A Companion to International [622941]

A Companion to International
History 19 00–2001
EDITED BY GORDON MARTEL

CHAPTER TWENTY -TWO
The Gran d Alliance, 1941–1945
WARREN F. K IMBALL
The Gran d Alliance was never formal. But its
basic principles of a joint struggle and a commit-
ment to “complete victory over their enemies” were set out in January 1942 by British Prime
Minister Winston Church ill an d US President
Franklin D. Roos evelt in what FDR labe led the
“Declaration by United Nations.” Save for the
name, the Declar ation had nothing to do with
the late r United Nations Organization; rather, it
was a statement of allied unity for those nations signing on to use thei r “full resources, military or
economic,” against the Tripartite Pact (Septem-ber 1940 ) of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Dec-
laration also referred to the “com mon prog ram of
purposes and prin ciples” that had been set out in
the Atlantic Charter, agre ed to by Church ill and
Roosevelt in August 19 41. Eventually, some
forty-fi ve governments (including, to Churchill’s
discomfort , India) signed on. Whatever the length
of that list, the Grand Alliance – Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and th e United States – together
led the struggle against the enemies of all.
As a statem ent of the war aims for the Grand
Alliance, the Atlantic Ch arter wa s intended as
merely a set of guidelines – Church ill called it
“not a law, but a star.”
3 Both Britai n and the
Soviet Union ha d express reservations about
promising to “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they
will live.” After all, each had an empire to hold
on to. The Russians also insisted on maintain-
ing thei r neutrality regarding Japan, a sensible The Gran d Alliance is, fi rst and foremost, the
story of one of history’s most successful wartime
alliances – and rumors of its death are exagger-
ated, for it never quite died. The Grand Alliance did no t survive the Second World War, at least not
in the same form, yet it was at the core of the
continuance of the Anglo-American special rela-tionship. Moreov er, Great Power collaboration –
the primar y legacy of the Grand Alliance – provided
an invaluable pl atform from which to launch ini-
tiatives fo r a lessening of Soviet–western tensions.
Yet historie s of the alliance and the Second World
War routinely focus on the wartime rifts and ten-
sions that crea ted what became known as the
Cold War, even while the Grand Alliance was
battling and defe ating a common set of enemies.
1
Preparing for the world that would emerge after
the wa r proved problematic. But the Grand Alli-
ance fa ced those problems and formulated
responses that, for better or worse, lasted into the twenty-fi rst century.
Winston Churchil l dubbed the array of nations
fi ghting Hi tler’s Germany (and Japan?) th e Grand
Alliance, then popularize d and perpetuated the
name by usin g it as the title of the third volume
of his extraordinarily popular memoir, The Se cond
World War.
2 As his t o ry l oo k e d a t th e p ara d e o f
what later were called “summit” meetings among the Bi g Three leaders, the Grand Alliance became
nearly synonymous with Church ill, Franklin
Roosevelt, and Jo sef Stalin – and so it shall be
used in th is chapter.

286 WARREN F. KIMBALL
position with Ge rman armies at th e gates of
Moscow, but less understandable by 1944 with Hitler’s forces in retreat. But even with such con-
ditions, the Atlantic Ch arter “turne d up like a
copper penny throughout the war – alternately embarrassing and pleasing its designers.” It was both an “idea and real ity.”
4
The principles of the Atlantic Ch arter he lped
shape postwar policy, but those principles were always preemp ted by national interest. The phrase
“national interest” seems hard-nosed and practi-cal, but defi nition s of what is national interest are
invariably fi ltered throug h ideology and history.
For Churchill and the British, declarations sup-porting h ome rule and self-determination for all
people meant that places like India and Br itish
colonies in Africa could choose to leave the British economic and political system. For the Ameri-cans, th e Charter’s call for so-called free trade
(multilateralism ) would benefi t strong economies
like that of the United States . For the Soviet
Union, its security de pended on “friendly”
governments in neighboring states, and friendly meant communist regimes that followed Mos-cow’s lead. All three leaders would have agreed with Stalin when, in 19 45, he offere d an axiom
to the Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas:
“whoever occupies a terr itory impo ses on it his
own social system.” Chur chill ha d offered his own
cynical contention that “the right to guide the
course of history is the noblest prize of victory.” FDR m ade no epigram, but insisted that the
United States have a major role in places like Italy,
even though Chur chill had suggeste d that Great
Britain be the “senior partner” in the occupation of that coun try. More importan t, Roosevelt con-
sistently trie d to attach the American liberal eco-
nomic agenda to agreements with his alliance
partners.
5
Addition al “defi nitions” of the go als of the
Grand A lliance would come with the 1942 Anglo-
Soviet Treaty , a more traditional bilateral alliance,
and th e “unconditional surrender” declaration
made by both Roosevelt and Churchill at the Casablanca conference in January 1943. Both
essentially repeat ed the commitment not to sign
a separate peace and, in the words of the Declara-tion by Unit ed Nations, to insist on “complete
victory.” The essentia l strategic understanding that
made the Grand Alliance possible came early in 1941, well be fore either the US or the Soviet
Union went to war with Germany. American–
British “conversations” between the top naval offi cers from ea ch country (the ABC-1 talks) con-
cluded that, in the even t of a war against both
Hitler’s Germany and Ja pan, the two nations
should focus on defeating Germany, the larger military power, fi rst. FDR neve r gave offi cial
approval to the strate gic recommenda tion until
after Pear l Harbor, but he read the report and
gave tacit approv al. That German y-fi rst policy,
and FDR’ s refusal to waver on it in the dark days
after the Pear l Harbor attack, were the sine qua
non for the creation of the Grand Alliance.
The essenc e of the Grand Alliance was never
on paper, but rather in the leadership and interac-tions of the Big Three – Churchill, Roosevelt, and
Stalin. Without the careful, personal diplomacy of the three leaders, the wartime alliance easily could have disintegrate d into direct Soviet–
western confl ict even before war’s end – a fright-
ening thought since by that time both factions had depl oyed vast, battle-harde ned military forces
in Europe an d, to a lesser degr ee, in East Asia.
Their diplomacy was complicated by ideological
differences am ong all three nations. Soviet com-
munism and autho ritarianism ran contrary to
British and American institutions. British imperi-alism an d colonialism generated strong American
opposition, and attack s on empire generated
equally impassioned British defense, especially from Churchill. American unilateralism (mislead-ingly labele d “isolationism”) and its liberal ideol-
ogy of “free trade” made for unsettling postwar security issues (after al l, strategic resources are
just that – strategic!), and th reatened the more
statist economic systems of the Soviet Union and
Great Br itain.
Geography, lang uage, and shared history for
over 300 ye ars made the Anglo-American rela-
tionship special. Whatev er British complaints
about Americans being “overpaid, oversexed, and over here,” the two countrie s had tightly interwo-
ven historic trade patterns, “combined” planning
boards fo r both logistics and military strategy,
extensively shared intelligence including a remark-able exchange of codebreaking secrets, and the

