Winston Churchill was instrumental in forming the special relationship between the US and the UK that has helped form the modern Western world and democracy as we know it.
From helping to persuade the United States that freedom was worth fighting for in World War Two, to his famous speech warning of the dangers of the ‘Iron Curtain’ descending across Europe – Churchill is undoubtedly history’s greatest Anglo American.
The legendary leader-to-be was born to an American mother – socialite Clarissa Hall – who he came to regard as his political mentor and she instilled in him an affinity for the US that would prove crucial.
The UK’s special relationship with the US dates back to the Second World War, as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany was aggressively gaining ground across Europe, and endured through the Cold War and to this day.
America and its then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt was reluctant to join the war in Europe after the First World War ended in 1918, but Churchill worked to persuade his friend and US-counterpart to assist the UK.
Between 1939 (before Churchill even became Prime Minister) and 1945, Churchill and Roosevelt exchanged an estimated 1,700 letters and telegrams, and met in person another 11 times.
By 1941, the US joined the fight against the Nazis and their Japanese allies, and helped repel their advance towards Britain and back to Berlin, before they were finally defeated in 1945.
Under Roosevelt and Churchill, the UK started their joint work to established NATO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
When Roosevelt died in 1945, shortly into his fourth term in office and months before the end of war, he was succeeded by his Vice President Harry Truman.
Churchill and Truman also developed a strong relationship, with Churchill acting as a strong supporter of Truman, calling him ‘the type of leader the world needs when it needs him most.’
Churchill himself lost an election in 1945, but resumed the roll of UK Prime Minister after a second election victory six years later in 1951, where Churchill and Truman – who had maintained their relationship even as Churchill was out of office – reunited as leaders of the two allies.
In 1946, Churchill was even invited by Truman to visit the US to deliver a speech at Westminster College in Truman’s home state of Missouri. The speech would become known as the ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, which highlighted the schism forming between the Soviet Union and western allies.
Churchill’s relationship with the US continued when Dwight Eisenhower assumed office in 1953, with the pair being familiar with one another from their time as leaders during the Second World War.
In 1963, Churchill was given an honorary U.S. citizenship by President John F. Kennedy.
It was the first time that Congress had resolved that an honorary citizenship be bestowed by the President of the Unites States on a foreign national, after only Marquis de LaFayette had previously been given an honorary citizenship.
Kennedy praised Sir Winston as a defender of freedom, wartime leader, orator, historian, statesman and an Englishman at a ceremony in the White House rose garden, watched by Churchill from his home in the UK.
The President’s opening remarks became an iconic tribute to Churchill and one of his greatest achievements.
‘He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle,’ Kennedy said, in reference to Churchill’s leadership of the UK in the Second World War.
In 1963, after receiving the honorary citizenship from the US, he said: ‘I am, as you know, half American by blood, and the story of my association with that mighty and benevolent nation goes back nearly ninety years to the day of my father’s marriage.
‘In this century of storm and tragedy I contemplate with high satisfaction the constant factor of the interwoven and upward progress of our peoples. Our comradeship and our brotherhood in war were unexampled. We stood together, and because of that fact the free world now stands.’
Churchill never criticised America publicly. Asked in 1944 if he had any complaints, he said ‘Toilet paper too thin, newspapers too fat.’