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Delivering on Ideas: British Plans for Post-war Regional and International Order, January – August 1944
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2022
Abstract
This article examines British planning for a post-war international order which took place throughout the spring and summer of 1944. The history of this planning process has been largely overlooked in the historiography examining both the creation of the United Nations organisation as well as British diplomacy in the period. When historians have addressed the creation of the organisation, focus has been on the efforts of the Roosevelt administration, usually at the expense of the other great and small powers who contributed in important ways. The work here describes how British officials ordered their thinking on the post-war world and assembled detailed plans for what would become the United Nations organisation. Importantly, the planning in these months involved a concurrent effort to develop an alternative ordering mechanism for the European continent – known as the ‘Western Security Group’ – which, in theory, might balance against a revanchist Germany and hostile Russia. There was thus, by the summer of 1944, a new grand strategy for the post-war period, one which rested on the seemingly paradoxical positions of a world organisation and a balance of power on the European continent. Understanding how British officials arrived at this policy – and specifically how they aligned these disparate strategic strands of regional and international planning – shines light on an important element in the intellectual thought and diplomatic practice of British statesmen in this most consequential of periods.
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Footnotes
Portions of this work have been submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy.
References
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7 There have been several studies examining the work of the Foreign Office and the Economic and Reconstruction Department in the period between January and August 1944, but none have offered as much detailed discussion as that presented in this article. See Greenwood, Sean, Titan at the Foreign Office: Gladwyn Jebb and the Shaping of the Modern World (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008)Google Scholar; Reynolds, P.A. and Hughes, E.J., The Historian as Diplomat: Charles Kingsley Webster and the United Nations, 1939–1946 (London: Martin Robertson, 1976)Google Scholar. Elsewhere, the historian Raymond Douglas has given credit to the Economic and Reconstruction Department in these years, but crucially, he has refrained from more detailed analysis and notes incorrectly that the historian Arnold Toynbee ‘laid down the foundations of Britain's United Nations policy’. See Douglas, The Labour Party, Nationalism and Internationalism, 1939–1951 (London: Routledge, 2004), 97–135.
8 Though scholars have addressed these basic interwar and wartime conceptions of international relations – and especially their connections, as opposed to contradictions – there has not been as much focus on the way that government officials wrestled with these notions. Importantly, and as this article describes, officials tended to think that public and intellectual opinion, especially in the United States, viewed these conceptions as contradictory. For scholarship examining the connections between such conceptions as internationalism and power politics, see Peter Wilson, ‘The Myth of the First Great Debate’, Review of International Studies, 24, 5, (1998), 1–15; and ‘The Twenty Years’ Crisis and the Category of “Idealism” in International Relations’, in David Long and Peter Wilson, eds., Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-war Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1–24; Lucian Ashworth, ‘Did the Realist-Idealist Great Debate Really Happen? A Revisionist History of International Relations’, International Relations, 26, 1, (2002), 33–51; and International Relations and the Labour Party: Intellectuals and Policy from 1918–1945 (London: Tauris, 2007).
9 Richard Law, ‘Speech to Cambridge Society for International Affairs, 18 March 1942’, Time and Tide, 21 Mar. 1942, copy in The National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter TNA), Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/35363/U830.
10 Memorandum by Gladwyn Jebb, ‘The “Four-Power” Plan’, 20 Oct. 1942, copy in TNA, FO 371/31525/U783.
11 Memorandum by Jebb, ‘Probable consequences of closing or failing to close the Suez Canal to Italy’, undated, 1936, TNA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (hereafter FCO) 73/262/It/36/8. For background on the Foreign Office in the period, see B.J.C. McKercher, ‘The Last Old Diplomat: Sir Robert Vansittart and the Verities of British Foreign Policy, 1903–30’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 6, 1, (1995), 1–38.
