The improbable alliance that defeated Hitler

Summary

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The Improbable Alliance That Defeated Hitler

Podcast: History Extra Podcast
Host: Danny Bird (Immediate Media)
Guest: Tim Bouverie (Historian and Author)
Date: November 10, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of the History Extra Podcast investigates the complex, often uneasy alliance between Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—commonly known as the “Grand Alliance”—that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. Host Danny Bird interviews historian Tim Bouverie, whose recent book explores the tangled personal and political dynamics among Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin. Together, they dive into the origins, challenges, and ultimate consequences of this improbable partnership, examining the sometimes conflicting ambitions, personalities, and cultural differences that shaped the wartime effort and its aftermath.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Personalities Behind the Alliance

[01:23 – 03:58]

• Bouverie sketches Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin:
  • Churchill: Romantic, historically minded, champion of the British Empire.
  • Roosevelt: Modern, idealistic, a product of New Deal reforms, fundamentally saw the end of the British Empire as a war aim.
  • Stalin: Ruthless Marxist revolutionary, ruthless in consolidating his own power, previously allied with Hitler (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939).
• Quote [02:59]:

  "Churchill and Roosevelt have certain qualities that they share: they both have a love of the navy and of history... On the other hand, there are major differences..." — Tim Bouverie

2. Stalin’s Gamble: The Nazi-Soviet Pact

[03:58 – 06:50]

• Stalin's pre-war diplomacy aimed for collective security with the West, but rebuffs convinced him Britain and France would appease Hitler.
• Immediate pragmatic gains from the pact: territory in Eastern Europe and time to rebuild the Red Army after purges.
• Quote [04:44]:

  "It convinces Stalin that the western democracies will continue to appease Hitler... In his mind, they are all capitalists. It doesn't make a great ideological difference..." — Tim Bouverie

3. From Anglo-French Alliance to Grand Alliance

[06:50 – 08:51]

• Initial resistance to Germany based on an Anglo-French partnership, not on the wider alliance.
• The collapse of France in 1940 recalibrated the world order and forced new alignments (Britain, US, USSR).
• Strategy: France as land buffer (Maginot Line, large army), UK as naval blockader, providing resources.

4. The Issue of Vichy France

[08:51 – 11:47]

• The U.S. kept recognizing Vichy France until late 1943, hoping to keep it semi-independent of Germany, but gained few benefits.
• Britain supported Gaullist Free French and was in de facto conflict with Vichy-controlled colonies.
• This policy divergence caused friction and highlighted the moral inconsistencies of the Allied coalition.
• Quote [09:25]:

  "The American recognition of Vichy France is one of the oddest episodes of the war..." — Tim Bouverie

5. The Forgotten Fourth: Nationalist China

[11:47 – 15:29]

• Roosevelt envisioned Nationalist China as the fourth postwar “policeman,” but its regime was corrupt and inefficacious.
• American public opinion fantasized China as a proto-democracy; the reality led to disappointment and eventual alienation.
• Quote [13:18]:

  "This was a fallacy. Nationalist China was a corrupt, fairly incompetent autocracy. And it was the collision of that reality with the American myth that led to great, great disappointment." — Tim Bouverie

6. The Fraying Ties and Roosevelt’s Calculations

[15:29 – 17:51]

• Roosevelt often undermined Churchill to win Stalin’s favor, displaying both idealistic naivety and political cynicism.
• Reluctance to challenge Soviet ambitions in Eastern Europe led to lasting consequences for Poland and others.
• Quote [16:27]:

  "Almost anything you can say about Franklin Roosevelt, you can also say the exact opposite...He was one of the great idealists... yet a consummate politician with all the requisite cynicism." — Tim Bouverie

7. The Specter of a Separate Peace

[17:51 – 20:16]

• Western leaders feared Stalin and Hitler might strike another deal if expedient, referencing the 1939 pact.
• Bouverie argues that realistically, once the Eastern Front tipped in favor of the Soviets, neither side had reason to negotiate until unconditional victory was in reach.

