The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century

ISBN: 1982127821

Author: Steil, Benn

Condition: Used

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 FDRs 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 FDRs death. Books, films, and even plays have since portrayed the circumstances surrounding Wallaces defeat as corrupt, and the results catastrophic. Filmmaker Oliver Stone, among others, has claimed that Wallaces loss ushered in four decades of devastating and unnecessary Cold War.Now, based on striking new finds from Russian, FBI, and other archives, Benn Steils The World That Wasnt 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 regions 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 governments 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 Kremlins aims and conduct.Meticulously researched and deftly written, The World That Wasnt is a spellbinding work of political biography and narrative history that will upend how we see the making of the early Cold War.