From World War to Cold War: The Wartime Alliance and Post-War Transitions, 1941-
1947
Author(s): David Reynolds
Source: The Historical Journal , Mar., 2002, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Mar., 2002), pp. 211-227
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3133637
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3133637?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to The Historical Journal
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Historical Journal, 45, 1 (2002), pp. 2I 1-227 ? 2002 Cambridge University Press
DOI: Io.I7/Soo I8246XIoo1002291 Printed in the United Kingdom
FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR:
THE WARTIME ALLIANCE AND
POST-WAR TRANSITIONS, 1941-1947
DAVID REYNOLDS
Christ's College, Cambridge
ABSTRACT. This review examines some of the recent British, Americ
on a series of important international transitions that occurred in theye
shift of global leadership from Great Britain to the United States, in wh
moment was the fall of France in 1940. Another transition is the eme
between Britain and America, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on
disintegration into the Cold War. Here the opening of Soviet sources dur
new evidence, though not clear answers. To understand both of these
necessary to move beyond diplomacy and strategy to look at the soc
dimensions of the Second World War. In particular, recent studies of Am
during and after the conflict re-open the debate about Cold War ideology
I
Some may lament the 'Hitlerization' of history. But, sixty years on, the Second World
War is still a subject of absorbing interest for scholars, students, and the general public.
At the level of general histories of the war in the English language, the fiftiethanniversary
volumes by Gerhard Weinberg, Martin Kitchen, and Alastair Parker are
now well established. The first is impressively long, the other two impressively short. All
three, particularly Weinberg, tried to do justice to the Eastern Front and the conflict in
Asia, as well as the more familiar stories of Anglo-American warfare in Western Europe
and the Pacific. For the sixtieth anniversary new volumes are appearing, written from
the vantage point of an unequivocally post-Cold War world. Both Pierre Grosser and
Bill Purdue sought to integrate this perspective into their 1999 overviews of, respectively,
the war's causes and its course; as did Richard Bosworth in his idiosyncratic but
stimulating essays on the national historiographies of the conflict. The New Zealand
historians, Margaret Lamb and Nicholas Tarling, offer a long view of its origins with
emphasis on Asia as well as Europe.1
1 Gerhard L. Weinberg, A world at arms: a global history of World War II (Cambridge, I994);
Martin Kitchen, A world inflames: a short history of the Second World War in Europe and Asia, I939-I945
(London, I990); R. A. C. Parker, Strugglefor survival: the history of the Second World War (Oxford,
1989); Pierre Grosser, Pourquoi la 2e guerre mondiale? (Paris, 1999); A. W. Purdue, The Second World
War (London, I999); R. J. B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: history writing and the
Second World War (London, 1993); Margaret Lamb and Nicholas Tarling, From Versailles to Pearl
Harbor: the origins of the Second World War in Europe and Asia (New York, 200 I). Some of the larger
methodological issues raised by postmodernism are discussed in Patrick Finney, 'International
21 I
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
For a generation, the World War was overshadowed by the Cold War. That is no
longer the case. The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the transformation of communist
China have opened up new windows on the war, while also unlocking hidden
documentary resources. The proliferation of Holocaust studies in the last few years is the
result of both of these developments.2 But perhaps the most striking example is the surge
of scholarship on the Soviet war effort, and this will be a major theme of my review.
Made possible by the end of the Cold War, such work naturally highlights and probes
the shift from wartime co-operation to post-war confrontation. But recent literature on
the Second World War has also been influenced by the changing character of historical
writing. Diplomatic historians have become conscious of their traditionalist image
within a discipline in which culture, discourse, and gender seem to rule supreme. The
result has been a new breaking down of the barriers between foreign and domestic
history, between the battlefronts and the homefronts. Again that raises questions about
the relationships between the conflict itself and the peacetime order that followed. The
theme of this review is, therefore, transitions - from war to peace, from World War to
Cold War. Its focus is the Big Three allies - the United Kingdom, the United States, and
the Soviet Union in the years from Soviet and American entry into the war until the
Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
II
The first transition is Anglo-American: how, when, and why the United States
supplanted Britain as the leading global power. Some might argue that the torch was
passed several decades before the Second World War, for instance in the diplomatic
revolution around i 900 that saw America's emergence as a naval power and a series of
British accommodations with imperial rivals.3 In Transition of power, the Canadian
historian Brian McKercher contests that claim. Like others,4 he insists that Britain's
twentieth-century decline should not be pre-dated and that the critical decade was the
I930S not the I9oos. In a phrase that implicitly reverses Henry Kissinger's dictum of
1973, he presents Britain as a great power with global interests and thirties America as
one of the 'regional powers with regional interests '.' Nor was this decade a harmonious
one for transatlantic relations. Despite a rapprochement in I929-3 , during the era of
Ramsay MacDonald and Herbert Hoover, when the protracted and acrimonious
arguments about naval limitation were settled (to America's benefit), relations
deteriorated in I93I-2 with the financial crash and the Manchurian crisis. The I932
history, theory, and the origins of the Second World War', Rethinking History, I (1997), pp. 357-79.
For a round-table collection of articles on the current state of Second World War studies see
Diplomatic History, 25/3 (summer 200oo).
2 And also of larger cultural changes. See, for example, the discussion in Peter Novick, The
Holocaust in American life (New York, i999).
3 'From the moment Britain surrendered naval supremacy, its empire was living on borrowed
time.' Aaron L. Friedberg, The weary Titan: Britain and the experience of relative decline, 1895-9o05
(Princeton, 1988), p. 300.
4 See the essays by Gordon Martel, Keith Neilson,John Ferris, and McKercher on 'The decline
of Britain' in International History Review, 13 (1991), pp. 662-783; and David Reynolds, Britannia
overruled: British policy and world power in the twentieth century (London, 199 ).