8. Cultural Tensions: Race and Army Life

[22:35 – 27:33]

• British public appalled by American racial segregation; black GIs were much more popular in Britain than their white counterparts.
  • Quote [23:31]:

    "There was an element of hypocrisy in American grandstanding about the British Empire and British colonialism when there was this, as I say, extremely stark contrast in how the US treated its own black population." — Tim Bouverie

• Cultural frictions between American and British troops—clashes over customs, etiquette, and perceptions.
  • Memorable Moment [24:51]:

    "He thinks English food is abominable. English cooking inexcusable. English coffee, atrocious...He is convinced he can sleep with all [English girls] and will, without much prompting, substantiate his statement with a variety of detailed and colourful examples." — American Army Report (read by Bouverie)

9. Roosevelt’s Death and End of the Alliance

[27:33 – 29:28]

• FDR’s death was seen as a major blow; Stalin respected him. Yet, Bouverie feels the alliance would have dissolved anyway as the “adhesive” of Hitler faded and Soviet ambitions increased.
• Roosevelt showed more willingness than Truman to appease Stalin but ultimately couldn’t bridge postwar divides.

10. Operation Unthinkable: Churchill’s Wild Military Scheme

[29:28 – 32:48]

• Churchill tasked his staff to envision a possible war against the Soviet Union after defeating Germany—Operation Unthinkable.
• The plan was militarily and politically impossible, given logistic realities and public exhaustion.
• Quote [30:11]:

  "...he asks his Chiefs of Staff to look at the military feasibility of driving back the Red army...using British and American airplanes and tanks and manpower, but also controversially, German manpower..." — Tim Bouverie

11. Was the Cold War Avoidable?

[32:48 – 35:12]

• None of the Big Three wanted the end of the alliance, but their interests were irreconcilable.
• Stalin's concept of spheres of influence contrasted sharply with Western ideals of self-determination.
• Misunderstandings ran deep—Stalin mistrusted the Western powers’ intentions and the atomic bomb’s development wasn’t candidly shared.

12. Winners and Losers of the Alliance

[35:12 – 37:04]

• Britain: Ultimate loser—huge sacrifices, accelerated decolonization, weakened global role.
• US: Emerged strongest; WWII ended economic depression, suffered least on home front.
• USSR: Gained territory but saddled with economic backwardness and unsustainable competition with the West.
• Quote [35:29]:

  "Undoubtedly the British came out least well from the Second World War... the Americans came out of the Second World War with the most to be pleased about." — Tim Bouverie

13. The Importance of Alliances for Today

[37:04 – End]

• Bouverie’s core lesson: alliances, however fraught, are vital for victory against greater threats.
• Quote [37:46]:

  "There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them." — Winston Churchill (quoted by Bouverie)

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Notable Quotes by Timestamp

• On leaders’ contrasts:
  “Roosevelt is... a great idealist who wanted to use the power of the state to alleviate poverty... Churchill... is a far more 19th century figure with a romantic and historic attachment to the British Empire.” — Tim Bouverie [02:59]
• On U.S. hypocrisy:
  “The British found it profoundly hypocritical of the Americans to lecture them about their empire...when basic civil rights were denied to the black population of the US.” — Tim Bouverie [22:47]
• On Operation Unthinkable:
  “The plan was called Operation Unthinkable. It’s unthinkable for two reasons...militarily impractical…Even more important: the idea of asking...the British and the American peoples to engage in another war...was completely and utterly unthinkable.” — Tim Bouverie [31:38]
• On alliances:
  “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” — Winston Churchill / Tim Bouverie [37:46]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:23 – Introduction of the Big Three and their characters
• 03:58 – Stalin’s motivations for the Nazi-Soviet Pact
• 06:50 – Collapse of France and recalibration of alliances
• 08:51 – America’s stance on Vichy France and Allied tensions
• 11:47 – The role of Nationalist China
• 15:29 – Dynamics and surprises in the Churchill–Roosevelt–Stalin relationship
• 17:51 – Fear of a German-Soviet separate peace
• 22:35 – Racial and cultural tensions among Allied troops
• 27:33 – The effect of Roosevelt’s death on Allied relations
• 29:28 – Operation Unthinkable: Churchill’s postwar scheme
• 32:48 – Could the alliance have survived, and was the Cold War inevitable?
• 35:12 – Who won and lost as a result of the alliance
• 37:04 – Enduring lessons for today’s international politics

