June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 23


It is absurd to suggest that Franklin D. Roosevelt may be second fiddle to WSC. Yes, Churchill was the voice in the wilderness warning against Hitler publicly, but FDR had trie same beliefs privately. FDR was dealing with a multitude of issues during Americas worst domestic crisis since the Civil War. In the isolationist political climate FDR had carefully to prepare the U.S. for mobilization and the eventual war that he knew was to come. FDR’s foresight and leadership not only saved England (Lend-Lease) but eventually would win the war.

I admire Churchill’s oratory but he wasn’t in FDR’s league. In stage presence, he wasn’t even in FDR’s ballpark. Roosevelt set the stage and still sets the agenda for the world we live in today. Remember the photograph of the Big Three. Who was in the center of that triumvirate?
-MARK THANAS

Iistserv Winston Replies…


Whatever FDR’s merits, the reason he was always in the centre of the BigThree photographs was that he was a Head of State (unlike WSC and Stalin, who were Heads of Government),
-PAUL COURTENAY

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n how many battles did Franklin Roosevelt participate? How many firearms did he fire in military engagements? How many regiments did he lead in active service, during the course of his adulthood? How many books did he write? How many articles did he submit to popular and scholarly publications? In how many elections did he stand as a candidate? In how many high government offices did he serve? How far out of the Depression was the United States by December 7,1941?
-SCOTTMANTSCH

The reason why Churchill gets the credit for leading the fight against the Axis is precisely because he did not keep his views private. He was out front trying to lead public and official opinion, at considerable risk to his stature and career. By comparison, Roosevelt’s behavior was hesitant and timid. Any American president would have “center stage.” This was not a function of FDR’s magnetic personality, but a realistic reflection of the balance of economic, technical, and military power.
-JOHN CUTCHER

It was easy for Roosevelt to warn of the Japanese aggression after Pearl Harbor. After Germany had surrendered and was in ruins, Churchill strove not only for a nonaggressive country but a land of prosperity. When Stalin died, WSC argued to Eisenhower that there were new leaders in the USSR who might want to take a less aggressive line. This Eisenhower ignored. It is not only Churchill’s response to aggression, but his response and actions to a changed world that, to me, made him the Man of the Century.
-MARC DAVID MILLER

Anything Roosevelt did, Churchill did better. Oratory? Churchill is the man of “Fight on the Beaches.” FDR is remembered mostly for an advance in one medium. Churchill is remembered for immortal words and delivery in any medium. Isolationism? The nation willing to give everything rather than risk anything was key. Churchill’s abilities exceed FDR’s in breadth and length. Churchill was a national figure, FDR was one-dimensional.
-ALAN HOHN

Few in the USA were alive to the Nazi threat, but few in Britain were sensible of it either, so I think it’s a bit much to expect 1930s America to have been on top of the problem. Churchill’s unique contribution was that he risked political suicide to warn people of the threat. This is different from having a few, private, niggling doubts about the future. After all, new research suggests that Chamberlain himself had doubts about Hitlers motivesโ€”but kept them private. We wouldn’t give him credit for that, would we?
-ROBERT COURTS

I admire Roosevelt for his tenacity in overcoming polio and for his ability to find silver linings, but the man attempted to pack the U.S. Supreme Court in 1937 and make it an agency of the Executive Branch. Had he succeeded, it would have undermined constitutional government, to say nothing of the Rule of Law. I fault FDR for running for a third term, defying a precedent established by Washington 150 years earlier. True, he may have thought that his work was not “finished” (and, if one examines the “leading economic indicators” of 1940, the depression had not ended); but that is hardly justification for his breaking the two-term limit. Worse yet, Roosevelt hung on for a fourth term, when he was near death. Look at the photographs! At Yalta, in early 1945, he was virtually catatonic. Had it not been for Winston Churchill, one can only wonder how and to what extent Stalin would have had his way at Yalta. Churchill knew then that the battle had been won, but the war lost. I believe a vigorous president could have held Stalin in greater check
-RICHARD H. KNIGHT, JR.

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