It is often said that the special bond between Britain and the United States was forged in war between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. But the closer link in many ways was that between Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, since it existed both in wartime from 1941 to 1945 but also again in very different circumstances.

Between 1951 and 1955, Churchill was prime minister and Eisenhower was briefly the first supreme allied commander of NATO, before going back to the United States to win the 1952 presidential race. This overlapped in the White House with Churchill’s peacetime premiership from 1953 to 1955. And from 1945 to 1951, Churchill by his speeches and Eisenhower by his tenure as first-ever supreme allied commander Europe were continuing to create the new and stable global world order that held until now.

In other words, theirs was a much longer relationship than that between President Roosevelt and Churchill and spanning peace as well as war. And it was the Eisenhower and Churchill relationship that essentially created the world order that lasted down until current times.

Churchill and Eisenhower can also be seen as a passing of the baton, from Britain as the fading superpower to the dynamic new world of the United States. Churchill’s relationship with Eisenhower spans this transition perfectly and is the ideal prism through which to witness this change, in terms of how the balance between the United Kingdom and the United States altered both as countries and in personal terms between the two men themselves.

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Lydbog: 1. november 2022