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    1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History
    1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History
    1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History
    Audiobook21 hours

    1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History

    Written by Jay Winik

    Narrated by Arthur Morey

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    **New York Times Bestseller**

    Jay Winik brings to life in “gripping” detail (The New York Times Book Review) the year 1944, which determined the outcome of World War II and put more pressure than any other on an ailing yet determined President Roosevelt.

    1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler’s waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies—but with a fateful cost. Now, in a “complex history rendered with great color and sympathy” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Jay Winik captures the epic images and extraordinary history “with cinematic force” (Time).

    1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the unprecedented D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But millions of lives were at stake as President Roosevelt learned about Hitler’s Final Solution. Just as the Allies were landing in Normandy, the Nazis were accelerating the killing of millions of European Jews. Winik shows how escalating pressures fell on an infirm Roosevelt, who faced a momentous decision. Was winning the war the best way to rescue the Jews? Or would it get in the way of defeating Hitler? In a year when even the most audacious undertakings were within the world’s reach, one challenge—saving Europe’s Jews—seemed to remain beyond Roosevelt’s grasp.

    “Compelling….This dramatic account highlights what too often has been glossed over—that as nobly as the Greatest Generation fought under FDR’s command, America could well have done more to thwart Nazi aggression” (The Boston Globe). Destined to take its place as one of the great works of World War II, 1944 is the first book to retell these events with moral clarity and a moving appreciation of the extraordinary actions of many extraordinary leaders.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateSep 22, 2015
    ISBN9781442388000
    Author

    Jay Winik

    Jay Winik is the author of the New York Times bestseller April 1865. He is a senior scholar of history and public policy at the University of Maryland and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

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    Reviews for 1944

    4.5/5

    71 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Outstanding review of American reaction, although “late to the game”, to the holocaust. World War 2 in Europe from a different perspective. Even for those that have read and learned a great deal about the war in Europe, there is much new material here. A truly great book worth the time.
    • 3/5
      Disappointing. Rehash of tortures. Scarcity of Roosevelt. Gratuitous ugliness tales. Hardly a history.
      PS I am not a Holocost denier, not by a long shot. But I didn't expect a history book to slap my face with low-echelon atrocities on every other page.
    • 5/5
      Great stuff from beginning to end. I would recommend it
    • 5/5
      This was one of the best books I have listened to in a long time and I listen to a lot of books. It draws you in and keeps you captivated.
    • 5/5
      Outstanding! Many of the author’s points and insights (especially a well reasoned and nuanced treatment of Roosevelt’s enigmatic response to the Holocaust) give the well known history of WW2 new perspective as well as continuing questions. Roosevelt was simultaneously brilliant and flawed, charismatic and bullying, heroic and tragic. A cataclysmic war was won but the peace following remains tentative.
    • 4/5
      The author's research is particularly well done. His writing is excellent. However, his thesis, the West abandoned Jews in or on their way to concentration camps during World War II, is problematic. Should the rescue of the Jews have been a strategic objective in addition to that of defeating the Nazis in Germany? Did adequate resources allow for both? Could the Allies have failed to defeat the Nazis and still rescued the Jews? Of course not. The author dismisses claims by military leaders that the best way to rescue the Jews was to defeat the Nazis. Yet, such a claim rings true to many. The Allies did not both defeat the Nazis and simultaneously rescue the Jews for the same reason the Allies couldn't rescue eastern Europe from the Soviets--just as evil as the Nazis--after World War II until 1989. The Allies simply did not have the resources. The misguided accuser blames the robbed car owner for not locking his doors as opposed to blaming the robber. The author does likewise in this case. The Nazis, not Allied leaders such as FDR, were murdering psychopaths who deserved to be destroyed as opposed to defeated. The author does an extraordinary job of articulating their evil.
    • 4/5
      This book can easily be read as a history of FDR's role in World War Two, as the author spends enough time on background that years before 1944 and the first few months of 1945 are covered as well as the critical year of 1944. What I found most interesting about this book is the discussion of the Holocaust and what the Allied Powers knew about it during the war years (having been previously somewhat uninformed on this topic). I learned a lot from this book and came away with a very different sense of the war and Holocaust than I had before.
    • 4/5
      I much appreciated Winik's April 1865, which I read 18 April 2002, so I decided to read this book. Winik has mined other books, many of which I have read, and though there is no bibliography as such, his source notes identify the books he has used. But the book is not well-organized and jumps around chronologically and sometimes repeats itself. Winik spends a lot of time on the Holocaust and argues that FDR should have bombed the concentration camps, especially Auschwitz, since what was going on there was known . Winik excoriates Breckinridge Long as anti-Semitic and affirmatively resisting helping the Jews of Europe and he blames FDR for inaction, though recognizing that there were arguments against such bombing, though Winik says such arguments should have been disregarded. But Winik tells often a fascinating story of an important time and much of the book is good reading.