Forged in War

March 3, 1997
Kimball (The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman) is a rigorous scholar who can tell a story well. Here, he displays his talents as he demonstrates the central role of personal leadership in the Anglo-American alliance of WWII. Without Roosevelt and Churchill, Kimball explains, the alliance would have been similar to that between the Western allies and the Soviet Union: a tenuous coalition sustained by the negative imperative of a common enemy. Recent writing on the U.S.-U.K. alliance has emphasized wartime differences between the English-speaking powers. Kimball, in contrast, stresses the consistent willingness of the two nations' leaders to seek common ground on vital issues. This willingness was, he shows, crucial to an Allied victory that was by no means inevitable. Kimball's spirited narrative establishes the central significance of American support for Britain's holding action until the last half of 1941 brought the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. openly into the war. Roosevelt's implementation of a "Germany first" strategy, even after Pearl Harbor focused America's attention on the Pacific, was matched by Churchill's eventual acceptance of a cross-channel assault that meant the commitment of an exhausted Britain's final resources. Kimball also stresses Churchill's and Roosevelt's efforts to develop long-term cooperation with the Soviet Union. Ironically, their failure to do so was in part due to Stalin's suspicion of a "special relationship" whose success was, as Kimball so expertly argues here, the product less of common national values than of the determination of two great men.