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Memorable Moments

• The West Country farmer’s quip about “getting on very well with Americans but having no time for the white men they had brought with them.” [23:27]
• The US Army report on American GIs’ colorful opinions of British life and women. [24:51]
• The stark reminder that the threat of Hitler was the main glue binding the Grand Alliance—once removed, the partnership swiftly began to crumble.

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Concluding Theme

Through nuanced anecdotes and historical analysis, Tim Bouverie and Danny Bird unravel the manifold layers of the Grand Alliance’s improbable cooperation. They demonstrate that victory hinged as much on awkward compromise and disagreement as on shared commitment, and warn that, amid today’s rising nationalism, the lessons of these troubled but necessary wartime partnerships should not be forgotten.

Transcript

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Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. To what extent does a course of history turn on the force of individual personalities? It's a question that looms large when examining the unlikely alliance forged between Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, a partnership that ultimately triumphed over the powers in the Second World War. In this episode, Danny Bird speaks with Tim Bouverie to explore the complex, often uneasy rapport between Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. He delves into the secrets, suspicions and towering ambitions that defined this remarkable chapter in wartime diplomacy.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Tim, your book digs into the complicated and often tense relationship between the so called Big Three and many people listening will be aware of them. But for the benefit of those who might not be that familiar, could you provide a brief sketch of each leader?

[Tim Bouverie]

Well, these are obviously some of the three most familiar and important figures in history, but their alliance during the Second World War, Danny, was both improbable and incongruous. Churchill and Roosevelt are from the democratic West. Stalin is a Marxist revolutionary who has committed innumerable atrocities within his own country, the Soviet Union, to come to power, supposedly in his mind to consolidate his power and to preserve himself in power. And beyond that, he has had in fact allied himself with Hitler prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in August of 1939, dividing up eastern Europe for the benefit of him and the Nazi state. So the idea of Stalin, this Caucasian brigand, coming onto the side of the democratic allies is one of the great puzzles of the war. Churchill and Roosevelt have certain qualities that they share. They both have a love of the navy and a love of history. They've both served in Naval departments, Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty in both the First World War and in the Second World War, Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and they are fascinated maritime strategy. On the other hand, there are major differences between Roosevelt and Churchill themselves. Roosevelt is, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who Was stationed in the British Embassy in Washington during the war. Later observed, fundamentally a man of the 20th century. A great idealist who wanted to use the power of the state to alleviate poverty. And to use a phrase which is anachronistic to this time but vaguely relevant, level up. Churchill, while sharing some of those views. He was after all a liberal reformer during the Asquith and Lloyd George era. Is a far more 19th century figure with a romantic and historic attachment to the British Empire. And this causes an increasing amount of tension between himself and the Americans. In particularly Roosevelt who saw it as a major American war aim to end the British Empire.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

You alluded there, of course, to the Nazi Soviet pact which was forged in the summer of 1939 just weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War. And some historians have maintained that Stalin entered into that pact as a means of buying time to build up the Soviet Union's military capacity because he was fearful that Britain and France's policy of appeasement towards Hitler would. And his expansionism was actually about directing Nazi aggression towards the Soviet Union. Do you think that's accurate? And what were the consequences of that pact on later relations between the Big Three?

