Thinking about The Citizens of London: a review

Over dinner in a private room of the fragrant restaurant, we gathered to discuss Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Finest Hour by Lynne Olson.  The eight of us sat around a long rectangular wooden table agreeing how little we had known about the topic prior to reading the book. We were all born in the 1940s or 1950s, so that war was important to our parents and grandparents.  Not so much to our generation.  Someone sagely suggested we each say a bit about how our parents experienced the war.

This meeting took place in northern California but several of us had been raised elsewhere.  The experiences were not just geographically diverse our parents had wildly different war experiences. 

A couple of fathers stayed at home in civil defense capacities, due to their age or family responsibilities. 

One of our fathers was unlucky enough to be shot down over France early in the war and endured near starvation in German prisoner-of-war camps only to be almost killed during a Soviet liberation. 

Another father had the inverse war story.  He managed to arrive in North Africa and Italy after the fighting, when dancing, drinking, and having a good time was all he reported doing for the duration. 

One set of grandparents had the misfortune of being Jewish in Eastern Europe (but the blonde looks to pass as gentile).  Many of their friends and family were unable to escape and lost their lives not just everything they owned. 

My dad sailed across the Pacific on a cheaply made naval vessel dodging cyclones, torpedoes, and bombs, mostly successfully.  Only recently have I learned about this war experience and his survivor guilt, as it just wasn’t discussed when I was a kid.

Whatever family’s war time experiences, few Americans fully comprehended what was happening in London prior to the U. S. entering the war.  The book gives a vivid, sometimes intimate look at the key players in London prior to and during World War 2.  Many of the important ones (Gil Winant, being the most important), I’d never heard of.  The secret lives and loves of all are revealed, along with the mind numbing geo-political escapades of the great powers.

The book is a treasury of information and it is guaranteed to get you thinking about a very important time in history.