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2.0 out of 5 stars
Wrong Impressions, Dec 6 2003
I am older than Ambrose would be if he had lived until today. I remember WWII well. So I was curious to read this book which was among my son's college materials. I didn't get beyond the introduction. I had enough right there. Mr. Ambrose is indeed a facile writer. But the wrong impressions begin in the very first paragraph. America felt secure in 1938. Isolationism, an organized "head in the sand" foreign policy, was the popular opinion. In Europe we believed that "it's their fight." We don't have to get involved. In the Pacific we never seemed to get the point. Great Amereicans like Jack London and General Billy Mitchell told us that Japan was going to attack. But it was easier not to believe it.
The American leaders, including most especially our political and intellectual leaders, failed to understand what was happening in the world. America was unprepared for the "real world" of 1938. A huge war broke out. A war that America might have prevented. Prevention would have required that we join the League of Nations and play the World role that our economic power called for after World War I. Instead many thousands of Americans and millions around the world died in the '30's & 40's. After the war with the very real threat of Stalin facing the world we began to play the World role that we alone could play. First the Marshall plan rebuilt Europe and American aid put Japan back in business. As for power politics We were new at it. All in all I think we did well. The Soviet Union with its Comintern and its Gulags collapsed. Yet the clear impression left by Ambrose's comments on post WWII political and military policy suggests only a clumsy or even arrogant American overkill. Ambrose's comments are without even a hint that we might have done a few things both right and important.
There are many other wrong impressions but perhaps the most colossal is the complete absence of any recognition of the world changing economic and technical leadership of the U. S. over those same 50 years. This leadership has improved living standards and the general well being of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. There is plenty left to do. But nations like India, China and Korea, where bare existence or starvation had been the rule, today prosperity is steadily increasing. Somehow these facts apparently we not "history" as Mr. Ambrose saw it. But he does think it historically notable that during those 50 years WE were doing well economically (and no one else?) because of the "arms race" and "cheap" raw materials. He must have misplaced information on entrepreneurial investment and the development of new technologies. But he did find evidence that during those 50 years "Businessmen looked for profitable markets...the military looked for overseas bases" suggesting only a grasping selfishness Mr. Ambrose has raised my curiosity. But I am going to look for a more reliable source of historical information about these critically important years.
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