Churchill and Roosevelt At War: The War They Fought and the Peace They Hoped to Make
Reviewed by Fritz Stern
An English historian, who has written on various aspects of the war, reexamines the relationship of the two leaders, emphasizing their mounting conflicts and the somewhat concealed decline of Churchill's influence. Principal disagreements were political, especially those touching on Eastern Europe, de Gaulle, and the postwar place of France and Germany. Roosevelt concentrated on the hopes for a new international order, hence the importance he attached to relations with the U.S.S.R. (though I think the author slights Roosevelt's disappointment at Soviet actions in the post-Yalta months). Churchill devised a new balance of power in Europe, requiring a strong France and eventually a rehabilitated Germany. Inherently an absorbing story, with some new archival material, but compressed and somewhat aseptic.