12 See for example Ernest Bevin to Anthony Eden, 8 Dec. 1942, TNA, FO 371/31525/U1798; Hugh Dalton to Eden, 19 Nov. 1942, TNA, FO 371/31525/U1796; and Memorandum by Sir Stafford Cripps, 13 Nov. 1942, WP (42) 516, TNA, FO 371/31525/U1505. For a detailed study of the post-war views of Labour Party intellectuals and politicians in the 1930s and 1940s, see Douglas, Labour Party.
13 Memorandum by Jebb, ‘The “Four-Power” Plan’, 20 Oct. 1942, 4, copy in TNA, FO 371/31525/U783. In fact, his original conception of a four-power nucleus was based on what he called a ‘Concert of the World’. Draft memorandum by Jebb, ‘Relief Machinery: The Political Background’, Aug. 1942, TNA, FCO 73/264/Pwp/42/8.
14 Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, ‘The United Nations Plan for Organising Peace’, WP (43) 300, 7 Jul. 1943, TNA, Cabinet Office (hereafter CAB) 66/38/50.
15 Jebb, ‘Discussions with the United States Administration on Armistice Problems’, 24 Mar. 1943, WP (43) 217, TNA, CAB/66/37/17.
16 Though Cabinet ministers had reviewed these Foreign Office plans, they had yet to be formally approved as post-war policy.
17 For a useful overview of Churchill's views towards a post-war international organisation, see E.J. Hughes, ‘Winston Churchill and the Formation of the United Nations Organization’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9, 4, (1974), 177–94.
18 Telegram from Lord Halifax to Foreign Office, No. 5629, 13 Dec. 1943, TNA, FO 371/40685/U7427; See also Telegram from Lord Halifax to Foreign Office, No. 130, 9 Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40685/U180.
19 See for example Minute by Jebb, ‘Views of Mr Pasvolsky on the Future of the World’, 29 Mar. 1943, TNA, FO 371/35396/U1546; Memorandum by Jebb, ‘Report on a Visit to the United States’, 29 Aug. 1943, TNA, FO 371/35461/U4056; Foreign Office memorandum, ‘Recent American Speeches about the Post-war World’, 10 Dec. 1942, TNA, FO 371/31515/U1682; Forrest Davis, ‘Roosevelt's World Blueprint’, The Saturday Evening Post, 10 Apr. 1943.
20 Ronald minute, 28 Jan. 1944; Jebb minute, 27 Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40685/U637.
21 Paul Gore-Booth to Michael Wright and Redvers Opie, 22 Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40685/U1973.
22 Paul Gore-Booth, ‘Note of a meeting held at the State Department on Saturday, January 29th’, 29 Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40685/U1973.
23 The decision was made during a meeting in Richard Law's room on 10 February. Jebb minute, 12 Feb. 1944, TNA, FCO 73/266/UN/44/9.
24 On 12 Feb., the Economic and Reconstruction Department sent a ‘summary of topics’ to the State Department which returned their own ‘topical outline’ a few days later. Both draft agendas were very similar, a product of the exploratory discussions between American and British diplomats and officials over the previous year. Each agenda outlined a world organisation comprised of an Assembly, a Council, a Court and a Secretariat; and both mentioned the need for a system of general security as well as economic and functional organisations.
25 Webster, ‘The World State: A Matter of Gradual Evolution’, The Times, 16 Jul. 1938. Webster first articulated this view as a postgraduate at Cambridge in 1909. See Webster, ‘The Evolution of a World State’, unpublished paper, London School of Economics (hereafter LSE), Papers of Charles Kingsley Webster (hereafter Webster) 21/1.
26 See for example Jebb's criticism of the historian Arnold Toynbee, who headed up the Foreign Research and Press Service (FRPS) – a group of British historians, political scientists and economists who worked as a kind of government research unit during the war. He wrote of Toynbee that, ‘All the sentimentalists and idealists, both in this country and in the United States. . . will plunge like the Gadarene swine down this short-cut to salvation’. Jebb minute, 4 Nov. 1942, TNA, FCO 73/264/Pwp/42/48. Quoted in Sean Greenwood, Titan at the Foreign Office, 164.