5 B. J. C. McKercher, Transition of power: Britain's loss of global pre-eminence to the United States,
1930-I945 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 340.
212
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS
elections brought to power a more isolationist administrat
Co-operation unravelled in 1932-3 and British policy m
States in the next year or so, as British leaders tried t
challenges to their imperial position that, in McKercher's
with Depression America's essentially regional interests a
The axiom in Whitehall - expressed by Stanley Baldwin
many others - was that America could be relied on for w
This overall argument is, of course, a familiar one. After
were opened in the 1970s, a succession of revisionist studi
in global context and highlighted the coolness and fr
relations.7 But McKercher's is the first book to offer a gl
over the whole decade, drawing on these monographs and
British and American archives. The result is an immensel
British side of the story. Whereas many of these revisionist
of the Treasury in shaping external policy, McKercher p
Foreign Office and in particular to Sir Robert Vansitt
Secretary from 1930 to 1937. Borrowing the term of Keith
as an 'Edwardian' in the tradition of Sir Edward Grey
Britain's global role through regional balances, backed by
military armaments. Vansittart's influence over foreign p
argues, potent in the mid-I930s, but contested thereaft
topple him at the end of 1937, only to expose their own diff
- Eden, as a 'League of Nations man', favouring a collectiv
than Van's unilateralism, whereas Chamberlain advocat
reduce the number of enemies. As Chamberlain's policies f
war, so America began to bulk larger in British policy. B
change until the summer of 1940.
'German victory over France changed everything. '9 It le
threat of invasion by Hitler, Italy's assault on its North A
expansion into undefended Southeast Asia. Dependence on
fighting on and McKercher highlights this as 'the tu
American relationship.'? In retrospect, that German vi
flabby Third Republic transfixed by the lightning thrus
work has underlined the contingency of events. For ins
historian Ernest R. May, in his book Strange victory, has ar
the West was by no means inevitable. 'Overall, France and
been better equipped for war than was Germany, with m
6 For a recent study of anti-British feeling in the United States s
lion's tail: American anglophobia between the world wars (New York,
7 E.g. Lawrence Pratt, East of Malta, west of Suez: Britiain's M
(London, 1975); Ritchie Ovendale, 'Appeasement' and the English-spe
States, the Dominions, and the policy of 'appeasement', 1937-1939 (C
Britain and the origins of the Pacific war: a study of British policy in E
G. C. Peden, British rearmament and the Treasury, 1932-I939 (Ed
The United States, Britain and appeasement, 1936-1939 (London, 198
of the Anglo-American alliance, 1937-I941: a study in competitive co-ope
8 McKercher, Transition of power, pp. i88-9, 230-2. 9
10 Ibid., p. 289.
2 I
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
more and better tanks, more bombers and fighters. On the whol
behind even in thinking about the use of tanks and planes."'1 Ger
was, however, far more imaginative than that of the Allies. The Ger
shifted from a main drive into Belgium (where they would have
Allied armoured and mechanized forces) to a thrust through th
Ardennes. Even more important, May argues, it was confident that t
would be unable to react quickly to that surprise - a confidence de
a striking chapter, from prescient war gaming in December 1939
many ways the fulcrum of the twentieth century. In Septembe
infantry just failed to reach Paris; in May I940 von Rundstedt's t
the Channel. The result of the first was a bloody, four-year stru
Europe. The result of the second was instant continental hegemony
possible Hitler's bid for global domination, involving first the Soviet
United States - in short, a truly world war.12
McKercher ends his detailed account of Anglo-American relation
France. He gallops down the rest of the road to Pearl Harbour (Dec
pages. An epilogue traces the 'new order' that emerged in I941quote
one of her senior diplomats, 'as junior partner in an orbit of p
under American aegis'.l3 The details of that wartime transition
American side, is one theme of Allies and adversaries -- Mark Stoler'
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the evolution of wartime strategy.-4
His title in part evokes the rivalry between the US Army and th
which began 1939 with a very different strategic vision. The Army,
Stanley Embick, head of the War Plans Division in the I930s, was a
Britain and favoured an essentially continentalist strategy, centre
United States itself. The Navy, not surprisingly, had a broader con
and many (though by no means all) of its senior officers were incl
with Britain. Balancing Army and Navy priorities was a headache
- the United States lacked the well-oiled Chiefs of Staff system of
arguments about the relative priority to be given to the Pacific dogg
1940--3. Stoler is particularly good on the de facto 'Pacific First' stra
in late 1942 (chapter 5) as manpower and resources were covertly s
the build-up in Europe, despite the president's wishes and the decl
strategy.15
But Stoler is also anxious to show a growing convergence of Army and Navy thinking
about US relations with Great Britain and the Soviet Union - present allies and
potential adversaries - and this is the main thrust of his book. In 1943 (chapter 6) the
theme is 'Britain as adversary' as London continued to push a Mediterranean strategy
that seemed mainly a vehicle for British imperial interests. At the same time Russia was
viewed, more ambivalently, as 'Ally and enigma' (chapter 7) - a vital factor in the
11 Ernest R. May, Strange victory: Hitler's conquest of France (New York, 2000), pp. 5-6. May's title
is, of course, a reversal of Marc Bloch's 1946 classic about the fall of France, entitled Strange defeat.
12 Cf David Reynolds, ' 1940: fulcrum of the twentieth century', International Affairs, 66 (1990),
pp. 325-50. 13 McKercher, 7ransition of power, p. 343.
14 Mark A. Stoler, Allies and adveisaries: the Joint Chiejs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. strategy
in World War II (Chapel Hill, 2000).
"1 A thesis powerfully developed in his earlier article 'The "Pacific-First" alternative in
American World War II strategy', International History Review, 2 (1980), pp. 432-52.
