Conclusion

Abstract

When the Third Reich had been reduced to a pile of rubble and the Great Powers assembled at Potsdam to decide the future of Europe, the British regarded their Soviet comrades-in-arms with apprehension but without hostility. British policy was dictated, to a large extent, by the realisation that her power had declined to such an extent that the Soviet Union would have to be treated as a difficult and regrettably crude partner rather than as an expansionist power that would have to be contained at any cost. Earlier illusions that the Soviet Union would be economically dependent on Britain for post-war reconstruction were shattered by the realisation of the parlous state of Britain’s finances. Militarily Britain was hopelessly inferior, and even the news of the successful testing of the atomic bomb did not, in the view of most responsible military leaders, radically redress the balance of power, even though Churchill, in his wilder moments, imagined that it did. But above all there was the widespread fear that the Americans would withdraw from Europe leaving the western European states virtually defenceless. Yet in spite of all these problems the British Government was not unduly concerned. The Soviet Union appeared to be pursuing its legitimate security interests, albeit in an often heavy-handed way.