Winston Churchill Letter to Charles de Gaulle Sold for $50,908 at Auction

A 1950 letter signed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to French leader Charles de Gaulle has sold for $50,908 at RR Auction’s Fine Autographs and Artifacts Featuring WWII sale.

The two-page typed letter, written on Churchill’s Chartwell letterhead and dated August 22, 1950, thanks de Gaulle for remarks in his memoirs and looks back on their wartime relationship. Churchill writes that despite the “hard contretemps of War” the two leaders maintained “fundamental goodwill” while serving “the common cause of freedom and tradition".

The letter concludes with a warning shaped by the opening years of the Cold War. Churchill writes: “How terrible it is to feel that all that we were able to achieve is now plunged in the greatest peril I have ever known, and that is saying a good deal.”

 "The letter shows how Churchill viewed the world in 1950. World War II had ended, but he believed many of the gains secured by the Allied victory were already under threat," said Bobby Livingston, Executive Vice President at RR Auction.

Other highlights included:

• an Alexander Hamilton letter signed as Treasury Secretary concerning the 1790 Tonnage Act (sold for $54,811)
• a Zhou Enlai signed letter discussing U.S. policy toward China ($31,245)
• Dambusters logbook documenting Operation Chastise and signed by five pilots later killed in action ($25,611)
• an Alfred Jodl signed manuscript containing his final statement to the Nuremberg Tribunal ($24,348)
• a Chester Nimitz signed letter to the parents of the Sullivan brothers ($23,544)