From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and International History of the 1940s

FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR

Also by David Reynolds

The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–1941: A Study in

Competitive Cooperation

An Ocean Apart: The Relationship between Britain and America in

the Twentieth Century (with David Dimbleby)

Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the Twentieth Century

The Origins of the Cold War in Europe (editor)

Allies at War: The Soviet, American and British Experience, 1939–1945

(coedited with Warren F. Kimball and A. O. Chubarian)

Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945

One World Divisible: A Global History since 1945

From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and

the Origins of the Second World War

In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing

the Second World War

From World War to

Cold War

Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International

History of the 1940s

DAVID REYNOLDS

AC

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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Harry Hinsley

Zara Steiner

Christopher Thorne

Donald Cameron Watt

With respect and affection

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Contents

Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

I WORLD WAR

1 The Origins of ‘The Second World War’: Historical Discourse

and International Politics 9

2 1940: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century? 23

3 Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Wartime Anglo-American Alliance 49

II CHURCHILL

4 Churchill and the British ‘Decision’ to Fight on in 1940:

Right Policy, Wrong Reasons 75

5 Churchill the Appeaser? Between Hitler, Roosevelt,

and Stalin, 1940–1944 99

6 Churchill and Allied Grand Strategy in Europe, 1944–1945:

The Erosion of British Influence 121

III ROOSEVELT

7 The President and the King: The Diplomacy of the

British Royal Visit of 1939 137

8 The President and the British Left: The Appointment of

John Winant as US Ambassador in 1941 148

9 The Wheelchair President and his Special Relationships 165

IV ‘MIXED UP TOGETHER’

10 Whitehall, Washington, and the Promotion of American

Studies in Britain, 1941–1943 179

11 Churchill’s Government and the Black GIs, 1942–1943 199

12 GIs and Tommies: The Army ‘Inter-attachment’

Programme of 1943–1944 217

V COLD WAR

13 Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Stalin Enigma, 1941–1945 235

14 Churchill, Stalin, and the ‘Iron Curtain’ 249

15 The ‘Big Three’ and the Division of Europe, 1945–1948 267

VI PERSPECTIVES

16 Power and Superpower: The Impact of the Second World War

on America’s International Role 291

17 A ‘Special Relationship’? America, Britain, and the International

Order since the Second World War 309

18 Culture, Discourse, and Policy: Reflections on the New

International History 331

Permissions 352

Index 353

viii Contents

Abbreviations

ABCA Army Bureau of Current Affairs

ADM Admiralty papers (TNA)

AG Adjutant General

CA Confidential Annex

CAB Cabinet Office papers (TNA)

CAC Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge

CHAR Chartwell Papers (CAC)

CHUR Churchill Papers (CAC)

CIGS Chief of the Imperial General Staff

CO Colonial Office papers (TNA)

COS Chiefs of Staff (UK)

DDEL Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas

ED Board of Education papers (TNA)

ETO European Theater of Operations, US Army

FDRL Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York

FO Foreign Office papers (TNA)

FRUS US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, various years)

HLRO House of Lords Record Office, London

HSTL Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri

INF Ministry of Information papers (TNA)

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff (USA)

KCL Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London

LC Library of Congress, Washington, DC

NA US National Archives, College Park, Maryland

NC Neville Chamberlain papers, Birmingham University Library

OF Official File (FDRL or HSTL)

PPF President’s Personal File (FDRL or HSTL)

PREM Prime Minister’s Papers (TNA)

PSF President’s Secretary’s File (FDRL or HSTL)

RG Record Group (NA)

TNA The National Archives of the UK: Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey

WM War Cabinet minutes (TNA)

WO War Office papers (TNA)

WP War Cabinet papers (TNA)

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Introduction

The ‘special relationship’ seems inescapable. True believer or iconoclastic sceptic,

no one writing about contemporary British foreign policy can avoid referring to

this cliche´d concept. In the 1970s, after Britain entered the European Com￾munity, many predicted that it would be consigned to the dustbin of history. But

then came the Falklands War. Another round of obituaries was written in the

early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet empire. But that was before two Gulf

Wars against Iraq. Like it or loathe it, the term ‘special relationship’ is still central

to the lexicon of British diplomacy, trotted out every time a Prime Minister flies

to Washington or a President deigns to visit London. To understand why, we

need to go back to the 1940s. The phrase and the idea were born in the Second

World War and nurtured by the onset of the Cold War. We still live in the

shadow of this, the most dramatic and decisive decade of the twentieth century.

