Rating: 
Summary: Not bombing concentration camps a mistake?
Review: This book is not particularly good and has little information people who have studied WWII aren't aware of. I am amazed that Beschloss assumes that the right and moral thing to have done was to have bombed the concentration camps. We would have murdered many people who not only lived but were witnesses of this gruesome event of history. I am sure if we had bombed the concentration camps that we would have been viewed as murders and destructors of evidence of genoicide. And remember precision bombing then wasn't precise. We didn't have the ability to hit the gas chambers precisely, we would have had to level the whole camps. I am sure the Germans would have found ways to continue their murders.I am just amazed that Beschloss treats the subject so tritely, just assuming everyone will agree with him that Roosevelt made a mistake here. I firmly feel Roosevelt did the right thing, to drop bombs on a camp of innocents would have been horrendous. Our moral anguish for the razing of cities, while perhaps justified in total war, is enough of a burden to bear.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment
Review: Roy Jenkins, in his biography of Churchill, characterized the Morgenthau Plan as a "fairly crack-brained plan." It hardly seems worth all the research and effort to write a book in which the central figure is Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and the central matter is his plan to make post-war Germany into an agrarian country. It turned out to be full of sound and fury, but signified nothing. Readers of Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919" will have some idea of the background for the resurgence of Germany militancy and, probably, the problems arising out of the fact that World War I was not "taken to the Germans." The idea of requiring unconditional surrender was thus a good one. The issue of the holocaust was certainly a great influence on most of the allied participants (although probably not Stalin), but the real story here was not the debate about the Morgenthau Plan, it was the story on the ground as World War II was ending and thereafter, and that story was told only in a brief last chapter. It may sell more books to purport to deal with the activities of Roosevelt and Truman, and Michael Beschloss obviously enjoyed exposing the faults of each of them, but ultimately the story told was tangential to the real one, and was not worth the time spent to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Engrossing, A Different Take on WWII
Review: I enjoyed "The Conquerors" and Beschloss's narrative voice. Most WW II tomes tackle the entire war or one of the major players. "The Conquerors" instead tells the story of one piece of the WW II puzzle: how the Allies planned to handle Germany after the War. From this vantage point, you view the different personalities and events of the War. I have read many books on WW II; yet I learned many new things from this book. FDR's manipulative and controlling managerial style truly came through as you see different individuals trying to push their "German plans" through the political machinations of the administration. Stalin's brilliance and cruelty come through in the descriptions of his reaction to various plans. As other reviewers have noted, this book focuses a great deal of its attention on Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury, whose lapsed faith in Jewish traditions was restored by the horrors of the Holocaust. I would have given the book 5 stars; however, I felt that Beschloss could have discussed the Marshall plan and its impact on post War Germany in greater details.
Still I would recommend "The Conquerors" to history and WW II buffs. Most likely, you will learn something new.
Rating:
Summary: Bait and Switch
Review: Despite the title, this isn't a story about the destruction of Hitler's Germany. It's not about FDR. It's not about President Truman. It's really about Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury during World War II. It mostly details his thoughts that the Germans should really be punished after the war. It says very little about how the Marshall plan eventually won out. All in all, an unimportant book primarily about a figure of no lasting historical significance. The title is shamefully misleading.
Rating: 
Summary: From a GI Who Was There
Review: I found this to be just one more book written about the events of this era. It is well written and very readable but I have my doubts about some of the contents. When he uses the letters, etc. of the characters, he doesn't (except in rare footnotes)tell us that perhaps the records left behind were selfserving and even greatly at odds with the facts. As a GI who earned his battle stars in the Battle of the Bulge and crossing the Rhine I greatly resent the photo titled "British soldiers cheer...". These are American GI's of MY unit.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing New Here, More of a Morganthau Biography
Review: While this book is interesting because you get an inside look at the internicene goings on in Roosevelts administration, there was nothing new really revealed to this reader on US plans for a post-war Germany. To me it was more of a biography of Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Morganthau.
Rating:
Summary: Disjointed, but informative
Review: "The Conquerors", author Michael Beschloss' account of how the Roosevelt and Truman administrations handled the execution of World War II and the decisions over how to handle postwar Germany, should be a better book than it is. It is not a bad book and, therefore, still worthy of a three-star rating, but it ultimately feels disjointed and rambling. There's an intangible piece to "The Conquerors" that seems to be missing. In the final chapter, when Beschloss summarizes the final decisions and events that took place in the aftermath of World War II, one can't help but think that these summaries don't seem to be relevant to the rest of the text in the book.
