American History Hit - FDR & Churchill

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

FDR and Winston Churchill spent 113 days in each others' company during WWII. FDR even saw Churchill naked. But how close were the pair in personality and in strategy? How did the personal relationship between these two giants of history shape the war? And why, in the end, did Churchill see it as a failure?Dan Snow, of our sister podcast 'Dan Snow's History Hit', joins Don to talk about the most 'Special Relationship' of all.Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. December 24, 1943. Once more, we find President Franklin D. Roosevelt seated at his microphone.

As we heard last week, the president had been meeting with allied leaders across Europe and beyond. Among them was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his steadfast partner in the war effort. Churchill had been laid low by a fever for six days earlier in December, but the conferences proceeded as planned and were deemed a success. the special relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill forged in the crucible of war had been reaffirmed, setting the stage for their continued collaboration in the fight against tyranny.

Of course, as you all know, Mr. Churchill and I have happily met many times before, and we know and understand each other very well. Indeed, Mr. Churchill has become known and beloved by many millions of Americans and the heartfelt prayers of all of us have been with this great citizen of the world in his recent serious illness.

Greetings all, welcome to American History Hit I'm Don Wildman. The superlatives used to describe the British leader Winston Churchill, indomitable, resolute, tenacious, defender of the empire are often followed by disparaging ones, arrogant, imperious, warmonger, autocrat.

It's a regular facet of the great figures of history, two sides of the same coin. But Churchill, who intersected with world events as if destiny had his number, required these contradictory traits, certainly as the Second World War became inevitable. Without Churchill, there is no answer to Hitler. The British appease and don't fight. Without Churchill, a reluctant U.S. is not drawn into the conflict. it was Churchill's special relationship with the equally imperious Franklin Roosevelt that forged the alliance that finally dismantled the German war machine.

And 80 years on, we would not be living in the free world we enjoy today without it. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt are still the rulers, against which all leaders in crisis are measured. There's a new limited series on Netflix these days that examines the mercurial and dynamic Winston Churchill, and it features prominently the voice of our guest. today, a dynamic man himself, who also happens to have founded the streamer upon which this podcast is carried. He is the host of Dan Snow's History Hit and founder of HistoryHit.com. Dan Snow, welcome to American History Hit. What an honor. It's great to be here.

Happy to have you know, and no disparaging descriptors for you. We've done a number of interviews in the past on this podcast. People can go right back to the beginning and find them. But also recently, we've been doing a lot on FDR. So this is about, we're right in the pocket of what we've been doing a lot of lately. I invite listeners to track back to episode 243, FDR on the New Deal. But today, we're lucky to have, Dan, a living Englishman to tell us about Winston Churchill in World War II. Take us back, Dan, if you will, to the midsummer months of 1940.

France has surrendered. The Dutch fell a month earlier. Now it's Great Britain, alone against the Nazis. Grim days. How have events gone so badly? Well, this is the huge question. this is the great hinge point of modern British history. It's what everyone is obsessed by,

these few days in May 1940 when the fate of Britain, its empire, and probably the democratic world hung in the balance. You have the greatest defeat in the history of the British Army takes place on the continent of Europe. And we've had a few. We've had a few knockbacks. There was a little local difficulty down there in Virginia in the early 1780s.

Some of your listeners may remember. But this was a humiliation of catastrophe. The British and French armies together combined, still on paper, there's still great, two great imperial states on earth. They were eviscerated, destroyed, humiliated by the German war machine in May 1940. In the space for a couple of weeks, the Germans just run rings, literally run rings around them and reach the coast and divide great chunks of the force from each other. It's a complete defeat. It's disaster. Well, this is the time period that we're talking about the darkest hour, the famous speech he makes in the fall.

how does Churchill view America during all this? How does that sort of loom for him? Well, Churchill becomes prime minister on the day the Germans invade France and the low countries, right? So Churchill has been prime minister for a couple of weeks. He's staring down the barrel at the worst defeat in British history. Then France drops out of the war, signs a peace with Hitler, and Britain and its empire, we should say huge empire, but Britain and its empire are alone fighting against Germany. And this is like Churchill's waited his whole life. You said in your brilliant introduction, like church's got fate or destiny on speed down, he used to tell people when he was a kid,

one day, one day I shall save the British Empire. He grew up in a palace. He's the grandson of a Duke, his forebears stretched back, performing all sorts of important tasks through history. One of his ancestors was the greatest general in British history, the Duke of Morbara. So he was trained and put pressure on himself

to be a great man. That's all he wanted to do in his life. And now's his chance, and it's all gone to ashes. So, Britain is fighting for its life against Germany. Churchill has two very simple ideas. This is what makes him a great man. He made many, many, many mistakes,

but he had two very simple ideas in 1940. And on those two things rest his reputation. One is he knew he could not compromise with Hitler. Hitler represented an evil that was almost unprecedented in human affairs. This was not like Napoleon. There was not like Kaiser the Wilhelm. There's not like Louis XIV. There's not like King Philip of Spain.

