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he, his political advisers, and his physicians predicted
significant, even complete, recovery of the use of his
legs. Shortly after FDR's illness, one doctor declared
that he would "not be crippled" (p. 24). More than a
medical assessment, this assured that he would retain a
socially valid identity and thus a politically viable
career. As important, FDR used claims about his
physical progress to time his political reentry. During
these years, he educated himself on issues and built a
national network of political contacts, while staving off
pressures to run for office until a propitious moment.
Meanwhile, he established an image of not just physical and mental fitness but also vigor and indomitability. By his 1928 run for New York's governorship, he
was being talked of for the presidency.
Nonetheless, during his gubernatorial and presidential campaigns FDR had to confront social prejudices
about "cripples" and "whispering" campaigns of his
physical and mental incapacitation. He developed a
visual rhetoric that presented him walking, campaigning tirelessly, and traveling extensively by automobile,
train, and airplane. His complementary verbal rhetoric
used irony to refute RepUblican "sympathy" for "this
unfortunate invalid," while calling audiences' attention
to his physical huskiness and strenuous campaigning
(p. 46). This rhetoric also refigured him as more rather
than less qualified for leadership. During the 1932
campaign, he portrayed his opponents as sickly and
himself as not just healthy but better equipped to guide
to recovery a nation prostrated by the depression.
Exhorting listeners to reject fear and have faith, he
declared that the country needed and demanded
"bold, persistent experimentation" backed by "enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even
unpleasant ones, bravely" (p. 84-85). He did not need
to mention his own disability for voters to connect his
political prescriptions with his personal, widely reported campaign of physical rehabilitation. Finally,
FDR's rhetoric implicitly countered notions that disability had demasculinized him by presenting him as in
control, while explicitly telling women voters that his
disability experience had engendered greater empathy
for ordinary people's struggles.
Many observers perceived FDR's disability experience through a moralistic understanding of "suffering"
as making or breaking personal character. Will Durant
described him as "a man softened and cleansed and
illuminated with pain" (p. 41). Houck and Kiewe
overlook that FDR's performance combined this traditional transfiguring triumph over adversity through
force of will with modern medical rehabilitation to
produce a persona of "overcoming." This mode of
public self-presentation and stigma management
would shape the social careers of millions of people
with disabilities.
The authors argue that FDR's disability experience
transformed his political values. For example, his 1929
inaugural address as governor outlined a progressive
agenda in terms of life in an interdependent world.
"For it is literally true," he proclaimed, "that the
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
'self-supporting' man or woman has become extinct as
the man of the stone age. Without the help of thousands of others, anyone of us would die, naked and
starved" (p. 52). If this interpretation is correct, the
historically significant, disability-based shift in values
demands more extensive exploration.
Unfortunately some distorting cultural assumptions
impair this analysis. Describing FDR's post-polio ambulation, the authors put the word "walking" in quotation marks, as though movement with leg braces,
crutches, and canes is not real walking (pp. 27, 62, 97,
115). They describe his campaign's coordinated responses to media stories about his health as seeking
"to correct 'false' impressions," again putting the key
word in quotation marks as though to question it (p.
58). In fact, many reports were false and prejudicial.
The authors assert that FDR portrayed his body as
"apparently healthy" (p. 50). In fact, although FDR
minimized the paralysis of his legs, his general condition in this period was robust. Finally, the authors, like
many of FDR's contemporaries, implicitly confound
impairment with illness or sickliness, an equation that
FDR's "rhetoric of disability" refuted. One newspaper
captured both his physical condition and his rhetorical
message: "Hundreds of thousands have seen the figure
of this lame man with the torso of an athlete ... whose
abounding vitality have made the whispers of his
crippled and invalid condition barely audible" (p. 109).
This book's shortcomings demonstrate the entrenched
power of cultural constructions of disability, while its
many insights show the value of a disability studies
approach for historical analysis.
PAUL K. LONGMORE
San Francisco State University
Nazi Saboteurs on Trial: A Military
Tribunal and American Law. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas. 2003. Pp. xi, 193. $29.95.
LOUIS FISHER.
Louis Fisher has provided a well-written, timely history
of what was popularly known as "The Case of the Nazi
Saboteurs." In June 1942, eight German would-be
saboteurs landed by submarine on the Long Island and
Florida shores. One of their leaders promptly betrayed
the mission, and all were quickly rounded up. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, outraged at their audacity,
was determined that they be executed expeditiously.
Six were electrocuted (the remaining two were sentenced to life terms in prison), but not until the United
States Supreme Court had passed on the legitimacy of
their trial by a military commission. Its decision, Ex
parte Quirin (1942), largely forgotten until recently,
has suddenly been catapulted into public debate by
passage of the Patriot Act.
Fisher organizes his treatment into four sections.
