SpringerLink
Log in

Harry S. Truman and Clement Attlee: “Trouble Always Brings Us Together”

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Presidents and Prime Ministers From Cleveland and Salisbury to Trump and Johnson

  • 280 Accesses

Abstract

By the time the Japanese surrender brought the Second World War to an end in September 1945, two of the three statesmen who had led the Allied Powers to victory were no longer in command. While Joseph Stalin retained dictatorial control of the Soviet Union, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt lay dead from a cerebral hemorrhage and the British electorate had ousted Prime Minister Winston Churchill from office.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
EUR 29.95
Price includes VAT (Germany)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
EUR 181.89
Price includes VAT (Germany)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
EUR 235.39
Price includes VAT (Germany)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
EUR 235.39
Price includes VAT (Germany)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    Warren Kimball (ed.), Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, 3 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).

  2. 2.

    Clement R. Attlee, As It Happened: His Autobiography (London: Heinemann, 1954).

  3. 3.

    For specific examples of these mildly different emphases, see Francis Beckett, Clem Attlee: Labour’s Great Reformer (London: Haus, 2015), 320; Alan P. Dobson, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century: Of Friendship, Conflict and the Rise and Decline of Superpowers (London: Routledge, 1995), 92; and Wilson D. Miscamble, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 204.

  4. 4.

    Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945–1951 (London: Heinemann, 1983), 602.

  5. 5.

    “Kee** Faith,” Daily Telegraph, 17 April 1945.

  6. 6.

    John F. Lyons, America in the British Imagination: 1945 to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 48.

  7. 7.

    Jonathan Schneer, “Hopes Deferred or Shattered: The British Labour Left and the Third Force Movement, 1945–49,” Journal of Modern History, 56, no. 2 (June 1984): 197–226.

  8. 8.

    “The Labor Victory,” New York Times, 27 July 1945; “British Policy,” Washington Post, 27 July 1945.

  9. 9.

    “British Laborites’ Duty to the World,” Philadelphia Inquirer , 28 July 1945. See also “Behind Britain’s Political Upheaval,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 July 1945.

  10. 10.

    “Socializing an Ancient Dame,” Wall Street Journal, 12 October 1945; “The British Attitude,” Wall Street Journal, 18 March 1947.

  11. 11.

    “I Propose a Toast,” Oregonian, 27 July 1945.

  12. 12.

    Martin Gilbert, Churchill and America (New York: Free Press, 2005), 361.

  13. 13.

    Attlee, As It Happened, 147.

  14. 14.

    See, for example, Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power 1945–1951 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 236.

  15. 15.

    Attlee, As It Happened, 169.

  16. 16.

    John Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (London: riverrun, 2016), digital edition, 1111–2; Beckett, Clement Attlee, 315.

  17. 17.

    Francis Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers (London: Heinemann, 1961), 129. For a typical example of British press reaction, see “Lend-Lease,” Daily Telegraph, 25 August 1945.

  18. 18.

    Marquis Childs, “Washington Calling: Britain’s Financial Position,” Washington Post, 17 September 1945.

  19. 19.

    “Britain Shocked,” Times-Picayune, 25 August 1945. This unseasonal Christmas metaphor appeared in other newspapers. See, for example, “Let’s Reason Together,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), 25 August 1945, and “Held Over by Request,” Los Angeles Examiner, 29 December 1945.

  20. 20.

    Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, 131–2.

  21. 21.

    Peter G. Boyle, “The British Foreign Office and American Foreign Policy, 1947–48,” Journal of American Studies, 16, no. 3 (December 1982): 380.

  22. 22.

    George H. Gallup, ed., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971, Vol. I, 1935–1948 (New York: Random House, 1972), 549–50.

  23. 23.

    “Spend It Closer to Home,” Plain Dealer , 23 May 1950.

  24. 24.

    Elisabeth Barker, The British between the Superpowers, 1945–50 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983), 25–6. A characteristic editorial of the time is “America’s Part,” Daily Telegraph, 10 December 1945.

  25. 25.

    “Anti-Americanism,” File Report 2454, 26 January 1947, 1, Mass Observation Archive, The Keep, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton.

  26. 26.

    Mass Observation File Report 2548, 14 December 1947, 5, Mass Observation Archive. Americans in turn recognized the strength of this nationalist reaction. See “Gossip of the Nation: Walter Winchell,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 16, 1948.

  27. 27.

    Ritchie Ovendale, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 65–6.

  28. 28.

    The Hyde Park Memorandum, September 1944, CAB 126/183, National Archives, Kew. Gilbert, Churchill and America, 281, 313.

  29. 29.

    Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, 118.

  30. 30.

    Saul Kelly, “No Ordinary Foreign Office Official: Sir Roger Makins and Anglo-American Atomic Relations, 1945–55,” Contemporary British History 14, no. 4 (October 2000): 109.

  31. 31.

