Was the personal rapport between FDR and Churchill special, transcending the bond that one might expect from two government leaders allied against the juggernaut of Nazi Germany? Speaking of a “personal relationship” raises the question: Was there a genuine friendship between the two legendary leaders?
Most historians, especially from Britain, conclude that the relationship was perceived through the cosmetic strategies of public relations efforts, at the time exactly what was needed for these men’s political roles. Such historians believe that FDR and Churchill were two heads of government who got along well together—most of the time—but really simply smiled for the photographers. The prolific British author Max Hastings has called it “a friendship of state.” He dismisses Randolph Churchill recording his father telling him that he and Roosevelt had made “a deep and intimate contact of friendship” during the three days they spent together. (I assume Randolph’s reference is to Churchill’s first visit to the White House in December 1941.)
If this friendship did go beyond that of two heads of state, Churchill took pains to hide it lest it appear “inappropriate,” even dangerous, to his cabinet colleagues in London. There were those who had already expressed the fear that Britain’s interests would be compromised if Roosevelt turned on his legendary charm. FDR never referred to their relationship, but at the dinner table he might make light fun of Churchill’s “Colonel Blimpish” colonial attitudes. Yet his affection for his co-leader in World War II was, I believe, plain to see.
I think the difference between these two views is quite important for our history. We need to assess the dynamics of this extraordinary friendship, beginning with “what happened”—especially the way it was viewed at the time, by which I mean those early days after America had been forced to enter the war following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Strategic objectives then had to be set in place for war against Germany and Japan. FDR was now a full-time commander in chief of all U.S. armed forces while Churchill was not only prime minster in a wartime coalition cabinet but Britain’s minister of defense as well. The two leaders’ roles were very different, and made even more so by the way each exercised his formal mandates.
Most writers hold the hardheaded, it seems to me, view that here were two seasoned political pros simply playing their assigned roles. I can see their reasons, but I feel they ignore a lot of plain facts as well as firsthand observations. They do not pay attention to the playfulness in the correspondence between FDR and Churchill, seeing it merely as stylistic banter, a useful front for the usual wary relationship between nations, even when wartime allies. These writers point also to the strongly divergent views between the two men toward the end of the war to hammer home their opinion.
Roy Jenkins’s comment in his biography of Churchill is typical: “It is more probable that the emotional link between Churchill and Roosevelt was never as close as is commonly thought. It was more a partnership of circumstance and convenience than a friendship of individuals, each of whom . . . was a star of a brightness which needed its own unimpeded orbit.”1
So is a genuine friendship between FDR and Churchill just a romantic notion? Someone like Jenkins might reply, “You’re not serious!—two hard-boiled politicians like Churchill and Roosevelt?” To which I would respond, “Yes indeed!”
I feel their actual mutual sympathy was obvious to most of the people around them. Was Churchill being cynical when he referred to himself as “a former naval person,” knowing Roosevelt’s love for the navy? No. Churchill had the same soft spot for the navy. It seems to me quite normal for Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty when their correspondence first began, to seek ways of establishing rapport with the president of the United States. And from the very beginning of their long correspondence it was FDR who led the way in establishing the friendly style, creating the amiable atmosphere between the two.
When they first met in 1941 on their respective warships in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, producing the Atlantic Charter, the two national leaders also demonstrated the value of their rapport. Their meeting was marked by an easy relationship, not the usual, more diplomatic reserve.
Historians who downplay the importance of the friendship have evidence on their side. Churchill seems to have thrown up a screen to obscure the genuineness of the personal friendship. For this, we have not only his own writing, we also have the reports of people close to him, such as John Colville, his private secretary. Quoting Churchill himself, Colville wrote that he had engaged in a “concerted and calculated” wooing of FDR, and that he was willing to throw over normal English reserve to “charm” Roosevelt and to gain the president’s willingness to bring America into the war. Colville didn’t understand, nor did Churchill perhaps, that it would be the U.S. Congress that would have to be “charmed” if the United States was to come into the war.
Upon returning to London, Churchill went out of his way to minimize his relationship with FDR. At the time when he spoke to Colville—using him because he knew Colville would spread the word—Churchill was wary of the diverse personalities in his War Cabinet. Key members were his supporters but others were more reserved, feeling that Churchill needed to be controlled. Even members of his own Conservative Party, as well as the Labour Party opposition—including Cabinet Deputy Prime Minister Clement Atlee—felt that their prime minister was prone to impulsivity.
Also, influential Foreign Office professionals were edgy about Churchill’s relationship with FDR, fearful that it was too close, too personal, and, God forbid, it might interfere with the Foreign Office planning. (As indeed it did.) From their point of view, Churchill’s rapport with Roosevelt was plainly inappropriate for a British prime minister.