THE GRAND ALLIANCE , 1941–1945 287
Church ill–Roosevelt connection. Certainly, that
relationship was tighter and more trusting than their association with the Soviet Union, a revolu-
tionary state with an ideology that threatened the social and economic instit utions of it s two Grand
Alliance partners . The distrust was mutual and
well earned by all thre e. British and American
diplomats complained bitterly about Soviet har-
assment an d suspicions. Nonetheless, lend-lease
aid poured into Russia (eventuall y comprising 7
to 10 percen t of Soviet war materials), intelligence
sharing was signifi cant though less detailed and
extensive than that between the US and the UK, and wartim e grand strategy as well as postwar
planning were disc ussed at th e highest levels. Like
Church ill and Roosevelt, Stal in worked to make
the Gran d Alliance function – and bring it into
the postwa r world.
The grea t truth about the Grand Alliance is
self-evident – Nazi Ge rmany and expans ionist
Japan were defeat ed, although that ca n get ignored
if the Second Wo rld War is seen merely as the
origins of another war. A key strategic victory in Europe occurred before th e Grand Alliance took
shape. From autumn 1940 throug h spring 1941,
Germany lost th e massive air struggle that
Church ill called the Battle of Britain, forcing
Hitler to s h e l v e p l a n s t o invade an d occupy
England. Without that Brit ish victory, the en tire
war would have been different. The Soviet Union, in order to surviv e, might well have struck another,
less favorable deal with the Germans. Even if such
offers were spurned by Hitler, the Russians could not have counte d on any effective help. The
Americans, reluct ant to get involved in “Europe’s
wars,” whatever FDR’s concerns, would surely have withdrawn behind wh at some viewed as For-
tress Atlantic , not to venture out unless Hitler
threatened the western hemisphere. Moreover,
German naval and aviation bases in th e British
Isles woul d have closed the Atlantic to any Amer-
ican attempt to provide aid to Hitler’s enemies. That would have left Euro pe from Pola nd to Italy
to Spain to the Netherla nds under th e barbaric
control of Nazi Germany and its allies. We would have avoided the Cold War, but at a far more hor-
rifying price.
But by th e time of the Japane se attack on Pearl
Harbor on December 7, 1941, when the Grand Alliance came into being, Britain was safe, and
American military aid was beginning to trickle
across the Atlantic and even into the Soviet Union. Even as the Re d Army retreated from the
German onslaught that had be gun on June 15,
1941, Roosevelt instructed that aid be sent to the
beleaguered Russ ians. Ignoring American and
British military predictions for a quick German victory, he ordered: “Use a heavy hand – act as a
burr under the saddle and get things moving. . . .
Step on it!”
6 That aid had little ef fect on the
ability of Russian forces to stop the Germans at the gate s of Moscow, which they did in December
1941, but it held out the promise of more and
substantial help to come. Whatev er the morale
boost, the ke y effect was to build confi dence with
Stalin – no small task when dealing with a revo-lutionary whose revoluti on had been directly
threatened two de cades earlier by British, and to
a lesser degree American, military action.
The Second Front
The decision to aid Russia was a precursor to
Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime policy of using the Grand A lliance to build Stalin’s confi dence that
his alliance partners could be trusted in the postwar wo rld. Churchill generally agreed, but
occasionally swung betwee n exhortations to con-
front th e Soviets during the war and agreements
with Stalin to recognize Soviet dominance in eastern Europe. Churchill underst ood that Brit-
ain’s traditio nal policy of pl aying the balance-
weight rather than trying t o i m p o s e i t s w i l l b y
force had been dictated by realities of physical size that could no t be overcome by economic strength,
even in Marlborough’s era. By the 1940s, he
unhappily recognized th at Britain’s economic
power ha d faded, and feared it would fade further
if it lost its empire as a result of the war. As for
Stalin, necessity made him receptive to Roosevelt’s blandishments. Yet what evidence we have from Soviet archives indicates that the Soviet leader
became increasingly intrig ued with the possibility
that wh at Winston Ch urchill later christened
“peaceful coexistence” mi ght be possib le, though
only on Soviet terms.
7
Those term s quickly became apparent. During
visits to London and Washington in spring 1942,

288 WARREN F. KIMBALL
Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molo tov reiterated
the requirements Stalin had laid out repeatedly
since th e German attack: recognition of Soviet
boundaries that included the Baltic states and
what had been eastern Po land, an d the establish-
ment of a major Anglo-American military front in western Europe – defi ned as “drawing off 40
German di visions (these being fi rst-rate divisions)
from the Soviet–G erman front” – the Second
Front. Time and again Molotov told Churchill and then Roosev elt that the Second Front was
more a politi cal than a military question, “and as
such should be solved no t by generals but by
statesmen.”
8
Stalin’s territorial demands were awkward for
the British. They had assisted in the creati on of
independent states in th e Baltic after the First
World War, an d had ostensibly gone to war in
1939 to “sav e” Poland from the Germans. But
Stalin was both sensitive to and wary of ethnic nationalism, viewing in dependence for Latvia,
Lithuania, and Estonia af ter 200 years of being
part of the Russian Empire as illegitimate and a threat to Soviet security. By spring 1942, the
British had accepted his position on the Baltic states, leavin g Polish boundaries for later. As for
the Second Front, at the beginning of 1942 Soviet
military needs were dire . Moscow and Leningrad
(St. Petersburg) were un der siege, while German
forces were moving across the Ukraine, Russia’s breadbasket, and would take the port of Sevas-topol on the Blac k Sea that autumn. Molotov may
have called the Second Fron t “political” (perhaps
hinting at a separate peace), but the military need
was overwhelming.
Roosevelt reac ted to Stalin’s territorial demands
with his clas sic tactic – delay. Arguing that those
matters should be left to the postwar peace con-ference, he told the British not to get into such details. A few months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, with the American publ ic clamoring for
prosecution of the war against the much-reviled Japanese, wa s no time to r i s k ru m o r s o f a d e a l
with Stalin on boundari es. That woul d threaten
what FDR and hi s military advisers knew was
crucial – the common Anglo-American under-
standing that Hitler’s Germany was the pr imary
threat. When both the Br itish an d the Americans
refused to sign off on a Soviet–Polish boundary, Stalin explained his intent ions to Molotov in no
uncertain terms. Ignore Br itish refusals to guar-
antee Soviet boundaries, St alin instructed, “for it
gives us a free hand. . . . The question of fron-
tiers . . . will be decided by force.”
9 All this was,
of course, done by the Americans and the British under the fear that Stalin would do again what he
did in 1939 – make an agreement with Hitler, this
time leaving his a llies high and dry. That fear of
a separate peace worried Churchill and Roosevelt throughout the war. Ironic ally, Stalin repeatedly
expressed similar fears to his advisers.
The Second Front in 1942 would not happen,
whatever Roosevelt’s privat e assurances and public
commitme nt to such an operation. Molotov and
FDR announced th at a “full understanding was
reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942,” but neither Molotov nor Stalin believ ed FDR. Soviet records
show that endorsements by Roosevelt and Hopkins of a Second Front by autumn were invariably fol-lowed by expressions of doubt. “The question arises: ca n we do it?” the president wondered.
Please tell Stalin, Roosevelt requested, “that we were hoping t o o p e n a s e c o n d fr o n t in 1 9 42 . ”
10
The American military spok e in terms of air oper-
ations in the event of a Soviet collapse, hardly the Second Front the Russians need ed. Moreov er, the
British dropped their guarded language and fi n a l l y m ade clear their unequivocal opposition to
any major invasion of we stern Europe in 1942.
They told Mo lotov that any such landing on the
continent in 1942 “was doomed to fa ilure” and
“would do nothing to help the Russia ns.”
11 That
constituted a veto since any invasion that year would have to be made primarily with British
forces.
The decision no t to launch the Second Front
in 1942, combined with the “pull of the Pa cifi c”
(pressure to pros ecute the war against the Japa-
nese), prompted Roosevelt to return to an idea he
had broached sh ortly after the United States
entered the war.
12 Not only did Stalin need reas-
surances, but the Germany-fi rst strategy FDR and
his military had agreed upon wa s threatened by a
growing se nse of American de tachment from the
war against Hitler. Bloodying the troops seemed the answer . In June 1942, Churchill decided to
“fl ip over” to Washin gton fo r talks with FDR and