[Tim Bouverie]

I think that there is a lot to be said for that. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the 1930s was directed towards collective security. The Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in 1934 and it was the consistent policy of Soviet foreign commissar Maxim Litvinov to try and bring the western democracies into some sort of coalition with the USSR that would contain expansionist Germany. And it is the fact that these Soviet efforts are consistently rebuffed and that the Soviet Union is ignored at Munich. Not invited to take part in the Munich conference that partitioned Czechoslovakia in September of 1938 that I think convinces Stalin that the western democracies will continue to appease Hitler and that they really are trying to direct the Wehrmacht eastwards to try and persuade Hitler if he is going to expand, expand in the direction of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Stalin is a wily old fish and he is also a cynic who doesn't see much difference between Hitler and the democratic West. In his mind, they are all capitalists. They all wish the death of the Soviet Union. It doesn't make a great ideological difference to him which side he allies with. And what the Nazis. And what Hitler is able to offer Stalin is something which the west cannot offer him. Hitler is able to offer him Eastern Poland and the Baltic states and eastern Romania in exchange for this. So called non aggression pact. And this is far too tempting for Stalin to turn down. At the same time, as you say, it provides the Soviet Union with time to rebuild their armed forces. Armed forces which have been severely impacted by the purges of the 1930s and then need desperate reform, as is shown by the really poor performances performance of the Red army in the so called Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland between November 1939 and March of 1940.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

We should also look at the role of France in this alliance. Could you tell me about the Anglo French partnership that initially resisted Nazi Germany and how it led to the grand alliance between London, Washington and Moscow?

[Tim Bouverie]

So the Anglo French alliance was the alliance that was meant to win the war. And the only reason that we're here talking about the grand alliance of Soviet Russia, the United States and Britain is because of the fall of France and the collapse of that alliance in the summer of 1940. An absolutely unprecedented event which recalibrated global politics and alliances with implications right up to and including the present. It was, however, an alliance of necessity rather than one of great affection and mutual kinship. The British and the French both came out of the First World War with a negative sense of working with each other. And it wasn't until later on in the First World War that they even did collaborate on a military basis, fully in tandem. Nevertheless, by the spring of 1939, when Hitler invades the rump of Czechoslovakia and tears up the Munich Agreement, it is clear that appeasement has failed. Hitler is not going to be sated. He cannot be trusted. The Allies are going to have to move from appeasement towards containment and potential deterrence. And that is where the Anglo French alliance comes into being. And the idea is that the French, much as in the First World War, will hold the Germans on land with this incredible system of fortifications along the Franco German frontier, the Maginot Line and the largest army in Europe after the Red Army. While the British will supply the French with finance, with material from the empire, a small expeditionary force, but above all attempt to asphyxiate the German economy by means of naval blockade.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

And just moving on very slightly into the war itself. How did America's continued recognition of Vichy France and Britain's backing of Charles de Gaulle and Free France affect the grand alliance that emerged following Pearl Harbor?

[Tim Bouverie]

The American recognition of Vichy France is one of the oddest episodes of the war, because America takes great pride in fighting this moral war. And Franklin Roosevelt puts morality and political principles at the heart of the Allied campaign. And yet the United States continued to recognize this collaborationist regiment right up until the moment when it was destroyed in effect by the invasion of southern France by Hitler in November of 1943 in response to the Anglo American invasion of French North Africa, Operation Torch. The American idea is that Vichy and its leader Marshal Petain has to have something to lose. That the Americans can help keep southern Vichy semi independent France out of the clutches of the Germans by bestowing this recognition on it, which in theory it could withdraw. The British, as you say, on the other hand, are supporting the Free French under Charles de Gaulle and are effectively in an undeclared war against Vichy. They take Vichy French colonies in Central and West Africa in 1940, they try and take the West African port of Dakar in September 1940 and they fight a very bloody two month war against Vichy forces in Syria and Lebanon in June July of 1941. And it is partly an agreed idea that the Allies or proto allies, because the US isn't in the war until December of 1941, should have a foot in both camps. And it might be helpful to have an American voice at Vichy. But ultimately it causes an enormous amount of inter Allied frustration simply because the American recognition of Vichy delivers next to no benefits to the Allied cause. Vichy allows German airplanes to use French air bases in Syria to attack the British in Iraq in 1941. That is the action which precipitates the Anglo Free French invasion of Syria and Lebanon. A couple of months later the Vichy French allow the Germans to use French North African ports to resupply Rommel and his Afrika Korps. So it's very, very hard to see what American recognition, continued recognition, did for the Allies while at the same time it risked undermining that moral plane and political principles which Roosevelt had put right at the centre of the war effort.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Another thing that your book has prioritized is looking beyond the transatlantic tradition of this alliance during the Second World War. And I was wondering how this alliance affected relations with Nationalist China and how that also impacted on relations between the Big Three.

