Vyacheslav Molotov

A common language, history, and culture bound the United States and the United Kingdom closer together than any other nation. Helping to cement that friendship was the close relationship of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and UK Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill.

Adolf Hitler had convinced himself by December 1940 that England lay prostrate before German air power. November had seen the worst of the air attacks; acres of England’s cities were reduced to rubble. Hitler believed she would never rise again to threaten Germany.