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Military History Book Review: Citizens of London

Citizens of London: How Britain Was Rescued in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

 by Lynne Olson, Bond Street Books, 2010, $34.95

The hero of this World War II history is not a cigar-chomping general or rhetorical prime minister but a New England diplomat who was so tongue-tied that the most common reaction to his speeches was sympathy. Certainly Lynne Olson’s pleasant new book Citizens of London features a cast of grand Americans who braved life in London between 1939 and 1945, but none is described in the Olympian proportions the author reserves for John Gilbert Winant.

Olson’s book—at least the best parts of it—relates the tale of the Americans who endured danger and deprivation in London throughout the war while their compatriots lived in relative comfort across the Atlantic. They withstood the blitz and tried to convince the U.S. government to declare war on Germany. They brought some consolation to the hard-pressed Londoners in their hour of need. And many remained in London through the buildup of U.S. troops in 1943–44 and even after the troops had shipped out to Normandy.

Some, such as General Dwight D. Eisenhower and former World War I flying ace Lt. Col. Tommy Hitchcock Jr., were gallant and soldierly. Others, like presidential adviser Harry Hopkins and ambassador W. Averell Harriman, were deft political operators. But none could match Winant for sheer human decency, which made him a hero to the Brits with whom he withstood the Nazi onslaught. His appointment as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain was a stroke of brilliance.

A former Republican governor of New Hampshire, Winant was as inarticulate as a politician could possibly be. But his concern for the poor was legendary, and he was at heart a New Dealer before the term was invented.

Winant would walk the streets after bombings and console despondent Londoners. His public comments were never flowery, but they struck a chord with the great and the masses in England, and he was viewed as the embodiment of American support for England—even when that support was lacking. (Olson wholly sympathizes with the British point of view that the United States was far too slow in aiding its cousin across the Atlantic.)

Winant’s seeming sole moral shortcoming centered on an affair he pursued with Winston Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, while Mrs. Winant was in the United States. In fact, these bellicose Yanks spent a good deal of time making love as well as war while the bombs fell: Olson meticulously chronicles liaisons between Pamela Churchill (the PM’s daughter-in-law) and Harriman, then Edward R. Murrow, as well as between Janet Murrow and another journalist.

The author does a splendid job of bringing these courageous, suffering souls to light, and she supplements their tale with the story of other nations’ expats in London at the time. The Poles come across as particularly admirable lot, and the book includes a fascinating description of the invaluable intelligence they provided to the Allies.

Olson seemingly lacked enough material for an entire book on the expats in London, however, as her book often drifts into a recitation of the all-too-familiar tale of World War II. Drawing from secondary sources and quoting contemporary historians, Olson simply tries too hard to set her Londoners in the context of the broader conflict. Yet her prose sparkles when she focuses on the band of London-based Americans and their problematic, critical and often affectionate dealings with the Brits.

It is just those exchanges, especially the ones between stiff-upper-lip London commoners and the cat’s-got-his-tongue Winant, that will linger with readers.

Originally published in the March 2011 issue of Military History. To subscribe, click here .  

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Citizens of London

The Americans who made it to London post-World War II found a vibrant city fueled by courage and resolve.

• By Randy Dotinga

April 10, 2010

Quick! Name an American ambassador to Britain . Well, there was President John F. Kennedy ’s father. And... um, maybe John Adams or Thomas Jefferson . How about another question?

Few in England would have had any trouble naming the US envoy to the Court of St. James during and after World War II. His name was John G. Winant , and he served as a bridge and a beacon. As one Briton put it, he “convinced us that he was a link between ourselves and millions of his countrymen, who, by reason of his inspiration, spoke to our very hearts.”

Winant was only one of hordes of Americans who landed in Britain to help it survive the worst days of its existence. They found a bustling capital city that boasted more glory than misery, more excitement than tedium, more amour than armor.

Citizens of London tells the story of these Americans in an engaging history that says plenty about the Yankees who came to pull Britain’s teapots out of the fire. Or, as the book’s subtitle puts it more elegantly, “The Americans Who Stood With Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour.”

Lynne Olson , the author and a former White House correspondent, chooses to focus on three American men – Winant, W. Averell Harriman and journalist Edward R. Murrow – who cozied up (sometimes literally) to Britain’s power players.

