The Winds of War

Currently I am reading the novel The Winds of War by Herman Wouk, which provides an excellent account of events leading up to the United States' entry to WWII. The book falls in the category of "historical fiction", meaning that the main characters are fictional, but every battle or other world event is completely factual. Wouk does a terrific job of maneuvering the various characters around so that every aspect of the war can be examined. The main character, named Pug, is a Navy man who wants nothing other than to go to sea, preferrably as commander of a battleship. Unfortunately for him, he always seems to get land assignments. He travels from Berlin to London to Washington to Moscow, and he meets Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. He witnesses the Battle of Britain and fighting on the eastern front. His son Byron is in Poland when the Germans invade, and his son Warren is in Hawaii when the Japanese attack. Farfetched? Absolutely. Boring? Not at all. The Winds of War, along with the follow-up novel, War and Remembrance, are the best fictional WWII accounts I've ever read.

The main focus of The Winds of War is the war in Europe and the moral dilemmas raised by it. The US's isolation is examined in depth. Europe in 1940-41 was a gruesome scene. Yet people in the USA viewed it as a ball game, with England as the home team. Let Europe's problems stay in Europe. Roosevelt, shrewd man that he was, found ways to support the Allies while convincing Americans we were still neutral. First by selling materiel to England, then just flat out giving it to them under the guise of Lend-Lease. So what was the right thing to do? I suppose there's no correct answer.