Franklin Roosevelt

There was “much fog on all sides,” but the United States agreed to share atomic bomb secrets with Britain—and no one else.

However much Churchill promoted a positive Anglo-American relationship, he did not create it. For Buruma to blame him for British nationalism is absurd.

The story of the Churchill, Harriman and Roosevelt daughters at the Yalta Conference was unnoticed until this account by Catherine Katz.

Hopkins to Churchill, 1942: “‘Where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God’…Even to the end.”

The main concern for Pilecki at Auschwitz was the fate of Poles, but in describing that of the Jews he asked a stark question: “Were we all people”?

During the war Churchill told a general: “Improvise and dare…He improvise and dore.” Leebaert sees America’s walk to global leadership in much the same way.

The Soviets contributed mightily to victory, but their success was owed to Churchill and Roosevelt, who provided crucial aid and kept Japan occupied.

Historical close calls, during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-21, remind us of the role of illness and chance in the fate of nations and their leaders.

For non-Russian-reading researchers, this book is indispensable. For aficionados of the history of the Second World War, it is a thought-provoking delight.

Churchill loved war. His spirit rose when it came. He fought on battlefields with a mixture of dash and calm courage. He directed wars in cabinet rooms with the moral courage and unflinching nerve that yields the best decisions. But Churchill loved something else better than he loved war. He loved peace. He loved freedom. He loved governments that protected the rights of their people and operated only with their consent.

Churchill told the story of his ancestor in beautiful Augustan Age prose, but also discovered new sources and corrected earlier historians’ errors. Mastering foreign language documents, he produced an outstanding work of history as well as literature, one that appealed to an academic as well as to a popular audience. All this came from someone whose father had said: “He has little [claim] to cleverness, to knowledge or any capacity for settled work.”

Whatever arguments we might make about Ireland in the Second World War, they will help us better to understand the dynamics of today’s relationships between the great powers.