Myths of WWII: In fact, Churchill was "one of the most disliked and distrusted politicians of his age" while FDR was “a thoroughgoing Robespierre, a world revolutionary”

The title of a book review in The New York Times of a major history volume is called, teasingly and eye-openingly, Why the British Were Afraid of Winning World War II.

In “Advance Britannia,” Alan Allport shows the conflict from the perspective of England and its various colonies. As reviewed by Kevin Peraino (the author of “A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949”), Alan Allport's book shows how many instances of common knowledge about World War II turn out to be myths.

In the annals of finest-hour mythmaking, there are two abiding articles of faith: first, that the United Kingdom bravely fought on “alone” after the fall of France, and second, that the New World ultimately came to the rescue of the Old.

The British prime minister Winston Churchill is the primary author of this narrative. In his memoirs, he claimed that not until Pearl Harbor had he recognized that Britain would survive the Nazi onslaught. With the United States finally involved, “we had won the war,” Churchill wrote. “The Empire would live.” Fighting alongside the Americans, he wrote, had proved “the greatest joy.”

Alan Allport skillfully subverts both these myths in “Advance Britannia,” the second volume of his elegant and unsparing history of London’s role in World War II. As he shows, Washington’s involvement was not an unqualified boon. Churchill had wanted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s help in Europe — not in the Pacific. Since their meeting aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in the summer of 1941, the American president had been urging Churchill to abandon Britain’s “backward colonial policy.” Compared with the conservative Churchill, Allport writes, Roosevelt was “a thoroughgoing Robespierre, a world revolutionary.”

Churchill’s “small island,” as the prime minister liked to call it, also never truly fought alone: To help pay for the war, it ruthlessly exploited its worldwide empire of more than 13 million square miles and 491 million people. Britain’s haughty imperiousness, along with the financial strain it caused, left the colonies vulnerable

 … Roosevelt’s intentions were not entirely pure either. … Again and again Washington clashed with London over policy in Asia and the Mediterranean. … By the final years of the war, Allport observes, the so-called special relationship had morphed into one of “patron and client.”

 … [In ADVANCE BRITANNIA: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945, the sequel to In the first volume in the series, “Britain at Bay”], Allport … overturns one piece of conventional wisdom after another — quarrelsome, occasionally, to a fault. 

Regarding myths in the first book, writes Geoffrey Wheatcroft in his New York Times review of six years ago, 

Churchill’s ascent to power was as remarkable as it may have been providential, since in his 40 years in Parliament he had become one of the most disliked and distrusted politicians of his age. If he became an admired national leader it was “because he happened to fill a role that very badly needed filling at that moment.”

 … In fact, Franklin Roosevelt had met Churchill in 1918, and disliked him. He was now told by his ambassador in London, the horrible old corrupt anti-Semite and defeatist Joe Kennedy, that Churchill was useless and England was finished.

 … Allport calls Churchill “the most self-assertive, disputatious and dogmatic prime minister in history,” demonstrating that his military judgment before and during the war was often wildly wrong.

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ADVANCE BRITANNIA: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945 | By Alan Allport | Knopf | 631 pp. | $40