Although global in scope, the ‘World War’ was, in many ways, a series of

connected regional conflicts. Germany and Japan, though part of the Axis,

fought entirely separate wars; on the Allied side, Britain and the United States

left the bulk of the land war in Europe to the Red Army. The Soviets, for their

part, did not enter the Asian War until its final days, while the Americans tried to

minimize involvement in Britain’s Mediterranean operations and to keep the

British at arm’s length from the Pacific War. The opening chapter shows how the

label ‘World War’ was stamped on these conflicts at the time by Adolf Hitler and

particularly Franklin Roosevelt as part of their ‘ideologizing’ of events. But the

regional nature of the conflict must be borne in mind if we wish to understand

the strengths and limitations of the wartime Anglo-American alliance.

Although we normally date the Second World War from September 1939, the

catalytic moment came in May–June 1940, with the fall of France in only six

weeks. The surprise collapse of what still seemed the strongest power in Europe

transformed the Continental balance of power. It also had global repercussions,

forcing Britain into reliance on the United States, spurring Hitler into a hubristic

attack on the Soviet Union, and emboldening Italy and Japan to make their own

bids for regional hegemony, which culminated in the attack on Pearl Harbor in

December 1941. The revolution of 1940 is the theme of Chapter 2.

Next I explore the broad character of the wartime Anglo-American alliance.

Looking in turn at different areas of the war effort—military, economic, and

diplomatic—Chapter 3 underlines the degree to which pre-war rivalries

continued, particularly over commerce and empire. But I also stress that the

wartime alliance, when measured against other bilateral relations between two

major powers, was characterized by a remarkable degree of cooperation in the

strategy for victory and in designs for a new post-war order. As historical fact, the

wartime Anglo-American relationship was truly ‘special’.

The term ‘special relationship’ was popularized by Winston Churchill—‘half￾American but all British’, as the obituaries liked to say. It was central to his

foreign policy as Prime Minister from May 1940 to July 1945, and Part II of this

book explores the evolution of that policy as Churchill picked up the pieces after

the French collapse and sought to draw America into a long-term relationship.

Chapter 4 underlines his remarkable achievement in reorienting British policy in

the crisis of 1940, when Britain’s prospects were bleak, as Churchill privately

acknowledged. To justify continuing the struggle, Churchill needed to offer

more than pugnacious rhetoric, important though that was. The reiterated

assertion that America was just about to enter the war was central to his reasons

(or rationalizations) for not seeking a compromise peace in 1940.

Some revisionist historians have argued that, by fighting on, Churchill sold

out British power in a credulous search for transatlantic amity. Chapter 5 offers a

detailed rebuttal, showing that the British could not have secured an acceptable

peace from Nazi Germany in 1940–1 but also that they never had a credible

strategy for winning the war single-handedly. Even Churchill’s long-term goal

was probably a negotiated peace with a non-Nazi German government. Total

victory depended on the might of America and Russia and, as Chapter 6 shows,

the price for that was a grand strategy that violated Churchill’s deepest pre￾ferences. Although this chapter emphasizes his waning influence in the last year

of the war, when America was fully mobilized, the three essays in Part II, taken as

a whole, suggest how much Churchill the diplomatist managed to achieve given

the appallingly weak hand he inherited in 1940.

Yet the wartime alliance was only possible because Churchill was met halfway

by Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1940–1 circuitously drew his country into full

belligerency and then on to a new global hegemony. Roosevelt’s style, very

different from Churchill’s, is examined in two contrasting case studies doc￾umenting his acute sensitivity to the larger forces of cultural values and public

opinion that set the parameters for official diplomacy. Chapter 7 shows how he

tried to use the British royal visit of 1939—on the face of it a prime symbol of

the ideological gulf between the Old World and the New—to mobilize popular

support for Britain. In Chapter 8, we find him selecting a new American

Ambassador to London in 1941 who could reach out to the British left and the

forces of reform that, FDR believed, were about to transform wartime Britain.

These vignettes illustrate Roosevelt’s almost feline fascination with the details of

diplomacy, in contrast with Churchill’s love of sweeping statements of policy. In

writing about Roosevelt, however, it is easy to forget that he was virtually

2 Introduction

paralysed from the waist down and unable to move unaided for the whole of his

twelve-year presidency. The effect of this handicap on FDR’s style as a leader is

the theme of Chapter 9. It looks at the way the wheelchair president relied on

others to be his eyes and ears, and sketches some consequences for his diplomacy.

We must not, however, dwell exclusively on Churchill, Roosevelt, and their

inner circles. The war saw a remarkable and unprecedented intermingling of

the two populations, not least because nearly three million American soldiers

passed through the United Kingdom during the Second World War. The cultural

and social dimensions of the wartime alliance provide the theme of Part IV. In

1941–2 Whitehall sought to counter the Hollywood image of America as a land of

violence and corruption by a vigorous campaign to develop American studies in

British schools and universities (Chapter 10). In 1942–3 Churchill’s Cabinet

debated whether to establish a covert colour bar to discourage British people

from fraternizing with black American soldiers (Chapter 11). And in 1943–4,

the two armies ran a series of exchanges between American and British army units,

to improve relations between GIs and Tommies in the build-up to D-Day

(Chapter 12). In all these cases, the British had an eye not just to wartime exi￾gencies but also to their larger goal of a close post-war transatlantic relationship.

