Acknowledgments

Fighting the Second World War entailed blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Occasionally I felt the same was true for writing about it.

Victory would have been impossible without great armies of supporters. First among them is Scott Moyers, who agented, edited, and published this book. I would call this a hat trick; Scott would call it a triple play. Either way, he was superb and I am hugely grateful. My thanks, too, to the rest of the stellar team at the Penguin Press in New York, including Ann Godoff; Laura Stickney, who bought the book and was unfailingly enthusiastic about it; Mally Anderson; and Roland Ottewell. Thanks also to Penguin Australia’s Ben Ball, a great ally.

Thank you to Andrew Wylie, an astute and valued counselor, and his colleagues at the Wylie Agency, including James Pullen.

I wrote this book at the Lowy Institute, Australia’s leading think tank. I am grateful to Frank Lowy AC, the Institute’s chairman and founder, and the rest of the board. My predecessor as executive director, Michael Wesley, was generous in his support of the project. Many of my colleagues, including Anthony Bubalo, Hugh White, Sam Roggeveen, Malcolm Cook, Philippa Brant, Milton Osborne, and Justin Jones, helped me with it. A section of energetic interns pitched in, including Bronwyn Lo, Matt Hill, Ben Coleridge, Angela Evans, and Chris Croke. Joanne Bottcher was indefatigable and indispensable. Her contribution was very significant.

Thanks also to my colleagues at the Brookings Institution, Martin Indyk and Strobe Talbott.

The book had its origins in research I conducted at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. I am grateful to the Rhodes Trust for funding my study; Balliol College and Nuffield College for providing me with congenial homes; and my supervisors Sir Adam Roberts, Yuen Foong Khong, and John Darwin.

Recreating the seven missions undertaken by Franklin Roosevelt’s envoys depended largely upon archival sources spread across three continents, many of them new or only lightly used in the past. In particular, the envoys’ firsthand accounts of their travels, recorded in journals, letters, and articles, were like time capsules. A brigade of archivists and librarians has provided first-rate assistance to me over the years. Its ranks are too numerous for individual citations, but special mention must be made of Bob Clark, Bob Parks, Wendell “Tex” Parks, Ray Teichman, and Matthew Hanson at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park. I must also thank the brilliant archivists at the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Columbia Center for Oral History Collection, the Houghton Library, the Baker Library, the Lilly Library, the U.S. Army Military History Institute, the British National Archives, the Churchill Archives Centre, the National Archives of Australia, and the National Library of Australia. Working in the archives can be a monastic life, and I am grateful to all those who made it easier. A full list of the archives I used and the papers I consulted is included in the bibliography.

I am thankful to my interviewees, including the late Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell, the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and William J. vanden Heuvel. Harry Hopkins’s daughter Diana Hopkins Halsted was kind enough to correspond with me.

A number of distinguished international historians have helped me along the way. Thank you to Sir Martin Gilbert, Robert Dallek, Keith Jeffery, Simon Sebag Montefiore, and in particular Steven Casey, a source of encouragement and assistance since Oxford. Frank Costigliola pointed me to the revealing Verne Newton collection of videos at the Roosevelt Library. Thomas Parrish was good enough to copy Rudy Abramson’s papers and send them to me in Sydney. Gillian Bennett and Patrick Salmon helped me navigate the darker corners of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office archives.

Any author addressing the Second World War nearly three-quarters of a century after it began will rely heavily on scholars who have gone before. For me, the writings of Robert E. Sherwood, David Reynolds, Robert Dallek, Sir Martin Gilbert, and Waldo Heinrichs form the canon. Luckily, because of the novelty of my special-envoy angle, I found that even well-scrubbed primary and secondary sources often contained new insights.

I would like to thank sincerely those who read my manuscript and saved me from various pratfalls: James Fallows, Graham Freudenberg, John Pollard, Emma-Kate Symons, Graeme Gill, John Bowan, Jonathan Wright, Justin Vaϊsse, Stephen Harris, Sudhir Hazareesingh, and others mentioned elsewhere in these acknowledgments. The remaining stumbles are all mine.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock and Sir John Holmes, two directors of the Ditchley Foundation, along with their excellent staff, welcomed me to Ditchley Park—a very fine house that itself is almost a character in my book. Derek Chollet showed me around the West Wing of the White House. Ambassador Michael McFaul hosted me at Spaso House. Bob Carr used his good offices on my behalf. Thanks also to Lorand Bartels, David Lee, Camille Grand, François Heisbourg, Charlie Peters, David Robarge, Douglas Waller, Gerald Hensley, Svetlana Chervonnaya, Glyn Stone, Mark Pottle, John Fraser, and Kevin Barker.

Paul Keating and Owen Harries both encouraged me, in different ways, to address big, central issues rather than small, marginal ones. If you’re going swimming, Owen often reminds me, swim in the deep water, not the shallows. Mark Ryan is a good friend and a sharp student of history. Thank you to my own personal brains trust—Sophie Gee, David Howarth, David Hunt, and Robert Dann.

Final edits were made at Wolf Cabin on Premier Lake, near Skookumchuck, British Columbia. Thank you to my Canadian relatives, especially my excellent mother-in-law, Janet Charlton.

Profound thanks and love go to my mother, Paddy Fullilove, a wise confidante; and my father, the late Eric Fullilove, who grew up in London during the Blitz and served in the war that Roosevelt and Churchill fought. Thanks, too, to my brother Christian Fullilove and his family for their love and support.

I have saved the best until last. My greatest discovery at Oxford was my brilliant, beautiful wife, Gillian. This book is dedicated to her, and to our darling sons, Patrick, Thomas, and Alexander.