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| Billie Silvey |
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| Two Leaders |
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| On Christmas Eve in 1941, two years after Britain entered World War II and just over two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into the war, the two leaders delivered Christmas greetings to the nation from the South Portico of the White House. Roosevelt closed his short message as follows: “And so I am asking my associate [and] my old and good friend to say a word to the people of America, old and young, tonight--Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain.”
Winston Churchill (1874-1965), was still first lord of the admiralty when he began his close working friendship with Roosevelt in early 1940. He began a long-term correspondence with Roosevelt as an attempt to get the neutral United States to enter the war when, in July of 1940, Britain lost 11 destroyers in 10 days. The most experienced leader of the major nations in World War II, Churchill had been out of the government in the 1930s because he insisted that Hitler’s arms buildup represented a risk to Britain. Britain had tried to appease Germany until their attack on France made it clear that Hitler wouldn’t be appeased. Churchill was energetic, stubborn and obstinate. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” he said in May of 1940. “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival,” he said a month later. Churchill was one of the most literate and the most prolific writer of any national leader in history. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. His inspiring rhetoric roused the British to the struggle. Throughout the war, his V-for-Victory wave, his bulldog tenacity and his ever-present cigar become symbols of Britain’s determination. According to American journalist Edward R. Murrow, Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” His speech before the House of Commons in June, 1940, included these memorable lines: “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the sea and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall flight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.” At the end of the Battle of Britain in July of 1940, he pointed out that, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” And after the North African Invasion of 1942, he said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) had been born into a patrician New York family. He was in an unprecedented third term as president and was expecting to leave office in January of 1945 when the war broke out. When Mussolini declared war on England and France in June of 1940, Roosevelt said, “The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor." Two days before calling Congress into special session to revise the Neutrality Act, Roosevelt began a long private correspondence with Churchill. Roosevelt, too, had seen and feared the growth of Germany. He, unlike Churchill, also saw the threat of Japan. In that year he built the Arsenal of Democracy, drafted soldiers and offered Destroyers for Bases to Great Britain. He spoke of the Four Freedoms—freedom of speech and of religion and freedom from want and fear. Roosevelt proposed the Lend-Lease Act in 1941 to help meet Britain’s need for supplies while maintaining the appearance of neutrality. Through it, the US exchanged 50 destroyers for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. As Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson put it, “We are buying . . . not lending. We are buying our own security while we prepare. By our delay during the past six years, while Germany was preparing, we find ourselves unprepared and unarmed, facing a thoroughly prepared and armed potential enemy.” Churchill and Roosevelt first met face-to-face in August of 1941 aboard a ship anchored off the coast of Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter signed at the meeting became the precursor of the United Nations. From then until Roosevelt’s death in 1945, the two leaders had a close personal and professional relationship. Playwright Robert Sherwood later wrote, “It would be an exaggeration to say that Roosevelt and Churchill became chums at this conference. . . . They established an easy intimacy, a joking informality and moratorium on pomposity and cant--and also a degree of frankness in intercourse which, if not quite complete, was remarkably close to it.” After the meeting, Roosevelt cabled Churchill, “It is fun to be in the same decade with you.” Churchill later wrote, “I felt I was in contact with a very great man who was also a warm-hearted friend and the foremost champion of the high causes which we served." Pearl Harbor changed everything between the two nations. To Churchill, the Japanese attack represented a victory for Britain by making US neutrality impossible. In a speech the next day, Roosevelt called December 7, 194l, “a date which will live in infamy.” Within an hour of the speech, Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan. Treaties between Germany and Japan meant that the US was also at war with Germany, and that Germany would fight a war on two fronts. According to William D. Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Churchill and Roosevelt really ran the war . . . we were just artisans, building patterns of strategy from rough blueprints handed us by our respective Commanders-in-Chief.” According to David Stafford, author of the recently published Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets, “The intensity of their partnership during the Second World War often obscures the fact that in many respects they were an ill-assorted pair. Paradoxically, each defied his national stereotype. Churchill, the nostalgic Victorian wedded to the glories of Empire, was emotional, direct and transparent, with a lifelong predilection for the company of self-made men. Roosevelt, the New World Democrat, had the manners of an English gentleman, and behind the surface bonhomie was impenetrable, enigmatic, secretive and machiavellian. Churchill carefully wrote down his thoughts and instructions. Roosevelt was deliberately informal, often giving inconsistent verbal orders. Churchill described him as 'a charming country gentleman whose business methods are almost non-existent.' "Yet they had much in common. Each was an ambitious high-flyer who lived and breathed politics, and each courageously overcame severe handicaps: Roosevelt a crippling attack of polio, Churchill a debilitating childhood stammer and lifelong bouts of depression. Both leaned heavily on their wives. Eleanor became her husband's political eyes and ears, Clementine provided the emotional rock on which Churchill stood." Their friendship continued until Roosevelt died just weeks before the end of World War II. |
| December 2009 |