The Allies
ALSO BY WINSTON GROOM
NONFICTION
Conversations with the Enemy (1982, with Duncan Spencer)
Shrouds of Glory (1995)
The Crimson Tide (2002)
A Storm in Flanders (2002)
1942 (2004)
Patriotic Fire (2006)
Vicksburg, 1863 (2009)
Kearny’s March (2011)
Shiloh, 1862 (2012)
The Aviators (2013)
The Generals (2015)
FICTION
Better Times Than These (1978)
As Summers Die (1980)
Only (1984)
Forrest Gump (1986)
Gone the Sun (1988)
Gump and Co. (1995)
Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl (1998)
El Paso (2016)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Groom, Winston, 1944- author.
Title: The allies : Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the unlikely alliance that won World War II / Winston Groom.
Description: Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018027574 | ISBN 9781426219665 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945–Biography. | Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945. | Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965. | Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953. | Heads of state–Biography. | BISAC: HISTORY / Military / World War II. | HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Presidents & Heads of State.
Classification: LCC D736 .G735 2018 | DDC 940.53092/2–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov_2018027574
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CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Winston Groom
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Photo Insert 1
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Photo Insert 2
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Notes
Notes on Sources and Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography
Illustrations and Maps Credits
PROLOGUE
November 1943
It was a sunny day in Tehran when Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived by air to attend the second Allied leadership summit of World War II, code-named “Eureka.” Joseph Stalin, who did not like to fly, had finally agreed to a meeting with the American president and the British prime minister in the recently occupied Persian capital, which he could reach by private train from Moscow. Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union had fought alongside one another for nearly two years to stem the Nazi tide that threatened Europe, yet their leaders had never before gathered together in the same room. Churchill himself later remarked that it was the greatest concentration of political power the world had yet seen.
On the afternoon of the first day, Stalin appeared at Roosevelt’s door with a hearty welcome. He insisted that Roosevelt stay at the Russian Embassy in Tehran, citing a suddenly uncovered assassination plot. Polio had long since destroyed Roosevelt’s leg muscles, so he was appreciatively surprised that his suite at the embassy included a newly built handicapped-style bathroom. But an atmosphere of suspicion hung over the proceedings: if Roosevelt had been expected to stay in the Soviet building all along, as the new bathroom suggested, it probably meant that he was being surveilled by Stalin’s cronies. After a long chat, Stalin went away amused by the American president’s cheery, casual approach to diplomacy but judged him a lightweight compared to the more formidable Churchill. Roosevelt, on the other hand, believed he could “do business” with Stalin, known familiarly between him and Churchill as “Uncle Joe.”
In Tehran, the three great leaders were perfectly in character. Roosevelt was charming as always, attempting with finesse to establish favor with his Soviet counterpart. He made martinis and cracked jokes to ease the obvious tension between the other two Allies. Stalin remained quiet and mysterious, projecting an icy confidence in his crisp military uniform and epaulets. Churchill stubbornly resisted playing nice with the Russian dictator and focused conversation on the war’s multiple fronts, especially the eastern Mediterranean. While Stalin insisted on a definitive date for the cross-Channel Allied invasion of France that would open a second front against the Germans, Churchill urged the American president to consider delaying the invasion slightly in favor of new operations to get at Germany through the southern Balkans. Roosevelt sided with Stalin: Operation Overlord (now remembered as D-day) would be the main event.
FDR had always been more favorably disposed toward the massive Communist state and its leader than had his British counterpart. Ever the bon vivant, Roosevelt approached Stalin with characteristic confidence in his own sparkling charisma. So when the two finally met in Tehran, it is perhaps not surprising that he found Stalin personally engaging. (Influenced by Walter Duranty’s New York Times articles praising the Soviet regime, one of Roosevelt’s first acts as president had been to diplomatically recognize the Soviet Union as a legitimate nation—against the wishes of a large number of his countrymen and his own mother.) As soon as Stalin became an ally of the United States in the war against Hitler, he was routinely portrayed in the American media as a benign, avuncular figure or as a bold, fearless leader. And yet up to this point in history, Uncle Joe—Time magazine’s 1942 Man of the Year—had systematically killed at least 20 million of his fellow citizens.