The first two, as Olson writes, served as FDR’s eyes and ears. Murrow did the same thing for the entire United States , or at least anyone near a radio. But their value also came in their relationships with Prime Minister Winston Churchill , who knew the United States held the key to his country’s survival and needed to find Americans to both trust and manipulate.

“Rarely – before or since – has diplomacy been so personal,” Olson writes of the relationships between Churchill and FDR’s two emissaries.

Winant was the public face of the US on the streets of London, a generous character who made points by popping up in local neighborhoods with offers of assistance after German bombings. Harriman, who’d go on to a long career in politics, served as a kind of top-level go-between. The superintense Murrow, meanwhile, embraced danger – he “repeatedly gambled his life” by tagging along on air raids – and went all-out to support the British cause. (Times, and wars, have changed. Even amid all of today’s endless accusations of bias against the media, it’s hard to imagine Brian Williams or Katie Couric going rogue on the objectivity front.)

While it has some exciting moments when American visitors experience the Blitz firsthand, “Citizens of London” isn’t a barnburner of a book. This is mainly a story of political, personal, and military maneuvering.

But there’s still plenty to appreciate thanks to Olson’s storytelling skills, including recaps of romance that never seem too gossipy or out of place. All three men at the center of the book – Harriman, Morrow, and Winant – had affairs with members of Churchill’s family.

“The war was an irresistible catalyst,” wrote Dwight D. Eisenhower ’s chauffeur, Kay Summersby , who’s thought to have engaged in a fling with the general herself. “It overwhelmed everything, forced relationships like a hothouse, so that in a matter of days, one would achieve a closeness with someone that would have taken months to develop in peacetime.”

“Citizens of London” encompasses much more than just Americans in England. The wide range of topics include war strategy, Eisenhower’s insecurity over his lower-class upbringing and the lack of deprivations back home in the US compared with Britain. While the English tried to win rare onions in raffles, American women refused to give up their girdles during a rubber shortage.

The book also tracks the experiences of black American soldiers, presidential adviser Harry Hopkins (a widely despised, power-behind-the-throne kind of character), and Churchill’s shy, idealistic wife, Clementine, who warned her husband against being influenced by his wastrel and wealthy friends who “can’t bear the idea of the lower classes being independent & free.”

Ultimately, many of the Americans who visited British soil believed they’d succeeded not only in saving the country but at seeing it at its best – “a magical place where courage, resolution, sacrifice, and a sense of unity and common purpose triumphed, if only for a few short years.”

Quite a few of the Americans, in fact, would never stop missing this most glorious of battlefields.

Randy Dotinga is a freelance writer in San Diego .

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CITIZENS OF LONDON

The americans who stood with britain in its darkest, finest hour.

by Lynne Olson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2010

A nuanced history that captures the intensity of life in a period when victory was not a foregone conclusion.

How the initially fragile Anglo-American alliance was forged in the perilous days of World War II.

In early 1941, Britain was perilously close to being forced to surrender to Germany. Submarines were sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of merchant shipping each month, creating dangerous shortages of food and materiel necessary to fight the war, yet Franklin Roosevelt held back from authorizing U.S. military convoys to accompany ships. Former Baltimore Sun White House correspondent Olson ( Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England , 2007, etc.) re-creates the dramatic interplay of personalities and world politics, from the relationship between Winston Churchill (who understood that America was Britain’s lifeline) and FDR (who feared precipitating war with Germany and was suspicious of British imperialist motives), to the successful efforts of a small group of Americans living in London who played a vital behind-the-scenes role in bringing the two leaders together and forming an important alliance. These included Ambassador John Gilbert Winant, a former Republican governor who was nonetheless an ardent New Dealer; Edward R. Murrow, whose live broadcasts brought the reality of German terror bombings home to Americans; Averill Harriman, FDR’s special emissary who served as lend-lease coordinator and coached the prime minister on how to deal with the president; and Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest advisor. Though many mingled with Britain’s “rich and powerful,” Murrow relished reporting about the “front-line” troops in the “Battle of London,” the “firemen, wardens, doctors, nurses, clergymen, telephone repairmen, and other workers who nightly risked their lives to aid the wounded, retrieve the dead, and bring their battered city back to life.” After Pearl Harbor, strains in the alliance emerged regarding the conduct of the war, with Dwight Eisenhower playing a crucial on-the-scene role in integrating the U.S.-British military command.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6758-9

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2009

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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.

Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.

The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad , the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.

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A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.

For Bay Area writer Tsui ( American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods , 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).

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Citizens of London

The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

Lynne Olson | 4.46 | 8,124 ratings and reviews

Ranked #92 in London

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Citizens of london – review by mark barnes.

Quite a few years ago I was working on a paper in London where one of the newer staff was an American lady who was bullish about the superiority of American culture over what we mere mortals had here in the OldeWorld. She would illustrate this with the sorry claim that there were “no songs about London” as opposed to many of the showstoppers about New York or Chicago everyone knew at a time when Frank Sinatra, especially, was still going strong. Now, maybe its because I’m a Londoner, but I found this immensely irritating and she was actually quite wrong. Fair to say much of the lyrical output relating to London came before radio in the golden age of music hall, but this was stuff that the times dictated would stay at home in a country with strong regional tastes and identities and in my youth the songs we knew were alive and kicking even if we younger people preferred pop, rock or whatever.  Family weddings were usually the epitome of the archetypal Cockney knees up and there was no dissent. Then, as now, the power and reach of American music was undisputed, but we knew our roots if nothing else.

In 1941 Noël Coward penned his love song to the city as it brushed off the Blitz and got on with life.  While London Pride is another one of those songs that hasn’t really sustained in the eyes and ears of a modern audience it will have resonated with the Americans who form the backbone of this convincing history by Lynne Olson.

I was born at the tail end of the 1950s when the war was still a very recent experience for many of the people around me and the scars of it were visible everywhere. I could walk anywhere with my parents and they would point out the new builds in our neighbourhood and my mum would recall the sisters from her school year who died in the house that stood there or the cobbler who wouldn’t leave his shop and who died where that place now stands. Some of the stories were colourful and others quite horrible. A shelter where bombs broke the water pipes and all the people drowned. A policeman decapitated after shoving my mum and my aunt into a safe place. A school hit by a V2 rocket, but, mercifully, on a weekend. My grandfather on his very last leave from the war at sea narrowly escaping a chunk of gravestone blown through the window from a bomb exploding in the local cemetery. (The lump of stone was kept for years as a reminder). A factory where my mother and grandmother worked was the subject of threats by the pro-Nazi propagandist William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ ; and although the factory was still there the last time I looked, all around it was the post war housing from where the Heinkels had missed the target.

This was the London that entranced the fabled journalist Ed Murrow and US Ambassador John G Winant. The contribution they made to building understanding between Britain and America was immense and the relationship we have inherited today is as much a consequence of their belief as all the other elements we have grown used to since 1945.

Olson tells us what an important man Winant became across the strata of wartime British life. I have to be honest here, because I had never heard of him before and I feel a little ashamed by that. He seems to have had an almost evangelical approach to Anglo-American relations and his role in promoting the British position to the US establishment as the Nazi threat mushroomed is quite remarkable. Breaking down the often implacable perceptions of isolationism was no mean feat. Now, obviously we know it was the Day of Infamy  followed up by the reckless brinkmanship of a chauvinistic and unworldly Fuhrer that actually brought the USA into the world war and not the clear as daylight reality Winant and Churchill had regularly espoused that the Nazis would have to be stopped before it really was too late.  But of course once they were in, the Americans would insure there could only be one result.

Winant built a strong bond with Churchill, for whom he was a direct link to the ear of the American establishment. I’ve not made my failure to buy into the enduring myth of Winston Churchill a secret. He has more minuses than pluses for me and his attitudes towards domestic issues in Britain and Ireland colour my overall opinion of him, although his record during the period of greatest threat in 1940-41 is immense.  A keen artist in her youth, my mother keeps two of her drawings from those years framed in her house – Churchill and Monty. Their place in the hearts and minds of Britons who lived through the war are secure but don’t always assume it is one of universal blind admiration. Monty we can leave aside, but Churchill is so important to 20 th Century British history, even the fiftieth anniversary of his funeral has created a large slice of news in the UK.

