Suchergebnisse

During World War II, Britain established a liaison officer with the Soviet Fleet in the Black Sea. Military cooperation between the western allies and the USSR is often regarded as minimal and unsuccessful, but this post demonstrated more positive cooperation. There were two crises when there were accusations of misbehaviour, and there were occasions when he was idle, but these were handled successfully in Whitehall. The post endured, and successive officers did a good job of operational liaison, as well as providing unique intelligence insights from a Soviet fighting front, right up until the end of the war in Europe.

In February 1943, the British Foreign Office launched an initiative to open discussions with the Soviet Union on postwar aims, a subject which had been off-limits since the disputes over Soviet frontiers during the negotiation of the Anglo–Soviet Treaty in early 1942. Joseph Stalin's response was to treat the approach seriously, and to request concrete proposals that would lead to a firm formal agreement. The British immediately pulled back, and no progress on political issues was attempted until later in the war. This article analyses this rarely-discussed episode, focusing on how British indecisiveness, at a crucial stage of the war, and the lack of political will of Anthony Eden, led to confusion and mixed messages being sent to the Soviet government. Attempts to build a solid political component to the wartime alliance and to reach agreement on the key issues of a postwar European settlement prior to the end of the war were delayed not so much by the ideological gulf between the allies as their different cultures of diplomacy and the customary processes of their bureaucracies. Ultimately progress was made when each began to adopt elements of the approach of the other.