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[00:00]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to the New Books Network, I imagine you like to read and I'm wondering if you have a goal to read more this year. How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread podcast is here to help. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They feature 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. You'll get a brief synopsis, fun and witty commentary, no spoilers and no sponsored reviews. It's just what Casey and Tyler think. Life's too short to read a bad book. So subscribe to the Proofread podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming. Thanks very much.
[00:52]
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[01:18]
Tim Bouverie
Phew.
[01:19]
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[01:53]
Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
[01:58]
Dr. Charles Petill
Good day. Welcome to New Books in History, a podcast channel, New Books Network. My name is Dr. Charles Petill. I'm a host on channel and today we are pleased indeed honor to have with us Tim Bouverie. Tim is the author of a well, very well received book which was Appeasement dealing with the diplomatic history in Europe in the 1930s. In addition, he is a graduate of Christchurch, Oxford, as well as having been a Alistair Horne Fellow at St Anthony's College, Oxford. And today he's got his newest book, Allies at War, which is published by Crowd. Welcome, Tim.
[02:34]
Tim Bouverie
Thank you, Charles. It's great to be here.
[02:35]
Dr. Charles Petill
And why did you write this Book.
[02:37]
Tim Bouverie
Well, the book came really out of my first book. I had written, as you say, this book, Appeasement, Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, which dealt with all of the machinations and diplomacy that is now known by the title Appeasement. And like you and many of your listeners, I'd read quite a lot about the Second World War. I'd read most of the well known secondary literature and it struck me that there seemed to be too much of a disconnect between the pre war period and the post war period and the actual war itself. Mainly that too often historians seem to assume that once war begins, this is purely a story of military engagements, of tanks and aeroplanes, spies and servicemen. But politics was absolutely critical to the Second World War. If we want to think about just at the most macro level, the most fundamental reason why Adolf Hitler and the militarist governments of Emperor Miconomiya Hirohito did not triumph between 1939 and 1945, it is because they were confronted by a superior coalition of nations and empires that combined their resources and coordinated their plans in order to thwart them. And now that may sound simple, but it really wasn't. It required an enormous amount of highly complex and often highly acrimonious politics going on behind the scenes between the big three, but also sundry other powers as well. And I felt that this hadn't been sufficiently explored. And I felt that both in terms of the scope of inquiry and the depth of inquiry, there was something more to be said and something more to be found. True.
[04:29]
Dr. Charles Petill
Would it be true to say that yours is a old fashioned diplomatic history?
[04:34]
Tim Bouverie
It would be, I think, fair to say that in the sense that, yes, this deals with foreign ministers, prime ministers, presidents, military leaders, it is on the other hand, an attempt to be integrated. It doesn't look at foreign relations in isolation. For example, why was it impossible for the British and the Americans to confront Stalin over his ambitions in Eastern and Central Europe at Yalta or in February of 1945, or indeed before? Well, there were several reasons, but one of the most fundamental was that public opinion in both Britain and the US was strongly pro Soviet thanks to the heroic deeds of the Red army and the propaganda on which they had been fed extolling those deeds, including the defeat of General von Paulus army at Stalingrad. So I don't look at diplomacy in isolation. Diplomacy is part of a wider picture and is always being informed by both public opinion in the democratic states and the situation on the battlefield. And so while it may be old fashioned in the sense that it's not looking at any of the more in vogue subjects such as gender or decolonization. Although it certainly deals with many aspects of colonialism and not favorably in any way, it, I hope, more rounded than the slightly pejorative label of old fashioned diplomatic history has.
[06:12]
Dr. Charles Petill
Oh, I mean, to be honest, from my perspective, there's nothing better than a good old fashioned diplomatic history.
[06:21]
Tim Bouverie
I rather agree, but it tends to be when people use that term that they're not being complimentary.
[06:27]
Dr. Charles Petill
Unfortunately, you are correct. It would appear from the endnotes in the bibliography of the book that you've done an enormous amount of archival and other research, even though the subject matter has been fairly well researched. What would you point to as the something which is novel that you found in your research?
[06:48]
Tim Bouverie
Well, I managed to find quite a lot of material which doesn't revolutionize our understanding of the war. I can't come to you today and tell you that the Queen Mother was having an affair with Joseph Stalin between 1942 and 1944. Much as publishers would love that sort of expose or smoking gun. But I found a huge amount of material from the diaries and unpublished memoirs of diplomats which had never been published before, never appeared in print, and which I think adds nuance and complexity to an otherwise familiar story. If I was to give one specific example, it is a one line telegram which I discovered in the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential archive in upstate New York. And it is dated 4th July 1940. Now, on 3rd July 1940, the British had enjoyed their first victory over the Second World War. Unfortunately though, this was not a victory over the Germans or the Italians, but over their former allies, the French. This was the bombing and bombardment of the Force Dorade, a significant section of the French navy off the North African coast, which resulted in the deaths of some 1300 French sailors. And there was a strong military rationale for this action, but there was also a political rationale. The political rationale being that Churchill was desperate to show the world in general and the United States in particular that Britain was going to do anything in order to survive and that Britain was not going to go the way of the U.S. oh, sorry. That Britain was not going to go the way of the French in surrendering as they had done on 17 June 1940. They had to make this demonstration clear because there wasn't frankly that much USAID crossing the Atlantic at the time. One of the reasons for which was the sense of in Washington and across the then 48 states that Britain was heading for defeat and what was the point in sending what little materiel the US had to Britain if it was merely going to end up in the hands of the Germans? So there's been a lot of speculation about this American angle to the shelling of the French fleet, but nothing that has ever been proved. And I simply came across this telegram from the then British ambassador, a man called Lord Lothian, to Roosevelt on the 4th of July 1940, which simply said, Mr. President, you will see that Winston Churchill has taken the action with regard to the French fleet which you and I discussed and you approved. And as I say before, that there had never been any suggestion in primary or secondary literature that the Americans had even been informed of what the British were planning, let alone that Churchill had sought presidential approval. And I think this really encapsulates how from the moment he becomes Prime Minister on 10th May 1940, right through to Pearl harbor on 7th December 1941, there is nothing that Winston Churchill does without an eye to US Presidential, congressional and public opinion.
[10:09]
Dr. Charles Petill
Now, David Reynolds wrote a very influential journal article titled Churchill's Decision to Fight On Right Policy, Wrong Reasons. And I'm sure you're familiar with it, but would you say that he's correct in impositing that while Churchill's decision to fight on, as opposed to Halifax, who would have tried to negotiate something with Mussolini as intermediary, that Churchill's decision to fight on in May, in June 1940 was correct, but the reason that he gave were in fact erroneous? Would you confirm that?
[10:45]
Tim Bouverie
Can you remind me what exactly the erroneous reason was cited by Reynolds?
[10:50]
Dr. Charles Petill
Well, specifically that the United States was willing to join the. The fight vis a vis the fascist powers by sometime in the summer, mid or late summer of 1940?
[11:02]
Tim Bouverie
Yeah, well, I, I mean, I would. I'm in broad agreements and I have unbounded respect for the considerable amount of scholarship of David Reynolds. I think it's wrong policy and right reasons. I would argue because the right reasons were that life for Britain and for Britons would not be worth living with a Nazified Europe, that British independence would be severely impinged, and more altruistically, that the continent and what was left, as Churchill described it, of European Christian civilization did have to be saved. That was the main reason for fighting on. So right policy and right reason, where I. But if we're not going to quibble over semantics, where you are completely right, where Reynolds is completely right, is that Churchill's strategy for winning the war was entirely based on the US joining it and in May of 1940, there was no evidence that the US was coming to Britain's aid in arms. It might help financially eventually. It might supply some of the tools to help not finish the job, but keep Britain in the war long enough for something to turn up. And Churchill indeed failed in this. Churchill did not bring the US into the war. It was the Japanese that brought the US into the war and Hitler that then declared war. The strategy was to survive until something turned up. And if one was thinking of this in cards as an analogy, the US was the ace of spades which Churchill was praying would turn up.
[12:49]
Dr. Charles Petill
Now the book has a novelty which, which is great, which is the fact that at the beginning of the book you explore in depth the Anglo French relationship and policy vis a vis Hitler's Germany. Would you say, what would you say then was the agreed Anglo French policy in terms of how they envision, envisions winning the war?
[13:16]
Tim Bouverie
I think this is really crucial. And the point of including all of this is that nobody, including Adolf Hitler, expected the Anglo French alliance to collapse so swiftly, certainly not in six weeks in 1940. This was the alliance which was meant to win the war. And this was the alliance which had held the Germans for four years on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. The strategy it may surprise people to learn what the reasons that is was defensive, based on the idea that the British and the French were bound to win a long war because they had superior wells of resources to the Germans with their large maritime empires and strong financial bases, particularly the British, but that they could potentially lose a short war. And in their thinking it was also the attacker was at greater risk than the defender. That had been the lesson of the trenches, that the attackers got massacred while the defenders remained on occasion relatively safe in their trenches. But this was envisaging, fighting a completely different war to the war which Hitler and his generals were planning to wage. And indeed, it is shocking that the British and the French, in particular the French, did not learn the lessons of the Polish Campaign of September 1939 and continued to prepare for a highly static defensive war of attrition in the West. But yes, their strategy was to outlast the Germans, to build up a blockade, to try and wear the German economy down, to try and stimulate trouble on the home front for Hitler. But it was certainly naive in expecting that this could produce any immediate results. The blockade did not really start to affect the German economy in the First World War until the dying months or certainly the final year. So it was an unimaginative strategy born of politicians who were desperate to avoid the massacres that had existed at the Somme and Passchendaele and Ypres between 1914 and 1980.
[15:40]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why did Churchill decide to back a relative non entity, Charles de Gaulle, to be representing a French resistance to defeat?
[15:52]
Tim Bouverie
Well, it's a completely astonishing decision. We're so used to the idea of de Gaulle as this great indomitable symbol of French resistance and a future President of France, that it seems perfectly natural that the British government on 27 June should recognise him as the leader of all Frenchmen that rally to him in support of the Allied cause. But this was an incredibly reckless decision in the way one considers the lack of information the British had about General de Gaulle. All they really knew about him was that he was the youngest Brigadier General in the French army and that he had been a member of the most disastrous government in French history for 11 days. That is the government that surrendered to the Germans on the 17th of June. The reason Churchill backed him, the reason Churchill anointed him as the symbol of French resistance, was that nobody more senior came. The British were hoping for a major national figure, somebody like General Von who was the commander in chief of the French armed forces at the time of the surrender, or the French Prime Minister, Paul Renault, or some other senior general in the French empire or a governor in the French Empire, someone, anyone. And it's only because nobody else came that they recognized de Gaulle. But for quite a long time they kept their options open and had a more senior figure turned up in 1940, particularly after the Dakar incident or fiasco, which I go into in quite a bit of detail in the book, I think it is entirely possible that they would have forced de Gaulle to submit to them rather than the other way around.
[17:40]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why was the basis for destroyers transaction between the United States and the UK so important to the future of Anglo American relationship?
[17:48]
Tim Bouverie
It was important not necessarily to the future of Anglo American relations long, long term, beyond the Second World War, but it was important at the time in that this was very much not a neutral act by a neutral nation. This was showing that the US was prepared to back the British, that the US very clearly wished the British to win, and that the US was prepared to aid the British, despite the fact that the transaction was completely inequitable. In order to obtain these 50 destroyers which carried with them great political value, but not necessarily great military worth, the British gave up leases for air and naval facilities on their colonial possessions in the West Indies and the Caribbean and the North Atlantic to the US for 99 years. It was, as Roosevelt told Congress, the greatest addition to the defense of the United States since the Louisiana Purchase. But as I say, the real significance of the deal was that it showed that Britain had a powerful ally, even if this ally was not yet fighting.
[18:58]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why did the British decide to assist the Greeks in their war with Fascist Italy?
[19:02]
Tim Bouverie
I think that this is a completely fascinating episode because it is one which shows how politics can often guide military strategy rather than the other way around. The background is this. In October, November of 1940, Mussolini had invaded neutral Greece. The Greeks had beat the Italians and driven them back into Albania. But then Hitler decided that he couldn't see his fellow fascist ally humiliated in this region and feared British intervention. So he decided to intervene. And in the winter of 1940, 1941, German troops began massing along the frontiers not only of Greece, but also of Yugoslavia. This is extremely inconvenient for the British because they have finally got the Italians on the run in North Africa. They have the opportunity, if they continue the North African campaign, of ridding the Axis from the entire continent of Africa. On the other hand, they could disengage from the battle in North Africa and send the majority of their forces to Greece. This is not thought of as a sensible military option. The chances of success in Greece, most British military officials think, are very, very slender. And yet the British government, led by Churchill and highly supported by Anthony Eden, the War Secretary and then Foreign Minister, who think that it is politically essential to come to Greece's aid because Britain has guaranteed Greece. In March of 1939, Britain guaranteed Poland. And then after that guarantee, Britain promised to come to the aid of Greece and Romania should either of these countries be the subject of unprovoked aggression and it is just considered too politically impossible or precarious to abandon an ally, an ally which is expecting British aid at this time. And how this is going to play not only in United States of America, who will have an awful lot of sympathy for another neutral country being attacked by the Axis. And was, it was to be expected, going to be censorious about Britain abandoning her ally, but also how it was going to play in the rest of the Empire. The British Empire at this stage is being held together by barely, barely at all. But if it's being held together by anything, it is largely being held together by tradition and a sense of British prestige. If Britain is seen as being so feeble that she cannot even try or won't even try to come to the aid of a minor Balkan ally, then the chances of Britain managing to hold on to her empire in Africa and the Far east and the Middle east might might as well be put at naught. So that is the rationale. And yet it really does lead to the military debacle that the strategists in London had always feared. And the British have to evacuate Greece just as they had already had to evacuate Norway, just as they had already had to evacuate France.
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[23:58]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why did you put it? Was the British victory in Iraq of greater significance than the loss of Crete to the Germans?
[24:04]
Tim Bouverie
This is a really misunderstood or I should rephrase that neglected episode. In May of 1941, the Iraqi government, which had been changed owing to a coup d', etat, aligned itself with the Axis and decided to try and drive the British out of Iraq. Iraq is technically independent, but it is more de facto under British protection, a part of the British Empire and certainly a crucial source of of oil for the British and their campaign in the Mediterranean and North Africa. And while the loss of Crete is contemporaneous with the battle in Iraq, this is late spring 1941. The loss of Crete does not close the Mediterranean to the Royal Navy. It does not prevent the British from continuing operations in the Middle east and in North Africa. The loss of Malta, by the way, would have been much more serious from that perspective. But the loss of Iraq threatened to completely encircle the headquarters of British military aid and British forces in the Middle East. In Egypt, Rommel would be coming from the west and then there would be a German force or an Italian force or an Axis force, at any rate able to be attacking from the northeast and further to which Britain's sources of oil from not only Iraq but also from Iran would have been severed. So it would not just in my judgment, but in the judgment of Air Marshal Tedder and some of the other senior military officials at the time have been a far, far greater disaster than the loss of Crete turned out to be.
[25:57]
Dr. Charles Petill
What was the Anglo American response to the Russo German war which began in June 1941?
[26:03]
Tim Bouverie
Churchill was elated when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. He broadcast immediately, and indeed without Cabinet approval, that the British would give the Russians every element of aid that they could spare. And this is a significant statement from a politician who has defined himself in, in the 1920s as not just an arch opponent of Bolshevism, but the arch opponent of Bolshevism. And certainly it is difficult in some respects for the British because not only does Stalin preside over a regime and a dictatorship and totalitarian system every bit internally, as invidious as that presided over by Adolf Hitler, but Stalin has been Hitler's ally for the first year and a half of the war. It is the Stalin Hitler Molotov ribbentropped pact of August 1939 that unleashes the Second World War. And yet Churchill is pragmatic enough to realise that any diversion of German forces away from Britain, any entanglement of the German army in what had and Churchill might knew his history and he certainly knew what had happened to Napoleon. The morass of Russia was certainly going to be to Britain's and the Allied the benefit. So there was a welcoming of Russia's involvement in the war in Britain and in the United States. Roosevelt extended lend lease to Russia fairly swiftly.
[27:44]
Dr. Charles Petill
Would it be true to say that you're. That in your narrative FDR more or less conforms to the characterization by the American historian Richard Hofstadler, which was quote the patrician as opportunist unquote I think.
[27:57]
Tim Bouverie
That that's a pretty good encapsulation. I think that the thing with FDR is that he is an extraordinarily complex character. I really came by the end of my research to the conclusion that almost everything about him that you can say with any certainty, you can also say the exact opposite. He was deeply earnest in many respects, and yet he was also extraordinarily frivolous. He was undoubtedly one of the great idealists of the 20th century, and yet he was also a rank opportunist and a dreadful cynics. And I think it's not enough to say that he was simply naive about the Soviet Union, because there are documents, less well known documents, which I quote in the book, which shows that at various moments he was aware of what Stalin had in store for Eastern and Central Europe. And yet, while he didn't mind this so much or certainly wasn't prepared to give it much thought during the war itself, because of the inestimable service that the Red army was giving to Allies victory, he nevertheless always retained this optimism, both in his own ability to rearrange the pieces on the chessboard at the end of the war, but also on American economic leverage, which so he felt, would bring about great dividends once hostilities had ceased.
[29:31]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why, until, I'm sorry, why was Harry Hopkins such an important figure in Anglo American relationship during the time period of your book?
[29:40]
Tim Bouverie
Harry Hopkins, a social worker from Sioux City, Iowa, was from the mid-30s until certainly 1943, Roosevelt's closest confidant and probably the closest thing the President had in those years to a genuine friend. And Roosevelt goes out of his way to ignore professional diplomats and to ignore the State Department during the war. He relies on unofficial emissaries, and Hopkins is by far the most important. And Hopkins not only had Roosevelt's trust, he also had Churchill's trust. And there are just so many occasions when Hopkins is able to act as an intermediary between the two men. He brings about their first meeting during the war at Placentia Bay in August of 1941. And just before that, he has proven a valuable conduit between Roosevelt and Stalin. He meets Stalin shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. And it is his testimony that convinces Roosevelt that the USSR is not going to surrender. Just as it was his testimony that convinced or helped convince Roosevelt that Britain was not going to surrender. That loosens roosevelt's and the US's generosity towards the Soviet war effort.
[31:03]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why until late 1943 were the British able to run around the American around in circles in terms of Allied planning.
[31:11]
Tim Bouverie
The British and the Americans had different views of grand strategy and both of these come a bit out of their own experience of the war thus far. Far or rather lack of experience in America's case because America only entered the war in December of 1941. But also on long held theories of strategy. British strategy had always been from at least the Napoleonic wars onwards, to try and chip away at the enemy's force before going, as it were, for the jugular. Because to attack the most strongly defended position was in their view, to invite a bloody repulse. Therefore the British inherently, but also due to their own experience of the war, were chary and that is to put it mildly, of crossing the Channel and re invading France too soon. And we can understand this. The British had suffered multiple defeats on land at the hands of the German army and had had to evacuate, as I've already mentioned, Norway, France and Greece. When Operation Torch, the first Anglo American joint military venture is being launched in November of 1980, 42 Churchill tells his confidants that he will have to resign as Prime Minister if this is a failure because he just cannot stand up in front of the House of Commons and announce that there has been another evacuation. The Americans are keen, they're fresh and it is part of their strategy, or an inherent part of American strategy, that the swiftest way to end war is to strike at the enemies strongest point and to defeat him there. The British are able to resist this simply by the fact that firstly, Churchill does have quite a large influence on Roosevelt who defers to him in matters of strategy, not necessarily FDR's specialism during the early part of their alliance, but secondly, because the majority of the troops, the majority of the ships, the majority of the landing craft that would be used for any major invasion of Europe or indeed North Africa in 1942 or 1943 were British or British Commonwealth. And so that gives the British an effective de facto veto over American suggestions. The Americans of course have their own not veto, but serious piece of leverage in the fact that they can, and indeed do at various points threatening to pull out of Europe if the British don't go along with their desired strategy and focus entirely on the war against Japan in the Pacific.
[33:54]
Dr. Charles Petill
So you would not attribute per se the British success in terms of planning to superior staff work by the uk.
[34:05]
Tim Bouverie
Certainly that helped. I mean the British plans for the invasion of North Africa and then for the invasion of Sicily were far more robust, were far more thought through and were being much smaller operations, far more practicable than the American desire to launch an invasion across the Channel against the forces in German forces in France. So yes, staff work and planning played a part, but I don't think it was the critical factor.
[34:37]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why was Roosevelt, an American officialdom, generally so hostile to de Gaulle?
[34:42]
Tim Bouverie
It's very curious. There was, as you say, real outright hostility. To a large extent this was to do with de Gaulle's behavior and reports in the press and reports from US diplomatic representatives and envoys that de Gaulle was anti democratic, extremely right wing, possibly even a potential fascist dictator in the making. And Roosevelt didn't like that. And quite right too. Nobody would like that. Now, while de Gaulle may not have been that great a democrat or his democratic credentials may not have been that strong and he certainly was dictatorial in the way he ran his outfit, this nevertheless was a gross exaggeration. And there was Nothing fascistic about General de Gaulle. @ the same time, the Americans did not place great store on restoring France as a major power. It wasn't important to them. They didn't even think that it could happen. And one of the reasons that it wasn't important to them was obviously the large ocean that separates France from America. For Britain, the rebuilding of France was not just a matter of honour, it was a matter of strategic priority, because they couldn't be the only power on the continent facing either a resurgent Germany or a newly dominant Soviet Union. And so it's a combination of major global political and strategic factors and outright personal.
[36:17]
Dr. Charles Petill
Hostility. Why did Roosevelt decide to side with Stalin as opposed to Churchill at the Tehran conference of late.
[36:24]
Tim Bouverie
1943? Well, at the Tehran Conference of November 1943, the Americans gang up with the Soviets against the British to ensure that there is a spring date for Operation Overlord, that is to say the re invasion of France by the Western Allies. And the British were dragging their feet on this. For the reasons I've just mentioned. The Americans wish this operation to take place place as soon as possible for the reasons I've already just mentioned. So it was a perfectly legitimate area on which to oppose the British and they succeeded. On the other hand, more generally, Roosevelt wanted to show Stalin that he was not bought and paid for, as it were, by the British. Indeed that he and Churchill were not always united in their military or political strategy. And he felt that this was his way of showing Stalin that he could be trusted. He thought that this was a good way to build a bilateral relationship between himself and Stalin, between the US and the ussr. But unfortunately it just showed Stalin that the democracies could be played off against each other and that he would not be facing a united democratic front when it came to some of his less popular desiderata Even within the U.S.
[37:52]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why was Roosevelt so invested in the concept or the idea that Chiang Kai Shek's China was a great power in the same level as the United States or the Soviet Union or for that matter, Great.
[38:06]
Tim Bouverie
Britain? Roosevelt was pretty pragmatic about this. He didn't claim that Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist China was a great power in 1942 or 1943 or even 1944. But what he kept on saying to those Sino skeptics, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, who did not wish to see China elevated to the status of a great power, certainly not on a par with the British Empire and the USSR and the usa, is that China had the potential to become a great power. He just kept on repeating, this is a country of half a billion people and they're going to count for something one day. And when they do, do we want them creating their own version of an exclusive Asiatic sphere of influence as the Japanese are currently and have been trying to do, or do we want to have them allying with the Soviet Union against the Western democracies? And in that he was completely correct. It didn't work, but it was a noble and far sighted.
[39:10]
Dr. Charles Petill
Ambition. What was Churchill trying to do with his percentages agreement with Stalin in the fall of.
[39:16]
Tim Bouverie
1944? This is one of the most controversial acts of Churchill's wartime leadership. In the autumn of 1944. Churchill is becoming increasingly alarmed by the success of the Red army and Stalin's intransigence over a fair deal for Poland. He sees the fact that the Red army is moving into the Balkans and that if he doesn't get some sort of an agreement with Stalin on some of these areas, particularly Greece, then all of the Balkans is going to be Bolshevised. And this is when he meets Stalin in the Kremlin and, and presents him with a notorious piece of paper, sometimes referred to as the naughty document, in which in his own hand he has written down the percentages of influence which the USSR and the British are going to have in certain Balkan countries after the war. So he proposes, for instance, that in Yugoslavia the British and the Soviets will have 50% influence each in that region. In Bulgaria the Soviets will have 90% influence and the British will only have 10% influence. But in Greece, Britain will have 90% influence and the Soviet Union will only have 10% influence. And this document has been decried, it has been denounced. It's beyond cynical that something as important as the post war status and the post war composition of governments and foreign interests therein relating of these countries could be so casually decided without any input from the countries themselves. And yet this, in my view, really misses the point. What Churchill was trying to do was trying to save what was left to be saved, which was Greece, because the Red army wasn't yet in Greece, but it was in, in or about to be in most of these other countries to save what was left to be saved by sacrificing what had already been lost. And in that he was successful. Stalin did not aid the communist partisans in the first iteration of the Greek Civil War, which broke out in the winter of 1944, 1945. And indeed he remained fairly chary about getting involved in the second iteration of the Greek Civil War once the Cold War was even.
[41:47]
Dr. Charles Petill
Underway. Why do you state that? Quote, the decisions made at Yalta had less significance than those taken at previous meetings between 1941 and.
[41:56]
Tim Bouverie
1945. Simply because what Stalin had said earlier in private, which was that what mattered was not paper agreements, was not summits, but the correlation of forces and specifically the locality of these forces where, where a Red army soldier stood, he likely was not going to be withdrawn. And so by the time of Yalta, there is very little that the British and the Americans can do, for instance, to ensure that a free, independent, democratic Poland, as they wish. Had they wished to guarantee a free, independent, democratic Poland, they would have had to try and pressure Stalin into accepting this much much earlier by potentially linking the fate of Eastern and Central Europe to lend lease supplies. But then that's an extremely unlikely proposition when one considers how much the western democracies were relying on on the Red army to continue killing hundreds of thousands of Germans. But also it's the decisions not to cross the Channel, to continue to engage in a peripheral and Mediterranean strategy to not try and get, and then also to not try and get British and American forces into Central or Eastern Europe at an early date that ensure that by Yalta the Red army is in possession of this territory. And the strategy which Roosevelt, who is easily the most powerful of the democratic leaders by Yalta, pursues at this conference is the same strategy that he has pursued since 1942, namely, great power, cooperation comes above all else. And that continuing to work with the Soviet Union and continuing to bring the Soviet Union into the international system, exemplified by his championship of power, a new International organization, the future United nations is his overriding priority. So for anything to really be different at Yalta, I'm not saying that the democracies couldn't have won a few more tricks at Yalta, and I'm certainly not claiming that either Roosevelt or Churchill were at their best at Yalta, particularly Roosevelt. But to really alter the diplomatic political landscape, then decisions would have had to have been made differently at a much earlier.
[44:28]
Dr. Charles Petill
Stage. Would it be true to say that unlike Churchill, Rosa and Stalin more or less got what they wanted at the Yalta.
[44:36]
Tim Bouverie
Conference? Yes, I think it would be true to say that although Stalin didn't get actually everything he wanted, further dismantling, therefore the idea that Yalta was some great betrayal, he didn't get what he wanted on the division of Germany and he didn't get what he wanted on. On reparations. He also had to accept France as an occupying power of Germany once the war was over. So he didn't get everything he wanted. What he did get was a deal on Soviet involvement in the war against Japan and territory as a reward for that involvement in the Far East. He got that which he wanted. He also had very little to worry about. His plans for Eastern and Central Europe based on the Declaration of Liberated Europe, which Roosevelt and Churchill got him to sign. And Churchill got what he wanted, which was Soviet membership of the United nations and a absolute commitment to joining the war against Japan. Despite the fact that Stalin had been saying that he would join the war against Japan from 1941 onwards. I mean, almost immediately after Pearl harbor, he was suggesting that at some stage the Soviet Union would get involved in the war against Japan. So why the US never took him at his word in earlier moments and kept on re bargaining the point, kept on giving more and more concessions to Sugar. The deal is.
[46:03]
Dr. Charles Petill
Perplexing. What do you mean exactly when you state, quote, the crux of the matter was that there was a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the alliance.
[46:13]
Tim Bouverie
Unquote. What I mean is that that the grand alliance was fighting for different ideals and for different reasons, and was completely, incongruously composed. What does that mean in simple terms? It means that the British and the Americans were fighting the war in the name of democracy, in the name of the rights of small nations, in the name of international law, in the name of not just living in a world which is governed by the law of the jungle and devil take the hindmost and survival of the fittest. And they were fighting against a hegemonic, totalitarian, murderous regime. And yet in order to achieve victory by 1945, certainly with the relatively low casualty rates that the British and the Americans suffered compared to the Germans or the Soviets, they had to do this in alliance with a totalitarian, murderous, potentially hegemonic power that didn't give a fig for the rights of small nations, for international law, or for morality. So that is the fundamental contradiction that I am alluding to in that.
[47:25]
Dr. Charles Petill
Quotation. If you wanted people to take one thing away from your book, what would it.
[47:29]
Tim Bouverie
Be? And so I would urge everyone that one of the lessons of my book is the importance of.
[47:35]
Dr. Charles Petill
Allies. On that observation, which I like to agree with entirely, I would like to thank you very much, Tim, for being so kind to speak with us today. Charles Coutho, you'll be listening to New Books in History, a podcast channel, New Books Network. Thank you, Tim, very.
[47:49]
Tim Bouverie
Much. Thank you, Charles. It's been.
[47:50]
Commercial Narrator
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[48:19]
Tim Bouverie
Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching.
[48:23]
Commercial Narrator
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Summary7 min read

Podcast Summary:

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Charles Petill
Guest: Tim Bouverie, author of "Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World" (Crown, 2025)
Date: December 19, 2025

Overview

In this in-depth interview, historian Tim Bouverie discusses his latest book, Allies at War, with host Dr. Charles Petill. The discussion centers on how the uneasy and often fraught relationships among the major Allied powers—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—shaped the course and outcome of World War II, along with the war’s geopolitical aftermath. Bouverie shares new archival findings and offers nuanced interpretations of now-classic events. The conversation is rich with insights into diplomatic strategy, alliance politics, key personalities, and the legacy of wartime decision making.

Episode Structure & Key Points

I. Motivation and Approach for "Allies at War"

[02:35 – 04:29]

Bouverie explains the book’s genesis as a continuation of his previous work (Appeasement) and identifies a scholarly gap: WW2 is too often seen as a story of pure military events, neglecting the crucial role of politics and alliance management.
- Quote: “Politics was absolutely critical to the Second World War.... It required an enormous amount of highly complex and often highly acrimonious politics going on behind the scenes...” (03:05)
He describes his method as “integrated” diplomatic history, situating high-level diplomacy within broader social and battlefield contexts, as opposed to an isolated “old-fashioned” approach.
- Quote: “Diplomacy is part of a wider picture and is always being informed by both public opinion in the democratic states and the situation on the battlefield.” (05:15)

II. Novel Archival Findings

[06:26 – 10:09]

Bouverie reports significant but nuanced discoveries, notably in unpublished diaries and diplomatic memoirs.
Highlight: A telegram from July 1940 revealing that Churchill informed President Roosevelt in advance about the attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, contrary to prior historiography.
- Quote: “Mr. President, you will see that Winston Churchill has taken the action with regard to the French fleet which you and I discussed and you approved.” (08:54)
Emphasizes Churchill’s constant awareness of American perception and the need to elicit U.S. support.

III. Churchill's Strategy and Anglo-French Policy

[10:09 – 15:52]

Revisits the debate about Churchill’s rationale for fighting on in 1940, agreeing with David Reynolds that Churchill’s main hope was U.S. entry into the war, despite lack of evidence for imminent U.S. intervention.
- Quote: “Churchill’s strategy for winning the war was entirely based on the US joining it... the US was the ace of spades which Churchill was praying would turn up.” (12:01)
Details the French and British expectation for a drawn-out, defensive war, not anticipating the speed of German victory.
- Insight: Their unimaginative strategy was shaped by WWI experiences and the hope of economic attrition.

IV. Diplomacy with France and the De Gaulle Decision

[15:39 – 17:40]

Churchill recognized Charles de Gaulle as leader of Free France out of necessity, as no more senior leader would assume the mantle.
- Quote: “It’s only because nobody else came that they recognized de Gaulle.” (16:31)

V. Alliance with the United States

[17:40 – 18:57]

The Destroyers-for-Bases deal was crucial, more for the political signal of U.S. support than for immediate military advantage.
- Quote: “This was very much not a neutral act by a neutral nation.” (17:55)

VI. The Balkans, Greece, and Political Strategy in War

[18:57 – 22:14]

Explains the British commitment to defend Greece—against sound military logic—was largely driven by political optics and imperial prestige.
- Quote: “[I]t is just considered too politically impossible…to abandon an ally which is expecting British aid at this time.” (20:58)
The failure in Greece is emblematic of political motives superseding strategy.

VII. Overlooked Episodes: Iraq and Crete

[23:57 – 25:57]

The British victory in Iraq (1941) was more strategically significant than the loss of Crete, as it protected vital oil supplies and prevented Axis encirclement of British forces in the Middle East.

VIII. The Alliance with the Soviet Union

[25:57 – 29:31]

Describes Churchill’s pragmatic embrace of the USSR after Barbarossa, despite earlier fierce anti-Bolshevism.
- Quote: “Churchill is pragmatic enough to realise that any diversion of German forces away from Britain…was certainly going to be to Britain’s and the Allied the benefit.” (26:32)
FDR’s complex opportunism—he could lapse between idealism, cynicism, and pragmatism, not simply “naive about the Soviet Union.”
- Quote: “Almost everything about him that you can say with any certainty, you can also say the exact opposite.” (28:02)

IX. Key Personalities: Harry Hopkins

[29:31 – 31:03]

Harry Hopkins, more than any diplomat, was FDR’s trusted emissary—crucial in facilitating mutual trust between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.

X. Allied Planning: Britain vs. America

[31:03 – 34:36]

Until late 1943, Britain had more clout in allied strategy due to military resources and Churchill’s influence. The British preference for indirect, peripheral campaigns delayed a cross-Channel invasion.

XI. Hostility to de Gaulle

[34:36 – 36:16]

U.S. officials’ distrust of de Gaulle stemmed from reports portraying him as anti-democratic; but also from a lack of U.S. interest in restoring France as a major power, unlike Britain.

XII. Diverging Agendas: Tehran, China, and the Percentages Agreement

[36:16 – 41:46]

At Tehran (Nov 1943), Roosevelt sides with Stalin to assure a D-Day timetable and signal Anglo-American differences.
- Quote: “[Roosevelt] felt that this was his way of showing Stalin that he could be trusted... But unfortunately it just showed Stalin that the democracies could be played off against each other...” (37:14)
Roosevelt’s insistence on elevating China stems from belief in its potential, not present power, trying to integrate it into post-war planning.
Churchill’s “percentages agreement” with Stalin (1944) was a pragmatic effort to protect British interests in Greece while conceding Soviet predominance elsewhere in the Balkans.

XIII. Yalta Conference and the “Crux” of Alliance

[41:46 – 46:12]

Yalta’s outcomes largely reflected military realities—control on the ground trumped diplomatic bargains.
- Quote: “What mattered was not paper agreements… but the correlation of forces and specifically the locality of these forces.” (41:59)
Roosevelt and Stalin substantially achieved their aims; Yalta was “not some great betrayal” but a codification of facts on the ground.

XIV. The Underlying Contradiction of the Grand Alliance

[46:12 – 47:25]

The fundamental contradiction: Allies, fighting for opposed ideals (democracy vs. totalitarianism), were forced together by necessity.
- Quote: “They had to do this in alliance with a totalitarian, murderous, potentially hegemonic power that didn’t give a fig for the rights of small nations, for international law, or for morality.” (46:38)

XV. Final Reflection: The Importance of Allies

[47:25 – 47:35]

Bouverie: “I would urge everyone that one of the lessons of my book is the importance of allies.”

Memorable Quotes & Insights (with Timestamps)

“Politics was absolutely critical to the Second World War.” (03:05) - Tim Bouverie
“Diplomacy is part of a wider picture and is always being informed by both public opinion…” (05:15) - Tim Bouverie
“Churchill’s strategy... was entirely based on the US joining it... and in May of 1940, there was no evidence that the US was coming to Britain’s aid in arms.” (12:01) - Tim Bouverie
“It’s only because nobody else came that they recognized de Gaulle.” (16:31) - Tim Bouverie
“This was very much not a neutral act by a neutral nation.” (17:55) - Tim Bouverie on the Destroyers-for-Bases deal
“Any diversion of German forces away from Britain… was certainly going to be to Britain’s and the Allied the benefit.” (26:32) - Tim Bouverie
“Almost everything about [FDR] that you can say with any certainty, you can also say the exact opposite. He was deeply earnest… and yet he was also extraordinarily frivolous.” (28:02) - Tim Bouverie
“They had to do this in alliance with a totalitarian, murderous, potentially hegemonic power…” (46:38) - Tim Bouverie
“I would urge everyone that one of the lessons of my book is the importance of allies.” (47:28) - Tim Bouverie

Important Timestamps

[02:37] Motivation for the book and approach to diplomatic history
[08:54] The Churchill-Roosevelt telegram on the French fleet
[12:01] Churchill’s reliance on U.S. involvement
[16:31] The recognition of de Gaulle
[17:55] Destroyers-for-Bases as a turning point
[20:58] Politics driving British intervention in Greece
[26:32] Churchill’s sudden pact with Stalin
[28:02] The paradoxes of FDR
[37:14] Roosevelt’s Tehran conference strategy
[41:59] Yalta: Military facts over paper agreements
[46:38] The contradiction of the Allied coalition
[47:28] Lesson: Importance of allies

Tone & Style

The conversation is analytical but accessible, peppered with dry humor and frank assessments. Bouverie is candid about the moral and practical ambiguities of Allied diplomacy, while Dr. Petill prompts with sharp, informed questions.

Takeaway

“Allies at War” provides a layered look at the diplomacy behind World War II’s outcome, challenging simple tales of heroic unity. The episode is an essential listen for understanding how uneasy alliances—grounded in necessity rather than shared ideals—shaped not only victory, but the world that followed.

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Transcript70 lines

[00:00]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to the New Books Network, I imagine you like to read and I'm wondering if you have a goal to read more this year. How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread podcast is here to help. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They feature 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. You'll get a brief synopsis, fun and witty commentary, no spoilers and no sponsored reviews. It's just what Casey and Tyler think. Life's too short to read a bad book. So subscribe to the Proofread podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming. Thanks very much.
[00:52]
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[01:18]
Tim Bouverie
Phew.
[01:19]
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[01:53]
Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
[01:58]
Dr. Charles Petill
Good day. Welcome to New Books in History, a podcast channel, New Books Network. My name is Dr. Charles Petill. I'm a host on channel and today we are pleased indeed honor to have with us Tim Bouverie. Tim is the author of a well, very well received book which was Appeasement dealing with the diplomatic history in Europe in the 1930s. In addition, he is a graduate of Christchurch, Oxford, as well as having been a Alistair Horne Fellow at St Anthony's College, Oxford. And today he's got his newest book, Allies at War, which is published by Crowd. Welcome, Tim.
[02:34]
Tim Bouverie
Thank you, Charles. It's great to be here.
[02:35]
Dr. Charles Petill
And why did you write this Book.
[02:37]
Tim Bouverie
Well, the book came really out of my first book. I had written, as you say, this book, Appeasement, Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, which dealt with all of the machinations and diplomacy that is now known by the title Appeasement. And like you and many of your listeners, I'd read quite a lot about the Second World War. I'd read most of the well known secondary literature and it struck me that there seemed to be too much of a disconnect between the pre war period and the post war period and the actual war itself. Mainly that too often historians seem to assume that once war begins, this is purely a story of military engagements, of tanks and aeroplanes, spies and servicemen. But politics was absolutely critical to the Second World War. If we want to think about just at the most macro level, the most fundamental reason why Adolf Hitler and the militarist governments of Emperor Miconomiya Hirohito did not triumph between 1939 and 1945, it is because they were confronted by a superior coalition of nations and empires that combined their resources and coordinated their plans in order to thwart them. And now that may sound simple, but it really wasn't. It required an enormous amount of highly complex and often highly acrimonious politics going on behind the scenes between the big three, but also sundry other powers as well. And I felt that this hadn't been sufficiently explored. And I felt that both in terms of the scope of inquiry and the depth of inquiry, there was something more to be said and something more to be found. True.
[04:29]
Dr. Charles Petill
Would it be true to say that yours is a old fashioned diplomatic history?
[04:34]
Tim Bouverie
It would be, I think, fair to say that in the sense that, yes, this deals with foreign ministers, prime ministers, presidents, military leaders, it is on the other hand, an attempt to be integrated. It doesn't look at foreign relations in isolation. For example, why was it impossible for the British and the Americans to confront Stalin over his ambitions in Eastern and Central Europe at Yalta or in February of 1945, or indeed before? Well, there were several reasons, but one of the most fundamental was that public opinion in both Britain and the US was strongly pro Soviet thanks to the heroic deeds of the Red army and the propaganda on which they had been fed extolling those deeds, including the defeat of General von Paulus army at Stalingrad. So I don't look at diplomacy in isolation. Diplomacy is part of a wider picture and is always being informed by both public opinion in the democratic states and the situation on the battlefield. And so while it may be old fashioned in the sense that it's not looking at any of the more in vogue subjects such as gender or decolonization. Although it certainly deals with many aspects of colonialism and not favorably in any way, it, I hope, more rounded than the slightly pejorative label of old fashioned diplomatic history has.
[06:12]
Dr. Charles Petill
Oh, I mean, to be honest, from my perspective, there's nothing better than a good old fashioned diplomatic history.
[06:21]
Tim Bouverie
I rather agree, but it tends to be when people use that term that they're not being complimentary.
[06:27]
Dr. Charles Petill
Unfortunately, you are correct. It would appear from the endnotes in the bibliography of the book that you've done an enormous amount of archival and other research, even though the subject matter has been fairly well researched. What would you point to as the something which is novel that you found in your research?
[06:48]
Tim Bouverie
Well, I managed to find quite a lot of material which doesn't revolutionize our understanding of the war. I can't come to you today and tell you that the Queen Mother was having an affair with Joseph Stalin between 1942 and 1944. Much as publishers would love that sort of expose or smoking gun. But I found a huge amount of material from the diaries and unpublished memoirs of diplomats which had never been published before, never appeared in print, and which I think adds nuance and complexity to an otherwise familiar story. If I was to give one specific example, it is a one line telegram which I discovered in the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential archive in upstate New York. And it is dated 4th July 1940. Now, on 3rd July 1940, the British had enjoyed their first victory over the Second World War. Unfortunately though, this was not a victory over the Germans or the Italians, but over their former allies, the French. This was the bombing and bombardment of the Force Dorade, a significant section of the French navy off the North African coast, which resulted in the deaths of some 1300 French sailors. And there was a strong military rationale for this action, but there was also a political rationale. The political rationale being that Churchill was desperate to show the world in general and the United States in particular that Britain was going to do anything in order to survive and that Britain was not going to go the way of the U.S. oh, sorry. That Britain was not going to go the way of the French in surrendering as they had done on 17 June 1940. They had to make this demonstration clear because there wasn't frankly that much USAID crossing the Atlantic at the time. One of the reasons for which was the sense of in Washington and across the then 48 states that Britain was heading for defeat and what was the point in sending what little materiel the US had to Britain if it was merely going to end up in the hands of the Germans? So there's been a lot of speculation about this American angle to the shelling of the French fleet, but nothing that has ever been proved. And I simply came across this telegram from the then British ambassador, a man called Lord Lothian, to Roosevelt on the 4th of July 1940, which simply said, Mr. President, you will see that Winston Churchill has taken the action with regard to the French fleet which you and I discussed and you approved. And as I say before, that there had never been any suggestion in primary or secondary literature that the Americans had even been informed of what the British were planning, let alone that Churchill had sought presidential approval. And I think this really encapsulates how from the moment he becomes Prime Minister on 10th May 1940, right through to Pearl harbor on 7th December 1941, there is nothing that Winston Churchill does without an eye to US Presidential, congressional and public opinion.
[10:09]
Dr. Charles Petill
Now, David Reynolds wrote a very influential journal article titled Churchill's Decision to Fight On Right Policy, Wrong Reasons. And I'm sure you're familiar with it, but would you say that he's correct in impositing that while Churchill's decision to fight on, as opposed to Halifax, who would have tried to negotiate something with Mussolini as intermediary, that Churchill's decision to fight on in May, in June 1940 was correct, but the reason that he gave were in fact erroneous? Would you confirm that?
[10:45]
Tim Bouverie
Can you remind me what exactly the erroneous reason was cited by Reynolds?
[10:50]
Dr. Charles Petill
Well, specifically that the United States was willing to join the. The fight vis a vis the fascist powers by sometime in the summer, mid or late summer of 1940?
[11:02]
Tim Bouverie
Yeah, well, I, I mean, I would. I'm in broad agreements and I have unbounded respect for the considerable amount of scholarship of David Reynolds. I think it's wrong policy and right reasons. I would argue because the right reasons were that life for Britain and for Britons would not be worth living with a Nazified Europe, that British independence would be severely impinged, and more altruistically, that the continent and what was left, as Churchill described it, of European Christian civilization did have to be saved. That was the main reason for fighting on. So right policy and right reason, where I. But if we're not going to quibble over semantics, where you are completely right, where Reynolds is completely right, is that Churchill's strategy for winning the war was entirely based on the US joining it and in May of 1940, there was no evidence that the US was coming to Britain's aid in arms. It might help financially eventually. It might supply some of the tools to help not finish the job, but keep Britain in the war long enough for something to turn up. And Churchill indeed failed in this. Churchill did not bring the US into the war. It was the Japanese that brought the US into the war and Hitler that then declared war. The strategy was to survive until something turned up. And if one was thinking of this in cards as an analogy, the US was the ace of spades which Churchill was praying would turn up.
[12:49]
Dr. Charles Petill
Now the book has a novelty which, which is great, which is the fact that at the beginning of the book you explore in depth the Anglo French relationship and policy vis a vis Hitler's Germany. Would you say, what would you say then was the agreed Anglo French policy in terms of how they envision, envisions winning the war?
[13:16]
Tim Bouverie
I think this is really crucial. And the point of including all of this is that nobody, including Adolf Hitler, expected the Anglo French alliance to collapse so swiftly, certainly not in six weeks in 1940. This was the alliance which was meant to win the war. And this was the alliance which had held the Germans for four years on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. The strategy it may surprise people to learn what the reasons that is was defensive, based on the idea that the British and the French were bound to win a long war because they had superior wells of resources to the Germans with their large maritime empires and strong financial bases, particularly the British, but that they could potentially lose a short war. And in their thinking it was also the attacker was at greater risk than the defender. That had been the lesson of the trenches, that the attackers got massacred while the defenders remained on occasion relatively safe in their trenches. But this was envisaging, fighting a completely different war to the war which Hitler and his generals were planning to wage. And indeed, it is shocking that the British and the French, in particular the French, did not learn the lessons of the Polish Campaign of September 1939 and continued to prepare for a highly static defensive war of attrition in the West. But yes, their strategy was to outlast the Germans, to build up a blockade, to try and wear the German economy down, to try and stimulate trouble on the home front for Hitler. But it was certainly naive in expecting that this could produce any immediate results. The blockade did not really start to affect the German economy in the First World War until the dying months or certainly the final year. So it was an unimaginative strategy born of politicians who were desperate to avoid the massacres that had existed at the Somme and Passchendaele and Ypres between 1914 and 1980.
[15:40]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why did Churchill decide to back a relative non entity, Charles de Gaulle, to be representing a French resistance to defeat?
[15:52]
Tim Bouverie
Well, it's a completely astonishing decision. We're so used to the idea of de Gaulle as this great indomitable symbol of French resistance and a future President of France, that it seems perfectly natural that the British government on 27 June should recognise him as the leader of all Frenchmen that rally to him in support of the Allied cause. But this was an incredibly reckless decision in the way one considers the lack of information the British had about General de Gaulle. All they really knew about him was that he was the youngest Brigadier General in the French army and that he had been a member of the most disastrous government in French history for 11 days. That is the government that surrendered to the Germans on the 17th of June. The reason Churchill backed him, the reason Churchill anointed him as the symbol of French resistance, was that nobody more senior came. The British were hoping for a major national figure, somebody like General Von who was the commander in chief of the French armed forces at the time of the surrender, or the French Prime Minister, Paul Renault, or some other senior general in the French empire or a governor in the French Empire, someone, anyone. And it's only because nobody else came that they recognized de Gaulle. But for quite a long time they kept their options open and had a more senior figure turned up in 1940, particularly after the Dakar incident or fiasco, which I go into in quite a bit of detail in the book, I think it is entirely possible that they would have forced de Gaulle to submit to them rather than the other way around.
[17:40]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why was the basis for destroyers transaction between the United States and the UK so important to the future of Anglo American relationship?
[17:48]
Tim Bouverie
It was important not necessarily to the future of Anglo American relations long, long term, beyond the Second World War, but it was important at the time in that this was very much not a neutral act by a neutral nation. This was showing that the US was prepared to back the British, that the US very clearly wished the British to win, and that the US was prepared to aid the British, despite the fact that the transaction was completely inequitable. In order to obtain these 50 destroyers which carried with them great political value, but not necessarily great military worth, the British gave up leases for air and naval facilities on their colonial possessions in the West Indies and the Caribbean and the North Atlantic to the US for 99 years. It was, as Roosevelt told Congress, the greatest addition to the defense of the United States since the Louisiana Purchase. But as I say, the real significance of the deal was that it showed that Britain had a powerful ally, even if this ally was not yet fighting.
[18:58]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why did the British decide to assist the Greeks in their war with Fascist Italy?
[19:02]
Tim Bouverie
I think that this is a completely fascinating episode because it is one which shows how politics can often guide military strategy rather than the other way around. The background is this. In October, November of 1940, Mussolini had invaded neutral Greece. The Greeks had beat the Italians and driven them back into Albania. But then Hitler decided that he couldn't see his fellow fascist ally humiliated in this region and feared British intervention. So he decided to intervene. And in the winter of 1940, 1941, German troops began massing along the frontiers not only of Greece, but also of Yugoslavia. This is extremely inconvenient for the British because they have finally got the Italians on the run in North Africa. They have the opportunity, if they continue the North African campaign, of ridding the Axis from the entire continent of Africa. On the other hand, they could disengage from the battle in North Africa and send the majority of their forces to Greece. This is not thought of as a sensible military option. The chances of success in Greece, most British military officials think, are very, very slender. And yet the British government, led by Churchill and highly supported by Anthony Eden, the War Secretary and then Foreign Minister, who think that it is politically essential to come to Greece's aid because Britain has guaranteed Greece. In March of 1939, Britain guaranteed Poland. And then after that guarantee, Britain promised to come to the aid of Greece and Romania should either of these countries be the subject of unprovoked aggression and it is just considered too politically impossible or precarious to abandon an ally, an ally which is expecting British aid at this time. And how this is going to play not only in United States of America, who will have an awful lot of sympathy for another neutral country being attacked by the Axis. And was, it was to be expected, going to be censorious about Britain abandoning her ally, but also how it was going to play in the rest of the Empire. The British Empire at this stage is being held together by barely, barely at all. But if it's being held together by anything, it is largely being held together by tradition and a sense of British prestige. If Britain is seen as being so feeble that she cannot even try or won't even try to come to the aid of a minor Balkan ally, then the chances of Britain managing to hold on to her empire in Africa and the Far east and the Middle east might might as well be put at naught. So that is the rationale. And yet it really does lead to the military debacle that the strategists in London had always feared. And the British have to evacuate Greece just as they had already had to evacuate Norway, just as they had already had to evacuate France.
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[23:54]
Tim Bouverie
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[23:58]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why did you put it? Was the British victory in Iraq of greater significance than the loss of Crete to the Germans?
[24:04]
Tim Bouverie
This is a really misunderstood or I should rephrase that neglected episode. In May of 1941, the Iraqi government, which had been changed owing to a coup d', etat, aligned itself with the Axis and decided to try and drive the British out of Iraq. Iraq is technically independent, but it is more de facto under British protection, a part of the British Empire and certainly a crucial source of of oil for the British and their campaign in the Mediterranean and North Africa. And while the loss of Crete is contemporaneous with the battle in Iraq, this is late spring 1941. The loss of Crete does not close the Mediterranean to the Royal Navy. It does not prevent the British from continuing operations in the Middle east and in North Africa. The loss of Malta, by the way, would have been much more serious from that perspective. But the loss of Iraq threatened to completely encircle the headquarters of British military aid and British forces in the Middle East. In Egypt, Rommel would be coming from the west and then there would be a German force or an Italian force or an Axis force, at any rate able to be attacking from the northeast and further to which Britain's sources of oil from not only Iraq but also from Iran would have been severed. So it would not just in my judgment, but in the judgment of Air Marshal Tedder and some of the other senior military officials at the time have been a far, far greater disaster than the loss of Crete turned out to be.
[25:57]
Dr. Charles Petill
What was the Anglo American response to the Russo German war which began in June 1941?
[26:03]
Tim Bouverie
Churchill was elated when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. He broadcast immediately, and indeed without Cabinet approval, that the British would give the Russians every element of aid that they could spare. And this is a significant statement from a politician who has defined himself in, in the 1920s as not just an arch opponent of Bolshevism, but the arch opponent of Bolshevism. And certainly it is difficult in some respects for the British because not only does Stalin preside over a regime and a dictatorship and totalitarian system every bit internally, as invidious as that presided over by Adolf Hitler, but Stalin has been Hitler's ally for the first year and a half of the war. It is the Stalin Hitler Molotov ribbentropped pact of August 1939 that unleashes the Second World War. And yet Churchill is pragmatic enough to realise that any diversion of German forces away from Britain, any entanglement of the German army in what had and Churchill might knew his history and he certainly knew what had happened to Napoleon. The morass of Russia was certainly going to be to Britain's and the Allied the benefit. So there was a welcoming of Russia's involvement in the war in Britain and in the United States. Roosevelt extended lend lease to Russia fairly swiftly.
[27:44]
Dr. Charles Petill
Would it be true to say that you're. That in your narrative FDR more or less conforms to the characterization by the American historian Richard Hofstadler, which was quote the patrician as opportunist unquote I think.
[27:57]
Tim Bouverie
That that's a pretty good encapsulation. I think that the thing with FDR is that he is an extraordinarily complex character. I really came by the end of my research to the conclusion that almost everything about him that you can say with any certainty, you can also say the exact opposite. He was deeply earnest in many respects, and yet he was also extraordinarily frivolous. He was undoubtedly one of the great idealists of the 20th century, and yet he was also a rank opportunist and a dreadful cynics. And I think it's not enough to say that he was simply naive about the Soviet Union, because there are documents, less well known documents, which I quote in the book, which shows that at various moments he was aware of what Stalin had in store for Eastern and Central Europe. And yet, while he didn't mind this so much or certainly wasn't prepared to give it much thought during the war itself, because of the inestimable service that the Red army was giving to Allies victory, he nevertheless always retained this optimism, both in his own ability to rearrange the pieces on the chessboard at the end of the war, but also on American economic leverage, which so he felt, would bring about great dividends once hostilities had ceased.
[29:31]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why, until, I'm sorry, why was Harry Hopkins such an important figure in Anglo American relationship during the time period of your book?
[29:40]
Tim Bouverie
Harry Hopkins, a social worker from Sioux City, Iowa, was from the mid-30s until certainly 1943, Roosevelt's closest confidant and probably the closest thing the President had in those years to a genuine friend. And Roosevelt goes out of his way to ignore professional diplomats and to ignore the State Department during the war. He relies on unofficial emissaries, and Hopkins is by far the most important. And Hopkins not only had Roosevelt's trust, he also had Churchill's trust. And there are just so many occasions when Hopkins is able to act as an intermediary between the two men. He brings about their first meeting during the war at Placentia Bay in August of 1941. And just before that, he has proven a valuable conduit between Roosevelt and Stalin. He meets Stalin shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. And it is his testimony that convinces Roosevelt that the USSR is not going to surrender. Just as it was his testimony that convinced or helped convince Roosevelt that Britain was not going to surrender. That loosens roosevelt's and the US's generosity towards the Soviet war effort.
[31:03]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why until late 1943 were the British able to run around the American around in circles in terms of Allied planning.
[31:11]
Tim Bouverie
The British and the Americans had different views of grand strategy and both of these come a bit out of their own experience of the war thus far. Far or rather lack of experience in America's case because America only entered the war in December of 1941. But also on long held theories of strategy. British strategy had always been from at least the Napoleonic wars onwards, to try and chip away at the enemy's force before going, as it were, for the jugular. Because to attack the most strongly defended position was in their view, to invite a bloody repulse. Therefore the British inherently, but also due to their own experience of the war, were chary and that is to put it mildly, of crossing the Channel and re invading France too soon. And we can understand this. The British had suffered multiple defeats on land at the hands of the German army and had had to evacuate, as I've already mentioned, Norway, France and Greece. When Operation Torch, the first Anglo American joint military venture is being launched in November of 1980, 42 Churchill tells his confidants that he will have to resign as Prime Minister if this is a failure because he just cannot stand up in front of the House of Commons and announce that there has been another evacuation. The Americans are keen, they're fresh and it is part of their strategy, or an inherent part of American strategy, that the swiftest way to end war is to strike at the enemies strongest point and to defeat him there. The British are able to resist this simply by the fact that firstly, Churchill does have quite a large influence on Roosevelt who defers to him in matters of strategy, not necessarily FDR's specialism during the early part of their alliance, but secondly, because the majority of the troops, the majority of the ships, the majority of the landing craft that would be used for any major invasion of Europe or indeed North Africa in 1942 or 1943 were British or British Commonwealth. And so that gives the British an effective de facto veto over American suggestions. The Americans of course have their own not veto, but serious piece of leverage in the fact that they can, and indeed do at various points threatening to pull out of Europe if the British don't go along with their desired strategy and focus entirely on the war against Japan in the Pacific.
[33:54]
Dr. Charles Petill
So you would not attribute per se the British success in terms of planning to superior staff work by the uk.
[34:05]
Tim Bouverie
Certainly that helped. I mean the British plans for the invasion of North Africa and then for the invasion of Sicily were far more robust, were far more thought through and were being much smaller operations, far more practicable than the American desire to launch an invasion across the Channel against the forces in German forces in France. So yes, staff work and planning played a part, but I don't think it was the critical factor.
[34:37]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why was Roosevelt, an American officialdom, generally so hostile to de Gaulle?
[34:42]
Tim Bouverie
It's very curious. There was, as you say, real outright hostility. To a large extent this was to do with de Gaulle's behavior and reports in the press and reports from US diplomatic representatives and envoys that de Gaulle was anti democratic, extremely right wing, possibly even a potential fascist dictator in the making. And Roosevelt didn't like that. And quite right too. Nobody would like that. Now, while de Gaulle may not have been that great a democrat or his democratic credentials may not have been that strong and he certainly was dictatorial in the way he ran his outfit, this nevertheless was a gross exaggeration. And there was Nothing fascistic about General de Gaulle. @ the same time, the Americans did not place great store on restoring France as a major power. It wasn't important to them. They didn't even think that it could happen. And one of the reasons that it wasn't important to them was obviously the large ocean that separates France from America. For Britain, the rebuilding of France was not just a matter of honour, it was a matter of strategic priority, because they couldn't be the only power on the continent facing either a resurgent Germany or a newly dominant Soviet Union. And so it's a combination of major global political and strategic factors and outright personal.
[36:17]
Dr. Charles Petill
Hostility. Why did Roosevelt decide to side with Stalin as opposed to Churchill at the Tehran conference of late.
[36:24]
Tim Bouverie
1943? Well, at the Tehran Conference of November 1943, the Americans gang up with the Soviets against the British to ensure that there is a spring date for Operation Overlord, that is to say the re invasion of France by the Western Allies. And the British were dragging their feet on this. For the reasons I've just mentioned. The Americans wish this operation to take place place as soon as possible for the reasons I've already just mentioned. So it was a perfectly legitimate area on which to oppose the British and they succeeded. On the other hand, more generally, Roosevelt wanted to show Stalin that he was not bought and paid for, as it were, by the British. Indeed that he and Churchill were not always united in their military or political strategy. And he felt that this was his way of showing Stalin that he could be trusted. He thought that this was a good way to build a bilateral relationship between himself and Stalin, between the US and the ussr. But unfortunately it just showed Stalin that the democracies could be played off against each other and that he would not be facing a united democratic front when it came to some of his less popular desiderata Even within the U.S.
[37:52]
Dr. Charles Petill
Why was Roosevelt so invested in the concept or the idea that Chiang Kai Shek's China was a great power in the same level as the United States or the Soviet Union or for that matter, Great.
[38:06]
Tim Bouverie
Britain? Roosevelt was pretty pragmatic about this. He didn't claim that Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist China was a great power in 1942 or 1943 or even 1944. But what he kept on saying to those Sino skeptics, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, who did not wish to see China elevated to the status of a great power, certainly not on a par with the British Empire and the USSR and the usa, is that China had the potential to become a great power. He just kept on repeating, this is a country of half a billion people and they're going to count for something one day. And when they do, do we want them creating their own version of an exclusive Asiatic sphere of influence as the Japanese are currently and have been trying to do, or do we want to have them allying with the Soviet Union against the Western democracies? And in that he was completely correct. It didn't work, but it was a noble and far sighted.
[39:10]
Dr. Charles Petill
Ambition. What was Churchill trying to do with his percentages agreement with Stalin in the fall of.
[39:16]
Tim Bouverie
1944? This is one of the most controversial acts of Churchill's wartime leadership. In the autumn of 1944. Churchill is becoming increasingly alarmed by the success of the Red army and Stalin's intransigence over a fair deal for Poland. He sees the fact that the Red army is moving into the Balkans and that if he doesn't get some sort of an agreement with Stalin on some of these areas, particularly Greece, then all of the Balkans is going to be Bolshevised. And this is when he meets Stalin in the Kremlin and, and presents him with a notorious piece of paper, sometimes referred to as the naughty document, in which in his own hand he has written down the percentages of influence which the USSR and the British are going to have in certain Balkan countries after the war. So he proposes, for instance, that in Yugoslavia the British and the Soviets will have 50% influence each in that region. In Bulgaria the Soviets will have 90% influence and the British will only have 10% influence. But in Greece, Britain will have 90% influence and the Soviet Union will only have 10% influence. And this document has been decried, it has been denounced. It's beyond cynical that something as important as the post war status and the post war composition of governments and foreign interests therein relating of these countries could be so casually decided without any input from the countries themselves. And yet this, in my view, really misses the point. What Churchill was trying to do was trying to save what was left to be saved, which was Greece, because the Red army wasn't yet in Greece, but it was in, in or about to be in most of these other countries to save what was left to be saved by sacrificing what had already been lost. And in that he was successful. Stalin did not aid the communist partisans in the first iteration of the Greek Civil War, which broke out in the winter of 1944, 1945. And indeed he remained fairly chary about getting involved in the second iteration of the Greek Civil War once the Cold War was even.
[41:47]
Dr. Charles Petill
Underway. Why do you state that? Quote, the decisions made at Yalta had less significance than those taken at previous meetings between 1941 and.
[41:56]
Tim Bouverie
1945. Simply because what Stalin had said earlier in private, which was that what mattered was not paper agreements, was not summits, but the correlation of forces and specifically the locality of these forces where, where a Red army soldier stood, he likely was not going to be withdrawn. And so by the time of Yalta, there is very little that the British and the Americans can do, for instance, to ensure that a free, independent, democratic Poland, as they wish. Had they wished to guarantee a free, independent, democratic Poland, they would have had to try and pressure Stalin into accepting this much much earlier by potentially linking the fate of Eastern and Central Europe to lend lease supplies. But then that's an extremely unlikely proposition when one considers how much the western democracies were relying on on the Red army to continue killing hundreds of thousands of Germans. But also it's the decisions not to cross the Channel, to continue to engage in a peripheral and Mediterranean strategy to not try and get, and then also to not try and get British and American forces into Central or Eastern Europe at an early date that ensure that by Yalta the Red army is in possession of this territory. And the strategy which Roosevelt, who is easily the most powerful of the democratic leaders by Yalta, pursues at this conference is the same strategy that he has pursued since 1942, namely, great power, cooperation comes above all else. And that continuing to work with the Soviet Union and continuing to bring the Soviet Union into the international system, exemplified by his championship of power, a new International organization, the future United nations is his overriding priority. So for anything to really be different at Yalta, I'm not saying that the democracies couldn't have won a few more tricks at Yalta, and I'm certainly not claiming that either Roosevelt or Churchill were at their best at Yalta, particularly Roosevelt. But to really alter the diplomatic political landscape, then decisions would have had to have been made differently at a much earlier.
[44:28]
Dr. Charles Petill
Stage. Would it be true to say that unlike Churchill, Rosa and Stalin more or less got what they wanted at the Yalta.
[44:36]
Tim Bouverie
Conference? Yes, I think it would be true to say that although Stalin didn't get actually everything he wanted, further dismantling, therefore the idea that Yalta was some great betrayal, he didn't get what he wanted on the division of Germany and he didn't get what he wanted on. On reparations. He also had to accept France as an occupying power of Germany once the war was over. So he didn't get everything he wanted. What he did get was a deal on Soviet involvement in the war against Japan and territory as a reward for that involvement in the Far East. He got that which he wanted. He also had very little to worry about. His plans for Eastern and Central Europe based on the Declaration of Liberated Europe, which Roosevelt and Churchill got him to sign. And Churchill got what he wanted, which was Soviet membership of the United nations and a absolute commitment to joining the war against Japan. Despite the fact that Stalin had been saying that he would join the war against Japan from 1941 onwards. I mean, almost immediately after Pearl harbor, he was suggesting that at some stage the Soviet Union would get involved in the war against Japan. So why the US never took him at his word in earlier moments and kept on re bargaining the point, kept on giving more and more concessions to Sugar. The deal is.
[46:03]
Dr. Charles Petill
Perplexing. What do you mean exactly when you state, quote, the crux of the matter was that there was a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the alliance.
[46:13]
Tim Bouverie
Unquote. What I mean is that that the grand alliance was fighting for different ideals and for different reasons, and was completely, incongruously composed. What does that mean in simple terms? It means that the British and the Americans were fighting the war in the name of democracy, in the name of the rights of small nations, in the name of international law, in the name of not just living in a world which is governed by the law of the jungle and devil take the hindmost and survival of the fittest. And they were fighting against a hegemonic, totalitarian, murderous regime. And yet in order to achieve victory by 1945, certainly with the relatively low casualty rates that the British and the Americans suffered compared to the Germans or the Soviets, they had to do this in alliance with a totalitarian, murderous, potentially hegemonic power that didn't give a fig for the rights of small nations, for international law, or for morality. So that is the fundamental contradiction that I am alluding to in that.
[47:25]
Dr. Charles Petill
Quotation. If you wanted people to take one thing away from your book, what would it.
[47:29]
Tim Bouverie
Be? And so I would urge everyone that one of the lessons of my book is the importance of.
[47:35]
Dr. Charles Petill
Allies. On that observation, which I like to agree with entirely, I would like to thank you very much, Tim, for being so kind to speak with us today. Charles Coutho, you'll be listening to New Books in History, a podcast channel, New Books Network. Thank you, Tim, very.
[47:49]
Tim Bouverie
Much. Thank you, Charles. It's been.
[47:50]
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[48:19]
Tim Bouverie
Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching.
[48:23]
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