The Vision of Anglo-America: The US-UK Alliance and the Emerging Cold War, 1943-1946

240 Pages·1987·5.89 MB·English

by  Henry Butterfield Ryan

THE VISION OF ANGLO-AMERICA
THE US-UK ALLIANCE AND THE EMERGING
COLD WAR, 1943-1946
Dr Ryan's innovative study demonstrates with great clarity the
importance of the decline of British power in the creation of the Cold
War. The author subjects to detailed analysis the concerted attempts
made by the British wartime coalition to forge a perpetual merger
with the USA in international affairs to arrest this global decline. He
reveals for the first time the origins of this policy, the great efforts
made towards its realisation, and the ultimate impossibility of its
aims.
The vision of a permanent Anglo-American combination is shown
as central to British diplomatic activity during the latter stages of
World War II, superordinate even to the concerted British attempt
to engineer a shift in American-Soviet relations, from accommodation
to confrontation. Checking Soviet expansion was to be simply the
first, albeit vital item on the agenda of this new Anglo-American
entity, and despite the ultimate failure of the overall policy, the
British effort to alter American-Soviet affairs must be counted
among the causes of the Cold War. An even more important factor,
however, was Great Britain's decline in strength, which eliminated
the possibility of triangularity in big power relations, leading to the
polarity that prevails today.
Dr Ryan uses the Polish and Greek crises of the mid-1940s as case
histories to demonstrate his thesis that both the Churchill and Attlee
governments recognised the need for the American connection and to
provide examples of how they set about obtaining it.

THE VISION OF
ANGLO-AMERICA
THE US-UK ALLIANCE AND
THE EMERGING COLD WAR,
1943-1946
HENRY BUTTERFIELD RYAN
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© Cambridge University Press 1987
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1987
First paperback edition 2004
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
Ryan, Henry Butterfield.
The vision of Anglo-America
Bibliography.
Includes index.
1. United States - Foreign relations - 1945-1953.
2. United States - Foreign relations - Great Britain.
3. Great Britain - Foreign relations - United States.
4. World War, 1939-1945 - Diplomatic history.
5. World politics - 1945-1955. 6. Great Britain - Foreign
relations - 1936-1945. I. Title.
E813.R93 1987 327'.09'044 87-9570
ISBN 0 521 32928 0 hardback
ISBN 0 521 89284 8 paperback
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS page vi
INTRODUCTION I
PART I STRENGTHENING THE TIES:
THE EFFORT AND THE PROBLEMS 13
1 The need 13
2 Problems with American public opinion 21
3 The mixing process 39
4 Economic issues 54
PART II FOREIGN CRISES THAT DEMONSTRATE GREAT
BRITAIN'S PROBLEMS
INTRODUCTION
SECTION I THE POLISH CRISIS 73
5 Background and build-up 73
6 Involvement of Great Britain and the United
States 80
7 Yalta and after 87
8 Truman: the new factor 99
9 The gathering for the San Francisco
Conference 103
10 Between San Francisco and Potsdam "3
11 Concluding thoughts on the Polish crisis
117
SECTION 2 THE GREEK CRISIS
121
12 Background of the crisis
121
13 1944, the critical year 132
14 The role of the press
139
15 The crisis peaks 146
16 America dives in 156
CONCLUSION 170
NOTES 174
BIBLIOGRAPHY 205
INDEX 227
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have given me an enormous amount of help with this
book, starting with Sir Harry Hinsley, who proffered invaluable
advice and assistance while supervising the Cambridge dissertation on
which it is based to a large degree and again when it became a book
manuscript. I am particularly grateful also to Dr John Thompson and
Dr David Reynolds who, being extraordinarily generous with their
time, have provided excellent criticism of the entire manuscript and
to the late Ms Elisabeth Barker and Dr Antony Polonsky for extremely
useful observations on the chapters regarding the Greek and Polish
crises, respectively. I have been most fortunate also to have had advice
and suggestions from Professor D. C. Watt, Dr Zara Steiner, Dean
Elspeth Rostow, Professor Warren Kimball, Dr Vojtech Mastny,
Professor H. G. Nicholas and Professor William H. McNeill. I am also
grateful to Sir Isaiah Berlin, Lord Gore-Booth, and the Hon.
