From ‘Hot War’ to ‘Cold War’: Western Europe in British Grand Strategy, 1945–1948

Abstract

If the British declaration of war on Germany in 1939 was proof of the United Kingdom’s strategic interest in the European continent, a superficial glance at the three British treaties that punctuated Western Europe’s early post-war period — the Dunkirk, Brussels and Washington treaties of 1947, 1948 and 1949, respectively — suggests that London still considered, post bellum, that European security remained a vital British concern. Though historians have differed in their interpretation of some of the subtleties of British policy, most have nevertheless concurred that, as the ‘Grand Alliance’ began to fall apart and as what became known as the Cold War began, the United Kingdom pursued a policy that both recognised the danger to Britain of Soviet ambitions in Europe and that also attempted to counter this direct military threat, through a willingness to undertake a revolutionary commitment to station British forces on the continent in peacetime and in the construction of a Western alliance that ultimately embraced the United States. In all this, the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, is presented as one of the leading figures, if not indeed the architect, of Western European defence. Historians have suggested that there was a deliberate consistency in Bevin’s policy which aimed first to build up a European security grouping, the Brussels Treaty, and then a larger Atlantic alliance, with American participation — ‘a sprat to catch a whale’.KeywordsEuropean SecurityMilitary AllianceLand ForceBritish PolicyMilitary CooperationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.