Winston Churchill built an American network in part because he had the foresight to want Britain to be in a position to further its interests in America, a nation he realized before most would be a major force in international affairs. Not incidentally, he hoped that his network would connect him to sources of income not available in Britain.
To meet his twin goals of influence and profit required the hard work of meeting and then maintaining contact with Americans who possessed power, or access to it, and financial resources. It also required exposure to and contact with large numbers of Americans who, in a democracy, wield substantial influence on those in power, especially in crises.
The lecture and the one personal tour described in this book contributed to both goals. He communicated an image as an America-understanding, policy-driven, witty, and thoughtful foreign statesman and, as the press reports referenced here show, built favorable contacts with important members of the American media, from beat reporters to media barons. He had, in part because of his natural sympathies for social and economic reform, integrated into his network elites who were mostly members of the Democratic Party. That party would dominate American foreign policy in a period when its leaders would be key to Britain’s survival.
Churchill’s favorable image among American voters combined with his sway over Democratic elites enabled him to lend support to President Roosevelt as he struggled to overcome opposition to aid to Britain. Churchill’s foresight in maintaining contact with key Americans when he could not be in their country either because he held ministerial office or was in the wilderness, paid off. His calling card was most often one or more of his books, a gift that produced benefits worth incalculably more than he or his publishers spent on mailing the works that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
The financial support Churchill received from American friends, such as Baruch, and the earnings on his American tours and from his articles for American magazines helped put him in a position to remain in the political fight against the Nazis and Fascists while the bills kept pouring in at Chartwell. He was, of course, receiving such help from Bracken, Lord Camrose, and Strakosch, among others at home, but the additional support from America was not inconsequential in permitting him to give his full attention to deploying the influence of his network in Britain’s behalf.
As he put it in a letter to Brendan Bracken, “It is unsuitable as well as harassing to watch an account [bills] from day to day when one’s mind ought to be concentrated upon the great world issues now at stake.”1
He built his American network to finance his lifestyle and to create a cadre sympathetic to Britain’s policy needs. He succeeded in both. His pen2 and tongue generated enough income to achieve the first objective in the years before the Second World War despite his unquenchable desire to spend, gamble, and speculate.
The historian Ian Kershaw argues that without Churchill—and he makes clear he means a fallible Churchill—Britain might have ended up a pro-German satellite “and most likely been implicated in the horrific crimes against humanity that accompanied it, and in implementing the Holocaust.”3
Another British historian, Dominic Sandbrook, whose review of Kershaw’s book opens with a description of the night a car almost killed Churchill in New York, closes with “It’s just as well, then, that Churchill didn’t die that night, whatever his critics might think.”4 As one who in effect has lived with Churchill for more than a decade and three books, I heartily agree.
In March 1961, on his last visit to the United States, Churchill cruised the Bahamas and the East Coast of the United States aboard Aristotle Onassis’s yacht, the Christina. When the yacht anchored off New York City, Bernard Baruch came on board for dinners on two nights, telling reporters, “It will be good to see my old friend again. He’s a wonderful young man at eighty-six.” During the first of these dinners, Anthony Montague Browne took a call from President Kennedy, asking whether Churchill would like to fly to the White House and spend a few days with him. Montague Brown decided that the aging Churchill was simply not up to the journey.5 Churchill had met John Kennedy in London before the war when Kennedy’s father was ambassador to Great Britain. It is reasonable to speculate that Churchill would have accepted the invitation had he known about it. In 1963, President Kennedy, the last of the sitting and prospective presidents with whom Churchill had met, would declare Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States.6
The morning after the second dinner, Churchill picked Baruch up from his New York apartment so the two could ride together as Churchill headed to the airport for his flight home to London. This was Churchill’s last visit to America and his last visit with his dearest American friend. Their association had begun during the Great War and blossomed into a friendship after a meeting in Versailles during the peace conference. Along the way, their correspondence moved from Minister and Mr. to Winston and Bernie.7
The financier died in June 1965, five months after Churchill. Two old friends who had rendered great service to their countries, and to the world, were gone.