27 As one of the leading members of the FRPS, Webster had overseen all papers dealing with the subject of international organisation. For more on the FRPS, see Parmar, Inderjeet, Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of the Role and Influence of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (New York, NY, 2004), 86–90Google Scholar; William H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life (Oxford, 1989), 179–82; Ian Hall, ‘“Time of Troubles”: Arnold J. Toynbee's Twentieth Century’, International Affairs, 90, 1, (2014), 23–36; Robert H. Keyserlingk, ‘Arnold Toynbee's Foreign Research and Press Service, 1939–43 and Its Post-War Plans for South-East Europe’, Journal of Contemporary History, 21, 4 (1986), 539–58.
28 Jebb, Gladwyn, The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn (New York, NY, 1972), 120Google Scholar; Lord Gladwyn, ‘Founding the United Nations: Principals and Objects’, in Erik Jensen and Thomas Fisher, eds., The United Kingdom – The United Nations (London, 1990), 34.
29 Philip Noel-Baker, ‘Planning for International Co-operation After the War’, 26 Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2198.
30 Cadogan minute, 4 Feb. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2198. Elsewhere, Jebb wrote that, ‘The League system. . . was about as perfect as the human mind could derive. The only trouble about it was that it wouldn't work. The reason why it wouldn't work was in the first place because the existing Great Powers could not agree as among themselves on certain essential things. And until we do get agreement between the World Powers on these essential things no international machine however perfect will ever work’. Jebb minute, 1 Feb. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2198.
31 The phrase ‘World Order Papers’ was used by some officials, such as Nigel Ronald. See Ronald to Richard Law, 29 Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2293. They were separated into five memoranda, A through E, and covered the ‘Scope and Nature of the Permanent Organisation’; ‘The Pacific Settlement of Disputes, The Question of Guarantees and How and When the Guarantee Should Come Into Operation’; ‘The Military Aspect of Any Postwar Security Organisation’; ‘Co-ordination of Political and Economic International Machinery’; and ‘Method and Procedure for Establishing a World Organisation’. For an overview of the memoranda, see Llewellyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, Volume V (London, 1976), 89–116.
32 Reynolds and Hughes, The Historian as Diplomat, 26. The committee – which included members from the Treasury, the War Cabinet, the Dominions Office and the Ministry of Labour, among others – met over a number of weeks, with its primary task being to coordinate the drafting of various papers that were to be presented to the Americans and Soviets. The rough outline followed that which was laid out by Jebb in January, and as time went on, the focus of papers expanded or contracted based on what was deemed essential in the upcoming negotiations.
33 ‘Memorandum A: Scope and Nature of the Permanent Organisation’, 24 Mar. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40687/U2585.
34 ‘Report of the Informal Inter-Allied Committee on the Future of the Permanent Court of International Justice’, 10 Feb. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2296.
35 Draft memorandum by Webster, ‘The Pacific Settlement of Disputes, the Question of Guarantees, and the Definition of the Occasion for Action’, 17 Mar. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2295,
36 Webster, ‘The Evolution of a World State’, unpublished paper, LSE, Webster 21/1.
37 See chapters by Webster, Arnold Toynbee and others in C.A.W. Manning, ed., Peaceful Change: An International Problem (London: Macmillan and Company, 1937).
38 Draft memorandum by Webster, ‘The Pacific Settlement of Disputes, the Question of Guarantees, and the Definition of the Occasion for Action’, 17 Mar. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2295.
39 Cadogan minute, 26 Mar. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2295.
40 Introduced by President Woodrow Wilson, this article worried British officials at the Paris Peace Conference, most notably Lord Robert Cecil, who thought that the promise to maintain the territorial status quo – while not allowing for reasonable adjustments – would lead to major difficulties. Egerton, George W., Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 131–2Google Scholar.
41 Draft of memorandum by Webster, ‘The Pacific Settlement of Disputes, the Question of Guarantees, and the Definition of the Occasion for Action’, 17 Mar. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2295.
