Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin were an odd trio. Churchill, the United Kingdom’s prime minister, was a bullish aristocrat famous for his brandy and cigars while Roosevelt, the U.S. president, had a well-known antipathy to the British Empire. Stalin’s differences with the two were stark: The Soviet dictator was responsible for the murder of millions of his own citizens. Yet when Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, these three, larger-than-life leaders joined forces to win World War II, as Winston Groom explains in his new book, The Allies, which is published by National Geographic. (Learn about a daring mission to stop a Nazi atomic bomb.)
Speaking from his home in Point Clear, Alabama, Groom describes how “fake news” about the Soviet Union blinded Roosevelt to Stalin’s character and intentions, how Churchill became a powerful symbol of courage and resistance for the British, and what lessons these three giants of history hold for us today.
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