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DAVID REYNOLDS Great Britain and the Security 'Lessons' of the Second World War

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DAVID REYNOLDS Great Britain and the Security 'Lessons' of the Second World War DAVID REYNOLDS Great Britain and the Security 'Lessons' of the Second World War in ROLF AHMANN, ADOLF M. BIRKE, AND MICHAEL HOWARD (eds.), The Quest for Stability: Problems of West European Security 1918-1957 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp. 299-325 ISBN: 978 0 19 920503 5 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 13 Great Britain and the Security 'Lessons' of the Second World War DAVID REYNOLDS One of the more moving documents in the British Public Record Office is a memorandum composed by Clement Attlee in August 1945, a few days after the first atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan. In four handwritten pages the new Labour prime minister tried to order his thoughts about what had happened. His overwhelming impression was that the emergence of this weapon has rendered much of our post- war planning out of date ... I noticed at [the recent] Potsdam [ conference of Allied leaders] that people still talked of the line of the Western Neisse, although rivers as strategic positions have been obsolete since the advent of Air Power. It is infinitely harder for people to realise that even the modern conception of war to which in my lifetime we have become accustomed is now com- pletely out of date. For Attlee, what was at stake was nothing less than 'the survival of civilisation and possibly of life on this planet'. 1 With hindsight, it has become a commonplace that 1945 did indeed mark a new era in international security. The atomic bomb revolutionized concepts of war and peace, of defence and deterrence. Moreover, Hitler's bid for Weltherrschaft, though ultimately abortive, had brought the old Europe down in ruins around him. And in the struggle to defeat him two new 'superpowers' had been created, which between them soon divided Europe into rival blocs. It is 1 Attlee, undated memo, [Aug. 1945], Public Record Office (PRO), PREM 8/ 116. These and other Crown copyright documents are cited by permission of the Controller of HM Stationery Office. The author is grateful to Dr Zara Steiner for helpful comments on a draft version. D. REYNOLDS easy, therefore, to think of 1945 as a 'new world', Nullpunkt, l'annie zéro. Yet these new realities were faced in the light of past experience. The lessons of the 1930s and the war still influenced the security thinking of the European powers after 1945. The British case is an instructive example. For one thing, it illustrates the missing 'European dimension' of the origins of the cold war and a bipolar Europe, which, from various angles, European historians are now identifying. Contrary to some American historiography, post-war Europe was not a completely passive victim of American and Soviet policies-the 'two big dogs chewing on a bone', in the words of Senator William Fulbright in 1945.2 Although the European powers were ravaged by the war, their aspirations and anxieties significantly influenced the growing polariza- tion, above all in Germany, where the impasse between the occupying powers over how to resolve 'the German problem' was central to the cold war. Furthermore, Britain was of special significance because she was the one major European power that had not been occupied or defeated. Though economically weakened by the war, she remained an in- fluential actor in the 1940s and her role was enhanced by the fact that initially the USA was inclined to pull back from extensive peacetime commitments in Europe. In the transitional years of 1945-7, before the unprecedented US commitments of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin blockade, and NATO, British security policy helped determine the future shape of Western Europe and left legacies that remain with us to the present day. This essay surveys the evolution of that policy in three areas-threat perception, military strategy, and alliance diplomacy-noting particularly the 'lessons' derived from the Second World War. 2 D. Reynolds, 'The Origins of the Cold War: The European Dimension, 1944- 51 ', Historicaljournal, 28 (1985), 499. See also G. Lundestad, 'Empire by Invitation: The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952', Journal of Peace Research, 23 (1986), 263-77; D. C. Watt, 'Britain and the Historiography of the Yalta Conference and the Cold War', Diplomatic History, 13 (1989), 67-98. For an overview by a German scholar embodying this approach see W. Loth, The Division of the World, 1941-1955 (London, 1988). Great Britain and Security 'Lessons' 301 THREAT: FROM GERMANY TO RUSSIA In May 1943 Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, told Congressional leaders in Washington that 'the first preoccupation must be to prevent further aggression in the future by Germany and Japan. To this end he contemplated an association of the United States, Great Britain and Russia.'3 This idea of continued 'Big Three' co-operation within the structure of the new United Nations was the foundation of British planning for post-war security. It is important to note that even Churchill was slow to abandon it. He had, of course, been a vehement opponent of the Soviet government in its early years, denouncing 'the foul baboonery of Bolshevism',4 and by the end of 1943 these fears had revived as he contemplated the spread of the Red Army deep into East and South-East Europe. Yet his moods oscillated. In January 1944 he could talk of 'the deep-seated changes which have taken place in the character of the Russian state and Government' and of 'the new confidence which has grown in our hearts towards Stalin'. 5 And his response to the Soviet thrusts west and south in the summer of 1944 was not confrontation but an attempt, symbolized by the 'percentages' agreement of October 1944, to reach an agreement on spheres of influence in the Balkans. He had essentially the same aim for Eastern Europe at Yalta in February 1945-a Soviet sphere open to Western trade and democratic values-and in the afterglow of the con- ference he was rash enough to tell his ministers: 'Poor Nevile [sic] Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong about Stalin.'6 His 3 Comments at British Embassy, Washington, 22 May 1943, PRO, CAB 66/37, WP (43) 233. 4 M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, 8 vols. (London, 1966-88), iv (London, 1975), 257, quoting speech of 19 Feb. 1919. 5 Churchill to Eden, M(S)31 /4, 16 Jan. 1944, PRO, PREM 3/399/6. For wartime policy see E. Barker, Churchill and Eden at War (London, 1978), and more specifically, G. Ross (ed.), The Foreign Office and the Kremlin: British Documents on Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (Cambridge, 1g85), and M. Kitchen, British Polity towards the Soviet Union during the Second World War (London, 1986). 6 Hugh Dalton diary, vol. xxxii, 23 Feb. 1945, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London, D. REYNOLDS hopes dimmed in the spring and some of his telegrams to Washington were almost apocalyptic in tone, but his object was negotiation from strength rather than direct confron- tation. Warning the new president, Harry S Truman, on 12 May 1945 that an 'iron curtain is drawn down upon their front' he urged: 'Surely it is vital now to come to an under- standing with Russia, or see where we are with her, before we weaken our armies mortally or retire to the zones of occupation. This can only be done by a personal meeting.'7 The new Labour government from July 1945 was slow to abandon the idea of Big Three co-operation as its public goal. Labour's foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, had little affection for Communists, having battled their Soviet- financed efforts to gain influence in the trade union move- ment throughout the inter-war years.8 Like most of the Labour leaders, Bevin believed firmly in Britain's continued world-power role and he quickly came into conflict with Soviet claims over the Near East and Mediterranean at the post-war foreign ministers meetings. Yet what he was 'trying to do-as Churchill had done in October 1944-was to get a general agreement on spheres of influence so that· each side would set a limit to its sphere of influence in Europe and the Middle East'.9 And he still hoped to maintain an overall framework of Big Three agreement, perhaps by extending the Anglo-Soviet treaty of friendship of 1942 from twenty to fifty years. Throughout, Bevin's own fears of Germany remained strong. He never forgave the Germans for the war ('I tries 'ard, Brian, but I 'ates them', he told the British military governor of Germany on one occasion) and as late as December 1947 he could still say that 'he doubted whether Russia was as great a danger as a resurgent Germany might become'. 10 7 W. S. Churchill, The Second World War, 6 vols. (London, 1947-54), vi (London, 1954), 498-9. 8 In 1937 he told the Soviet Ambassador: 'you have built up the Soviet Union and you have the right to defend it.
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