Naval War College Review Volume 60 Article 18 Number 2 Spring

2007 From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s Karl Walling

David Reynolds

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Recommended Citation Walling, Karl and Reynolds, David (2007) "From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s," Naval War College Review: Vol. 60 : No. 2 , Article 18. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol60/iss2/18

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160 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW Walling and Reynolds: From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Interna

personalities. Through these descriptions, what came to be called the “special rela- Tyerman creates after all a snapshot of tionship” between the United States how the crucesignati and jihadi thought, and Great Britain during the Second and in particular how they were influ- World War and thereafter through the enced by the concept of holy war. Cold War. Geostrategically, this rela- Tyerman avoids the controversy of the tionship originated with the fall of influence of the Crusades on events in France in May 1940, which Reynolds the Middle East today. He outlines the treats quite rightly as the “fulcrum of Christian concept of just war and holy the Twentieth Century.” Until then, war without assessing whether the Cru- British leaders had counted on France sades were just. He describes the Mus- to contain Germany, with England lim concept of jihad, yet does not pass making only a limited commitment of judgment on the initial conquest or ground forces to the continent and rely- reconquest of the Hold Land by the ing on a powerful deterrent based on Arabs. Additionally, he does not ad- strategic bombing. In 1940, with the dress Western guilt over the Crusades French knocked out of the war and or the Islamic feeling of having been England’s small army in ruins, whether wronged. Only in passing does he men- the British could fight on against Ger- tion a certain pope’s apology and a cer- many’s Wehrmacht depended above all tain politician’s ill-timed use of the on support from the United States. word “crusade.” In a word, he neither Winston Churchill’s decision to con- condemns nor apologizes for the ac- tinue fighting turned out to be the right tions and violence of Christians or policy chosen for the wrong reasons, Muslims but clearly lays out the social, because Franklin D. Roosevelt was ini- religious, political, and economic tially unwilling to supply more than causes and results of the Crusades. material aid and was later unable to bring Americans into the war until both For readers searching for a single-volume Japan and Germany declared war on survey of the crusading movement, the United States. Shared hatred of a vi- Christopher Tyerman’s God’s War is cious enemy, a more or less common invaluable. language, generally similar liberal polit- MARK K. VAUGHN ical principles, shared intelligence, Naval War College combined military staffs, summitry, and the industrial prowess of the United States was to make the Anglo- American alliance perhaps more effec- tive than any other in history. Reynolds, David. From World War to Cold War: Year by year, however, British influence Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006. within the Grand Alliance waned as 363pp. $45 American power waxed. In the spirit of Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt sought an In this insightful and elegantly written alternative to traditional alliances in his set of essays in international history, vision of postwar international peace David Reynolds ruminates on the and security cooperation by means of causes, evolution, and consequences of

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BOOK REVIEWS 161 Naval War College Review, Vol. 60 [2007], No. 2, Art. 18

the “Four Policemen”—the United Loyalty would purchase Britain a dis- States, the United Kingdom, China, and proportionate influence in American the Soviet Union—each of which would foreign policy, though some in England earn a permanent seat at the United might occasionally wonder whether the Nations Security Council. Despite price in national honor was too high, Roosevelt’s hopes of extending wartime especially when prime ministers ap- cooperation with the Soviet Union into peared to be mere “poodles” serving the peace, the ever more closed systems American masters. of government established within Soviet- Reynolds does not romanticize the spe- occupied East-Central Europe increas- cial relationship. The Suez crisis of 1956 ingly induced both British and American made it clear that Americans would not leaders to begin to fear the USSR as the prop up declining empires; indeed, it Second Coming of the Third Reich. was American policy to hurry them into This shared perception, fueled (some- their graves. Nonetheless, Americans what unintentionally, Reynolds claims) were there when the British needed by Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech in them, with satellite intelligence and Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, brought the other support, in the Falklands War. two wartime allies ever closer together However, the Iraq war of 2003 suggests again. Fears that appeasement would that sometimes Robin might be too merely whet the aggressor’s appetite for loyal to the caped crusader, who needs more then sustained the growing trans- to look before he leaps and benefit from atlantic consensus that the Soviet Union wiser counsel from his most loyal ally. needed to be contained. For all these difficulties, Reynolds As the Cold War heated up, the British shows that the current international or- and the rest of Western Europe needed der rests on common Anglo-American American power; Americans needed liberal principles and overlapping polit- British bases around the world, as well ical cultures that shaped how both the as the legitimacy and self-assurance that British and the Americans defined their the support of this ally, especially, interests from World War II to the end might supply both at home and abroad. of the Cold War and beyond. Though Although the Pax Britannica collapsed the relationship may always have been in the eastern Mediterranean in 1947, it more special to the British than the was replaced rapidly and smoothly by Americans, Reynolds shows why it the Pax Americana, as exemplified in the needs to continue to be especially close. Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, Arguably far more than Roosevelt’s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organi- United Nations, Churchill’s union of zation, with the especially close rela- English-speaking peoples saved civiliza- tionship between Britain and the tion from barbarism again and again in United States serving as the foundation the twentieth century. Our prospects in of transatlantic unity and cooperation. the current century require us to keep Henceforward, England would play that union especially in mind. Robin to America’s Batman, gambling KARL WALLING that loyalty to the United States would Naval War College enable it to punch above its weight.

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