美国和二战 特殊的关系

Books and arts Bookreview

文艺书评

America and the second world war

美国和二战

That special relationship

那种特殊的关系

Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941. By Lynne Olson.

书名：《那些愤怒的日子：罗斯福、林白及美国对是否参加二战的争论，1939至1941年》作者：Lynne Olson

WHEN the chips are down, David Cameron declared on a visit to Washington last year, Britain and America know that they can always count on each other.

去年，卡梅伦在访问华盛顿时说：在危急时刻，英美两国明白，双方总是可以互相信赖的。

Standing beside Barack Obama on a sun-drenched White House lawn, Britain's prime minister invoked the memory of their respective grandfathers,

卡梅伦首相与奥巴马一同站在白宫洒满阳光的草坪上，卡梅伦唤起了双方对各自先辈的回忆：

serving in the same campaign to drive Hitler's forces from France.

他们并肩作战，将希特勒的军队从法国驱赶出去。

The message was clear.

卡梅伦传达了一条明确的信息：

Seven decades on, when the British need to claim a special relationship with America, nothing approaches the second world war's talismanic power.

七十年后的今天，当英国需要与美国保持一种特殊关系时，什么也比不了二战的特殊魔力。

In truth, for two terrifying years after it declared war on Germany, Britain did not know that America would come to its aid.

实际上，在英国向德国宣战后可怕的两年中，英国不知道美国会对其提供帮助。

Winston Churchill's government wavered between a conviction that President Franklin Roosevelt did not want Hitler to control the whole of Europe and so would send help,

丘吉尔政府摇摆不定，时而坚信罗斯福不会让希特勒控制整个欧洲，因此会向英国提供援助；

and a suspicion that many in his government dreamed of scavenging the assets of a doomed British empire.

时而又怀疑罗斯福政府中的一些人，认为他们梦想着大英帝国会毁灭，然后蚕食其资产。

Britain made an extraordinary effort to bring America into the war before it was too late.

英国竭尽全力及时地拉动美国参战。

With Roosevelt's tacit approval, hundreds of British agents flooded neutral America, secretly spying on isolationist politicians,

在罗斯福的默许下，数百名英国间谍涌入中立的美国，秘密监视孤立派政治家、

Axis diplomats and Nazi sympathisers and more openly wooing public opinion with lectures, radio broadcasts and stories planted in friendly newspapers.

轴心国外交官和纳粹的同情者，他们还发表演讲、进行电台广播，同时在亲英的报纸上刊登故事，来更加公开地争取民心。

Marrying a historian's thoroughness with a biographer's eye for human nature, Lynne Olson's magnificent new account shows what a close-run thing their campaign was.

在这部精彩绝伦的新书中，作者Lynne Olson结合历史学家的全面性和传记作家对人性的探寻，向读者展示了他们的行动是如何地惊险。

Those Angry Days describes a divided America that is little remembered now, amid praise for the greatest-generation years that followed.

《那些愤怒的日子》一书描述了一个现在鲜为人知的分裂的美国，字里行间也体现了对之后数年内最伟大一代的赞许。

She depicts an anti-war country in which bars near army bases sported signs banning soldiers,

她描述了一个反战的国家，在那里，军事基地附近的酒吧挂着禁止士兵入内的标识，

and generals wore mufti to testify on Capitol Hill, lest their uniforms provoke isolationist members of Congress.

将军则在美国国会山身穿便服作证，以免他们的制服惹恼议会中不主张美国参战的人。

In defence of that pacifism, she explains how Americans felt that their country had been dragged into the first world war

美国人感到正是英国人狡猾的宣传和保证才把美国卷入了第一次世界大战，这些感受还是有原因的。

by clever British propaganda and promises that Americans killed in Europe's mud were making the world safe for democracy.

作者为反战主义辩护，解释了美国人为什么这样想。

Twenty years later, many Americans believed that Europe's squabbling