We could live with those guys. it would be awkward, but you could live it. This is an existential threat to everything that Winston Churchill believes, everything, liberal democracy, Western democracy, everything that it stands for. So he's got that idea in his head. So he's going to fight, even if he has to turn Britain into a graveyard, a bomb-blasted graveyard to do so, he's going to fight Hitler. His second idea is he's going to drag the Americans in.

He knows he can't win without America. So he says to his son on 18th of May, 1940, super early when you think about it, I shall drag the United States in. And with American manpower, with American military might, with American industrial might, Britain and America, together could beat Germany. That's it. That's his strategy. It's clear and he pursues it. Isolationism is the dominant opinion among Americans. Gallup poll taken in 1940 says 93% of Americans opposed declaring war on Germany, which is amazing when we look back on it. Tell me about his first foray to the United States. He becomes prime minister, as you say, replacing Neville Chamberlain, May 10th, 1940, May 15th, he cables FDR. The very same day he hears from the French

Prime Minister, Renaud, we are beaten. What does he say in that first communications? Well, he loved America. His mom was American. Yeah. The only thing I'm common with Winston Churchill, sadly, is that my dad's a Brit, my mom's North American, my mom's Canadian. So he's one of those many Brits who has this kind of transatlantic heritage. And he thinks he can do business in America. He thinks of himself in some ways than America. and there's a great moment in New York when he was hit by a car, I think it was in the 1920s, and he got hit by a car and he managed to get the doctor to prescribe him a vast amount of alcohol in Prohibition era America to make sure he could survive. So he writes straight

away to FDR and he says, look, we are doing our best. The scene has darkened swiftly. We are about to be attacked here ourselves. No question. We're getting ready for invasion. We're getting ready for be it air assault, be it airborne assault or even naval assault. and we're going to fight. We're going to fight. Don't you worry? And by fighting, we're fighting for, not just for Britain, we're not just such empire, we're fighting for you. We're fighting for Western democratic liberal democracies. Not unlike a certain Ukrainian president has been in for the last few years. He goes, look, every dollar you spend now giving to us to fight Putin is a dollar you won't have to spend fighting him yourself in a few years time. So that is Churchill's

exact pitch. And he says, what we need at destroyers, we need ships. And we do, and he does say, we're going on paying dollars as long as we can, so we're going to pay for this stuff. But I'd like to feel confident that when we can no longer pay, you will give us the stuff all the same. And then he finishes by saying, if you leave this too long and we're knocked out of this war, well, then you've got a big problem, USA. You've got a European continent dominated by a massively powerful Nazi war machine with the wind at its back. And trust me, he says to Roosevelt, you'd rather deal with me. You'd rather give me some battered old chips, a bit of can, Give that stuff to me now because otherwise you're going to be fighting Hitler and it's going to be bad.

You mentioned his ties to America and his familiarity of the culture. How familiar is he with and does he sympathize with Roosevelt's situation in terms of the isolationist? Is he aware of this tenuous position Roosevelt is in? That's a great question. It's something that I probably don't think enough about because Roosevelt had a huge problem. As you say, you quoted that fact. The Americans did not want to go to war against Hitler in 1940 and understandably. You know, when I go to the beach over, the Great Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach Day, and I walk around, I see 19-year-old kids from Omaha, and I think, what are they doing here so far from home? Like, it's hard. This is a hard thing to sell to people, right? So I respect the American people in their desire to stay out of trouble. If I lived in the middle of America, particularly, you bet I wouldn't be clamoring to fight Germany. Yeah. But I think that what Churchill does is he launched an influence campaign, right? His speeches are great. Some of the funest speeches ever made in the English language up there with the Gettes-Begers. address and some of Dr. King's speeches. But in those pieces, you listen to it very closely,

