Retreat From Power 2. [antikvár]

Preface This second volume of studies in Britain's foreign relations begins with the Second World War. In some respects, that cataclysm confirmed and deepened the results of the First; Germany and her allies were again defeated. It reversed other consequences, for Russia, having escaped defeat by the narrowest of margins, emerged as the predominant power in central and eastern Europe. No country mobilised its resources of industrial output and manpower more effectively than Britain. Had it been possible to bring the war to an end, say, eighteen months earlier, her political weight insidis the coalition would have been much greater than it proved to be in the last year of the struggle. But so enormous an effort, impossible without the support of the United States, inevitably meant that Britain could no longer sustain the whole range of her former burdens, especially when it became clear again that the ending of a great war was not to be followed by a period of peace, rebuilding and good will among the victorious allies. These essays are intended to show how Britain conducted her relations with foreign powers during the war, with particular emphasis on the United States and the Soviet Union; and how she reacted to the changed circumstances of the uneasy truce after 1945. Professor Gopal's paper provides in some senses a complement to Dr Hillmer's account, given in the first volume, of Britain's adjustment to a new relationship with the countries of the old empire; while Professor Gowing's description of the British government's decision to manufacture the atomic bomb connects naturally with Dr Spiers's review of the factors which the British government had to weigh before deciding in the summer of 1980 to remain a nuclear power, a decision which -quite apart from its significance in the field of armaments - tells us a good deal about the role which the British aspire to play in the international politics of the next ten or fifteen years.