The bulk of "The Conquerors" focuses on the relationship between President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau. Morgenthau was a long time friend and confidant of the President from his pre-White House days. Morgenthau, though Jewish by heritage, was anything but an ardent Jew. During the era he grew up in, Jewish-ness was something to try and conceal or deny. Morgenthau did so by proclaiming himself to be "100% American". Yet, when word of the atrocities committed by Hitler's Nazi regime against the European Jews began to make its way around the world, that news, along with guilt and pressure applied by prominent American Jews, prompted Morgenthau to do an about-face and embrace his Jewish heritage and seek strong retribution against Germany for their actions. His "Morgenthau Plan" called for the destruction of all German industry, which would regress the country to an agrarian state where its existence would be dependent strictly on its farming ability. While many in the Roosevelt administration (Roosevelt included) favored harsh penalties against Germany, the "Morgenthau Plan" created an uproar and caused somewhat of an embarrassment to the administration. The administration had to consider the practicality of such a plan given the predicted struggle with Russia over German territory and also didn't want to seem to be kowtowing to issues important only to the Jewish population, which was still viewed as 'persona non grata' at the time.
"The Conquerors" also spends a great deal of time reveling in the political games that Roosevelt played within his own administration and forced to use with his other Big 3 allies, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. He teamed with Stalin to goad Churchill into supporting stronger retribution against Germany, while he (and Truman) teamed with Churchill to plan ways to mute the Russian grab for land and influence in postwar Europe because they foresaw the potential chilling of relations with the Soviet Union. The political games are fascinating and they tie back into the furor over the Morgenthau plan on some level. However, the overall problem seems to be that there is no focus for all the disjointed anecdotes that Beschloss writes about. As mentioned earlier, the conclusions that Beschloss arrives at in his book seem to have very little to do with his previous narrative. While the information revealed throughout the book is intriguing, the overall quality is disappointing. Still, it is worth a look.
Rating:
Summary: What is going to happen after the Allies conquer Germany?
Review: I believe this to be a unique book about what is going to happen after Germany is conquered and Hitler gone. Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States all had different thoughts about what needed to be done to Germany. In the United States there were differences between the State Department and the Treasury Department about what would become of Germany. The Treasury Department headed by Morgenthau was for a vindicative peace. Morgenthau was Jewish and wanted Germany to be divided and an agrarian nation. Hull wanted a generous peace where the U.S. would help the Germans reconstruct, and stay an industrial nation so she could rebuild Europe.
I shudder to think if we had heeded Morgenthau on Germany. The rest of Europe would have become Communist. Fortunately, Morgenthau failed and Truman got him to resign. This book details the policy battles between the State, Treasury, and War Departments about the fate of Germany.
Beschloss does a good job detailing the policy battles between the departments and differences with the British and Soviets. This book was very readable, and not difficult to go through. I have some of Beschloss's other books, which I haven't read and this will spur me to read these. This was a pretty good read, especially for a policy book.
Rating:
Summary: The older I get, the more iconoclastic I become¿
Review: While reading "The Conquerors: ..." protagonist and antagonist, alike, seem to float off the page and become as real as any first-rate movie. It takes a skilled historian and author to make sense of the raucous cacophony of egomaniacs, malevolent actors, amid the truly great. It amazes me that, while we live in a country of hundreds of millions of people, it is a few that truly drive the hugely important decisions that so often result in the tragic loss of thousands to millions of people and immeasurable wealth. Mr. Beschloss does a great job weaving what could be a fine novel... With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, coupled with recent revelations regarding the deep penetration of Soviet sympathizers throughout our government, much of the wrangling and ultimate decisions made eminent sense, at least logically if not in substance. Another source of amazement comes from consideration of how different life might be... Truman returned from Potsdam with the full knowledge and realization that it (could) have been Washington DC lying in blackened ruins instead of Berlin... Berlin was eventually rebuilt as the democratic capital of a free Germany - DC would have been rebuilt as a totally different city. Read this book if you want an unvarnished view of the most important period of history in the last 100 years.
Rating:
Summary: choppy narrative
Review: In light of the magnitude of our success in re-making Germany after World War II, this topic is an interesting and important one. It is all the more worthy of close attention as we try to re-make Iraq. Policymakers would do well to study our efforts in Germany. John Dower's Embracing Defeat on post-war Japan, I understand, was required reading in the White House last spring, and for the information it presents, Beschloss's book also merits high-level attention. But for sheer pleasure of reading, the book doesn't quite make the grade. Beschloss, apparently, began and nearly completed the book some ten years ago and then set it aside to await the release of confidential documents, finally completing it in 2002. Whether it is a function of the ten-year gap or of Beschloss's style (this is the first of his works I have read), I'm not certain, but the book is extremely choppy. He breaks the story into episodes, some as long as pages, others only a paragraph. The narrative thus has no flow to it, and while the technique may illuminate certain characteristics of the leading figures (such as Roosevelt or Morgenthau or Truman), it detracts from the book's overall effect. Given the parallels to current events, The Conquerors is worth reading--but only if you can endure a jarring, halting read.
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