I just finished Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham's stirring history of the personal relationship between FDR and Churchill that began in September 1939, shortly after the latter became First Lord of the Admiralty (and 8 months before he became Prime Minister), and lasted until Roosevelt's death in April 1945.
It's a very good book, although not a great one--Meacham provides almost too much background in the early going and then, as if tiring of his subject, rushes from one major event to the next in the final years of the war, leaving a few too many holes along the way.
But I found myself lingering as I neared the end, reluctant to finish it, and that's a credit to Meacham's ability to bring his subjects to life as much as it is to the gripping nature of the lives they led. In the simplest terms, Roosevelt was the savvier politician, and Churchill was the keener intellect--and ultimately the more sympathetic figure. But what makes their story compelling is how difficult it is to reduce them to simple terms, and their relationship was as complex as they were.
I'm not going to write a full-on review here, but I made a number of notes to myself while reading that seemed worth hanging on to in some form:
On Leadership: Frances Perkins, Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor (and the first woman in a president's cabinet) said of FDR:
His capacity to inspire and encourage those who had to do tough, confused and practically impossible jobs was beyond dispute. I, and everyone else, came away from an interview with the President feeling better. It was not that he had solved my problem or given me a clear direction which I could follow blindly, but that he had made me more cheerful, stronger, more determined to do what, while I talked with him, I had clearly seen was my job and not his. It wasn't so much what he said as the spirit he conveyed.
It's hard to imagine a better image of leadership--of management--in action.
During Churchill's second stint as Prime Minister in the 1950s, he called his private secretary:
"Has anything happened," Churchill asked? "No," replied [his secretary.] "Then let's make something happen," Churchill said, with mischief in his eyes.
He would have been at least 77 at that time, and he would serve in the House of Commons until he
was 90--a model of vigor and determination.
Finally, from Churchill's historical volume, The Hinge of Fate:
There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril of misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool's paradise.
On Means of Communication: Churchill, speaking at a press conference after his September 1944 summit with Roosevelt in Quebec:
What an ineffectual method of conveying human thought correspondence is [laughter]--telegraphed with all its rapidity, all the facilities of our--of modern intercommunication. They are simply dead, blank walls compared to personal--personal contacts.
I obviously rely heavily on the "facilities of modern intercommunication," but I share Churchill's view of their limitations and insufficiency as a substitute for face-to-face contact. Meacham sounds a cautionary note: "Meetings often produce a kind of magic, but magic can fade. Such is the power and peril of personal diplomacy." Roosevelt's experiences with Stalin bear this out in spades--see below--but I still believe in the value of relationships and direct personal contact.
On the Western Front, the Soviet Union, and the Postwar World: From the earliest days of the war, Churchill advocated attacks on the periphery--North Africa, the Middle East--while Roosevelt and the U.S. general staff pushed for a frontal assault on Europe by way of an invasion of France. The Soviets, who bore the brunt of the Wehrmacht's wrath from late 1941 until D-Day in mid-1944, were understandably anxious to see a Western Front opened, and they perceived Churchill's resistance as foot-dragging.
Meacham takes pains to point out that an invasion of France was inconceivable in 1942 and might not have been successful even a year later--and if it had failed, it could have been a disatrous setback. However, given Churchill's adamant desire to preserve the British Empire, even in the face of Roosevelt's support for its (eventual) dismantling, it raises suspicions that the Prime Minister may have been seeking to maintain British power around the globe while letting the Soviets and Germans exhaust each other.
I read Alan Clark's Barbarossa several years ago, and the harrowing story of the Eastern Front left a deep impression on me. The Germans' horrific cruelty in the East made their behavior in the West seem benign by comparison, and the scope of the death and suffering inflicted on the Russians, Poles and others in the East dwarfed that of the British, Americans and their Western allies.
Although it should always be remembered that Stalin first tried to make peace with Hitler in 1939 and left the British isolated for over a year before the Nazis turned on him, the fact remains that while the Brits and Americans readied themselves and their war industries for the assault on France, Germany's victims in the East were dying by the millions.
It is against this complicated background that we have to consider the sometimes conflicting plans made by Churchill and Roosevelt for the postwar world. Churchill was far more prescient than FDR in seeing Stalin's goal of a Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, and struggled to convince FDR of the danger. Roosevelt, with some justification, saw Churchill's efforts as an attempt to resist the End of Empire, and placed great stock in his plans for a United Nations, dominated by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., with China and Britain as junior members of the leadership.
Starting with the first meeting of the Big Three at Teheran in late 1943, Roosevelt sought to achieve a personal connection with Stalin that would enable him to "do business" with the Russian leader, and this often entailed distancing himself from Churchill and his policies. Despite continued close Anglo-American cooperation throughout 1944, Roosevelt persisted on this course through the fateful summit at Yalta in early 1945, when some historians--alhough not Meacham--feel that his efforts (and possibly his advancing illness) emboldened the Soviets.
By the spring of 1945, Roosevelt seems to have changed his mind, expressing his fear that Stalin intended to violate the Yalta agreements with regard to the postwar settlement. Churchill was heartened, but it was too late. It's unlikely that even Roosevelt's forceful opposition could have dissuaded Stalin occupying Eastern Europe--the Soviets were determined to prevent a third war with Germany over this territory--but the President took any faint hopes of avoiding the Cold War with him.
In light of this complicated history--and following the recent publication of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, a counterfactual novel in which the isolationist Charles Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election--it's useful to note that FDR's sensitive but sure leadership was essential in convincing a skeptical America that Hitler was a serious threat to her own liberty. Meacham writes in 2003, "But for [FDR's] caution in those early years, we could be living in the grim shadow of an isolationist Age of Lindbergh, not in the light of the Age of Roosevelt."
On Life and Death: From Churchill's novel, Savrola:
When the notes of life ring false, men should correct them by referring to the tuning fork of death. It is when that clear menacing tone is heard that the love of life grows keenest in the human heart.
I ended "Franklin and Winston" with the distinct impression--although Meacham never says so directly--that FDR probably worked himself to death. Today, when we see how much a peacetime presidency ages a man in four or eight years, it's startling to remember that Roosevelt led the nation for over 12 years, during its greatest economic crisis and its most profound wartime threat.
Speaking to the House of Commons after FDR's death, Churchill said,
President Roosevelt's physical afflication lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, woud have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene.
Roosevelt's example makes me think of how much I make of the minor obstacles life has placed in my path, and encourages me to overcome them--I'm also more grateful for the advantages I've been given, and inspired to make better use of them.
Looking over these notes, I'm reminded that Churchill lived nearly 30 years longer than Roosevelt, and spent much of that time writing--although he often played second fiddle to FDR in life, he comes to the foreground in any literary history. I do have a special fondness for Churchill--I share his loquacity, his high and low moods--and I view FDR as a more distant, more ambivalent figure, but in "Franklin and Winston," Meacham has done both men justice.
