The twelve-year presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from March 1933 to April 1945, coincided almost exactly with the twelve years of Hitler's Third Reich. As such, it coincided with the evolving process of Nazi Germany's efforts to extinguish Jewish life by various means, first in Germany, and then in Europe. The catastrophe suffered by the Jews in Europe, where some two-thirds of the world's Jews lived in 1939, would play an increasingly important and divisive role in the domestic and foreign policies of the Roosevelt administration throughout its time in office. Given the enormity and focus of the Nazi assault on Jewish life in Europe during those years, it was also inevitable that Roosevelt's response to that assault would become the subject of an intense, complex, and sensitive debate among scholars and others in the more recent decades of the postwar era. Those twelve years represent a period in which the reactions of non-Jewish as well as Jewish organizations and institutions at all levels of society to the plight of the Jews, inside and outside Germany, would be scrutinized and judged for what they did or failed to do to help the Jewish victims. This was certainly the case for the legislative and executive branches of government in the United States, a country in which millions of Jewish refugees from earlier generations had found refuge from persecution.

FDR and the Jews provides a meticulous analysis of an unprecedented collection of primary sources from archives and libraries throughout the United States. It revisits this much-debated question within the broader context of early twentieth-century American and American Jewish history and the political, economic, and social transformation of the United States in the midst of unprecedented economic crisis, changing ethnic/racial attitudes and relations, and the emergence of the United States as a global power during the earlier decades of the new century. These fundamental and rapid changes generated complex political realities that, as presented by the authors, often posed obstacles to FDR's otherwise natural inclination to provide help for the Jews of Germany and the rest of Europe between 1933 and 1945. Two realities in particular worked against an overall stronger administration effort to help the Jews of Europe. One was the deeply rooted isolationist feelings of most Americans and their disinclination to risk involvement in European affairs and possibly another war; another was anti-immigration sentiment based on the familiar economic insecurities of the 1930s, and a general racist xenophobia and antisemitism that was prevalent in America during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Breitman and Lichtman carefully and objectively weigh the responses and decisions of FDR's administration with regard to the evolving crisis of the Jews in Europe against the very real political constraints that FDR faced at the time. Indeed, some will contend that the authors' explanations of those constraints amount to an attempt to excuse FDR's inaction when the situation demanded action on behalf of the victims. This reviewer, however, finds nothing in the book that could in any way justify such a claim. From the outset, Breitman and Lichtman are scrupulously detached and objective in their assessment of the record of FDR and his administration on the Nazi persecution and mass murder of the Jews. Moreover, their assessment of FDR is in fact a mixed one. They characterize much of his first and third terms as generally failing to undertake desperately needed political initiatives at home (increased immigration quotas) and abroad (various forms of diplomatic intervention with Hitler's regime). The second and fourth terms, on the other hand, are described as periods of significant political initiative by the administration as it actively tried to save Jews from their increasingly impossible situation, first in Germany and then throughout Europe. Among these efforts, one notes in particular the establishment of the War Refugee Board in late 1943, support for efforts to increase Jewish immigration into the United States, and in particular into Palestine. The latter involved intervention with the British government and with the King of Saudi Arabia. Yet, Roosevelt usually avoided confronting the prevailing anti-immigration sentiments in the State Department and among organized labor. He also had to work around persistent antisemitism in both, as well as in the Republican and Democratic parties, and in the country in general. Throughout those years, Roosevelt depended on the advice of several of his Jewish advisors and appointees, official and unofficial, on these matters. Individuals such as Rabbi Stephen Wise, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, and Supreme Court justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter stood by the president on the question of the rescue of Jews in Europe, even when they disagreed with his positions.

On balance, the book reaches a conclusion on the Roosevelt administration's efforts on behalf of the European Jews that is generally more favorable than unfavorable. While asserting throughout that FDR could have done more to assist Jews and save more lives during the twelve years of his administration, it maintains that, in the end, he did much more than Chamberlain, Churchill, or any other world leader to rescue Jews during those years. Breitman and Lichtman would not necessarily reject much of the criticism of FDR that forms the substance of books such as The Jews Were Expendable and The Abandonment of the Jews. Likewise, they might agree with much of what his defenders say in works such as The Myth of Rescue and Saving the Jews. Their approach and conclusions, however, part ways with the generally less nuanced analyses and conclusions of both the critics and the defenders of FDR. They portray a consummate yet compassionate politician who in the end was neither a bystander nor a savior. Indeed, Breitman and Lichtman offer the reader a sober and balanced assessment of FDR's response to the Jewish catastrophe between 1933 and 1945, one that is firmly grounded in their consultation of perhaps the most exhaustive accumulation of primary source archival materials available on the subject. FDR and the Jews will surely be recognized as the standard work on the subject.