Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, 1991).

Warren Kimball's comprehensive edition of the Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence provides the evidentiary basis for the nine essays which comprise this volume. The essays, written for different audiences over a period of more than twenty years, have been significantly updated for this work. The essays concentrate on Roosevelt's personal foreign policy, attempting to discern "particularly the assumptions that underlay that policy" (xi). Kimball's analysis of Roosevelt's guiding hand on the wheel of the 'Great Ship of State' is convincingly argued.

The wartime policies in regard to Britain and the Soviet Union are examined at three levels: "tactics, or actual diplomacy; strategy, or what we usually call foreign policy; and assumptions or concepts--the unspoken but fundamental starting point for the tactics and strategy" (4).

The book title is taken from a Roosevelt quotation which appears at the beginning of the first essay. It is worth repeating because it is the linchpin of Kimball's argument:

You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does. . . . I may have one policy for Europe and one diametrically opposite for North and South America. I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war. (7)

Kimball finds this convincing enough to dismiss the "canard" that Roosevelt had no foreign policy but merely reacted to events. The difficulty is in determining just what the policies were and upon what assumptions they were predicated. In many ways, Roosevelt remains as enigmatic and contradictory today as he was in life. Kimball argues that World War II brought a maturation to Roosevelt's thinking about international issues. The immediate demands of the war aside, policies were needed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the war for lasting, significant reform. "And reform appealed to the optimistic progressive in Roosevelt" (18). It is hardly surprising then that the Allies would proclaim themselves the United Nations, that the conferences to arrange a world organization were held in the United States, or that the new organization--also the United Nations--would be located in the United States.

Three of Roosevelt's elusive assumptions come to light in the essay "Casablanca: The End of Imperial Romance." These assumptions seem very simplistic, which is perhaps true of any basic assumption determining policy. First, Kimball argues, historians (and other readers) must recognize that for Roosevelt the enemy was not Britain, not Stalin, not even DeGaulle--it was the Germans, the Japanese, and their supporters. Second, the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers was taken as a fundamental given, not a political slogan. Third, Roosevelt had a definite vision of the postwar world. Kimball finds it absurd to suppose otherwise.

During the war, Roosevelt was often preoccupied with the shape of the peace to come. "The President saw no sense in fighting World War II in order to prepare for World War III" (195). He envisioned some sort of regional geopolitical system commonly called the Four Policemen. Although clear plans did not exist, except perhaps in the mind of Roosevelt, Kimball asserts that the Big Four (China included) would each assume responsibility for a region of the world. Roosevelt assumed that this relationship would keep the Four Policemen too preoccupied to interfere with the well-being of other nations. In addition, such an arrangement would actually help the small nations of each region to develop in a peaceful atmosphere. Roosevelt also wanted to ensure that the small nations could not wreck the cooperation of the Great Powers which had happened, he believed, in the First World War. The president sought to fulfill a long-held goal of disarming everyone but the Great Powers. Of course, "disarming almost everybody left unanswered the question of policing the policemen" (98). This flaw in Roosevelt's thinking would prove vexing to the Four Policemen and to the policed.

Kimball identifies another basic assumption underlying Roosevelt's policies which the president never fully or coherently articulated but firmly believed to be the most practical approach to solving the world's problems. Labelling it 'Americanism,' Kimball describes it as nationalism that "unites foreign and domestic affairs" (3). Although Roosevelt's 'Americanism' crops up in nearly every essay, it is never defined more explicitly. It would seem that such a loose definition could fit not only Roosevelt but Nixon, Reagan, or any other president.

While the essays require only two hundred pages, there are seventy-five pages of end notes. Many are explanatory notes that provide vital supplement to the closely reasoned arguments of the essays. In addition, the notes contain a number of miniature bibliographic essays that trace the salient scholarship on the topic in question. An extensive seventeen-page bibliography completes the excellent critical apparatus. Another nice feature is the inclusion of more than a dozen candid photographs of Roosevelt which capture his varied moods. Throughout, this is a first-class effort. Kimball offers the reader many new insights into the most complex politician to occupy the White House in the twentieth century. Necessary reading for a fundamental understanding of Roosevelt's foreign policy in World War II, the well-written essays should also hold appeal to a general audience.

Warren Kimball, a professor of history at Rutgers University, received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1968. A former naval officer and instructor of history at the Naval Academy, Kimball was awarded the 1965 George P. Hammond Prize for the essay "Dieckhoff and America: A German's View of German-American Relations, 1937-1941." His works include the three-volume Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence; The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941; and, Swords or Ploughshares?: The Morgenthau Plan for Defeated Nazi Germany.