J. Brett Grill's statue of John G. Winant. Cold? Winant would give you his overcoat. |
As a way of honoring a man or woman who set a good example
in this world, a statue is a throwback. But Winant himself was a throwback: an idealist and humanitarian whose actions followed his hopes for mankind. A cynical world dismissed him as a dreamer but could not change him.
Winant devoted himself to serving others. He was a teacher, a flier in
World War I, a governor, the first director of Social Security and the U.S.
ambassador to the Court of St. James during World War II. To him, service
was not about the offices he gained. As governor, he gave away his pocket change on his way
to work. Once he even gave away his overcoat. He picked up hitchhikers and
found jobs for the needy. As ambassador, he did as much as anyone could to bridge
the gap between Great Britain and the United States, to reassure a suffering nation and to win the war.
Five years ago, I had the opportunity to delve into Winant’s
life, and I took it. Lynne Olson, a fine historian and writer, had just brought out Citizens of London, her book about three men
who shaped the British-American alliance in World War II. I read the book,
interviewed Olson, did further research and wrote a two-part series about Winant
for the Concord Monitor.
Winant had not been totally forgotten, but until her book came out, the story of his service as ambassador and his deep and
crucial friendships with Churchill and FDR had never been part of the public lore about him. The stigma of his suicide in 1947 had blotted out his wartime
achievements.
So, bravo for the campaign to build the statue. It’s a fine
likeness and a deserved tribute. It is also a reminder that politics and public
life are about service, not self-interest.
Here is part one of my 2010 series on Winant. Part two is coming soon.
FDR finds his man
From the day John G. Winant, of Concord, N.H., arrived in London as U.S. ambassador in early 1941, the White House resisted his pleas for stronger U.S. action against Germany’s war machine.
When the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor finally forced his
country’s hand, Winant was so excited that he and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill danced around the room together.
Churchill is front and center, Winant right of him, hat under arm. |
That should change this week with the release of Citizens of London, Lynne Olson’s new
book about the Americans who played critical roles in the wartime relationship
between Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Olson is a former journalist with
two other World War II histories to her credit.
In Citizens of London,
she portrays Winant as an extraordinary man whose principles, compassion and
hard work helped win the war. In her view, he lived close to power without
having power himself, using the ambassadorship to strengthen the bonds between
Churchill in London and Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.
For Olson, the discovery of Gil Winant, as he was known, was
a pleasant but unsettling surprise.
“I had never heard of him before my research, and that is a
crying shame,” she said during a recent telephone interview. “When you consider
how important that alliance was, it seems incredible that one of the architects
who made it happen is unknown to the American people.”
The story of Winant in London has remained incomplete for
decades. When he committed suicide at his Concord home in 1947, he had signed a
contract to write his wartime memoirs in three volumes, but finished only one.
“He Walked Alone,” a 1968 political biography, covered the war years, but
didn’t gain wide general readership.
John G. Winant in 1919, at age 30. |
Olson’s Winant is an idealist and a workaholic, a man who
stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the British people as the Luftwaffe’s bombs and
rockets fell on London and other cities. The British adored him for it,
especially in contrast to his predecessor, Joseph P. Kennedy – who, upon
arriving back home in the States in 1940, declared: “England is gone. . . . I’m
for appeasement 1,000 percent.”
Olson’s book examines Winant’s love affair with Sarah
Churchill, a daughter of the prime minister. It recounts his devotion to
Roosevelt, his effort to build the alliance and his campaign to improve
understanding between the two peoples. It ends with a thorough account of
Winant’s suicide.
In the book, Winant shares the limelight with Averell
Harriman, Edward R. Murrow and others, but Olson returns to his story again and
again.
“It is astonishing to me that virtually the entire British
public knew Winant and could identify him on the street if they saw him,” Olson
said. “He became a symbol to most British people of our country standing with
them – even before we were really standing with them.”
Before the war
Roosevelt and Winant had a history before Winant’s
appointment as ambassador. Winant was a Republican, Roosevelt a Democrat, but
after Winant embraced the New Deal during the 1930s, Roosevelt made him the
first chairman of the board that oversaw Social Security.
John G. Winant |
Roosevelt then sent Winant to Geneva, where he headed the
International Labor Organization, an agency founded after World War I under the
auspices of the League of Nations. Its chief function was to promote fair
conditions for workers.
In Europe, Winant witnessed Hitler’s aggression firsthand.
He went to Prague to commiserate with the Czechoslovaks after Germany took over
the country. He was in Paris the day before Hitler’s forces captured it. He
traveled to England at Roosevelt’s request to report on British resolve under
attack.
In Olson’s view, Roosevelt had wanted to replace the
defeatist Kennedy as ambassador to Great Britain for some time. Although
Roosevelt’s goal was a stronger alliance, he probably gave Winant no specific
instructions. Roosevelt seemed “intentionally vague” during their Oval Office
meeting, Olson said – so much so that Winant learned of his appointment only
when the press told him about it afterward.