CM. Woodhouse for the interviews they gave me and to Professor
Nicholas Hammond for his helpful correspondence. My thanks go as
well to my wife Patricia Ryan for useful suggestions, proofreading,
copy-editing and, above all, patience with that poorest of companions,
the book-writing spouse.
To Trinity College, Cambridge, whose generous assistance in so
many ways has enabled me to do this study, I owe very special thanks
indeed. I am also grateful to Professor Stanley Hoffmann and the staff
of the West European Studies Center at Harvard for providing the
original stimulus to investigate the questions with which this
dissertation is concerned.
Finally, to William Ryan, thanks for performing such chores as
collating the various copies of the interminable drafts.
INTRODUCTION
Awaking one night 'with a sharp stab of almost physical pain',
Winston Churchill realised that he might be dismissed as Prime
Minister by Britain's voters in the summer of 1945. Brooding, he said
' The power to shape the future would be denied me. The knowledge
and experience I had gathered, the authority and goodwill I had
gained in so many countries, would vanish.'1 But, in fact, even after
his defeat at the polls, his influence on world affairs was far from
spent. If his credit at home was limited for the time being, it remained
vast in the United States, the largest unit of the English-speaking
peoples, a community of which he often spoke, exaggerating its
cohesiveness.2
The extent of his prestige in America was never clearer than when
he delivered his 'Iron Curtain' speech in Fulton, Missouri, on 5
March 1946. On that occasion he was not simply warning the world
of the danger of communism or of Soviet imperialism, or trying to
stimulate the West to more appropriate policies. He was continuing
an effort made since he had become Prime Minister to join Great
Britain and the United States, at least their military and foreign
policy directorates, in a much closer union. By the time of his defeat
the previous July he had not succeeded, and at Fulton he made a last
attempt.
Churchill and the government he headed were determined to
maintain a relationship with the United States unique among modern
sovereign powers. Specifically, their objectives, as will be demon-
strated, were to maintain indefinitely the wartime merger of military
commands, known as the Combined Chiefs of Staff, which would be
the basic postwar mechanism for keeping the peace. They hoped also
for similar coordination within the foreign ministries of the two
countries. Because there was no existing binational structure for
diplomacy, however, as there was for military commands, this
objective never advanced as far as its military counterpart, but
2 Introduction
Churchill and his aides were clear about their desire to see it emerge.
In short, the policy of Churchill's government, if successful, would
have created in the international arena a new power, one made up
of two nations. It could appropriately be called 'Anglo-America'.
Churchill could even contemplate common citizenship and suggest
it on several occasions. Is that to be taken seriously? Probably not,
if one believes that diplomatic history should weigh only concrete
objectives backed by government actions. Churchill himself was
content to let common citizenship wait for 'destiny' as he said at
Fulton. Nevertheless, his proposal indicates the kind of closeness he
could foresee between the two nations, for leaders of great powers do
not often make such suggestions, and to do so three times publicly,
twice while in office, is a matter of political significance by itself,
regardless of the fact that it was hyperbole. The significance was that
Churchill was trying to create an atmosphere of familial closeness in
which more specific aims were to be achieved, an atmosphere in
which, he hoped, the military and diplomatic affairs of the two
nations were to be linked.
Perhaps it should be pointed out here that colonial affairs were
most definitely not to be included. British officials knew very well that
American views generally, certainly those of the Roosevelt Administra-
tion, tended to be hostile to the British and other European empires.
But, of course, strictly speaking, from Whitehall's vantage point,
colonial affairs were not foreign affairs. Certainly in Churchill's view
they were not.
Churchill hoped to preserve Great Britain as a major power and
influence in world affairs, as a nation resembling the Britain of his
youth. Some very close link with another major power was the only
way to do that, which may have become clear to him even before the
war. Certainly, by the mid-1940s, the period on which this study
concentrates, there was no longer any question of it in his mind.