he is speaking, yes, he's speaking to the MPs in his own parliament. He's trying to convince the MPs, back me, we're going to fight Hitler. He's speaking to the British public. He's also speaking to the world public. He's setting this up, he's setting this up as a global war against evil that he hopes will help Roosevelt. If he just goes, yeah, this is an old-fashioned British, you know, the Brits have been fighting on the continent for 300 years, right? We've been swapping provinces and with the French and the Austrians of the Germans, but he doesn't want it to be seen as that kind of war. This is not like, oh, we'll take Alsace the rain, we'll give you back Gibraltar, you know,

all that kind of stuff. This is a all-or-nothing fight against something that is evil. And he's doing that to try and help Roosevelt, to try and say, I'm going to sell this in a different way. Right. I mean, you're touching on the very magical chemistry of this man. Same went for FDR, but they both have resumes that are very unique in that they have in effect fought wars. They've been ministers of war in the past. In Churchill's case, he actually went to war in the Boer War and has a very famous hero from that time period. But they're also playing this big stage of PR, which both these guys are amazing at. I would say Churchill even more so than Roosevelt. And that's the amazing story behind these guys that they have to walk both these things. Churchill was a genius of media, you know, and a fierce, amazing. He writes tons of stuff after the war looking back at it.

He'd been journalists before that. So they walk both lines, both of these guys. It's really interesting. Yeah, we sometimes think of so true, man. We sometimes think of these guys as old school patrician, pre-internet, pre-TV, grand strategists. These two were ferocious PR guys. They knew exactly what was going on.

They knew exactly how to move democratic audiences one way or another. You mentioned this before. I just want to circle back. Why couldn't Britain take on Germany itself? I mean, there's a major industrial power at this time, large population. Couldn't they have beaten Germany? The Brits faced a very tough battle against Germans. They were two equally matched price fighters. It would have been, they'd have been punch-hrunk by the end. I mean, you're going to end up in a situation not unlike the Napoleon it was, where Britain wouldn't have been able to get an army ashore on the continent

to take on the German war machine, but the Germans wouldn't be able to build a fleet to cross the, you know, it's the same problem Napoleon's got, right? So you're going to end up with this kind of maritime power against this continental European power, and it's going to be a bit of a stalemate. Now, Germany conquered this vast empire in Europe from like the biggest since the Caesars, right? So you've got, you know, from the border of France to the Vistula River and what is now Poland, if he'd actually exploited that empire and kind of mobilized it in an effective way, instead, actually it was run with a mixture of genocidal savagery and incompetence.

So actually, but yes, it would have been a multi-year project, a multi-year project. and Britain didn't have at that site, you know, they just didn't, they didn't have the results. They couldn't build a massive army to go alongside its massive Navy. So Britain needed help. It was the head start that they had. Yeah. Yeah, this massive head start. It really is important to recognize 1940.

Americans don't think of this for us. Usually World War II begins on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. But the fact is, these events that happened 1939 until 41, had a lot to do with Churchill and Roosevelt, talking to each other and developing these programs would end up in Lend-Lease and so forth. And that's where we're going to. But you have to understand in the British world, you're talking about the assumption that Germany had that they could invade, just like they had France and Dutch and Holland and all the rest of them. They would just walk into England. But by September 15th, which is the Battle of Britain Day, they find out that's not going to be possible through their air force.

So suddenly they begin the blitz. So the blitz goes on for 52 days. You know, this is the fall of 1940. I'm reviewing all of this to tell you that there's this enormous momentum to Winston Churchill that he's bringing to FDR that the American people are not really aware of. They see it in the news, but we don't have that kind of coverage that we, you know, Edward R. Murrow ends up going over. So that's the first time we're in London in effect on the radio. But all of these events are really important to understand what's about to happen in person in the White House as Churchill begins to come. There was a letter on December 8th. 8th, 1940, this was all to lead up to this question, that he says was the most important he ever wrote. I'm going to just quote what Churchill writes to FDR. Finally, I need to discuss money. The more weapons and ships you send us, the faster our money is spent. We've already spent a lot so far, the moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies. This letter involves what issue exactly for Churchill? Well, Church is one of several letters. He writes

Rosa all the time saying, please get involved in the war and please send us more stuff. And as you say, he spends the summer of 1940 trying to avoid outright defeat. They do that in the Battle of Britain. They defeat the German Air Force in the Battle of Britain. They then move to a situation of, well, you know, stalemate. You know, neither side can land a knockout blow. And Churchill wants to get to a place where you can move towards victory. And to do that, he needs American resource. He needs American money and weapons and industrial output and things like that. And so, and so he says in December 8th, he goes, Britain is approached from the point where we are bankrupt. We cannot pay for things in cash. And they send a new ambassador over to the US in that same time, late fall

