A WWII Movie Based on THE NEW DEALERS' WAR

MerryPrankster

The narrative movie Lincoln was based on a book entitled Team of Rivals that's basically about how Lincoln assembled his previous political rivals into an effective team to win the Civil War.

How likely is it that one might make a narrative film about the last days of FDR based on The New Dealers' War, which is very critical of the Roosevelt administration?

Basically it would depict Roosevelt in decline and duped by Stalin, many New Dealers as Communist dupes (Henry Wallace) if not outright spies (Henry Dexter White) and/or New World Order wannabes (the book makes a reference to a Roosevelt official wanting to use German POWs as forced labor to build Tennessee Valley Authority projects in the Congo Basin), etc. It could be played as all edgy and revisionist, iconoclastic, etc.

I think that this movie would be very difficult to get made and funded and even if it were, it would be heavily criticized both rightly (Thomas Fleming seems to throw all sorts of mud at Roosevelt in hopes that something will stick) and wrongly (depicting the New Deal having lots of philo-Communists in it could be construed as propagandistic).
 
Jape

Jape

Well seeing how Lincoln shows off Abe as a great man, a film that makes FDR look like a moron won't be too popular. Also unlike the politics of abolition, the New Deal as part of the rise of Keynesianism is still relevant today. Doing something like you suggest would be seen as having an axe to grind. Probably in not too different a way than the Atlas Strugged movies.

Now a film that dealt much strictly on FDR & co. preparing for the end of WWII and the forshadowing of the Cold War, you could get something a bit more balanced out of it, with Wallace and Truman the differing voices on the Soviet Union as an ailing FDR deals with his changing views of Stalin.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Fleming is a hack and a polemicist

He makes David Irving look honest.

Even Fox would not be stupid enough to bankroll this; it would be the conserviverse version of Ishtar or Battlefield Earth.:rolleyes:

Best,
 

Scherzo

I dunno, you still get 'documentaries' about Obama getting theatrical releases every 6 months or so, so I don't think it's improbable that an FDR hit-piece would get made, especially if they try to draw direct parallels between FDR's handling of the Depression and Obama's handling of the Recession. It'd definitely be schlock though, not an austere production like Lincoln.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
It's the same dreck the

It's the same "FDR provoked the war" dreck the right wing, from McCormick to Buckley etc., have ranted about since 1945..

He's a hack.

Best,
 

MerryPrankster

Gaius Julius Magnus said:
Lincoln was based off a good book. This movie would not be.
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Which aspects of the book were wrong? Have you read it?

I haven't read it in a long time, but I could imagine the parts critical of the use of the A-Bomb made too much of the peace feelers put out by certain people in the Japanese government. One of my high school books references them, but suggests that these people didn't have the authority to negotiate on behalf of the Japanese.

(Think Rudolf Hess's bizarre mission to Britain.)
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Pretty much everything from the cover to the index

I read it; someone thought I might it interesting and I didn't have the heart to tell them no.

After the umpteenth "FDR provoked the war" trope, my judgment was pretty final.:rolleyes:

Best,
 
Gaius Julius Magnus

Gaius Julius Magnus

MerryPrankster said:
Which aspects of the book were wrong? Have you read it?

I haven't read it in a long time, but I could imagine the parts critical of the use of the A-Bomb made too much of the peace feelers put out by certain people in the Japanese government. One of my high school books references them, but suggests that these people didn't have the authority to negotiate on behalf of the Japanese.

(Think Rudolf Hess's bizarre mission to Britain.)
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I read some of it about four years ago at my local library and the conclusion I drew of it was that is was just more of the same attacks used by anti-FDR proponents since Pearl Harbor, specifically on the Yalta conference and how FDR was apparently "duped".

However you are right in that a movie about the international politics of the end of WW2 and beginning of the Cold War, such as the Yalta Conference, could make for a very good movie.
 