THE GRAND ALLIANCE , 1941–1945 289
was delighted to fi nd that the president had
returned to his idea of an Anglo-American inva-
sion of Nort h Africa. The North African coast of
the Mediterran ean ha d been a persistent battle-
ground si nce th e start of the war. Hitler’s Italian
ally, le d by fellow dictator Benito Mussolini, had
overextended its forces in various parts of the
Mediterranean littoral, forcing the Germans to bail him ou t in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Libya/
Tunisia. French forces, presumably neutral since
their country’s surrender in June 1940, controlled
their Moroccan colony an d other parts of North-
west Africa. Germ an forces , led by General Erwin
Rommel, threatened Egyp t and the Suez Canal.
Even as Churchill arrive d in Washington for the
third of what would be a dozen Chur chill–Roo-
sevelt m eetings, he learned of the surrender of
33,000 experienced Britis h troops and the for-
tress at Tobruk in Libya, to a Germ an forc e half
that size. “Defea t is one thing; disgrace is
another,” Churchill later wrote.
13
The American military was willing to offer the
British tanks and supplies, but was aghast at FDR’s suggestion of a North African invasion.
General Geor ge C. Marshall, the US Army Chief
of Staff, and his planne rs were adamantly com-
mitted to a majo r cross-Channel invasion. Medi-
terranean operations were a “suction pump” that would divert atte ntion from “the main plot.”
Marshall muttered darkly about Roosevelt’s “cig-
arette holder” strategizi ng, abou t British efforts
to drag the Amer icans into a fi ght to restore
British infl uence in the region rather than defeat
Hitler, an d even about making the war against
Japan th e fi rst priority. FDR confronted Marshall,
likening th e general’s arguments to “taking up
your dishes and going away.” Fighting for a bunch
of islands in the Pacifi c “will not affect the world
situation this year o r n e x t . ” B u t the collap se of
Russian resistance would. Churchill and Roo-sevelt agreed th at Germany-fi rst meant keeping
the Soviet Un ion actively in the war, and that
meant the North African invasion – operation TORCH.
Operatio n TORCH
That decision se nt Church ill on the missio n of
“carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole” – explaining to Stalin why the Second Front in
western Europe had been replaced by obviously
more peripheral operations in No rth Afri ca. The
trip, in August 19 42, came at a time when supply
convoys to northern Russia had been suspended following staggering losses of shipping caused by German subm arine, air, and surf ace raider attacks.
At the same time, German U-boats had disrupted
the sea-supply li nes from the United States to
Great Britain, due in part to a loss of intelli gence
that came when the Germans change d their
communications ciphers. Stalin had complained angrily abou t the cut-off of convoys, but received
the news of TO RCH with appare nt resignation
and relief – partly because he already suspected
that the Second Front wo uld be delaye d, partly
because Hitler ha d launched a summer offensive
that had forced Stalin to order a strategic retreat
(the only time he did so during the war). His
allies would op en a second front, but not the
Second Front the Soviet leader hoped for. Still,
they were not de serting him. Chur chill re vealed
his personal preference for a Mediterranean cam-
paign when he drew a clever sketch of a crocodile showing TORCH as an attack on the “soft under-belly” as part of an a tta ck o n the “h ard sn out”
– Hitler’s Europe. Stalin responded, “May God prosper this undertaking.” The Grand Alliance was intact.
14
But th e Second Front issue, political and mili-
tary, woul d not go away. Churchill’s soft under-
belly remained the Anglo-Americ an strategic
focus, just as General Marshall had feared and Stalin must have suspected. The reality was that TORCH m ade a major cross-Channel invasion
impossible in 1943, alth ough that postponement
might well have come anyway give n training and
logistical challenges. Postponing the Second Front and not actively engaging Hitler’s fo rces for
a year (spring 1943 to spring 1944) could prompt Stalin to conclude that his allies were leaving him in the lurch. As the Soviet victory at Stalingrad
that would soon come in February 1943 became
obvious, US assessments of probable Soviet inten-
tions raised conc ern that the Soviet Union might
settle fo r a restoration of its 1939 boundaries and
not prosecut e the war against Germany. Church-
ill understood: “Nothing in the world will be accepted by Stalin as an alternative to our placing

