One was the soldier-statesman who would become America’s 34th president. The other was the British icon who refused to surrender in democracy’s darkest hour. Together they launched invasions, toppled tyrants and shaped the world as the nations they served drifted apart. From world war to Cold War, from Pearl Harbor to the hydrogen bomb, Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower faced down Hitler, Stalin and Khrushchev and stood together in the uneasy dawn of the nuclear age. Through triumph and loss, they forged a remarkable friendship that weathered the decline of an empire and rise of a superpower.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was wakened from its slumber of isolationism. To help him steer the nation through the coming war, President Franklin Roosevelt turned to the greatest “team of rivals” since the days of Lincoln: Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Admiral Ernest J. King and General George C. Marshall. Together, these four men led the nation through history’s most devastating conflict and ushered in a new era of unprecedented American influence, all while forced to overcome the profound personal and political differences that divided them.