The iconic picture of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 paints a picture of unparalleled Allied cooperation during one of the world’s greatest conflicts. The Grand Alliance did not come easy to the main Allied players, however. While the British and American reservations about allying themselves with a Russia, who just years before had been friendly with Nazi Germany, are well espoused, many narratives focus on the strong collaboration of the Anglo-American forces and either gloss over the inherent conflicts of two separate countries working and fighting together, or discuss them within the framework of a type of
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The scope of the second volume, Their Finest Hour, in Churchill’s own words relays “How the British people held the fort ALONE till those who hitherto had been half blind were half ready.”(title page) Their Finest Hour describes the Battle of France, the excavation of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, and what it took to sustain the British Empire from May 1940 through Fall 1941. The Grand Alliance, number three in the series, tells of the lead up to the Anglo-American-Soviet alliance, America’s official entrance into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the planning involved in working with several governments and armies. The fourth volume, The Hinge of Fate, describes the first year of cooperative combat, the dire situation in the Pacific, and the campaigns in North Africa. Closing the Ring, the fifth in the series, starts in Summer 1943 and works through the surrender of the Italian government and the build up to Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion of France. Triumph and Tragedy ends the series with the taking of the European continent by Anglo-American …show more content…
In the first months of 1941, Roosevelt saw the Lend-Lease program as the medium between outright belligerency and outright isolationism. Stoler quotes Roosevelt on page 37 as saying to Joseph Grew, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, “menaced both in Europe and in the Far East . . . our strategy of self-defense must be a global strategy.” Churchill, relieved by the news of the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, wrote to Roosevelt on March 9, 1941, “Our blessings from the whole British Empire go out to you and the American nation for this very present help in time of trouble.” (Grand Alliance, 128). Almost exactly nine months after the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, American military involvement in the war was assured with the Japanese attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. America found itself as an arms supplier to not only its own forces, but British and Soviet forces as
The scope of the second volume, Their Finest Hour, in Churchill’s own words relays “How the British people held the fort ALONE till those who hitherto had been half blind were half ready.”(title page) Their Finest Hour describes the Battle of France, the excavation of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, and what it took to sustain the British Empire from May 1940 through Fall 1941. The Grand Alliance, number three in the series, tells of the lead up to the Anglo-American-Soviet alliance, America’s official entrance into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the planning involved in working with several governments and armies. The fourth volume, The Hinge of Fate, describes the first year of cooperative combat, the dire situation in the Pacific, and the campaigns in North Africa. Closing the Ring, the fifth in the series, starts in Summer 1943 and works through the surrender of the Italian government and the build up to Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion of France. Triumph and Tragedy ends the series with the taking of the European continent by Anglo-American …show more content…
In the first months of 1941, Roosevelt saw the Lend-Lease program as the medium between outright belligerency and outright isolationism. Stoler quotes Roosevelt on page 37 as saying to Joseph Grew, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, “menaced both in Europe and in the Far East . . . our strategy of self-defense must be a global strategy.” Churchill, relieved by the news of the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, wrote to Roosevelt on March 9, 1941, “Our blessings from the whole British Empire go out to you and the American nation for this very present help in time of trouble.” (Grand Alliance, 128). Almost exactly nine months after the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, American military involvement in the war was assured with the Japanese attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. America found itself as an arms supplier to not only its own forces, but British and Soviet forces as