Overview

""British propaganda brought America to the brink of war, and left it to the Japanese and Hitler to finish the job."" So concludes Nicholas Cull in this absorbing study of how the United States was transformed from isolationism to belligerence in the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. From the moment it realized that all was lost without American aid, the British Government employed a host of persuasive tactics to draw the US to its rescue. With the help of talents as varied as those of matinee idol Leslie Howard, Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin and society photographer Cecil Beaton, no section of America remained untouched and no method--from Secret Service intrigue to the publication of horrifying pictures of Nazi atrocities--remained untried. The British sought and won the support of key journalists and broadcasters, including Edward R. Murrow, Dorothy Thompson and Walter Winchell; Hollywood film makers also played a willing part. Cull details these and other propaganda activities, covering the entire range of the British effort. A fascinating story of how a foreign country provoked America's involvement in its greatest war, Selling War will appeal to all those interested in the modern cultural and political history of Britain and the United States.

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9780195111507

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<br> Nicholas John Cull has made a major study of Britain's potent efforts to get a reluctant United States to fight. --International Herald Tribune<br>. ..this is a sensible, thoughtful, and--in revealing the foibles of many key actors--an often amusing book. --Kirkus Reviews<br> Cull writes with wit and zest about the efforts of Britons to help Roosevelt to bring the USA into the war....Based on careful research in many archives, this book provides a definitive account of important factors bearing on a decisive moment in world history. --Angus Calder, author of The People's War and The Myth of the Blitz<br>

A valuable study of how British propaganda helped to bring the US into WW II, which shows too why such a study has been so slow to appear. Nobody comes out of such an examination unscathed. Americans can't feel good about an isolationism so profound that it nearly permitted Nazi Germany to conquer Europe - or about the fact that three months before Pearl Harbor the Mothers of America were pelting the British ambassador with rotten eggs. Jews cannot be happy about the lobbying they had to do, as late as 1940, to compel the American Jewish Congress to endorse the Allied cause. Admirers of FDR must cringe at the irony in Cull's report of the president's being infuriated in 1939 by British indecision in response to German aggression. The British bungled, too. The Empire's bureaucracy put every obstacle in the way of American reporting of the Blitz, which was largely responsible for turning the tide of American opinion. Yet, as Cull (History/Univ. of Birmingham, England) notes, the cumulative achievement of the British effort was tremendous, and he shows how the British changed their propaganda themes during the course of the war: from Britain Can Take It during the Blitz to Give Us The Tools And We Will Do The Job in 1941. One is still left with the thought that the change in American sentiment was clue less to skillful British propaganda than to the fact that the British authorities finally allowed the American public to know what was going on. As Eric Sevareid put it, the secret to good press relations in London was simple: We wanted Hitler to lose. Cull sometimes goes beyond the evidence - as in saying that without the American lend-lease program, 1941 would have brought a British defeat. But this is a sensible, thoughtful, and - in revealing the foibles of many key actors - an often amusing book. (Kirkus Reviews)

Nicholas John Cull has made a major study of Britain's potent efforts to get a reluctant United States to fight. --International Herald Tribune<br> .,. this is a sensible, thoughtful, and--in revealing the foibles of many key actors--an often amusing book. --Kirkus Reviews<br> Cull writes with wit and zest about the efforts of Britons to help Roosevelt to bring the USA into the war....Based on careful research in many archives, this book provides a definitive account of important factors bearing on a decisive moment in world history. --Angus Calder, author of The People's War and The Myth of the Blitz<br>

Author Information

Nicholas John Cull is Professor of American Studies at the University of Leicester.

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