It is often said that the special bond between Britain and the USA was forged in war between Roosevelt and Churchill. But the closer link in many ways was that between Churchill and Eisenhower, since it existed both in wartime 1941-1945 but also again in very different circumstances between 1951 and 1955, when Churchill was Prime Minister and Eisenhower was briefly the first Supreme Allied Commander NATO before going back to the USA to win the 1952 Presidential race and overlap in the White House with Churchill's peacetime premiership from 1953-1955. And in 1945-1951 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 FDR 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 USA. 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 UK and USA altered both as countries and in personal terms between the two men themselves.
About the Author: Dr. Christopher Catherwood is an author based in Cambridge, England. He is a Fellow of the Churchill Fellowship and of the Royal Historical Society, and has twice been elected to Archives By-Fellowships at Churchill College. He is the author of numerous books on Winston Churchill, as well as on church history. He is the Academic Director of the Cambridge INSTEP programme for Wake Forest University, for which he has taught since 1997. He has in the past held posts at the University of Richmond VA (including as their Peple Lecturer), the University of Virginia and other places in the USA and has previously taught for continuing education at Cambridge University. He has been a Kemper Lecturer at Westminister College in Fulton, MO, with its close Churchill links. He has degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia for his book on Churchill's creation of Iraq in 1921. He is a widower, and spent much time in his late wife's home state of Virginia.