David Reynolds

FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR: THE WARTIME ALLIANCE AND POST-WAR TRANSITIONS, 1941–1947

This review examines some of the recent British, American, and Russian scholarship on a series of important international transitions that occurred in the years around 1945. One is the shift of global leadership from Great Britain to the United States, in which, it is argued, the decisive moment was the fall of France in 1940. Another transition is the emergence of a wartime alliance between Britain and America, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other, followed by its disintegration into the Cold War. Here the opening of Soviet sources during the 1990s has provided new evidence, though not clear answers. To understand both of these transitions, however, it is necessary to move beyond diplomacy and strategy to look at the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the Second World War. In particular, recent studies of American and Soviet soldiers during and after the conflict re-open the debate about Cold War ideology from the bottom up.

Whitehall, Washington and the Promotion of American Studies in Britain during World War Two

called upon the Board urgently to consider ways of improving the situation.1 On the face of it, the moment was hardly propitious for minor educational reform. Britain was fighting on alone against Germany and Italy, the Battle of the Atlantic had worsened, and new setbacks were about to befall British armies in Libya, Greece and Crete. Yet Duff Coopers suggestions were adopted with an alacrity that was remarkable by Whitehall standards. An ambitious programme to promote the study of America was quickly set in train for elementary and secondary schools, followed, though more slowly and less successfully, by action at the university level. Throughout, the Ministry of Information and the Board of Education enjoyed the enthusiastic support of other Government departments, particularly the Foreign Office, and of outside bodies including the BBC and Oxford University Press. Also closely involved were the American Ambassador, John Winant, several

From the Transatlantic to the Transnational: Reflections on the Changing Shape of International History

The first of Kathleen Burks many books, based on her Oxford D. Phil. dissertation, was Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914–1918 (1985). This explored a hitherto neglected aspect of the Great War when Britain became dependent on American supplies and finance to maintain its war effort. By the autumn of 1916 two million pounds of the five million needed every day by the British Treasury in order to prosecute the war came from the United States. “If things go on as at present,” the Chancellor of the Exchequer warned, “I venture to say with certainty that by next June or earlier the President of the American Republic will be in a position, if he wishes, to dictate his own terms to us.” The situation did improve somewhat after the United States entered the war in April 1917, but Britains underlying dependence remained. The war had mobilised America as a global financial power, whilst also permanently sapping Britains economic strength. In retrospect the period can be seen as a turning point in Anglo–American relations and, indeed, in global history. 1

Costigliola, F. (2012). Roosevelt's Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War.

Frank Costigliola is well known for his suggestive essays exploring the cultural dimensions of international history. Now he has developed this approach into a full-scale analysis of the wartime alliance between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, seeking to explain why it broke down in the year after Franklin Roosevelt’s sudden death in April 1945. On the theoretical level, Costigliola argues that “huge policy issues about the very future of the alliance were filtered through highly personal relationships, intense desires and disappointments, and deep flaws of body and personality” (p. 20). More pragmatically, he offers a familiar revisionist thesis embellished with a cultural turn: “If Roosevelt had lived a while longer . . . he might have succeeded in bringing about a transition to a postwar world managed by the Big Three” (p. 4). The result is a fascinating but problematic book: this reviewer applauds the overall approach but is not persuaded by its counterfactual conclusions. Costigliola’s insistence on exploring the private, human sides of public policy yields dividends. Utilising a wide range of new or underexploited archives, he brings out the personalities of the wartime Big Three, identifies what he calls their “emotional beliefs” or gut convictions, and explores their inner circles in often vivid detail—for instance about the sexual diplomacy of Pamela Churchill Harriman (pp. 112–18). But Costigliola’s main focus is on Franklin Roosevelt, because the US president is seen as the essential glue of the Big Three and his death is represented as the tragic lost chance to avoid the Cold War. Costigliola insists that 12 April 1945 was “a contingent death”—in other words the fatal stroke could have occurred earlier, later, or never. Roosevelt “might have survived into the postwar era. If he had had more time, he might well have ‘worked it out’” (p. 258). These huge counterfactuals assume, as Costigliola admits, two more: a president operating in 1945–6 with “full vigor” (p. 428) and with an inner circle of fixers such as Missy Le Hand and Harry Hopkins that no longer existed (pp. 229–30). And what does that breezy Rooseveltian phrase “work it out” actually signify? Here Costigliola is as vague as the President. He claims that FDR “kept up his sleeve two

The Cost of Geography: Europe's International History Between the Wars, 1918–1939

‘Geography costs – why does the map of Europe never stay put?’ The American poet Carl Sandburg posed that question in 1940 as the European continent was engulfed by another great conflict, the second in a generation. The course and conduct of the two world wars continue to dominate publishers’ lists but several recent volumes offer stimulating interpretations of Europes international history during the intervening twenty years. They shed a sobering light on the cost of geography and on the challenges of statecraft, because what moved the map were not only the tectonic forces of socio-economic change but also the decision-making of political leaders.

Churchill and de Gaulle: Makers and Writers of History

Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle bestrode Anglo-French relations in the mid-twentieth century. They were the Second World War analogues of Lloyd George and Clemenceau. In fact, Churchill and de Gaulle probably had greater significance for the Entente than any other pair of leaders in the whole century. This was partly because of their longevity and influence as national leaders — Churchill was prime minister in 1940–45 and 1951–55; de Gaulle led his country in 1944–46 and again, as president of his tailor-made Fifth Republic, from 1958 to 1969 — but their importance also derived from being historians, not just statesmen, shaping events through their writings as well as their deeds. This essay examines three facets of their wartime relationship — what happened at the time, how they wrote about these events in their memoirs, and the underlying vision of history that inspired them as statesmen and historians.1