214
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 202u, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS
defeat of Hitler whose future power evoked both hopes an
show how fears became predominant by the summer
establishment that increasingly thought in terms of' the Big
story, the Joint Chiefs were operating much more as a unity
able to claim a major say in determining US foreign policy,
running argument with the State Department about th
Moreover, as Embick's own conversion showed, they and t
to a pro-British and anti-Soviet consensus. Stoler sugg
generational divide: younger officers, less imbued with
anglophobia, were quicker to perceive Britain's decline
importance of Western Europe for future US security.l6 Gu
of geopolitics such as Edward Mead Earle of Princeton, t
I940 and laid the intellectual basis for the revolutionary p
European prosperity and security that followed in 1947-9,
and the North Atlantic Treaty.
One side of the backdrop to his book is British decline; the
power. But the closeness of the transatlantic alliance m
relatively transparent, whereas the closedness of Stalin's r
Union was persistently opaque. Stoler's reference to Russia
Churchill's aphorism of October I939 that 'the action of
'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'.'7 Sinc
Union, however, the historical 'iron curtain' has lifted t
interpretations of Stalin's foreign policy, drawing to varying
European archives, were published in 1996. For Vojtech Ma
'insatiable' quest for security. 'The victory in World War II
security than it had ever had, yet not enough for him.' Hi
root cause of the growing East-West tension', despite th
'manageable, if not necessarily cordial, relations'. Vladis
Pleshakov agreed that the 'concept of territorial security
regime', stressing Stalin's interest in regions that were con
tsars. Yet, they argued, he believed in 'world revolution' a
empire', confident that his skilful playing of the old worl
someday allow him to sweep that world completely away bourgeois
civilization'.l8 Realist or paranoid, geopolitic
remains enigmatic. Recent studies of his diplomacy embroi
unravelling it.
In Grand delusion Gabriel Gorodetsky looks at Moscow's relations with Berlin and
London before Hitler's surprise attack of 22 June I94i, operation Barbarossa. Apart
16 Stoler, Allies and adversaries, pp. 264-7.
17 Speech of i Oct. I939 in Winston S. Churchill, Into battle (London, I94I), p. 131.
18 Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet insecurity: the Stalinyears (New York, 1996), p. 23;
Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: from Stalin to Khrushchev
(Cambridge, MA, i996), pp. I8- 9. See also the useful overview essays on the wartime period by
Jonathan Haslam, 'Soviet war-aims', and John Erickson, 'Stalin, Soviet strategy and the Grand
Alliance', in Ann Lane and Howard Temperley, eds, The rise andfall of the Grand Alliance, I94I-i945
(London, I995). For discussion of the problems in using the new Soviet archival sources see the
symposium in Diplomatic History, 2I (1997), pp. 217-305, and also Silvio Pons, 'The papers on
foreign and international policy in the Russian archives', Cahiers du monde russe, 40 (1999),
pp. 235-50.
215
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
from British and German sources, Gorodetsky has gained access to selected materials
from Soviet presidential, military, and diplomatic archives, plus Bulgarian and
Yugoslav documents. These latter sources enable Gorodetsky to highlight Stalin's
persistent concern about the Balkans, particularly access to and from the Black Sea. The
first half of the book shows how his hammering on this issue in late 1940, particularly
during and after the Molotov-Ribbentrop talks in Berlin in November, prompted
Hitler's green light for invasion planning. In April 1941 the Nazi conquests of Greece
and Yugoslavia posed an even greater threat to Soviet regional interests. But Gorodetsky
also demonstrates that the scramble for the Balkans decisively shaped Anglo-Soviet
relations: it distracted the British (as Hitler intended) from his build-up against Russia,
while Stalin viewed British predictions of German attack as ploys to lure him into the
Anglo-German struggle in south-eastern Europe. Until the last moment London and
Moscow each feared that the other was about to do a deal with Berlin. For Stalin the
dramatic flight to Britain on I May by Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy (which
Gorodetsky has no doubt was a maverick act), proved that negotiations for a
compromise peace were well advanced. Gorodetsky ends his account with lurid Russian
visions in the days after Barbarossa of the Royal Navy steaming up the Baltic for a joint
Anglo-German assault on Leningrad !19
Although this book deals with 1940-- , its conclusions cast a long shadow over the rest
of the war. Stalin never shook off fears that Britain and Germany would sign a
compromise peace, as is clear from his agitation in February 1945 at reports of a
separate German surrender in the West. In October I944 he probed Churchill on the
real reasons why the British Secret Service (as he believed) had lured Hess to London
four years earlier.20 These rooted suspicions show that the wartime Anglo-Russian
alliance always rested on shaky foundations. Churchill's Moscow visit was, of course, the
occasion for his notorious ' percentages' deal over spheres of influence in the Balkans. In
the light of Gorodetsky's account one can see a pronounced continuity between Stalin's
obsession with Roumania and Bulgaria in I940 and the priorities he attached to those
countries (respectively 90 per cent and 80 per cent) in October I944. Here then is hard
evidence for one part of Stalin's territorial agenda. Indeed Gorodetsky presents him
very much as a realist - proponent of' an unscrupulous Realpolitik serving well-defined
geopolitical interests' rooted in the tsarist past -- and argues against attributing Soviet
policy in 1939-4I 'either to the whims of a tyrant or to relentless ideological
expansionism'. Yet to claim as Gorodetsky does that 'Stalin's foreign policy appears to
have been rational and level-headed' flies against the evidence set out in the book. A
leader who discounted not only British warnings of imminent German attack but dozens
more from his own military and intelligence staff is not easily described in the language
of rationality. Here surely is another sign of the paranoia lurking behind the purges, and
of his obsession about imperialist encirclement - in short of the 'sentiment' and
'ideology' that Gorodetsky claims had little place in Stalin's policy.21
For Stalin the Baltic mattered as much as the Balkans. The first Molotov-Ribbentrop
negotiations, in August 1939, had revolved around Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania - territories formerly within the tsarist empire. Stalin's concern with these --
which figures little in Gorodetsky's book -- is, by contrast, central to the important
19 Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand delusion: Stalin and the German invasion of Russia (New Haven, 1999).