290 WARREN F. KIMBALL
50 or 60 Divisions in Fran ce by the spri ng of this
year.”15
But making Stalin cont ent was not Churchill’s
primary concern. He had never been comfortable with the American plan for a single, massive
invasion of western Euro pe across the English
Channel. Memori es of the horr ifying trench
warfare of the First World War and limited British manpower prompted the British prime minister to opt for a war of attrition: a series of attacks on
the periph ery of German-held Europe that would
wear down re sistance. The Angl o-American inva-
sion of Nort h Africa in November 1942, and a
British offensive westward from Egypt, had suc-ceeded in removing any German thre at to the
Suez Canal and the Middle East. Now Churchill hoped that a campaign in Italy and perhaps the
Aegean Se a region would take precedence. The
Normandy invasion would still take place, but it would be ju st one of a number of Anglo-
American fronts.
But th e North African campaign proceeded
much more slowly than they had hoped. He and
FDR me t at Casablanca in February 1943, and
agreed on an invasion of Sicily. Th e Italian island
of Sicily lay only some 150 miles from the port of Tunis, making it an inviting target. For FDR, it
offered a charade of continuing to engage the Germans. For Chur chill, it held out the hope of
a Mediterranean strategy – one that would rein-stall Brit ain into it s traditional sphere of infl uence.
For Stalin, it was not the Second Front, but at least his allies were not deserting him – or so they hoped he wo uld think. When Churchill and Roo-
sevelt met in January 1943 at Casabl anca, in just-
liberated French Morocco, they agreed to take
that step, although the Americans insisted that preparation for the cross-Channel invasion had fi r s t p r iority.
16
With the Soviet Union fi r m l y i n m i n d , R o o –
sevelt and Church ill also proclaimed “uncondi-
tional surrender” as their joint goal. FDR had
earlier called for “victory, fi nal and complete,” a
phrase that was repeated in the Decl aratio n of
United Nations, but th e words “unconditional
surrender” also ruled out negotiations with Hitler.
That was no t only a message for Stalin, but also
a statement of Roosevelt’s belief that German character had been so warped and distor ted by Prussian m ilitarism and Nazism that fundamental
reforms had to be imposed on Germany – in later parlance, “natio n-building.” Bo th Stalin and
Church ill had some doubts about unconditional
surrender, but never repudiated the policy.
17
By early 1943 the outline of wartime Anglo-
American relations with the Soviet Union had
taken shape. Th e military engagements between
the Bolshevi k revolutionaries and the West,
which ha d happened only twenty-fi ve years earlier,
were not forgotten. Nor were Bolshevik threats
and condemnations. Coop eration and a degree
of trust had come very recently, and then only because of a common enemy – Hitler’s Germany.
Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt (nor Stalin for that matter) wanted th e Second World War to
become the Third. How to avoid that was the
question. Chur chill favo red creating a balance of
power that wo uld restrain the Soviets, but drew
back from aban doning efforts to prolong the
Grand A lliance. Roosevelt, halfway ar ound the
world from Moscow, reve rsed the pr ecedence,
insisting on working to bring the Grand Alliance into the postwa r world, but dr ew back from
actions that might compromise America’s inter-ests or security . The two leaders never considered
allowing their differences to split Brit ain an d the
United States – a demonstration of their “special”
relationship – but those differences affected all aspects of Anglo-Americ an wartime relations.
Decolonization, th e fate of France, the establish-
ment of an international organization, occupation and liberation po licy, th e treatment of Germany
and Japa n – all took different shape because of
divergent vi ews in London an d Wash ington on
how to deal with the Soviet Unio n. As for Stalin,
while he (m ore than Molotov) seemed intrigued
with the notion of cooperation, he never took his
eye of f his immediate goals of physical and ideo-
logical security for the Soviet state.
FDR’s hope s of transmuting the wartime
Grand A lliance into a postwa r working relation-
ship (a modus vi vendi) came to dominate Anglo-
American policy, especially as th at cooperative
policy also addressed their persistent fears that
Stalin would once again strike a de al with Hitler
and leave his allies to fi ght on al one. Whatever the
arguments betw een London and Washington
over postwar trade , empire, and infl uence, the

THE GRAND ALLIANCE , 1941–1945 291
Anglo-American relationsh ip continued to main-
tain the peaceful civility that had ex isted si nce the
American Civil War, desp ite quarrels and jealous-
ies and suspicions. But the Soviet Union was a different ke ttle of fi sh. During Roos evelt’s regular
meetings with State Department offi cials drawing
up plans for the postwar world, he worried aloud that “he didn’t know what to do abou t Russia.”
British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden echoed FDR’s concern, warning that the Soviet Union
was “our most diffi cult problem,” though he did
not thin k Soviet leaders actively planned for the
spread of international communism. But even if
they did, “if we are to win the wa r and to main-
tain the peace, we must work with St alin an d we
cannot work with him unle ss we are su ccessful in
allaying s ome at least of his suspicion.”
18
Roosevelt ha d come into the war with what
proved to be consistent, if uncomfortably vague, views on how to restruct ure internat ional rela-
tions in the postwa r world. The United States
would work with other nati ons to preserve peace,
but it had to avoid commitments that would drag it into every little argu ment and local squabble.
Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations concept
had fallen into th at trap, and the American public
and Congress had rejected the sche me, insisting
that the United States reta in its freedo m of action.
That experience , and FDR’s assessment of the
causes of the tw o world wars, left him convinced
that, sinc e the Great Powers made world wars,
only the Great Powers could maintain the peace.
19
At the same time, he believed that each of the
Great Powers , the sheriffs or policemen, should
pay primary attention to its own region – for the United States th at meant the western hemisphere,
a more palatable commitment for parochial Americans in an age before jet planes and rockets.
As early as Augu st 1941, during a meeting with
Church ill, Roosevel t had suggested that the two
Great Powers , the United States and Great Britain,
would have to ac t as policemen after the war. By
1942, th e list of policemen had expanded to four
to include th e Soviet Union and China. Disarma-
ment would be key – “smaller powers might have rifl es but nothing more dangerous,” he once com-
mented. Small nations would have to trust in the Great Powers – “another League of Nations with
100 differen t signatories” wo uld mean “simply too many nati ons to satisfy.” He had spoken sim-
ilarly to Molotov in Ma y–June 1942, and gotten
Stalin’s strong endorsement: “Roosevelt’s consid-erations about peace protection after the war are absolutely sound . . . his position will be fully sup-ported by the So viet Government.”
20
By mid-1943, with the Germans halted in
North Africa and the tide about to turn on the Russian front, European frontier s and self-deter-
mination became a major issue. From the start,
Stalin had insisted on having “friendly” govern-ments around the Soviet periphery in eastern Europe. Roosevelt’ s (and Churchil l’s, at least
most of the time) dreams of persuading Stalin to
be a cooperat ive participan t in the postwar world
required that the Soviet leader feel secure, satis-fi ed, and sure of Anglo-American reliability. But
since self-determination meant independence for
the Balt s and the establishment of an anti-Russian
(and anti-Soviet) gove rnment in Warsaw , how
then to avoid the obviou s? Both Roosevelt and
Church ill had trie d to create a good postwar rela-
tionship with the Soviet Union even before the
Stalingrad battle demons trated the likelihood of
Red Army occupation of the territor y Stalin
demanded. What options were left to London and Washin gton? Not military confrontation, at least
not with Anglo-American forces st ill struggling
in Nort h Africa and 15 mont hs aw ay from an
invasion of western Euro pe. More to the point,
what were the lo ng-term prospects for peace if the
United States and Britai n chose to confront the
Russia ns? More fr ightening, what if gettin g tough
with Stalin pushed him into making a deal with Hitler? Af ter all, Stalin had complained, accu-
rately, that the North African campaign was no
substitute fo r the Second Front. The atomic bomb
could change the dynamic, but that weapon was still only a projec t, not a reality until after the
Germans surrendered. Th en there was Japan to
be defeated – a campaign that all agreed would
take s ome two years. Rather than fruitlessly
opposing any and al l expansion of Soviet power
in eastern Europe , the Anglo-Americans opted to
continue to promote long-term cooperation. As Roosevelt an d Under-Secretary of State Sumner
Welles told Anthony Eden , “the real decisions
should be made by th e United States, Great
Britain, Russia and China, who would be the