For all his faults, Churchill could see that the Nazi threat to the United States was real, but he could never separate it from the precipitous state of affairs affecting Britain and it was easy forisolationists to trump this state of affairs in any argument for action by the United States before Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war. He was an undoubted Anglophile, but Winant could see the writing on the wall, too. It is no wonder he became so central to promoting the British argument but he never really won it because events more or less caught up by themselves. He was at times isolated by the attentions of politicians in Washington and by rivals fetching up in London and his hopes for a significant role in the post war world were stymied by Roosevelt and the changing face of world politics.

Ed Murrow is a towering figure in so many ways and his importance to the history of broadcast news and the way it can be used to influence hearts and minds is crucial. He really was a giant of his age. World War II was perhaps a series of episodes in his life and work,but his adherence to strong principles may well have been crowned by his deconstruction of McCarthyism at a time when America faced new threats. Murrow loved London and returned as often as he could to a city he very much saw as a home from home. Olson tells us he was quite uncomfortable returning to America during wartime to a land without air raids, the blackout or the privations of shortages of food, fuel and clothing. We learn about his strong bond with friends at the BBC who would really have liked to have stolen him from CBS. The book underlines how we must never underestimate the importance of people like Murrow.

The third arm of the book is Averell Harriman and I detect that of the three he is the one the author has the least empathy for. He was an opportunist who sort to advance himself by any means in pursuit of power, influence and business opportunities. Can we blame him? The short answer is no. He turns up in this book during important episodes of the war’s story or when he is making hay and I suppose from the British perspective he seems the least sincere with a kind of detachment I can’t admire. Harriman cultivated a relationship with Churchill and usurped Winant in his contacts with Washington at critical times. He was living the dream and promoted himself at every opportunity. I remember him as one of the talking heads in the ground breaking  World At War documentary series of the 1970s when he was one of few survivors from the movers and shapers of the wartime period.

The author delves much further into the complicated impact Americans had on Britain during the war and does not avoid the overpaid, oversexed and over here  legend that follows the story of US servicemen during their stay in Britain. The thorny issue of Roosevelt’s antipathy to the British Empire and his quest to undermine it is central to the man’s relationship with Churchill and his Cabinet. I do not defend empire. I was at the National Portrait Gallery recently looking at the great, the lucky and the brave who built the edifice looking down from the safety of their years. I don’t have a smug feeling of wonder that Britain could have dominated so many countries and peoples for good or ill for the best part of two centuries but am rather in awe that people from a small island could have achieved it.

It’s all pretty academic now. The British Empire was in decline after the ruinous Great War and the financial and political tsunami that devastated it from 1939-45 combined with a yearning for change within Britain itself gave all the nails the coffin needed for hammering in. Nothing lasts forever and all empires fall in the end. The thing that annoyed imperialists and modernising realists alike in Britain on the end of Roosevelt’s lectures was that his vision of American altruism in having takenterritories from Spain and lands from Mexico, quite apart from the stark truth of racial segregation within the United States did not put him in a position to be telling them what to do.

The author makes effort to point out that the relationship between Britain and America was far from a rosy one. I said I’d leave Monty aside, but he and others were bound to butt up against the people other writers readily describe as Anglophobes and it really comes down to how much the exposure to the class system and culture of particular Britons exacerbated the problem. Some of these Brits were steadfastly peeing off their own countrymen, quite apart from what they did to foreigners and we know it wasn’t all one-way traffic.

Britain went to war on the principle of Polish liberty and it remains the tragic irony that the victory achieved in 1945 came with it utterly blown away by the harsh reality of the real politik  practiced by Stalin and Roosevelt. Churchill’s immense frustration at his powerlessness to intervene must have been a painful experience as the truth of the new world order washed over him. There is no comfort that he folded in the end and acquiesced to the absorption of Poland into the Soviet sphere. But worse was to come for him in the summer of 1945 when the first general election held in Britain for ten years swept him and his party away in an outpouring of rejection for his policies and prejudices.

