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Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt and Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain: Amelioration of Rivalry in the 1930s

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Abstract

Whereas the 1920s saw Anglo-American relations suffused by naval rivalry, the dichotomy of reparations imposed on Germany versus British war debts, and trade and financial competition, the 1930s differed. The first years saw increasing co-operation over naval policy, and trade policies overtook debt as the primary concern. The reason lay with the Great Depression. By 1933, in Europe and East Asia, different constellations of power were forming. American governments—first, Herbert Hoover’s administration and then Franklin Roosevelt’s—had maintained isolationism by avoiding political or security arrangements with other powers. Successive British prime ministers—Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, and Neville Chamberlain—were increasingly concerned about European and East Asian security. Largely for Britain and America, their relationship with the other was of secondary importance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Patrick O. Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Michael H. Hunt, The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 8, 23–102; Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), xix, 274–343. For a more nuanced but still economic determinist assessment, see Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916–1931 (London: Penguin, 2014).

  2. 2.

    Robert Self, Britain, America and the War Debt Controversy: The Economic Diplomacy of an Unspecial Relationship, 1917–1941 (London: Routledge, 2006), 15–59.

  3. 3.

    Charles R. Geisst, Wall Street. A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 146–89; Taylor Jaworski and Price V. Fishback, “Two World Wars in American Economic History” in Louis P. Cain, Price V. Fishback, and Paul W. Rhode (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Economic History, Volume II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 391–417.

  4. 4.

    Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1994), 1–233. See also, Table 2 in Paul Bairoch, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980,” Journal of European Economic History 11, no. 2 (Fall 1982): 275; B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics 1750–1970 (London: Palgrave, 1975), 353–483.

  5. 5.

    P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 (London: Longman, 2016).

  6. 6.

    Mitchell, Historical Statistics, 828–9. See also A. G. Hopkins, American Empire. A Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 443–93.

  7. 7.

    Circa 25 percent of Britain’s national wealth by the late 1920s derived from external sources, including exports, re-exports, and gold and silver bullion sales—approximately $6.5 billion. America’s total was in the order of 5 percent to 6 percent, circa $6.4 billion. See B. J. C. McKercher, “Wealth, Power, and the New International Order: Britain and the American Challenge in the 1920s,” Diplomatic History 12, no. 4 (October 1988): 433.

  8. 8.

    Jon Jacobson, “Locarno, Britain and the Security of Europe” in Gaynor Johnson (ed.), Locarno Revisited: European Diplomacy, 1920–1929 (London: Routledge, 2004), 8–22.

  9. 9.

    William Roger Louis, British Strategy in the Far East 1919–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 131–3.

  10. 10.

    Lawrence Lenz, Power and Policy: America’s First Steps to Superpower, 1889–1922 (New York: Algora Publishing, 2008), 225–44.

  11. 11.

    G. H. Bennett, The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity 1919–22: Naval and Foreign Policy Under Lloyd George (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 125–44.

  12. 12.

    I. H. Nish, Alliance in Decline: A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1908–1923 (London: Bloomsbury, 1972), 391–7.

  13. 13.

    Sadao Asada, “Japan’s ‘Special Interests’ and the Washington Conference, 1921–22,” American Historical Review 67, no. 1 (October 1961): 62–71.

  14. 14.

    Calvin Coolidge, Message to Congress, 4 January 1926 in U.S. State Department, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1926 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1941), 42–4.

  15. 15.

    Except where noted, this paragraph is based on Report to the Council on the Work of the First Session of the Commission held at Geneva from May 8th to 26th 1926 (May 1926), League of Nations Document [hereafter LND, League of Nations Archives, Palais des Nations, Geneva], C.30. 1926. IX; Report of the Sub-Commission A (December 1926), LND C.739.M.278.1926. IX; Sub-Commission B, Report No.1 (30 November 1926), LND C.P.D.29; Sub-Committee B, Report No. II (17 March 1927), LND C.P.D.39; Sub-Committee B, Report No. III (March 17, 1927), LND C.P.D.40.

