Five Days In Philadelphia

Charles Peters's Five Days in Philadelphia tells the story the 1940 Republican convention in Philadelphia when charismatic newcomer Wendell Willkie campaigned as the only anti-Hitler candidate against three leading isolationists. After five action-packed days, Willkie walked away with the nomination-a turn that proved essential in allowing FDR to save Britain and prepare the country for entry into WWII. Where the other candidates would have opposed Roosevelt, Willkie supported him in giving Britain the military aid that enabled it to continue fighting and in enacting the draft that meant this country had an army of 1.6 million instead of just 270,000 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. As Peters shows, the Republican convention and its improbable outcome were as important as the Battle of Britain in defeating the Nazis. These were the five days that saved the Western world, and Willkie was the necessary man. Savvy in its politics, riveting in the stories told, and restoring Willkie to his proper place as an American hero, Five Days in Philadelphia is narrative history of the first rank.