The world that wasn't : Henry Wallace and the fate of the American century

The world that wasn't Henry Wallace and the fate of the American century

Benn Steil

Book - 2024

"From the acclaimed economist-historian and author of The Marshall Plan comes a dramatic and powerful new perspective on the political career of Henry Wallace-a perspective that will forever change how we view the making of US and Soviet foreign policy at the dawn of the Cold War. Henry Wallace is the most important, and certainly the most fascinating, almost-president in American history. As FDR's third-term vice president, and a hero to many progressives, he lost his place on the 1944 Democratic ticket in a wild open convention, as a result of which Harry Truman became president on FDR's death. Books, films, and even plays have since portrayed the circumstances surrounding Wallace's defeat as corrupt, and the results c...atastrophic. Filmmaker Oliver Stone, among others, has claimed that Wallace's loss ushered in four decades of devastating and unnecessary Cold War. Now, based on striking new finds from Russian, FBI, and other archives, Benn Steil's The World That Wasn't paints a decidedly less heroic portrait of the man, of the events surrounding his fall, and of the world that might have been under his presidency. Though a brilliant geneticist, Henry Wallace was a self-obsessed political figure, blind to the manipulations of aides-many of whom were Soviet agents and assets. From 1933 to 1949, Wallace undertook a series of remarkable interventions abroad, each aimed at remaking the world order according to his evolving spiritual blueprint. As agriculture secretary, he fell under the spell of Russian mystics, and used the cover of a plant-gathering mission to aid their doomed effort to forge a new theocratic state in Central Asia. As vice president, he toured a Potemkin Siberian continent, guided by undercover Soviet security and intelligence officials who hid labor camps and concealed prisoners. He then wrote a book, together with an American NKGB journalist source, hailing the region's renaissance under Bolshevik leadership. In China, the Soviets uncovered his private efforts to coax concessions to Moscow from Chiang Kai-shek, fueling their ambitions to dominate Manchuria. Running for president in 1948, he colluded with Stalin to undermine his government's foreign policy, allowing the dictator to edit his most important election speech. It was not until 1950 that he began to acknowledge his misapprehensions regarding the Kremlin's aims and conduct. Meticulously researched and deftly written, The World That Wasn't is a spellbinding work of political biography and narrative history that will upend how we see the making of the early Cold War"--

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Location Call Number   Status
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Subjects
Wallace, Henry A. > (Henry Agard), > 1888-1965.
1933-1945
Vice-presidents > United States > Biography.
HISTORY / United States / 20th Century.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political.
International relations.
Politics and government.
Vice-presidents.
United States > Politics and government > 1933-1945.
United States > Relations > Soviet Union.
Soviet Union > Relations > United States.
Soviet Union.
United States.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : Avid Reader Press 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Benn Steil (author)
Edition
First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition
Physical Description
687 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781982127824
  • 1. Why Wallace?
  • 2. Of Maize, Math, and Mysticism
  • 3. The Farmers New Deal
  • 4. The Guru and the New Country
  • 5. Fighting Fascists, Planning Peace
  • 6. Into Siberia
  • 7. China, Through a Glass Darkly
  • 8. History's Pivot
  • 9. Keeping Up with the Joneses
  • 10. 60 Million Jobs, Four Million Strikers
  • 11. Mission to Moscow
  • 12. The Odd Tale of the Sino-Soviet Treaty
  • 13. The Nuclear Option
  • 14. The New Republic
  • 15. Gideon's Red Army
  • 16. Collusion
  • 17. The People Speak
  • 18. Belief Betrayed
  • Acknowledgments
  • Cast of Characters
  • Appendix 1. Henry A. Wallace's Open Letter to Joseph Stalin
  • Appendix 2. Translation of Soviet Cypher Cable
  • References
  • Notes
  • Index
  • Illustration Credits
Review by Choice Review

One of the more consequential elections in American history was in 1944 when a physically deteriorating President Roosevelt bowed to party pressure and forced Henry Wallace from the vice presidential ticket, replacing him with Senator Harry Truman. If Wallace had remained on the ticket and become president when Roosevelt died in 1945, Steil (Council on Foreign Relations) argues that "there would have been no Truman Doctrine. No Marshall Plan. No NATO. No West Germany. No policy of containment of the Soviet Union" (p. 2). Wallace opposed all of these initiatives, which were "foundational to what has been called the 'American Century'" (p. 2). This illuminating biography is sure to become the definitive account of Wallace's life. Though a brilliant geneticist, Wallace, as Steil details, was blind to his being manipulated by a number of aides who were Soviet agents. There was also the matter of Wallace's attraction to Nicholas Roerich, a mystic who became his spiritual guide and confidant. Wallace was a man of peace who held the US responsible for the Cold War until the 1950s--his attitude toward Stalin changed in 1949 when he discovered the truth about the Communist coup in democratic Czechoslovakia. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. --Jack Robert Fischel, emeritus, Millersville University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Steil (The Marshall Plan), a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, offers a meticulous biography of Henry Wallace, a politician and government official during the 1930s and '40s. Steil sets out to paint a less heroic picture of Wallace than previous biographers, criticizing his involvement with spiritualism, his naive trust in the Soviet Union, and his connections to the American Communist Party, among other issues. Wallace's first interest was in scientific farming, and as secretary of agriculture under Franklin Roosevelt, he was responsible for major changes in farm policy, including attempts to increase crop prices by reducing production. During his tenure, he incorporated spiritualism, or Theosophy, into his policymaking; he involved a "guru," Nicholas Roerich, in plans to create a cooperative farming system in Central Asia, which fell through when Roerich was accused of fraud. Wallace was later elected FDR's vice president but was demoted to secretary of commerce because his eccentricity and leftism made him unpopular among Democratic party elites; he was fired by Harry Truman in 1946 after giving a speech, "The Way to Peace," that urged conciliatory policies toward the Soviet Union. Drawing on new materials from FBI and Soviet Union archives, Steil paints a vivid picture, though his account does not greatly alter the popular assessment of Wallace as a progressive firebrand. Still, this is a rewarding dive into the inner workings of mid-century American government. (Jan.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Comprehensive biography of a figure now largely forgotten but central to the history of the World War II--era Roosevelt administration. Henry Wallace (1888-1965) was sharply intelligent, but "he also had great difficulty with social interactions…and he frequently failed to recognize even elementary cues as to people's motivations and agendas," writes Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. The agendas were many when he entered the administration as vice president. At heart a Midwestern farmer, he came to the office in the fraught years of World War II. Although Wallace's interest was in foreign policy, writes Steil, he viewed it through the lens of agriculture and commerce, and when it was his task to negotiate trade and loan deals with the Soviet Union, a never quite trustworthy ally, he was inclined to generosity. Indeed, notes the author, Wallace was dogged throughout his years in office and afterward with the charge of being a communist, tracked by the FBI. There was some basis for the suspicion, for Wallace was steered into numerous positions by Soviet agents, to the consternation of other allies: "Opposed to the British Empire, and friendly to the Soviet one, Wallace was a constant source of concern in London." Considering Wallace a detriment, Roosevelt selected another vice-presidential candidate to run with him in 1944, easing Wallace out. That moment has taken on layers of legend, which Steil deftly sorts through to distinguish truth from fiction. Within the Democratic Party, Steil observes, Wallace became the "unrivaled leader of the party's liberal wing" and later broke to lead the Progressive Party, running against Harry Truman. Wallace's politics became less doctrinaire late in life, when he endorsed Eisenhower for president and perhaps even voted for Nixon against Kennedy. A welcome reconsideration of a much-misunderstood but important figure in American politics. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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