As German tanks rolled toward Paris in May 1940, the U.S. Ambassador to France, William Bullitt, was defiantly holed up in his country chateau. Across the English Channel, Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy publicly expressed his belief that the Allies would be defeated. A former ambassador to Luxembourg, David McKean traces the rise of the Third Reich in Germany from the perspective of these men as well as William Dodd and Breckinridge Long, all four of them high-level American diplomats in Europe who witnessed it firsthand. Despite their desire to be of service to President Roosevelt, McKean suggests here that they greatly underestimated Germany's power and resolve.