20 Winston S. Churchill, 7he Second World War (6 vols., London, I948-54), II, p. 49; cf.
Jonathan Haslam, 'Stalin's fears of a separate peace, I942', Intelligence and JVational Security, 8
(1993), PP- 979. 21 Quotations all from Gorodetsky, Grand delusion, p. 316.
2I6
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS
collection of Soviet diplomatic documents for the per
edited by the veteran Russian military historian Oleg
This volume, entitled War and diplomacy, covers two m
the wartime alliance - the negotiations in Moscow co
British Foreign Secretary, in mid-December 194I, an
Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, to London,
in May and June I942 to discuss an Anglo-Soviet treaty
The documents come from Stalin's personal files no
president of the Russian Federation, and thus offer a
Soviet policy at the very top. They confirm evidence al
side about the importance that Stalin attached to an
Soviet borders, with Poland and the Baltic states at the to
Molotov were carrying on where they left off in 1939-4
the Germans as interlocutors. In May 1942 Molotov's o
borders brought the treaty negotiations with Britain
suddenly, he abandoned this position and signed a twe
without any territorial strings attached. Historians ha
for Molotov's U-turn. In his war memoirs, Churchill s
solidarity of the British and US governments. More rec
Molotov had become aware through the US ambassador
objections to a deal on frontiers and that Stalin, faced
in May 1942, had become more concerned to win Angl
second front.24
Rzheshevsky cannot shed any new light on the re
Miner, he thinks that the situation at the fronts was
provides dramatic detail on how the policy reversa
handed Molotov a new draft treaty, shorn of any terr
cabled the full text to Stalin, commenting: 'We conside
is an empty declaration which the USSR does not ne
and abrupt, cabling on 24 May that this was not 'a
important document'. Although not providing any gua
bad perhaps, for it gives us a free hand'. According to St
for the security of our frontiers' would be 'decided by
confidence is remarkable, given the dire predicament of
1942 as the Wehrmacht surged on towards the Caucasus.
Molotov was talking to Roosevelt in Washington, the li
one of international co-operation. 'There is no doubt
22 Oleg A. Rzheshevsky, ed., War and diplomacy: the making of
Stalin's archives (Amsterdam, 1996).
23 See Graham Ross, ed., The Foreign Office and the Kremlin:
relations, 1941-1945 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. I8-25, 82-94. On th
'Uncommon ground: Anglo-American-Soviet diplomacy,
Sovietique, I8 (I991), pp. 237-57, and Lloyd C. Gardner, 'A tale
and the second front, I941-I942', in Soviet-American rela
pp. 104-20.
24 Churchill, Second World War, iv, p. 300; Steven Merritt Miner, Between Churchill and Stalin: t
Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the origins of the Grand Alliance (Chapel Hill, 1988), esp. pp. 248-
257-9, 267. 25 Rzheshevsky, ed., War and diplomacy, pp. 159-6o.
26 Ibid., pp. 121-2.
217
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
maintain peace in the future without creating a united military force by Britain,
USA and the USSR, capable of preventing aggression. It would be good to inc
China here. '27 Was Soviet territorial security to be achieved by international consen
by national power? Stalin oscillated between the two positions, though gravitatin
the latter with increasing frequency as the war progressed.
Equally interesting is Molotov's grovelling reaction to Stalin's peremptory cable of
May: 'I shall act in accordance with the directive ... I believe that the new draft t
can also have positive value. I failed to appreciate it at once.' He added that he wo
present Soviet acquiescence as 'a big concession to Churchill, and especially
Roosevelt',28 whose views had just been made known to him by ambassador Wina
Molotov was thereby able to change tack gracefully, but he anguished over St
about-face and tried hard to elucidate it when back in Moscow. His role as a glor
message boy is indicated by another instruction from the Kremlin, dressed up, as us
as a telegram from the Central Committee (Instanzia, or 'the top'). Sent on 3 June
expressed dissatisfaction with 'the terseness and reticence of your communications. Y
convey to us from your talks with Roosevelt and Churchill only what you you
consider important and omit all the rest. Meanwhile, the Instance would like to k
everything, what you consider important and what you think unimportant.'29 In
need to know everything there is more than a hint of Stalin's underlying parano
call Molotov 'his master's voice' - almost 'Stalin's yes-man' - may be going too fa
but the documents in Rzheshevsky's illuminating collection make very clear who
the boss.
Yet the Western allies developed a very different image of Kremlin policymak
Although there have been important studies of British wartime diplomacy tow
Moscow, Martin Folly is the first scholar to offer a book-length analysis of
underlying assumptions in Whitehall about the wartime Soviet Union, based on a
array of British primary sources.31 Folly argues that successful Red Army resist
(rather than Hitler's onslaught itself) forced British leaders to take the Soviet U
seriously and to formulate a clear policy, predicated on cautious confidence that
Soviets now wanted to co-operate with the Western allies. This axiom is familiar
Folly is at pains to argue that it rested on clear and plausible assumptions, which
hold in Whitehall in 1942--3. First, that Soviet foreign policy aims were limited
largely defensive. The basic goal was security (not revolution); the prime fear w
resurgent Germany. Secondly, that the costs and challenge of rebuilding the warcountry
would be immense. Stalin might need Western aid; even if he did not
burden of reconstruction was likely to dictate a cheap foreign policy - in other w
co-operation not confrontation. Thirdly, there was faith in Stalin himself, vi
increasingly, in Folly's preferred phrase, as 'a wise statesman, a sagacious realist',3
judged that his country's best interests were served by co-operation with his all
27 Ibid., p. 204. 28 Ibid., pp. I38-9. 29 Ibid., p. 210.
30 See Steven Merritt Miner, 'His master's voice: Vyacheslav Mikhaliovich Molotov as Stalin's
foreign commissar', in Gordon A. Craig and Francis L. Loewenheim, eds., The diplomats, 1939--1979
(Princeton, I994), pp. 65, 92.
