The Rise and Fall of the Grand Alliance, 1941–45

280 Pages·1995·30.33 MB·English

by  Ann Lane

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE
GRAND ALLIANCE, 1941-45
Also by Howard Temperley
BRffiSH ANTISLAVERY, 1833-1870
WHITE DREAMS, BLACK AFRICA
The Antislavery Expedition to the Niger, 1841-1842
The Rise and Fall
of the
Grand Alliance,
1941-45
Edited by
Ann Lane
and
Howard Temperley
Professor ofA merican Studies
University ofE ast Anglia
First published in Great Britain 1995 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
andLondon
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-24244-3 ISBN 978-1-349-24242-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24242-9
First published in the United States of America 1995 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS,INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-12674-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The rise and fali ofthe Grand Alliance, 1941-45/ edited by Ann
Lane and Howard Temperley.
p. cm.
Based on papers presented at a conference which was held in Sept.
1993, Norwich, Eng.
Originally published: Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1995.
lncludes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: Anglo-American waraims,l941-43, the firstreview:
Eden 's mission to Washington 1 Warren F. Kimball-Soviet war aims
1 Jonathan Haslam -American foreign economic policy and lend-lease
1 Kathleen Burk - The Soviet economy and relations with the United
States and Britain, 1941-45/ Mark Harrison-Churchill's Roosevelt
1 John Charmley - Anglo-American-Soviet intelligence relations 1
Chistopher Andrew-Stalin, Soviet strategy, and the Grand
Alliance 1 John Erickson - Anglo-American strategy 1 Correlli
Bamett - The war against Japan and allied relations 1 Peter Lowe -
-The atomic bomb and the end of the wartime alliance 1 David
Holloway-Yalta, Potsdam, and beyond: the British and American
perspectives 1 Norman A. Graebner.
ISBN 978-0-312-12674-2
1. World War, 1939-1945-Diplomatic history-Congresses.
1. Lane, Ann. Il. Temperley, Howard.
D749.R58 1995
940.53'2--<lc20 95-13886
CIP
Editorial matter and selection © Ann Lane and Howard Temperley 1995
Text© Macmillan Press Ltd 1995 unless otherwise stated
Chapter 2 © Jonathan Haslam 1995
Chapter 3 IL' Kathleen Burk 1995
Chapter 8 IL' Corelli Bamett 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1995
Ali rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the tenns of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
1098765432
04 03 02 OI 00
In memory of
Richard Bone
Head of Library and Records Department
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
1989-1995
Contents
Notes on the Contributors viii
Introduction X
Anglo-American War Aims, 1941-43, 'The First Review':
Eden's Mission to Washington
Warren F. Kimball 1
2 Soviet War-Aims
Jonathan Haslam 22
3 American Foreign Economic Policy and Lend-Lease
Kathleen Burk 43
4 The Soviet Economy and Relations with the United States
and Britain 1941-45
Mark Harrison 69
5 Churchill's Roosevelt
John Charmley 90
6 Anglo-American-Soviet Intelligence Relations
Christopher Andrew 108
7 Stalin, Soviet Strategy and the Grand Alliance
John Erickson 136
8 Anglo-American Strategy in Europe
Correlli Barnett 174
9 The War against Japan and Allied Relations
Peter Lowe 190
10 The Atomic Bomb and the End of the Wartime Alliance
David Holloway 207
11 Yalta, Potsdam and Beyond: The British and American
Perspectives
Norman A. Graebner 226
Index 255
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at
Cambridge University. His recent books include Secret Service: The Making
of the British Intelligence Community; KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign
Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (with Oleg Gordievsky), and For the
President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from
Washington to Bush.
CorreUi Barnett was Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre (1977-95), and a
Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. His recent books include The Audit of
War; Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World
War; and The Last Victory: British dreams and British realities 1945-1980.
Kathleen Burk is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Uni
versity College London. She is the author of a number of books, of which
the most recent is 'Goodbye, Great Britain': The 1976 IMF Crisis (with
Alec Cairncross).
John Charmley is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of East Anglia.
His recent books include Churchill: The End of Glory and Churchill's Grand
Alliance.
John Erickson is Director of the Centre for Defence Studies at the Univer
sity of Edinburgh. His books include The Soviet High Command, 1918-1941;
The Road to Stalingrad; The Road to Berlin; The Soviet Ground Forces,