1940. And he's very charismatic guy. And he, there's a famous quote that he sort of, it's unfortunately, I can't find if it's actually true. But the story goes, the story's widely told that he says to the journalist who greeted him when he landed, well, boys, Britain's broke. It's your money we want. And so, as you say with Murrow and stuff, there is also this influence campaign going on, which is showing the British people enduring night after night of bombing. Women killed, children killed, houses destroyed indiscriminate bombing by the German war machine. So building sympathy within the American people to go, look at this. You've got this guy, Churchill, they're fighting the Germans. They're fighting fascism. They're on the side of democracy.

And look at the sacrifices they're making. And it's this drip, drip, drip. And then it's, we need your support. We can't do this alone. We're running out of cash. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. This is all, you know, FDR is working behind the scenes, of course, even with Congress about, you know, how do we get ready for this war that he sees as inevitable at this point? But it's going to get formalized in the spring of 1941 as the Lend Lease Act, which is what we all know is the moment when it really tips towards us involving ourselves. Harry Hopkins was a big name here. I did a real rabbit hole dive on. this guy really interested in his story because I'd heard it a lot, but I didn't know who he was. And he's as remarkable as Roosevelt, you know, even health problems. He was his personal envoy to

Churchill. He comes over and sees the bomb cities. He sees the naval base at Orkney all bombed. He stays at Checkers, which is the home of the, of the Churchill treats him like royalty. Yeah, exactly. He understands that there's facing mortal danger here. Dan, do a bit of historical mind reading. Do you think that FDR has any ability to deal with Hitler? I mean, we know how Churchill feels, but what about FDR? Well, you know, you're the expert on FDR, Don, with this great series you've been running, but I think the FDR was hoping to avoid war if he could. He was hoping that there would be some way for the Europeans, not to drag the world back into kind of global Armageddon, as they'd done so many times in the past. But he also is, I think he buys what Churchill's selling. He buys the idea

that Hitler is evil. He buys the idea it's a threat, an existential threat to democracy. And that's why, and you can see that, because he does answer Churchill's pleas. And he does help. I'm astonished when I read about 1941, before Pearl Harbor, the lengths that the Americans go to help the Brits in 1941, it actually makes it less surprising that Hitler made the crazy decision to declare war on the Americans after Pearl Harbor. Because for the Hitler's point of you, the Americans were kind of in the war. And if you look at Lend Leas, a great example, in March 41, you get the Lend Lease Act passed by Congress. And Churchill said it's tantamount to a declaration of war. Churchill knows, like, he's got them. This is, America are in. They have agreed to provide

enormous, enormous military supplies to Britain and its empire and its allies. Yeah. Over $30 billion worth of American goods are lent over and galvanized this war effort. What does FDR think of Churchill, though? I mean, they had their suspicions that this guy was not all there. I mean, he was old and he, a very indulgent personality, you know, likes to drink and likes to party. Yes, he likes to drink. He's old. He's a sort of Victorian warhorse let loose in this sort of modern age of the mid-20th century.

He is also, this is the big thing that FDR, I think, will always sit between them. He believes in the British Empire passionately. Like, I mean, he's, you know, 1940, Churchill does some mental gymnastics, right? Because Churchill is saying, Hitler's an existential threat to everything good in this world. By the way, India, you're remaining part of the British Empire for the foreseeable. So, you know, you're like, okay. So he, and FDR sees that. FDR's like, I'm not sending American boys to die and I'm not sending American dollars to be put to work to keep the British Empire float.

Like, that's not what, that's, you know what? The name, the Republic, it's the United States of America. Our foundation myth tells you all you need to know about our view of the British Empire, right? And this is something I think that Brits and something we can come maybe to at the end, but Winston Churchill gets fundamentally wrong about the Americans of FDI. It's like he thinks they buy into the whole thing and that the British Empire is sort of legitimized. But no, like FDR is always going to be like, you are a crazy old aristocrat from a different era who at the moment we find ourselves with the same interest, the same aim.

but don't think that I'm buying every single thing that you're selling it. This is a really important point. And it adds to the texture of the story. They are not best friends. It's really Churchill coming to FDR in the way that he, there's almost a, I don't know, is the word unctuous, correct? I mean, he steps into this world and says, I'm here now. Yeah, exactly. He wooes him very hard.