Seleucus

MerryPrankster said:
So Stalin did NOT attempt to prevent the U.S. from supporting the Warsaw rebels?
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- I'm not sure why you suddenly decided to bring this up in the thread, when no one has made the point you're apparently attempting to rebut.


- The Soviets did discourage and attempt to prevent the U.S. from supporting the Warsaw Uprising through airdropped supplies. It's worth noting that the vast majority of supplies (Soviet commanders estimated 96%) fell into German hands due to poor accuracy of night drops, so the airdrops could be viewed as counterproductive, helping the Nazis more than the Polish rebels.
 

MerryPrankster

Seleucus said:
- I'm not sure why you suddenly decided to bring this up in the thread, and act as if someone else had claimed otherwise.


- The Soviets did discourage and attempt to prevent the U.S. from supporting the Warsaw Uprising through airdropped supplies. It's worth noting that the vast majority of supplies (Soviet commanders estimated 96%) fell into German hands due to poor accuracy of night drops, so the airdrops could be viewed as counterproductive, helping the Nazis more than the Polish rebels.
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I brought that up because TFSmith claimed the entirety of the book was BS. Even if the stuff about FDR's sanctions regime provoking Japan's attack (whether deliberately or unintentionally) is pure 100% unadulterated bullshit, there're still other sections of the book that are better supported.

(I brought that up because I have other sources for the Soviets' generally treacherous attitude toward the Home Army, including betraying and murdering them after fighting the Nazis together.)
 

Seleucus

MerryPrankster said:
I brought that up because TFSmith claimed the entirety of the book was BS. Even if the stuff about FDR's sanctions regime provoking Japan's attack (whether deliberately or unintentionally) is pure 100% unadulterated bullshit, there're still other sections of the book that are better supported.

(I brought that up because I have other sources for the Soviets' generally treacherous attitude toward the Home Army, including betraying and murdering them after fighting the Nazis together.)
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For some reason, I still can't find TFSmith saying that, but this is a bit of a digression.

I haven't read the book, anyways, so I can't quite comment. From what I've heard of it online, though, I'm somewhat skeptical in that it seems to make lots of "FDR was duped by the Soviets" claims that tend to look through things through a purely Cold War lens.

(Yes, Stalin was a horrible person, but I don't think a German Poland - as the July 20 plotters demanded - would have been much better than the Communist one.)
 

Seleucus

MerryPrankster said:
Look for the heading of the post where he said his judgement was final (#9). He basically says it's wrong from the cover to the index.
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Oh, I see. Then again, one could also interpret it as saying that they read it from the cover to the index, and anyways, arguing over the minutiae of what someone else is saying seems rather pointless.

From my perspective, it also seems a bit like taking things too literally - TFSmith's point was focused on the FDR provoking the war bits. If someone says "Stalin was a horrible person that was wrong about everything", it would be rather nitpicking to ask in response if they support lobotomies. (Context: The Stalinist USSR banned lobotomies as grossly unethical in 1950; the U.S. kept performing them for another two decades.)
 

MerryPrankster

Seleucus said:
From my perspective, it also seems a bit like taking things too literally - TFSmith's point was focused on the FDR provoking the war bits. If someone says "Stalin was a horrible person that was wrong about everything", it would be rather nitpicking to ask in response if they support lobotomies. (Context: The Stalinist USSR banned lobotomies as grossly unethical in 1950; the U.S. kept performing them for another two decades.)
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That's only the first chapter or two, though. If the whole book were making that claim, dismissing it as nonsense would be more defensible.

Didn't know that about Stalin. That's a bit of a surprise considering the abuse of mental-health treatment in the later USSR and in Cuba.
 

MerryPrankster

TFSmith121 said:
Even Fox would not be stupid enough to bankroll this; it would be the conserviverse version of Ishtar or Battlefield Earth.:rolleyes:
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AKA Atlas Shrugged? :D

I'm not sure how they managed to make three movies considering I don't think any of them have made significant amounts of money or been well-reviewed.
 
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