My dad used to tell me his generation were never going to miss out on what the men of 1918 believed they had earned. He was patriotic, avowedly socialist in a way I would find difficult to define for an American audience with fixed views of what that means. But he was a monarchist, possessing a pragmatic view that having a king or queen saved us from the misery of watching the political class squabbling over who might be president of a British republic. Believe me, in a general election year such as this, that view makes a whole lot of sense.

I’ve had this argument with my mates over a few beers that Britain didn’t so much win World War II as survived it. What did she win other than years of debt and decline? But at least she was free and the much-needed changes in society were taking hold. Looking at things now with the recession still biting in our era of austerity when the latest in a periodic series of recoveries looks a little pale it is easy to identify with aspects of the post war world when the sun was well on the way to setting on the empire and the United States was in the ascendant position the Greatest Generation had earned for it. Winant, Murrow and even Harriman and others espoused the so-called special relationship between America and Britain that remains in the hearts of elements of the British political elite today, if no one else. I am not sure there really is one.Franklin Roosevelt really was a great man, but his vision of American power and greatness had no room for sentiment and why should it have? He was doing his job.

It all comes down to timing. The period when Britain stood alone against the Nazi menace has a rightful place in our history. But it marked the end of days as Churchill and the men of his political era knew it. Murrow may have been there to record it and perhaps John G Winant, in his own way, was there to make the pill easier to swallow even if he hadn’t recognised all the brutal realities himself.  But he never really escaped those times that were the high watermark of his days and he took his own life as his fortunes declined and I find that terribly sad because he is largely forgotten today as I have readily admitted.

Lynne Olson has her three main men entwined with Churchill politically and, even more so, romantically with women of his family. This book is full of opportunists! The connections between them have helped graft a genuinely fascinating history of Britain and America during those dramatic years. The place of London throughout it all is central and I take pride from that for obvious reasons.  My ancestors were building bits of the city in the century after the Great Fire and I lived with others who were there to seeswathes of it destroyed again. I don’t live in London anymore and I couldn’t afford it even if I wanted to, but the city beloved by Winant and Murrow will always mean as much to me as it did to them and their deep attachment to it is perhaps the strongest thing that resonates from this wonderful book. CITIZENS OF LONDON The Americans Who Stood With Britain In Its Darkest, Finest Hour By Lynne Olson Random House ISBN: 978-0-8129-7935-0

Citizens of London

The americans who stood with britain in its darkest, finest hour.

C itizens of London is the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States and Britain forged their crucial wartime alliance, as seen from the viewpoint of three key American players in London. Drawing from a wide variety of primary sources, Lynne Olson depicts the personal journeys of these men, who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and reluctant American public to back the British at a critical time.

The three —Edward R. Murrow, the handsome, chain-smoking head of CBS News in Europe; Averell Harriman, the hard-driving millionaire who ran FDR’s Lend-Lease program in London; and John Gilbert Winant, the shy, idealistic U.S. ambassador to Britain – formed close ties with Winston Churchill and were drawn into Churchill’s official and family circles. So intense were their relationships with the Churchills that all of them were involved romantically with members of the prime minister’s family: Harriman and Murrow with Churchill’s daughter-in-law, Pamela, and Winant with his favorite daughter, Sarah.

Citizens of London , however, is more than the deeply human story of these three Americans and the world leaders they aided and influenced. It’s a compelling account of the transformative power of personal diplomacy. Above all, it’s a rich, panoramic tale of two cities: Washington, D.C., a lazy Southern town slowly growing into a hub of international power, and London, a staid, class-conscious capital transformed by war into a vibrant cosmopolitan metropolis, humming with energy, romance, excitement, and danger. To a number of Americans who spent time in wartime London and the rest of Britain, the country seemed like a kind of Brigadoon—a magical place where courage, resolution, sacrifice, and sense of unity and common purpose triumphed, if only for a few short years.