Unless Britain made what might be compared to a marriage, it could
not remain in big-power society, especially considering the new and
greatly escalated standards for membership. Furthermore, there was
only one suitable partner, the United States. Consequently, Churchill
set out early in the war to form the tie, believing that what Great
Britain could not be, Anglo-America could. As in any marriage, at
least any modern one, each partner surrenders part of his and her
sovereignty, but the couple, at least potentially, can have greater
influence than either individual, and the weaker of the two, if older,
cleverer and more experienced, can have great sway in the union.
Introduction 3
That is the position Churchill hoped Britain might attain following
an intimate if often troubled wartime engagement, but, unfortunately
for his plans, the wedding never took place.
Churchill's efforts to create this new alignment with the United
States should not be made to seem cynical. There is no reason to
believe that he felt anything but good would accrue not only to
Britain but to America and for that matter the entire world as a result
of his plans. And if there was no other country but the United States
to serve his purposes, one can imagine him pleased by that necessity,
pleased because it was his mother's homeland, because it uses at least
a version of his language (and he made much of this fact), and because
so much of its taste and so many of its institutions, however much they
may have strayed from the originals, had roots in his country.
Although frequently critical of American policy, he was on the whole
extremely favourably disposed to the United States. 'He will not
listen to any criticism of America, her people or her army', said Lord
Moran, his physician, who spent a great deal of time with Churchill
during the war and afterwards.3
Some members of his government disagreed with his approach to
America, feeling often that he was going too far. They included Leo
Amery, P. J. Grigg, Lord Beaverbrook, and at times Anthony Eden,
but they did not create serious obstacles, and, perhaps equally
significant, Foreign Office personnel dealing with American affairs
gave him solid support. Certainly there were many grumbles about
the national attitudes and the international deportment of the United
States, but usually less as a result of disagreement with the Prime
Minister's policy than of frustration in trying to enact it.
Furthermore, during that period of the Labour Government's
tenure with which this book is concerned, approximately its first
three-quarters of a year, it strove just as hard as its predecessor to align
America with policies which it considered vital, and it made a major
and successful effort in the case of Greece. If it put less emphasis on
joint military and foreign policy directorates than did Churchill, it did
want America by its side on specific issues. In Churchill's view,
however, crises such as those in Greece and Poland in the mid-1940s
were not in themselves the reasons for creating Anglo-America, but
only proof of the need for it. Nor did he assume that the new power,
once formed, was to fade when these particular problems were
removed, but instead it should remain permanently to provide the
world with a Pax Britannica-Americana.
Churchill made his views in this regard very clear in an exchange
4 Introduction
of correspondence with Ernest Bevin in which he pointed strongly
towards his famous 'Iron Curtain' speech, made about four months
later. Bevin had asked both Churchill and Eden, who by then were
in the Opposition, for their opinions regarding American requests to
share British Commonwealth military bases, a matter of much
discussion between the two governments during the latter half of
1945. Churchill replied:
The long-term advantage to Britain and the Commonwealth is to have
our affairs so interwoven with those of the United States in external and
strategic matters, that any idea of war between the two countries is
utterly impossible, and that in fact, however the matter may be worded,
we stand or fall together.
... From this point of view, the more strategic points we hold in Joint
occupation, the better. I have not studied particular islands and bases
in detail on the map, but in principle there is no doubt that the Joint
occupation greatly strengthens the power of the United States and the
safety of Britain. Although the United States is far more powerful than
the British Commonwealth, we must always insist upon coming in on
equal terms. We should press the Joint occupation at all points in
question rather than accept the exclusive possession by the United
States. We have so much to give that I have little doubt that, for the
sake of a general settlement, they would agree to Joint occupation
throughout.
I do not agree with the characteristic Halifax slant that we should melt
it all down into a vague United Nations Trusteeship. This ignores the
vital fact that a special and privileged relationship between Great Britain
and the United States makes us both safe for ourselves and more
influential as regards building up the safety of others through the
international machine. The fact that the British Commonwealth and the
United States were for strategic purposes one organism, would mean:
(a) that we should be able to achieve more friendly and trustful relations
with Soviet Russia, and
(b) that we could build up the United Nations organization around us
and above us with greater speed and success. ' Whom God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder.' Our duties to mankind and all States
and nations remain paramount, and we shall discharge them all the
better hand in hand.
... The future of the world depends upon the fraternal association of
Great Britain and the Commonwealth with the United States. With