POST WORLD WAR TWO

Austerity in Europe: Withdrawal from Empire: USA Ascendant

LONDON AND WARSAW SHARE DESTRUCTION

THE AUDIT OF WAR (CORRELLI BARNETT) http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-

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• “A working class population of ill educated men doing everything they could to control their low paid work, unable to move on.

• Ignorant Working Class women bringing up children in an atmosphere of low expectations and poor social habits knowing little about nutrition or child care.

• Had a malevolent conqueror wished to pursue a long term policy of degrading the British population into a physically, intellectually and technologically inferior race ---- he could hardly have succeeded better.

BRITAIN: LAST GASP OF GLORY OR INTO A NEW FUTURE (OR BOTH?)

• Finest Hour• A Bankrupt Country• A Shabby people who

gloried in having ‘saved Europe’ but unprepared for new realities

• People loved the war and let it effect their politics for 30 years.

REFLECTIONS OF MY YOUTH

A COUNTRY NEEDING ANOTHER 10 YEARS FROM 1939 TO RESTRUCTURE

• Pre-war problems of ‘out of balance’ Victorian economy.

• Lost the ‘cushion’ of huge overseas assets

• Still a huge Imperial Power but without the finance to back it up

• A newly enfranchised people who wanted the promised ‘New Jerusalem’

WAR HAD NOT ELIMINATED SOCIAL DIVISIONS

1945 General Election Fought on Class Lines and Pre-War Memories• A working class

ignored in the 1930s asked to give their lives for a country that had failed them.

• Memories of Dunkirk• Churchill a great man

in war but divisive in peace.

CHURCHILL HAD SAVED BRITAIN IN WAR BUT COULD HE BE TRUSTED IN

PEACE? (Election 23 May 1945)• National government in war:

opposition leaders did well.• Labour had done well in pre-

war local elections.• New electorate• Memories of 1930s• Dunkirk – Singapore• Which party would deliver a

welfare state: no party could refuse a version.

• Which party would deliver housing

• A vote for socialism but not on socialist tenets: more on delivering on promises made.

Votes % of Vote

No of MPs

CON 9,988,306 40% 213

LAB 11,995,152 48% 293

LIB 2,248,226 9% 12

COM 102,780 0.4% 2

THE WELFARE STATEBy 1939 Britain enjoyed a wide range of welfare services on a scale

not surpassed and hardly rivaled by any country in the world. (Lowe: in Johnson – 20th Century Britain)

• The term "welfare state" is believed to have been coined by Archbishop Temple during WW2, contrasting wartime Britain with the "warfare state" of Germany.

• Provision of services as of right.• In 1941, the government ordered a report on

how Britain should be rebuilt after the war; Beveridge was an obvious choice to take charge.

• Beveridge saw FULL EMPLOYMENT as the pivot of the social programme he expressed in the 1942 Beveridge Report, and Full Employment in a Free Society 1944 said how this might be gained.

• Measures included Keynesian fiscal regulation, direct control of manpower, and state control of the means of production. The impetus behind Beveridge's thinking was social justice, and the creation of an ideal new society after the war. He believed that the discovery of objective socio-economic laws could solve the problems of society.

SOME POINTS ON THE WELFARE STATE

• “A state where market forces are modified to the extent that individuals are assured of a basic income, as of right, whether or not they are in work, and where all citizens have equal access to the best standards of health, social services, housing and education.” (Briggs 1961)

• “The poor are poor because they smoke too much, drink too much and fornicate too much” (Beveridge 1942)

• BUT IS IT WELFARE OF THE STATE?• Pension burden, health burden, smooth out economics, placate

voters, improve access to schools. Improve the quality of the people.

POST-WAR AUSTERITY GREATER THAN IN SOVIET RUSSIA

SO BRITAIN’S POSITION IN 1945

• Victor in the war but economically devastated at home and abroad.

• Realized that USA intended to take full trade advantage

• Expense of establishing a welfare state

• Expense of garrisoning Germany

• Expense of running an empire

• Expense of fighting communist insurgents.

ONE OF THE GREAT VICTOR NATIONS OF WW2

BROUGHT TO BANKRUPTCY AND PENUARY

Which is why this is so Important Paris 1947

FRANCEDid Von Falkenheim’s Tactics in 1916 come to Fruition in 1941?

VICHY FRANCE

FRANCE’S WAR EXPERIENCE• 1930s a political mess• National Guilt! • Collaboration?• A mood of desperate passivism in the

higher echelons of the country.• Germany planned to use the east but 40%

of German war effort from France (Note Renault)

• War indemnity (Tax) paid to Germany every week.

• 1.6 million French forced labour in Germany.

• Many French sent to gas chambers• Note La Coupole-Dora- Belgium Guards.• Country freed by Anglo-Saxon allies• Need to develop a sense of national

purpose and pride. Honour of France shot to ribbons

DEVASTED ECONOMYCAEN

REGAIN THE GLORY OF FRANCE THROUGH EMPIRE

• A badly damaged national economy and a sense of shame.

• Regain place in the world by reclaiming pre-war Empire. (Without the economic resources to succeed)

• Quickly turned from oppressed to oppressor.

• NOTE French attitude to colonial properties.

GERMANY

• Unlike WW1: Total defeat and unconditional surrender.

• Allied control of entire country to borders pre-organized.

• Allies planned for a ‘pasteurized’ Germany.

• But, within a few weeks pre-war tensions reappeared.

• Roosevelt naïve on Stalin.• Truman not fooled• Stalin acted as if the Molotov

pact had never taken place.

OCCUPIED GERMANY TREATED AS SHE

TREATED OTHERS Antony Beevor: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,707835,00.html

• If you want an explanation of why the European Community came about think about this.

• "Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual liaisons' with German women," wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia. "Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape them on a collective basis."

• In Berlin, many women were simply not prepared for the shock of Russian revenge, however much horror propaganda they had heard from Goebbels.

• Several German women recorded how Soviet servicewomen watched and laughed when they were raped.

• Estimates of Berlin victims from the two main hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000.

some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide.

• NOTE BOOK: ‘A Woman in Berlin’

DID BOMBING GERMANY DESTROY

THEIR ECONOMY? TIME MAGAZINE 1945

• The great cities of Germany are dead. ----

• Yet air power did not do what many an American thinks. It did not destroy German industry nor the potentials for a third world war. “Selective bombing" was never intended to destroy all industry, the host of Allied experts is gradually realizing that 70% of German industry, perhaps more, escaped

• The remaining stocks of raw materials, particularly steel and aluminum, are tremendous. If Germany was short of anything, except oil, it has not yet been discovered.

• Reparations aside, the economy of Europe rests on the Ruhr's coal. If Ruhr coal is not mined in immense quantities, France and Belgium cannot rapidly rebuild their economies.

• The Germans have no intention of stopping. After more than five years of war, their energy and determination are amazing. Nowhere is there the apathy which has contributed to France's paralysis.

SOME POINTSNOTE: UNITED STATES STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY 1945

BRITAIN: WITHDRAWAL FROM EMPIRE

• Imperial policy brought forward all kinds of justifications and apologies, but at the heart it was based on Trade, Settlement and Self Interest.

• Though the UK and its Empire emerged victorious from WW2, the economic costs of the war were far greater than those of World War One. The United Kingdom's already weakened commercial and financial leadership were undermined, heightening the importance of the Dominions and the USA as a source of military assistance.

• The rise of anti-colonial nationalist movements in colonies (India) and the changing economic situation of the world in the first half of the 20th century challenged an imperial power now increasingly preoccupied with issues nearer home.

• The British Empire lost its most valuable colony when the Raj came to an end in August 1947 after a forty year-long campaign by the Indian National Congress. Without India much of the need for a vast Empire disappeared.

•

BRITISH EMPIRE 1921

At its peak after WW1 a quarter of the world’s population.

• Treatise on the wealth, power and resources of the British Empire in every part of the Globe.

• Patrick Calquhoun 1814

• They had robbed the Spaniards, copied the Dutch, beaten the French and plundered the Indians

INDIA the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ Imperial Policy grew to Protect Trade to

India.• Maritime trade routes• Around cape and via Suez.

Sea-routes to India had to be protected as national trade survival.