Churchill, for his part, hated communism from its inception, and he remained distrustful of Stalin’s intentions even after the Soviet Union openly avowed that it had no de
signs on any countries in Europe. At Tehran, Churchill was loath to allow the relationship he had carefully cultivated with the American president to be undermined by Stalin’s insistence on definite plans for a second front and was put off by Roosevelt’s eagerness to please the Communist leader. Stalin frequently tossed out words like “freedom,” “liberty,” and “democracy,” in regard to such Soviet-occupied countries as Poland, prompting Churchill to recall Humpty Dumpty’s conversation with Alice: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Churchill came away from Tehran more skeptical than ever about Stalin’s postwar intentions. Roosevelt, virulent anti-imperialist that he was, remained more concerned about whether Churchill’s government would try to retain the massive global empire that the British had acquired over the past two hundred and fifty years. In fact, Roosevelt left Tehran thinking that he had won over Stalin. It did not seem to occur to him that the wily Soviet premier might be playing his own game.
The conference in Tehran saw the convergence of three lives that would stand above all others in the history of the twentieth century. Here, the Allies of World War II had their first opportunity to size each other up in person. True to form, they were all principled and ruthless, far seeing and personally preoccupied. The fateful intertwining of their lives that led to this moment is a story with consequences of the greatest magnitude. Together, these three men brought the world through a period of devastating conflict—sometimes with stunning courage, sometimes with brutal force. Churchill and Roosevelt would be rightly remembered for their bold leadership in crisis, but the enormity of Stalin’s crimes would echo just as powerfully. For better or for worse, none of the Allies ever seemed destined for a lesser fate.
CHAPTER ONE
Winston Spencer Churchill was born November 30, 1874, in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, the traditional seat of the Dukes of Marlborough, who had descended in the Churchill family name since the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was said that his mother was expecting to deliver him in London in a month’s time, but that out on a shooting party she stumbled and fell, causing her to have him early, at Blenheim. It was also circulated that there was nothing premature about the birth except for premature sexual relations between his parents before their marriage.
In the summer of 1873, Churchill’s mother, the exquisitely beautiful American heiress Miss Jennie Jerome of New York, was attending the annual English regatta at Cowes. There, she met Lord Randolph Churchill, who fell in love with her at first sight.1 For his part, Churchill conceded many years afterward that while he was present at the occasion of his birth he had “no recollection of the events leading up to it.”
Winston Churchill was raised as an aristocrat between the society circles of London and large country houses. His parents were friendly with the country’s most important people—including His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the ultimate social arbiter of the day who would later reign as King Edward VII.*1
Churchill’s father, Randolph, was a thoroughly political creature. After graduating from Oxford in 1870 with a law degree he ran successfully for Parliament. As an aristocrat he was a member of the Tory or Conservative Party—but it was the society parties (and especially their costs) that nearly did him in.
Lord Randolph was a third son—and thus his inheritance did not sufficiently provide him the style of living that his family enjoyed.*2 But he had also become a rising politician, with whispers he might someday become prime minister. He kept homes in London’s fashionable Mayfair district, with a staff including a butler, housekeeper, chef, cooks, maids, and coachmen as well as a nanny for young Winston. Jennie had brought a significant dowry with her to the marriage, but she was running through it at great speed, ordering scores of dresses from haute couture dressmakers in Paris, some costing as much as $20,000 in today’s dollars. The couple entertained lavishly, with fine champagnes and expensive dinners, followed by the best brandies and cigars.
Perhaps in keeping with her opulent social routine, Mrs. Churchill is known over the years to have had affairs with a number of prominent aristocrats, not excluding important politicians, officers of the army, and the prince of Wales himself. Indeed, Churchill’s parents had a peculiar marital arrangement. At some point in the 1870s Lord Randolph was diagnosed with syphilis; his wife’s affairs may have been a part of some arrangement following the diagnosis, for these were the days before penicillin and there were no effective medications. In any case, Lady Randolph Churchill’s long list of lovers is, interestingly, not terribly unusual for the Victorian era.