[Tim Bouverie]

Absolutely. So the ambition for the book is, is not just to write another history of the Big three Allied war leaders, but to look at Allied politics in its entirety. And so as we've mentioned, a lot of it focuses on the Anglo French relationship and then the American French relationship, but also includes other important players including important neutrals such as Francois, Spain, neutral Ireland, Turkey, Greece and a non neutral nation, Nationalist China. Roosevelt actually spoke about the Big Four. He wanted four post war policemen to guarantee the security and stability of the Post war world. And that included Nationalist China, the nation which had been fighting the Japanese since 1937. And if you look at opinion polls taken in the US throughout the Second World War, you see that it was Nationalist China more than any other ally that Americans identified with and sympathized with for several decades. The Americans had been fed on this propaganda diet that Nationalist China was essentially a proto democracy, that this was an anti imperial power which indeed it was, which wished to get rid of British, French, Western influence, and it should actually be pointed out, American influence. The Americans had their own extraterritorial rights in China, which were resented to a lesser extent than the Western European empires, but nevertheless resented. But this was a fallacy. Nationalist China was a corrupt, fairly incompetent autocracy. And it was the collision of that reality with the American myth that occurred during the Second World War that led to great, great disappointment on both sides and a massive falling out between the US and the Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai Shek. On this issue of China, Roosevelt is far more far sighted than Churchill or Stalin. Both keep on being dismissive of the idea of China ever becoming a great power. Roosevelt doesn't attempt to claim that Nationalist China is a major power at the time in the 40s or that it's even really fighting very well against the Japanese, despite the fact that its mere presence in the war is responsible for pinning down some 600,000 Japanese in western China. 600,000 Japanese that could otherwise have been sent to fight against the British in India or the Americans in the Pacific. But Roosevelt keeps on saying to Stalin at Tehran or to Churchill in the White House, this is a country of over half a billion people and they are going to count for something one of these days. And when they do, it is going to be far better if they are on our side, the Western side, rather than either isolationist or conspiring with the Japanese for an exclusive Asian sphere of influence in the Far east or coming under the influence of the Soviet Union. And in that, he was completely right. It didn't turn out that way, but he showed a great deal of foresight.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

I'd like to zone in a little bit on those differences between the wartime leaders. Was there anything that surprised you about their personalities or how they got along that changed the way you had previously seen the alliance?

[Tim Bouverie]

I think the extent to which Roosevelt was prepared to undermine Churchill and undermine the solidity of the Anglo American relationship in order to try and curry favor with Stalin did surprise me. I write in the book that almost anything you can say About Franklin Roosevelt, you can also say the exact opposite. He was warm and charming, but he was also cold and devious. He was one of the great idealists of the 20th century. And yet he was also a consummate politician with all the requisite cynicism. He championed the destitute. And yet he also had a very strong conception of himself as an American patrician and frankly, a fetish for European royalty that were in exile in the United States. All of these multiple facets of his personality come into play with his relationship with the Soviet Union. On the one hand, he does seem to be genuinely naive about the true nature of the Stalinist regime and about Stalin and the USSR's ambitions in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, he seems privately to recognize that the Soviets will exert a major sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, whatever is going to happen, and the democracies are just going to have to grin and bear it. But the lack of effort he makes to try and deter Stalin from growing his Communist empire, the lack of effort he makes towards trying to secure a fair deal for Poland, and the lack of support he gives to Churchill, who feels far more strongly about these issues, was something that I wasn't surprised about because I was aware of, but I think I was surprised at the sheer cynicism, or this very curious and slightly oxymoronic combination of cynicism and naivety. So that was certainly one thing you.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Write about, this intriguing fear among the British and American leaders that as the Soviets pushed back the Germans following the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, Hitler may have been tempted to strike some kind of deal with Stalin. Again. How credible do you think that possibility was? And would Stalin have been open to that kind of agreement?