31 Martin H. Folly, Churchill, Whitehall, and the Soviet Union, I94I--1945 (London, 2000). Cf.
Martin Kitchen, British policy towards the Soviet Union during the Second World War (London, I986);
Victor Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, i94I-I947 (London, I982); P. M. H. Bell, John Bull and
the Bear: British public opinion, foreign policy and the Soviet Union, 194I--I945 (London, I990).
32 Folly, Churchill, Whitehall, and the Soviet iUnion, p. I68.
2I8
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS
Complementing this was a widespread conviction that, lu
rival camp - perhaps led by Molotov - which was still instin
pro-German. Much ink was spilled in speculative Kremlino
was that Stalin was firmly in the co-operationist camp. One
the axiom that the Soviets wanted co-operation was the tr
evinced by Stalin and, even more, by Soviet officials. But
ingrained suspicions of Britain, fear of an Anglo-Amer
sensitivity about equal treatment as a great power. Given
was hard to calibrate the right tactics. Was it better to be o
(the line taken by Cripps and Beaverbrook)? Or were f
insistence on reciprocity the way to command respect
conclusions were reached, but the second view tended to p
It is an essential part of Folly's case that co-operation rema
policy toward the Soviet Union right to the end of the Ch
Although the 'doctrine of hypersensitivity' was replaced by
arrogance, he argues that most of the other assumptions r
were not fully discredited by Soviet behaviour in Eastern
of 1945, he claims, 'British attitudes were by no means ye
for 'firmness' and 'frankness' should be understood 'in term
rather than with our knowledge of the events and attitudes
has no doubt that Churchill fits this pattern. Allowed un
persuaded that the Soviet leader was a co-operative realist
still prone to fears that the Kremlin was full of incorrigib
wild oscillations, but around a trajectory of co-operation
spring of 1945 for greater toughness and for pressing on to
Folly's view, belated attempts to put co-operation on a fir
interests - negotiation from a position of strength. This
depiction than those presenting Churchill as a full-blown
even as a dyed-in-the wool anti-Bolshevik who had been
clothing of appeasement because of wartime exigencies
Churchill was fascinated by Stalin, and greatly taken by
David Carlton to suggest that his professions of trust after
were mere pretence, and that Churchillian assertions such
were deliberate exaggerations so that he could later blast
Folly may have overdone the impression of consensus an
feels, British wartime policy towards the Soviet Union wa
wishful thinking. Nevertheless, this is a thoughtful an
beyond the rather narrational accounts we have to date of
with great detail on the Polish question, to explore the ass
It reminds us, on the one hand, how limited was the info
Soviet Union and its leaders, and yet, on the other, how
opened up by the wartime alliance. Faute de mieux, West
very little. Personal contacts with Stalin, boozy wartime
such as greater religious freedom - all were grist to the m
guard on the walls of Stalin's study were noted - the repla
33 Ibid., p. i66.
34 David Carlton, Churchill and the Soviet Union (Manchester,
2I9
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
and other ideologues with paintings of Russian war heroes such as Suvorov.35 Ac
Atlantic, U.S. policymakers were engaged in similar essays in interpretation.36
and reconstruction, not revolution, were also their keywords. None of this prec
possibility of Soviet expansion, but even Americans who discerned imperialist am
in Moscow tended to conceptualize them in terms of' normal' power politics.
the crux: in both London and Washington the wartime alliance encouraged
that 'Russia' (preferred to 'the Soviet Union') was entering its post-revol
phase.
This, of course, raises the question of what went wrong. Sadly Folly does not push his
analysis on into the deepening Cold War of I945-6. Many scholars judge the early
months of I946 critical - with the Soviet-American face-off over Iran in the United
Nations, Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech at Fulton, the impact on Washington of
George Kennan's 'Long Telegram' from Moscow, and the Foreign Office's parallel
rethink in the face of the intense anti-British propaganda campaign and messages from
Kennan's British counterpart, Frank Roberts.37 It would therefore have been interesting
to see Folly's analysis of when and why the co-operationist axioms broke and what
perceptions of the Soviet Union replaced them. But what his account does make clear
is that foreign policy is based on far more than diplomatic interchanges: we need to
probe beneath these to the underlying perceptions of the other country and its society.
Good international history must embrace cultural and social history as well.
III
This is particularly true during total war, when whole populations were mo
support of diplomatic goals or in defence of the national homeland. D
efflorescence of social and cultural history, however, relatively little of it has
the experience of war. The main exception is, of course, the study of memorial
in literature, art, and especially monuments. But the survivors matter as m
dead. As Omer Bartov has observed of Hitler's Wehrmacht:
while social historians have probed into civilian society, military historians have
themselves with tactics, strategy, and generals ... Consequently, once conscripted
historians' protagonists were passed over to the military historians who ... treated them
a vast, faceless mass of field-grey uniforms devoid of any civilian past. Conversely, once t
over, those soldiers who survived it were, so to speak, delivered back into the hands o
historians, only to continue their civilian existence with very little reference to the fact that
they had served as soldiers.38
The same is true for other nations. 16 million Americans (some 12 per ce
35 See David Reynolds, 'Legacies of the "Grand Alliance": geopolitics, perception
Stalin enigma, I94-I1945', in Christian Ostermann, ed., Stalin and the Cold War, 1945Haven,
forthcoming).
