Topic 5 Notes: Anglo-American Relations from 1921-1945

USA in the 1920s: economically, but not militarily, dominant

Faces no serious challenges: army only 140,000 strong
Armaments reduction part of Republican prescription for economic expansion
Japan and Russia preoccupied with internal issues and regional hegemony
European empires larger but facing challenges; especially Britain: Iraq, Palestine, India, Ireland

1920s decade of dominant US soft power

Economic
Technology
Culture: Hollywood
Missionary zeal in Third World

US in dispute with Europe over WW1 debts

Europeans

their own indebted structure cannot be untangled without cancellation of debts to USA

Europe paid in blood; US only in money

Americans

debts must be paid: “they hired the money, didn’t they?”
Cancellation of European debts will cause higher taxes in USA

US economic and diplomatic involvement with Europe in 1920

1923: US helps force French withdrawal from Ruhr by withholding loan

1924: Dawes Plan scales down reparations payments and provides US loan to Germany

1925: Alanson Houghton (US ambassador to UK) helps bring Locarno Powers together by threatening withdrawal of US loans

1928: Kellogg responds to Briand’s request for bilateral pact by suggesting multilateral agreement to outlaw the use of war as an instrument of national policy

1929: Young Plan reduces reparations and sets terminal date of 1988 for payments

The impact of the Depression

1930 Hawley-Smoot tariff raises rates to 40%, increasing duty on c900 imported products

US policy focused on domestic recovery, not world economic problems

FDR takes US off Gold and devalues the dollar
July 1933 torpedoes the World Economic Conference

June 1932 Lausanne Conference: reparations cancelled

July 1932 Ottawa Conference: imperial preference introduced

1934 Johnson Act in USA

No US loans to governments in default of existing debts to US Treasury
Token payments no acceptable so Europeans default, June 1934

June 1934 Collapse of Geneva Disarmament Conference

1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria

Hoover welcomes Japanese intervention in Manchuria: hopes they will get tied down

US bankers refuse State Department request to lend to China: too risky
Bankers willing to evade government restrictions and lend to Japan in Manchuria

Jan 1932 Stimson Doctrine: US will refuse to recognise territorial changes brought about by war

Regards them as violations of Open Door policy and Kellogg-Briand Pact
Britain lukewarm: takes four months to reply

Roosevelt’s early policies isolationist, or non-interventionist

Hopes for Wilsonian international co-operation and peace
Dislikes European empires
Suspicious of international banking and commercial interests for influencing governments
Needs support of progressive Republicans for his New Deal policies
BUT Most progressive Republicans were isolationists

FDR’s early actions isolationist

Reduces size of US army but expands US navy to Washington/London limits
Inaugural promises US interests first
Abandons Gold and devalues dollar
Torpedoes World Economic Conference in London

Isolationist opinion in the USA

Ideas influencing US isolationism

European powers preoccupied with their empires
US preoccupied with its own problems
European territorial squabbles don’t affect the USA
US resentful of European failure to repay war debts
Widespread view that involvement in WWW1 had been a mistake

Divided opinion in the USA

Oct 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia
Rouses African American opinion in support of Abyssinia
Italian-Americans supportive of Italy
July 1936 Outbreak of Spanish Civil War
American Catholic Church supports the nationalist rebels
Left-wing Americans volunteer to fight for Republican cause

Jan 1935 Senate rejects US participation in World Court

Feb 1937 opinion poll: 95% of Americans want to stay out of any future war

FDR refuses to join League sanctions against Italy

Dec 1935 Hoare-Laval Pact convinces Americans that Europe is degenerate

Oct 1937 Gallup records 73% approval for Louis Ludlow’s campaign for a constitutional amendment requiring a national referendum for a declaration of war, except in the case of invasion

Jan 1938 Ludlow defeated in the House 209/188

Neutrality Acts

Aug 1935 provisional Act

No arms sales to any belligerent nation
President can warn US nationals not to travel on ships of belligerent nations
Congress opposed to ban on sales only to aggressors as FDR wants
FDR needs votes for his Social Security Act

Feb 1936 Act renews 1935 Act for 14 months

No loans to belligerent nations

Jan 1937 Arms embargo extended to civil wars

May 1937 Act permanent

Arms sales, loans, credit to belligerents banned
travel on ships of belligerents banned
Merchant ships trading with belligerents cannot be armed
“Cash and carry” of non-embargoed goods permitted: concession to business interests

July 1937 Outbreak of Sino-Japanese war

Seizure of Shanghai, rape of Nanking
US media strongly anti-Japan
FDR wary of Congress after defeat over Supreme Court reform

Dec 1937 FDR rejects Chamberlain’s request for a joint US/GB naval show of force at Singapore to try to deter Japanese expansion

Dec 1937 no US response to Panay incident in which a few Americans killed

Japanese apologise and pay compensation

Oct 1937 FDR’s ‘Quarantine’ Speech

Nov 1937 Brussels Conference of 9 Power Washington/London naval powers

GB wants US to take the lead in resisting Japan
US reluctant to be pushed into war
FDR can’t afford to be “a tail to the British kite”

Jan 1938 FDR’s international conference initiative

Chamberlain hostile: thinks it will upset his plans for appeasement of dictators

1938 Munich Crisis: FDR ambivalent

Dislikes the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia
Reluctant to get involved, but encourages negotiations to take place

Nov 1938: USA fails to rescue Jews fleeing Germany after Crystal Night pogrom

1924 National Origins Quota Act

allows in only 2% of a national group already in the USA
those who will be a burden on the state not admitted: Germans refuse to allow Jews to take their assets abroad

