On May 30th 1940, just after the war cabinet crisis & during the Dunkirk evacuation;
Winston Churchill was informed by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, of more dreadful news.
Roosevelt had no faith in Churchill nor Britain, and wanted Canada to give up on her.
Roosevelt thought that Britain would likely collapse, and Churchill could not be trusted to maintain her struggle.
Rather than appealing to Churchill’s pleas of aid — which were politically impossible then anyway — Roosevelt sought more drastic measures.
A delegation was summoned [from] Canada.
They requested Canada to pester Britain to have the Royal Navy sent across the Atlantic, before Britain’s seemingly-inevitable collapse.
Moreover, they wanted Canada to encourage the other British Dominions to get on board such a plan.
Mackenzie King was mortified. Writing in his diary,
“The United States was seeking to save itself at the expense of Britain. That it was an appeal to the selfishness of the Dominions at the expense of the British Isles. […] I instinctively revolted against such a thought. My reaction was that I would rather die than do aught to save ourselves or any part of this continent at the expense of Britain.”
On the 5th June 1940, Churchill wrote back to Mackenzie King,
“We must be careful not to let the Americans view too complacently prospect of a British collapse, out of which they would get the British Fleet and the guardianship of the British Empire, minus Great Britain. […]
Although President [Roosevelt] is our best friend, no practical help has been forthcoming from the United States as yet.”
Another example of the hell Churchill had to endure — which would have broken every lesser man.
Whilst the United States heroically came to aid Britain and her Empire, the initial relationship between the two great powers was different to what is commonly believed.
(The first key mover that swung Roosevelt into entrusting Churchill to continue the struggle — and as such aid would not be wasted on Britain — was when Churchill ordered the Royal Navy’s Force H to open fire and destroy the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kébir — after Admiral Gensoul had refused the very reasonable offers from Britain, despite Germany and Italy demanding the transference of the French Fleet as part of the armistices.)
Andreas Koreas, Twitter, 2024-12-27.
March 30, 2025
QotD: FDR, Mackenzie King and Churchill in 1940
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
