The Wings of Democracy: The Influence of Air Power on the Roosevelt Administration, 1933–1941 by Jeffery S. Underwood (review)

238 Canadian Review of American Studies of the "COINTELPRO," or "Counterintelligence Program," and the means bywhich it became public, the degree to which the FBI violated civil liberties and also the nature of the line which J. Edgar Hoover declined to cross. Davis also offers short and effective discussions about the FBI's effect on various dissident groups, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Black Panthers, the old left to the new. Spying on America will be of some interest to specialists and is of acceptable quality as an introduction for undergraduates. The real significance of these two books is to reveal just how limited is our understanding of American intelligence since 1945. Historians have come to terms with the institutional background to American intelligence. There is a solid literature on the FBI's role in internal American politics and about some aspects of the work of the CIA, especially its more scandalous activities. There are scattered but useful works on other topics, such as the development of technical sources of intelligence gathering and the effect of intelligence on certain aspects of American strategy during the cold war. Yet, scholars know far less about these issues than they think -they have scarcely even begun to study such central questions as the effect of intelligence on American strategy and foreign policy. It is almost literally true to say that there are more studies of the effect of intelligence on American policy toward Albania in the 1940s,Guatemala in the 1950s,and Cuba in the 1960s than on American relations with any major power between 1945-89. Scholars might pay more attention to the topic. Intelligence is too important a thing to be left to the journalists -or the old intelligence hands. John Ferris University of Calgary •••••• Jeffery S. Underwood. The Wings of Democracy: The Influence of Air Power on the Roosevelt Administration, 1933-1941. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 1991. Pp. 235. The basic roles of the military in American life since the Second World War and its meagre size and status before it is one of the most remarkable contrasts in recent U.S. history. Readers of The Wings of Democracy may have to keep reminding themselves that the book is about the same country that has spent trillions on the military and is able to project force anywhere on the globe. In 1934, the United States spent only $12 million on the predecessor agency of the United States Air BookReviews 239 Force. As late as 1939,it had only thirteen heavy bombers that could carry a ton or twoof bombs a fewhundred miles.Lockheed Aircraft had only800workers. Military organization and tactics were primitive and the political environment was hostile toward the armed forces. There was a strong peace movement and a powerful bloc of senators who railed against "militarism," "navalism," and "imperialism" and helped keep the military seriously underfunded. Undeiwood does not pursue this contrast or other issues that might have givenhis book originality and broader appeal. Instead, he offers a conventional account of the struggles in military doctrine, bureaucracy, and public relations that shaped American army aviation during the New Deal. His story begins with a summary of General Billy Mitchell's crusade during the 1920sfor American air power and for the idea that bombers, especially those that could target an enemy's industries and urban populations, had made infantry and naval fleets obsolete. He then traces the Anny Air Corps' experiences during the 1930s,from the various political crises it faced in FDR's first administration to its rising fortunes after the Munich Crisis and its acceptance as a coequal component of the American military in 1940-41. Undeiwood's story and thesis are not new. For him, the main reason the United States was in a position to deploy large-scale air power during the war was that its proponents, beginning in 1935, became more sophisticated. Air Corps offic~rslike H. H. Arnold, Frank Andrews, and Ira Eaker were less dogmatic about air power and used promotional tactics that were more productive than those of Mitchell who enjoyed rattling the cages of the old-line Army and Navy brass. Underwood stresses the...