The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

and defiance – the spirit – that Daidie Penna was discovering in her Surrey
village was beginning to take root.
But while uniting the British was of great importance, so was stirring
the United States into action. Churchill had deliberately included America
in his speech on 18 June, words of warning that were broadcast and printed
throughout Britain and her Dominions as well as the United States.
Bringing the US into the fight was still a key part of his strategy despite the
cold shoulder Britain had received earlier in May. The President had spoken
out against Italy’s entry into the war, and promised all material support for
those prepared to defy the Axis and to speed up American rearmament and
their own means of defence. ‘I call for effort, courage, sacrifice, devotion,
the love of freedom,’ he said in a speech on 10 June. ‘All these are
possible.’ This was music to Churchill’s ears, who wasted no time in reopening
a dialogue with the President, and stressing that the fight against
Nazism was America’s fight too. ‘I send you my heartfelt thanks,’ he wrote,
‘and those of my colleagues for all you are doing and seeking to do for what
we may now indeed call a common cause.’ He once again asked for ‘30 or
40’ American destroyers to be sent over immediately, and also told
Roosevelt that US entry into the war was the only possible means of
keeping France fighting. This Roosevelt rejected out of hand; on the
question of destroyers, he did not reply.
Churchill’s efforts to wed America to the ‘common cause’ were
infuriating the US Ambassador in London. Joe Kennedy had never had
much truck with Churchill. He mistrusted him, thought he drank too much
and was too prone to cronyism. Since Churchill had become Prime
Minister, Kennedy had also felt increasingly snubbed by the new
Government, shut out from the kind of access that he enjoyed during
Chamberlain’s premiership. He had finally secured an appointment to see
Churchill at 7 p.m. on 10 June, but his nose had been put further out of joint
when he was kept waiting half an hour. The fact that Churchill was
frantically busy with the current crisis, and that Kennedy’s own isolationist
and defeatist stance was neither helping British interests nor endearing him
to the Prime Minister, did not seem to occur to him.
When he was finally ushered in to see the Prime Minister, Churchill
immediately offered him a ‘highball’. Kennedy told him he didn’t drink.
‘England is next on Hitler’s list,’ Churchill said, ‘but we will fight to the
end and give him plenty of trouble. How about those destroyers? We need