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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Fine Churchill Volume by Martin Gilbert, December 6, 2005
This review is from: Churchill and America (Hardcover)
I don't think it would be possible for Sir Martin to write other than a superb book about Churchill if he tried. And this latest volume is no exception. The only thing better than reading it is to hear the author, as I did recently at the National Archives, speak about the book and take questions. One of the most remarkable things about Gilbert is that despite the fact he has written so extensively on WC, he still manages to add something new or a novel perspective.
I think if a single theme dominates the book, it is that WC fought a life-long battle against British anti-Americanism. In the mid-1930's, WC began using the expression "English-speaking Peoples," which was another device to build unity between the two countries. I had assumed the book would begin with WWI, but I was very wrong in that regard. Rather, Gilbert begins by looking at WC's parents, and particularly the American connections of his mother, Jenny Jerome. WC makes his first visit to America in 1895. Each visit thereafter (some 17 or so) is discussed, and an important bonus feature is an appendix containing maps of WC's various U.S. travels.
But the book is about far more than visits. It is about the manifold way WC interacted with Americans over nearly 70 years, sometimes to his benefit, other times resulting in frustration. For example, WC always maintained that the U.S. refusal to enter the League of Nations played a major role in the rise of Nazism and the need to fight a second great war. There were also constant negotiations during and after both wars relative to British debt and the means of repayment. Gilbert is particularly effective in discussing the 1930's period when the European war was about to commence and how WC interacted with FDR in trying to secure necessary materials and induce the U.S. to join in the battle. The discussion of the "special link" between FDR and WC is acutely perceptive and much attention is devoted to it. A relationship full of affection and joint success, but also marred by fundamental disagreements, such as the priority of the cross-Channel invasion and whether Ike should race to beat the Russians to Berlin.
The points of increasing stress between WC and the U.S. are interesting to say the least. Among the most pressing issues were: (a) how to treat Stalin; (b) intervening in Greece; (c) the puzzle of Poland; and (d) the priority of taking Prague. Always, there are disputes about the enormous wartime and postwar British debt and whether the Americans were trying to "skin" the Brits. There is no doubt that Churchill paid a steep price at home for his heavy reliance upon the "special relationship," and he also exasperated subsequent presidents Truman and Ike. Nonetheless, this is almost a love story--Churchill and his dedication to Anglo-American interests and dominance.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Churchill, with the passing of years, becomes ever larger, November 17, 2005
This review is from: Churchill and America (Hardcover)
Winston Churchill was a remarkable man and Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, has spent at least thirty-six years chronicling the great man's life.
Recounting the connection(s) between a British citizen and the United States might make thin gruel for anyone other than Churchill. But it was Churchill's perceptions and obvious love for America that may have saved the world or at least Europe from generations of tyranny.
Churchill's first visit to the United States occurred in 1895. Even at 21, because of his family, Churchill was introduced to the powerful of the day. Five years later Churchill was being handsomely compensated for lecturing across the United States. In an era before broadcast radio and television, Churchill was a celebrity known for his reporting and heroism.
A few years later, Churchill was a member of the British government, working closely with his American counterparts on aspects of strategy against the common WWI enemy.
America, always America. Churchill correctly foresaw and understood the growing power and influence of the United States in the world. He cultivated his relationships with powerful Americans and was a frequent visitor to the US. During the 1930s, Churchill was one of the few who saw the need to confront Hitler, a stance that left him a political outcast until the opportunity for peace had passed by and Churchill became a wartime Prime Minister.
It is during this period that the fullness of Churchill's love for the United States and his belief in its power and capabililities becomes clear. Churchill knew that Britain could not survive without US involvement in the European war. America, at the time, manifested the same political blindness it would evidence again over Vietnam and Iraq: a refusal to confront evil. Churchill's popularity in America, built over the previous four decades; his writings; his outright appeals to the decency of the American people and, of course, his capacity for establishing productive relationships with Americans such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bernard Baruch. Gen. George Marshall all helped to bring the United States around to Churchill's thinking.
