‘A long, slow and painful road’: The Anglo-American alliance and the issue of cooperation with the USSR from Teheran to D-Day

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & Francis.The Second World War Anglo–American alliance was less cohesive on the political side than the military. There were widening divergences between Britain and the United States with regard to the best way to handle co-operation with the Soviet Union during 1944. Some shared assumptions about the motivations of Soviet policy existed, but British and American policy-makers not only formulated different approaches, they consistently viewed their own to be more successful than those of their ally. There was an opportunity to co-ordinate polices during American Under-Secretary of State Edward Stettinius's mission to London in April 1944 but the fact that the issue was barely discussed is symptomatic of the situation. The British Foreign Office gained the backing of Winston Churchill in an attempt to forge ahead with pragmatic arrangements with the Russians. A satisfaction with their own efforts on both sides meant that the British and American bureaucracies made no serious and sustained attempt to co-ordinate their policies towards the Soviet Union through 1944, in contrast to the closeness of co-operation in other areas

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

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