Grand Alliance (World War II)

The Grand Alliance (German: Anti-Hitler-Koalition), also known as The Big Three, was a military alliance consisting of the three major Allies of World War II: the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It is often called the "Strange Alliance" because it united the world's greatest capitalist state (the United States), the greatest Communist state (the Soviet Union) and the greatest colonial power (the United Kingdom).[1] The Declaration by United Nations on 1 January 1942, signed by 26 nations, not only laid the groundwork for the future of the United Nations, but officially formed the Grand Alliance, committing the three nations to cooperation until the culmination of the war.[2]

The Big Three leaders at the Tehran Conference
Big Three leaders pictured on the front of Pravda, 10 May 1945

Origins

The Grand Alliance was one of convenience in the fight against the Axis powers. The British had reason to ask for one as Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan threatened not only the colonies of the British Empire in North Africa and Asia but also the British mainland. The United States felt that the Japanese and German expansion should be contained, but ruled out force until the attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The Soviet Union, after the breaking of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact by the instigation of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, greatly despised German belligerence and the unchallenged Japanese expansion in the East, particularly considering their defeat in several previous wars with Japan. They also recognized, as the US and Britain had suggested, the advantages of a two-front war.

Before official confirmation of the alliance, there had been pre-emptive cooperation and a vision of the postwar world. The Anglo-Soviet Agreement was signed in July 1941 forming an alliance between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. The Atlantic Charter defined a common Anglo-American vision of the postwar world.[3] In addition, through US armament supplies to Britain and the Soviet Union in the form of Lend-Lease, there was an effort to collaborate before the official forming of the alliance.

Alliance

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin were the "Big Three" Allied leaders. They were in frequent contact through ambassadors, top generals, foreign ministers and special emissaries such as the American Harry Hopkins. Relations between them resulted in the major decisions that shaped the war effort and planned for the postwar world.[4] Cooperation between the United Kingdom and the United States was especially close and included forming a Combined Chiefs of Staff.

There were numerous high-level conferences; in total Churchill attended 14 meetings, Roosevelt 12, and Stalin 5. Most visible were the three summit conferences that brought together the three top leaders.[5][6] The Allied policy toward Germany and Japan evolved and developed at these three conferences.[7]

  • Tehran Conference (codename "Eureka") – first meeting of The Big Three (28 November 1943 – 1 December 1943)
  • Yalta Conference (codename "Argonaut") – second meeting of The Big Three (4–11 February 1945)
  • Potsdam Conference (codename "Terminal") – third and final meeting of The Big Three (Truman having taken over for Roosevelt, 17 July – 2 August 1945)

Tensions

There were many tensions in the Grand Alliance among the Big Three leaders, although they were not enough to break the alliance during wartime.

In 1942 Roosevelt proposed becoming, with China, the Four Policemen of world peace. Although the 'Four Powers' were reflected in the wording of the Declaration by United Nations, Roosevelt's proposal was not initially supported by Churchill or Stalin.

Division emerged over the length of time taken by the Western Allies to establish a second front in Europe.[8] Stalin and the Soviets used the potential employment of the second front as an 'acid test' for their relations with the Anglo-American powers.[9] The Soviets were forced to use as much manpower as possible in the fight against the Germans, whereas the United States had the luxury of flexing industrial power, but with the "minimum possible expenditure of American lives."[9] Roosevelt delayed until 1944 to enforce a second front in Europe; in the meantime he had endorsed the British proposal to invade North Africa, straining Anglo-American and Soviet relations.

The essential ideological differences between the United States and the Soviet Union strained their relationship. Tensions between the two countries had existed for decades, with the Soviets remembering America's participation in the armed intervention against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War as well as its long refusal to recognize the Soviet Union's existence as a state. The original terms of the Lend-Lease loan were amended towards the Soviets, to be put in line with British terms. The United States would now expect interest with the repayment from the Soviets, following the initiation of the Operation Barbarossa, at the end of the war—the United States were not looking to support any "postwar Soviet reconstruction efforts",[10] which eventually manifested into the Molotov Plan. At the Tehran conference, Stalin judged Roosevelt to be a "lightweight compared to the more formidable Churchill".[11] During the meetings from 1943–1945, there were disputes over the growing list of demands from the USSR.

Tensions increased further when Roosevelt died and his successor Harry Truman rejected demands put forth by Stalin.[8] Roosevelt understood that cultural differences could doom the alliance and, as opposed to the likes of Truman and W. Averell Harriman, Roosevelt wanted to play down these tensions.[12] Roosevelt felt he "understood Stalin's psychology" which aided him in cooperating more successfully with the Soviet Union in comparison to Truman, stating "Stalin was too anxious to prove a point... he suffered from an inferiority complex."[13]

See also

References
  1. Ambrose, Stephen (1993). Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938. New York: Penguin Books. p. 15.
  2. Ninkovich, Frank (1999). The Wilsonian Century: US Foreign Policy since 1900. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 137.
  3. Ninkovich, Frank (1999). The Wilsonian Century: US Foreign Policy since 1900. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 131.
  4. Sainsbury, Keith (1986). The Turning Point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-Shek, 1943: The Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran Conferences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  5. Herbert Feis, Churchill Roosevelt Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought: A Diplomatic History of World War II (1957)
  6. William Hardy McNeill, America, Britain and Russia: their co-operation and conflict, 1941–1946 (1953)
  7. Wolfe, James H. (1963), Wolfe, James H. (ed.), "The Diplomacy of World War II Genesis of the Problem", Indivisible Germany: Illusion or Reality?, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 3–28, doi:10.1007/978-94-011-9199-9_2, ISBN 978-94-011-9199-9, retrieved 22 November 2020
  8. Jones, Maldwyn (1983). The Limits of Liberty: American History 1607-1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 505.
  9. Gaddis, John Lewis (2000). The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947. New York. p. 65.
  10. Gaddis, John Lewis (2000). The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947. New York. pp. 178–179.
  11. Groom, Winston (29 November 2018). The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II. National Geographic. ISBN 978-1-4262-1986-3.
  12. Costigliola, Frank (2010). "'After Roosevelt's Death: Dangerous Emotions, Divisive Discourses and the Abandoned Alliance'". Diplomatic History. 34 (1): 19 – via JSTOR.
  13. Costigliola, Frank (2010). "'After Roosevelt's Death: Dangerous Emotions, Divisive Discourses and the Abandoned Alliance'". Diplomatic History. 34 (1): 7–8 – via JSTOR.

Further reading
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