Book Review...

For fifty years I've been studying military history, particularly WWII...It is possibly the most thoroughly documented conflict in history, thanks mostly to the German penchant for keeping detailed records, and their inability to destroy those records before defeat due to their sheer volume...I've mostly concentrated on battle campaigns and combat sequences, but lately, as I read more biographical information, I find myself more and more involved in the political aspects...

Men and hardware fight wars, but men (and women) and their egos and ideas cause them...My Mom (a lifetime Democrat) last year started talking about a book about her favorite President, Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor called "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Goodwin...I bought it for her last Christmas, and when she finished it she gave it to me...Seeing it mainly covers the WWII years, I decided to read it and was thoroughly surprised to find it held my interest cover to cover...

Politics are what make wars either inevitable or avoidable...I have a new respect for the juggling act that all leaders perform in getting a majority of the public, and thus their representatives in government, to agree on a common direction...I'm now convinced that the alternative leadership that might have helmed our ship of state could not have led the allied effort to victory with any greater degree of success...

I still think many of the bloated government programs which the overburdened American taxpayers are carrying on their shoulders stem from the FDR years, and should have been terminated or severely limited decades ago...But I now believe that without some of them in place at the time, the US would have been less prepared to counter a two-front attack by our enemies...

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