Diplomatic history of World War II

The Diplomatic history of World War II includes the major foreign policies and interactions inside the major coalitions, the Allies and the Axis powers.

Allies

Britain - United States

See also: Lend-Lease, Destroyers for Bases Agreement, and Manhattan Project

Though much of the American people were sympathetic to Britain during its dangerous confrontation with Nazi Germany, there was widespread opposition to possible American intervention in European affairs. This was put into law in a series of Neutrality Acts which were ratified by the United States Congress in 1935, 1936, and 1937 respectively. However,President Roosevelt's policy of cash-and-carry still allowed Britain and France to order munitions from the United States and carry them home.

Roosevelt and Churchill drafted the Atlantic Charter aboard the HMS Prince of Wales in August 1941

Churchill, who had long warned agauinst Germany and demanded rearmament, became prime minister after Chambelain [policy of appeasement had totally collapsed and Britain was unable to reverse the German invasion of Norway. After the fall of France in spring 1940, Roosevelt gave Britain and (after June 1941) the Soviet Union all aid short of war. The Destroyers for Bases Agreement which was signed in September 1940, gave the United States a ninety-nine-year rent-free lease of numerous land and air bases throughout the British Empire in exchange for the Royal Navy receiving fifty old destroyers from the United States Navy. Beginning in March 1941, the United States enacted Lend-Lease in the form of tanks, fighter airplanes, munitions, bullets, food, and medical supplies. Britain received $31.4 billion out of a total of $50.1 billion sent to the Allies.

In summer 1941, two American destroyers shadowing German submarines had already been torpedoed in the North Atlantic Ocean. During the war the senior military commanders of both sides formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff to plot policy, which had to be approved by Roosevelt and Churchill. Military cooperation was close and successful.

Technical collaboration was even closer, as the two nations shared secrets and weapons regarding the proximity fuze and radar, as well as airplane engines, Nazi codes, and the atomic bomb.

Millions of American servicemen were based in Britain during the war, which led to a certain amount of friction with British men and intermarriage with British women. This animosity was explored in art and film, most particularly A Matter of Life and Death and A Canterbury Tale.

In 1945 Churchill had sent British fleet to help the United States attack and invade Japan.

India

Serious tension erupted over American demands that India be given independence, a proposition Churchill vehemently rejected. For years Roosevelt had encouraged Britain's disengagement from India. The American position was based on principled opposition to colonialism, practical concern for the outcome of the war, and the expectation of a large American role in a post-colonial era. However in 1942 when the Congress Party launched a Quit India movement, the British authorities immediately arrested tens of thousands of activists (including Gandhi). Meanwhile India became the main American staging base for aid to China. Churchill threatened to resign if Roosevelt pushed too hard, so Roosevelt backed down.

Britain-France

In spring 1939 both Britain and France formally announced they would defend the integrity of Poland. Hitler did not believe they would fight in such a faraway hopeless cause, and Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France declared war on September 3, 1939. But there was little they could or did do to help Poland. When Germany began its attack on France in 1940, British troops and French troops again fought side by side. Eventually, after the Germans came through the Ardennes, it became clear that France would not be able to fend off the German attack, and the new Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged that the United Kingdom would continue to fight for France's freedom, even if it must do so alone. The final bond between the two nations was so strong that members of the British cabinet had proposed a temporary union of the two countries for the sake of morale: the plan was drawn up by Jean Monnet, who later created the Common Market. The idea was not popular with a majority on either side, and the French government felt that, in the circumstances, the plan for union would reduce France to the level of a British Dominion. The proposal was turned down, shortly before France fell to the Germans. The Free French resistance, led by Charles de Gaulle, were formed in London, after de Gaulle gave his famous 'Appeal of the 18th of June', widely broadcast by the BBC.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Charles de Gaulle at Marrakesh, January 1944

In southern France a collaborative government known as Vichy France was set up, allied to Germany. The British were soon at war with the Vichy state, destroying much of its navy and moving into many of its colonies, such as Senegal, on behalf of the Free French government.

Following D-Day, relations between the two peoples were at a high, as the British were greeted as liberators. Following the surrender of Germany in 1945, the UK and France became close as both feared the Americans would withdraw from Europe leaving them vulnerable to the Soviet Union's expanding communist bloc. The UK strongly advocated that France be given a zone of occupied Germany. Both states were amongst the five Permanent Members of the new UN Security Council, where they commonly collaborated.

United States

US-China

Chiang Kai-shek of China with Roosevelt and Churchill at the Cairo Conference in 1943.

File:Mao, Hurley and Chiang.jpg

Mao Zedong, Patrick J. Hurley, and Chiang Kai-shek in 1945.

The United States was a strong supporter of China after Japan invaded in 1937. Even the isolationists who opposed war in Europe supported a hard-line against Japan. The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 saw aid flow into the Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-shek.

American public sympathy for the Chinese was aroused by reports from missionaries, novelists such as Pearl Buck, and Time Magazine of Japanese brutality in China, including reports surrounding the Nanking Massacre, also known as the 'Rape of Nanking'. Japanese-American relations were further soured by the USS Panay Incident during the bombing of Nanjing. Roosevelt demanded an apology from the Japanese, which was received, but relations between the two countries continued to deteriorate. By early 1941 the U.S. was preparing to send American planes flown by American pilots under American command, but wearing Chinese uniforms, to fight the Japanese invaders and even to bomb Japanese cities. The "Flying Tigers" under Claire Chennault arrived just as the U.S. entered the war.

