FDR & Stalin: A Not So Grand Alliance, 1943?1945

In Churchill: The End of Glory (Nonfiction Forecasts, July 19), John Charmley maintains that the British prime minister's political compromises with Stalin constituted appeasement, especially Churchill's role in the surrender of Poland. In the book in hand, Perlmutter ( Against Authoritarianism ) contends that President Franklin Roosevelt was the greater appeaser. In this sometimes strident revisionist study, the author faults FDR for everything , including the Cold War: for failing to ``harness'' Stalin, for not fulfilling the principles of the Atlantic Charter and for failing to ``deter'' the Soviet empire. Perlmutter's arguments on how the president could have harnessed and deterred the powerful Soviet dictator in his expansionism are confined for the most part to generalities ; to wit, that FDR might have taken political advantage of U.S. economic, military and atomic superiority. (Oct.)