The ‘frozen front’: the Labour government, the division of Germany and the origins of the cold war, 1945–7

Abstract

Scholars have long argued over the origins, nature and impact of the cold war. 1 During the 1950s and the early 1960s the West was held in thrall by the so-called traditionalist view of the cold war, expounded, in many cases, by those who had been active in government during these years. According to this school of thought, the desire of the Soviet Union to expand across Europe was held in check only by the defensive, protective policy of the United States. The cold war was in essence an American response to a Soviet challenge. During the Vietnam War and the crisis of American self-confidence that ensued, American scholars took a fresh look at the 1940s. These scholars' revisionism led them to depict the early cold war years as a period of the onward march of American capitalism, seeking power, influence and East European and world markets, using the myth of Soviet expansionism to mask the true nature of the United States' own foreign policy. Both these interpretations cast Britain in a supporting rather than a leading role. One reason for this is that Britain is seen in retrospect as a middle-ranking power, unlikely to have been capable of determining the course of events in Europe. It has, however, become increasingly clear since the opening of the relevant British archives that such a view is unhistorical. Whatever happened later, Britain was, and still regarded itself as, a major power in the immediate postwar years.2 This article, based mainly on the official British archives, will argue that to the extent that the cold war began with the division of Germany between East and West, Britain carries the responsibility for the cold war as much as Russia or America. It was not until 1948 that the lines of bipolar confrontation were publicly drawn, symbolized by the European Recovery Programme, the Berlin crisis and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the postwar diplomatic negotiations about Germany, negotiations that shaped this superpower confrontation, Britain played a leading part.