Prelude to Power: Churchill and the American Presidency before the Second World War
As Prime Minister, Winston Churchill had important working relationships with three different American presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Churchill’s involvement with holders of the Oval Office, however, did not begin or end with this impressive trio.
Altogether, from December 1900 through January 1977, there were eleven occupants of the White House who either met Churchill personally or had at least been in his presence. Additionally, Churchill wrote assessments of several American presidents before his own time, beginning with George Washington. The articles that follow this one describe the encounters that Churchill had with each president from Roosevelt to Gerald R. Ford. This article looks at what came before that, when Churchill studied American history and met several of its leaders but was not yet the leader of his own nation’s government.
Early Giants
In the late 1930s, before the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill started work on his four-volume . The third and fourth volumes cover the early history of