292 WARREN F. KIMBALL
powers fo r many years to come that would have
to police the wo rld.”21
All this came in the atmosphere of suspicion
created by German disclosures in mid-April 1943 that the Soviet Union ha d executed some 4,400
Polish offi cers and men when the Red Army took
eastern Poland late in 19 39 as pa rt of the agree-
ments in the Nazi–Soviet Pact. Churchill found reports of the massacre persuasive, but both he and Roosevel t put fi rst things fi rst and refused to
let the issue divide the Grand Alliance. It was the beginning of a “litmus test” – the independence
of Poland from Russian/Soviet control – that would spel l the disintegration of the Grand
Alliance.
22
By autumn 1943, the Soviet military situation
had improv ed signifi cantly, eliminating Hitler’s
offensive threat by dest roying the bu lk of the
German tank s and mobile artillery. The Red
Army had faced, and wo n out over, the bulk
of German military forces, while the Anglo-Americans were st ill nibbling around the edges in
North Africa and Italy. Yet Stalin still needed the Grand A lliance, for the Germans remained a pow-
erful defensive force that could reconstitute its ability to go on the attack if the growing pressure in the west slac ked off. Bu t the political dynamic
was shifting, and that made a meeting of the Big Three – Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin – desirable, even necessary. Roosevelt, with Church-
ill’s agreement, backed off from suggestions of
Alaska, North Africa, Cairo, and Baghdad, and
agreed to meet in Teheran, Iran – which was as far outsid e the Soviet Union as Stalin would travel.
23
The Tehe ran Conference
In theory, the Second Fr ont decision remained in
play fo r the conferees. Churchill made his case for
an expanded Ital ian ca mpaign, but the painfully
slow advance up the Italian peninsula, even after Italy’s surrende r, had m ade those arguments
non-starters. As Stalin had accurately put it, the
Germans wo uld keep “a s many allied Divisions as
possible in Ital y where no decision could be
reached” – which is precisely what Hitler did. When the Soviet leader made clear his insistence
on a major cross-Channel invasion, the debate ended. Churchill railed about “the dangers of spelling the word OVERLORD T-Y-R-A-N-T.”
24
But th e decision had been made. An Italian cam-
paign would not replace a single, massive cross-Channel invasion . Angry and feeling isolated,
Church ill privately threaten ed to get drunk and
go home, but there was no chance of that hap-pening once the conference got down to the busi-
ness at hand – immediate and longer-term postwar settlements.
The Tehera n conference marked the apogee of
the Gran d Alliance. The discussions were friendly,
and thei r agreements general enough to avoid the
devilish deta ils. All three felt comfortable with
their specifi c as well as the overall military situa-
tion, even if the Russians still bore the brunt of the fi ght agains t Germany. Despite Churchill’s frus-
tration at the dism issal of hi s peripheral approach,
the German s no longer threatened Egypt and the
Suez Canal. Stalin thrilled the Amer icans when he
repeated a commitment made a few weeks earlier (at a meeting in Moscow of the UK, US, and
Soviet foreig n ministers) to attack Japan six weeks
after Germany’s surrende r. American campai gns
in the Pacifi c had secured the Southwest Pacifi c,
and th e island-hopping campaign against Japan
was about to start. The Anglo-Americans prom-ised the Sovi ets a portion of the captured Italian
fl eet. But even Stalin knew that they had gathered
at Teheran to talk about politics, not military issues – he had left his military staff back in Russia.
All politics is re lated, but two issues stood out.
One wa s an opportunity – establishing a postwar
international structure that co uld preser ve the
peace. The second was a challenge – to reconsti-
tute European nations and boundari es in the
wake of Hitler’s disruption and destruction. That challenge, labeled “self- determination” by the
western powers, qu ickly became a contest between
the Bi g Three to implement Stalin’s axiom –
“whoever occupies a terr itory impo ses on it his
own social system .” A su bset of that challenge,
also embraced by the term “self- determination,”
was the decolonization of European empires, par-ticularly in South and Southeast As ia. As it turned
out, the challenge trumped the opportunity, while th e colonized sought their own solutions.
The opportun ity wa s the creation of an inter-
national system, a set of relationsh ips, that would
avoid, evade, and even prev ent another great war.

THE GRAND ALLIANCE , 1941–1945 293
Both Churchill an d Stalin saw FDR’s Four Police-
men as a regional system, leaving them in charge of what they vi ewed as their spheres of infl uence
– Great Britain in western Europe and the Medi-terranean, Russia in the Balkans and Europe east of Germany. When Roosevelt sketched his concept of the Four Policemen to Stalin, the Soviet leader questioned having China pl ay a role in European
affairs. FDR, always conc erned about a rebirth of
so-called isol ationism, warned that the United
States could not participate in an exclusively European grouping that might try to force the
dispatch of Amer ican troops to Europe. When
Stalin wondered how the United States would respond to a request for military assistance from another Policeman, the presid ent evasively spoke
of quarantines and using only ships and airplanes – not troops.
Stalin agreed th at any international organiza-
tion should be worldwide, not regional, but he
also heard th e clear message that the Americans
would no t be m ilitarily involved in policing
Europe. Th e Cold War confrontation had not
begun – cooperatio n within the Grand Alliance
remained the watchword. There were no further signifi cant discussions of the postwar structure.
Working ou t the details could derail the concept,
especially with the disposition of Germany waiting
in the wings. Ye t all three delegations had taken
to referring to some sort of postwar organization
as “the Unit ed Nations.”
25
The challen ge of boundaries and political
reconstruction centered on central Europe, spe-cifi cally Germany and Poland. All three leaders
agreed that Germany should be broken up (Soviet
offi cials and historians later denied that Stalin had
supported dismemberment) . But no one was ready
to ge t into the messy details of boundaries and
specifi cs of governan ce lest that threaten the
cooperative atmosphere or limit their freedom of action. Instead, they created the European Advi-sory Commission (EAC) to study such issues . As
it turned out, by the time of the Yalta conference
14 months later, that commission ’s prop osals
became by default the guid ing principles – setting
“temporary” occupation zones of Ge rmany that
lasted fo r a half-century.
Stalin’s initial proposal for Poland found quick
agreement from Churchill. Whatever the details, the basi c agreement was crystal clear. In Church-
ill’s words: “he would lik e to see Poland moved
westward in the same manner as soldiers at drill execute the drill ‘left close’ and illustrated his point with three matches representing the Soviet
Union, Poland and German y.” Chur chill’s instinc-
tive reaction to the possibility of postwar confron-tation with Russia was to establish clearly defi ned
boundaries and spheres of infl uence. Such Victo-
rian arrangements had wo rked in the nineteenth
century, why not again? The Great Powers of Europe would, he hoped, seek their ow n interests
and create a great peace. “I did not think we were
very far apar t in pr inciple,” he told Stalin.
26 Ten
months later, during hi s talks in Moscow with
Stalin, the British prime minister would take the next step and spell out in clear, certain terms just who would get what.
Whatever the d omestic problems Church ill’s
“left close” maneuver for Poland might generate for FDR, Great Power cooperation came fi rst. He had, like Churchill, agreed earlier that the
Baltic states were an in t e gr al p art o f th e S o vi e t
Union. “Do yo u expect us and Britain to declare
war on Joe Stalin if they cross your previous fron-
tier?” he to ld the Polish ambassador (he repeated
the story to Stalin ). “Even if we wanted to, Ru ssia
can st ill fi eld an army twice our combined
strength, and we would just have no sa y in the
matter at all.” Churchill made a similar comment a few weeks later.
27 The same wa s true for
Poland.
Yet Poland eventually be came the li tmus test
for Soviet intentions, despite what seemed a clear understanding that indepe ndence and freedo m of
action depended on Soviet self-restraint, not Anglo-American gu arantees. Why? Partly because
Stalin acted with such harsh brutality; partly
because Church ill and Roos evelt both failed to
prepare their publics and their parliaments for something less than a perfect solution – leaders
could not speak of geopolitical compromises in a “People’s War” fought for principles; partly
because Polish lead ers-in-exile in England rejected
any compromi se. Self-determina tion fo r Poles
meant an anti-Soviet/anti-Russian regime in
Warsaw. Stalin ha d no intention of allowing that
to happen, any more than th e Americans and
British would stand by while Italy or Greece or

