Saturday, May 18, 2013

Alliance

I just finished reading a book about the alliance between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin during World War 2. It would be redundant to repeat the big themes, but listing ten of the details that have stuck in my mind might be revealing in some way. Firstly, I did know that Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound, but I'd forgotten that I knew it which is a testament to his skill at managing his image and an indication of how much media technology has moved on since then. Secondly, Churchill had a habit of walking around naked from the waist down and a sketch of him thus exposed is reproduced in the book. Thirdly, Stalin might be the most charming mass murderer in history and his lack of illusions made him the most focused of the three. My favorite word used to describe Churchill is 'bellicose'. Roosevelt was a dreamer, thankfully. Fourthly, it brought home to me the enormity of the folly involved in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Fifthly, there was never a Russian banquet without lashings of vodka and suckling pig nor a British one without oceans of whisky, wine and brandy, and it seems Churchill at least was drunk pretty much throughout the war, which I would have been too in his position. Sixthly, Stalin was not a complete megalomaniac and had some feeling for which nations were and were not well suited to communism. Seventhly, Churchill comes across as the last of the old school champions of Empire, but at least that attitude served a higher purpose. In the light of this book, Thacher's tragic dalliance in the Falklands in the service of the 80s yuppie party that followed looks pathetic and shameful. Eighthly, the pressure that they were all under is impossible to imagine, but, at least some of the time, they were having a high old time while soldiers froze in the trenches, melted in the jungle and were slaughtered in their millions. Ninthly, I didn't know that the Polish government was exiled in London during the war or how important the fate of Poland after the war was to the members of the alliance and I still don't know how to pronounce the exiled leader's name. Tenthly, Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's closest adviser is in a tie with Churchill for my favourite character in the book.

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