10 research outputs found
Friends - of a kind: America and its allies in the Second World War
Copyright @ 2006 Cambridge University PressThe Second World War continues to be an attractive subject for scholars and evenmore so for those writing for a general readership. One of the more traditional areas of focus has been the ‘Big Three’ – the alliance of the United States with Britain and the Soviet Union. Public interest in the three leaders – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin – remains high, and their decisions continue to resonate in the post-Cold War era, as demonstrated by continued (and often ahistorical) references to the decisions made at the Yalta Conference. Consequently, while other aspects of Second World War historiography have pushed into new avenues of exploration, that which has looked at the Grand Alliance has followed fairly conventional lines – the new Soviet bloc materials have been trawled to answer old questions and using the frames of reference that developed during the Cold War. This has left much to be said about the nature of the relationship of the United States with its great allies and the dynamics and processes of that alliance, and overlooked full and rounded analysis of the role of that alliance as the instrument of Axis defeat
‘The impression is growing … that the United States is hard when dealing with us’: Ernest Bevin and Anglo-American relations at the dawn of the cold war
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Board of Transatlantic Studies.This article examines British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin's views on Anglo-American relations during the crucial year of 1947. It challenges the view that Bevin was unquestioningly pro-American. It demonstrates how Bevin pushed the embassy in Washington to project a view of Britain, based on answering American criticisms robustly. He saw Britain's problems to be a consequence of American failures to act responsibly, as he saw it. Bevin was frustrated with American attitudes, and sought to bring them to underwrite his own policies and shape theirs around his strong belief that Britain had earned their support and that they should compensate Britain for its past sacrifices in the common cause. Bevin was not coldly pragmatic, nor was he uncritically pro-American, or merely a puppet in the hands of his Foreign Office officials
Protecting the Northern Flank, or keeping the Cold War out of Scandinavia’? British planning and the debate on the place of Norway and Denmark in a North Atlantic pact, 1947-49
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & Francis.A pragmatic, but focused, pursuit by British policy-makers of an alliance is often regarded as a central element in the genesis of the North Atlantic Treaty. Analysis of the issue of Scandinavian membership shows that British policy was not actually consistent regarding either means or ends. It was subject to internal debate, based upon conflicting assumptions in the Oslo embassy, the Foreign Office, and the armed forces. The Foreign Office's main concern was to provide Norway and Denmark with a sense of security so that they would take measures against internal subversion, while the military was more concerned to prevent British military resources being overstretched and were prepared to accept Scandinavian neutrality: they wished if possible to keep the cold war out of Scandinavia. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office did not believe this was possible, nor necessarily desirable, but were less than wholehearted about Norway and Denmark joining the pact on their own. Even in early 1949, when Soviet pressure was applied to Norway, Britain was ambivalent about whether Norway should be a founder-member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Although Britain strongly desired the alliance for long-term gains, they worked hard to ensure the form it took worked to meet their short-term needs
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Seeking comradeship in the "Ogre's Den:" Winston Churchill's quest for a warrior alliance and his mission to Stalin, August 1942
On 12 August 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Moscow to meet Soviet leader Josef Stalin, for the first time, a mission that Churchill’s wife, Clementine, had described to him as a “visit to the Ogre in his Den.” Churchill had, by his own account, attempted to strangle the Bolshevik state at birth, by supporting British intervention on the side of the White Russian counter-revolutionaries in 1918-19. His arrival in Moscow was a dramatic illustration of the way the actions of Adolf Hitler had altered international politics. However, in histories of the coalition of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union that came together to defeat Hitler, this mission of Churchill plays a small and insignificant part. Indeed it is often barely mentioned, though for its historic symbolism, one might rank Churchill’s meeting with Stalin as on a par with U.S. President Richard Nixon’s meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972. It will be shown here that Churchill’s mission should not be dismissed so lightly when examining the early development of that strange coalition commonly called the “Big Three.” Churchill’s meetings with Stalin established, despite great setbacks in the middle period of the mission, that this alliance could function as a viable entity, so long as all parties agreed tacitly to certain rules of engagement. It is often suggested that the third member of the Big Three, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, was largely responsible for establishing this pragmatic approach, but this article will show that Churchill and Stalin became alive to the wisdom of managing their interactions in this manner independently of Roosevelt, and indeed some way in advance of his active involvement in Big Three politics
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British attempts to forge a political partnership with the Kremlin, 1942-3
In February 1943, the British Foreign Office launched an initiative to open discussions with the Soviet Union on postwar aims, a subject which had been off-limits since the disputes over Soviet frontiers during the negotiation of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty in early 1942. Joseph Stalin’s response was to treat the approach seriously, and to request concrete proposals that would lead to a firm formal agreement. The British immediately pulled back, and no progress on political issues was attempted until later in the war. This paper analyses this rarely-discussed episode, focusing on how British indecisiveness, at a crucial stage of the war, and the lack of political will of Anthony Eden, led to confusion and mixed messages being sent to the Soviet government. Attempts to build a solid political component to the wartime alliance and to reach agreement on the key issues of a postwar European settlement prior to the end of the war were delayed not so much by the ideological gulf between the allies as their different cultures of diplomacy and the customary processes of their bureaucracies. Ultimately progress was made when each began to adopt elements of the approach of the other