1944

FDR and the Year That Changed History

By: Jay Winik

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

New York Times best-selling author Jay Winik brings to life in gripping detail 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.

It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did or that it would even end well. Nineteen forty-four 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 superbly told story, Jay Winik, the acclaimed author of April 1865 and The Great Upheaval, captures the epic images and extraordinary history as never before.

1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris and the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But on the way, millions of more lives were still at stake as President Roosevelt was exposed to mounting evidence of the most grotesque crime in history, the 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 all but dying Roosevelt, whose rapidly deteriorating health was a closely guarded secret. Here then, as with D-Day, was a momentous decision for the president. Was winning the war the best way to rescue the Jews? Was a rescue even possible? 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, including the liberation of Europe, one challenge - saving Europe's Jews - seemed to remain beyond Roosevelt's grasp.

©2015 Jay Winik. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Incomplete

More about what was happening in China, the Pacific and SE Asia would help provide background for Roosevelt's decisions.

A good but tearful read

Make no doubt but this story is one of the holocaust. Throughout the book their are parts of WW11 history that focus on FDR’s handling of the holocaust mainly citing missed opportunities. He is pretty harsh on Roosevelt in my opinion. Narration was superb.

Conscious Raising

For a 1946 Boomer Baby who often reflects on WW II & it's impact on our world today, Mr. Winik has given me greater depth to my thinking.

1944 was the tipping point in WW2

This book is a riveting story of humanity at its best and worst, full of guilt and redemption.

Insightful informative comprehensive

I think Jay Winik is a great author and a great historian. He makes the stories interesting and compelling. Very easy to listen to. I also enjoy the narrator Arthur Morey. I have already listened to the entire book twice over the last several weeks.

I never knew about this side of FDR

What did you love best about 1944?

The information gathered is incredible. Vivid, detailed, emotional, shocking, and
enlightening.

What other book might you compare 1944 to and why?

Mornings on Horseback
By David McCullough

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I thought I had seen and heard just about everything on the Holocaust.
I had relatives who were killed for being Jewish. The events written about in this book,
will make you feel like you are with these people, an observer, but not an observer.

Any additional comments?

I was a fan of FDR's until I read this book. with regards to how long it took for him to bring the US into the war. He was more worried about Politics and how the Americans would feel about it, then to get involved and help save millions of lives from the death camps.

"How the West ignored mass killing of the Jews"

I was expecting an in-depth history of the events before, during and right after 1944 - and impacts onto WWII.

However, I think 50% of the book is dedicated to how the West ignored the desctruction of Eastern Jewish population by the Nazi's. It was a very valuable and well written history of those events, but it is misleading to label this as a global history of that year.

I learned and I cried

Great listen. gave a clear sense of many perspectives. it also gave a clear caution to not repeat history with our present state and reinforce the clear need and reinforce the clear need for the first in 2nd amendment of the US Constitution

Excellent book!

Highly recommend for anyone interested in this topic. The book reads like a story. It keeps you pushing for more. You will enjoy this and the reader does a fab job.

ISIS Is amateur

Not wishing to minimize the senseless atrocities perpetrated by ISIS, but they are amateurs compared to the Nazis. Winik, with unrestrained detail chronicles the years of moral depravity of the German and Nazi people toward all who did not fit their definition of correctness. What lessons can we learn from history in closing our response to the evils of genocide? The US has and is guilty. Winik, without specifically proclaiming it, would call a halt to isolation from our moral responsibility to the value of human life. Winik's seamless weaving of so many threads of our recent history into a cohesive, illuminated picture is revelatory. I am so much better informed than I was even having personally lived through the entire epoch. Born in 1930 I was too involved in personal naval gazing to ever perceiving of a personal responsibility to be involved in attempting to effect change--for which I repent. Read the book and ask what your response should be--you may be surprised.