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Allied diplomacy in the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Graham Ross
Affiliation:
Lecturer in History, University of Leeds

Extract

Is there such a subject? The study of Allied diplomacy has been slow to establish itself, partly because the bulk of the American and British records have only recently become available, but mainly because of the debate about the origins of the Cold War – the contemporary equivalent of the war-guilt question. Because of the paucity of Soviet material it has in practice turned into an argument about American policy and has not, of course, been confined to the wartime period. The search for origins, turning-points and causes employs the advantage of hindsight in deciding what is relevant. It, therefore, tends to overlook the side issues, dead ends and the short-term nature of much wartime diplomacy. Nobody would deny the importance of the origins of the Cold War or of wartime American-Soviet relations. Yet it is misleading to see Allied diplomacy solely in terms of this one theme. There is room for an attempt to examine some other wartime issues and to indicate topics worthy of further exploration. In the rest of this article, therefore, the Cold War will as far as possible be ignored.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1975

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References

page 283 note 1. For a recent comment on the Cold War debate see Leigh, M., ‘MI there a Revisionist Thesis on the Cold War?’,Political Science Quarterly, ixxxix (1974), pp. 101–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 284 note 1. On Cripps' problems seeParkinson, R.,Blood, Toil, Tears andSiveat (London, 1973), pp. 84Google Scholar, 138-9? and passim. This book and its successor, A Day's March Nearer Home (London, 1974)Google Scholar, contain much densely packed detail drawn from War Cabinet records. The emphasis is on strategy rather than diplomacy, and it is not easy to follow specific themes.

page 284 note 2. Lensen, G. A., The Strange Neutrality: Soviet-Japanese Relations during the Second World War 1941-42. (Tallahassee, 1972).Google Scholar

page 285 note 1. Borg, Dorothy and Okamoto, Shumpei (eds.),Pearl Harbour as History: Japanese-American Relations 1931–41 (New York and London, 1973)Google Scholar.

page 285 note 2. Divine, R. A., Foreign Policy and US. Presidential Elections 1940–48 (New York arid London, 1974)Google Scholar.

page 285 note 3. Herring, George C. Jr,Aid to Russia 1941–46: Strategy, Diplomacy. The Origins of the Cold War (New York and London, 1973), pp. 1921Google Scholar.

page 285 note 4. Leutze, J. (ed.), The London Observer: The Journal of'General Raymond E. Lee (London, 1972).Google Scholar

page 285 note 5. Bell, P. M.H.,A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fail of France (Farnborough, 1974)Google Scholar.

page 286 note 1. Lewin, R., Churchill as Warlord (London, 1973)Google Scholar has some interesting comments on Anglo-American relations, but is based almost entirely on published sources and concentrates on strategy. For comments on the Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence see Kimball, W. F., ‘Churchill and Roosevelt: The Personal Equation’, Prologue; the Journal of the National Archives, vi (1974) PP. 169–82Google Scholar.

page 286 note 2. Pogue, Forrest C., Marshall, George C.; Organiser of Victory 1940–45 (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Blumenson, M. (ed.), The Patton Papers 1940–4/ (Boston, 1974)Google Scholar. Enthusiasm rather than objectivity was Patton's strong suit.

page 287 note 1. Steele, R. W., The First Offensive 1942: Roosevelt, Marshall and the Making of American Strategy (Bloomington, Indiana, 1975)Google Scholar. Steele emphasizes the President's concern with public apathy in the early months of 1942. He also presents Marshall in a less favourable light than Pogue does.

page 287 note 2. Pogue, op. cit. p. 516.

page 287 note 3. Pearson, Lester,Memoirs 1897–1948: Through Diplomacy to Politics (London, 1973), chs. 1114Google Scholar.

page 287 note 4. Carroll, Joseph T., Ireland in the War Years (Newton Abbot and New York, 1975)Google Scholar.

page 288 note 1. In 1942 Eire threatened to stop all beer exports. Lord Woolton feared this would have a bad effect on morale in the North. Carroll, op. cit. p. 92. It seems that diplomatic historians do not always give such important matters their true weight.

page 288 note 2. Weisband, E., Turkish Foreign Policy 1943-4/: Small State “Diplomacy and Great Poiver Politics (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar. He has interviewed a number of Turkish politicians and diplomats who were active during the war.

page 288 note 3. Ibid. p. 189, n. 67.

page 289 note 1. Roberts, W. R., Tito, Mihailovich and the Allies 1941-45 (New Brunswick, 1973)Google Scholar.

page 289 note 2. Ibid 106–12.

page 289 note 3. Ciechanowski, J. M., The Warsaw Rising of 1944 (Cambridge, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 289 note 4. Ibid. pp. 56–58.

page 290 note 1. Ibid pp. 52–56. Divine, op. cit. pp. 108–11 points out the significance of the Polish vote in the 1944 Presidential election.

page 290 note 2. Esherick, J. W. (ed),Lost Chance in China: The World War Two Despatches of John S. Service (New York, 1974)Google Scholar and Varg, P. A.,The Closing, of the Door: Sino-American Relations 1956-46 (East Lansing, 1973)Google Scholar.

page 290 note 3. Pearson, op. cit. p. 237.

page 291 note 1. Varg, op, cit. p. 189. Bohlen, Charles E., Witness to History (London, 1973)Google Scholar does not think the Chinese would have got better terms on their own. P. 198.

page 291 note 2. Sharp, T., The Wartime Alliance and the Zonal Division of Germany (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar.

page 291 note 3. Ibid. pp. 86–87. Pogue,op. cit. p. 465.

page 291 note 4. Bohlen, op. cit. p. 129 points out that Roosevelt expected subordinates to take the initiative in bringing ideas to him. To be silent was to be forgotten.

page 291 note 5. Pogue, op, cit. pp. 460–5 defends the role of the Joint Chiefs in zonal planning.

page 291 note 6. Sharp, op. cit. pp. 142–53.

page 291 note 7. Bethell, N.,The Last Secret: Forcible Repatriation to Russia 1944-47 (London, 1974)Google Scholar. Bethell gives a good deal of information on British views, but has less to say on the American side.

page 292 note 1. Sharpe,op. cit. pp. 12–25. His interpretation of the evidence in Soviet military memoirs therefore, differs from that of Diane Clemens, alta (New York, 1970). Lensen, op. cit. p. 275, mentions a similar argument over the timing of the Soviet attack on Manchuria. Shtemenko argues that the dropping of the atomic bomb did not affect Soviet strategy. But Vasilevsky claims that Stalin rang up from Potsdam after hearing of the bomb to try and get the date of the offensive advanced. Over the feasibility of a Soviet attack on Berlin in early 1945 Sharpe prefers Shtemenko's account whereas Clemens follows Chuikov. It is reassuring to find that Soviet military memoirs can provoke disagreement as much as their Anglo-American counterparts.

page 292 note 2. Inevitably some books tend to be overlooked in a tour d'horizon of this nature. One such is Wheeler-Bennett, J. W. and Nicholls, A.,The Semblance of Peace; The Political Settlement after the Second World War (London, 1972)Google Scholar. Part One provides a survey of allied diplomacy which is unsympathetic to revisionist viewpoints and on the whole takes the British side. For a general survey which is more sympathetic to Russia see King, F. P.,The New Internationalism: Allied Policy and the European Peace 1939–40 (Newton Abbot, 1973)Google Scholar.