“A triumph of research and storytelling… history on an intimate level.” —Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker and Leonardo da Vinci

“In this engaging and original book, Lynne Olson tells the story of the Americans who did the New World credit by giving their all to help Churchill’s Britain hold on against Hitler. Rich in anecdote and analysis, this is a terrific work of history.” —Jon Meacham, author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

“ Citizens of London is a great read about a small band of Americans and their courageous role in helping Britain through the darkest days of early World War II. I thought I knew a lot about that dangerous period but Lynne Olson has taught me so much more.” —Tom Brokaw, former NBC News anchor and author of The Greatest Generation

“If you don’t think there’s any more to learn about the power struggles, rivalries and dramas—both personal and political—about the US-British alliance in the World War II years, this book will change your mind—and keep you turning the pages as well.” —Jeff Greenfield,  former Senior Political Correspondent, CBS News

“Ingenious history… All three men were colorful, larger-than-life figures, and Olson’s absorbing narrative does them justice.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson

Introduction

The acclaimed author of Troublesome Young Men reveals the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, the handsome, chain-smoking head of CBS News in Europe; Averell Harriman, the hard-driving millionaire who ran FDR’s Lend-Lease program in London; and John Gilbert Winant, the shy, idealistic U.S. ambassador to Britain. Each man formed close ties with Winston Churchill—so much so that all became romantically involved with members of the prime minister’s family. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Lynne Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and reluctant American public to back the British at a critical time. Deeply human, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, Citizens of London is a new triumph from an author swiftly becoming one of the finest in her field.

Editorial Review

Discussion questions, notes from the author to the bookclub, book club recommendations.

Recommended to book clubs by 5 of 5 members.

Member Reviews

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour, Lynne Olson, author; Arthur Morey, narrator Early on, the author makes his pro Obama view obvious which ... (read more)

We learned so much from this book that wasn't previously known about Americans during London's darkest hours.

Impressive research! Enjoyed learning the 'inside' stories.....a good read!

a harrowing story of Americans in London During the bombing in World War II: Edward R. Murrow, Hugh Winamt (ambassador to England, ) and Averill Harriman

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Pithy Summary

for inquisitive minds: outlines of compelling non-fiction books

Citizens of London – The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

The non-fiction feature.

Also in this Weekly Bulletin : The Fiction Spot: The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah The Product Spot: The National WWII Museum

The Pithy Take & Who Benefits

Lynne Olson, a historian, author, and former reporter, takes the sprawling events of WWII and pulls them tightly around three pivotal men: US Ambassador Gil Winant, CBS reporter Ed Murrow, and businessman Averell Harriman. All three formed close relationships with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and constantly urged FDR to support the British against Adolf Hilter’s seemingly insurmountable Nazi forces.

I think this book is for people who seek to understand: (1) the inner workings of FDR and Churchill’s decisions during WWII, as seen through the lens of three men who were deeply sympathetic to embattled Britain; (2) the complexities and marvels of the US-Britain alliance; and (3) how the decisions of Winant, Murrow, and Harriman aided the survival of Britain and affected the outcome of the war.

The Outline

The Preliminaries

• The US emerged from WWI as the world’s leading economic power. Many in the US felt that bankers and arms manufacturers tricked the US into intervening in WWI—as a result, Congress became increasingly isolationist.
• In 1939, Britain declared war against Adolf Hitler’s Germany. More than a million people evacuated London.
• German submarines also sank hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping each month, causing severe shortages in Britain.
• FDR acknowledged that the US had to do more but was unwilling to declare war; he unveiled the Lend-Lease program, where the US would lend or lease material to any nation considered vital to the US’s defense.
• Prior to the US entering WWII, the US Army had 300,000 men (Germany had 4 million and Britain had 1.6 million).
• He was a very awkward speaker, but conveyed warmth and sincerity. He had a zeal for economic justice and social change.
• In 1934, FDR nominated him as the first US representative to the International Labor Organization, an agency sponsored by the League of Nations in Geneva.
• Soon after, FDR made him chairman of the new US Social Security Board.
• In 1940, Winant urged FDR to send Britain help as soon as possible. 
• Winant’s mission was to explain to a bombarded country that the US, safe 3,000 miles away, wanted to help but not fight.
• Murrow came from a family of impoverished farmers in North Carolina.
• When Hitler pounced on Austria in 1938, Murrow conducted the first news roundup broadcast to America, which was a major success for CBS; radio emerged as America’s chief news medium.
• Murrow earned his listeners’ trust. Hundreds said that his broadcasts moved them from neutrality to the side of the British, and he was the most well-known reporter of the time.
• He also felt a kinship with the middle- and working-class Britons who bore the brunt of the Blitz—he found them exceedingly brave, tough, and prudent.
• Murrow and Churchill became acquainted after their wives became friends.
• In 1940, Murrow pressed his connections in the White House to install Winant as US Ambassador (Murrow and Winant had been friends for years).

