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What role did Winston Churchill play at the outset of World War II, and why did Roosevelt seek him out rather than Chamberlain?

August 21, 2026 World War II with Tom Hanks

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When war was declared, Winston Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and joined the new war cabinet — the role he had held before, and the one his reputation demanded. Franklin D. Roosevelt bypassed Neville Chamberlain entirely, sending Churchill a private congratulatory note and opening a secret line of communication. Roosevelt's calculation was simple: Churchill was a fighter, and the man you call when you already know the war is going to be big.

A decade in the wilderness — then proven right overnight

Throughout the 1930s, Churchill had been the loudest and most persistent critic of Adolf Hitler's rise in the West. He warned repeatedly about German rearmament and the failure of the European powers to enforce the Treaty of Versailles — warnings that were largely ignored by a political class exhausted by the memory of the First World War.

When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Britain declared war, Churchill's decade of alarm was suddenly vindicated. His return to government was not a reward — it was an acknowledgment that he had been right all along. As Tom Hanks traces in World War II with Tom Hanks, Churchill's re-entry into power came at exactly the moment his warnings became reality.

Roosevelt's secret note — and why it went to Churchill, not Chamberlain

Franklin Roosevelt understood, even in September 1939, that the United States would probably not be able to stay out of this war. Ninety percent of Americans polled at the outbreak said the U.S. should absolutely not get involved in the European conflict — but Roosevelt was already thinking ahead.

Chamberlain, as Prime Minister, was the formal head of the British government. Yet Roosevelt chose to write directly to Churchill. The reason was strategic and personal: Churchill had a reputation as a combatant, a man who would fight rather than appease. Roosevelt needed a contact in London who shared his assessment of the war's gravity. Chamberlain did not fit that profile.

That private note established a secret channel between the two men — a back-channel that would grow into one of the defining diplomatic relationships of the entire conflict. This episode of World War II with Tom Hanks captures the moment that relationship began, before most of the world had grasped what was coming.

"Poland has been overrun by two of the great powers which held us in bondage for 150 years, but were unable to quench the spirit of the Polish nation. The heroic defence of Warsaw shows that the soul of Poland is indestructible."

Churchill's war cabinet statement in 1939 made the British position explicit: the British Empire and French Republic should prepare for a war of at least three years. That sober, long-horizon thinking is precisely what made him credible to Roosevelt, and it is detailed in the opening episode of World War II with Tom Hanks.

The contrast with Chamberlain could not have been sharper. Where Chamberlain had pursued appeasement and believed Hitler's assurances, Churchill had never wavered. For Roosevelt, choosing his British interlocutor was not a diplomatic formality — it was a signal about what kind of war he expected and what kind of ally he was already preparing for. The full context of this calculation is explored across the podcast series.