[Tim Bouverie]

You're right that the Western powers do continually worry about a separate peace between Hitler and Stalin. And in one sense, they're right to worry because it's happened before. I mean, it's not a separate peace, but these two men have come to an agreement. The Molotov Ribbentrop pact, which began the whole war. And the British and the Americans aren't so naive that they think that Stalin is going to continue fighting to, as the saying went, pull their chestnuts out of the fire. On the other hand, the chances of a Soviet German compromise peace are pretty slim. While the Germans are winning the war in the east, which they don't really begin to realise that they are losing until they get bogged down in Stalingrad, Hitler is not incentivised to negotiate with Stalin. And when the Red army is winning and the Germans are being driven back. Stalin is not incentivized to negotiate with Hitler. He has made a massive strategic error in not anticipating the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941. He has almost brought destruction upon his communist state and thereafter, particularly in light of the immense sacrifices made not just by the Red army, but by the Soviet people. He needs nothing short of total victory. And I think that as long as Stalin is satisfied that the British and the Americans aren't going to double cross him, which to a certain extent he is, although he's paranoid about the presence of Rudolf Hess in Britain, the Deputy Fuhrer who parachuted into Scotland in the spring of 1941, as long as he is satisfied that he isn't going to be double crossed, I think the chances of a compromise peace in the east, unless the fronts had completely stabilised and it looked like nothing was going to win this war were pretty small.

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[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

I was also struck by the cultural clashes that you touch upon throughout the book, like the fact that the U.S. army was racially segregated while stationed in places like Britain and how did that affect the way the British saw the Americans?

[Tim Bouverie]

So the British found it profoundly hypocritical of the Americans to lecture them about their empire and colonial policy when basic civil rights were denied to the in black population of the us. And as you say Danny, when the American troops arrived in Britain from the summer of 1942 onwards, the Americans imposed racial segregation in American army camps and put pressure on the British government to impose racial segregation elsewhere, in cinemas, in barbershops, in pubs. And this is something that the British refused to do. They said that we do not distinguish between races in this country. Of course, Britain was a far more homogenous country racially in those days than the US was. There was an element of hypocrisy in American grandstanding about the British Empire and British colonialism when there was this, as I say, extremely stark contrast in how the US treated its own black population. And it should be said that black American troops were extremely popular in Britain. British publicans resented attempts by white GIs to eject their black brethren, while George Orwell voiced a commonly held view that the only American soldiers with decent manners were the black American GIs. There was a popular story of the time that probably apocryphal but nevertheless revealing, about a West country farmer being asked by a journalist what he thought about all of the visiting Americans in the spring of 1944. So just before D Day, the farmer replied that he got on very well with Americans but had no time for the white men they had brought with them.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

How exactly did military personnel in the American and the British armies cooperate? How did they get along culturally whilst they were stationed together?

[Tim Bouverie]

Generally they got on very well, but there were some teething troubles shall we say, fairly early on in Eisenhower's time as commander of what was going to be the Allied Expeditionary Force that was going to invade North Africa, he heard tales of one of his staff frequently telling British staff officers that the Americans were going to show them how to win the war. And culminating in him calling his British opposite number a British son of a bitch. And when Eisenhower heard this, he dismissed the officer immediately and sent him back to America. And the British officer was dismayed when he heard this. He thought that this was far too harsh a punishment. And he went to Eisenhower and implored with him to reverse this ruling. He said, sir, we British have in fact only recently learned that to call someone a son of a bitch is really a term of endearment in America. This is all part of the course and camaraderie of the U.S. army. And Eisenhower said, that may be, but he called you a British son of a bitch. My ruling stands. And I think that that really exemplifies how absolutely brilliant Eisenhower was as a supreme commander. Whatever disagreements and criticisms there are about his role as a general, as a strategist or as a tactician, he was the absolutely perfect politician general, probably the only person capable of keeping together this diverse Anglo American band of prima donna generals, admirals and air marshals lower down the chain of command. There were obviously some fairly major cultural differences. In early 1942, an American was sent on a tour of US army camps to find out how American GIs were getting on with their British hosts. And in his report he wrote that he, the average American soldier thinks the country is inexcusably old fashioned. He concedes that there is something to be said for tradition. But he will not admit that you can say enough in this direction to counterbalance the agonisingly leisurely shopkeepers, the uncomfortable hotels, the outmoded lavatory equipment, the funny trains or the cut of women's clothes. He thinks English food is abominable. English cooking inexcusable. English coffee, atrocious. English restaurants, unclean English waitresses, untrained, English dietary habits unhealthy. He has very little sincere respect for English girls. By and large, he is convinced that they are all inferior to American girls. He is convinced he can sleep with all of them and will, without much prompting, substantiate his statement with a variety of detailed and colourful examples.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Looking towards the end of the war. Now, obviously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies in April 1945. What impact did his death have on the Alliance?