I mean, we'll come onto this, I'm sure. but they actually end up meeting face to face. And Churchill absolutely, it's like going out on a date. He's sort of bending over backwards. At the same time, Churchill regards himself as the grandfather of global, like as the Kissinger figure of the world. You know, like, I'm the one who knows all that strategy, and I've served in the trenches of World War I and I've served in the border.

So he's personally quite arrogant, but the same time he knows, he's just about clever enough to know that he has to subordinate all that to trying to woo the Americans and get them into this. Yeah. I mean, his FDR's discomfort with imperialism will add to the story between the three of them when Stalin comes into the picture. Oh, yeah. I mean, he really kind of favors Stalin over Churchill in terms of, you know, what's the world going to be like? Because it's not going to be with empire. They're dismantling this as they speak. When did they first meet face to face? August 1941, right? Yeah, and their war time, first war time meeting took place in August 941. And again, you can see the sort of power differential here, because Churchill jumps on a battleship and crosses the Atlantic. You know, the battle of the Atlantic's raging at the moment. And they go to, they go to, they go to Newfoundland. And so it's a short hop up from FDR's native New York City. But it's a trek for a British Prime Minister to make. And I don't think he'd have made it unless he needed to. And they party. They, you know what, they, they, that meet, Churchill's very moved by that meeting because he gets a powerful reminder that. these are two English-speaking empires, two English-speaking countries. They have so much in common. They have bonds of kinship. They have bonds of religion. There's a big religious, Protestant religious service on board the deck of one of the battleships and the Americans come and there's a shared service. You know, there's a lot in common here. And Churchill allows himself to hope that this will mean that the Americans inevitably will come down on the side of the Brits in this great global struggle and back the Brits. And to so extent it's true that that kinship did really matter in the 20th century between the Brits and the Americans. So they also create the Atlantic Charter, which is a sort of a vision for

a post-war order. Now, Churchill agrees there will be language in there about self-determination. People's around the world will be able to choose their own former government. That includes people in current British colonies. So it shows how much peace prepared to compromise to get FDR on board and to get to show the rest of the world that the British and Americans are forming a kind of axis here, an alliance, an alliance. against the Nazis. It's after Pearl Harbor, now we're in December 1941, that Churchill rushes to Washington, obviously, critical moment here. This is the moment when Churchill knows he's got America with him fully. Yeah, he receives news of Pearl Harbor. And by the way, people forget the same day as

Pearl Harbor. In fact, I think a couple of hours before, the Japanese attack the British Empire in Asia as well. So, Britain, Churchill wakes up to find that Pearl Harbor's happening, but also he finds out that the British Empire already under strain, dealing with Italy and Germany. He's now fighting this Pacific power, Japan as well. But Churchill doesn't let that worry him, because he's focused. He knows that the key event is Pearl Harbor. He knows the key event. And he said, the night after he found out,

he slept the sleep of the saved and thankful. And he wrote that Japan would now be ground to powder, and Hitler's fate was sealed. And actually, in terms of predicting the future, that's pretty good going. Churchill's exactly right. America's entry into the war. America being dragged into the war by Japan. Don't forget the very strange declaration of war by Hitler. Roosevelt had a bit of an issue. You get bombed in Hawaii. You can't declare war on Germany. Right. But Hitler made the job very easy for him. Hitler declared war on the United States and America.

Followed oddly by Romania and that was a stretch for them. But anyway, so Roosevelt goes fine. Well, we're in it now. Hitler did so because as far as he concerned, the bloody Americans were working so close to the Brits anyway. He might as well get involved when the Japanese got involved and try and make a fist of it, you know, try and go for it together. And he thought desperately it might encourage the Japanese to help him out invading the Soviet Union, but that's a separate issue. So Churchill thinks right we're done here. This is it.

The statistics now make this look very well-opsided. We've got the Soviet Union, got the British Empire, we've got the Americans on one side, and we got Japan, Germany, Italy, effectively on the other. This is not going to work for them. and he straight away, straight away, tells the king. I think it's the day after Pearl Harbor, Churchill says the king, I'm off to America, I'm going. I'm going to, and the reason he goes is because he wants to shape American policy. He does not want them terrassing around the Pacific chasing the Japanese when they,

Churchill thinks they need to deal with Germany first, right? And this is the big thing Churchill wants to achieve. It's so-called Germany-first mission. Right. And that plays out in FDR's messaging as well down the years. I mean, he articulates that vision. We will first defeat Germany and then we will defeat Japan. Don, I've always wondered, Don, how do the American people take that?