and, as editor, Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies.
Norman A. Graebner is the Randolph P. Compton Professor of History
and Public Affairs Emeritus, University of Virginia. His most recent book is
The National Security: Its Theory and Practice, 1945-1960.
Mark Harrison is Reader in Economics at the University of Warwick. His
books include Soviet Planning in Peace and War, 1938-1945, and (with
John Barber) The Soviet Home Front, 1941-1945.
Jonathan Haslam is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and
the author of The Soviet Union and the Threat from the East, /933-1941.
He is also chairman of the international advisory group of the Russian Foreign
Ministry's Historical Documentary Department.
viii
Notes on the Contributors iX
David Holloway is Professor of Political Science, and Co-Director of the
Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University. His
most recent book is Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic
Energy, 1939-1956.
Warren F. Kimball is Robert Treat Professor of History at Rutgers Univer
sity. He is author-editor of the three-volume Churchill and Roosevelt: The
Complete Correspondence, and, most recently author of The Juggler: Franklin
Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman.
Ann Lane is Editor of Documents on British Policy Overseas at the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office, and author of Britain and Yugoslav Unity, 1941-
49. The comments attributed to this contributor in the present volume are
the author's own and should not be taken as a statement of official government
policy.
Peter Lowe is Reader in History at the University of Manchester. He is the
author of Great Britain and the Origins of the Pacific War and The Origins
of the Korean War.
Howard Temperley is Professor of American Studies at the University of
East Anglia and a former editor of the Journal of American Studies. His
most recent book is White Dreams, Black Africa: The Antislavery Expedi
tion to the Niger, 1841-1842.
Introduction
Wartime alliances tend to be short-lived. They are formed in response to
immediate needs, unite rivals in the face of commonly perceived dangers
and fall apart once their period of usefulness has passed. So it was with the
Grand Alliance of 1941-45 between Britain, the United States and the So
viet Union. Brought about by the need to join forces against a common foe,
the allies found they had little else to bind them together once victory had
been achieved. There were, it is true, all the grand generalities contained in
the Atlantic Charter - renunciation of territorial aggrandisement, affirmation
of democracy, the right of nations to self-government, freedom of the seas -
but when it came to deciding what these meant in practice there was no
common agreement. No wonder, once the war was over, the alliance fell
apart.
Nevertheless, the struggles of these years continue to fascinate if only
because we still live in their shadow. The Second World War was midwife
to the birth of a new era in international politics in which a system, once
dominated by the major powers of Europe, was to be displaced by an un
easy balance between the emerging superpowers. One development, already
evident by the time the fighting ended, was Britain's diminishing status as a
world power. Effectively, Britain was reluctantly passing on responsibility
for maintaining world order to the United States. This shift in responsibility,
in turn, brought with it a change in the world economy, with a new era of
liberalism resulting from the end of the system of imperial preference and
the substitution of the dollar for the pound as the principal unit of interna
tional exchange. As Kathleen Burk's chapter in this collection shows, the
groundwork for this transformation was laid during the war. The alliance
also brought new measures of cooperation in the fields of strategic planning
and intelligence which laid the foundations for the postwar unified command
operations which have operated in hot-war conflict since 1945 and in one
sense, are a practical application of the principle of collective responsibility
for world order which was advocated by the Big Three as an essential ingre
dient of postwar international peace-keeping.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent transformation of
the postwar international system have changed historical perspectives and
prompted a new revisionism which seems likely to be sustained by fresh
evidence emerging from hitherto closed Soviet archives. The historiography
of the alliance has gone through a series of distinct phases. The early re
lease of American records, particularly in the form of published documents,
meant that the initial histories of the alliance were written, in the absence of
X