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American History: A Friendship Helps Guide World War 2 Diplomacy
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Photo: AP
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, left, US President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in Yalta, Crimea, on February 4, 1945
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STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember
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History is full of examples of leaders joining together to meet common goals. But rarely have two leaders worked together with as much friendship and cooperation as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill did.Roosevelt was president of the United States; Churchill was prime minister of Britain. The two men had much in common. They were both born to wealthy families, and they were both active in politics for many years. Both leaders also shared a love of history and nature, and the sea.
Roosevelt and Churchill first met when they were lower-level officials during World War One. But neither man rememberedmuch about that meeting. However, as they worked together during the Second World War, they came to like and trust each other.
Roosevelt and Churchill exchanged more than one thousand seven hundred letters and messages over a period of five and a half years. They met many times, at large international gatherings and in private talks. But the closeness of their friendship might be seen best in astory told by one of Roosevelt's close advisers, Harry Hopkins.
Hopkins remembered how Churchill was visiting Roosevelt at the White House one day. Roosevelt went into Churchill's room in the morning to say hello. But the president was shocked to see Churchill coming from the bathroom with no clothes on.
Roosevelt immediately apologized to the British leader. But Churchill reportedly answered,"The prime minister of Great Britain has nothing to hide from the president of the United States."
The United States and Great Britain were the most powerful of the nations that joined together as allies to resist Germany's Adolf Hitler and his Axis partners. In January of nineteen forty-two, twenty-six of the Allied nations signed an agreement promising to fight for the goals of peace, religiousfreedom, human rights and justice.
The three major Allies were the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union. The governments in Washington and London did not always agree. For example, they disagreed about when to attack Hitler’s forces in western Europe. And Churchill resisted Roosevelt's suggestions that Britain give up some of its colonies. But in general, the friendship between Roosevelt andChurchill, and between the United States and Britain, led the two nations to cooperate closely.
This was not true with the Soviets. The Soviet Union was a communist country. It did not share the same history or political system as the United States or Britain. And the Soviet Union had its own interests to protect along its borders and in other areas.
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Relations between the Soviet Unionand the western Allies were mixed. On the one hand, Hitler's invasion deep into the Soviet Union had forced Josef Stalin and other Soviet leaders to make victory over the Germans their most important goal.
On the other hand, shadows of future problems could already be seen. The Soviet Union was making clear its desire to keep political control over Poland. And it was supporting communist fightersin Yugoslavia and Greece.
These differences were not discussed much as the foreign ministers of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States gathered in Moscow in nineteen forty-three. Instead, they reached several agreements, including on a plan to establish a new organization called the United Nations.
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Finally, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met together for the first time....