Defending the West: The Truman-Churchill Correspondence, 1945-1960

(Hardback)

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This work provides a documentary record of the correspondence, official and private, between Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill, from Truman's accession to the presidency in April 1945. Official communications between the two resumed during Churchill's second premiership (1951-1955) and more personal correspondence would continue into Churchill's retirement. Subjects of note range from events surrounding German surrender to the Cold War. Completing previously published wartime correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt up to the latter's death in 1945, this material records the thoughts and decisions of Truman and Churchill from April 12, 1945, nearly a month before Germany's surrender, until Churchill's defeat in the General Election was confirmed in late July, shortly before the dramatic close of the Pacific war against Japan little more than a fortnight later. The two would subsequently maintain personal contact, first as associates and later as friends, a situation shaped by their meeting at Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill would deliver his famed "Iron Curtain" speech.

Reviews

.,."Through the words of two men who proved themselves equal to an epic emergency, this volume allows us to be "present at the creation" (as Dean Acheson modestly put it). In this first full, scholarly edition of their correspondence, Gregory Sand has given all students of the Anglo-American alliance and of the Cold War a truly excellent resource. It is almost a political education in itself."-Robert Eden, Professor of History and Political Science Hillsdale College

Author Bio

G. W. Sand is Adjunct Professor of History at the Saint Louis College of Pharmacy. He has also been a member of the Liberal Arts faculty of Concordia University Wisconsin, St. Louis Center, since 1994, and is the author of two books in 20th Century History and International Relations. In 1999-2000, he was a Visiting Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.