To augment Chennault's 100 P-40Bs, in May 1941 Washington decided to send 144 Vultee P-48's, 125 P-43's and 66 Lockheed and Douglas medium bombers. The goal was to give China by early 1942, a respectable air force, judged by Far Eastern standards, sufficient to "(a) protect strategic points, (b) permit local army offensive action, (c) permit the bombing of Japanese air bases and supply dumps in China and Indo-China, and the bombing of coastal and river transport, and (d) permit occasional incendiary bombing of Japan." A year before the U.S. officially entered the war (after Dec. 7, 1941), Chennault developed an ambitious plan for a sneak attack on Japanese bases. His Flying Tigers would use American bombers and American pilots, all with Chinese markings. The U.S. military was opposed to his scheme, and kept raising obstacles, but it was adopted by top civilian officials including Henry Morganthau (the Secretary of the Treasury who financed China) and especially President Roosevelt himself, who made it a high priority to keep China alive. They not only approved they set it motion by sending the bombers to China. By October, 1941, bombers and crews were on their way to China. However the American attack never took place. The bombers and crews arrived after Pearl Harbor and were used for the war in Burma, for they lacked the range to reach China.

Wartime

After the formal declaration of war in December 1941, the U.S. stepped up the flow of aid, but it had to be routed through India and over the Himalayan Mountains because Japan blocked the other routes. Chiang's beleaguered government was now headquartered in remote Chongqing. Madame Chiang Kaishek, who had been educated in the United States, addressed the US Congress and toured the country to rally support for China. Congress amended the Chinese Exclusion Act and Roosevelt moved to end the unequal treaties. However, the perception that Chiang's government, with his poorly equipped and ill-fed troops was unable to effectively fight the Japanese or that he preferred to focus more on defeating the Communists grew. China Hands such as Joseph Stilwell argued that it was in American interest to establish communication with the Communists to prepare for a land-based counteroffensive invasion of Japan. The Dixie Mission, which began in 1943, was the first official American contact with the Communists. Other Americans, such as Claire Chennault, argued for air power. In 1944, Generalissimo Chiang acceded to Roosevelt's request that an American general take charge of all forces in the area, but demanded that Stilwell be recalled. General Albert Wedemeyer replaced Stilwell, and Patrick Hurley became ambassador.

Chiang did not like the Americans, and was suspicious of their motives. The American OSS, forerunner of the CIA, showed interest in a plot to seize control of Chiang's regime. Chiang ordered the plotters executed. Chiang felt no friendliness towards the United States, and saw the US as pursuing imperialist motives in China. Chiang did not want to be subordinate to either the United States or the Soviet Union, but jockeyed for position between the two to avoid taking sides and to get the most out of Soviet and American relationships. Chiang predicted that war would come between the Americans and Soviets and that they would both seek China's alliance, which he would use to China's advantage.

Chiang also differed from the Americans in ideology issues. He organized the Kuomintang as a Leninist-style party, oppressed dissent, and banned democracy, claiming it was impossible for China.

Chiang manipulated the Soviets and Americans during the war, at first telling the Americans that they would be welcome in talks between the Soviet Union and China, then secretly telling the Soviets that the Americans were unimportant and their opinions were to be left out. At the same time, Chiang positioned American support and military power in China against the Soviet Union as a factor in the talks, keeping the Soviets from taking advantage of China with the threat of American military action against the Soviets.

Chiang's right hand man, the secret police chief Dai Li, was both anti-American, and anti-Communist. Dai ordered Kuomintang agents to spy on American officers. Dai had previously been involved with the Blue Shirts Society, a Fascist-inspired paramilitary group in the Kuomintang that wanted to expel Western and Japanese imperialists, crush the Communists, and eliminate feudalism. Dai Li was assassinated in a plane crash orchestrated by the American OSS or the Communists.

After World War II ended in 1945, the hostility between the Republic of China and the Communist Party of China exploded into open civil war. American general George C. Marshall tried to broker a truce between the Republic of China and the Communist Party of China in 1946, but it quickly lost momentum. The Nationalist military position steadily worsened and by 1949, the Communists were victorious and drove the Nationalists from the onto the island of Taiwan. and other islands. Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China, while the Republic of China remains in Taiwan to this day.

Further reading

• Overy, Richard J. The Origins of the Second World War (3rd ed. 2008)
• Steiner, Zara. The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933-1939 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (2011) 1248pp; comprehensive coverage of Europe heading to war excerpt and text search
• Watt, Donald Cameron. How War Came, The Immediate Origins of the Second World War 1938-1939 (1990) highly detailed coverage
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (1994) comprehensive coverage of the war with emphasis on diplomacy excerpt and text search

Allies

• Beschloss, Michael. The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941–1945 (2002).
• Burns, James. Roosevelt: the Soldier of Freedom (1970).
• Churchill, Winston. The Second World War (6 vol 1948)
• Charmley, John. Churchill's Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940–57 (1996)
• Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (1995).
• Fenby, Jonathan. Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (2005).
• Gibson, Robert. Best of Enemies (2nd ed. 2011). Britain and France
• Glantz, Mary E. FDR and the Soviet Union: The President's Battles over Foreign Policy (2005)
• Langer, William and S. Everett Gleason. The Challenge to Isolation, 1937–1940 (1952); The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (1953) highly influential, wide-ranging semi-official American diplomatic history
• Louis, William Roger; Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941–1945 (1978)
• Nasaw, David. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (2012), US ambassador to Britain, 1937-40; pp 281-486
• Reynolds, David. From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s (2007) excerpt and text search
• Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (2009).
• Woods, Randall Bennett. Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941–1946 (1990)

Axis

• Weinberg, Gerhard L. Hitler's Foreign Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II (2005)