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The White House, December 1941: Solidifying the Special Relationship
- By CITA STELZER
- | June 23, 2023
- Category: Churchill in WWII Resources
Cita Stelzer sent us these 2015 remarks during the launch of what has become the annual History dinner of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute. She offers a glimpse of the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship we had never read in such detail, and with her permission, we offer the transcript. (Omitted is her description of the dinner at Chequers, 7 December 1941, where Churchill first learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which we have covered previously.) This and other important dinners will be found in her Dinner with Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table (2013). Quotations without attribution are from that book.
Churchill in America, 1941
Thank you, Senator Kyl, for your kind introduction. Let me tell you how honored I am to be part of the opening celebration of The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute. Winston Churchill would have felt at home here tonight, in a place dedicated to furthering civil discourse.
The British and Empire-Commonwealth had been at war for over two years when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Churchill wanted to ensure that America’s desire for revenge would not lead the United States to concentrate prematurely on fighting Japan. Hitler in Europe, he believed, was the main enemy. He traveled to Washington to meet President Roosevelt—much as Prime Minister Tony Blair did immediately after September 11th, 2001, to stand together with President Bush and America.
Churchill accepted the President’s invitation to live in the White House, which he did for the better part of three weeks. Was this the beginning of what we now call the Special Relationship? I think so. The relationship lasts, I say with confidence, because Britain’s strategy assessments still have as their centerpiece the special security and military alliance with the U.S.
Churchill’s preparation
From northern Scotland on 13 December 1941, Churchill boarded the battleship HMS Duke of York for the 10-day trip to Washington. He was accompanied by Lord Beaverbrook, his daughter Mary as aide-de-camp, and a staff of high military officers. Concerned about U-boats and German spotter aircraft, the ship maintained wireless silence. The Atlantic was at its worst, WSC wrote to his wife: “We have had almost unceasing gales…. Three days ago we left our destroyers behind as they could not keep up in the rough sea…. Being in a ship in such weather as this is like being in a prison, with the extra chance of being drowned.”1
His words give a sense of how the Churchill, then 67, conceived his duty. Neither storms nor U-boats stopped him from working round the clock. Among dozens of meetings and correspondence, he dictated three long and complex papers on the future course of the war as he intended to fight it, and how he hoped to persuade Roosevelt to fight it.
In his first paper, “The Atlantic Front,” he outlined the initial goal: Anglo-American forces would occupy the entire North African coast from Dakar (on the Atlantic) to the Turkish border.
The second, “The Pacific Front,” suggested the strategies by which the Allies would regain control of the Pacific and overturn Japanese successes with increased use of British and American aircraft carriers. The third paper, “1943,” set the ultimate goal, liberation of Europe by a massive landing of allied troops. The would be at a place to be determined, and Churchill named 1943 “the date for this supreme stroke.” He only missed by a year.
If you have not read these three memoranda, in The Churchill Documents, Volume 16, you should. They prove that Churchill was amazingly prescient, deeply informed, and a master military strategist.
Grand Alliance complete
Churchill and his advisors arrived in Washington on 22 December. It is said that he “hit the White House like a cyclone.” No time was wasted. It was agreed that very night that the war in Europe took precedence. Until Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt, had faced three political obstacles: Irish- and German-American voters, a powerful isolationist bloc led by Charles Lindbergh, and his wife Eleanor’s personal disdain for the British Empire. Pearl Harbor melted these into the background. Churchill and Roosevelt were certain that once Germany was defeated, Italy and Japan would soon fall.
Having agreed on a Europe-first strategy, the leaders created an unprecedented organization: the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Military officials from America, Britain, and the Empire-Commonwealth would work together in Washington. Policies and strategies would be shared openly between the two countries. Officers would be interchanged regardless of nationality. Operating out of Washington, the Combined Chiefs ensured a smooth-working alliance for as long as it took to win the war.
Churchill and Roosevelt also agreed on command structure and on production of armaments and all-important supplies. A joint committee would be responsible for deciding all requirements—physical, human, military, naval and air—to fulfil Anglo-American war strategy. That strategy was worked out during these three weeks.
The President was eager that American forces be sent into battle as soon as they were prepared, preferably before the November 1942 congressional elections, to show voters that the administration was taking action. A landing in North Africa was agreed—it came to be known as Operation Torch, the first wartime engagement of the Grand Alliance against the Nazis.
At the dinner table
It seems to me that these day-long meetings—and the accompanying lunches and dinners—were immensely important. They bonded the two new allies. And they set up a structure that would prosecute the war to its successful conclusion.
A common language helped enormously, although once or twice the vernacular was misunderstood. (To Britons, “tabling” a proposal meant putting it up for a discussion; the Americans thought it meant “forget it.”)
A word about the meals. While Churchill was Roosevelt’s guest in the White House, during these three weeks, they shared every meal except breakfast. It is agreed by almost everyone that Henrietta Nesbitt, the cook (not chef in those days) was the worst in White House history. She had done much to help Mrs. Roosevelt renovate the antique, cockroach-ridden kitchen, but her menus were unimaginative.
