The Eleventh Hour: How Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. Brokered the Unlikely Deal that Won the War
In late November 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Joint Chiefs of Staff secretly boarded the battleship USS Iowa to attend a conference in Tehran with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, where the Allies would come to an agreement on a war plan to defeat Germany. Although Roosevelt’s preparation at sea established the groundwork for the American position on D-Day, it was in the heated and electrifying debates that followed in Tehran―and only through those intense debates―that a deal was ultimately struck.
In The Eleventh Hour, critically acclaimed author L. Douglas Keeney explores FDR’s covert conferences on the battleship and provides stunning insight into the formerly secret, behind-the-scenes transcripts from the meetings in Tehran. Brilliantly chronicling the three days of aggressive debates between the heads-of-state, Keeney demonstrates that Tehran, although remembered as a diplomatic conference with a well-known outcome, was in reality chaotic, conflicted, and subject to numerous heated, closed-door sessions―with a petulant, irritable Churchill; a strikingly reserved, detached Roosevelt; and an assertive but unexpectedly diplomatic and even charming Stalin, winning over his guest, President Roosevelt, whose quarters were bugged by the Soviets.
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Book details
- Author
- L. Douglas Keeney
- Imprint
- Trade Paper Press, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Pages
- 272
- Formats
- Hardcover
- Subjects
- History › Wars & Conflicts › World War II
History › Military › United States
History › Europe › Great Britain
History › World - Topics
- World War II · Tehran Conference · Allied diplomacy · Franklin D. Roosevelt · Winston Churchill · Joseph Stalin · D-Day planning · wartime strategy
- ISBN-13
- 9781118269862
About the author
L. DOUGLAS KEENEY is a military historian and author of more than a dozen books on American history. His recent books include The Eleventh Hour, 15 Minutes and The Pointblank Directive.
Keeney holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Southern California and completed post-graduate study at the Institute of Advanced Advertising Studies in New York City. His work has been reviewed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker.
When not writing, Keeney draws on roughly sixteen years as an advertising executive at agencies including Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam, and cofounded The Military Channel, now part of Discovery Communications, in 1992. That background in research and media runs through his books on American military history.
Douglas lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, journalist Jill Johnson Keeney.