Because I've always thought that was kind of an intro. I know that the Germans had declared war on them, but how did they sell that? As far as, you know, I was raised by a guy who signed up, you know, a month after Pearl Harbor. They saw it as the totality of Germany, you know, the access powers. Where they sold that bill of goods, I'm not sure, but it certainly was perceived by my father, as a package deal. And so it made sense to them. Also, you have to remember America was very Eurocentric in those days. I mean, we were very much focused on what Europe was doing. And the Blitz was a terror. That whole period, that's why I went through those events of 1940, late 1940, are very important in shaping America's view of how this war is prioritized and fought. Never mind, it's a really, there's an evolution to the Pacific War, of course, that has to do with island hopping, which just takes a long time and is a very strange and remote world out there. And so Americans are much more persuaded by ideas of retaking Paris. You know, these are much more familiar places. He lives at the White House, as you're saying,

three weeks at the White House. This is a very weird bit of history. Churchill moves in as like a house guest. He says to his, he writes to his own family. It's like I'm a member of the family here. I mean, it just takes up residence. I mean, it's crazy. He lives at Blair House. I know this very well. He was living across the street, which is really interesting. It's still there. Now, the Blair House, which is always sort of diplomatic guests. But he was making himself very, very comfortable in the White House. There's a famous little episode about him in a bathrobe. You know, he's working with his assistant. And the towel falls off. And the president comes in and Churchill says, I have nothing to see. I have nothing to conceal from you. That's my best invitation.

It's very good. No, exactly. Paul Roosevelt has to see the guy totally naked, which is, I mention a Terrifying thought. Yeah. And there's lots of American gossip, how much he's drinking. He's drinking vast amounts, a tumber of sherry in his room before breakfast.

I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary. Yeah, well, this is where they get the inside view on this guy that they're now, you know, going to the mat with. It's that way. But they do make strategy, of course, its massive armament increases are planned, mind-blowing numbers of tanks and aircraft.

It was agreed that the British and American forces would always be, this is very important, under one Supreme Commander, a now tradition that continues to this day with NATO. Talk to me about that. That had to have been weird for the British military. Listen, that is very weird for the military, and I think we accept it now because of NATO

and the World War II. But there is nothing more important for a state than directing its own military affairs. The idea that you subordinate yourself to other people. It's one thing being a kind of alliance situation where a sort of alliance commander can be like, I'd love it if you chaps moved that way, but this is integrated command structure.

This is you salute your superior officer and take an order as if he's from your nation, and he's not. Like, it's an extraordinary idea. And in the First World War, it hadn't happened. Right at the end, in the First World War, the Americans had fiercely guarded their independence. Pershing, he would lend units to the French and the British.

The British and French and the First World had been like, just send us Americans and we'll stick them in our battalions and we'll send them to the front. And the Americans are like, no, no, no, no. they will fight under American officers under American flags. And the same is true, you know, well, throughout history. But what happens here, yeah, you say, you're going to send a Supreme Allied commander for Europe. He's going to be an American and British generals and officers will serve under him.

So you're right. You're right to sort of focus on that. It's a hugely important thing. But my goodness, how powerful an alliance working so closely together. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Yeah, a special relationship. That's the... There you go.

That's the term, and it really is born, you know, of many things. But this, this relationship between these two men is fundamental. Between 1941 and FDR's death in 45, these two guys would spend a total of 113 days together. That's a lot. You know, for these two political leaders in the middle of an incredible crisis, investing a lot of time and energy into this personal relationship. It's amazing. They really forged that special relationship between them. Yes.

I'm somebody who gets quite queasy when. special relationships are mentioned, but it is certainly true that the OG special relationship, the one between these two men, was very special. And they spent a huge amount of time together. They spent a huge amount of time on the phone. Yeah. Nine conferences. They are in nine conferences together. It's wild. In person. You know, Churchill, if you look at Churchill's travel alone in World War II, it's mind-blowing. And he's in, he's flying, rickety old aircraft across, you know, if not kind of enemy occupied land, certainly airspace that was content. He's going in ships all over the place.