42 Webster drafted the covering brief for the memoranda which were presented by the Minister of State. See Richard Law, Covering brief for ‘Future World Organisation: Forthcoming Conversations at Washington’, 16 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40689/U3128.
43 For record of British officials being aware of Roosevelt's thinking on this subject, see ‘Meeting with the Soviet Delegation at No. 10 Downing Street’, 9 Jun. 1942, TNA, FO 954/25B/257. For Churchill's view in autumn 1942, see ‘Memorandum prepared by the British Embassy after luncheon on 22 May 1943’, FRUS, 1943, Conferences at Washington and Quebec, Document 65, 167–72. For some discussion of this topic in the 1930s, see David Davies, The Problem of the Twentieth Century (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1931) and ‘An International Police Force?’, International Affairs, 11, 1 (1932), 76–99; Dalton, Hugh, Towards the Peace of Nations: A Study in International Relations (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1928), 290–93Google Scholar; Attlee, Clement, An International Police Force (London: New Commonwealth, 1934)Google Scholar. See also Michael Pugh, ‘Policing the World: Lord Davies and the Quest for Order in the 1930s’, International Relations, 16, 1 (2002), 97–115.
44 ‘Post-war World Security’, Memorandum by the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee, P.H.P. (43) 24A (Draft), 14 Dec. 1943, TNA, FO 371/35444/U6488.
45 Revised draft of ‘The Military Aspect of Any Post-war World Security Organisation’, 4 Jan. 1944, PHP (43) 24A, TNA, FO 371/40605B/U279. For more on the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee, see Julian Lewis, Changing Direction, 63–74.
46 ‘World Security Discussions’, Report by the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee, P.H.P. (44) 29 (Final), 24 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40690/U3630.
47 Their idea was instead for the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff to continue in the future and for the Soviets to exercise a similar influence over their particular sphere. This did not preclude the existence of a World Council, but the Chiefs of Staff preferred that this grouping of great powers meet periodically, with military advisors accompanying the delegations.
48 Victor Rothwell, War Aims in the Second World War, 66. See also Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 87.
49 This is a view put forward by a number of scholars, including Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 35–8, 89–96, 167–68; Martin Kitchen, British Policy Towards the Soviet Union During the Second World War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1986), 194–96, 204; Rothwell, War Aims in the Second World War, 66–7; and Graham Ross, ‘Foreign Office Attitudes to the Soviet Union 1941–45’, Journal of Contemporary History, 16, 3 (1981), 521.
50 For initial opposition, see Jebb minute, 19 Feb. 1944, TNA, FCO 73/264/Pwp/44/1/A. For the text that the Vice-Chiefs of Staff wrote for inclusion in Memorandum C, see ‘Earmarking of Specific Forces for the World Council’, Report by the Vice-Chiefs of Staff, 5 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40691/U3991. See also Note of a meeting between Mr. Jebb, Brigadier Jacob, Brigadier Redman, Colonel Cornwall-Jones and Colonel Norman, 8 May 1944, TNA, FCO 371/40692/U4287.
51 The UN Plan of January 1943 had identified economic and financial issues as one of the principal causes of modern war.
52 For the work of Robbins and the Economic Section during the war, see Susan Howson, Lionel Robbins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 387–552.
53 Memorandum by Marcus Fleming, ‘Co-ordination of International Economic Institutions and their Relation to Political Organisation’, Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2293, paragraph 35. Cairncross, Alec, Economic Ideas and Government Policy: Contributions to Contemporary Economic History (London: Routledge, 1996), 33–52Google Scholar.
54 From a structural standpoint, this Central Economic Organisation would have three principal organs: a Central Economic Council of no more than fifteen countries; an Economic Consultative Council made up of representatives from principal international institutions such as the International Labour Organization; and an Advisory Economic Staff which would serve as the secretariat of the Central Economic Organisation. Memorandum by Marcus Fleming, ‘Co-ordination of International Economic Institutions and their Relation to Political Organisation’, Jan. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40686/U2293.