W. Averell Harriman

• Harriman was an aggressive, hard-driving businessman. He was pragmatic, lacked a sense of humor, and was a womanizer.
• Harriman wanted the job; he strongly believed that the US was obliged to save Britain from defeat.
• Harriman was supposed to recommend everything that the US could do, short of war, to keep Britain afloat.
• Harriman had to persuade US military leaders that US material would be of greater value in British hands, and would have to convince Churchill to provide evidence that the material would be put to immediate use.
• Winant was a terrible administrator but an inspirational leader, and the embassy funneled enormous amounts of information about British war developments to the US.
• Winant had to deal with Churchill’s growing expectation that the US would enter the war by early summer of 1941.
• Winant and Harriman kept emphasizing that it was up to Congress, not FDR, to declare war, and Congress was nowhere close.
• Churchill incessantly begged for the US to intercede, but FDR was waiting for public opinion to lead, and public opinion was waiting for him to lead.
• Churchill pledged Britain’s full support even though he despised Joseph Stalin; he needed the Soviets to bear the new attacks so that Britain could recover.
• Ultimately, it was a disappointment. FDR said he couldn’t do more because of Congress, but did promise to ask for another $5 billion for Lend-Lease.
• Harriman had little knowledge of the country and didn’t tell anyone that he had more than $1 million in Russian investments.
• Harriman gave Stalin virtually everything he asked for (weapons, planes, supplies, etc.) with no strings attached.

Pearl Harbor

• On December 7, 1941, FDR invited Murrow and his wife for dinner, while the Churchills invited Winant and Harriman.
• Immediately after Pearl Harbor was attacked, FDR called Churchill, saying that they were all in the same boat now. Churchill, Winant, and Harriman were euphoric.
• A single commander would have authority over all British and American soldiers, while a Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee would coordinate the strategy. 
• US-British agencies would control munitions, shipping, raw materials, etc. 
• In the following years, everyone agreed that Winant was largely responsible for the high degree of cooperation between representatives.
• Americans thought this was a scheme to safeguard Britain’s oil interests. 
• Winant taught Britons about the US steel mill and textile mill workers, coal miners, and the railroad and the shipyard workers.
• Murrow also explained the politics, personality traits, and peculiarities of each ally to the other through a new BBC series called Meet Uncle Sam .
• In 1942, the first American troops arrived in Northern Ireland.
• He was one of America’s few generals who wasn’t an Anglophobe, and was determined to forge a close working relationship with Britain.
• Eisenhower became very close with Winant.
• (When France capitulated to Germany in 1940, Hitler allowed Marshal Petain to establish a collaborationist French government based in the town of Vichy. The US had maintained diplomatic relations, unlike Britain.
• Vichy officials instituted highly repressive policies against Jews.)
• Other than incredible logistical problems, the militaries did not know how each other operated, and there were many personality clashes and feuds.
• Eisenhower, unaware of Darlan’s anti-Semitism, said the Allies would appoint him governor of French North Africa in exchange for a ceasefire. 
• Churchill and FDR agreed, and the fight in North Africa ended.
• Murrow criticized the move, and though Winant believed that it was a monumental error, he felt obliged to defend the position in public. 
• Darlan died soon after and Henri Giraud succeeded him; he also persecuted Jews—this posed a moral conundrum for the US and Britain.
• On May 7, Tunis fell to the Allies, securing the Middle East and North Africa.
• As time went on, Eisenhower, who was Supreme Allied Commander, established himself as a fully authoritative and commanding person. No other military leader worked as hard as he did to make the alliance a success.
• At this time, FDR began to pull back from his friendship with Churchill, as the US was dominant in the number of troops, weapons, and other resources.
• Against Churchill’s opposition, the Americans pushed through a plan to invade southern France.
• FDR didn’t have any real understanding of the massive divide between a Bolshevik and a non-Bolshevik.
• Churchill and FDR secretly agreed to one of Stalin’s key demands: post-war Soviet control of eastern Poland, even though Churchill had promised the Polish government-in-exile that they would get their homeland back.
• Winant knew that this enormous influx of Americans made life hard for Britons. He acted as an intermediary to make this transition as peaceful as possible.
• The 100,000 US black soldiers were kept as separate as possible. Britain was not a segregated country, and its citizens were shocked by the blatant racism.
• Overall, there was a relatively harmonious coexistence of US soldiers and British civilians, and most of the credit belonged to Winant.
• Operation Overlord, on June 6, was the greatest organizational achievement of WWII: nearly 2 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen from half a dozen Allied countries disembarked across Normandy.
• Murrow was deeply involved in every aspect of the preparations: how many journalists would cover the landings, how they would get there, etc.
• One week later, Germany attacked London, and for the next three months, thousands of pilotless missiles killed more than 33,000 people.
• Harriman regarded Poland as the touchstone of Stalin’s attitude toward his less powerful neighbors.
• Harriman and Winant urged FDR to press Stalin to do more, but he did not. 
• The Poles surrendered in October; 250,000 residents of Warsaw had been killed.
• Winant grew worried about the Allies’ failure to make firm postwar decisions.
• FDR, Churchill, and Stalin met again in Yalta, and FDR resisted all Churchill’s attempts to coordinate an Anglo-American strategy.
• The question of Poland dominated Yalta, but Poland’s fate was already settled. Soviet troops now occupied most of the country.
• More than 50,000 Buchenwald inmates died during the war.
• Winant had repeatedly pushed FDR to do more, but FDR declined to press for a change in America’s restrictive immigration laws so that more Jews could be admitted.
• On April 12, FDR died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
• On April 30, Hitler committed suicide.
• On May 7, WWII in Europe ended.
• On July 26, Churchill was voted out of office. 
• President Harry Truman terminated Lend-Lease, and the British could not understand why their closest ally, flush with prosperity, turned its back on them.
• Harriman soon took over Winant’s place as ambassador, and Winant became America’s representative to the Economic and Social Council, a UN agency.
• Murrow became VP of news at CBS.

