Roosevelt, Churchill and World War II

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that despite occasional disagreements, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill never lost sight of their ultimate goal of defeating the Axis powers. It shows how the two leaders were very different men. The paper presents many examples such as Churchill and Roosevelt's personalities: Churchill's approach to life's challenges was one of confrontation, order and hierarchy; wherein, Roosevelt's was one of evasion, competition and improvisation. The author believes that the most important difference between Churchill and Roosevelt during the war was their vision of the future of the colonial territories: Churchill retained an imperialist vision for the future of the empire and opposed independence for its members; Roosevelt saw the demise of European colonialism as inevitable.

From the Paper:

"The friendship that developed between Churchill and Roosevelt was not without its difficulties, and it is important not to lose site of the fact that the primary responsibility of both men was to look after national interests. This inevitably led to tensions, which at times became quite pronounced. Serious differences arose, for example, over the question of when and where to open the second front in Europe, and a host of other issues, particularly with respect to economic matters. Furthermore, as the years passed and victory in Europe appeared more and more certain, Roosevelt began to cultivate a bilateral relationship with Stalin that wounded Churchill's pride and signaled the emergence of a bipolar postwar world, dominated not by the British Empire, but rather by the two new Super-Powers."

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