"To understand why men attacked in the places they did, you’ve got to look at the relationships between the political masters and the military commanders"

Andrew Roberts is multifaceted, authoring bestsellers like A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 and coanchoring television coverage of Princess Diana’s funeral and Prince Charles’s marriage to Camilla Bowles. Now comes Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945. The four: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, U.S. Army chief of staff George C. Marshall, and British chief of Imperial General Staff Alan Brooke.

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For the inside scoop, the prizewinning historian burrowed through archival documents, especially diaries. His greatest coup: verbatim accounts of War Cabinet meetings by Lawrence Burgis, assistant secretary to the War Cabinet. “I’d like to pretend it was archival genius, but it was pure serendipity. I looked at the catalog because I thought, ‘Who’s he?’” Burgis didn’t burn his notes as ordered, but squirreled them away—a trove untapped till now.

Why this book?
It came from reading Alan Brooke’s diaries, specifically his over-the-top attacks on George Marshall, who I always saw as the sweetest, best-natured, charming man. I thought, “How on earth could you make a major enemy out of someone so completely courtly?”

Did your views of the four main characters evolve over time?
In all cases they moved pretty radically—except for Marshall, who I liked as much when I finished as I did when I picked up my pen. Brooke I’d always thought of as just being a tough man at home in his own skin, sitting in front of the prime minister breaking pencils in half, looking him right in the eye and saying, “Frankly, I disagree with you.” Of course I’ve written a lot about Churchill and adore him, but the ways he would manipulate pretty much everybody and everything in order to get his way was something even I wasn’t quite prepared for. And I was astonished at how he manipulated his memoirs of the war. So I’m afraid Churchill did go down in my estimation.

And FDR?
I’d always assumed he had a grand strategic plan for the Second World War, but in the course of writing the book it became quite clear to me he didn’t at all. He saw it in terms of politics. Everything was to be seen in terms of politics. And that was actually the right way to look at this war.

What powered the quartet’s interactions?
The terror of being caught out being the fourth one, the other three agreeing—and knowing if that happened, your view of how to win the war was not going to be adopted. Except for Roosevelt, they all had very strong views on what that strategy should be. That’s what kept this complicated minuet going.

How did it work?
The classic example is the attack on northwest France. They pretty much agreed where it should be from the earliest days. The timing, of course, was something quite different. The British didn’t agree with the Americans. At times Brooke didn’t agree with Churchill. Brooke very rarely agreed with Marshall. FDR changed his mind in 1942, after initially supporting Marshall, and supported Churchill. And that went on for another two years.

Why?
It was a political decision. When FDR realized Brooke and Churchill weren’t going to go along with Marshall’s plan [to invade France in 1942], he knew he had to get American troops fighting German troops somewhere. It was all very well having the USAAF flying very bravely and sinking German ships, but you really had to have people engaged on the ground—preferably, as far as FDR was concerned, by the midterm congressional elections.

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