My stressing the friendship between the two leaders doesn’t diminish the fact that Churchill was not without a well-developed agenda when he came in December 1941, after Pearl Harbor, to visit the White House. To put it simply, the British needed American aid, both material and financial, in order to continue the war against Germany. Once France had been defeated in 1940 they were on their own. Indeed they fully expected an invasion across the English Channel—until Hitler changed his mind and invaded the Soviet Union instead. However, by early 1942 they could anticipate soon being broke—and this was because the U.S. Congress insisted on the British paying cash on the barrelhead for any arms bought from America. There were no loans or credit.
Especially after FDR’s resounding reelection victory in November 1940, Churchill believed that the president had the executive power—as a prime minister would have had—to move past an isolationist Congress and send aid to Britain. He didn’t grasp the fact that even though Roosevelt was 100 percent behind Britain, his hands were still tied by Congress. My guess is he assumed FDR was only stalling for domestic political reasons. So that when he came to the White House for that December visit, it was with a definite plan to put pressure on the president for money and materiel. He had no choice. Even with the United States and Britain becoming allies after the Pearl Harbor disaster, he knew that without aid, and soon, Britain couldn’t carry on much longer.
We must add to this the fact that Churchill, as I have already said, lacked a real understanding of how differently the game of politics is played across the Atlantic. The difference between a parliamentary form of democracy and one in which the executive and the legislative branches are purposely made separate is very important. Churchill’s writings indicate that, while he surely understood intellectually the difference in form and structure, he did not fully grasp the political implications. Therefore he did not see as clearly as he might have that, from 1939 on, FDR was taking enormous personal political risks on behalf of Great Britain.
Over and over again he expressed his expectation that FDR would now be able to bring America into the war. Roosevelt, however, made it plain, especially in the 1940 election, that the United States would not enter the war without first being attacked. I should add here that FDR’s efforts, prior to Pearl Harbor, to provoke a
n attack in the Atlantic from German submarines had not proved fruitful despite the many risks taken. As an American politician running for office, he could not have said otherwise, but with every one of FDR’s recent political victories—the Lend-Lease Act, for one, not to mention his third-term reelection—Churchill always felt that now FDR could, if he wanted to, pull America into the war. Apparently he simply refused to see that Congress would have turned the president down if he had asked for a declaration of war against Germany. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor made all the difference. And even then it was only the precipitous action of Hitler unilaterally declaring war on America that immediately brought the United States into the war against Germany.
The comparison between the political systems of the two English-speaking countries appears easy to grasp, but it isn’t so. My course on the British political system at Columbia University when I did graduate work there was excellent, but when I moved to England I found that I really understood very little about the politics of the British parliamentary system, the way it actually works. And thirty years as a member of the Reform Club in London has amply illustrated for me how little my friends there understand the U.S. democratic system, our politics. After years of trying to explain and illustrate this to them, my conclusion is that making comparisons is only confusing and, often worse, misleading. So when I refer to Churchill’s “lack of understanding,” it is not meant as a criticism of his intellectual powers, it is just an observation on the complexity of trying to understand the American system from his point of view.
But back to that memorable meeting in Washington when the prime minister of Britain spent two weeks living comfortably in the White House. It was on this occasion that the friendship of FDR and Churchill was cemented. Correspondence and the brief Atlantic Charter meeting had shaped it, but seeing each other daily with time for banter and informal exchanges, especially when the two men were on their own, was very different. Indeed it was unprecedented and most unusual for a British prime minister and an American president to become chums.
What Roy Jenkins and others ignore, or feel to be irrelevant, is that Churchill and Roosevelt shared many cultural and class values. True, they did not have exactly the same background, but both been born into households of nannies and servants. And both went to schools proper to their status (though neither did terribly well). Each went into politics as soon as the opportunity arose, and succeeded.
Once in the political arena they were thought of as rebels, upstarts, too big for their britches. Yet they both were recognized as competent and were appointed to senior government administrative posts while still young.2 Still, the superiors of Roosevelt and Churchill kept a close eye on them, trying to rein in their enthusiasm in the exercise of power.
The British historian Robert Rhodes James has written about Churchill as “a study in failure.” His career was indeed marked by serious ups and downs, being in and then being out—banished into the political wilderness—but his accomplishments while holding ministerial positions were recognized.
FDR’s political career followed the trajectory of his cousin, and idol, Theodore Roosevelt. It was a star that rose and then suddenly plummeted. Like Churchill, he went into “the political wilderness” after eight years as assistant secretary of the navy. This was, of course, not because of any action of his own but for reasons of having fallen victim to the debilitating polio that left him crippled from the hips down, unable to get around without assistance. After having been on the national scene as vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats in 1920 and recognized as a rising star, he was quickly a political has-been. Thus, when Winston Churchill arrived at the White House in December 1941, he and his presidential host both knew well the victories and the defeats that mark all practicing politicians.
When he arrived for his stay at the White House, Churchill brought with him a small version of his Map Room. This was installed in the Monroe room of the White House, just across the hall from his bedroom, the same bedroom that Queen Elizabeth had used when she and King George visited the Executive Mansion. It should be noted that he pronounced himself immediately at home. He didn’t have to adjust his habits to fit into the Roosevelt household. And it was the same at the family home at Hyde Park. My guess is that he was much more at his ease than he might have been if he’d been snagged into spending a couple of weeks at Buckingham Palace with the king and queen as his hosts.
