Britain, America and Europe

Abstract

In 1940, A.C.F. Beales, who made a special study of peace aims, captured the ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ poles of current thinking: ‘the idealist is canvassing the already famous FU while on the other side the cynic is murmuring that war aims are being left vague deliberately, so that no predatory victory in the future may be have been forsworn in advance’.¹ With the benefit of hindsight, British enthusiasm for federalism in 1940 stands out as an aberration in the long-term emphasis of policymakers on jealously safeguarding national sovereignty. Up to 1940, proposed solutions for the problems behind the war looked to a radical rearrangement of the international politics of Europe, and frequently stressed a federal future. Likewise, British strategic planning in the war against Germany was based around an Anglo-French alliance. In a sense, the Churchill government’s proposed ‘indissoluble union’ between Britain and France of June 1940 was the logical culmination and, as it turned out, conclusion, of both these discourses.² The rapid, unanticipated and catastrophic defeat of the Allies revolutionised this situation. After the fall of France, the only power which could contemplate transforming European political relations was Germany, which did indeed announce its intention to create a ‘new European order’.