That there was no shortage of men who came under her spell was certainly not surprising, for Jennie Churchill was one of the great beauties of the day and imbued with abundant personal charm as well. Lord D’Abernon caught sight of her at the Irish viceroy’s ball in Dublin where “all eyes had turned on a dark, lithe figure standing somewhat apart and appearing to be of another texture to those around her, radiant, translucent, intense. A diamond star in her hair—her favorite ornament—its luster dimmed by the glory flashing in her eyes. More of the panther than of the woman in her look, but with a cultivated intelligence unknown to the jungle. She was universally popular. Her desire to please, her delight in life, and a genuine wish that all should share her joyous faith in it, made her the centre of a devoted circle.”2
This was indeed a splendid tribute, however exaggerated. In any case, the Churchills spent much time apart on separate trips abroad, which assisted in Jennie’s various trysts. What Randolph did on his numerous journeys history does not tell us. But we do know that it was not spending time with his son.
While his parents carried on the grand social life of the day, young Winston was left to the care of a Mrs. Everest, the nurse and nanny to whom he became greatly attached. He also became devoted at an early age to his collection of lead toy soldiers—fifteen hundred of them—that he would arrange in different imagined battles, with his infantry, cavalry, artillery all arrayed against various enemies of the Crown. To say that Churchill was an intractable child would court understatement. But his personality was certainly shaped by his parents’ willful neglect of him.
As was the practice in Victorian England, children of the upper classes were sent off to boarding school at an early age. Thus when he was seven young Winston was sent to the fashionable and expensive St. George’s School, near Ascot. Accompanied by no one, including his parents, he was put on a train with a handful of coins equaling less than a British pound. Admitting to himself that he was a “troublesome boy,” he was bullied at the school and mercilessly beaten by the masters and headmaster.3
Winston’s loneliness and longing for his parents became pathetic as the weeks and months droned by without a single visit. Churchill treasured both parents almost to the point of worship, recalling later in life that his mother was to him then “like a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power…She shone for me like the Evening Star.”4
By now Winston had a brother, Jack, but he was barely a toddler and at any rate no company while Winston was away at school. “Please come and see me,” he wrote his mother. “Come and see me soon, dear Mamma.”5 She rarely even replied. Churchill’s father never wrote, although he once sent his son Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The boy immediately devoured the book and took up the habit of reading to mask the tedium and brutality of life in a private boys’ school. Many years later, Churchill’s own son recalled that “the neglect and lack of interest in [Churchill] shown by his parents were remarkable, even judged by the standards of the Victorian and Edwardian days.”6
Winston was home for a holiday when Mrs. Everest noticed ugly scars and welts crisscrossing the backs of his upper thighs. Further investigation revealed the full extent of the cruelty that had been inflicted; his mother immediately removed him from St. George’s and put him in a small school in Brighton. There, he began to
flourish under the tutelage of Kate and Charlotte Thomson, the old maid sisters who ran the institution. His writing and elocution were vastly improved, and he was doing well even in math.
In the summer of 1887, when Winston was twelve, England was convulsed by the largest celebration in its history: Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. He was determined to go and begged his mother to write the Thomson sisters, granting her permission for him come to London, but she had plans of her own for the event and declined. Winston would not be put off, and he continued to plead so pitifully that his mother relented. Mrs. Everest took him to watch the old queen, wearing her glistening crown, ride by in the royal coach amid the jubilantly cheering throngs. His mother had a seat in Westminster Abbey for the ceremony but there was none for her son. Afterward, however, she took him for an outing on the royal yacht, where he met Edward, Prince of Wales, the future king of England.
The next year, Winston got double pneumonia and nearly died; he languished with temperatures exceeding 104 degrees. His doctor, who had gone down to Brighton from London, stayed by the boy’s bedside for nearly a week, sending notes to Jennie and Randolph in London (they had earlier arrived separately but stayed only a few short hours). When he had recovered, Winston continued to bombard his mother with pleas for a visit. He was in a play and wanted her and his father in the audience. “Please do come. I have been disappointed so many times.”7
In the meantime, he sought out newspapers for items about his father, who in 1886 had been named chancellor of the Exchequer. These he pasted in a scrapbook as a sort of shrine to his mostly absent parent. Randolph was busy making speeches throughout the land: the custom for politicians before the advent of radio and television. Young Winston would commit these speeches to memory, as well as statements by his father gleaned from news stories.
* * *
WHEN WINSTON WAS FOURTEEN his parents decided to send him to Harrow, a private school on the outskirts of London dating to the sixteenth century that rivaled its prestigious counterpart Eton. Generations of Churchills had been educated at Eton, but the boy’s weak chest, caused by the pneumonia, would be aggravated by that school’s location on the damp, foggy banks of the Thames.