How Churchill shaped our view of the second world war

When Winston Churchill told Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at Tehran that history would treat them kindly, he spoke with the certainty of a man who would write that history. Churchill’s The Second World War has not only shaped our view of that war, but also of Britain’s place in the world that followed it. From Anglo-American relations, through to the role Britain ought to play as Greeks in the new Roman empire, Churchill set the tone for successive British prime ministers. It is only now, 80 years after VE Day and with the dawning of the age of Trump, that some aspects of his account are coming to be questioned.

Churchill waxed lyrical about the ‘special relationship’ in his memoirs, setting a pattern followed by many of his successors. Harold Macmillan described Britain as playing the role of the Greeks in the new American imperium, a flattering description which allowed him, and others such as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, to strut on the world stage in a manner which Britain’s actual status would not otherwise have allowed.

The reality of the relationship between Britain and America was closer to the view taken by Trump, if he was the only American president undiplomatic enough to say that Britain was a convenient partner if it did as it was told.