He is traveling. It is crazy. And he's an older guy. And travel is not comfortable and safe in this period. He won at one stage in an aircraft. He almost kind of gets hypothermic and risks on that as going down to North Africa. This is a huge, huge lift. And it's the epic coalition nature of this warfare.

The kind of way in which the allies are able to work together that does just seal Hitler's fate. I mean, he has no hope. Right. He has no hope. But their relationship, their personal relations really does add to the strategy, you know, the strategic planning behind this war in terms of, you know, when we're going to do D-Day, we wanted to go right on with D-Day. Let's just go into France. It was Churchill holding back from this that really

stayed us off until 44, right? Yes, Churchill was very nervous about the amphibious assault on Europe. Like he'd been thrown out of government for a disastrous amphibious assault in Gallipoli in the first war. Exactly. He was very nervous about this. And he he did not want to go before he felt they had overwhelming, overwhelming force and superiority. So they did not go in 1943. Stalin was begging them to go in 43, did not go in 43, and they went in 44. And I think Churchill was a large part of a securing that delay. Yeah, it was the Tehran conference.

Anybody who's not familiar with this, there's a whole string of these conferences in which we go from planning the war to planning the aftermath of the war. But in November, December, 1943 is the Tehran conference. By this time, the dynamic has shifted a great deal. I mean, you've got Stalin, everyone who knows the Soviets are going to win this war against Germany. D-Day is kind of the aftermath of what they are in the process of, of course. But that's when Churchill recognizes that he's been kind of sidelined at this point. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. And from Churchill's point of view, he thinks the British Empire is a big deal. Still, although he knows about, although I keep saying, he can read the balance sheet. He knows about the American military and economic might, but he still thinks in terms of this being a sort of British century. And he thinks these are two equals. And the Quebec Agreement in 1943 when Britain had a nuclear programme. And he signs it all over to the Americans going, well, let's pool our resources. And the work that the Brits had done, the experts that the Brits could send over, then get supercharged with US resource.

And the result is the Manhattan Project. The result is the successful detonation of an atomic. weapon. But so from Churchill's point of view, this is like a joint, yeah, yeah, sure, this is a joint project we're working on here. And as the war goes on, things just become clearer and it becomes impossible to keep up that pretence much longer. Britain is bankrupt, it's broken, it's shattered, it's got, it's got British people are already expressing a desire for a very different world afterwards, and a world specifically not run by old imperial warhorses like Churchill, you know, a world where we have welfare states, social democracy, European style, that kind of thing.

And at Tehran in late 43, Churchill wrote he's appalled by my own impotence. And he talks about being sat there. He's got a great Russian bear on one side, Stalin with his millions of men just grinding their way towards the heart of Europe. And on the other side, he's got the great American buffalo. And I'm not sure what he means by buffalo, but it's not wholly sort of complimentary, is it? And in between Churchill says he's got the poor little English donkey. who was the only one who knew the right way home. So he maintains this. Yes, maybe he doesn't have the arm, maybe doesn't have the millions of men. Maybe he doesn't have the industrial might. But you know what? Britain's got, darling. You know, it's that kind of slightly pompous view that Brits still have today. We've got the sort of, we got the now. We've got the knowledge. We can, we might lack some of the muscle. But if you follow, we're very cerebral. Follow what we do. We know the way. And of course, Churchill, this is classic. And but, and Roosevelt was like, no thanks. I think we've got this from here, buddy. and he becomes, through the war, Churchill becomes less and less relevant, I think. But they're both playing chess in their minds. I mean, and you're right, the priority, the main strategy for Churchill is to preserve the empire, to come out on the winning end as far as, you know, the greatness of Britain in the world. On the other side of it, FDR has no interest in this, as we've already established. But the problem is that Churchill understands what Stalin really represents, which is the next huge challenge, what will lead to the Cold War. He, in fact, names it.

He calls the Iron Curtain what it is because he understands these dynamics better than FDR as far as Europe's concerned. I think he probably does. I think FDR was optimistic where the USSR was concerned the Soviet Union. And Churchill begins the war, obviously hugely supportive of the Soviet Union. By 44, 45, he starts to see things as they are. At the Yalta conference in 45, Churchill's really saddened. Stalin's literally making jokes about the sexual assaults being carried out on a kind of, continental scale by the Red Army as they march into the territory of the Third Reich.