Roosevelt’s attempts to assist the Western allies

FDR fears that

Western powers might succumb to Germany
Modern air power makes the USA vulnerable

Jan 1939 Congress grants $500m for expansion of US military

June 1939 successful royal visit to the USA

4 Sept 1939: FDR’s ‘Fireside chat’ promises US neutrality

Nov 1939 embargo on arms sales lifted

Events of 1940 increase US sympathy for Britain

Heroic resistance in Blitz
German expansion threatens US: Greenland and Iceland

1940 Greenland request US protection to secure its neutrality
1941 FDR makes Greenland a de facto US protectorate
May 1940 Britain invades Iceland
July 1941 USA takes over the defence of Iceland

Nov 1940 FDR’s election victory gives him more latitude to assist Britain

Nov 1940 Destroyers for Bases deal with Britain

29 Dec 1940 ‘Fireside chat’ promises US will be the “arsenal of democracy” and suggests Lend-Lease

Jan-March 1941 Anglo-American Staff talks in London agree on a joint strategy

March 1941 Congress permits Lend-Lease

August 1941 Placentia Bay meeting between FDR and WSC

Atlantic Charter

1941 Role of US navy in Atlantic convoys gradually extended

April: can escort to mid-Atlantic; i.e. responsible for western Atlantic

Sept: USS Greer attacked by a German U-boat it was tracking

US ships protect convoys as far as Iceland
FDR announces policy of “shoot on sight”

Nov: Congress repeals major aspects of Neutrality Acts

November 1941

US merchant ships can be armed
US warships to escort convoys fully across Atlantic

Anglo-American issues of co-operation and discord

Strategy

Americans want massive troop build-up in Britain for cross-Channel invasion of France

Suspicious of Britain’s insistence on Mediterranean strategy

Wasteful of men and resources on side-show
Designed to use American power to prop up Britain empire in Middle East

British convinced that premature invasion of France will be suicidal

British views prevail until 1943

American troops and materials not fully engaged
British staff planning better
Americans divided: some planners want to concentrate on Pacific

Intelligence and nuclear research

a)Intelligence

Nov 1940 Intelligence agreement signed: US has virtually no Intelligence capability

1943 BRUSA agreement

ULTRA material from Enigma decripts formally exchanged
Co-operation in signals and personnel

b)Britain ahead in nuclear research at the start of the war; unwilling to share with US

1942 USA ahead; unwilling to share with Britain

FDR and WSC agree Britain will participate in Manhattan Project

1943 Quebec Agreement

GB and USA agree not to use the bomb against each other
No use against a third party without the consent of the other
No sharing of atomic secrets with another nation
Post-war commercial developments to be shared with Britain only with the consent of the President

Sept 1944 Hyde Park agreement between WSC and FDR: co-operation to continue after the war

Economics and trade

US anxious to use Britain’s wartime dependency to break imperial preference and sterling area

Wish to create a multilateral liberal world economic order
Bretton Woods
fixed exchange rates linked to the dollar as the reserve currency
creates International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
1945 British loan: requires convertibility of sterling within a year

Post-War world

WSC wants traditional balance of power arrangements

Britain at the centre of a series of regional pacts
Maintenance of British Empire and Commonwealth supported by USA
Anglo-American united front against Stalin
Oct 1944 Percentages agreement with Stalin to tie him down

FDR wants a Wilsonian internationalist world order

Creation of the UNO
Stalin’s security anxieties must be acknowledged
FDR anxious to avoid alienating Stalin by being too close to WSC at Teheran and Yalta

The Post-War Settlement

Yalta Conference, 4 to 12 Feb 1945

a) The Declaration on Liberated Europe stated

the intention to create democratic institutions in place of Nazism and Fascism
pledged ‘free elections’ in each state
the USA and GB saw such elections as involving a choice of political parties but the Soviet Union was unlikely to allow any such threat near her borders

b) Post-War Germany: Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt confirmed an earlier agreement

Germany to be divided up into zones occupied by the USSR, the USA and Britain;
now accepted a fourth French zone;
similar divisions would be imposed on Berlin;
Reparations Commission established in Moscow to discuss reparations payments by Germany

c) Post-War Poland

Stalin’s demand that the USSR should gain land from Poland accepted
Poland’s eastern frontier with the USSR would follow the Curzon line
Poland would gain lands in the west from Germany, probably up to the Rivers Oder and Neisse
Stalin wanted Poland governed by the Lublin Committee of partisans and communists but the Western leaders insisted that the government should include exiled Polish leaders, known as the London Poles
free elections based on universal suffrage and a secret ballot to be held in Poland

d) the war against Japan

Stalin agreed to join within three months of victory in Europe but
demanded in return certain concessions in Manchuria and southern Sakhalin Island
These were agreed, but in secret
Stalin also agreed to join the UNO

San Francisco Conference, 26 Apr to 26 June 1945

50 countries launched the UN Charter, establishing the UNO

Potsdam Conference, 17 July to 2 August 1945

Council of Foreign Ministers established to begin work on peace treaties
Stalin agreed that the time was near for the USSR to join the war against Japan

a) Germany

Nazism was to be totally eliminated from Germany as was Germany’s ability to make war
It was agreed that Germany would be treated as a single economic unit despite its division into zones of occupation
Germany should make some payment to the Allies for damages suffered
USSR to receive the most reparations because of the extent of Soviet sufferings
West insisted that the Soviets should send foodstuffs to western Germany and food shortages in the east made this a point of controversy
Special arrangements needed to give Western powers access to their zones of Berlin

b) Poland

The powers confirmed the earlier agreement to hold free elections
Poland’s final boundaries were left to a future peace settlement