This article examines certain aspects of British planning for post-war regional and international order which took place in the spring and summer of 1944. Beginning in January of that year, the Foreign Office set out to develop more detailed plans for a post-war international organisation, ones which would be presented to the American and Soviet delegations at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. By the time that the British delegation arrived at the meeting at the end of August 1944, they carried with them a detailed outline of the structure and functions of a future institution – plans which allowed the British delegation, led by the civilian head of the Foreign Office, Alexander Cadogan, to play a leading role at the conference.Footnote 2 This article goes some way in describing how British officials arrived at that point, specifically how they ordered their thinking on the post-war world and delivered plans for what would become the United Nations organisation.
Importantly, the article also addresses a concurrent effort by these same officials to develop an alternative ordering mechanism for the European continent. Despite their attempts to create what was the most extensive international security organisation to date, senior Foreign Office officials were debating the merits of what was being termed a ‘Western Security Group’ – a regional alliance which, in theory, might balance against a revanchist Germany and a potentially aggressive Russia.Footnote 3 Though previous historians have examined this subject, the issue is revisited here in the context of planning for a world organisation. The purpose of this Western Security Group was, in addition to protecting against Germany and insuring against Russia, a way to tangibly increase British power vis-a-vis the United States and the Soviet Union. By the summer of 1944, such a structure had become a key pillar of wider plans for a world organisation. There was thus, at this stage, a new grand strategy for the post-war period, one which rested on the principles of a global internationalism and a balance of power. The three main components of this revised strategy were: a tripartite great power alliance, to underpin a wider international organisation; a United Nations Commission for Europe, to oversee the rebuilding of the continent; and a Western European defence system, to explicitly protect against Germany and to secretly balance against the threat of future Soviet expansion westward.
In tracing this subject of diplomatic history, the work shines light on the wartime origins of the United Nations, a process which historians have tended to view as dominated by the will and skill of American leaders.Footnote 4 Though there is a growing body of scholarship examining the contribution of other governments and individuals, a great deal of this history has yet to be written.Footnote 5 Several historians have focused on the British role in the creation of the post-war organisation, but their work has tended to describe the ideas and efforts of the principal statesmen such as Winston Churchill.Footnote 6 Less attention has been given to senior officials and intellectuals associated with the process during the war, although there are some notable exceptions.Footnote 7
The evidence presented here shows clearly that not only was the British government thinking very seriously about these issues but also that those in the Foreign Office, in particular, drove the process. In addition to these basic diplomatic and bureaucratic dimensions, the work also discusses an important intellectual characteristic of the British planning for post-war international order as it developed in the years 1944–5. Specifically, the individuals most responsible for ordering these regional and international systems harboured nuanced, and even clashing perspectives of international politics.Footnote 8 Yet their collective opinion, and the plans they went on to deliver, reflected a unique approach to the post-war world. Understanding the interplay of these ideas, and how these officials worked to plan for and negotiate certain structures, provides a new, more comprehensive analysis of the British wartime planning for a post-war organisation. In this way, the work marks a contribution to both British diplomatic history and the history of the creation of the United Nations.
This article begins with a brief overview of British post-war planning between the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the end of the Tehran Conference in December 1943. It then moves into its main contribution to the historical scholarship: the work of the Economic and Reconstruction Department of the Foreign Office in the period between January and August 1944. The bulk of these efforts were directed towards the related issues of carrying out more detailed planning for a post-war international organisation and the need to ensure future stability on the European continent. These aspects will be addressed in turn, before describing how each became key pillars in a revised British grand strategy. An essential element in this history – and the focus of the latter third of the article – is the way that Foreign Office officials battled to see their post-war recommendations accepted. Only through steady persistence and their cultivation of outside support, most notably from the Dominion prime ministers, were these officials able to see their plans become the decided policy of the government. And it was these blueprints which the British delegation carried with them to the conversations at Dumbarton Oaks in late August 1944 – the moment which laid the foundation of the United Nations organisation.
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:
We . . . arrive at a post-war picture in which the three Great Powers will perforce have to take the lead, and the burden of my argument is that it is on their relation between each other that the prospects of future peace will primarily depend. On what, then, will these relations themselves depend? Surely, they can only depend on comprehension of and respect for each others’ ‘vital interests’. This is what is meant by politics, and it is on the handling of the tension thus created that the balance of power will rest.Footnote 61
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:
Our main interest in Post-War Security is to obtain such definite commitments and practicable arrangements that we can rely on the United States and the USSR joining with us in the maintenance of world peace. This object, however, by no means excludes special arrangements for particular areas in which we have a special strategic interest if they are made in support of and not as alternate to the general world system. On the contrary such special arrangements may be essential in order that the worldwide security system may be able to function effectively in our defence.Footnote 70
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
Conclusion
After the ‘Future World Organisation’ papers had been approved by the War Cabinet on 7 July, attention turned to outlining the directives for the British delegation travelling to meet with their American and Soviet counterparts. Drafted by Jebb and Webster these points contained some essential details which had not been addressed in the original series of memoranda. The size of the World Council, the paper instructed, was to be no fewer than nine or larger than twelve; and the British delegation was to suggest that France be included as a permanent member. Decisions taken in the World Council would be decided by a unanimous vote in the settlement of non-justiciable disputes, but a two-thirds majority (including all of the great powers) for all decisions involving the use of force. Elsewhere recommendations were laid out for how the Military Staff Committee would communicate and operate under the World Council.Footnote 123
On 4 August, the Cabinet approved the directives as outlined by Jebb and instructed Cadogan, who was to be the head of the delegation, that if the Americans were to bring up colonial questions – then considered to be the issue of greatest divergence between London and Washington – he was to refer to London for further instructions. Churchill, for his part, advised that the upcoming talks be ‘for preliminary exploration’, as opposed to ones which might seek a more comprehensive agreement. Overall, the Prime Minister appeared pleased with the developments, though Cadogan felt he was ‘cynically jocular’ and not taking it seriously. The Prime Minister went so far as to state that he regretted the fact that the War Cabinet had not had more time to discuss these matters.Footnote 124 It was a comment to which Cadogan and Eden – not to mention the members of the Economic and Reconstruction Department – could only shake their heads. By the time the directives had been approved, roughly half an hour after the meeting had started, Churchill remarked that, ‘There now: in 25 min[ute]s, we've settled the future of the World. Who can say that we aren't efficient?’Footnote 125
The Dumbarton Oaks conversations between the British, American and Soviet delegations that began on 21 August marked the first formal negotiations between the great powers on the structure and function of a future international organisation.Footnote 126 Over the course of three weeks of discussion, the governments agreed to establish an organisation made up of a General Assembly, Security Council, an International Court of Justice and a Secretariat. Among the responsibilities of the assembly were budgetary and membership questions, the election of non-permanent members of the Security Council, the regulation of armaments and the coordination of the work carried out by the Economic and Social Council. Sitting above the assembly was the council, comprised of eleven members, including five permanent members (the three great powers, along with China and France) and six non-permanent members. It was given expansive authority to deal with any matter it deemed to be a threat to international peace and security. In terms of the organisation's enforcement mechanism, the Security Council was to rely upon a Military Staff Committee which had been one of Jebb's earlier recommendations. This body would be comprised of the chiefs of staff of the permanent members and placed in charge of coordinating any national forces that might be put at the disposal of the council.Footnote 127
This blueprint for a post-war international organisation became known as the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, an outline which became the focus of global debate for the ensuing seven months. Finally, at the San Francisco Conference which began in late April 1945, over forty national delegations met to deliberate and decide upon the final form of these proposals. By and large, the United Nations Charter adopted the vast majority of the Dumbarton Oaks agreement, particularly around the structure of the organisation and the functioning of its principal organs.
The period between when the Economic and Reconstruction Department had finalised their World Order Papers and the signing of the United Nations Charter had stretched nearly a year. Throughout this most consequential phase of the process, British officials had played an indispensable role.Footnote 128 This was especially true at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. There, British plans, along with those of the Americans, had served as the substantive bedrock of the proposals which were eventually agreed. Moreover, the head of the British delegation, Alexander Cadogan, along with Jebb and Webster, had done more than anyone to help to define the position of the great powers relative to the rest of the United Nations. On the question of whether great powers should retain the right of veto in disputes to which they were involved, Cadogan remained firm in his opposition against, at first, the Russians and the Americans. Though the latter eventually came around to the British view, the initial stand taken up by the Permanent Under-Secretary had great implications for the nature of the organisation – a factor which has been less emphasised in the previous studies which have discussed the British role.Footnote 129 Where the Soviet Union may have seen it as more of a ‘great power dictatorship’, in which the permanent members of the World Council would always retain veto power, the British – and eventually the Americans – saw it as a slightly more democratic institution, in which the permanent members should, to a certain extent, be answerable to a majority of smaller states. And perhaps more consequential was a recommendation made by Jebb during a meeting at Dumbarton Oaks, one which was intended to resolve the growing divide between the British and Soviet positions on the voting issue. It was this recommendation which, once it was eventually adopted at the Yalta Conference, ultimately saved the organisation.Footnote 130
The British and Soviet roles in the creation of the United Nations have often been seen as secondary to that of the United States, a view which tends to overlook what were robust planning operations underway in London and Moscow. This article has focused solely on the British efforts in the first half of 1944, when an existing planning apparatus entered a new, more concerted phase of work. The period is essential to historians of the organisation as well as to those studying the diplomatic history of the Second World War, as the activities undertaken by the Foreign Office in this period were crucial both to the makeup of the organisation and to wider British post-war strategy. Their work is a classic study of diplomatic planning, in that officials, many of them subordinate to those with ultimate authority, faced bureaucratic hurdles, including a Foreign Secretary with a loose grip on the details, a Prime Minister keen to advance his own vision, and other departments with fundamentally different assessments about a principal wartime ally.
More interesting, however, is the way in which key officials – principally Gladwyn Jebb and Charles Webster – wrestled with certain assumptions regarding the nature of international politics, the purpose of a world organisation and the continental versus global dimensions of British foreign policy. Where Jebb saw certain methods of international politics as timeless and a world organisation as serving the needs of the British national interest, Webster perceived international relations to be evolving in a progressively interdependent direction. This led him to a view that it was the responsibility of the United Kingdom to help bring about a more robust form of internationalism, one that might pave the way for a future world government. Despite these great ambitions, Webster was also pragmatic and attuned to the need for the United Kingdom to protect its own interest in the short- and medium-term, and to deliver an organisation which could evolve in the future.
Their views ultimately converged with regard to the way in which British policy towards the continent might be fused with the country's larger global strategy. And it is this last dimension which reveals a fundamental aspect of Foreign Office planning in the period – namely, that one cannot understand the nature of the United Kingdom's approach to what would become the United Nations without taking into account its evolving policy towards the European continent. A principal justification for the post-war world organisation, especially for Jebb, had been the need to bring the United States into the security order on the European continent. But as plans for such a world institution developed, confidence in its ability to meet British objectives in Europe wavered. The future capabilities of Germany and the future intentions of the Soviet Union – and in the background, a feeling that the United Kingdom and its Empire was far secondary to the power of the United States and Russia – had led to a surge of stage fright, and a rush back to the drawing board. Thus, at the crucial moment, when British planners were setting out final designs for a grand internationalist scheme, they reverted to what were considered more traditional ordering techniques, in order to ensure the country's safety and status. A Western security grouping was to serve as a check on Germany and potentially Russia, as well as to bolster British power relative to the United States and Soviet Union. Importantly, through Jebb and Webster's hand, these ordering mechanisms were framed as reinforcing, as opposed to undermining, the future world organisation.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Contemporary European History for their help with this article. The work has been greatly improved by their suggestions.
