Chamberlain and Roosevelt

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This instructive study of Britain's strained relations with the United States during the era of appeasement documents the tenacity with which Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain clung to his policy of ``timely concessions to meet legitimate German grievances'' and the futile attempts by President Franklin Roosevelt, hamstrung by isolationist sentiment in America, to establish Anglo-American rapport at the top level. Rock ( British Appeasement in the 1930s ) examines the character of British suspicions regarding American intentions, including the fear that economic expansion at the expense of Great Britain was one of Roosevelt's primary motives. It is made clear that FDR grasped the nature of the Nazi threat earlier and more fully than Chamberlain did, and that the British leader obtusely ignored several opportunities to broaden his base of friends and potential allies. Chamberlain's most intimate views on all this are revealed in startlingly frank letters to his sister, Hilda, much-quoted here: ``I am trying to jolly the Americans along.'' ``I do wish the Japs would beat up an American or two!'' (Oct.)