First, he recounts the story of the saboteurs and their
misadventures in Germany and America. (A lawyer
who was involved in their appeal described them as "a
lumpenproletariat of slovenly and quarrelsome misfits
who, if they had eluded capture, might well have blown
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Reviews of Books and Films
up themselves rather than their designated targets.")
Next, he describes their trial before a military commission (a panel of army generals) for violation of the
statutory Articles of War and the unwritten law of war.
Then, in the heart of the book, he traces their arguments before the United States Supreme Court challenging the legitimacy of trying them by military
commission. Finally, Fisher sketches the subsequent
eclipse and unexpected revival of Quirin in our times,
particularly its recrudescence as the basis for the Bush
administration's authorization of military tribunals to
try those who assisted the terrorists of September 11,
2001. Attorney-General John Ashcroft's judgment that
"foreign terrorists ... do not deserve the protection of
the American Constitution" traces its lineage back to
Quirin.
The Germans' petition raised momentous questions.
Could they seek a writ of habeas corpus to test the
legality of their trial? The Court held that they could
(an issue that resonates today) but disappointed them
on all other points they raised. It upheld the constitutionality of FDR's proclamation denying them access
to civil courts. This diminished the authority of the
Civil War precedent, Ex parte Milligan (1866), which
had held that a civilian paramilitary cannot be tried by
a military commission outside the theater of war when
the civil courts are open and functioning. The Court's
denial also implicitly upheld an immense extension of
presidential war powers, anticipated by the appalling
dicta of Justice George Sutherland in United States v.
Macintosh (1931) and United States v. Curtiss-Wriqht
Export Corp. (1936). It circumvented Chief Justice
John Marshall's stringent requirements for treason
convictions (at least one of the defendants was or had
been an American citizen). It ignored FDR's dilution
of procedural guarantees of fairness provided by the
Articles of War (which in any event may have been
applicable only to American military personnel tried
by courts martial).
Fisher offers this book as the prelude to his forthcoming study of military tribunals throughout American history. He has written a dozen books on the
separation of powers, his specialty, and this background informs his approach to the saboteurs' appeal.
Fisher's book will find its most apt use as assigned
supplementary reading in college-level courses in public law and constitutional history. It is not a part of the
University Press of Kansas's invaluable "Landmark
Law Cases and American Society" series, but in content and approach it resembles the twenty-plus volumes that have already appeared in that series. Unlike
those volumes, however, Fishers's book has footnotes
(and a tip of the reviewer's hat to the press for putting
them at the bottom of the page, rather than as
endnotes inconveniently stuck at the back of the
volume). University Press of Kansas provides an invaluable service to college and law school teachers in
publishing books in the "Landmark" series and related
volumes like this one.
Fisher's study also belongs in all research, university,
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
and general libraries because of its value in providing
the American people with historical background enabling them to evaluate the reappearance of military
commissions. It will inform policy debates today not
just on military commissions, but on the scope of
presidential power and the role of courts in protecting
civil liberties.
WILLIAM
M.
WIECEK
Syracuse University
PETER J. WESTWICK. The National Labs: Science in an
American System, 1947-1974. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 2003. Pp. x, 403. $49.95.
Even before the United States entered World War II,
scientists at select universities across the country had
begun efforts to understand the implications of nuclear fusion. Soon these efforts were concentrated at
four campuses-Columbia, Chicago, Princeton, and
Berkeley-under the auspices of the federal Office of
Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Created in 1941, the OSRD, and subsequently the Manhattan Project, laid the foundation for what were to
become the national labs. Initially made up of Argonne, Brookhaven, and Oak Ridge, and focusing on
nuclear and high energy physics, this lab system had a
profound impact on the organization and substance of
science in the United States during roughly the quarter
of a century after World War II.
After the war and under the auspices of the Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC), the national labs constituted the early heart of "big science"-expensive,
capital and labor-intensive, multidisciplinary research.
An organizational innovation, these were hybrid entities: officially federal facilities, their operation was
contracted variously to industrial firms, individual universities, and university consortia. The labs were hybrid also in the composition of their users. Each had
massive staffs, including scientists, who used the extensive research equipment, but in addition, the labs
were intended to provide resources unavailable elsewhere for visiting academic researchers.
The national labs shaped an array of scientific fields,
including high-energy physics, solid-state physics, material science, nuclear medicine, and radiobiology. Lab
scientists developed crucial research tools, including
radioisotopes, research reactors, and particle accelerators, and affected our understanding of the structure
of matter, the process of photosynthesis, chemical
elements, and human metabolism.
While there are a number of monographs on individual national labs, Peter J. Westwick's new book is
the first full-length study of the national labs collectively. By looking at the national labs as a system,
Westwick enriches our understanding of the characteristics of individual labs but also captures their interdependence. Especially attentive to the ways in which the
national labs were shaped by the larger environment in
which they developed, Westwick stresses three ongoing tensions in the history of the national lab system:
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