[Tim Bouverie]

The death of Roosevelt in April 1945 was considered a major blow to the grand alliance. Stalin restored, respected Roosevelt, maybe he even admired him. However, I think that the difficulties that were inevitably rearing their heads at the end of the war as this adhesive substance, otherwise known as the threat of Adolf Hitler was disintegrating, the thing that really kept the alliance together and the Soviets were showing an increasingly cavalier and ruthless attitude in the countries that they were liberating but also occupying in Eastern Europe. I think it is highly likely that Roosevelt would have come to the same sort of frustrated conclusions and reached the same dead ends that the Truman administration came to and reached with Stalin in the summer and autumn of 1945 and over the succeeding years. That said, Roosevelt showed a far greater willingness to propitiate the Soviets in Eastern Europe. In the months following the Yalta Agreement, he is bombarded with messages from Churchill giving details of how the Soviets are breaking the Yalta Accords, how they're refusing to allow allied, I.e. western observers into Eastern Europe, how he's dragging his feet on the exchange of prisoners of war, how he is progressing his plans to dominate these countries by force. And Roosevelt is continually counselling caution and refusing to join the British in joint diplomatic action or a warning to the Soviets.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Operation Unthinkable. Churchill's wild plan to attack the Soviets right after the war is such a fascinating and seemingly inexplicable moment. What exactly did it entail and how seriously was it even considered?

[Tim Bouverie]

Well, I think the clue to the answer to the second part of your question is in the name it is Operation Unthinkable. And I think even Churchill knew that it was unthinkable. Let me just explain what it was. From 1943 onwards, Churchill has become increasingly obsessed with trying to save as much of Eastern Europe as he can from the ussrs domination from communism. And this has led to his mission to Moscow in October of 1944, where he came up with the infamous percentages deal with Stalin over how the British and the Soviets were going to divide influence in the Balkans. And then it also was responsible for his attempts to persuade the American high command, including Roosevelt, that the Allies should make a great effort to put push up through the spine of Italy and get into Austria and Czechoslovakia before the Soviets reach there. This the Americans absolutely refuse to do. They understand that it's militarily impossible. And they also believe that their greatest contribution to winning the war as swiftly as possible is occurring in Western Germany, France. But it's after the Yalta conference in the late spring of 1945 that Churchill asks his Chiefs of Staff to look at the military feasibility of driving back the Red army to the Soviet Union's supposed natural frontiers, to where they were before the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact of August of 1939. Using British and American airplanes and tanks and manpower, but also controversially, German manpower, the Chiefs of staff produce a plan which, as we've said, is called Operation Unthinkable. And it's unthinkable for two reasons, and these are reasons which surely Churchill knew. Firstly, it is militarily impractical. The Chiefs of Staff point out that even if the British and the Americans were able to defeat the Red army in battle in Poland, there was nothing to stop Stalin from withdrawing his forces and continuing the war for as long as he wished, turning this into a total war, causing the British and the Americans to pursue the Red army into Russia. And suddenly it's not the Wehrmacht that's freezing to death outside Moscow and outside Stalingrad, it's the British and the Americans. Even more important was the fact that the British and the American publics had been fed on a pro Soviet, pro Red army propaganda diet for the last three years. This was Uncle Joe. These were our comrades in arms. And the idea of asking the British and the American peoples to engage in another war against another major power, an emerging superpower after five years of war to defeat Hitlerite Germany was completely and utterly unthinkable.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Was there any chance that the alliance could have survived? The Second World War and the Cold War have been avoided entirely.

[Tim Bouverie]

The irony about the disintegration of the grand alliance was that it was something that none of the Big Three actually desired. Even Stalin didn't want to end the grand alliance, but he wanted it to continue purely on his terms, which would be to allow for a massive Soviet sphere of influence in in Eastern Europe and an emerging one in Southeast Asia. And his concept of great powers and spheres of influence was totally at odds with the Western democratic ideals, which included a respect for the rights of small nations. This respect for the rights of small nations and international law, democracy and self determination were completely antithetical to Stalin and Soviet doctrine. And it is perhaps a failure of the Western powers to have made Stalin properly aware of this. Although when admittedly they did try and do this, Stalin accused them of hiding behind congressional or parliamentary or public opinion. He didn't understand the West. He thought that Churchill and Roosevelt could do whatever they wanted. He thought that they had great empires. The United States is a continental empire in his view and in the view of others. The British Obviously have a vast empire. What was wrong with expanding the Soviet empire for the benefit of Soviet security? And they didn't fully understand him either. They didn't understand the paranoid nature of his rule and the fact that Poland and the buffer states along the western frontier of the Soviet Union were fundamental red lines for him. At the same time as they failed to appreciate quite how unsettling it must have been for Stalin to know that they, the liberal democracies, were building a weapon of unfathomable, previously unknown, utterly incredible destruction, that is the atomic bomb. A fact which he was aware of thanks to Soviet penetration of the Manhattan Project, something which Roosevelt was warned about but did nothing to counter. And yet he was not officially informed of the development of the atomic bomb until the potsdam Conference of July 1945.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Who do you think really came out on top in this whole alliance, whether militarily, politically, or ideologically? Was there a clear beneficiary? And just look at the flip side of that. Who lost out in the long run?

[Tim Bouverie]

Undoubtedly the British came out least well from the Second World War. Britain had sacrificed a quarter of her national wealth in, in order to be on the winning side and to play her part in defeating Nazism. And the Second World War greatly increased the process of decolonization, which had already started and was as close to being inevitable as anything in history can be inevitable. I would say that the Americans came out of the Second World War with the most to be pleased about. The Second World War ended the Great Depression in America. It was not the New Deal that rebalanced and revived the American economy. It was the massive amount of war expenditure. American cities and the American civilian population had got off incredibly lightly compared to the British and certainly compared to the Soviet population. Stalin gained greatly in territorial terms. The Soviet Union expanded the to the size of an empire, even exceeding that of the Romanovs at the peak of their power. And yet that came at the price of a ruinously expensive arms race with the west and an inability to match the west in terms of living standards, which is ultimately something which the Soviet Union felt very keenly in the subsequent decades and was caused by of the Gorbachev reforms, which led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. So while it can be seen that Stalin did gain greatly during the Second World War, it would have been wiser for him if he had been less imperialistic.

[Interviewer (Danny Bird)]

Finally, Tim, are there any lessons from the grand alliance that you think are pertinent to today's world?

[Tim Bouverie]

I'd say there's one overwhelming lesson, and that is on the importance of alliances. The only reason that Hitler did not win the Second World War was was because he was confronted by a superior coalition of nations and empires that combined their resources and coordinated their plans in order to defeat him. This book focuses to a great extent on the areas of conflict between the Allies, because they were many and because they were important and because they haven't been explored to the extent that I think is necessary. And yet their cooperation, which I also go into, was absolutely vital. And I keep on coming back in my mind when I look at the world today to the Churchill quote, which is a saying he said repeatedly during the Second World War. And that is that there is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them. And that is something which I really think that we should remember today in this world of increasing nationalism, isolationism and nativism.

[Podcast Host]

That was historian and journalist Tim Bouverie, whose book Allies at the Politics of Defeating Hitler is out now. Tim was speaking to Danny Byrd.