294 WARREN F. KIMBALL
France were reconstructed in ways that went
against Washington or London.
Operation OVER LORD, th e Allied cross-
Channel invasion of wester n France in June 1944,
quickly followed as it was by a promised Red
Army offensive, should have been the Grand Alli-
ance’s greatest moment. It was, on the surface.
The full defeat of Germany had become only a
matter of time. But that also meant that the Big Three coul d no longer postpone agreement on
postwar geopolitical issues. Whether or not the
attack was militarily necessary to defeat Hitler was
hardly discussed. The An glo-American s had made
a promise, and they would keep it! Not to do so would only have confi rmed Stalin’s persistent sus-
picions that his allies would turn on the Soviet Union once th e war ended.
Yet ther e is an undertone of politics in OVER-
LORD. Th e Americans had long entertained an
operation, codenamed RA NKIN, that expressly
called fo r an emergency insertion of British and
American forces into west ern Europe in the event
of a Soviet breakthrough. Why? Stalin’s axiom governs. If the Anglo-Americans were not on the continent to liberate western Europe, how could they ensure that thei r “social system” would
prevail? In Italy, the British and Americans had excluded the Soviet Unio n from any meanin gful
role in reconstr uction, then quarreled themselves
about whether or not Italy should be a “constitu-tional” monarchy (Church ill) or a public democ-
racy (FDR). Anglo-Amer ican conceptions of
democracy and freedom may have been superior to those of the Soviet Union, but geopolitical
positioning also played a role. The Normandy
invasion was more t h a n j u s t a h e r o i c e f f o r t t o
eliminate Nazism. But a “People’s War” requires grand themes and high purp oses. Geopol itics sits
uncomfortably in that seat.
By August 1944, the Polish resistance in
Warsaw had conclu ded that it had to liberate the
city before the Re d Army could do so. Hitler
responded predictably, ordering that the uprising be crushed. Sovi et forces near Warsaw did not
attack, and Stalin rejected Anglo-American ges-tures to send wh at would have be en meaningless
aid an d thus avoid embarrassment at home.
Perhaps Soviet ac tions in autumn 1944 indicated
that the Grand Alliance ha d collapsed. But perhaps Poland, whic h had been forced to “migrate” west-
ward for some 600 years, and whose leaders had played a dishones t political game since 1919, was
not a valid litmus test.
Planning for Po stwar: Poland
and Percentages
By autumn 1944, full-fl edged postwar planning
had broken out. FDR assume d that geography
and “isolationism” dictated that the United States
operate at a distance. American planners focused
on internationalizing New Deal economic plan-ning with grand trade agreements. Wheat and oil
were just th e start. A “world bank” and interna-
tional monetary agreemen ts (the Bretton Woods
conference) were keys to a better world. They would, of course, provid e economic advantage for
the United States . That, along with the creation
of what beca me the United Nati ons Organization
(at th e Dumbarton Oaks conference), would
ensure long-term US involvement on the interna-tional scene (t hough it wo uld no t ensure the
victory of internationalism over unilateralism).
But Church ill an d Stalin had to think in terms
of details. Britain and Russia would look at each other across the European continent, and who controlled/infl uenced what was a crucial detail.
Politics is principle. Th e Warsaw Uprising did not
prevent Church ill from travelin g to Mosc ow two
months later (the TOLSTOY conferen ce) to work
out a political arrangement he thought could avoid a confrontation with the Soviet Union. The
now famous “percentages” ag reement ignored
Poland – the matchstick s had already been moved
westward. Percen tages of infl uence (Bri tain 90
percent in Greece , the Soviets 90 percent almost
everywhere else), a biza rre concept, were an
attempt by both parties to avoid confrontation while implementing Stal in’s axiom. The 50 –50
split in Yugoslav ia was more a concession to the
strength of Tito’s regi me than anything else.
Stalin ignored his 10 percent in Greece; Church-ill did th e same for the rest of the South Balkans
except in Yugoslavia, where neither East nor West prevailed.
In December 1944, FD R, in a me ssage to
Stalin (repeating a State Department statement), asserted that the United States was committed to

THE GRAND ALLIANCE , 1941–1945 295
“a strong, free, independent and democratic
Poland.” He went on to state th e American pref-
erence for boundary questions to be settled at a postwar peace conf erence, then dropped the other
shoe. It would be acceptable to arrive at boundary
decisions and to transfer “national groups” so long as the “Government and people of Poland” agreed.
28 On the surf ace it said all the right things.
But Roosevelt, Ch urchill (who ag reed wi th the
message), and Stalin – as well as the Polish leaders in London – al l knew full well what it meant. Any
Polish government “friendl y” to the So viet Union
would agre e to moving the boundaries and
“national groups” (i.e., Poles and Germans) west-ward to fi t into the new Polish boundaries – and
Roosevelt knew that St alin was abou t to recog-
nize just su ch a “friendly” go vernment, the so-
called Lublin Poles.
So where di d it all go wrong? Certainly not at
Yalta. When the Grand Al liance leaders met for
the last time be fore Germany surrendered (uncon-
ditionally), the basics of a political settlement had
been deci ded. Germany would be occupied along
boundaries recommended by the EAC, with its
future to be decided. Eastern Europe, save for
Greece, wo uld be in th e Soviet sphe re of infl u-
ence. Great Britain, assisted at its request by France, would handle the reconstruction of western Europe . The United States would be in
charge of the western hemisphere, but had its
fi n g e r s i n e v eryone else’s pie through the various
international econ omic institutions being estab-
lished. An d the Grand Alliance – the Great Powers
– would live on as the UN Security Council where they could continue to work things out, safe
from unwanted infl uence from others thanks to
the ve to.
But th e Yalta agreements became a symbol in
the United States and Brit ain of corr upt, even
conspiratorial, power politics. Neither Churchill nor Roosevel t believed th ey could admi t to their
publics or th eir political opponents that they had
consigned the Baltic states, Poland, and much of the Sout h Balkans to the tender mercies of Soviet
control. Neither could admit that they had made concessions in Northeast Asia that restored Russian economic and politi cal infl uenc e in
Manchuria an d northern Korea. In each case the
reasons were mixed, but establishing a coopera-tive rather than confrontational relationship with
the Soviet Un ion was the overriding motive. It
was sometime a case of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, especially in places like the Baltic states, bu t better that than playing dog-in-the-
manger and getting suspicion and enmity in return. The Declaration on Liberated Europe, agreed to at Yalta, called for the kind of openness and politica l freedom enjoyed in the United States
and Britain. But that was no rhetorical “victory”
over the Soviet Un ion. Rather, it served to raise
expectations for the war’s outcome to unrealistic levels, and helped guaran tee that Am erican and
British frustrations and disillusionment would, as after th e First World War, intensify tensions. Only
this time it became the Cold War.
29
The conventional wisdom is that the Gr and
Alliance was collapsing by March/April 1945.
But that confuses diffi culties with disaster. Stalin
took a hard line in P o l an d an d eastern Europe,
consolidating his control with ruthless brutality. FDR and Churchill had full y expected the Soviet
Union to impose fi r m c o n t r o l , b u t had hoped for
at least the cosmetics of plebiscites in the Balkans (which pro-Soviet elemen ts were bo und to win
with the Red Army stan ding by), and with a
superfi cially independent Polish government. But
no Polish po litical gr oup that was “friendly” to
the Soviet Un ion could get elected, so Stalin
installed hi s own set of puppet s. Church ill hoped
to have things both ways . Even while he tried to
persuade Roosevel t to get tough with Stalin, the
prime minister instructed his government not to complain since Stalin was living up to his com-mitment ab out leaving Greece to Britain. Coop-
eration remained an objective. The Grand Alliance – international leadership by the Great Powers – still existed, and would co ntinue to do so until
the en d of the Cold War.
Perhaps Stalin’s most prescient comment,
however dubiou s his history, on the nature of the
postwar wo rld sums up the problems faced by the
Grand A lliance:
[A]fter this war all States would be very nationalis-
tic. . . . The feeling to live independently would be
the strongest. Later, ec onomic feelings would
prevail, but in the fi rst period they would be purely nationalis tic an d therefore groupings would be