55 This Cabinet Committee was created in April 1944. Saville, John, The Politics of Continuity: British Labour Foreign Policy and the Labour Government, 1945–46 (London: Verso, 1993), 27Google Scholar. The committee included Clement Attlee (chairman), Ernest Bevin, Viscount Cranborne, Oliver Lyttelton, Leo Amery, Archibald Sinclair, Richard Law, Alexander Cadogan, Lord Bruntisfield, Edward Bridges, John Stephenson. Minutes of APW Committee meeting, 22 Apr. 1944, APW(44) 1st Meeting, TNA, FO 371/40690/U3604.
56 Minutes of APW Committee meeting, 22 Apr. 1944, APW(44) 1st Meeting, TNA, FO 371/40690/U3604.
57 Memorandum D: ‘Co-ordination of Political and Economic International Machinery’, copy in Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 153–4. ‘This is an extraordinary way to get out so important a paper’, Webster remarked in his diaries. Webster acknowledged that he had been intentionally vague. ‘I think I have left the way open for the future to do what is necessary’. Webster noted that the committee had ruled out asking Fleming for a redraft of the paper, and as Lionel Robbins was away at the time, they turned to Webster for a new draft. Webster diary, 22 Apr. 1944, in Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 30.
58 For Hull's comments, see ‘Allies on the Offensive’, The Times, 19 Nov. 1943. Hull had given his first press conference after Moscow on 15 November. See ‘Mr Cordell Hull on Moscow’, The Times, 15 Nov. 1943.
59 Wilson minute, 20 Nov. 1943, TNA, FO 371/37031/N6879.
60 Webster had spoken about this on a number of occasions. See Webster, ‘Some Problems of International Organisation’, Montague Burton Lecture at the University of Leeds, 15 Oct. 1943, LSE, Webster papers E(1)/946.
61 Gladwyn Jebb, Lecture on ‘The Balance of Power’ delivered to the Canning Club, Oxford University, 21 Feb. 1944, TNA, FCO 73/263/Mis/44/1.
62 The speech was titled ‘Thoughts on the New World’. See ‘General Smuts on Shaping the New World’, The Times, 3 Dec. 1943.
63 Telegram from Smuts for the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, 20 Mar. 1944, No. 320, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4105.
64 Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi, Pan-Europe [1923] (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926).
65 Churchill, ‘The United States of Europe’, The Saturday Evening Post, 15 Feb. 1930; Leo Amery, ‘The British Empire and the Pan-European Idea’, Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 9, 1, (1930), 1–22.
66 Clarence K. Streit, Union Now: A Proposal for a Federal Union of the Democracies of the North Atlantic [1939] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1940).
67 Eden to Halifax, Sept. 1939, TNA, FO 800/325/71-3.
68 Attlee, ‘The Peace We Are Striving For’, Speech at Caxton Hall, 8 Nov. 1939, copy in Attlee et al, Labour's Aims in War and Peace (London: Lincolns-Prager, 1940), 96–110. Eduard Beneš, ‘The Organization of Post-war Europe’, Foreign Affairs, 20, 2 (1942), 226–42.
69 At the same time, it was noted that Stalin, in comments made to Eden as far back as December 1941, had entertained the idea of Britain playing a greater role militarily in Western Europe. This comment, combined with the fact that the Soviet Union had recently concluded a treaty with Czechoslovakia, seemed to already justify any British moves towards the formation of a Western bloc. See record of meeting in the Foreign Office, 10 Feb. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40606B/U1333. The Czechoslovakia-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Collaboration was signed on 12 December 1943. See ‘Czechoslovakia–Soviet Union: Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Collaboration’, The American Journal of International Law, 39, 2 (1945), 81–3.
70 Draft memorandum by Webster, ‘Britain and Western Europe’, 11 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4102.
