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.