296 WARREN F. KIMBALL
unwelc ome. The fact that Hitler’s regime had devel-
oped nationalism could be seen in the example of
Yugoslavia where Croats, Montenegrins, Slovenes,
&c. al l wanted something of their own. It was a
symp tom.30
It was more than a symptom; it was a fact. It took
Germans and Czechs and Po les and Balts and
Slovaks and others a half-century to achieve their nationalist as pirations, but it was they who caused
the col lapse of the Soviet Empire.
FDR’s deat h quickly ended cooperation as the
watchword as the new president, Harry Truman, took advice from those advisers of FDR who had
swung to a get-tough approach to the USSR.
That did no t cause the Cold War, which had
antecedents that st retched from 1917 to the Polish
independence crisis. Bu t it did create a meaner,
more confrontationa l, scarie r world.
NOTES
1 Grand sweeping histories like this Companion to
the Internatio nal Histor y of the Twentieth Century
depend on periodization to create intellectually
digestible pieces of related information. But some
chronologically sh ort chunks of im portant, world-
shaping histor y do not fi t comfortably or logically
into either the period before or the er a that follows.
The brevit y of the Second World War – a massive,
worldwide struggle – has made the international history of th e Second World War begin to disap-
pear, partic ularly under the ic y onslaught of the
Cold War. Fo r a fuller discussion see Warren F.
Kimball, “The Incredib le Shrinking War: The
Second World Wa r – Not (Just) the Origins of
the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 25 (2001):
347–65.
2 Whether or not Churchill used the phrase during
the Second Wo rld War, it gained no cu rrency until
after th e publication of his memoir/history. He
obviously took the term from the successful diplo-macy of his forebear John Church ill, th e 1st Duke
of Marlborough, who had, in the 1690s, created what became known as th e Grand A lliance against
Louis XI V of France. Winston Churchill, who
thought of Marl borough as a model, always
thought in te rms of person al diplomacy and used
the term to describe th e Big Three leaders and
their states – the United States, the USSR, and
Great Brit ain – whatever his references to the British War Cabinet being “at once surprised and
thrilled by the scale on which the Gran d Alliance
was planned. ” The quotation, which is from
Church ill, The Second World War [SWW ] 6 vols.
(Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1948–53) , vol. 3, The
Grand Al liance , p. 665, is the only use of that
term, other than the volume title, found in any of the si x volumes. For the history of that history, see
David Re ynolds, In Command of History (London:
Allen Lane/Pen guin, 20 04).
3 Churchill’s comment is in his SWW , vol. 6, Triumph
and Tr agedy , p. 393. The context and details of the
Atlantic Conference and Charter of Au gust 1941
can be foun d in Douglas Brinkley and David
Facey-Crowther, eds., The Atlantic Charter (New
York: St . Martin’s, 1994).
4 The quotes are from Theodore Wilson, The First
Summit (Lawrence, K S: University Press of Kansas,
rev. edn, 19 91), p. 149, and Lloy d Gardner, “The
Atlantic Char ter: Idea and Reality, 1942–1945,”
in The Atlantic Charter , ed. Brinkley and Facey-
Crowther, pp . 45–81.
5 Djilas quoting Stalin as cited in Georg Schild,
Bretton Wood s and Dumbarton Oaks (New York:
St. Martin’s , 1995), p. 17 5; Churchill as quoted in
Raymond Ca llahan, Churchill: Retreat from
Empire (Wilmington, DE: Sc holarly Resources,
1984), p. 18 5. Church ill wrote similarly to Eden
in January 19 42; Churchill, The Gr and Alliance ,
p. 696.
6 Roosevelt to Wayne Coy, August 2, 1941, F.D.R.
His Personal Letters, 1928–1945 , 3 vols., ed. Elliott
Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan, an d Pearce,
1950), vol. 2, pp. 11 95–6.
7 Churchill genially lifted the phrase from a speech
by his foreign secretary and inserted it in a speech to the House of Commons on July 12, 1954; Geoffrey Best, Churchill and War (London and
New York: Hambledon, 2005), p. 240.
8 Oleg A. Rzheshevsky, ed., War an d Diplomacy:
The Making of th e Grand Alliance (Amsterdam:
Hardwood Academic, 1996), d o c . 7 0 ( r e c o r d o f
talks betwee n Molotov and Roosevelt, May 29,
1942), pp . 177–8.
9 Rzheshevsky, War an d Diplomacy , doc. 38
(Moscow to Molo tov, May 24, 1942), p. 122.
10 See al l the documents in Rzheshevsky, War and
Diplomacy , pp. 163–261, but especially docs. 71,
72, 81, 83, 94, and 100. Italics added. Molotov
Remembers , ed. Felix Chuev and Albert Resis
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993), pp. 45–6.
11 Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War (New York:
Morrow, 1997), p. 14 2; Martin Gilbert, Road to

