June 24, 2013

Finest Hour 137, Winter 2007-08

Page 53

Penetrating Analysis

By Christopher H. Sterling

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Professor Sterling teaches Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University.

From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt and the International History of the 1940s, by David Reynolds. Oxford University Press, 364 pp. hardbound, $60. Member price $48.

Good history requires strong narrative and insightful analysis. David Reynolds, author of the superb In Command of History among numerous other books, provides both in this anthology of nearly twenty of his journal articles from the past twenty-five years. Originally published in British and American historical journals, they are here placed in an order that tells how the diplomatic world was transformed during the 1940s. As one might expect from the author and his title, Churchill figures on almost every page.

Reynolds’ analysis appears in six parts. Part one, “World War,” begins with a fascinating search for just where the “Second World War” rubric first appeared. The answer, it seems, is in a 1941 Roosevelt speech. The second reviews the “fulcrum” role of 1940 which Reynolds sees as accelerating the rise of the superpowers as well as the shift in British focus from working with France to working with the United States.

Part two, “Churchill,” reviews the controversial cabinet debate of late May 1940 on whether to fight on or seek terms from Hitler. Reynolds argues that the decision to fight on, hardly preordained, was the right decision for the wrong reasons (a presumption of strong American support and early entry into the war, for one thing). As he concludes, “A not unskilful politician, handling the same issues in different ways for domestic and foreign audiences, privately wrestling with his own doubts and fears, yet transcending them to offer inspiring national and international leadership—that is surely a more impressive as well as a more accurate figure than the gutsy bulldog of popular mythology” (page 97).

A paper entitled “Churchill the Appeaser?” argues that WSC backed the wrong horse—RAF bombing—as the chief means of bringing down Hitler. “Only military victory would force a German collapse—not blockade, bombing, subversion or peripheral operations” (119). Of course it could be argued that bombing, pre-1944, was the only weapon Britain had available.

Part three is on Roosevelt, beginning with an interesting take on the Royal visit to America in June 1939, going on to some of the political background of the appointment of John “Gil” Winant as American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in 1941, and concluding with a chapter on “the wheelchair president and his special relationships” that assesses FDR’s relations with advisers like Bullitt, Welles, and Hopkins.

“Mixed Up Together,” the fourth part, turns to the British-American partnership, considering 1941-43 American studies in Britain by the Ministry of Information and the Board of Education, growing out of government concern for misperceptions about the U.S. ally. Next Reynolds assesses the touchy question of how Britain dealt with the influx of black GIs: both British sympathy for blacks who were often poorly treated by American southern whites, and simultaneous fears over white British women dating black soldiers. A third paper looks into British and American troop interactions given the higher pay of the latter.

Part five, “Cold War,” reviews Churchill, Roosevelt and the “Stalin Enigma,” the efforts to “read” the Soviet dictator and his motives, a process that moved from faith to distrust. Reynolds states that Soviet post-war dominance of Eastern Europe was not owed to Yalta, but to the long debate and delay of the second front in Western Europe. Next is Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech, and the roles of the Big Three in the postwar division of Europe. A final chapter discusses how and why the Cold War began, and who lit the fuse. Reynolds provides an insightful assessment of what happened—and what have might happened. Churchill plays an important part throughout all tliree chapters.

The final section, “Perspectives,” turns to the impact of the war on American international policy, and how much Roosevelt learned from Wilson’s failings in 1919-20. The penultimate chapter tackles the postwar Anglo-American “special relationship,” rather more upbeat than John Charmley’s more dismal take in his Churchill’s Grand Alliance. This chapter, extended and revised since its 1986 appearance, is a sad account of British decline and the dilemma over whether to work more closely with Europe or America. A final chapter sums up the methodological issues in the writing of international history, including the growth of intelligence studies, and the role of personalities.

This is a sparkling book, filled with insight and penetrating ideas. David Reynolds deals with complex matters but never in a complex style. His writing is as clear as his thinking. With a deep understanding of the scholarly literature, he guides us through a thicket of issues and events to a better understanding of what happened and why.