Delivering on Ideas: British Plans for Post-war Regional and International Order, January – August 1944

Abstract

This article examines British planning for a post-war international order which took place throughout the spring and summer of 1944. The history of this planning process has been largely overlooked in the historiography examining both the creation of the United Nations organisation as well as British diplomacy in the period. When historians have addressed the creation of the organisation, focus has been on the efforts of the Roosevelt administration, usually at the expense of the other great and small powers who contributed in important ways. The work here describes how British officials ordered their thinking on the post-war world and assembled detailed plans for what would become the United Nations organisation. Importantly, the planning in these months involved a concurrent effort to develop an alternative ordering mechanism for the European continent – known as the ‘Western Security Group’ – which, in theory, might balance against a revanchist Germany and hostile Russia. There was thus, by the summer of 1944, a new grand strategy for the post-war period, one which rested on the seemingly paradoxical positions of a world organisation and a balance of power on the European continent. Understanding how British officials arrived at this policy – and specifically how they aligned these disparate strategic strands of regional and international planning – shines light on an important element in the intellectual thought and diplomatic practice of British statesmen in this most consequential of periods.