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- Title: Ike and Winston
- Author: Jonathan W. Jordan
- Genre: Non-Fiction
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Pages: 576
Even the most casual reader of history is on a first-name basis with Ike and Winston, so this foray into Second World War history chronicling the links between Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill will tread on much familiar territory. But this relationship – surprising on its face, it being the ties between a Kansas soldier and a British aristocrat – holds surprises beyond the surface level.
It lasted from the early days of American involvement in the war, which for the United States began in late 1941 – more than two years after Britain (and Canada) was involved in hostilities against Nazi Germany – all the way to 1965, when Churchill died. It involved military planning, big-power negotiations and a reversal in the diplomatic and military profiles of the U.S. and Britain, the former eventually overtaking the latter in power and prestige.
For a good portion of the period, Churchill occupied 10 Downing St. For about two overlapping years, Eisenhower governed from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
There were, to be sure, disagreements, and Jonathan W. Jordan doesn’t gloss over them in Ike and Winston. These included disputes about wartime priorities, the date and character of the D-Day invasion, the destiny of the British colonies that Churchill held dear – even whether there should be a 1950s summit involving the Soviet Union. But through it all the friendship prevailed.
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Eisenhower and Churchill are pictured together in Washington in 1954.The Associated Press/AP
Their connection flourished, even though it has been overshadowed by the intimate wartime relationship between Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. That relationship has spawned several high-profile examinations, especially Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time (1994), which won the Pulitzer Prize and remains a prominent part of the Second World War canon, and Jon Meacham’s Franklin and Winston (2003).
Jordan’s title is more of a joint biography, in spirit and form taking its place comfortably on a bookshelf that might include such volumes as Arthur Herman’s Gandhi & Churchill (2008), Mark Perry’s 2004 Grant and Twain (about the president/Civil War general and the American author) and, more recently, John Ibbitson’s The Duel (dealing with John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson), which this newspaper named one of the best books of 2023.
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Some day, someone will write such a history about Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, but that author will have to delve beneath the show of bonhomie to discover how much they disliked each other. “He’s a very difficult guy,” Trump said in June – one of the few understatements of his life.
Neither Eisenhower nor Churchill would issue such a comment about the other. “The glue binding one of history’s most pivotal friendships,” Jordan tells us, “was an extraordinary personal rapport, leavened with shared values and shared hardship.”
The two complimented and complemented each other. Eisenhower was a “fine bourbon served from a plain glass bottle,” while Churchill was a “Pol Roger champagne, bubbly and delightful to the senses.”
Ike and Winston presents the relationship as a balance between political and military imperatives.
“Winston would leave Ike to smooth things out between the British and American military camps,” Jordan writes. “That was Ike’s particular specialty. Winston’s specialty was dealing with Roosevelt and Stalin.”
Another example arose from Churchill’s concerns that his aides couldn’t fashion the portable Mulberry harbours needed for D-Day swiftly enough. Churchill asked Eisenhower to offer American assistance, knowing that the ability of the Yanks to address the task in time would spur his own team into action. Of course, it did.
As expected, there were moments when each doubted the other. Churchill felt Eisenhower too timid; Eisenhower believed Churchill too impulsive. Jordan portrays Churchill as a romantic and Eisenhower as a realist. “As a soldier, Ike’s horizon ended with a military armistice. Winston’s stretched beyond surrender, beyond Hitler’s death, into the postwar peace.”
The relationship, never fully dormant after the war ended, was rekindled when Eisenhower became commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, later, when the two men occupied the top elective posts in their respective countries. This happened a little more than a year after Churchill returned as Conservative prime minister. (Although by then the senior man was the less powerful, and was in the unfamiliar and deeply uncomfortable position of suffering what Jordan describes as “the bite of the protégé daring to lecture his mentor.”)
Ultimately, in both duration and durability, their partnership rivalled the one between Churchill and Roosevelt (and others that have been celebrated as central elements of modern history). It spanned the Second World War through the Cold War. It survived disagreements over the efficacy of combat in Africa; whether the Allies should rush to capture Berlin to keep the Soviets out; and whether the Allies should bolt to Prague for the same reason.
Yet theirs remained a largely forgotten link, substantially lost to popular appreciation until Jordan’s dive into the historical literature and archives. We should be grateful for both the friendship that helped save the world from cruelty, slavery and tyranny – and the effort to document it.