FDR, Fascism, and America's Path to World War II with Historian William Hitchcock

Today on Diplomatic Immunity, we're joined by historian William Hitchcock to talk about FDR's presidency, why he sees him as both a hero and an anti-hero, and how America ended up leading the fight against fascism.

William Hitchcock is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and professor of history at the University of Virginia. We discuss the conventional wisdom about American "isolationism" in the 1930s and why it's wrong, the cast of journalists and activists (Dorothy Thompson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway) who sounded the alarm long before Pearl Harbor, the crises in Ethiopia and Spain as turning points, FDR's dramatic pivot in 1940–41, and what lessons the 1930s hold for navigating today's multipolar, crisis-filled world.

📚 A Shadow Over the World by William Hitchcock

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Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

Produced by Mislav Majcan.