The fare often included chipped beef on toast with mushrooms and boiled broccoli. (The President hated broccoli; Eleanor and Nesbitt knew it.) There were molded Jell-O salads, shredded cheese with tomatoes, and Bavarian cream pie: out-of-fashion foods today and not well prepared then. Churchill’s only comment on White House cuisine came when pressed for his opinion of the President’s favorite pigs’ knuckles. He did finally admit they were “a bit slimy.”2
“Children’s Hour”
No wonder President Roosevelt looked forward to what he called his “Children’s Hour”: the time when he mixed and served his lethal pre-dinner martinis. Churchill was of course on his best behavior. He was there to work and to woo the President, so he would not have complained about the food or drink. Still, one source says the Prime Minister was observed emptying his martini glass into a nearby potted plant. Another said he spit out the olives.
Churchill, more accustomed to pre-dinner champagne, did however see some usefulness to FDR’s ritual. Earlier he had written: “I am no devotee of cocktails, still I must admit that this preliminary festival while the guests are arriving is most agreeable.”3
Having lived with rationing at home, most British guests ate heartily in the White House. Sometimes they had two meals at once, according to Mrs. Nesbitt. Two eggs in the morning was standard; at home they had one egg per week. Mrs. Nesbitt served Chicken-à-la-King two or three times a week, much to Roosevelt’s repeated protests. Most British loved it, since chicken was rationed at home. Privately, Churchill was less enthusiastic, he “did not like his chicken messed about with.”
Christmas amidst war
At dusk on Christmas Eve, the two leaders stood on the White House portico and together lit the national Christmas tree. Churchill spoke to the nation: “I cannot feel myself a stranger here, in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which…convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.”4
Christmas dinner at the White House was a family affair including many Roosevelt children and cousins as well as their British guests. We are indeed fortunate to have virtually the same holiday menu here—but tonight it is perfectly cooked!
The military and civil staff meetings continued day and night, establishing personal relationships that in many cases lasted throughout and after the war. On the 26th Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress. Then he took a few days off, enjoying the warm ocean in Pompano, Florida. There he spent much time dictating position papers and arranging for future coordination between the Allies. The Secret Service had wanted privacy for his visit, but it was difficult, as Churchill insisted on bathing every day, frolicking in the surf, sometimes without what was then called a bathing costume.
Think of this: A 67-year old, in an era when men his age had mostly retired, or were dead. A severely disabled President with 20 pounds of steel on his legs, unable to stand unaided. Much of the American fleet destroyed at Pearl Harbor. Britain’s colonies in the Far East attacked by sea and land. Most of the European continent in Hitler’s hands. And yet these two leaders were confidently mapping a route to victory.
Return to the fray
As Churchill prepared to return to London he wrote: “I must leave the hospitable and exhilarating atmosphere of the White House and of the American nation, erect and infuriate against tyrants and aggressors.”5 Having established the structures that would win the war, he flew back on a Boeing flying boat, taking the controls himself for a short time. He had been scheduled to sail back, but the lure of a flight in a new aircraft easily persuaded him to fly. And there he resumed his tireless round of policy-making at the dinner table. I am sure that if he were still with us, he would wrangle an invitation to the Justice O’Connor Institute, for civil conversation.
Last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that a survey of 1300 CEOs in 68 different countries had chosen Churchill as their most admired leader. In this day and age, when leadership is so crucial, it is important for us all to recall what made him so great. He saved Europe from fascism and cemented the “Grand Alliance.” That alliance held throughout a long war on broad fronts, despite many setbacks and disappointments. After the war, he warned again about another “Gathering Storm” in Eastern Europe, one to be heeded today with Russian troops again on the move.
The author
Cita Stelzer graduated from Barnard College and was a special aide to New York Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Hugh Carey, before joining an economic consulting firm specializing in regulatory policy. She is the author of two works on Sir Winston: Dinner with Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table (2013) and Working with Winston: The Unsung Women Behind Britain’s Greatest Statesman (2019). Her next book, Churchill’s American Network: Winston Churchill and the Forging of the Special Relationship, will be published by Pegasus in November.
Endnotes
1 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC) to Clementine Churchill, en route Washington, 21 December 1941, in The Churchill Documents, vol. 16, The Ever Widening War, 1941 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2011), 1662, 1665.
2 It was not his first encounter. During his first run for Parliament, in Oldham in 1899, Churchill went to “an inexpensive pub to dine on pig’s knuckles and beer.” (He lost.) Robert Lewis Taylor, Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1952), 164.
3 WSC, “Land of Corn and Lobsters,” in Collier’s, 5 August 1933, reprinted in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, 4 vols., London: Library of Imperial History, 1974, IV: 263.
4 WSC, The Unrelenting Struggle (London: Cassell, 1942), 351.
5 WSC, The Grand Alliance (London: Cassell, 1950), 625.