71 Draft memorandum by Jebb, ‘The “Western Bloc”’, 12 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4102.
72 The European Advisory Committee, which had grown out of Jebb's earlier proposal for a United Nations Commission for Europe, had fallen flat since it had been agreed upon at the Moscow Conference in October 1943. The E.A.C., as Eden was to write just months later, had been a ‘flop’. Eden minute, 9 Jul. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40699/U6441.
73 Draft memorandum by Jebb, ‘The “Western Bloc”’, 12 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4102.
74 Responding to Smut's earlier proposal for a Western grouping, Jebb had written that such an arrangement would ‘not only increase our political bargaining power but would also link our fortunes in an enduring way with the continent of Europe’. Jebb minute on Smuts's speech, 19 Dec. 1943, TNA, FO 371/35443/U6254.
75 Jebb's minute on ‘The British Commonwealth and World Order’, Sidney Ball Lecture delivered by Sir W Layton at Oxford on 3 Mar. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40607B/U2283.
76 He wrote that, ‘If we must do it, we must not be caught in the act’. Malcolm minute, 22 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40607B/U2283.
77 Butler minute, 23 May 1944. Webster wrote that ‘The consensus of opinion is striking’. Webster minute, 25 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40607B/U2283.
78 It is worth noting that Webster's paper was drafted with the assistance of Jebb and Nigel Ronald. Eden thought the recommendation ‘useful’, though he admitted that, ‘I don't quite know what to do with it’. Eden minute, 7 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4105.
79 Sargent minute, 6 May 1944, ibid.
80 Jebb wrote that these had become the ‘consistent departmental view’ on the general post-war objectives of British policy. Jebb minute, 28 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40691/U3704.
81 Cadogan and Webster had been pressing Edward Bridges, the Cabinet Secretary, about ways to force the Prime Minister to examine and decide on the papers which the Economic and Reconstruction Department had been drafting. Cadogan diary, 25 Apr. 1944, in David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938–1945 (London: Faber & Faber, 2010), 623; Webster diary, 26 Apr. 1944, Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 31.
82 The earliest schism had centred on Jebb's objection to Churchill's proposal to form Scandinavian, Danubian and Balkan confederations on the continent. See Memorandum by the Prime Minister, ‘Notes on Post-War Security’, 1 Feb. 1943, and Jebb minute, 3 Feb. 1943, TNA, FO 371/35363/U549.
83 War Cabinet conclusions, WM (44) 58, Minute 2, 27 Apr. 1944, TNA, CAB 65/42.
84 This is mentioned in Webster's diary on 28 Apr. 1944, Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 31.
85 In a separate minute, Jebb wrote that, ‘The Prime Minister simply ignores the realities of the world. . . We have been repeatedly told that while the United States will take responsibility for world peace including that of Europe inside a world organisation they will refuse to take part in a purely European organisation’. Jebb minute, 3 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40691/U4098. Indeed, a State Department delegation, led by the Under-Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, had recently visited London and had not only noted the divide between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Office but also expressed their support for the latter's view which ‘would put the weight of world security upon the World Organization rather than upon regional councils’. Moreover, they wrote that, ‘it was clear that Mr. Churchill has not thought out the operations and complexities of regional councils’. ‘Report on Conversations in London, Apr. 7 to Apr. 29, 1944’, FRUS, 1944, Volume III, 17. See also Summary of discussion between Cadogan, Jebb, Webster and [Isaiah] Bowman, 19 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40690/U3409.
86 Memorandum by Webster, ‘Reasons for Establishing the General International Organisation for the Maintenance of Peace and Security in Accordance with Article 4 of the Moscow Declaration’, 29 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40691/U4036.
87 Eden minute, 30 Apr. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40691/U4036.
88 As Webster later confided in his diaries, ‘[Eden] has very little knowledge of the original papers’. Webster diary, 10 Jul. 1944, Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 37–8.
