By Thomas F. Schwartz Click here for Part 1 Most accounts in Ike Hoover's Forty-Two Years in the White House are positive with certain caveats. Newspaper editor William Allen White who authored the popular early biography of Calvin Coolidge, A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (1938), offered mixed judgments on Ike Hoover … Continue reading The Mystery of Irwin Hood Hoover’s Forty-Two Years in the White House: Part 2
By Thomas F. Schwartz Memoirs by former presidential staff and White House employees can offer candid assessments of the public officials’ private lives. They can also be extremely misleading, reflecting the author’s personal views, and often contain hearsay recounting events not witnessed but related second-hand. A book frequently cited in presidential biographies and studies of … Continue reading The Mystery of Irwin Hood Hoover’s Forty-Two Years in the White House: Part 1
By Thomas F. Schwartz In Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath edited by George H. Nash, Hoover entitles a section “Brainwashing the American People.” He details President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts to counter isolationist/non-interventionist sentiment by suggesting that Hitler was seeking world domination, not simply that of … Continue reading The Germans are Coming, the Germans are Coming
By Thomas F. Schwartz Diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005)Library of Congress digital ID hec.12925 After relying on the detailed Siberian travelogue of George Kennan to determine the region’s mining potential, Hoover’s second Kennan encounter with was with George F. Kennan regarding Hoover’s work with President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. In 1957 Kennan … Continue reading Hoover and the Two George Kennans: Part 2
By Thomas F. Schwartz Journalist and explorer George Kennan (1845-1924) Library of Congress digital ID ppmsc.01361 George F. Kennan is known for writing the 1946 "long telegram" as the U.S. chargè d’affaires in Moscow. Kennan argued for the U.S. to oppose Soviet attempts to undermine democratic institutions and wait for positive internal changes within the Soviet … Continue reading Hoover and the Two George Kennans: Part 1
Stone Plate Engraving of the Declaration of Independence, National Archives and Records Administration By Thomas F. Schwartz “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” This aspirational statement … Continue reading The Declaration, Lincoln, and Hoover
By Thomas F. Schwartz Continued from part 1… As the title suggests, This Is Not Who We Are: America’s Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue by Zachary Shore examines three episodes of American actions during the WWII period that were motivated by in part by vengeance but eventually turned into more virtuous behavior. The three episodes … Continue reading Germany and the Morgenthau Plan: Part Two
By Thomas F. Schwartz Fighting a war is costly both in human lives and military expenditures. More costly is securing a just peace with defeated enemies. As a previous blog explained, Herbert Hoover failed in his attempts to feed civilian populations in Poland and Finland at the outset of World War II, but not for … Continue reading Germany and the Morgenthau Plan: Part One
by Thomas F. Schwartz Hoover’s tenure as Secretary of Commerce witnessed some of the greatest advances in technology with the development or expansion of radio, talking movies, commercial aviation, automobiles, telephones, and television. The Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. is named after Herbert Hoover in recognition of his many achievements as Secretary of Commerce. He … Continue reading The Hooverofon
by Thomas F. Schwartz A common technique used by advertisers engages the services of celebrities to endorse and promote their product. Current ethics laws prevent elected official from product endorsements. Such prohibitions did not exist for earlier generations of elected or appointed officials. A previous blog post indicated that Herbert Hoover was frequently approached as … Continue reading A 1927 Celebrity Endorsement