36 An important essay in similar vein, though not cited by Folly, is Eduard Mark, '
Thermidor?: interpretations of Stalinism and the perception of Soviet foreign policy in t
States, I927-1947', American Historical Review, 94 (1989), pp. 937-62.
37 For instance, John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the origins of the Cold War
(New York, I972), esp. ch. 9; FraserJ. Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and
of the Cold War (New York, 1986); Sean Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, I945--9
2000), esp p. pp. 7-19.
38 Omer Bartov, 'The missing years: German workers, German soldiers', German H
(I990), p. 52.
220
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS
population) were inducted into the US armed forces
Some 4'3 million of these served abroad in the Europ
million passed through Britain. What effect did such exp
outlook? The so-called 'new military history', which se
in the experience of soldiering, is turning to these quest
in 1995 produced an outstanding collection of internati
Gerald Linderman has explored 'the world within war'
I94I--5, drawing mostly on published materials.39 Goi
historian Peter Schrijvers has published an important
combat soldiers in Europe, using some of the rich prim
The crash of ruin explores the GIs' encounters with E
both Allied and enemy. Schrijvers argues that the Ame
lessons from their wartime experiences. One was th
United States, exemplified in the mechanization of the U
fabled Wehrmacht on horse-drawn transport. Anothe
strated by pay, rations, and the PXs and, even more, b
of European civilians to get their hands on this largesse.
communication': language barriers prevented rounded
case most of the latter were women, children, and
strengthened the impression of European dependence.
'normal' Europe was the totality of total war, in which
been pulverized by bombs and shells. But all this is pr
theme, that the degradation of Europe and Europeans
the fundamental degeneration and decline of'the Old
The continent was cramped (even France would fit
shackled by a tyrannical past, backward in living stan
capable of appalling barbarism (as shown in the last w
and other concentration camps). According to Schrijver
of the moral and material superiority of the New World
globe a better place.
There are, I think, some methodological problem
Repeatedly we are told that 'the GIs felt' this or 'th
There is little effort at disaggregation. One would like
Americans of Italian descent adopted the same contemp
Sicilians and Italians as apparently did the rest of their c
thesis depends largely on the assumption that GIs took t
permanent (wartime ruination as evidence of cultural
know whether levels of education made any differenc
sufficient background in classical philosophy to echo th
1945, on America's obligations as a superpower: 'I think
39 Paul Addison and Angus Calder, eds., Time to kill: the soldie
I939-I945 (London, I997); Gerald F. Linderman, The world with
in World War II (New York, I997); cf. David Reynolds, Rich re
Britain, i942-I945 (London, 1995). See also the overv
W. R. Morrison, 'The American rampant: reflections on the
Allied countries during World War II', Journal of World His
40 Peter Schrijvers, The crash of ruin: American combat soldie
(London, I998). 41 Ibid., pp. I20-4.
22I
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
officials are those who serve against their will, from a sense of duty
really so ready to blur national differences into a composite image
writing of their anger at the concentration camps: 'they realized
had been lurking beneath most of the Old World's surface and co
any of its countries .4 Schrijvers seems, in fact, to take American st
World as a given. There is no attempt to analyse what soldiers mig
way of prior cultural baggage from textbooks, literature, and mov
For all these reasons, therefore, The crash of ruin must be used wi
it is more inferential than inductive. That said, however, it is a ri
of work, which lends weight to similar interpretations. Gerald Linde
argued that the combat veteran's first reaction to the war's end was
Reactions such as 'we won' and 'it mattered' came later - often af
'To soldiers' families', wrote Linderman, 'the conflict had been on
clarity; victory had turned on the almost perfect congruence of A
American morality. '4 Schrijvers's vivid and plausible account of t
war offers a different glimpse of how America's Cold War consen
After the demoralization of the Depression and the ambivalence of
was a new assurance about American power and values, confirm
such foreign encounters. As he hypothesizes, this may well ha
foundation for post-war internationalism. Here, certainly, is a
further research.
Peter Schrijvers's monograph explores the transition from war to peace in the minds
of ordinary soldiers, just as Mark Stoler has done for the military planners. At both
levels one finds by I945 a new conviction of American might and right. This is
important. Several leading scholars have recently urged historians to bring back
ideology into their study of the Cold War, to recognize that values genuinely mattered
rather than simply being a tool of power politics. Thus, from different angles, John
Lewis Gaddis, Odd Arne Westad, Anders Stephanson, and DouglasJ. Macdonald have
emphasized 'ideals' as much as 'interests' in the shaping of US Cold War policy.45 This
is also the approach of Freedom's war, in which Scott Lucas insists that American
policymakers genuinely believed that they were engaged in a 'crusade' against the
Soviet Union. The Cold War, in his view, was understood and presented, 'first and
foremost, as a clash of cultures and ideologies' -such language was not simply a 'screen'
for geopolitical and economic objectives. Moreover, argues Lucas, these values were not
the monopoly of policymakers but were shared by much of the public. And since the
struggle was viewed as one of'freedom' versus 'tyranny', this imposed certain limits on
how Cold War propaganda could be conducted. To talk of 'freedom', says Lucas,
'meant that the U.S. Government, unlike its evil Soviet counterpart, did not direct
labor activity or academic research or journalistic endeavors'. Thus, 'it was the nature
of American ideology that demanded a private facade' for Cold War propaganda, 'a
State-private network' ranging from Radio Free Europe to the Ford Foundation.46
42 Ibid., p. 260. 43 Ibid., p. 257. 44 Linderman, The world within war, p. 360.
45 See John Lewis Gaddis, We now know: rethinking Cold War history (Oxford, I997), pp. 282-3;
Odd Arne Westad, 'The new international history of the Cold War', Diplomatic History, 24 (2000),
esp. pp. 552-6; Odd Arne Westad, ed., Reviewing the Cold War: approaches, interpretations, theory
(London, 2000), chs. 4 (Stephanson) and 8 (Macdonald).
