A companion history to the author's controversial book on Winston Churchill, Churchill: The End of Glory, offers a provocative revisionist account of the ""special relationship"" between the U.S. and England during and after World War II. Tour.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
"It is as well that the ironies of history are hid from participants," says Charmley, the revisionist author continuing the history begun in Churchill: The End of Glory; A Political Biography (LJ 9/1/93). Churchill, the optimistic, myopic imperialist, turned to America for help in facing down Germany's onslaught in 1940. FDR, cool, pragmatic, unemotional, finally entered the war with his own agenda, which relegated the British to junior players on the world stage. Churchill never understood or expected that alliance to strip Great Britain of its colonial power; FDR knew full well that there was no place for the "old" Britain in America's new, postwar plans. Charmley will have his detractors (he is, after all, casting a cold, skeptical eye on venerable British institutions), but he has crafted a solid, balanced portrait of a frightening, chaotic time. Recommended for public libraries.
Nancy L. Whitfield, Meriden P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Nancy L. Whitfield, Meriden P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
As did his Churchill: The End of Glory (1993), Charmley's latest sally into "declinology," the study of how Britain faded from first-to third-rate power, should stir controversy, at least among historians. His comprehensive research rests on two ideas: that Churchill, the romantic, was less perceptive than foreign secretary Anthony Eden to the drift of American foreign policy in the 1940^-56 period, and that that policy meant "America wanted a compliant, non-imperial Britain as part of a European federation." Because Churchill ascribed often and eloquently a unique character to U.S./UK relations, Charmley has a fat target. He hits it repeatedly with his interpretations of FDR, who he believes inflicted permanent damage to British interests. In finance, sterling fell to dollar supremacy. In geopolitics, the British received no support outside Europe and eventually sustained the decisive setback as a world power in the Suez fiasco of 1956. In proving the relation was special on American terms only, Charmley surely succeeds, but Churchill idolaters may not notice as they recoil from the constant criticism of their hero. A brave, iconoclastic work. Gilbert Taylor
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A conservative revisionist view of Chuchill and the 'Special Relationship',
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This review is from: Churchill's Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940-57 (Paperback)
It is rather interesting that I looked up this book on Amazon nearly 15 years after I bought it and noticed nobody had done a write up as of yet (even Amazon.uk didn't have one!) Perhaps it is due to the message of the book and maybe even the authors criticism of Churchill being more popular in America than in his homeland. Though looking at Amazon.uk I notice that most of his books only have a smattering of reviews, even his recent history of the Conservative Party (2008) is unreviewed. I wonder if this is a truer indication of the acceptance of the authors point of view than anything else, considering that a book such as Pat Buchanan's revisionist WW II history - `Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War' has nearly 200 reviews and a lively life in replies to the reviews. Also an interesting aspect to this view of Churchill is that usually I associate negative views of him with those on the left (Labour) here the criticism seems to be coming from the right side of the political spectrum
The main point of his book is that Churchill threw away the Empire and England's status as a Great Power by his fighting of Hitler's Germany. Now honestly I cannot remember if it was in this book or in `Churchill: End of Glory' it could be read that Churchill made a mistake in not accepting Hitler's overtones of peace in 1940, and either leave Germany unencumbered to attack Stalin's Soviet Union fully as an attack on the greater evil. Churchill is criticized for only having the defeat of Germany as his aim and not thinking ahead towards a post-war Europe where England would still have the ability to lead. Even the American Alliance comes into question concerning Roosevelt's dislike for the British Empire and maneuvers to break down Imperial Preference and break away the colonies. Charmley even calls to account the accepted notion of Churchill's personal diplomacy and close relationship with Roosevelt as being responsible - in part - for America's entry into the war. The book ends with the aftermath of Operation Musketeer, the joint Anglo/French intervention against Nasser's Egypt over his nationalization of the Suez Canal. In this action the Eisenhower Administration pressured England and France, as well as Israel, to pull back. Suez has often been compared to the `Lion's last roar' as the point when England realized it was no longer a Great Power in that it had freedom of action on the world stage. The role of revisionist histories is to provide an alternative to what is generally accepted as a historical `fact'. However I don't recall any real supporting evidence to a belief that Hitler would have allowed England to return to a state of neutrality after Dunkirk, nor that the Empire would have lasted much longer in the manner it had been with the rise of Indian Nationalism and the contentious debates in Parliament prior to September 1939. In this I wonder if Charmley may represent what in England may be described as `isolationist' sentiment is often described in the United States - that it is better to withdrawal from international entanglements and preserve the status quo than to risk your existing position. I have read some but not nearly enough on the mood of the aristocracy in England towards Nazi Germany prior to the outbreak of war, but it was obviously apparent enough that there was sympathy either towards Germany, or towards an isolationist sentiment for something like the Hess mission to be attempted. Today suggesting that there were those in the UK that would have either accepted or otherwise accommodated a Nazi controlled Europe is bound to be controversial and here is where Charmley's work falls. A recent echo of this book has been Pat Buchanan's book `Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War'. I believe that all of this is a fundamental misreading of British foreign policy which going back 500 years has been to oppose the `strongest, most aggressive, most dominating power on the continent, whether Pre-revolutionary France, Spain, Napoleon, Wilhelmine Germany, the Third Reich or in the cold war the Soviet Union. You can even say that still influences the stands against Brussels and the European Union, though not in an armed sense obviously. In that most scholars do not believe that a policy of appeasement would have done anything more than put off the inevitable fight with Nazi Germany. The last paragraph of the book is as follows: Churchill's `misguided sentimental investment' paid few dividends for Britain, but it made the road to world power for America smoother. It is, therefore, appropriate that whilst his fellow countrymen have named a college after him, it should be the Americans who have raised a shrine to Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
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