There was, however, a third partner in what Churchill liked to call ‘the Grand

Alliance’. After the titanic victory at Stalingrad in 1942–3, Roosevelt was

determined to forge a relationship with Stalin. Although Churchill was more

sceptical, his subsequent image as a Cold Warrior should not obscure the way

that, during the war, he as much as Roosevelt invested remarkable faith in Stalin

as a ‘moderate’ surrounded by sinister and shadowy hardliners, for reasons

examined in Chapter 13. And when Churchill spoke out about Soviet expansion

at Fulton in March 1946, popularizing another famous slogan, the ‘iron curtain’,

close examination of his speech (Chapter 14) suggests he deliberately played up

the Soviet threat to justify his main argument, the need for a post-war special

relationship. The break-up of the Big Three in 1945–8 and the ensuing division

of Europe are traced in Chapter 15, which stresses the impact of the war in

shaping the Cold War. This is especially evident in the centrality of

the intractable ‘German question’ and in the way that wartime images, such as

the concept of ‘totalitarianism’ and the ‘lessons’ of appeasement, constituted the

ideological lenses through which the events of the late 1940s were perceived.

The final section of the book offers some broader perspectives on the era of the

Second World War. Chapter 16 considers how it helped turn America into a

superpower—another neologism of the 1940s. This development owed much to

the country’s industrial strength, but there was no necessary connection between

economic power and military power. To account for the timing and direction of

America’s entry on the global stage, I explore four explanatory frameworks—

environment, interests, intentions, and institutions.

If ‘superpower’ was the defining idea for post-war diplomacy in America,

Britain’s was the ‘special relationship’. Chapter 17 looks at the word and the

Introduction 3

reality, at how far Anglo-American relations might be termed ‘special’ in the

decades since 1945. Using a political slogan as an analytical term is, of course,

problematic but, developing the argument of Chapter 3, I suggest two uses for

the phrase: special in importance to each country and to the world, and special in

quality compared with other bilateral diplomatic relationships. Although Brit￾ain’s unusual importance for America waned after the first post-war decade, the

relationship has remained unusual in quality particularly in intelligence and

nuclear weaponry. And ministers and officials in London and Washington still

instinctively talk immediately and naturally about the issues of the day with their

opposite numbers. This larger ‘consultative’ relationship is another continuity

between the era of Roosevelt and Churchill and that of Bush and Blair, and it

rests on a deeper shared tradition of political and economic liberalism.

The essays in this book have been written over two decades. Most started life as

papers delivered to a variety of international audiences, from Moscow to

Washington, from the Netherlands to New Jersey. During the process, my views

and approach have developed and, I hope, matured. That said, I believe these

essays hang together as a sustained argument, outlined above, and also that they

reflect a distinct methodology.

My approach to the history of Anglo-American relations has been termed

‘functionalist’. At a colloquial level, this word implies an interest in how the

relationship actually operated behind the surface forms. More technically, it

refers to the theory of ‘functional cooperation’, which examines how states

interact positively but short of formal union in various areas of international life.

The subtitle of my first book, about Anglo-American relations in the period

1937 to 1941—‘a study in competitive cooperation’—has been dubbed ‘the

epitome of Functionalism’.1

Functionalism is not, however, a label that I would use. My work has

undoubtedly been influenced by the realist approach to international relations.

In other words, I take seriously the centrality of the state and the concepts of

power and national interest. But, as many have noted, realism is at best a crude

tool, at worst positively unhelpful.2 The ‘state’ is not a unitary actor: we need to

understand the dynamics of policy-making and the complexities of bureaucratic

politics. As critics of realism have also noted and as I explored in Britannia

Overruled, ‘power’ takes many forms—tangible and intangible, hard and soft.3

The ‘special relationship’ as idea and practice constitutes a classic case study in

1 David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance: A Study in Competitive

Cooperation, 1937–1941 (London, 1981); cf. Alex Danchev, On Specialness: Essays in Anglo￾American Relations (London, 1998), 3. 2 e.g. John A. Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics: From Classical Realism to Neotraditionalism

(Cambridge, 1998), and Jack Donnelly, Realism and International Relations (Cambridge, 2000). 3 David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the Twentieth Century

(London, 1991), ch. 1.

4 Introduction