FROM THE BOOKSELF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000200250005-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 12, 1999
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: December 8, 1953
• Content Type: NSPR

FOIAb3b
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE n~r
Aft~iMl For Release I 99'9i'U9/OT : -R
From the Bookshelf
Illuminating History. . ................. .... By Tully Nettleton
ai roF.~uea tt_..t?,'cleason. ( ew ork: )Harper
& Bthers. 963 pp. $10.)
If. anyone supposes that diplomacy is any-
istory of a period of less than two years
rior to Pearl Harbor should help remove that
nd 1he signii%r of he Tripartite 'w is i
ligned Japan with Germany and Italy as the
ive spheres.
From that point it traces factually and un-
heatrically, but nevertheless with absorbing
The book will be of great value to historians,
iplomatists, and students of international
ffair?s but it may also answer questions for
ystified as to their origins.
Why, for example, after Hitler had de-
overlapping claims of Spain, Vichy France,
and Italy until he at length concluded Franco's
price was too high and until Franco began to
doubt Nazi invincibility.
Is the reader one of those to whom Hitler's
attack on Russia came as a complete surprise
and who supposes it marked merely a sudden,
irrational impulse? Then it is illuminating to
find that this plan began to form five months
before the event, and shortly after the Fiihrer
failed to talk concretely enough to draw Stalin
and Molotov in as partners in conquest.
The Japanese purpose to prepare war plans
dated only about three months before Pearl
Harbor; operational orders were issued a
month before, and the task force which was
to make the strike had left port when Secre-
tary Hull submitted his final 10-points pro-
posal to Ambassadors Nomura and K. urusu.
But this followed months and months of Ameri-
can and Japanese endeavor to bridge the chasm
that lay between them as the result of Japan's
aggression in China and Indo-China.
The account given will not satisfy those
who aver that Churchill and Roosevelt plotted
to push Japan into making war. The forces
pictured are more massive and impersonal than
that. The authors are not uncritical of Ameri-
can diplomacy but from their record it is diffi-
cult to see how collision could have been
averted by diplomacy alone.
The authors are a professor of history at
Harvard and a former associate professor at
Amherst,, l nf, w served ixt,lrl~e..Qg of
~te is h vices during the war. It is' pub-
lis e or r Cu iiil on Foreign Relations, Inc.
CPYRGHT
Approved For Release 1999/09/07 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000200250005-4