Ike and Winston: World War, Cold War, and an Extraordinary Friendship

The relationship between Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill changed radically along with their countries’ military-industrial heft, according to this perceptive study. Historian Jordan (The War Queens) opens the account with Eisenhower’s 1942 arrival in Europe as America’s top general. At that time, British prime minister Churchill usually prevailed in debates over strategy—he persuaded the Americans to postpone the invasion of France to attack the Axis in North Africa—though he and Eisenhower often backed each other. That changed in 1944, when America’s prodigious arms production came to dominate the war and Eisenhower began overriding Churchill on strategic issues, including sidelining the Italian campaign and commencing bombing attacks on German-occupied France. In the 1950s, the stoutly anticommunist Eisenhower rebuffed Churchill’s calls for a summit with the Soviets, and during the 1956 Suez crisis, he forced Britain to back off against Churchill’s wishes. The eloquent, cigar-chomping, and frequently soused Churchill is the more charismatic figure in Jordan’s colorful dual portrait, but Eisenhower is more transfixing, a cold and ruthless operator beneath his genial, grandfatherly mien (“When Ike stepped on a friend, he wouldn’t lift his boot until he got what he wanted”). It’s a fascinating analysis of two larger-the-life personalities who ushered in the American Century. (May)