89 Webster diary, 2 May 1944, ibid., 32.
90 Eden diary, 4 May 1944, reprinted in Eden, The Reckoning, 442.
91 See for example the comment by the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in War Cabinet conclusions, WM (44) 58, Minute 2, 27 Apr. 1944, TNA, CAB 65/42.
92 Eden to Churchill, 4 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40691/U3872.
93 ‘The Post-war World Settlement’, Note by the Prime Minister, 8 May 1944, PMM (44) 5, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4194.
94 PMM (44) 12th meeting, 11 May 1944, TNA, CAB 99/28. Webster diary, 11 May 1944, Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 34. Reynolds and Hughes have noted that the opinions of the Dominion prime ministers were the ‘coup de grâce’. See ibid., 86, 99–100. These Dominion delegations expressed certain reservations, however, including on the issue of regional bodies and on the issue of whether the United Kingdom, from its seat on the World Council, might act on behalf of the entire Commonwealth. The latter proposal was one to which nearly all of the Dominions were opposed. Cadogan diary, 19 May 1944, Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Alexander Cadogan, 630; Peter Fraser to Eden, 18 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40693/U4562; Meeting of Dominion Officials with Sir Alexander Cadogan on Wednesday, 17 May 1944. See also Letter from MacKenzie King to Anthony Eden, 29 May 1944, No. 96, TNA, FO 371/40693/U4406.
95 Cabinet minutes quoted in Cadogan's paper on ‘Discussion with Dominions on World Organisation’, 15 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4367.
96 Webster diary, 11 May 1944, Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 34.
97 Hugh Dalton diary, 9 May 1944 and 9 June 1944, Ben Pimlott, ed., The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1940–1945 (London, 1986), 743–4, 755–6.
98 Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 34. Webster referred to this as a ‘crisis day’. See also TNA, FO 371/40692/U4367. Draft memorandum by Jebb, ‘British Policy Towards Europe’, 12 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40692/U4367.
99 Webster diary, 15 May 1944, Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 35; Jebb minute, 29 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40694/U5050.
100 Churchill to Eden, 21 May 1944, M.583/4, TNA, FO 371/40693/U4635.
101 Jebb minute, 31 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40694/U5050.
102 See Ronald Campbell to Sir David Scott, 12 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40693/U4745.
103 Telegram from Washington to Foreign Office, No. 2857, 30 May 1944, TNA, FO 371/40694/U4874.
104 Cadogan minute, 2 Jun. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40694/U4928.
105 Cadogan diary, 7 Jul. 1944, in Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Alexander Cadogan, 645–6.
106 War Cabinet conclusions, WM (44) 88, 7 Jul. 1944, TNA, CAB 65/43. American plans were sent to the British on 18 July, and the British plans were sent to the Americans on 21 July. See Telegrams from Foreign Office to Washington, No. 6539 and to Moscow, No. 2178, 21 Jul. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40700/U6461.
107 Webster diary, 7 Jul. 1944, Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 37.
108 Record of meeting at the Foreign Office, 1 Jun. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40695/U5051.
109 Memorandum by Duff Cooper, 30 May 1944, 4, TNA, FO 371/40696/U5407; Charmley, John, Duff Cooper: The Authorized Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 184Google Scholar.
110 Jebb minute, 18 Jun. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40696/U5407.
111 In a contribution which was supported by Eden, Oliver Harvey wrote that the Western alliance should be explicitly directed against Germany, with Soviet Russia supporting the Western allies in the endeavour. Oliver Harvey minute, 25 Jun. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40696/U5407.
112 Sargent minute, 30 Jun. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40696/U5407.
113 Cadogan minute, 4 Jul. 1944 and Eden minute, 6 July 1944, quoted in Ross, The Foreign Office and the Kremlin, 146. See also Ross, ‘Foreign Office Attitudes to the Soviet Union 1941–45’, 522.
114 These differences have been discussed at length in John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism, 19–36; Baylis, ‘British Wartime Thinking about a Post-War European Security Group’, 273–7; Lewis, Changing Direction, 107–43; Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 114–23. See also Elisabeth Barker, Churchill and Eden at War, 286–92.
