The Greatest Briton by Havardi Jeremy

Author:Havardi, Jeremy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn
Published: 2012-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

How ‘special’ was the Churchill-Roosevelt partnership before Pearl Harbor?

CHURCHILL COINED the term ‘special relationship’ in 1946 to describe the closeness of Anglo-American relations during and after the war. It has since become a standard part of the international political lexicon. The term was also retrospectively applied to the Churchill-Roosevelt wartime relationship which lasted for nearly four years. During this time, the two men created a victorious alliance against the forces of German, Italian and Japanese militarism. They felt a shared abomination for fascism, while both saw their war against Hitler as a crusade against evil. They exchanged a vast number of telegrams during the war years and met on eleven separate occasions in different parts of the globe. As author Joseph Lash put it, this was truly a ‘partnership to save the West’.

Underpinning this relationship was a genuine sense of mutual affection. As Elizabeth Nel, one of Churchill’s private secretaries, put it, ‘the sympathy and understanding, the knowledge of a common aim, which existed between these two leaders was a great force sustaining them both’. 1 Churchill declared: ‘I felt the utmost confidence in his upright, inspiring character and outlook, and a personal regard – affection I must say – for him beyond my power to express today.’ 2 Naturally the men clashed on many issues: the British Empire, the future of India and Stalin’s intentions in Europe to name just three. That this relationship was maintained despite these fierce ideological disagreements is testament to their character.

But much of what we think we know about their wartime relationship comes from Churchill’s war memoirs, which are, in their author’s own words, a ‘contribution to history’. In truth, there is still a great deal of romantic mythology attached to the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship which detracts from the notion of a ‘special relationship’. This is especially so in the years 1939-41.

At different times in the 1930s Churchill had called for closer ties between America and Britain. During a lecture tour of the country in 1932 Churchill told an audience in New York that both England and America had ‘the same outlook and no common discords’, and that both should be ‘the strong nucleus at the council board of the nations’. 3 He took to Roosevelt after the latter won the 1932 election, and also expressed support for the New Deal, calling it the ‘greatest crusade of modern times’. 4 When he entertained James Roosevelt, the President’s son at Chartwell in 1933, Churchill said that his greatest wish was to be a British Prime Minister working closely with the American President. ‘There is’, he said, ‘nothing that we could not do if we were together.’ 5 On a more personal level, he admired the way that the President coped with his physical infirmity. 6

During the Munich crisis of 1938 he again welcomed the idea of Anglo-American collaboration. He wrote that, ‘These two great kindred powers, in collaboration, could prevent – or at least localise and limit – almost any quarrel that might break out among men.

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