There was a relaxed informality, owing much to my grandmother, which blended in with the accustomed White House formalities, a style Churchill would have found compatible. As his youngest daughter, Mary Soames, said to me, “We felt quite at home at your family’s place at Hyde Park.” We know from his aides that he also felt the same way about the White House.
Winston Churchill undoubtedly knew that the White House was the Executive Mansion of the president of the United States, FDR being chief of state as well as head of government. Hence the White House was something of a hybrid—a cross between Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street. But the prime minister was not in the least fazed by protocol ranking him one step down from his host, who was head of state, just as the king was in Britain. This is why it was FDR who always chaired the meetings of the Big Three wherever they met.
In the evenings after supper, they smoked and drank, and bantered. Serious business was reviewed but it was mixed with storytelling and, most importantly, a sharing of speculations and “what ifs.” Both men liked to display their knowledge of the world beyond their own countries and the politics of the “spheres of influence” across the globe. It was a longstanding way of keeping the peace that had been the cornerstone of international relations since the Congress of Vienna, after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
In the White House my grandmother took the prime minister’s visit in her stride, but she was much concerned about their guest’s proclivity for “staying up all hours, talking with ‘Pa’—until two in the morning!” she said. For, as she noted, her husband was used to going to bed well before midnight. She said, “He drank whiskey right along with Mr. Churchill,” and then added, “although not as much.” The prime minister would have a nap in the afternoon, she reported, “while Franklin was at his desk” catching up on his work. “Yet ‘Pa’ didn’t seem tired; indeed, he seemed to thrive on it.” My grandmother noted that Mr. Churchill had members of the White House staff flabbergasted; they’d never seen imbibing on that scale. “He consumed an astonishing amount throughout the day,” she said, then adding, genuinely puzzled, “He doesn’t seem to show any effect from it!”
Quite aside from the alcohol, my grandmother reported that “Pa” and the prime minister seemed “to charm each other” and that she hadn’t seen “father” so relaxed in another person’s company for a long while. For me that is the key as to “what happened,” the telling observation, indicative that the warm feelings between the two men were genuine.
One of the most revealing expressions of Roosevelt and Churchill’s unusual relationship occurred at the regularly scheduled White House press conference. This fell on the first full day of Churchill’s visit, in the late afternoon. FDR had invited the prime minister to join him. The two heads of state sat behind Roosevelt’s large desk. The Washington Star described the scene: “Two great statesmen/showmen, sharing the star parts in a world drama that will be read and studied for centuries to come, played a sparkling and unique scene at the White House yesterday.”
The Oval Office was crowded with reporters. Roosevelt asked Churchill to stand on his chair so the press could see him better. The British leader obliged and proceeded to shoot back answers to the reporters’ questions, all the while waving his cigar to emphasize points. Alistair Cooke, then a young Englishman reporting from the United States for the Manchester Guardian, described it as “terribly exciting” and wrote, “Accustomed to commanding this room and this audience, Roosevelt sat back and delightedly—even proudly—watched Churchill cast his spell.”
What I find amazing is on
e flamboyant politician inviting an equally flamboyant one to take over his stage and make it his own—which Churchill did. As Newsweek reported, “The smiling president looked like an old trouper who, on turning impresario, had produced a smash hit. . . . Some thought they detected in his face admiration for a man who had at least equaled him in the part in which he himself was a star.”
This certainly doesn’t square with the narrow view of Lord Moran, Churchill’s physician. Not known for political sagacity, he pronounced that really all the two leaders had in common was the war. While more accepted authorities, such as the British historian David Adams, take a centrist view, describing Roosevelt and Churchill as having “a marriage of convenience,” for me, that fails to take into account the importance of the trust a personal friendship generates.
Some historians might propose that the friendship between Churchill and Roosevelt was not dissimilar to the smile, winks, and nods we could observe between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Or, more cynically, was it primarily for the press, as when the Blairs and Clintons were photographed dancing together after supper in the White House State Dining Room? Neither of these images passes muster; the relationships were completely different—consider the time and circumstances. The word used by the press is one I don’t like, “bonding.” It covers everything from casual interaction to merely an expedient expression of compatibility and affection—as well as describing the real thing.
At the opposite extreme were those observers who gushed about the personal relationship—and that isn’t helpful, either. In his recent book, historian Jean Edward Smith has a more measured approach, drawing from remarks by FDR’s press secretary. Bill Hassett reported that Churchill, during his 1941 White House visit, made himself at home, walking barefoot, going wherever he chose whenever he chose. FDR enjoyed the same informality. And Smith quotes Lord Ismay, “There was something intimate in their friendship. They used to stroll in and out of each other’s rooms.” (FDR would of course always be in his wheelchair.)
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