In Winant, Roosevelt knew he had found a man who could
connect with the British and let them know they weren’t alone. He also
understood the character of Winant, who he called “Utopian John.”
A royal welcome
Winant’s welcome in England underscored how desperate the
British were for American help. In a departure from protocol for receiving new
ambassadors, King George VI met him at the railroad station in Windsor and
spoke with him at length.
Winant (right) with King George VI (saluting) and his wife Queen Elizabeth. |
Winant didn’t need convincing. He counseled Churchill on how
best to deal with Roosevelt. Determined to bring America into the war, he threw
himself at his task.
“There’s no place I’d rather be than in England,” he said,
and he meant it.
Winant lived modestly in London despite his station and traveled widely despite the Blitz. He became a familiar figure at bombed buildings, helping where he could. He preferred conversing with janitors and waiters to rubbing elbows with the high-born.
Though a lackluster orator, he expressed clear principles
with a human touch. His message was simple: We’re with you. After one speech
prevented a coal miners’ strike, a leading British newspaper compared it to
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
In May 1941, two months after he came to London, Winant made
it clear to the British public where he stood and where he wished his country
to stand.
“We have all slept while the wicked, evil men plotted
destruction,” he said. “We have all tried to make ourselves believe we are not
our brother’s keeper. But we are now beginning to realize we need our brothers
as much as our brothers need us.”
In 1940 and ’41, however, the government Winant represented
failed to deliver on Roosevelt’s glib promises of aid to Great Britain. For the
ships and other materiel and supplies it did send, the United States charged a
high price.
Chequers, the prime minister's retreat, 40 miles west of London. |
It wasn’t Winant who needed convincing, and Churchill came to see this. Roosevelt had promised during the 1940 election not to go to war, but Winant knew a U.S.-British military alliance was essential to stop Hitler.
Churchill told his cabinet Winant was “apparently longing
for Germany to commit some overt act that would relieve the president of his .
. . declaration regarding keeping out of war.”
As documented in Citizens
of London, Winant was in the unusual position of representing his country
while also making Churchill’s arguments to the Roosevelt administration. His
allegiance to Britain’s cause raises the question of whether he ever put his
own country second. Although Olson sees Winant’s relationship with Churchill as
unprecedented, her answer is a resounding no.
“The interests of the United States were paramount with
Winant,” she said. “There was no sign of his stepping over the line. He always
had it in mind that he was representing the president.”
War
In response to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress declared
war on both Japan and Germany, the two chief Axis partners. Winant was with Churchill and
others at Chequers when the radio brought news of the attack. All were
jubilant. One of Churchill’s private secretaries wrote in his diary that the
two men “sort of danced around the room together.”
Olson stressed during the interview that Churchill and
Winant weren’t reacting to the horrific details of the Pearl Harbor attack.
“They didn’t know those,” she said. “All they knew was that
the United States was in the war.”
This fact made Winant’s job even more challenging. He was now a catalyst in the often caustic compound of two giant egos joined as wartime leaders. He had to prepare England for the arrival of a U.S. military force that, by late 1943, grew to more than 1.6 million men.
Lt. John G. Winant Jr. is second from right in life jacket. He is pictured with the flight crew of his B17 Flying Fortress. Photo was taken in August 1943. |
As he assumed these responsibilities, Winant also faced two
personal issues. One was a perennial problem: his loneliness. The other was
news that, like Winant during World War I, his son, John Jr., had decided to
join the U.S. Army Air Forces.
Winant was prone to depression and beset by debt. He and his
wife, who occasionally visited him in London, had long been emotionally
distant.
Olson quotes a woman who knew them both as saying: “He would
sit up all night brooding over how to make things better. She loved to throw
parties.”
In Sarah Churchill, Winston’s favorite daughter, Winant
sought solace. Twenty-five years younger than Winant, who was in his early 50s,
she was rebounding from a broken marriage. He fell in love with her.
Sarah Churchill |
Especially by London standards during the war, their affair was discreet. Having forgone the ambassador’s residence, Winant lived near the embassy in a modest three-bedroom flat in Grosvenor Square. Sarah Churchill’s smaller flat was a short walk from the embassy.
They spent as much time together as possible, but few people
knew of the liaison. Sarah Churchill suspected the prime minister might be one
of them, later referring to it as a “love affair which my father suspected but
about which we did not speak.”
When the U.S. buildup in England began in earnest, John
Winant Jr.’s decision to become a bomber pilot added to the pressure on his
father. At the height of World War I, Gil Winant had left his teaching job at
St. Paul’s School to fly in France, an experience he was lucky to survive. Now,
John Jr. began training to fly a B-17 during a period when German fighter
planes and antiaircraft guns were shooting down Flying Fortresses with alarming
ease.
The Air Force had no long-range fighter planes to protect
the bombers from German Messerschmitts. Ignoring evidence to the contrary, the
brass clung to the idea that B-17s and B-24s were so powerful and plentiful
that they would prevail without fighter escorts.
From London, Winant joined the campaign to overcome this
hubris, but by the time he and others finally won the argument, it was too late
to help his son.
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