The Later Years

• On November 3, 1947, Winant, deeply in debt because of his lifelong habit of giving financial aid to others, exhausted and depressed, took his own life with a pistol.
• Murrow grew greatly disheartened by the lack of freedom in the postwar world.
• Harriman became a playboy businessman, and in 1954 became governor of New York. Later, he negotiated the Geneva Accords to end a civil war in Laos.

And More, Including:

• Details of the affairs that Murrow, Harriman, and Winant had with Churchill’s daughters
• The difficult relationship between Winant and Harriman, as Harriman consistently encroached on Winant’s turf
• The Americans who broke US law by enlisting for Britain
• A significant chapter about the forgotten Allies, in particular Polish intelligence, all of whom sacrificed greatly to end the war
• The monumental significance of Tommy Hitchcock—if not for him, the US Army Air Forces would never have adopted the plane that ultimately became the best American fighter of the war
• How FDR’s vague conceptions of a post-war world allowed Stalin to make enormous gains on controlling neighboring countries

Citizens of London – The Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour

Author: Lynne Olson Publisher: Random House Pages: 471 | 2011 Purchase [If you purchase anything from Bookshop via this link, I get a small percentage at no cost to you.]

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& Noteworthy

In which we ask colleagues at The Times what they’re reading now.

Last summer, I happened to meet two authors whose books sent me into a World War II reading binge. Lynne Olson’s “Last Hope Island” chronicles the story of the Poles, French, Dutch and other Europeans who took refuge in Britain and fought to liberate their homelands from there. This was a discovery and led me to her previous books, including “Citizens of London” and “The Murrow Boys,” the latter written with her husband, Stanley Cloud, and both remarkable accounts of Americans in the wartime British capital. I also loved “The Jersey Brothers,” by Sally Mott Freeman, about three brothers in the Navy. The oldest was on the USS Enterprise carrier in the Pacific. The middle one, Freeman’s father, set up Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Map Room to track the war. The youngest was captured by the Japanese and the book is the story of the search for this brother, missing in action. So powerful, so richly researched.

— Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent

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