Initiated into Latin America via the revolutionary turmoil of the Dominican Republic in 1965, Sewall ("Stu") Menzel began an adventure into Latino politics and the struggle for power, wealth and influence throughout the region, which would further take him from one trouble-spot to another. Whether it was confronting revolutionaries in the Caribbean, multiple guerrilla threats in Central America, drug traffickers in the Andes Mountains, or recalcitrant dictators, the author brings the reader onto the stage of Latino politics as he experienced it from 1965 to 1989. In this unvarnished presentation of conflict and revolution in the Americas, Colonel Menzel offers a succinct critical analysis of U.S. policy and operations against a historical backdrop of the times. While the United States has always maintained a special relationship with Latin America, the region has been a difficult milieu to deal with in its complexity. Washington's Cold War experience in Latin America amply demonstrates this truth as its attempts to influence regional politics constantly ran up against competing and countervailing values and cultures. As such, the author points out how U.S. national security interests constantly butted heads with and often worked at cross-purposes with the need for human rights-based socio-economic and political reforms. The primary lesson learned from the overall experience is that America needs to know not only what it is against, but also what it is for if it wants to have a lasting positive impact on Latin America. Colonel Menzel's personal experiences and observations involving the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Panama amply illustrate the point.

This book provides a penetrating look into U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's strategy to bait Adolf Hitler into declaring war on America in order to defeat Germany militarily, thus preventing the Nazis from developing the atomic bomb. In late 1939, President Roosevelt learned that Hitler was attempting to develop an atomic bomb to use against the United States. The president responded by directing his own scientific community to develop an atomic bomb and began making plans to go to war with Germany. However, he was hampered by public opinion, with 80 percent of the American people against U.S. involvement in another ground war in Europe. Roosevelt seized an opportunity in 1940, when Japan and Nazi Germany formed a military alliance. To bait Germany into war, FDR shut down Japan's war-making economy, prompting Tokyo to attack Pearl Harbor. A few days later, Hitler declared war on America. Using declassified documents, this book shows how Pearl Harbor was not about Japan; it was about the United States going to war with Germany. It reveals how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system could break virtually any Japanese naval code, but Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was kept in the dark about the impending Pearl Harbor attack by his own government. Shows how Roosevelt had the courage and insight to see the threat that a Nazi atomic bomb posed to the United States and outlines his strategy to bait Germany into declaring war on America Explains how Japan's Bushido Code, which demands "death before dishonor," influenced Tokyo's decision to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor Demonstrates how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system was second to none in terms of code breaking and locating the Imperial Japanese Navy's warships Uses declassified top-secret documents and other primary sources to prove that Roosevelt could have prevented the Pearl Harbor attack

Initiated into Latin America via the revolutionary turmoil of the Dominican Republic in 1965, Sewall ("Stu") Menzel began an adventure into Latino politics and the struggle for power, wealth and influence throughout the region, which would further take him from one trouble-spot to another. Whether it was confronting revolutionaries in the Caribbean, multiple guerrilla threats in Central America, drug traffickers in the Andes Mountains, or recalcitrant dictators, the author brings the reader onto the stage of Latino politics as he experienced it from 1965 to 1989. In this unvarnished presentation of conflict and revolution in the Americas, Colonel Menzel offers a succinct critical analysis of U.S. policy and operations against a historical backdrop of the times. While the United States has always maintained a special relationship with Latin America, the region has been a difficult milieu to deal with in its complexity. Washington's Cold War experience in Latin America amply demonstrates this truth as its attempts to influence regional politics constantly ran up against competing and countervailing values and cultures. As such, the author points out how U.S. national security interests constantly butted heads with and often worked at cross-purposes with the need for human rights-based socio-economic and political reforms. The primary lesson learned from the overall experience is that America needs to know not only what it is against, but also what it is for if it wants to have a lasting positive impact on Latin America. Colonel Menzel's personal experiences and observations involving the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Panama amplyillustrate the point.