by Bret Baier
First published 2019
Bret Baier reconstructs the pivotal Tehran Conference of November 1943, when Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met face to face for the first time. The Allied powers faced a precarious moment. Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe while Japan dominated the Pacific. Soviet forces had suffered massive casualties on the Eastern Front. Against this backdrop, the three leaders gathered in the Persian capital for clandestine negotiations that would determine the war's outcome. Baier draws on newly discovered transcripts, oral histories, and declassified documents from the Roosevelt Library to reveal the complex dynamics between these unlikely allies. The author shows how Roosevelt emerged as the key strategist, the democratic leader who could shape the postwar world order. Over three intense days, with rumors of a Nazi assassination plot hanging over them, the Big Three hammered out agreements for the D-Day invasion and the future of Germany. Their decisions in Tehran laid the foundation for both the United Nations and the Cold War that followed.
Genres: history, 20th-century, political-science, biography-memoir, military-history, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-drama, political-intrigue
Setting: Tehran, Persia
Period: 1943
434 pages · Hardcover · Mariner Books