The World That Wasn't

Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century

By: Benn Steil

Narrated by: Stephen Graybill

From the acclaimed economist-historian and author of The Marshall Plan, a “timely, riveting” (The Washington Post) new perspective on the political career of Henry Wallace—one 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 FDR’s third-term vice president, and a hero to many progressives, he lost his place on the 1944 Democratic ticket in a wild open convention, resulting in Harry Truman becoming president upon FDR’s death. Books, films, and even plays have since portrayed the circumstances surrounding Wallace’s defeat as corrupt, and the results catastrophic. Filmmaker Oliver Stone, among others, has claimed that Wallace’s loss ushered in four decades of devastating and unnecessary Cold War.

Now, based on striking new finds from Russian, FBI, and other archives, Benn Steil’s The World That Wasn’t 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 region’s 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 government’s 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 Kremlin’s aims and conduct.

Meticulously researched and deftly written, The World That Wasn’t is a spellbinding work that shows how “American history—and world history—could have turned out very differently if just a few things had gone the other way” (The Wall Street Journal).

©2024 Benn Steil (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Should be required reading for all voters

I put off listening due to length and unfamiliarity of Wallace (which is why I bought it). It reveals history prior to my time. I wish I could ask my parents what they thought about these elections. Noble intentions can be used by devious. I will think about Wallace when I eat chicken or corn-his area of expertise in which he excelled.

Not really a biography

The book doesn’t really pretend to be a full biography. The author is more into policy. Wallace believed and did som rather bizarre things and after reading the book I still didn’t feel I understood why. Still, this is an important book for anyone wanting to understand Wallace and the postwar world. The author has dug lots of interesting material out of the Soviet archives. It was clearly hard for many New Dealers to shift gears after World War II when the threat from the “right” gave way to the threat from the “left.” It was made even harder by Communist infiltration, and in Wallace’s case, arrogant self-righteousness.

An important book--and a very good one.

This is not merely a biography of Henry Wallace, a somewhat forgotten but important figure of twentieth century American politics. It is also an exploration into a range of important subjects--agricultural policy during the New Deal, US relations with the Soviet Union, the Chinese civil war, and the policy struggles surrounding the early Cold War, not to mention the internal politics of the Democratic party in both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. It is extremely readable, remarkably well researched, and read fluently.
Wallace was an important figure of the New Deal. A former Republican (whose father was a cabinet member under Herbert Hoover), Wallace the son became, first, Agriculture Secretary in the first two Roosevelt administrations, then Vice President (1940-44) until he was pushed out to become Commerce Secretary (replaced in the vice presidency by Senator Harry Truman) in the last days of FDR's presidency. And a good thing too, because by then Wallace was on his way to becoming the most important stooge of the Soviet Union was ever to enjoy in American politics. Angered by the Marshall Plan and Truman's refusal to hand over the atom bomb to the Soviets, Wallace--driven by vanity and ambition--left the Truman administration to run for the presidency on a third party ticket (the Progressive Party, actually an instrument of the CPUSA, that is, the American Communist Party). In what must have been the biggest upset in history of American politics, Truman won a three-way race and Wallace's political career came to an end. When the Chinese, with Soviet support, invaded South Korea, Wallace, disillusioned, switched sides and supported Truman and the United Nations, but his political career was over. He retired to his farm in upstate New York City and died almost forgotten.
Wallace's real interest was scientific agriculture, and he was a distinguished plant and animal scientist. He should have stuck to that.
This book is a needed corrective to work of "revisionist" historians of the Cold War, most notably the late John Morton Blum of Yale, who during the aftermath of Vietnam tried to resurrect Wallace as a neglected visionary (The Price of Vision). I am not surprised that Wallace's grandson does not like this book. Too bad.

ideological hit job

the book barely covers Wallace's most important legacies: his tenure as secretary of department of agriculture, his founding of the greatly successful pioneer hi bred company, his anticolonialist and anti racist campaigns, his contributions as chairman of the board of economic warfare during ww2, and his methodological contributions to statistics and econometrics. most of these aspects of his life recieve at most passive mention in favor of red scare red herrings. the documentation from Soviet records does open a new perspective on Wallace's life worth considering, but not in favor of essentially ignoring the major contributions he made to making America and the world more prosperous and equitable. it seems that even for those at the leadership of cfr, ideologically selective revisionist history passes for a reasonable contribution.

tl;Dr the Wallace biography worth reading is American dreamer by culver and hyde

American Dreamer

2000’s “American Dreamer: Life of Henry A Wallace” was better. It was more engaging as just a read while also being more fair because the authors are actually from Iowa and one of them was a Senator. Make that one an Audible option

completely biased completely partisan.

I never read such a pathetic history in my life...a weak minded partisan drivel piece. this is what Donny Trump would write if he could write ...