Churchill and America

Martin Gilbert

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2005
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780743291224
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

In this stirring book, Martin Gilbert tells the intensely human story of Winston Churchill's profound connection to America, a relationship that resulted in an Anglo-American alliance that has stood at the center of international relations for more than a century.
Winston Churchill, whose mother, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a leading American entrepreneur, was born in Brooklyn in 1854, spent much of his seventy adult years in close contact with the United States. In two world wars, his was the main British voice urging the closest possible cooperation with the United States. From before the First World War, he understood the power of the United States, the "gigantic boiler, " which, once lit, would drive the great engine forward.
Sir Martin Gilbert was appointed Churchill's official biographer in 1968 and has ever since been collecting archival and personal documentation that explores every twist and turn of Churchill's relationship with the United States, revealing the golden thread running through it of friendship and understanding despite many setbacks and disappointments. Drawing on this extensive store of Churchill's own words -- in his private letters, his articles and speeches, and press conferences and interviews given to American journalists on his numerous journeys throughout the United States -- Gilbert paints a rich portrait of the Anglo-American relationship that began at the turn of the last century.
Churchill first visited the United States in 1895, when he was twenty-one. During that first visit, he was invited to West Point and was fascinated by New York City. "What an extraordinary people the Americans are!" he wrote to his mother. "This is a very great country, my dear Jack, " he told his brother. During three subsequent visits before the Second World War, he traveled widely and formed a clear understanding of both the physical and moral strength of Americans.
During the First World War, Churchill was Britain's Minister of Munitions, working closely with his American counterpart Bernard Baruch to secure the material needed for the joint war effort, and argued with his colleagues that it would be a grave mistake to launch a renewed assault before the Americans arrived.
Churchill's historic alliance with Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War is brilliantly portrayed here with much new material, as are his subsequent ties with President Truman, which contributed to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
In his final words to his Cabinet in 1955, on the eve of his retirement as Prime Minister, Churchill gave his colleagues this advice: "Never be separated from the Americans."
In Churchill and America, Gilbert explores how Churchill's intense rapport with this country resulted in no less than the liberation of Europe and the preservation of European democracy and freedom. It also set the stage for the ongoing alliance that has survived into the twenty-first century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Books by Martin Gilbert
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• List of Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One From Blenheim Palace to Buffalo Bill
• Chapter Two The “Tall Yankee” and “A Great Lusty Youth”
• Chapter Three Cuba and Beyond
• Chapter Four “How Little Time Remains!”
• Chapter Five Lecturer in the United States: “The Stormy Ocean of American Thought and Discussion”
• Chapter Six “Dark Would Be the Day”
• Chapter Seven Churchill at War, and a Neutral America
• Chapter Eight “The Future Destiny of the English-speaking Peoples”
• Chapter Nine 1918: “Come Over as Quickly as Possible”
• Chapter Ten “America Did Not Make Good”
• Chapter Eleven “We Do Not Wish to Put Ourselves in the Power of the United States”
• Chapter Twelve “United to Us by the Crimson Thread of Friendship”
• Chapter Thirteen Between Two Visits
• Chapter Fourteen “There’s No Baloney About Him at All”
• Chapter Fifteen “Why Do Our Two Countries Not Take Counsel Together?”
• Chapter Sixteen “A Union of Spirit”
• Chapter Seventeen Road to War
• Chapter Eighteen “Hope Burden Will Not Be Made Too Heavy for Us to Bear”
• Chapter Nineteen “I Shall Drag the United States In”
• Chapter Twenty “Until the Old World—and the New—Can Join Hands”
• Chapter Twenty-One “We Are No Longer Alone”
• Chapter Twenty-Two Five Months of Anguish
• Chapter Twenty-Three “A Means of Waging More Effective War”
• Chapter Twenty-Four “American Blood Flowed in My Veins”
• Chapter Twenty-Five The Washington War Conference: “All in it Together”
• Chapter Twenty-Six “Okay Full Blast”
• Chapter Twenty-Seven “The Tact and Consideration Which the Harmony of the Common Cause Requires”
• Chapter Twenty-Eight “If We Are Together Nothing Is Impossible”
• Chapter Twenty-Nine Toward Overlord: “Our Band of Brothers”
• Chapter Thirty From Normandy to Quebec
• Chapter Thirty-One “It Grieves Me Very Much to See Signs of Our Drifting Apart”
• Chapter Thirty-Two Malta, Yalta and Beyond
• Chapter Thirty-Three “We Must Make Sure That the United States Are with Us”
• Chapter Thirty-Four “Britain, Though a Smaller Power Than the United States, Had Much to Give”
• Chapter Thirty-Five Fulton and Its Aftermath
• Chapter Thirty-Six “I Have Always Worked for Friendship with the United States”
• Chapter Thirty-Seven The Indefatigable Traveler
• Chapter Thirty-Eight “I Marvel at America’s Altruism, Her Sublime Disinterestedness”
• Chapter Thirty-Nine “We Must Not Cast Away a Single hope, However Slender”
• Chapter Forty “Never Be Separated from the Americans”
• Chapter Forty-One Final Decade: “I Delight in My American Ancestry”
• Churchill’s American Visits
• Maps
• Bibliography
• Illustration Credits
• Index
• About the Author