régnait autour de ceux qui décidaient de la vie de millions de personnes. Écrit à la première personne, ce livre tient à la fois de la narration, de la biographie, de l'histoire et de la collection de documents, car on y trouve verbatim de larges extraits des comptes rendus de Hopkins au sujet des grandes conférences (Placentia Bay, Casablanca, Québec,Téhéran, Yalta), de ses rencontres avec les autorités civiles et militaires éminentes, des extraits de sa correspondence ou des discours du Président. Le compte rendu de sa dernière rencontre avec Staline et Molotov à la demande exprès de Truman suite à l'échec de la conférence de San Francisco (1945) demeure mémorable. Le tout se lit avec énormément de plaisir et nous permet d'entrer dans l'intimité de tout ce monde et de mieux comprendre l' esprit, le courage et l'ardeur qui les animaient tous. Ce livre est un classique et il a valu à Sherwood un autre prix Pulitzer.

I first read this book when I was in high school in 1952. For several years I had been captivated by politics and political biography, reading everything I could get my hands on. Sherwood's ROOSEVELT AND HOPKINS was the best. In the more than half century since, my passion for political writing and biography has continued unabated, and on many occasions I have recommended this book to others. Since 1991 I have traveled to Russia dozens of times and frequently recommend this book to English speaking Russian academics and politicians there. Every person to whom I have recommended it, here or in Russia, has seen fit to tell me how much they appreciated the book and the recommendation. Recently I began to wonder though. Was the book really as good as I recalled it from my first and only reading over 58 years ago? So I re-read it. It stood the test of time and of memory. It was even better than I recalled. It is an old and good friend, as alive, vibrant, and informative today as if all that the monumental and world-changing people and events described in it had happened yesterday. Kenneth E. MacWilliams New York City

When a brilliant dramatist & political speechwriter takes on the task of writing about a New Deal operative that he admires & expresses a desire to assure that his subject won't recede into history without recognition, one might be justified in examining that author's objectivity closely. But Sherwood's biography of Hopkins reveals an equally obvious intent to write a complete and accurate history. The result does credible homage to the man that steered the New Deal through relief efforts, war logistics & diplomacy--and to his biographer. Besides commemorating Harry Hopkins, the book covers FDR and his Presidency. But it does so by interspersing material from Hopkins's personal papers between long quotations from secret communications (which would be embargoed for five decades nowadays) and the author's own experience of principle players & events. The result is a bit long & more tedious than the source from which the technique was borrowed, Churchill's history of WWII. Still, his insider's look at the Roosevelt White House provides insight that is available nowhere else. There are errors, inevitable in a work this comprehensive; Sherwood took responsibility by correcting & documenting them in the second edition, except for one. He has Roosevelt leaving Boston's Back Bay to give a speech at the Boston Arena, which is in the Back Bay. But such errors are niggling. This is an indispensible work for anyone who wants to know what Roosevelt, Hopkins, Churchill, De Gaulle & Stalin did and said--and how they interacted. It makes Stalin's post-war policy clear: "Never again," and Stalin was going to make sure of it, by any means necessary. It also explicitly points out the weakness of the U. S. Constitution at times of war.

I started reading this book and couldn't stop reading. When you finish reading it you miss the main characters. You would like to meet Mr. Hopkins in person, but unfortunately that is impossible.The facts, ideas and the history in the book demonstrates that America had the most important political leader of the XXth century as president during second world war.My personal opinion is that Mr. Roosevelt is the man that was responsible for truly changing the direction that history was about to take.I read a translated version of the book.