Churchill was far more than a merely decent man. He believed in freedom, though his idea of freedom had more than a bit to do withd nationality: some people simply weren't fully ready for freedom in Churchill's eyes. But America and the United Kingdom shared a special relationship and should, because of their common beliefs, essentially rule the world in order to make it a better place for all. Churchill was an idealist and this shows in his voluminous correspondence with various Americans.
There is a huge amount of detail in this volume. In lesser hands than Gilbert's, there might be a risk of boredom or lost direction. But Gilbert never fails. He paints what is a love story between Churchill and America, of a man whose love for freedom had him standing against legions of detractors. To read Churchill's correspondence with Americans and his discussions about America and Americans is moving. Fortunately we have a few politicians who, not as literate as Churchill, still walk in his footsteps, though they are mere shadows of the man.
Gilbert's "Churchill And America" is indispensable for any admirer of Churchill, student of history, those we want to know we have arrived where we are --- or those who simply want to read of an important aspect in the live of one of the greatest men to have ever walked the face of the Earth.
Jerry
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A grand and historically compelling story, October 21, 2005
This review is from: Churchill and America (Hardcover)
President John F. Kennedy once famously lauded Winston Churchill as the man who "mobilized the English language and sent it into battle."
That deed is the central idea that leaps from the pages of Martin Gilbert's CHURCHILL AND AMERICA, a documentary study of Churchill's lifelong involvement with the homeland of his own mother, the wealthy and well-connected Jennie Jerome of New York City.
Gilbert, who was appointed Churchill's "official biographer" (by whom appointed is not specified) has written or edited at least seven volumes on Churchill himself as well as a number of others on related aspects of World War II. Judging by the large number of source-note citations in this book, he has recycled a fair amount of material from his earlier output. Can Gilbert finally have reached the point where there is nothing new left to say about the great English wartime leader?
The core of Gilbert's story, of course, is the close wartime collaboration between Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a partnership that, it could be plausibly argued, saved the west from Nazi conquest. The documents that Gilbert reprints show that, beneath the public surface of mutual admiration and close cooperation between the two, there lay a substratum of suspicion, doubt and wily tactical maneuvering.
They genuinely liked each other, but beyond that each man was looking out for his own country's interests first. During the dark days when Britain fought the Nazis alone while powerful interests in the US fought against American involvement, Churchill told his son forcefully, "I shall drag the United States in." An aide once recorded him saying that "no lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt."
This whole wartime story has been told often before, of course. Gilbert's method relies heavily on documents --- telegrams, diplomatic dispatches, diaries, memoirs. This gives his book a certain stenographic quality, but the central drama remains as vivid as ever.
The book is also filled with examples of Churchill's masterly prose style, which could make the most routine of matters readable and interesting. When he and FDR disagreed over the length of one of their wartime meetings, Churchill told him that five or six days was too short a time --- "even the Almighty took seven."
The reader is also reminded of Churchill's remarkable prescience --- his ignored early warnings about both the Hitler menace and the Communist threat, his feeling that rejection by the US of participation in the League of Nations after World War I was a catastrophic mistake that led inevitably to World War II.
During his long life Churchill visited the US a total of 16 times, first as a 20-year-old lecturer, lastly as an out-of-office 85-year-old. From the very beginning he saw America with a clear, discerning eye and a sharp pen, producing shrewd character sketches of those he met, marveling at what this country had become yet distressed by its brashness. He was appalled by the length and superficiality of American elections, announcing once with typical wit that "for the next nine months the Americans will be amused by their election campaign." One wonders what he might say on that subject today.
Despite his reservations, one of his great lifelong passions was for close cultural -- but not, of course, political -- union of the two nations, whose common destiny he saw as nothing less than a mission to preserve civilization.
It really does not matter how much scissors-and-paste Martin Gilbert used to assemble this book. It is still a grand and historically compelling story. It is here told without much literary flair --- but when you have Winston Churchill as your co-author, even 40 years dead, you need not worry too much about that.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn [...]
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