46 Scott Lucas, Freedom's war: the US crusade against the Soviet Union, 1945--1956 (Manchester,
i999), quoting from pp. 2 -3.
222
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS
But the 'new' values of Cold War clashed with older tra
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their planners, as Stoler
enlarged conception of American national security intere
war and Soviet confrontation. Translating those ideas
Michael Hogan, challenged cherished American val
traditions of limited government and virtuous nation
cross of iron (presumably a play on William Jennings B
standard in the 1896 election: 'you shall not crucify m
examines how the country's 'national security state' em
this older political culture and the new security ideolo
at times dense; and there is considerable repetition of his
But his overriding point is important: 'how the count
without losing its soul '.47 The underlying fear was of cr
called 'the garrison state', in other words allowing a po
militarize America and subvert its values. This concern
both Truman and Eisenhower - as evidenced in their
Similar compromises emerged in the debates about a De
civilian control) and universal military training (a renew
In the end, Hogan does not seem to feel that these comp
By 1953 defence spending accounted for 8 per cent of
federal budget devoted to national security program
sketchily, that security could have been achieved at low
book is to show how new ideas had to battle with o
importance of ideology and political culture in the sh
Neither Lucas nor Hogan probes the wartime legacy.
with the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the latter devotes
before I945. Their work should be integrated with that o
on wartime. Arguably the turning point in this story w
waged against the 'isolationists' before Pearl Harbour
security in global terms and promulgated a bipolar, m
between democracy and totalitarianism. Cold War in
draft, the 'military-industrial complex', and even the
to have their roots in 1940-I.49 Be that as it may, the
America grew in various, sometimes contradictory, wa
Second World War. These two eras should not be studi
On the Soviet side, this is even more important. T
Three allies, the homefront was a battlefront. Britain w
continental United States was untouched by war apart
the Pacific north-west and the odd submarine off the Ca
western USSR was a killing ground twice over - in 194
east and in I943-4 as the Red Army rolled west. Stra
Rostov-on-Don changed hands several times. Total So
But if one accepts the post-glasnost consensus of arou
gone much higher) then this is equivalent to 14 per cen
47 Michael J. Hogan, A cross of iron: Harry S. Truman and the
(Cambridge, 1998), p. 266. 48 Ibid, pp. 469-82.
49 Themes of David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt's America and the origins
Second World War (Chicago, 200I).
223
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
the British the death toll was 350,000 (0'75 per cent); for the U
(0'25 per cent). Put another way, casualties in the I94I--4 siege of
those of America, Britain, and the British empire put together.50 It
such a profound experience of total war did not have post-war rep
little attention had been paid to this theme. In I97i the British jo
Werth, whose account of Russia at war remains a classic, dubbed
between the end of the war and the post-Stalin 'thaw', as 'the mos
in the whole history of the Soviet Union'.5l After the Soviet colla
appeared excellent English-language studies of the total Soviet war
those by John Barber and Mark Harrison and by Richard Over
scholars have begun to explore the transition from war to post-wa
Elena Zubkova's book, Russia ajfer the war, is a pioneering study
sources such as public opinion surveys for the Central Comm
censorship records, as well as memoirs, newpapers, and oral testim
of some of the social fallout from the war - 8'5 million men demo
youngest of whom (born I923-7) had never had any other employm
Of these nearly half a million were invalids who had lost at least o
neither jobs nor homes for these heroes of wartime Soviet labo
reduced to living in dugouts. The food supply was also in crisis. R
only half the population in wartime, and starvation was acute in b
Leningrad and also in rural areas where crops had been ravaged by
1946 a sequence of summer drought and then harvest deluges decima
just as the ration-card system was being drastically cut back. The bes
2 million died friom famine between 1946 and 1948, especially in R
the Ukraine. All this, Zubkova argues, strained the collective farm
breaking point. One man from Stavropol (Mikhail Gorbachev
mented: 'We work on the collective farm as we used to work for t
days of serfdom. '53 A further source of instability was the return, oft
of Soviet citizens from Germany, who had been prisoners of war
Over 5 million had been repatriated by the beginning of 1946. Zu
immediately after victory, there was widespread faith in the g
capacity for reform, particularly among intellectuals. But by 1947
galloping alienation of the higher and lower orders'.54 This soci
plausibility to the claim that, for Stalin, the intensification of the C
a form of social control. As with the war scare of 1928, a foreign thre
internal crackdowns such as post-war purges of party members, th
West' campaign in I947-8, and the attack on 'cosmopolitanism'
A rather different interpretation of the post-war transition emerge
of war- Amir Weiner's study of the Vinnytsia region of the west-ce
emphasizes the formative nature of the war, but stresses that it was
previous Soviet experience. Vinnytsia was a particularly turbulent
50 David Reynolds, Warren F. Kimball, and A. O. Chubarian, eds., Alli
American, and British experience, 1939-1945 (New York, 1995), p. 429.
51 Alexander Werth, Russia: the postwaryears (New York, 1971), p. ix.
52 John Barber and Mark Harrison, 7he Soviet home front, I94--1945: a socia
of the USSR in World War II (London, I99I); Richard Overy, Russia's wa
53 Elena Zubkova, Russia after the war: hopes, illusions, and disappointmen
NY, I998), p. 60. 54 Ibid., p. 107.