115 ‘Effects of Soviet policy on British strategic interests’, 6 Jun. 1944, extracts in Ross, The Foreign Office and the Kremlin, 166–8. The Post-Hostilities Planning Staff (PHPS) was established in May 1944. It followed the Post-Hostilities Planning (PHP) Sub-Committee of the Chiefs of Staff which had been established in August 1943, after the restructuring of the Military Sub-Committee. The PHP Sub-Committee was chaired by Jebb and designed to serve as a ‘channel’ between the Service Departments and the Foreign Office. See Lewis, Changing Direction, 44–54; 98–104.
116 The Chiefs of Staff were considering the paper on ‘Security in Western Europe and the North Atlantic’, P.H.P. (44) 17(0) (final). Chiefs of Staff meeting, 26 Jul. 1944, C.O.S. (44) 248, Minute 14, quoted in Annex 3 of Lewis, Changing Direction, 349–53.
117 In this, the PHPS were considered by the Foreign Office to be the ‘wild acolytes’ of the Chiefs of Staff. Warner minute, 24 Jul. 1944; Ward minute, 15 Aug. 1944; and Jebb minute 28 Jul. 1944, quoted in Ross, The Foreign Office and the Kremlin, 159, 162 and 160, respectively. See also Lewis, Changing Direction, 37–40, 63–74.
118 Eden minute, 2 Jul. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40696/U5407.
119 Eden's reply to Cooper, 25 Jul. 1944, WP (44) 409, copy in TNA, FO 371/40701/U6543.
120 During a meeting in the Foreign Office on 7 July, Eden indicated that he favoured making contact on this issue soon. Record of a meeting held in Eden's room, 7 Jul. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40701/U6543.
121 Cadogan minute, 6 Jul. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40701/U6588. In a meeting the following day, Cadogan argued that they should hold back on approaching the Western European governments. He was recorded as saying, ‘We ought not to do anything to prejudice our chances of getting the United States committed to some kind of World Organisation, since if they were committed the whole peace structure would be greatly reinforced’. Record of a meeting held in Eden's room, 7 Jul. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40701/U6543.
122 Eden minute, 10 Jul. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40701/U6543.
123 ‘Future World Organisation: Points for Decision’, 17 Jul. 1944, APW (44) 45, TNA, FO 371/40699/U6443.
124 War Cabinet conclusions, W.M. (44) 101, 4 Aug. 1944, TNA, CAB 65/43. For final list of directives, see Telegram from Dominions Office to Dominion Governments, No. 1111, 8 Aug. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40704/U6806.
125 Cadogan diary, 4 Aug. 1944, Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Alexander Cadogan, 653–4.
126 While a Chinese delegation also attended the Dumbarton Oaks negotiations, they were not invited until the second half of the conference, which began on 29 Sep. This was well after the most consequential discussions between the American, British and Russian delegations had taken place. The exclusion of the Chinese delegation was due to the refusal by Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, to have Chinese officials involved in the talks.
127 ‘Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organisation’, 28 Sept. 1944, TNA, FO 371/40716/U7585.
128 For a discussion of the British contribution at the conference, see Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 39–57; Greenwood, Titan at the Foreign Office, 179–85; and Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks, 67–228.
129 Citing Reynolds and Hughes, Greenwood adds that Webster ‘claimed credit for enticing the Americans into the British camp’. Greenwood, Titan at the Foreign Office, 181. See also Reynolds and Hughes, Historian as Diplomat, 42–3.
130 Known as the ‘Roosevelt compromise’, this recommendation, which was suggested by Roosevelt to Stalin at Yalta, had originally been suggested by Jebb at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. British officials made the conscious decision to allow Roosevelt to take credit for the compromise, as a way of drumming up further American support for the organisation. See Andrew Ehrhardt, ‘The British Foreign Office and the Creation of the United Nations Organization, 1941–1945’, PhD thesis, King's College London, 2020.