"The author draws on wartime files only recently released as background for his new work - an intriguing look behind the congenial facade of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, revealing how each jealously guarded knowledge from the other in pursuit of separate national interests." "Theirs was a unique relationship. It was based on linked national histories and partially shared nationality - Churchill was half-American - similarities in class and education, a special love for the navy, and a common belief in the superiority of Anglo-Saxon institutions. But above all, it was cemented by shared enemies: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. On these foundations Roosevelt and Churchill constructed a fighting alliance unlike any other in history. Each in his own way had to deal with two other allies of stature - Joseph Stalin and Charles de Gaulle - whose agendas were certainly different again." "Roosevelt and Churchill also developed an extraordinary personal relationship, communicating almost daily by telegram, telephone, meetings, or contact through intermediaries. Their complicated camaraderie - which was always dynamic - ended abruptly with FDR's death on April 12, 1945, just hours before American and British troops liberated Buchenwald and Belsen."--BOOK JACKET.