You know, and Churchill's just like, I cannot believe what's happening here. Roosevelt's ill by that stage, very ill. And Churchill feels that Stalin is kind of bossing Roosevelt around a bit. But look, it's the fact, this is, this is about facts on the ground, man. And the fact is, it was Stalin, whose war machine was grinding pretty fast towards Berlin. You know, Churchill had all of these big ideas about Eastern European democracy. Don't forget, Don't. This is the thing about the Second World that no Brits like to talk about. Britain went into the Second World War to protect and safeguard Polish democracy

Poland, right? Poland. At the end of the Second World War, Poland was occupied and crushed and under a dictatorship, but it was a Soviet dictatorship, basically. So now Brits, it's weird, because Brits talk about the Second World and are the greatest war, but actually the war aim was absolutely not accomplished in the Second War, fascinatingly. Weirdly, First World War, everyone very dismissive, very rude

about the first world, what a waste time, what a disaster. Britain went to war for Belgian independence. It got, but Belgium was independent at the end of that war. Britain fought and won Belgian independence for that, it's a little country. So it's a very strange thing. I can tell you, though, I will take exception to this. No American thinks that way about it. Yeah, interesting.

Stop somebody on the street. They have no concept of success or failure based on Poland. I know. Isn't it weird? And British role in all of that. But it's funny that you mentioned. Yeah, but the Americans went to war to, well, the Americans, Hitler declared war in America and he paid the ultimate price, right?

So America was like, yeah, fine, we dealt with you. Thank you very much. But Britain, so Churchill's there in 44, 45. Hang on a minute, everyone. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't forget, don't forget. We want all Eastern Europe to be democratic. And Poland here, I've got a nice government of polls in London. They're the government in exile.

They're all lovely, genteel old chaps, and they're all kind of aristocratic polls, and they all want to go back. And Stalin is like, you've got to be joking. And Roosevelt is thinking, this is not a big priority, right? It's not a priority for the U.S. here. And so Churchill just fails to shape 44, 45, 46, 47 as he had shaped 1940. And that's just, you know, things changed. Well, we've come in with the Marshall Plan and we've restructured everything at this point. And that's, that's the force against him. It's always, it's fascinated me. And always surprised me the first time. I remember that Churchill ends in somewhat disgrace. You know, the politically speaking anyway, historically, he'll be otherwise. But he loses the prime ministership in the in the 50s. How does he look back at his relationship with FDR in the writings that he does that he produces? Well, this is extraordinary about Churchill, and it's the, is that in 45, before the war has even ended, Britain is still fighting with Japan.

There's a general election here in the UK, and Churchill gets absolutely hammered. The Labour Party, the left of center party, crush the conservatives. People could not believe it. Churchill's wife said, maybe it's a blessing in disguise. And Churchill said, well, it's a pretty bloody good disguise. if it is one. And he then is out for five years. The British Labour Party kind of reshape, they give India to this independence, they reshape the British society in the most transformational way. And Churchill's on the sidelines thinking, what this was meant to be my time. He then does become Prime Minister again in the early 1950s, but he's very ill, very infirm,

and he's forced to leave office because he's eventually driven out by his comrades after having strokes and things. But yeah, so he considered, in late life, he considers himself a failure. He set himself a job, which was to sustain and expand and deepen the British Empire. He was through the war and in the post-war politics, the British Empire lost its place in the world. Largely lots of bits of it left, and then he witnessed Britain's diminution on the world stage. And he was appalled by that, and very saddened by that. Wow. Ironic, to say the least.

Actually, it's one other ironic thing, which I've always loved on me, is that he, Winston Churchill, was leader of the Conservative Party. He thwart three general elections against the Labor Party. And he lost two of them and he won one of them. But in that one that he won, because of the vagaries, the British electoral system, he got less votes than the Labour Party. He got fewer votes than the Labour Party. He got fewer votes than the Labour Party. This celebrated number one, like top Britain, everyone's hero, greatest politician in British history. He never got more votes than the other party in an election in which he was leader. Never. It's crazy. Historian and author, Dan Snow is the founder of history hit.com and host of its original podcast, one of the most popular history pods in the world. Dan Snow's history hit, look it up.

He's long been a broadcaster on the BBC, as well as recently featured in a currently streaming National Geographic documentary Endurance about the finding of Ernest Shackleton's sunken ship. See him as well in the Churchill at War series on Netflix. The Man is everywhere, and that is a good thing. Dan Snow, great to be with you. Thanks for coming on. come back soon. See you soon, brother. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit.

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