The chapter examines the different phases of the wartime ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the USA. Roosevelt’s initial contact with Churchill was born of the realisation that American security was tied to that of the UK but with the over-riding caveat that the USA would not become ‘a tail on the British kite’. Initially, Churchill worked hard to convince Roosevelt that Britain was serious about continuing the war, while FDR pursued a strategy of hemispheric defence. Co-operation then increased with Roosevelt developing a policy of all aid short of war. Pearl Harbor ushered in the high-water mark of the alliance, albeit with disagreements about strategy. FDR saw an opportunity to draw the English-speaking peoples together to create a new, multilateral world order that rejected imperialism, while Churchill saw the war as a means to restore the British Empire and perpetuate British power. Roosevelt’s pursuit of a bilateral relationship with Stalin led to a final phase of increasing tension. Ultimately, the special relationship that emerged from the war would become far more important in the UK than in the USA, yet it owed much to the two people’s shared belief in preserving democracy.

Chapter 1 traces the development of Allied internment policy from 1943 to 1946. It examines the discussions and statements of the UK, USA, and USSR, including at their European Advisory Committee and in the Potsdam Agreement of 1945. It analyses arrest directives issued in 1944–5 by western military authorities and the Soviet NKVD and discusses the Allied Control Authority’s attempt to develop a detailed quadripartite policy in late 1945/early 1946. It shows that the British were more enthusiastic and that the ‘Morgenthau Plan’ was less significant for US policy than is generally believed. The chapter argues that security, punishment, political change, and reparatory labour all featured in Allied thinking and that internment was consistently conceived as an extrajudicial measure against targets defined largely by their positions in Nazi organizations, rather than by individual acts. The chapter identifies differences over the precise targets, with Soviet directives being more expansive than their western equivalents and calling for members of the SA, SS and other paramilitary organizations to be deported as POWs rather than interned in Germany. Comparisons with Austria reveal basic similarities for the western powers but a different Soviet approach of leaving denazification and internment to Austria’s provisional government.