ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL

AND THEIR WAR LEADERS

Franklin D. Roosevelt was a politician and a statesman, but never a soldier. He was a man of consistent and balanced views, with a strong sense of moral purpose and a desire to serve his people. Winston Churchill was at once a patrician and a rebel; a soldier in his youth, a politician in his prime and a statesman in his maturity. Churchill was a man of action, an inspired leader. Roosevelt was a creature of reason. That the two achieved such close understanding and coincidence of purpose was in many ways remarkable, for they were in almost every respect quite different men.

Roosevelt brought to the strategy of the Second World War exactly that quality of balance, compromise and political opportunism that was needed to steer the rocky course between Stalin and Churchill; between conflicting ideologies and viewpoints. His was a contribution that, it might be argued, no soldier could have made. For Roosevelt recognised that the great weakness of the Axis was its inability to take and follow joint decisions that were mutually beneficial and jointly acceptable.

Both Roosevelt and Churchill reasoned that the greatest potential strength of the Allies rested in true international strength and command, and both worked ceaselessly to achieve the unity and consistency of policy that, contrasting with the grotesque disharmony of the Axis commands, did so much to hasten the end of the war. Yet it was Churchill's pugnacious inability to compromise, which had brought him long periods in the political wilderness before the war, that made him unwilling to accept anything less than what he saw to be right, and which, ultimately steered the Allies towards total victory. For much of Europe, Churchill's determination was the pivot of freedom.

Nonetheless, it fell to Roosevelt to seek the middle course that would preserve the unity of the alliance with the Soviet Union, and thus make it possible to win the war. He saw that Stalin wanted the British and Americans to open "The Second Front" in France in 1942. He recognised that Churchill was correct in his view that the Allies were not ready - but proposed instead that the USA should join in prosecuting a new offensive in North Africa and thereby appease Stalin. He knew that there was a powerful groundswell of public opinion that demanded an all-out effort to defeat the Japanese as a higher priority than the conquering of Germany, but saw that the Allied strategy of "Germany first" must be preserved if world peace was to be achieved. His was a rare ability among men of politics, for he was able to compromise without being seen to deviate from an agreed policy.

These, then, were the men who led the USA and Britain to war. Whom did they choose to help steer their ships of state?

The strength of Roosevelt's team rested in men of his own kind, the civilians mainly from the Eastern states with a predominance of Harvard graduates, the military an immensely able group of commanders, each capable of seeing and valuing others' points of view. General George C. Marshall was Army Chief of Staff, a man who later demonstrated great political ability during the postwar period. Admiral Ernest J. King was Chief of Naval Operations, General Henry H. Arnold the head of the Air Corps. All were far more than just military leaders, for they were the backbone of wartime government in the USA. Alongside them worked men of the calibre of Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War; Edward R. Stettinius, who first ran Lend Lease, then became Secretary of State in 1944, and Joseph C. Grew, who as US Ambassador in Tokyo had foreseen the risk to Pearl Harbor and Hawaii and was now senior adviser on Asian matters.

Add to these and other men of stature - Cordell Hull, Sumner Welles, Frank Knox, James Forrestal - the extraordinary Harry Hopkins, son of an Iowa harness maker - and one cannot but recognise the unique nature of the team. Hopkins was the fast-moving, fast-talking go-between who did much to fashion Roosevelt's working relationships with Churchill and Stalin and to whom Roosevelt turned more than to any other. Few actually liked him, but all respected him.

In Britain, Churchill had assembled men whose integrity, drive, ability and determination almost matched his own. Impelled by the events of April and May 1940 and the fall of his own party leader Neville Chamberlain to create a coalition government of national unity, he turned a political situation which most party politicians would have regarded as a disaster into a source of strength. Instead of being constrained by party loyalties to appoint to great office only parliamentarians of his own Conservative party, Churchill was able to select the finest talents in the land. He began with the service ministries. From the Labour Party he drew A.V. Alexander, later first Earl of Hillsborough, to become First Lord of the Admiralty. From the Liberal party came Sir Archibald Sinclair as Secretary of State for Air. From the Conservative Party he appointed, as Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, who as Foreign Secretary had resigned from Chamberlain's government because of his opposition to Chamberlain's appeasement of the dictators.

In addition to his role as Prime Minister, Churchill also created for himself the position of Minister of Defence. He resisted immense political pressure in 1940 to remove from office as Foreign Secretary the greatly experienced Lord Halifax, and retained at that time even Neville Chamberlain in the post of Lord President of the Council, setting the value of experience above considerations of politics. Halifax was eventually replaced as Foreign Secretary in December 1940 by Anthony Eden, Viscount Halifax becoming Britain's Ambassador in Washington, and David Margesson replacing Eden as Secretary of State for War.

Continuing the all-party policy, Churchill appointed Labour's extremely able Ernest Bevin as Minister of Labour, the leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, as Lord Privy Seal and Herbert Morrison as Minister of Supply. The charismatic Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Beaverbrook became Minister of Aircraft Production, his success as a non-politician in that role providing a curious parallel to that of Germany's Albert Speer, an architect by profession and an immense success as Reich Minister for Armaments Production. Brendan Bracken, Churchill's Parliamentary Private Secretary and an unfailing support during his wilderness years, was appointed a Privy Councillor, despite initial opposition from King George VI.

Churchill's Chiefs of Staff were, like their American counterparts, both able and successful as a team. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound was First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff until his death in 1943, when he was succeeded by Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Cunningham, later Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope. Chief of the Air Staff, appointed in October 1940, was Air Vice Marshal (at that time) Sir Charles Portal, and in the key role of Chief of the Imperial General Staff was General Alan Brooke, later to be Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, more than any other Churchill's friend and military confidant. Another vital figure, acting as principal intermediary between the Chiefs of Staff and Churchill in his role as Minister of Defence, was Major-General (later General Lord) Hastings Ismay, Secretary of the Imperial Defence Committee.

The Allies had good cause to be grateful for the immense ability of the men both Roosevelt and Churchill gathered around them. For their quality was such that, on both sides of the Atlantic, virtually no cabinet or Chief of Staff changes were necessary throughout the war other than where caused by ill health or death. Rarely in history has there been such a consistent and unanimous sense of purpose felt by the great men of nations at war.