• Huge shipping companies and huge Royal Navy

• NOTE OIL

• Predicated the shape of many Imperial outposts and possessions

BUT: Empire was CHEAP Trade and Capital Flows went to traditional areas

1900 Import/export Millions pounds

1914 Investment: Millions pounds

Canada 22.9/9.6 500

USA 138.8/37.4 750

India 27.4/31.0 400

New Zealand 11.6/5.9 400

West Indies 1.8/4.7 750

South America 28/24 Part of above

Europe 248/139 200

East Asia/Sub Saharan Africa

28/46 1000

First of Two Significant Shocks

• SINGAPORE 15 February 1942

• Biggest defeat ever suffered by the British Army

Second: As the Rationale for Empire Disappeared Africa became even more of a

burden.• 1960 Cape Town• In a speech to MPs in the Houses of

Parliament in Cape Town, Macmillan spoke of the "wind of change" blowing through the continent of Africa, as more and more majority black populations in the colonies claim the right to rule themselves.

• Nationalist Party politicians listened to him in silence, and a number refused to applaud when he had finished.

• The end of Britain's Empire in Africa came rapidly: Ghana (1957) Nigeria and Somaliland(1960), Uganda(1962), Kenya (1963)

• Withdrawal from south and east Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations:

ALTHOUGH COLONIAL DISPUTE HAD NOT ALTOGETHER GONE AWAY

Maggie’s Impact

FRANCE: CLINGING TO EMPIREAn Australian view of Vichy France Colonial policy

• Repressive colonial governments. The Spanish, Dutch, and French had a very different attitude toward their colonies than the British.

• They generally placed the European in a superior legal position, and limited civil liberties.  Political activities were discouraged.   Access to modern education was restricted in numbers and to certain social groups.   Censorship was common. 

• French colonial administration is usually characterised as more ‘direct rule’ compared to the British; traditional authorities were largely ignored.Assimilation this approach had its origins in the French revolution—equality, fraternity and freedom should apply to anyone who was French, regardless of race or colour; thus, rights of citizenship, including political rights;- assimilation was predicated on a presumption of the superiority of French culture and ‘civilisation’. As part of France’s ‘mission civilisatrice’, when confronted by ‘barbarian’ people, it was the duty of France to civilise them and turn them into Frenchmen.

France: Clinging to GloryDays of Glory (1943)

AND ANOTHER WE WILL COVER LATER

AND ONE WE WILL NOT

Marshall Plan (1948-1951)• US program to provide economic aid to

Europe. The idea of a European self-help plan financed by the U.S. was proposed by George Marshall in 1947 and authorized by Congress as the European Recovery Program. It provided almost $13 billion in grants and loans to 17 countries and was a key factor in reviving their economies and stabilizing their political structures.

• Historians continue to argue the main thrust of the plan. Regardless of the motives behind it, the plan, which lasted from 1948 to 1952, was a phenomenal success. The Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites declined to participate, but the Plan provided assistance to seventeen countries, including Great Britain, France, Italy, and western Germany, and resulted in a 25 percent increase in western

European GNP.

WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES PROMPTED THE MARSHALL PLAN?

• Lack of will and isolationism had prompted USA not to join League of Nations.

• Realized it could not be dragged back into another European conflict.

• Revive western economies to resist Russia. Prosperous Europe a bar to communism.

• Market for US goods: fear of another depression.

• Trade with Europe to solve ‘dollar gap’.• Act as a beacon of hope.• 1947 Winter• Acknowledgement that the USA had

to become involved with Europe and take the lead.

• NOTE: Containment

FOR BRITAIN A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY SQUANDERED ON THE BONFIRE OF GREAT POWER

PRETENSIONS.

• The plain truth is that the Labour Government in the late 1940s sought to use Marshall Aid as a general subsidy for whatever they wished to do, like clinging on to the dream of a world power role. As a Cabinet Office memorandum in 1948 put it:

• 'It is perfectly true that if Marshall Aid covers our dollar drain, then all our payments of gold and dollars can be regarded as financed by Marshall Aid - expenses of HM Embassy in Washington, gold payments in Persia, purchase of petrol for our troops in the Middle East, every conceivable thing.' And so we find - surprise, surprise - that during the four-year period of Marshall Aid, Britain planned to devote to net fixed investment in industry and infrastructure a proportion of GNP that was a third less than West Germany's proportion

AND FOR GERMANY (JAPAN) ANOTHER HIDDEN BUT EFFECTIVE FORM OF AID

W.A.P. Manser: Britain in Balance, 1971, Penguin• 1968 British Accounts (Mil

Pounds) (Devaluation 1967)• Visible Imports 6807• Visible Exports 6273• Balance -534

• Invisible Imports 2530• Invisible Exports 3561• Balance +1031

• Trade Balance +497• Capital Outflow -180• Overall +387

• Private Balance +387• Official Balance – 795

Overall - 384 (Great Power Spending)

• Balance of Government Payments and Receipts 1966 ($mil)

• USA -6385• UK -288• France -1• Germany +339• Japan +315

• An exercise in Keynesian distribution to Germany/Japan which they did not have to pay back.

