By 1945 the British had painfully discovered that while Tommies and GIs were fighting side-by-side against the Germans and Japanese, back home the Roosevelt administration was striking some very harsh bargains with beleaguered Britain. Churchill’s nation was obliged to sell its entire foreign assets to American corporations at fire-sale prices, to pay for arms. Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, wrote in March 1941: “I have never realized so strongly as now how entirely we are in the hands of American ‘friends’ over direct investments, and how much it looks as if, with kind words and feelings, they were going to extract these one after another.” Max Hastings October 4, 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-10-04/americans-have-always-been-hard-nosed-in-britain-and-europe Max Hastings is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His histories include "Inferno: The World At War, 1939–1945," "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945–1975" and "Ab...