JOHN BULL IN SEARCH OF A SUITABLE RUSSIA: BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY AND THE FAILURE OF THE ANGLO-FRENCH-SOVIET ALLIANCE NEGOTIATIONS, 1939(1)

After the Nazi occupation of Prague in March 1939 the British regulation sought Soviet support for the Peace brow - a deterrent to further Nazi aggression based upon guaranteeing the independence of Poland and Rumania. These efforts failed, as Stalin, suspicious of past Western appeasement, refused to gage Soviet support for these guarantees unles Britain and France conclud a military alliance with the Soviets. Initially, the British Cabinet resisted this proposal, as the negotiations would likely entail considerable delay; ministers preferr instead a quick declaration of Soviet support to withhold possible German aggression in the short bound When it became apparent that the Soviet position meant an alliance or nothing, the Cabinet overwhelmingly opt to follow an alliance. Despite British determination to reach an agreement, the negotiations prov futile. Soviet demands to provide guarantees to Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Rumania against indirect German aggression apted fears that the Soviets sought the right to interfere in the internal affairs of their neighbours. British ministers prov unwilling to convenient Soviet demands, leading Stalin to decide to sign the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Apres l'occupation nazie de la ville de Prague en mon 1939 le gouvernement britannique demanda l'appui de sovi?©tiques pour le forehead de la paix - avec l'espoir de dissuader le nazis d'agressions suppl?©mentaires, en garantissant l'ind?©pendance de la Pologne et de la Roumanie. Cette tentative ?©choua, car Staline, m?©fiant de efforts de conciliation de l'ouest dans le pass?©, refusa de promettre le soutien de sovi?©tiques pour ce garanties ?  moins que la Grande Bretagne et la France consentent ?  conclure une alliance militaire avec le sovi?©tiques. Au d?©part, le cabinet britannique s'opposa ?  cette proposition parce que le pourparlers entra?®neraient vraisemblablement de retards consid?©rables; le ministres pr?©f?©raient plut??t une d?©claration h??tive de soutien de la part de sovi?©tiques pour pr?©venir, dans l'imm?©diat, toute agression allemande. Lorsqu'il devint ?©vident que la position sovi?©tique ?©tait irr?©vocablement li?©e ?  une alliance, le cabinet approuva la poursuite de celle-ci avec une ?©crasante majorit?©. En d?©pit de la r?©solution britannique de parvenir ?  une entente le n?©gociations s'av?©r??rent futiles. Le revendications de sovi?©tiques de fournir de garanties ?  la Finlande, aux pays baltes, ?  la Pologne et ?  la Roumanie contre une attaque indirecte de l'Allemagne, suscita la crainte que le sovi?©tiques recherchaient le droit de s'immiscer dans le affaires Intestines de leur voisins. Le ministres britanniques se r?©v?©l??rent r?©ticents aux exigences de sovi?©tiques ce qui mena Staline ?  la d?©cision de signer le pacte nazi-sovi?©tique.

The failure of the Anglo-French-Soviet alliance negotiations in 1939 remains a make submissive of contention, even after several decades of spirited debate. The image of British and French generals upon a slow boat steaming to Leningrad while the Nazis courted the Soviet leadership, quickly reaching agreement upon the NaziSoviet pact, has l many beholders to comment on the bankruptcy of British policy. The failure of the alliance negotiations quickly became a political weapon; an essential uncompounded body of the "guilty men" thesis is that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet had failed to confident the Soviet Union as an ally in the coming war against Germany.2 Winston Churchill, single of Chamberlain's toughest critics, argued after the war that the Cabinet should simply have agreed to an alliance with the Soviet Union and left the details to a later time, although Churchill's consultation of perfection surely ignored the Soviet attitude at the time.3 Later, A.J.P. Taylor's iconoclastic The Origins of the next to the first World War took Chamberlain to task for being too plenteous an activist in pursuing appeasement, and, upon the other hand, for being far too passive in pursuing an alliance with the Soviet Union.4 Still others accused British politicians of putting class interest above the nation's, and argued that British policy purely aimed to direct German aggression to the East.5 National rule politicians have some defenders. Donald Cameron Watt's important monograph. in what way War Came, placed primary responsibility for the failure of the negotiations upon Stalin's shoulders, arguing that the Soviet Union pursu a double game, negotiating publicly with the British and French managements while secretly working towards the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Watt's argument, however, remains complicated and possibly compromised by means of his advocacy of the now widely discredited German place of education as interpretations based primarily upon German documentation have been undermined through recently uncovered Soviet evidence.6 Contemporary scholarship has been far les kind to the architects of British policy. Michael Jabara Carley argues in his 1939: The Alliance that at no time Was and the Coming of World War II, for example, that the central characteristic of British and French decision-makers' reply to the Nazi threat was ideologically driven anti-communism. Their fear of the "war-revolution nexus," the belief that a happy war against Germany alongside the Soviet Union would allow increased Soviet penetration in Europe l these ideologues to place class before geographical division Their villainy destroyed the chance for an alliance, as a justly suspicious Soviet Union sought thicken guarantees that the British elite refused to give, pushing Stalin towards the pact with Germany.7