Lynne Olson - Citizens of London

I am enjoying this book about World War II.  Freddy is home and he recommended it.  The WW II years were the most important of the 20th Century.  Those years were perhaps the most important in the history of Western Civilization.

The main thing I learned in this book is that US/British cooperation in the war was not automatic.  There was initial animosity both before and during the war.  FDR and Churchill had to warm up to each other.  They did not like each other initially.  Churchill had to court FDR and he did it well to get the US into the war.  He danced a jig when he heard about Pearl Harbor.  By the end of the FDR was drifting away from Churchill.

How London stood up to the Nazi bombing is beyond me.  It sounds like the city was all but leveled.  Londoners suffered much more than Americans.  The author makes it sound our country sailed thru the war with little hardship.

The author makes it sound like FDR thought he could deal with Stalin.  It seems that he was snookered by the Russian.

The author also makes it sound like FDR moved too slowly toward preparing the US for the war though he knew it was inevitable that we would get into it.

The story of the book is the three gentlemen who were in London preparing for our entry into the war.  I certainly did not know their story before reading this book.