• Receipts from Military Expenditure• Germany +560• Japan + 315

THE SUEZ CRISIS (1956) Short Term American Gain, Long Term American

Strategic Error? End of an Era• Oct. 29, 1956 — Israeli paratroops

were dropped deep behind Egyptian lines in the Sinai peninsula, opening the way for the ground troops that followed. In a lightning campaign lasting less than five days, the Israelis took control of the entire peninsula. The Israelis had a rendezvous at the Suez Canal with the armed forces of Britain and France.

• Reverberations are still felt today. The road that led to Suez began in 1947, when the British Foreign Office notified the American Department of State that Britain could no longer afford to hold its positions in Greece and Turkey against pressure from Russia.

• Soon the United States was engaged in an effort to hold the line against Russia — there, but also all around the world.

THE BACKGROUND• The Middle East was essential to the US policy

of containment. • The Arabic-speaking Muslim world had been

taken in hand by Britain and France after the First World War, and though they had since achieved independence, the countries of the Middle East remained predominantly Western-influenced.

• European and American oil companies played an important role in Middle Eastern affairs.

• Britain retained a presence at the strategically vital Suez Canal in the form of a major military base and a garrison of more than 80,000 men. Not until the autumn of 1954 did Britain agree to withdraw from this installation.

• The United States had always deplored European — especially British — imperialism. In the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson seemingly hesitated as to which side to join (or whether to at all), and in the end joined Britain and France only as an “associated power” rather than as an ally, thus making clear that our country did not share the goals of the other belligerents — goals that Wilson claimed were imperialistic.

THE PLOT• USA (anti-Soviet politics) offered to

finance nationalist Egyptian leader Nasser’s Aswan High Dam. Then, canceled the offer to humiliate Nasser. Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, transferring to Egypt the shares of the company. Nasser announced that Egypt would finance the dam itself, using the income from the canal.

• This was a public challenge to Britain, the canal’s biggest user and shareholder, and to France, which had created the canal in the 19th century.

• France imagined that Algeria’s revolt (1954) was inspired by Nasser, and without him it would collapse. Britain was losing control of Jordan because of Nasser, and believed that without him they could regain control.

THE PLOT THICKENS• Prime Minister Eden, Prime Minister Guy

Mollet of France hatched a plot for France and Israel to act together, and in which Britain now joined.

• October 1956, Israel attacked Egypt through Sinai and drove to Suez. Britain and France then invaded, occupying the canal and claiming to be separating the Egyptian and Israeli Armies. The British, French and Israelis stuck to their prefabricated story, but their collusion was evident; soon they had to admit the truth.

• The Americans had been kept in the dark, and they took it personally.

• The United States acted quietly but effectively. The Treasury Department threatened to withdraw support of the British currency unless the British Army left Egypt. Within 10 days, England would have collapsed financially. The British — and the invasion — stopped. To keep from being thought imperialists, the Eisenhower administration saved Nasser. The Suez crisis was over.

RAMIFICATIONS• USA by its actions actually let the Soviets into the Middle East as

they financed Aswan• Many now said the motivation for the USA was to steal the Empires.• Britain in a fit of ruling class depression decided that its role now

had to be as a junior American ally.• France decided that the United States would not protect France’s

interests, and immediately, began to build the atomic bomb and withdraw from Nato — the result of American policy.

• France concluded that it could no longer rely on Britain and turned its attention to Germany and European union. (and build a military apart from the USA)

• France and Continental Europe no longer considered USA to be a reliable ally (Note 2003 Iraq situation)

• Arab countries see Nasser as ‘facing down’ the West and see no reason why it should not do so again particularly over Palestine.

HOW CANADA BECAME INVOLVED

• The most significant of Canada's early peacekeeping missions occurred in 1956, when a dispute over the Suez Canal threatened the stability of the Middle East.

• For his part in resolving the Suez Crisis, Lester Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.