THE GRAND ALLIANCE , 1941–1945 297
Victory ( B o s t o n : H o u g h t o n M i f fl i n , 1 9 8 6 ) , p .
121.
12 The “p ull of th e Pacifi c” was heightened by
American nava l victories in the Pacifi c. In fact, by
June 1942, US fo rces had halted the Japanese
advance in the Southwest Pacifi c, ended Japanese
carrier-based ai r superiority in the Pacifi c, and
regained the balanc e of sea power in that theater of
operations.
13 Chur chill, SWW , vol. 4, The Hi nge of Fate , p. 383.
14 The shor t quotes in the preceding two paragraphs
are take n from various sources cited in Kimball,
Forged in War , pp. 148–59, plus one from Chur-
chill, The Hi nge of Fate , p. 481.
15 Church ill as quoted in Gilbert, Road to Victory ,
p. 313.
16 If the conquest of Sicily went well and quickly, Italy
would be next – although Church ill pushed so
hard for a formal commitment that Roosevelt got
annoyed and, according to Stimson, told the pr ime
minister that he had better “shut up.” Kimball,
Forged in War , p. 214.
17 Arguments that unconditional su rrender was a
tragedy and that it lengthened the war are prem-ised on a canard – that a strong Germany at the
end of the Second World War would have somehow prevented Soviet occupation of eastern Europe and won the Cold War even before it started. In reality, the likely result of an Anglo-American settlement
with the German generals (assuming th e unlikely
prospect of a successful coup against Hitler) that excluded the Soviets would have been either Europe engulfed by a Soviet–German war or a
Soviet–Germa n alliance.
18 Eden to Ha lifax, January 22, 1942 , FO
954/29xc/100818, Pu blic Record Offi ce (PRO);
E. L. Woodward, ed., British Foreign Policy in the
Second World War (London: HMSO, 1971 ), vol.
3, pp. 9–10 ; US Department of State, Foreign
Relations of th e United States (herea fter FRUS )
(Washington: USGPO, 1862 –), 1943 , vol. 3, p.
13; Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt an d Hopkins:
An Intimate History (New York: Harp er, rev. edn,
1950, pp . 708–9); Department of State [Harley
Notter], Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939–
1945 ( W a s h i n g t o n : U S G P O , 1 9 5 0 ) , p p . 9 2 – 3 ,
96–7; and Post World War II Foreign Policy Plan-
ning: Stat e Department Records of Harley A. Notter
(microform: Bethes da, MD , 1987), fi le 548-1 (a
summary of contacts with the president).
19 As quoted in John L. Harper, American Vi sions of
Europe (New York: Ca mbridge University Press,
1994), p. 113. 20 For th e Molotov–Roosevelt conversations of May–
June 1942 and St alin’s strong endorsement of
FDR’s thinking, se e Rzheshevsky, War an d Diplo-
macy , docs. 68, 77, 82, 83; and FRUS , 1942, vol.
3, pp. 573–4. Citations to the othe r quotes can be
found in Kimball, Forged in War , p. 368 n.11. For
additional references to the “policemen” idea, see Warren F. Kimbal l, “The Sh eriffs: FDR’ s Postwar
World,” in pr ess from the “I n the Shadow of FDR”
conference, Roosevelt Institute, Hyde Park, NY (September 22 –5, 20 05).
21 FRUS , 1943, vol. 3, p. 39.
22 The so-cal led Polish Question is far too complex
and lengthy to cover in this essay. Suffi ce to say
that nationalism, religi on, an d politics all com-
bined to ma ke an infl ammatory mix. The realities
of war, Polish intransigenc e, and the ne ed to main-
tain the Gran d Alliance and extend it to Japan
prevented the Anglo-Americans from giving the Poles anything more th an private and empty
reassurances.
23 Too much has been made of FDR’s acceptance of
Stalin’s invitation to stay at the So viet embassy.
Even Churchill agreed that travel through Tehe-ran’s str eets by FD R should be avoided, while both
men correctly assumed that their quarters were “bugged” with Sovi et electronic listening devices.
The conference met from November 28 through
December 2.
24 Kimball, Forged in War , p. 259. Field Marshal
Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945 , ed.
Alex Danchev an d Daniel Todman (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: Univer sity of California Press, 2001),
p. 480.
25 FRUS, Tehran Conference , pp. 530–2, 595–6, 622;
Kimball, The Juggler: Frankl in Roosev elt as
Wartime St atesman (Princeton, NJ : Princeton
University Press, 1991) p. 110; Earl of Avon, The
Reckoning (London: Cassell, 1965), p. 437 .
26 Chur chill, SWW , vol. 5, pp. 395–7; FRUS, Te hran
Conference , pp. 512, 599. Stalin’s fi rm preference
for dismemberment of Germany is one of the few instance s where the British and American
records ar e not seconded by the published Soviet
record.
27 FDR is quot ed in Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt
and American Foreign Policy (New York : Oxford
University Press, 1979), pp. 436–7. Ch urchill to
Eden (January 7, 1944) as quoted in Gilbert, Road
to Victory , p. 641.
28 The Stat e Department statement is printed in
USSR, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Stalin’s
Correspondence with Roos evelt an d Truman, 1941–

298 WARREN F. KIMBALL
1945 (New York: Capricor n Books, 1965),
p. 176.
29 This summarizes arguments I have made in “The
Sheriffs.”
30 Minutes of the TOLSTOY conference as quoted in
Gilbert, Road to Victory , p. 1026.
GUIDE TO FURT HER RE ADING
Edward M. Bennett, Franklin D. Ro osevelt and the
Search for Victory: Americ an–Soviet Rela tions, 1939–
1945 (Wilmington, DE: Schola rly Resource s, 1990).
An important study of US –Soviet relati ons du ring
the Second World War.
Douglas Brinkley and Davi d Facey-Crowther, eds., The
Atlantic Charter (New York: St. Martin’s , 1994).
Essays by leading scholars on this aspe ct of the
Anglo-American relationship.
David Ca rlton, Churchill an d the Soviet Union (Man-
chester: Manchest er University Press, 2000). An
intriguing study of Churchill’s changing attitudes toward the Soviet Union.
Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosev elt an d American
Foreign Policy (New Y ork: Oxfor d U niv ersi ty Press,
1979). A soli d broad survey of Franklin Roosevelt’s
foreign policies.
Lloyd C. Gardner, Spheres of Infl uence: Th e Great Powers
Partition Europe from Munich to Yalta (Chicago:
Ivan R. De e, 1993). A su ccinct, fo cused look at the
Grand A lliance and wa rtime diplomac y related to
peacemaking.Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory (Boston: Houghton
Miffl in, 1986). Th e Second World War volume in the
offi cial Chur chill biography.
Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Fran klin Roosevelt
as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, NJ : Princeton
University Press, 1991) and Forged in War (New York:
Morrow, 1997). Essays on FDR’s foreign policies, and a more genera l study of the Grand Alliance.
Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977). Th e best in-depth
survey of the wa rtime pressu res on the Brit ish for
decolonization.
David Re ynolds, In Command of History (London:
Allen Lane/Penguin , 2004). The defi nitive study of
the writin g of Churchill’s war memoir, and of how
that written history sq uared with the ev ents.
Oleg A. Rzhesh evsky, ed., War an d Diplomacy: The
Making of the Grand Al liance (Amsterdam : Hard-
wood Academic, 1996). A co llection of previously
unpublished and unavailabl e documents from Soviet
sources, this invaluable co llection explai ns much of
Stalin’s th inking in the 1941–3 period.
Georg Sc hild, Bretton Wood s and Dumbarton Oaks
(New York: St . Martin’s, 1995). A solid, useful
summary of tw o conferences that laid out much of
the postwa r economic structure and set up the United
Nations Orga nization.
Theodore Wilson, The Firs t Summit (Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas, rev. edn, 1991). A broadly
conceived study of the Atlantic Conference between Church ill and Roosevel t, the m eeting th at set the
parameters for th e Anglo-American wartime alliance.