    Randall B. Woods and Howard Jones, Dawning of the Cold War: The United States’ Quest for Order (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 80. As ever, the Anglophone press on the East Coast took a dissenting view. See Barnet Nover, “The Atomic Pact: A Good Step Forward,” Washington Post, 17 November 1945.

  32. 32.

    Four years later, the arrest of Klaus Fuchs and defection of Bruno Pontecorvo suggested that Americans still had cause for concern.

  33. 33.

    Henry Pelling, The Labour Governments, 1945–51 (London: Macmillan, 1984), 127.

  34. 34.

    Trevor Burridge, Clement Attlee: A Political Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985), 248–59; Ovendale, Anglo-American Relations, 69–70.

  35. 35.

    George Gallup, “78% of U.S. Public Favors Palestine Haven for Jews,” Washington Post, 19 June 1946.

  36. 36.

    Attlee was not unaware of the self-interest that motivated Truman. Clem Attlee: The Granada Historical Records Interview (London: Panther, 1967), 38–9.

  37. 37.

    David Low, “Sorry the Girl-friend’s Changed my Mind,” Evening Standard, 7 August 1946.

  38. 38.

    “Palestine Solution,” Washington Post, 15 May 1946.

  39. 39.

    British Embassy, memorandum, “Survey of American Press and Radio Trends—May 21st to 27th [1948].” Another report concluded that criticism had reached “white heat.” C. Raphael, British Information Services, to the Controller, 26 May 1948, FO 953/157C, National Archives.

  40. 40.

    D’Arcy Edmondson, British Information Services, to Thomas Hodge, 25 March 1948,

    FO 953/157C, National Archives.

  41. 41.

    Barnet Nover, “Bull of Bashan: Bevin Reaches A New Low Level,” Washington Post, 13 June 1946.

  42. 42.

    On these later events, see Avivia Halamish, The Exodus Affair: Holocaust Survivors and the Struggle for Palestine (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1998).

  43. 43.

    Herbert L. Matthews, “London Ponders Problems of Anglo-American Amity,” New York Times, 30 May 1948.

  44. 44.

    For an insider’s account of Truman’s motivations, see Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President (New York: Random House, 1991).

  45. 45.

    Stewart Alsop, “Britain’s Palestine Policy,” Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1948; Raymond Daniell, “Palestine Peace Hinges on British-U.S. Accord,” New York Times, 16 January 1949.

  46. 46.

    Barker, Britain Between the Superpowers, 56–60.

  47. 47.

    Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, 172.

  48. 48.

    Attlee, As It Happened, 147.

  49. 49.

    See Jamil Hasanli, Stalin and the Turkish Crisis of the Cold War, 1945–1953 (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2011).

  50. 50.

    Gary R. Hess, “The Iranian Crisis of 1945–46 and the Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly 89, no. 1 (March 1974): 117–46.

  51. 51.

    George Kennan, “The Long Telegram,” National Security Archive (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/).

  52. 52.

    Fred O. Seibel, “Invitation to Drink,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 7 March 1946. For a comprehensive analysis of the origins, content, and impact of the speech, see Alan P. Dobson (ed.), Churchill and the Anglo-American Special Relationship (London: Routledge, 2016).

  53. 53.

    Frank K. Roberts, “Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary” in Ritchie Ovendale (ed.), The Foreign Policy of the British Labour Governments, 1945–1951 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1951), 23; Morgan, Labour In Power, 244–5.

  54. 54.

    The principal revisionist interpretations are Robert Frazier, Anglo-American Relations with Greece: The Coming of the Cold War 1942–47 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), 155–60; Martin H. Folly, “‘The Impression is Growing … that the United States is Hard when Dealing with Us’: Ernest Bevin and Anglo-American Relations at the Dawn of the Cold War,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 10, no. 2 (April 2012): 150–66.

  55. 55.

    “President Harry S. Truman’s Address before a Joint Session of Congress, March 12, 1947,” The Avalon Project (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/).

  56. 56.

    Attlee, Personal Telegram to Truman, 4 April 1948, PREM 8/918, National Archives; Christopher Grayling and Christopher Langdon, Just Another Star? Anglo-American Relations since 1945 (London: Harrap, 1988), 6; John Dickie, “Special” No More: Anglo-American Relations: Rhetoric and Reality (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1994), 55.

  57. 57.

    Walter Lippmann, “Cripps Will Hear Why U.S. Is Disappointed,” Los Angeles Times, 30 September 1948; Walter Lippmann, “Right Understanding of Britain and France Essential to U.S. Policy,” Los Angeles Times, 6 January 1949. Mass Observation still discovered that the British public, ever willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, often suspected the Americans of ulterior motives. See “Britons and the Marshall Plan” File Report-2575, Mass Observation Archive.

  58. 58.

    Avi Shlaim, “Britain, the Berlin Blockade and the Cold War,” International Affairs 60, no. 1 (January 1984): 1–14; Norman Moss, Picking Up the Reins: America, Britain and the Postwar World (London: Duckworth Overlook, 2008), 154–7.

  59. 59.

    Ernest Bevin, Telegram to Oliver Franks, 14 August 1950, PREM 8/1156, National Archives.

  60. 60.

    David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart: The Relationship between Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (London: BBC Books, 1988), 182.

  61. 61.

    Statement by the president on the situation in Korea, 27 June 1950, The American Presidency Project (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/).

  62. 62.

    Dennis D. Wainstock, Truman, MacArthur, and the Korean War (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 12.

  63. 63.

    Jonathan Mercer, “Emotion and Strategy in the Korean War,” International Organization 67, no. 2 (April 2013): 235.

  64. 64.

    Sean Greenwood, ““A War We Don’t Want”: Another Look at the British Labour Government’s Commitment in Korea, 1950–51,” Contemporary British History 17, no. 4 (May 2008): 1–5.

  65. 65.

    Oliver Franks, Telegram to Ernest Bevin, 16 August 1950, PREM 8/1156, National Archives.

  66. 66.

    Geoffrey Warner, “Anglo-American Relations and the Cold War in 1950,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 22, no. 1 (March 2011): 49.

  67. 67.

    Morgan, Labour in Power, 426–7.

  68. 68.

    The President’s News Conference, 30 November 1950, The American Presidency Project (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/).

  69. 69.

    Oliver Franks, Telegram to Foreign Office, 16 December 1950, PREM 8/1560, National Archives.

  70. 70.

    “Record of Washington talks—Atomic Weapon,” n.d., PREM 8/1560, National Archives.

  71. 71.

    David Demarest Lloyd, “The Care and Kee** of the Great Alliance,” The Reporter, 27, December 1956, 12–13 Morgan, Labour in Power, 428–30.

  72. 72.

    “Meeting between Friends,” Daily Telegraph, 9 December 1950; “Mr. Attlee’s Statement,” The Times, 13 December 1950.

  73. 73.

    This decision was clearly against Attlee’s better judgment. Only a month earlier, he had informed Truman that such a resolution “will, in our view, almost certainly provoke China to extend hostilities.” Attlee, Telegram to Truman, 8 January 1951, PREM 8/1438, National Archives.

  74. 74.

    “Stand by our Friend,” Daily Mail, 26 January 1951, 1; Dimbleby and Reynolds, An Ocean Apart, 190.

  75. 75.

    Oliver Franks, Memorandum, “General MacArthur’s Dismissal,” 12 April 1951, FO 371/90907, National Archives.

  76. 76.

    Oliver Franks, Telegrams to Foreign Office, 3 May and 4 May 1951, FO 371/90960, National Archives.

  77. 77.

    Oliver Franks, Telegram to Ernest Bevin, PREM 8/1156, National Archives.

  78. 78.

    Greenwood, “‘A War We Don’t Want,’” 8; Warner, “Anglo-American Relations and the Cold War in 1950,” 57.

  79. 79.

    Jussi M. Hanhimaki, “‘The Number One Reason’: McCarthy, Eisenhower and the Decline of American Prestige in Britain, 1952–54” in Jonathan Hollowell (ed.), Twentieth Century Anglo-American Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001), 107, 111–12; John P. Rossi, “The British Reaction to McCarthyism, 1950–54” in Lori Lyn Bogle (ed.), The Cold War, Volume 4: Cold War Espionage and Spying (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), 204–5.

  80. 80.

    “Attlee in Wonderland,” Los Angeles Times, 14 August 1954.

  81. 81.

    Sir Harold Caccia to D. A. Greenhill, 2 September 1964, FO 372/7898, National Archives.

  82. 82.

    Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970), 387.

  83. 83.

    For an illustration of Attlee’s terseness, see his answers to numerous questions about the United States in Attlee: The Granada Historical Records Interview, 49.

  84. 84.

    Clement R. Attlee, “Britain and America: Common Aims, Different Opinions,” Foreign Affairs 32 (1 January 1954), 190–202.

  85. 85.

    Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 1946–1953 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1956), 275.

  86. 86.

    David Low, “United We Stand—With the Usual Leg Free,” Daily Herald, 15 December 1950.

  87. 87.

    “The Common Front,” New York Times, 5 December 1950.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Modern History, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Clive Webb

Authors
  1. Clive Webb
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Clive Webb .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, University of Roehampton, London, UK

    Michael Patrick Cullinane

  2. School of History, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Martin Farr

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Webb, C. (2022). Harry S. Truman and Clement Attlee: “Trouble Always Brings Us Together”. In: Cullinane, M.P., Farr, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Presidents and Prime Ministers From Cleveland and Salisbury to Trump and Johnson. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72276-0_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72276-0_8

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-72275-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-72276-0

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation