Invasion, Liberation, and Order

Abstract

As the Soviet military advances of 1943 and 1944 underlined the extent to which the Soviet Union would be a major factor in the affairs of postwar Europe, the British war leadership began to define more clearly Britain’s own interests in Europe and what these implied for future relations with Moscow. The lessons of the 1930s and the exhaustion of Britain’s financial power in the course of the war itself indicated that Europe would be more important than ever before. Not only did Britain’s political and commercial interests demand the quickest possible restoration of order and security in Europe, and the maintenance there of politically sympathetic régimes, but there were vital security interests involved. In 1944 the Foreign Office defined these as being, first, ‘the security of the United Kingdom against long-distance air attack and, still more, against the domination of Europe by a single Great Power’ (a traditional British foreign policy objective), and second, ‘the security of our vital sea and air communications in the Mediterranean and elsewhere’. But if the future of Europe was crucial to British interests, and the Soviet Union was to emerge from the war as the predominant power in Europe, it meant that an Anglo-Soviet alliance would have to be the foundation stone of British policy in Europe.