Churchill and his high-level staff decamped to the nation’s
capital for three weeks, including an important political trip to Ottawa and
vacation time in Florida. The prime
minister smoked, drank and plotted with the president. The two men got along well although each had his own agenda. Eleanor Roosevelt was less
enthusiastic about her high-maintenance house guest whose personal habits could
be taxing.
The two leaders celebrated Christmas together, including lighting
the tree at the White House South Portico with a crowd assembled below them. Both attended Christmas services and celebrated
with a turkey dinner. Churchill also
spoke to an enthusiastic Congress where he mixed humor with serious comments on
the war. The prime minister, whose mother
was American, began by telling the lawmakers that “if my father had been an
American, and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have
gotten here on my own.”
This was third time that Churchill and Roosevelt had
met. The first was in 1917, but FDR did
not remember it. Their next meeting was
to talk and draft the Atlantic Charter near Newfoundland in August 1941. The Christmastime meeting was the solidifying
of a friendship. While Churchill was the
junior partner in the relationship—the longtime suitor of the more powerful
nation—and Roosevelt would wax and wane on his support of British interests,
the two men’s work was essential to the allied war effort.
Photograph of Winston Churchill before a joint session of
Congress, December 26, 1941, is from the Library of Congress and is in the
public domain.
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