224
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS
bitter partisan warfare, the resurgence of Ukrainian nation
outside the control of the Russian Orthodox church. For the
war stabilization was acute. Yet Weiner is interested in th
imposition but as bottom-up self-assertion, in which Red
those of Ukrainian ethnicity, helped shape a post-war or
shows how the victors of the post-war purges, in an area
been destroyed in wartime, were overwhelmingly from th
partisans or ofJews (many of whom migrated to Palestin
anti-semitism intensified). Unlike Zubkova, he suggests
acceptance of the collective farms, not least because th
former kulaks (rich peasants, purged by Stalin in the earl
authority, and argues that Red Army veterans disproport
chairmen and village officials after I945. If the post-war p
the peasant, Weiner claims that it also marked the emerge
Autonomous nationalist groups were brutally suppres
completed until 1949, but Ukrainian particularism wa
nationhood, with distinctive passports and an officially s
The war had seen the final unification of the Ukraine at
(1939) and then Germany (1944). Ukrainian peasants, vic
terror, were now depicted as Red Army victors in the Gr
a par with the Russian people themselves. Whereas Zu
solidation of Cold War ideology as an instrumental respo
Weiner stresses the support the Soviet regime enjoyed amon
won the war. The post-war order, he implies, rested on co
His veterans, like Schrijvers's GIs, emerge from the war a
Zubkova's and Weiner's are very different studies, based
sources. The first is macro and broad-brush, the second mic
region. The divergences of interpretation between them
more work of this kind, for instance John Barber's nuan
public opinion in wartime Leningrad.56 Taken together,
question the Cold War 'totalitarian' image of a Soviet mon
wartime on the post-war era, to relate high diplomacy an
They also underline the need to take account of the e
subject all too often consigned to its own sub-disciplinary
Harrison's collection The economics of World War II ca
Harrison is an economic historian who has specialized on t
also wrote a valuable comparative article on some of the ot
goes a stage further, with commissioned essays on the six
written by a national specialist, and drawn together
introduction. The essays address two principal themes: the c
55 Amir Weiner, Making sense of war: the Second World War and the
(Princeton, 2001).
56 John Barber, 'War, public opinion and the struggle fo
Leningrad', in 'Annali' dellafondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (19
57 His works include Soviet planning in peace and war, I938-1945 (C
war: Sovietproduction, employment, and the defence burden, I940-I94
mobilisation for World War II: the U.S.A., U.K., U.S.S.R., and
History Review, 41 (1988), pp. I71-92.
225
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORICAL JOURNAL
ultimate victory or defeat, and the impact of the war on long-term economic
and trends. On the first, Harrison's judgement is clear: until early i94
factors mattered much less than military. Surprise, deception, and str
portunism by Germany and then Japan carried all before them. Thereafter
'economic fundamentals reasserted themselves' and '[u]ltimately, econ
termined the outcome'.58 Among these economic fundamentals, the lev
opment is particularly important. The Second World War confirmed th
from I914-I8 that less developed countries collapsed first- as exemplified
Italy, and then Japan. As industry was diverted to war, so fewer goods we
to sell to peasants and foreigners alike in exchange for food and essential imp
countries also lacked the commercial and administrative infrastructure for ef
balanced mobilization. This point is underlined by the case of Britain - sm
Japan in population and territory and, like Japan and Italy, dependent on i
trade- which nevertheless mobilized without serious breakdowns in foo
thanks to its advanced infrastructure, efficient agricultural sector, and in
trading nexus.
The big exception to Harrison's 'development' thesis is the Soviet Unio
despite relative backwardness and the catastrophe of 1941-2, did not rep
collapse. In part, this was because Stalin presided over a very different cou
Nicholas II. In 194I the Soviet Union had a well-developed defence indus
and a centralized system for allocating resources. Morale and national unit
disintegrate despite defeat and appalling suffering. These were all marked
with 1917. Moreover, the Allies were genuinely an alliance, in contrast to t
the essay by Stephen Broadberry and Peter Howlett reminds us, net grant
United States (mostly Lend-Lease) covered over half of Britain's current acc
for the whole war.59 But foreign aid was also important for the USSRacknowledged
by Soviet historians during the Cold War. Harrison recko
imports, mostly from America and Britain, were worth 10 per cent of Sov
both 1943 and I944.60 Other Soviet borrowings were also important. Harri
that I945 represented a victory of mass production over craft indust
quantitative superiority of the Allies in weaponry was based on standardize
in a limited assortment' produced in large, specialized factories and us
changeable parts.6' In and after the war, both Great Britain and the So
adopted this American model; Germany and Japan took it up belatedly in
without totally abandoning their craft traditions. This, Harrison argues,
advantages in the later era of 'flexible manufacturing'. The Soviets, by con
'the defeated victor' - to quote the title of his chapter. Not only did they
heaviest Allied losses (a quarter of national wealth), but the war econ
'entrenched a production system based on mass-production technolog
centralized management for national goals, rather than on flexible pro
consumer markets'.62 Eventual Soviet collapse was, he implies, the result of a
commitment to Fordism as much as to the command economy.
58 Mark M. Harrison, ed., The economics of World War II: six great powers in internationa
(Cambridge, 1998), p. 2. Cf. the more nuanced judgement of Richard Overy, Why t
(London, 1995), p. 325, that the Allies won 'because they turned their economic st
effective fighting power, and turned the moral energies of their people into an effectiv
59 Harrison, ed., The economics of World War II, p. 52. 60 Ibid., pp. 286
61 Ibid., p. 39. 62 Ibid., p. 297.
226
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 227
Harrison offers these reflections as asides rather than as firm c
suggest further, intriguing ways to explore the post-war transition.
War in relation to the World War, by looking at both from the va
that our rich, if richly fragmented, discipline now offers, there is m
about some of the most familiar years of the twentieth century.
This content downloaded from
147.251.68.36 on Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:07:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms