Overview of the Early Years of British Post-war Planning, 1939–43

Despite a lack of concrete planning in the early years of the war, by January 1944 the British government had made great strides towards developing a grand strategy for the post-war period. The fixed points of this strategy were the need for the United Kingdom to retain its Empire and its status as a world power, along with the need to bind the United States into the maintenance of peace on the European continent. The nightmare of autumn 1919, when American senators voted against the ratification of the Versailles Settlement and the League of Nations Covenant, loomed large in the minds of Foreign Office officials. One way of ensuring American support for the post-war European and international order, they believed, was to accept the broad parameters of American designs for the post-war political and security order. This is not to say British diplomats did not favour an international organisation, or that it was solely an American idea. Rather, the fact that the Roosevelt administration favoured such an organisation, with the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union at its centre, helped to direct what were evolving and still undecided British aims.

The Foreign Office, and in particular its Economic and Reconstruction Department, had undertaken the first serious efforts towards the development and articulation of a post-war political and security strategy – what one senior official described as a ‘grand strategy of peace’.Footnote ⁹ Under the direction of Gladwyn Jebb from the spring of 1942, the department began to produce iterations of what was known as the ‘Four Power Plan’.Footnote ¹⁰ The central organising principle of this strategy was that the United Kingdom should advocate for the creation of an international organisation in which the great powers (principally the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, China and possibly France) would serve as the nucleus of a wider grouping of states. Mention was made of a world council, an assembly, a permanent secretariat, and various regional organisations; but overall, the plans at this stage constituted more of an outline than a detailed scheme.

Importantly, the nature of this early planning was shaped to a great degree by Jebb's perspective on international politics. The forty-two-year-old official had entered the civil service just as the League of Nations was established; but by the mid-1930s, he, like a number of his colleagues in the Foreign Office, was writing of the institution's irrelevance and the need for the United Kingdom to return to a ‘lively pursuit of “Realpolitik”’.Footnote ¹¹ Though his Four Power Plan came to embody more than a base minimum of internationalism – for example, the idea that the organisation might be buttressed by social and economic bodies – these references were the product of external input, including input from Labour ministers Ernest Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps.Footnote ¹² Jebb's recommendations, on the other hand, were more often than not infused with stark calculations of economic and military influence. ‘We must, on the one hand, either have some powerful ally or allies, or cease to be a World Power, and, on the other hand, we cannot expect to have powerful allies unless we are powerful ourselves’, he had urged.Footnote ¹³ This view of British power and the centrality of national interest was woven throughout Jebb's conceptions of a future international organisation.

By July 1943, he and his colleagues in the Economic and Reconstruction Department had produced the third version of the post-war plan, now titled the ‘United Nations Plan for Organising Peace’.Footnote ¹⁴ They had also engaged with their American counterparts on the issue, meetings which helped to order their own thinking on the subject and to gradually align Anglo-American views on a post-war organisation.Footnote ¹⁵ Despite this progress, the Cabinet had yet to formally approve these schemes.Footnote ¹⁶ The chief hindrance was Churchill, who not only harboured his own ideas for the post-war world, but also remained hesitant to commit the country to ambitious objectives prior to the conclusion of the military struggle.Footnote ¹⁷ By the end of the summer 1943, however, with the surrender of Italy and the increase of tensions between the three great allies over how to administer to post-war Europe, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin agreed to send their foreign ministers to Moscow for discussions about the period after the war.

The declaration signed at the end of the Moscow Conference in October 1943 marked the first American-Soviet-British agreement on a post-war international organisation. The discussions at this conference, however, were vague on the structure and functions of this proposed institution, as well as the date it would be established. Just months later, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met together for the first time in Tehran, and while formal discussions did not weigh into the subject of a post-war organisation, side conversations, especially between Roosevelt and Stalin, solidified their intention to move forward with more substantive negotiations in 1944.

The ‘World Order Papers’: Defining the Structure and Machinery of an International Organisation

Though the Foreign Office were conscious that negotiations over a future international organisation would take place sometime in the New Year, the date had yet to be decided. They were thus surprised when, in early January 1944, a telegram arrived from Washington stating that State Department officials were progressing with their own plans and wanted to begin three-power talks by the end of the month.Footnote ¹⁸ Despite his alarm at the lack of more detailed planning, Jebb advised that discussions with the Americans and Soviets should not be delayed. Given the priority the Foreign Office placed on ensuring that the United States committed to the maintenance of post-war peace on the European continent, British officials wanted to avoid dampening American enthusiasm at this stage.

The views of British and American officials towards a future organisation were surprisingly similar in these months. Even though Jebb had traveled to the United States in March and August 1943 to discuss the broad outlines of a future peace settlement, there had been no formal exchange of plans between the State Department and the Foreign Office. Instead, members of the Economic and Reconstruction Department were left to piece together an idea of American intentions, much of which they based on previous discussions with and public statements by members of the Roosevelt administration.Footnote ¹⁹ Generally speaking, British officials perceived their American counterparts as favouring the formation of an assembly, a court and a council, the latter of which would be composed principally of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China. It was this body of great powers which was to be responsible for the maintenance of worldwide peace and security. More so than an entirely unique American conception, the structures of the institution were in line with previous British thinking, much of which was based on the experience of the League of Nations.

There were several tactical and administrative decisions made in the first weeks of January 1944 that would subtly influence the shape of British plans going forward. First, Jebb laid out specific questions, themes running from ‘A' to ‘G' in a memorandum, which would direct the planning efforts of the department. Crucially, he and his immediate superior, Nigel Ronald, decided that these plans would be undertaken by the Foreign Office, as opposed to opening it up to other officials and Cabinet ministers. The ‘responsibility of the government should not be engaged too soon’, Ronald advised.Footnote ²⁰ Second, a member of the Economic and Reconstruction Department, J.G. Ward, met with key American planners Leo Pasvolsky and Harley Notter at the State Department, where it was agreed that the two governments should first consider exchanging ideas and plans amongst themselves, prior to opening discussions with the Russians. Though the Americans recognised the ‘dangers and difficulties of such a proceeding’, it was understood that without solid Anglo-American coordination on a future organisation, such a scheme would have little chance of coming into existence.Footnote ²¹ Ward and his State Department counterparts then agreed to exchange papers on the general outline of an agenda for three power talks, which would read as a kind of ‘table of contents’.Footnote ²² Taking this up in London, the Foreign Office decided in early February to put forward an agenda to the Americans and Russians. Jebb explained that this might allow them to ‘start the discussions on lines favoured by us . . . rather than putting forward ours as amendments to the American list’.Footnote ²³ In this way, they might have some control over the scope of the talks, and to a greater extent, some influence on the shape of the organisation.Footnote ²⁴

Another development was the incorporation of Professor Charles Webster into the ongoing work of the Economic and Reconstruction Department. A historian of nineteenth-century British diplomacy, Webster had distinguished himself early in his career as a scholar of the Congress of Vienna; and during the interwar period, he became a noted commentator on both British foreign policy and League of Nations affairs. While a steadfast supporter of the latter organisation, he was also honest about its practical shortcomings, including the inability of leading powers to marshal military responses in defence of the Covenant. But the most surprising aspect of Webster's view of international politics, at least as it relates to this history, is that he expressed radical notions of future internationalism, including support for an eventual ‘world state’.Footnote ²⁵ It was a view of which Jebb, given his distaste for academics espousing ‘idealist’ or ‘utopian’ schemes, was most likely unaware.Footnote ²⁶ Instead, Webster had gradually made himself indispensable to the work of Jebb and his colleagues by producing concise historical studies on previous international organisations.Footnote ²⁷ Not only was he an expert on such institutions dating back to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but he had, as Jebb later recalled, an ‘encyclopaedic knowledge of the League’.Footnote ²⁸ The professor thus came to be seen as an increasingly valuable mind in a planning process that was becoming more urgent.

Webster's growing involvement in the department was a reflection of a broader trend within the British government. As attention began to turn to a future institution, many began returning to the precedent of the League of Nations. Though the organisation's impotence in restraining the actions of Japan, Italy and Germany in the previous decade was a common refrain, there were a number of officials who recognised that the experience of the League offered a valuable blueprint, and that a number of its institutions and functions should be carried over. For influential figures like Labour Party MP Philip Noel-Baker, a man involved with the creation of the League and who served as assistant to the Secretary General of the institution, it was essential that the organisation be reconstituted.Footnote ²⁹ The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Alexander Cadogan, who had been responsible for League affairs for a decade beginning in 1924, agreed to some extent. He noted that it would be ‘unwise to throw away all the experience that we gained at Geneva in the 20 intervening years’. But crucially, they would need to make the institution more efficient and formidable, an improvement which would depend on the ability of the great powers to act decisively and in unison. ‘The “machine” of the League became the golden calf, and we mustn't lapse into that idolatry again. But if we are to have an “international organisation”, we must have a machine to serve it, and it is important to get the best design . . . I don't think it's difficult to construct a perfectly good machine. But it's useless without the power and dangerous without the steering gear’.Footnote ³⁰

Between March and April, a number of documents which came to be known as the ‘World Order Papers’ were drafted by the Economic and Reconstruction Department and submitted to an inter-departmental body for approval.Footnote ³¹ Chaired by the Minister of State Richard Law, this latter grouping was eventually made a Cabinet sub-committee under the title ‘Committee on Future World Organisation’.Footnote ³² Several fundamental points emerged across the five memoranda, which were efficiently labelled ‘A’ through ‘E’. First, while all states would in theory be equal, the four principal powers were to retain a special position and responsibility within the organisation. Their continued cooperation, Memorandum A read, was more important than ‘any other single factor’. The grouping of great powers – eventually including France (once its ‘greatness was restored’) and possibly the addition of other states based on election by the Assembly – would make up the World Council. This body would be considered a ‘centre of action’ while the wider World Assembly was to be the ‘centre of discussion’. The primary purpose of the Assembly, moreover, would be to ‘focus public opinion on the objects of the organisation’, while the purpose of the World Council would be the ‘preservation of peace’.Footnote ³³

To help ensure the latter, there would need to be in place a method to facilitate the peaceful settlement of disputes between states. This subject was a favorite of Webster who, in drafting Memorandum B, wrote that, ‘If war is to be abolished for a considerable period there must be in existence . . . a means to make those decisions which in the past have been made by violence’. All ‘justiciable’ disputes, he suggested, should be handled by a Permanent Court of International Justice, the establishment of which had just been recommended by an Inter-Allied Committee.Footnote ³⁴ Other disputes, Webster wrote, would be handled by the World Council, which would be free to decide amongst themselves – and without input or consent from the parties involved in the dispute – how the matter would be settled.Footnote ³⁵ The general idea of states submitting decisions to an international court was an old point for Webster, one which had roots in his days as a postgraduate at Cambridge. In one of his earliest descriptions of what he termed a ‘world state’, he wrote that the final step in this evolutionary progression was the submission by states to ‘compulsory arbitration’.Footnote ³⁶ Later, in the second half of the 1930s, Webster joined a number of prominent commentators in supporting the notion of ‘peaceful change’, whereby states, including those seeking territorial adjustments, would submit their claims to an international organisation.Footnote ³⁷

Closely related to the peaceful settlement of disputes was the question of when and how the international organisation might be moved to take action. Webster suggested that the entire procedure was to be guided by ‘certain essential principles’, more so than adherence to a strict constitution.Footnote ³⁸ ‘Flexibility’ was a favoured concept of British planners, all of whom believed that the League had been hampered by rules governing when they should use force. It was an opinion shared by the most senior officials as well. ‘If we are to learn any lesson from the failure of the League’, Cadogan had written in these months, ‘it is . . . that procedure is rather a secondary matter. Everything depends on the unity of purpose of those powers who are able to impose their will’.Footnote ³⁹

How exactly this principle might be translated into a specific policy was left to Webster. He singled out Article X of the League's Covenant, which had guaranteed the territorial integrity and existing political independence of member states as one of the major faults of the organisation.Footnote ⁴⁰ As Japan, Italy and Germany progressively challenged the boundaries agreed by the Treaty of Versailles, it had become clear that many League members, including the United Kingdom, simply refused to take action in line with Article X. The entire question, Webster said, could not in the future be dealt with by some constitutional clause. ‘Too rigid a definition of the occasion for action’, he wrote, ‘is likely to hinder as to facilitate the preservation of peace and security’. Instead, such questions might be addressed by ‘a continual process’ of discussion and negotiation between the great powers, as well as the other states involved in the matter.Footnote ⁴¹ This reliance on great power negotiation was, Webster argued, in line with the ‘great tradition of British policy’ dating back to Lord Castlereagh, Lord Palmerston, Lord Salisbury in the nineteenth century and, more recently, Lord Balfour and Sir Austen Chamberlain.Footnote ⁴²

As the Economic and Reconstruction Department continued to address these points, they came to the question of the methods by which force would be organised and administered within the organisation. This subject was addressed by Jebb in Memorandum C, which concerned the ‘military aspect’ of a future world organisation. Work on this paper had been ongoing since the autumn of 1943 and involved the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee, a body chaired by Jebb but comprised primarily of military officials. In their discussions, they considered but eventually ruled out the possibility of an ‘international police force’, an idea which had strong support in certain influential circles within the United Kingdom and one which Roosevelt and Churchill had expressed support for in recent years.Footnote ⁴³ The thinking among members of the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee, however, was that such a scheme was both too ambitious and too unlikely to be accepted by any great power.Footnote ⁴⁴

What eventually emerged was a suggestion by Jebb to form a ‘Military Staff Committee’ which, working under the World Council, would direct ‘earmarked’ contingents of national forces. It was this machinery which Jebb and the Economic and Reconstruction Department believed might facilitate military cooperation among the four powers and serve as the principal enforcement mechanism of the world organisation.Footnote ⁴⁵ The scheme, however, ran up against the opposition of interested parties. Like the earlier ideas for an international police force, the Chiefs of Staff were initially opposed to this idea for earmarked forces. For one, they feared the constraints such quotas would impose on an overstretched British military. ‘Owing to the scattered nature of the Empire’, one document read, ‘we must retain the maximum strategic flexibility to switch forces from one place to another. A system by which certain forces were earmarked for tasks under the World Council might therefore prove embarrassing’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Equally, the Chiefs of Staff also doubted the chances that the Soviet Union could be brought into such a system with the Americans and British.

Suspicion of Soviet motives pulsed through this period of planning, eventually becoming a fault line between military officials and diplomats.Footnote ⁴⁷ Among the latter, the working assumption was that Soviet leaders had post-war designs of their own which were based primarily on security concerns, that their immense power might make such visions a foregone conclusion, and that the United Kingdom needed to exert diplomatic leverage before Soviet military advances rendered their influence obsolete.Footnote ⁴⁸ The Anglo-Soviet Treaty in May 1942, the Moscow Declaration in October 1943, and indeed, the future international organisation itself, were seen by Foreign Office officials as ways both to forge a cooperative spirit with Moscow and to bind them into post-war commitments which would, in turn, act as a kind of restraint on future ambitions.Footnote ⁴⁹ This political objective, at least for the time being, won out. The Vice-Chiefs of Staff, although they held more cynical views of future Soviet intentions, also grasped the need to establish some post-war organisation which might ensure American military commitments. In the end, they decided to tailor some of the language of Memorandum C and agreed to discuss plans for a Military Staff Committee with the Americans and Soviets.Footnote ⁵⁰

As is clear from the writing above, the Economic and Reconstruction Department under the leadership of Jebb tended to prioritise political and security systems over economic and social institutions at this stage. This view – which, at its root, concerned the base structures of regional and international order – was not one shared across government, however. Ministers within the Labour Party, as well as some Foreign Office officials such as Webster, continued to stress the need for a future organisation to incorporate robust economic institutions, ones which would serve to foster European and international collaboration in the future. Though Jebb tended to see such ideas as of secondary importance, he had nonetheless begrudgingly worked such points into each of the major planning documents.Footnote ⁵¹ Yet as planning became more urgent by the spring of 1944, the decision was made to outsource responsibility for this dimension of the plans – otherwise known as Memorandum D – to the Economic Section of the War Cabinet Office. Led by the famed economist and internationalist Lionel Robbins, this body had been engaged in their own post-war planning related to finance, trade, currency, employment and food and relief efforts.Footnote ⁵² Marcus Fleming, then a junior economist working under Robbins, delivered the first draft for Jebb and Webster; and in it, he recommended that they avoid regionalisation of trade and finance and instead promote global economic systems.Footnote ⁵³ The key structure in this proposal was referred to as the ‘Central Economic Organisation’ which, taking over from the League's Economic and Financial Organisation, would serve as the centralised body responsible for coordinating economic and financial activity with respect to the larger international security organisation.Footnote ⁵⁴

Together with a final document – Memorandum E which outlined a procedure for establishing the organisation – the department had now delivered a collection of detailed plans. The ‘World Order Papers’, as they were known, were presented to the Cabinet's Armistice and Post-War (APW) Committee on 22 April 1944.Footnote ⁵⁵ The Committee approved Jebb and Webster's drafts but pushed back on Fleming's paper which covered the economic side of the world organisation, seeing it as ‘too theoretical and detailed’.Footnote ⁵⁶ An unprepared Webster was tasked with a redraft of the paper, which, compared to Fleming's original draft, came to be much shorter and referred only to ‘an economic and social secretariat’ which might be linked to the World Council.Footnote ⁵⁷ Though Webster had long advocated for any future organisation to deal in some degree with economic and financial matters, it was clear at this stage that the Foreign Office and the War Cabinet were preoccupied with the organisation's political and security functions. Given that the other memoranda, particularly A through C, dealt overwhelmingly with these subjects, the APW Committee decided that the five memoranda would now be submitted to the War Cabinet and then circulated to the Dominion governments, before finally being shared with the Americans and Russians.

A Western Security Bloc and a Revised British Grand Strategy

Even as their plans for a future international security organisation became more developed, Jebb, Webster and other officials in the Foreign Office were focusing on the future security order on the European continent. At the root of this concern was a fear that the United States, or more likely the Soviet Union, would back out of a world organisation – a development which would undermine the efficacy of the organisation, especially with regard to British concerns over future European security. Though Foreign Office officials had been wrestling with these challenges for months, it was not until the spring of 1944 that they arrived at a specific policy, one which addressed these disparate concerns.

As has been described, both Jebb and Webster held different conceptions relating to the ultimate object of British post-war planning. Where Jebb sought to maintain British power and influence through an international organisation, Webster desired such an institution because he saw it as a step in the direction of a more unified world government. But despite their fundamental, if unacknowledged, differences on this issue, they shared certain views with regard to the character or methods of international politics. In other words, though Jebb and Webster held different political objectives, they converged on a more immediate strategic basis – namely, the view that an international organisation might be underpinned by a global balance of power.

In the months after the Moscow Conference, officials in the Economic and Reconstruction Department had begun to more seriously consider two issues: the relationship of the great powers to the smaller powers and the United Kingdom's future position vis-a-vis the United States and the Soviet Union. The momentum in the direction of a more internationalist order was thus met with more fundamental calculations concerning power politics. It was a position which appeared to contrast with the view of the State Department, and in particular that of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who had returned from the Moscow Conference promoting an agreement which he believed would bring an end to spheres of influence, balances of power and alliances.Footnote ⁵⁸ Officials in London considered such views to be the product of ‘wishful thinking’ and geared more towards winning over American public opinion.Footnote ⁵⁹ In their view, if there was to be an organisation capable of maintaining order after the war, it would need to take into account certain fundamental realities of great power politics.

In Webster's view – one that he was to repeat throughout the planning process – ‘Power and responsibility must be commensurate with each other’. He continued, ‘If the Great Powers are to obtain the consent of the lesser Powers to their assumption of world leadership they must convince the latter of their intention and capacity to guard the world's peace, while at the same time respecting the rights of their smaller neighbors’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Jebb was in agreement with this basic premise, but he went further and articulated the need for a balance of power to underpin the future international order. The distribution of power between the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, was, for Jebb, the predominant factor. As he told a group of students at Oxford University in February 1944:

How exactly these intellectual – some might say theoretical – concepts were translated into practical recommendations can be seen in the way that Jebb and Webster connected the plans for a world organisation with new policies towards the European continent. The latter issue took on increasing importance towards the end of 1943. In November, the Prime Minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, suggested in a public speech that the United Kingdom bind itself with Western European democracies. At the heart of his proposals was a desire to increase the power of the British Commonwealth vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and the United States.Footnote ⁶² Months later, in March 1944, Smuts took up the issue directly with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, suggesting in blunt terms that such a grouping might help to balance against a hostile Soviet Union.Footnote ⁶³

Suggestions for the formation of such blocs was not exactly outlandish for the time. Similar proposals, including ones which advocated a European federation, had been widely discussed and even advanced by diverse intellectual and political factions during the interwar years. Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi's concept of a European federation in 1923, to take a more famous example, had helped to give rise to a Pan-European movement across the continent.Footnote ⁶⁴ Within the United Kingdom, notable figures including Leo Amery and Churchill echoed similar views. In 1930, the latter wrote in The Saturday Evening Post of his support for a ‘United States of Europe’ – although one that would not include the British Empire.Footnote ⁶⁵ Later in the decade, a celebrated text from the American journalist Clarence Streit called for alliances of democracies to meet the fascist and communist threats.Footnote ⁶⁶ It was an argument which stirred the hearts and minds of key intellectuals and politicians, among them Arnold Toynbee and Anthony Eden.Footnote ⁶⁷ Just months after war had returned to the continent, the leader of the Labour Party, Clement Atlee, told a crowd gathered in London that ‘Europe must federate or perish’, while in 1942, the leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, Eduard Beneš, called for a European confederation.Footnote ⁶⁸

Though there was a lack of Foreign Office agreement on this topic in the early years of the war, the emerging view amongst officials by the spring of 1944 was that such a grouping would be an important structure for future continental stability. But given the priority placed on establishing a world organisation, it was essential that such a formation be framed in a tactful way. For one, officials thought that Smuts' remarks had given off ‘an unfortunate balance-of-power flavour’ which might prove distasteful to the American government and public. As important, however, was the need to ensure that such a defensive alliance was explicitly directed towards Berlin and not Moscow. Though the grouping of Western democracies would have, as a secondary purpose, protection against future Russian encroachment in Europe, if leaders in Moscow suspected such a structure, it would not only throw the world organisation into jeopardy but it would likely create a situation in which Europe was divided into two ‘spheres’.Footnote ⁶⁹

Given the connection to the larger subject of world organisation, the Economic and Reconstruction Department were asked to develop a response. In the weeks that followed, Webster and Jebb each submitted memoranda on ‘Britain and Western Europe’ and ‘The Western Bloc’, respectively. In his paper, Webster recommended the creation of an alliance between the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and possibly Norway which, although not involving political or economic unification, might ‘buttress a worldwide security system’. He cited the historical precedent of Austen Chamberlain negotiating the Locarno Treaties in 1925, agreements which were intended to reinforce the League rather than undermine it. As Webster put it:

Jebb largely agreed with Webster's prescription, noting that alliances of mutual defence, far from undermining the world security system, would actually ‘reinforce’ it. But the crucial consideration, in his view, concerned wider British grand strategy, and in particular, the way in which policy towards the continent might be ‘fitted in to our policy towards the rest of the world’.Footnote ⁷¹ His recommendation here was twofold. First was the need to ‘revive’ earlier proposals – which he had been largely responsible for developing – for a central European body such as the United Nations Commission for Europe, which would operate under the ‘umbrella’ of the world organisation and help the great powers administer to the recovery of Europe.Footnote ⁷² Secondly, Jebb proposed that ‘defensive systems’ be erected in both the West and the East of Europe; formations which might be directed against Germany. The United Kingdom and France would take the lead among the Western democracies, with the United States possibly involved in the ‘background’. The Eastern system, he admitted, would ‘depend primarily on the USSR’.Footnote ⁷³

The system which Jebb proposed was based on a foundational conception – namely, that for a future world organisation to be effective and lasting, there needed to exist a balance of power between the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom.Footnote ⁷⁴ ‘Whatever “World Organization” may be set up. . .’, he wrote, ‘peace is not going to be preserved unless the Big Three are in a position to cooperate. This entails (a) that they must regard each other as equals (b) that they pay due regard to each others “vital interests”’. Emphasising this point, he affirmed that, ‘This is what is meant by the Balance of Power, and if its balance is unbalanced then trouble is bound to follow’.Footnote ⁷⁵

It was a position with which many officials in the Foreign Office agreed, although some expressed concern with the way in which it was phrased. ‘This doctrine’, one official wrote, ‘if it is ever acted on, must be most carefully concealed from the US’. Notions of power politics or the balance of power were considered to be ‘both wicked and peculiarly British practices’.Footnote ⁷⁶ The Head of the American Department, Nevile Butler, agreed with this suggestion, noting that while the United States was ‘beginning to think much more realistically about power’, they were still inherently averse to traditional stereotypes of European statecraft. Thus, the Foreign Office might pursue the policy as described by Jebb, but it was essential that they not be ‘caught in the act’.Footnote ⁷⁷

When they came up for decision in early May, it was Webster's paper that was adopted by the Foreign Office.Footnote ⁷⁸ Deputy Under-Secretary Orme Sargent even noted the insurance potential that such a policy offered, writing that, ‘this regional system might very well, in altered circumstances, develop into a bulwark against Russian penetration’.Footnote ⁷⁹ There was now a growing consensus within the Foreign Office, driven chiefly by the work of the Economic and Reconstruction Department, that the United Kingdom's grand strategy for the post-war period rested on three foundational pillars: a world organisation led by a tripartite alliance; a United Nations Commission for Europe on which the three great powers (with the possibility of France at a future date) would sit on a ‘steering committee’; and a Western European defence system which, serving to protect against Germany and the Soviet Union, would also help to fortify British power within the new world organisation.Footnote ⁸⁰

The Foreign Office Challenge to Churchill

For all of the progress made in planning for the machinery of a future organisation within the Foreign Office, the plans would dissolve without the approval of the Cabinet. The Prime Minister, in particular, had for years served as the chief bulwark against Foreign Office planning. Intent to put forward his own ideas for the reorganisation of Europe and the world, Churchill remained steadily removed from the planning being undertaken in the Foreign Office – a reality which was both encouraging and worrisome for officials in the Economic and Reconstruction Department. With the Prime Minister's attention elsewhere, Jebb and Webster could draw up their plans unimpaired; but equally, such distance ran the risk of Churchill ignoring them altogether.

After some wrangling to bring the question of world organisation before the Cabinet, the issue finally came up during a meeting on 27 April.Footnote ⁸¹ Here Churchill's views were surprisingly more in line with those of the Foreign Office, but important differences remained. There had long been a divide between the Prime Minister and members of the Economic and Reconstruction Department over the composition of a regional council in Europe.Footnote ⁸² Though Jebb had initially been supportive of regional structures forming the basis of a larger international organisation, his discussions with members of the Roosevelt administration had made clear that such structures might jeopardise future American support. As such, Jebb and Webster began to strongly resist Churchill's continued proposals for a ‘Council of Europe’ which he thought might become a ‘United States of Europe’.Footnote ⁸³ More concerning were comments made by Churchill to Richard Law in the corridor after the Cabinet meeting – namely an idea, unheard of until that time, that there should be no international organisation at all but instead a ‘continental League of Nations’ and a four-power alliance.Footnote ⁸⁴ While the latter was essentially what the Foreign Office was calling for, the former arrangement would, in effect, be the Council of Europe which Churchill had long advocated in opposition to Foreign Office warnings.

After his conversation with the Prime Minister, a concerned Law approached Webster about drafting a memorandum which would point out the inconsistencies in Churchill's proposal. Late into the evening on 28 April, Webster set about making his case. Across six pages, Webster argued that the only way to get a four-power alliance was through the creation of a wider international organisation. The Americans, he stressed, would simply have it no other way.Footnote ⁸⁵ Should the Americans back out of a world organisation, it would throw American participation in the maintenance of peace on the European continent – a fixture of British grand strategy for the post-war period – into doubt. Without this American support, Webster warned that the United Kingdom would be without its greatest ally ‘in a world of uneasy and unstable alliances’.Footnote ⁸⁶

When the memorandum crossed Eden's desk on 30 April, the Foreign Secretary said he agreed ‘emphatically’ with Webster's thoughts. Here the documents reveal an interesting detail: in his analysis, Eden had drawn a diagram of the proposed world organisation in the margin of the paper, a sketch which actually misunderstood the structure that Jebb and Webster were proposing.Footnote ⁸⁷ It is no surprise then that, despite the support of the Foreign Secretary, both Jebb and Webster remained concerned that Eden did not fully grasp the intricacies of their plans. Worse, they were doubtful as to whether he would confront the Prime Minister on this matter directly.Footnote ⁸⁸ A gloomy Webster confided in his diaries that, ‘This is a really big issue on which the fate of the world may ultimately depend’.Footnote ⁸⁹

Somewhat surprisingly, a meeting of the Dominion prime ministers in May served as a crucial boon to the efforts of the Economic and Reconstruction Department. In the early days of the conference, it became apparent to Eden that the prime ministers of New Zealand, Australia and Canada (Peter Fraser, John Curtin and Mackenzie King) were in general agreement with the direction of Foreign Office thinking on the question of a future world organisation.Footnote ⁹⁰ Among other factors, Dominion governments tended to favour more international security schemes, as opposed to ones which, like Churchill's, were directed mainly towards the European continent.Footnote ⁹¹ Though they were strongly opposed to certain points in the Foreign Office plans – for example a suggestion that the United Kingdom, from its seat on the World Council, might act on behalf of the entire Commonwealth – they indicated that they would lend their support to the broad principles developed by the Economic and Reconstruction Department. Encouraged by this news, the Foreign Secretary sent Jebb and Webster's papers to Churchill on 4 May and urged him to circulate them among the Dominion delegations.Footnote ⁹² The Prime Minister agreed, provided that his own memorandum on this matter was circulated with those of the Foreign Office. In comparison to Jebb and Webster's papers, a key divergence remained Churchill's support for regional councils of Asia, Europe and the Americas. Added to this were new and old ideas, such as a ‘fraternal association with the United States’ and a ‘United States of Europe’.Footnote ⁹³

The papers were discussed among the Dominion prime ministers between 9 and 11 May, and much to the delight of Jebb and Webster, the leaders had favoured their recommendations concerning the structure and function of a world organisation.Footnote ⁹⁴ Now clearly the odd man out, Churchill withdrew his memorandum, having grown increasingly frustrated by the widespread opposition to his suggestions. He made clear, however, that ‘his views remained unchanged in essentials’, and asked for the Foreign Office papers to be redrafted to accommodate some of his preferences.Footnote ⁹⁵

Even with what seemed like a great success, the Foreign Office could not afford to ignore the Prime Minister's views altogether. He remained the most influential voice within the government, and his support would be indispensable when it came to future negotiations with the Americans and Russians. This was not lost on Webster, who, despite his opposition to the Prime Minister's views, understood that some concessions needed to be given in order to bring him more fully on board with the plans of the Economic and Reconstruction Department.Footnote ⁹⁶ Jebb, on the other hand, could not contain his frustration with the Prime Minister, whose views, he told his friend Hugh Dalton, were ‘romantic and ill-judged’.Footnote ⁹⁷ Because no one had ever ‘challenged him properly’, Jebb set out to write a memorandum intended for Churchill. Titled ‘British Policy Towards Europe’, Jebb's paper explained in blunt terms why the idea of a ‘United States of Europe’ was both ‘dangerous and impracticable’. The Prime Minister's objectives, he argued, might instead be met through the ‘mutually consistent’ plans for a World Organisation, a United Nations Commission for Europe and a Western European Defence System.Footnote ⁹⁸

When the paper was forwarded to Churchill on 16 May, he ignored the concerns of the Foreign Office and delayed a decision until after his upcoming speech in the House of Commons. Fearful that their window of opportunity was closing, Jebb and Webster were surprised when the Prime Minister delivered a speech which was largely in line with their plans.Footnote ⁹⁹ But a crucial sticking point, namely his idea for a European Council, remained fixed in his mind. Writing to Eden on 21 May, Churchill stated that, ‘The only thing I am pressing for is a United States of Europe in some form or other, with a Council of its own of which I trust Russia, Great Britain and the United States will be members’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Given the Prime Minister's obstinacy on this point, the decision was made to incorporate some of Churchill's views, but to do so superficially and on the terms laid out by the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister's views on regions, they decided, would be mentioned briefly in Memorandum A of the world organisation papers.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Going forward, though, Jebb and others would aim to dilute Churchill's European idea through negotiations with the Americans and Russians.

Just as the Foreign Office were finalising their own papers, telegrams from the State Department in Washington reflected a renewed sense of urgency on the part of the Roosevelt administration, and in particular the Secretary of State Cordell Hull.Footnote ¹⁰² On 29 May, he relayed that their ongoing discussions with members of Congress had advanced, and that his officials were now ready to begin negotiations.Footnote ¹⁰³ Ever sensitive to the mercurial nature of American public opinion and the need to secure American support, Cadogan wrote that the State Department seemed to be in a ‘hurry’. ‘We must not give the impression of drawing back’, he warned.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Though the aftermath of the Allied invasion of France on 6 June 1944 consumed much of the War Cabinet's attention throughout June, on 7 July, ministers finally met to consider the papers on ‘Future World Organisation’. This climax was nearly ruined, however, when the Prime Minister decided to leave the meeting early, just before the topic of a post-war organisation was taken up. According to Cadogan, as Churchill exited, he said that he was leaving it up to the group to discuss ‘the Peace of the World about which, in present circumstances, I am rather lukewarm’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The Prime Minister's absence turned out to be a great fortune for the Foreign Office. In his absence, Cabinet ministers quickly expressed their support for the five memoranda on world organisation, and while not yet official policy, the Foreign Office received authorisation to share the documents with their counterparts in Washington and Moscow.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ ‘This is a real milestone’, Webster celebrated in his diary.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Though a great achievement for the Economic and Reconstruction Department, in the weeks ahead, their focus turned to the final preparation for the conference with their American and Soviet counterparts, as well as the all-important issue of post-war policy towards Europe.

British Policy Towards Europe

In the weeks when the department's plans for a future world organisation were nearing completion, there was also some progress on the Foreign Office's approach towards Europe. Once again, this was due in large part to the work of the Economic and Reconstruction Department and Webster and Jebb's ability to link these two major questions together. Jebb's paper on ‘British Policy Towards Europe’, while originally intended to combat the views of the Prime Minister on a ‘United States of Europe’, ended up being considered as the Foreign Office's future policy towards the continent. In a meeting of a Cabinet sub-committee on 1 June, it was decided that Jebb's paper should be combined with Webster's ‘Western Europe’ paper, which had advocated the United Kingdom joining a defence system with France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and possibly Norway.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

The idea for a Western bloc had been gaining traction from other quarters of the United Kingdom's diplomatic establishment. Duff Cooper, then the British Minister in Algiers, had written to his superiors in London calling for a Western European alliance to counter what he considered to be a hostile Soviet regime.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Officials in the Foreign Office were in general agreement with Cooper's suggestion, but for others, such as Jebb, the concept had become one of the greatest importance. In what was a surprising if revealing line, he described such an alliance of Western democracies as being potentially more important than the world organisation itself. ‘It is primarily in the right development of our “alliance potential” that the future of this country lies and not so much in the “mystical” idea of a world state or even, on certain definitions, in the idea of a World Organisation’.Footnote ¹¹⁰

But a crucial difference between the majority Foreign Office view and that of Cooper was the former's belief that such an alliance must not be directed against Russia.Footnote ¹¹¹ Orme Sargent warned that when London and Moscow no longer viewed Germany as the main threat – a position he thought constituted the ‘cement’ of their post-war relationship – their bilateral relations would dissolve and the Western bloc would then move from balancing against Germany to protecting against Russia. It would become, in his words, ‘a most dangerous experiment which might well precipitate the evils against which it was intended to guard’.Footnote ¹¹² Both Eden and Cadogan agreed, with the latter writing that, ‘There is no doubt that our own policy must be directed to cooperation: if it fails, it must not be through our fault’.Footnote ¹¹³

The Foreign Office view towards the Soviet Union once again ran in stark contrast to that of the Chiefs of Staff.Footnote ¹¹⁴ It was a gap in assessments, rooted in diverging assumptions about the post-war intentions and capabilities of the Kremlin, which widened throughout the summer of 1944. In early June, the Post Hostilities Planning Staff (PHPS), which was made up mostly of military representatives and reported to the Chiefs of Staff, recommended that a closer defensive alignment with France and the Western democracies be directed against Russia.Footnote ¹¹⁵ A month later, the Chiefs of Staff took a further step, suggesting that officials might explore ways that parts of Germany, assuming it could be dismembered after the war, might be brought into a grouping led by the United Kingdom.Footnote ¹¹⁶

The Foreign Office considered this a potentially catastrophic recommendation. Not only did the service chiefs continue to resist the creation of a world organisation, but it also appeared that they were suffering from an ‘anti-Bolshevik complex’.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Similar to Sargent's warnings of a self-fulfilling prophecy, several Foreign Office officials warned that if the United Kingdom was to follow the recommendations of the Chiefs of Staff, then Moscow would undoubtedly take measures to protect itself. The result would be a hostile Russia, the destruction of three power cooperation (and with it, the end of the world organisation) and a European continent divided into blocs.

At the beginning of July, Eden approved the recommendations put forward by his officials. Though he still lagged behind their nuanced positions on these issues, the Foreign Secretary's views were steadily forming. In his mind, the Anglo-Soviet Treaty which had been signed in 1942 was to be a key pillar of British policy, along with a grouping of Western democracies aligned in principle against Germany.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The formation of a Western security group had now become a central priority for the Foreign Office. A memorandum submitted to the Cabinet stated bluntly, ‘From the political point of view . . . our policy should be directed towards establishing some kind of defence system in Western Europe whether we are successful in creating a World Organisation or not. If we are unsuccessful the need for it will be immeasurably greater’.Footnote ¹¹⁹

The burning question now, however, was whether the United Kingdom should reach out to their French, Belgian, and Dutch counterparts before or after the Washington talks on world organisation. It was here that Cadogan offered a more tactical approach – namely, prioritising the talks with the Americans and Soviets and making subtle, quiet contact with the governments that might make up a Western security bloc.Footnote ¹²⁰ The Permanent Under-Secretary held in his mind the precedent of the Treaty of Locarno which created a new security order in Western Europe but was tied directly to – and remained, in theory, under the authority of – the League of Nations. Laying out this approach, he wrote that, ‘If I could order the world as I liked, I might even begin with the Western European System, and build on that. But we have to take things as we find them, and the fact is that we must try . . . to work out a World Organisation with the Americans’.Footnote ¹²¹ This meant that the post-war international organisation was to remain the priority, but it was to be buttressed by a Western security bloc, developed and guided by the United Kingdom.

To initiate this regional defensive alliance, it was suggested that Eden might make gradual approaches to his Western European counterparts, but in a manner that was secret and ‘in a general nature’. The Foreign Secretary understood the need to tread carefully vis-a-vis the Americans and the Russians on this point, yet he had also become convinced in these weeks that such discussions on a potential security pact were a necessity. The Foreign Secretary admitted that he held an ‘obstinate’ view on this point. ‘It is really bad’, he wrote, ‘for [the] US government and Soviet to think that we cannot ever have so harmless a talk with our nearest neighbors without telling them in advance’.Footnote ¹²²