  16. 16.

    Carolyn J. Kitching, Britain and the Geneva Disarmament Conference. A Study in International History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 26–50; B. J. C. McKercher, “Of Horns and Teeth: The Preparatory Commission and the World Disarmament Conference, 1926–1934” in B. J. C. McKercher (ed.), Arms Limitation and Disarmament: Restraints on War (Westport: Praeger, 1992), 177–8.

  17. 17.

    B. J. C. McKercher, The Second Baldwin Government and the United States, 1924–1929: Attitudes and Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 56–7.

  18. 18.

    On Coolidge and domestic issues, see Richard W. Fanning, Peace and Disarmament. Naval Rivalry & Arms Control 1922–1933 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 1–25.

  19. 19.

    Carolyn J. Kitching, “Sunk Before We Started? Anglo-American Rivalry at the Coolidge Naval Conference, 1927” in Keith Hamilton and Edward Johnson (eds.), Arms and Disarmament in Diplomacy (Portland OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2008), 91–111; McKercher, Second Baldwin Government, 59–84.

  20. 20.

    Egerton [Director of Plans, Admiralty] memorandum, 27 March 1927, ADM [Admiralty Records, The National Archives, Kew], 116/3371/2807.

  21. 21.

    USN General Board, “General Board Report for Delegates to Geneva,” 1 June 1927, U.S. Navy General Board [Massey Library, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston] RG 80.7.3, Series 5, Box 12.

  22. 22.

    McKercher, Second Baldwin Government, 71–2.

  23. 23.

    Gaynor Johnson, “Austen Chamberlain and Britain’s Relations with France” in Glyn Stone and Thomas G. Otte (eds.), Anglo-French Relations since the Late Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2008), 127–8; McKercher, Second Baldwin Government, 150–8.

  24. 24.

    Calvin Coolidge, Address at the Observance of the Tenth Anniversary of the Armistice under the Auspices of the American Legion, 11 November 1928, American Presidency Project (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu).

  25. 25.

    B.J.C. McKercher, “From Enmity to Cooperation: The Second Baldwin Government and the Improvement of Anglo-American Relations, November 1928–June 1929,” Albion 24, no. 1 (1992): 64–87.

  26. 26.

    Atherton telegrams (98, 99) to secretary of state, both 24 April 1929, both HHPP [Herbert Hoover Presidential Papers, West Branch, IA] Box 998.

  27. 27.

    B.J.C. McKercher, Transition of Power. Britain’s Loss of Global Pre-eminence to the United States, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 33, 38, 48–50.

  28. 28.

    For example, MacDonald to Hoover, 19 November 1929, Hoover to MacDonald, 3 December 1929, HHPP 999.

  29. 29.

    USN General Board memoranda, 10 June, 23 August, 28 September 1929, Hoover to Stimson, 17 September 1929, Hoover to Buchanan, 24 September 1929, with enclosures, HHPP 998.

  30. 30.

    John Maurer and Christopher Bell (eds.), At the Crossroads between Peace and War: The London Naval Conference of 1930 (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 2014).

  31. 31.

    See Jones “Comment on the Treaty of London, nd,” Jones [Admiral Hilary Jones Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC] 4.

  32. 32.

    For example, Stimson diary, with memorandum, “Conversation with the Prime Minister of Great Britain,” both 17 January 1930, Stimson [Henry Stimson Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT] 12; MacDonald diary, 17 January 1930, MacDonald [J.R. MacDonald Papers, The National Archives, Kew] PRO 30/69/1753.

  33. 33.

    For instance, the London treaty allowed the U.S. Navy 25 heavy cruisers, the RN 15. In 1936, Britain had 14 built and two building; the United States, 15 and two. The same American deficiency is true for other classes of warship. See Francis E. McMurtrie (ed.), Janes’ Fighting Ships (1936).

  34. 34.

    Unsigned memorandum [in Hoover’s hand], nd [likely summer 1929], HHPP 998.

  35. 35.

    Sadao Asada, “The London Conference and the Tragedy of the Imperial Japanese Navy” in Maurer and Bell, London Naval Conference, 89–134.

  36. 36.

    Wilson to Lloyd George, 5 May 1919, Arthur S. Link (ed.), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, 1987): 58, 446–8.

  37. 37.

    World War Foreign Debt Commission, Minutes of the World War Foreign Debt Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1927), 90–2. Also see Combined Annual Reports, With Additional Information Regarding Foreign Debts Due the United States, Fiscal Years, 1922, 1923, 1924 1925 and 1926 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1927), 30–47.

  38. 38.

    Self, War Debt Controversy, 34–59; Tooze, Deluge, 442–7.

  39. 39.

    Gerald D. Feldman, Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), Part IV; Winfried Lampe, Bankbetrieb in Krieg und Inflation: Deutsche Grossbanken in den Jahren 1914 bis 1923 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012), chaps. 4 and 5.

  40. 40.

    C. Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis, 1923–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); E. Y. O’Riordan, Britain and the Ruhr Crisis (Houndmills, NY: Palgrave, 2001).

  41. 41.

    Cohrs, Unfinished Peace, 154–84, 259–79, 281–571.

  42. 42.

    Harold James, The Reichsbank and Public Finance in Germany, 1924–1933: A Study of the Politics of Economics during the Great Depression (Frankfurt: F. Knapp, 1985); A. Ritschl, Deutschlands Krise und Konjunktur 1924–1934: Binnenkonjunktur, Auslandsverschuldung und Reparationsproblem zwischen Dawes-Plan und Transfersperre (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 107–41.

  43. 43.

    Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic, Second Edition (London: Routledge, 2005), 64–5; Z. S. Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 470–80.

  44. 44.

    McKercher, Transition, 69–73.

  45. 45.

    Hurst minute, 28 October 1925, FO 371/10646/5376/1490; Robert Calder, Beware the British Serpent: The Role of Writers in British Propaganda in the United States, 1939–1945 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 29; Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day, 21 February 1946.

  46. 46.

    B. J. C. McKercher, “A British View of American Foreign Policy: The Settlement of Blockade Claims, 1924–1927,” International History Review 3, no. 3 (1981): 358–84.

  47. 47.

    Douglas A. Irwin, Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).

  48. 48.

    Joanne Gowa, and Raymond Hicks, “Politics, Institutions, and Trade: Lessons of the Interwar Era,” International Organization 67, no. 3 (2013): 439–67; Jakob B. Madsen, “Trade Barriers and the Collapse of World Trade during the Great Depression,” Southern Economic Journal 67, no. 4 (2001): 848–68.

  49. 49.

    See MacDonald comments in Cabinet Conclusion [CC] 26(32)1, 4 May 1932, CAB [Cabinet Records, The National Archives, Kew] 23/71; Simon memorandum, “Note on Reparations Policy,” Point (e), CP191(32), 6 June 1932, CAB 24/230.

  50. 50.

    Diary, 28 December 1930, Stimson Papers.

  51. 51.

    Hoover moratorium diary, 5 June 1931, HHPP 1015; Stimson to Hoover, 13 June 1931, HHPP 1006; diary, 5 June 1931, Stimson 16; Feis minute for Stimson, 13 June 1931, Stimson to Hoover, 14 June 1931, Feis telephone report [conversation with Treasury Secretary Ogden Mills], 15 June 1931, all Stimson [Henry Stimson Papers, Microfilm] Reel 81.

  52. 52.

    Self, War Debt Controversy, 161–77.

  53. 53.

    John Moser, Twisting the Lion’s Tail. American Anglophobia between the World Wars (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 87–8.

  54. 54.

    Cf. P. Clavin, The Failure of Economic Diplomacy: Britain, Germany, France and the United States, 1931–36 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 1996), 117–42; McKercher, Transition, 159–60, 169–72.

  55. 55.

    Moley telegram to Bullitt, 14 June 1933, SDDF [State Department Decimal Files, National Archives and Record Administration, College Park] 550.1 Monetary Stabilization/16-1, 16-2.

  56. 56.

    C. Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948): 1, 260–6.

  57. 57.

    Michael J. Hogan, Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy, 1918–1928 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1977).

  58. 58.

    M. G. Blackford, The Rise of Modern Business: Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Third Edition (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 139–68; Cain and Hopkins, Innovation and Expansion, 479–500; Fiona Venn, “A Struggle for Supremacy? Great Britain, the United States and Kuwaiti Oil in the 1930s,” Colchester: University of Essex, Department of History, Research Paper No. 2 (2012); M. Wilkins and F. E. Hill, American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

  59. 59.

    Emily Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); J. H. Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920–1933 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 6–100.

  60. 60.

    For example, Øystein Noreng, Crude Power: Politics and the Oil Market (New York: Bloomsbury, 2002), 52–102; Stephen Randall, United States Foreign Oil Policy since World War I: For Profits and Security (Montreal: McGill, Queen’s University Press, 2005); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), Part II.

  61. 61.

    Roberta Allbert Dayer, Bankers and Diplomats in China, 1917–1925: The Anglo-American Relationship (London: Routledge, 1981).

  62. 62.

    Jürgen Osterhammel, “British business in China, 1860s–1950s” in R. P. T. Davenport (ed.), British Business in China since the 1860s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 203.

  63. 63.

    Sherman Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 22–69.

  64. 64.

    On cables, see R. Boyce, “The Origins of Cable and Wireless Limited, 1918–1939: Capitalism, Imperialism, and Technical Change” in B. Finn and D. Yang (eds.), Communications Under the Seas: The Evolving Cable Network and Its Implications (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 81–114; L. B. Tribolet, The International Aspects of Electrical Communications in the Pacific Area (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1929).

  65. 65.

    Ian Drummond and N. G. Hillmer, Negotiating Freer Trade: The United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and the Trade Agreements of 1938 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1989).

  66. 66.

    On 1930–1933 as the “Hinge Years” where the achievements of the 1920s collapsed, see Steiner, Lights that Failed, Part II.

  67. 67.

    Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: W. W. Norton, 2001), chap. 2; Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Starting World War II, 1937–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Then see J.E. Casteel, Russia in the German Global Imaginary: Imperial Visions and Utopian Desires, 1905–1941 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 2016).

  68. 68.

    F. A. Bianco, Mussolini e il “Nuovo Ordine”:I Fascisti, l’asse e lo “Spazio Vitale” (1939–1943) (Milano: Luni Editrice, 2018); Gerhard Feldbauer, Mussolinis Überfall auf Äthiopien: eine Aggression am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Bonn: Pahl Rugenstein, 2006); G. B. Strang, On the Fiery March: Mussolini Prepares for War (Westport, Praeger, 2003).

  69. 69.

    John W. Dower, “The Structures and Ideologies of Conquest” in Stephen R. MacKinnon, Diana Lary, and Ezra F. Vogel (eds.), China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 17–21; Masato Kimura and Tosh Minohara (eds.), Tumultuous Decade: Empire, Society, and Diplomacy in 1930’s Japan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013); S. C. M. Paine, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 77–142.

  70. 70.

    Declaration by Mr. Gibson concerning President Hoover’s Proposal (20 June 1932), LND Conf.D.126.

  71. 71.

    On moral leadership, see Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920–1933 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 330.

  72. 72.

    Lindsay despatch (986) to Simon, 17 June 1932, FO 371/15875/3933/268; diary, 13–16 June 1932, Stimson 22.

  73. 73.

    Hoover holograph drafts of the speech, plus Stimson-Gibson telephone conversation, 20 June 1932 (3:00 pm), both HHPP 1002; diary, 18–22 June 1932, Stimson 22.

  74. 74.

    CC26(32)2, 4 May 1932, CAB 23/71.

  75. 75.

    Simon memorandum, “The Future proceedings of the Disarmament Conference,” 10 June 1932, FO 800/287.

  76. 76.

    Simon memorandum, “The Disarmament Conference” [CP78(32)], 20 February 1932, CAB 24/228.

  77. 77.

    American negotiators earlier complained that Washington’s directives ignored strategic issues; see Marriner to Moffat, 9 April 1932, Moffat [J. Pierrepont Moffat Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA] 11.

  78. 78.

    Simon to MacDonald, 29 June 1932, with enclosure, CAB 21/357; Statement of Views of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom regarding President Hoover’s Proposal (7 July 1932), LND Conf.D.133; Statement by Mr. Baldwin in the House of Commons on July 7, 1932, BDFA, II, J4, 27–31.

  79. 79.

    Simon [draft] to Cecil, nd [but late June 1932], Simon FO 800/287.

  80. 80.

    MacDonald to Baldwin, 24 June 1932, Baldwin [Stanley Baldwin Papers, University Library, Cambridge] 119.

  81. 81.

    MacDonald to Simon, 31 May 1932, FO 800/286.

  82. 82.

    Moffat to Gordon, 6 October 1932, Moffat to Wilson, 1 December 1932, both Moffat 3; Gibson to Davis, 3 December 1932, Davis [Norman Davis Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC] 26; MacDonald to Davis, 7, 17 November 1932, Davis to MacDonald, 15 November 1932, all Davis 40.

  83. 83.

    Roosevelt to Davis, 26 November 1932, Davis 51.

  84. 84.

    Davis memorandum, 28 November 1932, Record of a Conversation between Mr. MacDonald, Sir J. Simon, and Mr. N. Davis at Geneva, December 2, 1932, Record of a Conversation between Mr. MacDonald, Sir J. Simon, and Mr. N. Davis at Geneva, December 3, 1932, Documents on British Foreign Policy [DBFP] Series II, Volume IV (London, 1947), 306–10, 313.

  85. 85.

    Joseph Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–39: A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War (Houndmills: Palgrave, 1998), 11–37; “Deception and Intelligence Failure: Anglo-German Preparations for U-boat Warfare,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 4 (1999): 53–76.

  86. 86.

    Craigie minute, 11 January 1935, FO 371/18731/478/22.

  87. 87.

    FO-Admiralty memorandum, “Questions of Naval Limitation, with Relation to the Possible Holding of a Conference for the Limitation of Naval Armament,” 30 March 1935, FO 371/18732/3205/22.

  88. 88.

    Ibid.

  89. 89.

    Hoare despatch (714) to Lindsay, 7 August 1935, enclosing FO memorandum, 2 August 1935, FO 371/18737/6954/22; FO-Admiralty memorandum, Future Course of Naval Negotiations, 18 July 1935, FO 371/18737/6525/22.

  90. 90.

    Craigie memorandum, 11 September 1935, FO 371/18739/8071/22; “Memorandum communicated by Italian Embassy,” 4 September 1935, FO 371/18739/7833/22.

  91. 91.

    Atherton to Broad, 19 August 1935, FO 371/18738/7286/22.

  92. 92.

    Record of a Meeting, 27 September 1935, FO 371/18739/8361/22.

  93. 93.

    Craigie memorandum, 7 September 1935, FO 371/18739/8397/22.

  94. 94.

    Craigie memorandum, 18 October 1935, with enclosure, FO 371/18740/9070/22; CC48(35), 23 October 1935, CAB 23/83; NCM memorandum, The Naval Conference, 1935 [CP201(35)], 11 October 1935, CAB 24/257.

  95. 95.

    Joseph Maiolo, “Naval Armaments Competition Between the Two World Wars” in Thomas Mahnken, Joseph Maiolo, and David Stevenson (eds.), Arms Race in International Politics. From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 103–6.

  96. 96.

    Cmd. 5136: Treaty of the Limitation of Naval Armaments, 25th March 1936 (1936).

  97. 97.

    For Hitler’s reasons, see A. Hillgruber, “England in Hitlers aussen politischer Konzeption,” Historische Zeitschrift 218, No. 1 (1974): 65–84; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, 271–2.

  98. 98.

    Craigie memorandum, 4 March 1936, FO 371/19809/2021/4.

  99. 99.

    FO-Admiralty memorandum, “Course of Naval Negotiations,” 11 October 1935, FO 371/18740/8758/22; Roosevelt to Bingham, 1 November 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs [FDRFA], Series II, Volume 3, 45–7.

  100. 100.

    Craigie minute, 5 November 1935, FO 371/18740/9218/22; FO telegram 9(2) to Clive, 6 January 1936, Eden telegram (6) to Lindsay, 10 January 1936, both FO 371/19803/4; diary, 8, 14 January 1936, Phillips [William Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA] 9.

  101. 101.

    McKercher, Transition of Power, 226, n53.

  102. 102.

    COS Meeting 101, 22 March 1932, CAB 2/5; CC19(32), CAB 23/70.

  103. 103.

    CID Meeting 261, 9 November 1933, CAB 2/6.

  104. 104.

    First DRC Report, 28 February 1934, CAB 16/109.

  105. 105.

    See Chamberlain’s remarks in DC(M)(32) meetings 41–50, CAB 16/110; “Note by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Report of the Defence Requirements Committee” [DC(M)(32) 120], CAB 27/51.

  106. 106.

    DRC Interim Report [DRC 25], 24 July 1935, CAB 16/136; DRC Third Report [DRC 37], 21 November 1935, CAB 16/112; DPR(DR) Report [CP26(36)], 12 February 1936, CAB 24/259. On DRC deliberations, see B. J. C. McKercher, “The Continental Commitment and British Foreign Policy: The Field Force and the Strategy of the National Government, 1933–1938,” English Historical Review 123, no. 500 (2008): 98–131; M. L. Roi, Alternative to Appeasement. Sir Robert Vansittart and Alliance Diplomacy, 1934–1937 (Westport: Praeger, 1997), 3–45.

  107. 107.

    Roosevelt to Phillips, 17 May 1937, FDRFA, II, 5, 200–1.

  108. 108.

    Gian Giacomo Migone, United States and Fascist Italy: The Rise of American Finance in Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); J. P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); Manfredi Martelli, Mussolini e l’America. Le Relazioni Italo-Statunitensi dal 1922 al 1941 (Milano: Mursia, 2006).

  109. 109.

    Roosevelt to Mussolini, 29 July 1937, FDRFA, II, 6, 219.

  110. 110.

    Lindsay telegram (200) to Hoare, 12 August 1935, DBFP II, XIV, 477.

  111. 111.

    Justus D. Doenecke and John E. Wilz, From Isolation to War, 1931–1941 (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2015), 78–82; R. A. Kennedy, “The Ideology of American Isolationism: 1931–1939,” Cercles 5 (2002): 57–76.

  112. 112.

    Hoare to Drummond, 31 August 1935, FO 800/295; Osborne telegram (212) to Hoare, 22 August 1935, FO 371/18772/7421/3483/45; Lindsay telegram (203) to Hoare, 14 August 1935, Hoare telegram (235) to Lindsay, 17 August 1935, both DBFP II, XIV, 479, 498.

  113. 113.

    Lindsay telegram (200) to Hoare, 12 August 1935, DBFP II, XIV, 477.

  114. 114.

    David Turns, “The Stimson Doctrine of Non-Recognition: Its Historical Genesis and Influence on Contemporary International Law,” Chinese Journal of International Law 2, no. 1 (2003): 105–43.

  115. 115.

    E. M. Clauss, “The Roosevelt Administration and Manchukuo, 1933–1941” in Walter Hixson (ed.), The American Experience in World War II, Volume 3: The United States and the Road to War in the Pacific (New York: Routledge, 2003), 65–82.

  116. 116.

    Sadao Asada, Culture Shock and Japanese-American Relations: Historical Essays (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 137–73; Stephen E. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor; The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 7–64.

  117. 117.

    Roosevelt memorandum, 13 December 1937, Roosevelt [Franklin Roosevelt Papers, Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY] PSF Japan; Douglas Carl Peifer, Choosing War: Presidential Decisions in the Maine, Lusitania, and Panay Incidents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), Part 3.

  118. 118.

    Chamberlain to Hilda [his sister], 17 December 1937, NC [Neville Chamberlain Papers, University of Birmingham, Birmingham] 18/1/1032; emphasis in original.

  119. 119.

    Hull memorandum, 14 December 1937, Hull [Cordell Hull Paper, Library of Congress, Washington, DC] 58; CC47(37)4 (15 December), CC48(37)5 (22 December), both CAB 23/90.

  120. 120.

    Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 154.

  121. 121.

    E. C. Bolt, Jr., Ballots before Bullets: The War Referendum Approach to Peace in America, 1914–1941 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977), chap. 20.

  122. 122.

    Lindsay telegram to Eden, 10 January 1938, FO 371/21525/196/64.

  123. 123.

    Beith minute, 19 January 1938, FO 371/21525/383/64.

  124. 124.

    Holman minute, 12 February 1938, FO 371/21525/1081/64.

  125. 125.

    Speech by the President, 5 October 1937, FDRFA II, 7, 10–21.

  126. 126.

    D. Borg, “Notes on Roosevelt’s Quarantine Speech,” Political Science Quarterly 72, no. 3 (1957): 405–33; Dallek, Roosevelt, 147–52.

  127. 127.

    Press Conference, 8 October 1937 and Radio Speech of the President, 12 October 1937, FDRFA II, 7, 53–4. 86–9.

  128. 128.

    Holman, Orde, Sargent minutes, 7 October 1937, FO 371/20667/7185/448; Allen minute, 7 October 1937, FO 371/20667/7236/448; Vansittart minute, 7 October 1937, FO 371/20667/7185/448.

  129. 129.

    CC36(37)5, CAB 23/89; Chamberlain to Hilda, 9 October 1937, NC 18/1/1023.

  130. 130.

    Eden to George VI, nd [?14–15 November 1937], FO 800/954/FE/37/10.

  131. 131.

    Peter Lowe, Great Britain and the Origins of the Pacific War: A Study of British Policy in East Asia, 1937–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 30–1.

  132. 132.

    Ian Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period (Westport: Praeger, 2002), 123.

  133. 133.

    Chamberlain to Ida [his sister], 4 July, 30 October, 26 November 1937, NC 18/1/1010, 1026, 1030; Chamberlain to Hilda, 24 October, 5 December 1937, NC 18/1/1025, 1030a.

  134. 134.

    Chamberlain to Hilda, 1 August 1937, NC 1014/18/1.

  135. 135.

    Inskip, “Report on Defence Expenditure in Future Years” [CP24(38)], 8 February 1938, CAB 24/274; CC5(38)9, 16 February 1938, CAB 23/92.

  136. 136.

    Chamberlain to Hilda, 9 February 1936, NC 18/1/949; G. C. Peden, “Chamberlain, the British Army and the Continental Commitment” in Malcom Murfett (ed.), Shaping British Foreign and Defence Policy in the Twentieth Century: Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 86–100.

  137. 137.

    This paragraph is based on D. C. Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (New York: Pantheon, 1989), still the best examination. Also, Frank McDonough (ed.), Origins of the Second World War: An International Perspective (London: Continuum, 2011); Richard Overy, Origins of the Second World War (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), Part II.

  138. 138.

    Watt, How War Came; B. J. C. McKercher, “Strategy and Foreign Policy in Great Britain, 1930–1938: From the Pursuit of the Balance of Power to Appeasement” in Christopher Baxter, M. L. Dockrill, and Keith Hamilton (eds.), Britain in Global Politics, Volume I: From Gladstone to Churchill, 1900–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 153–74; Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the Road to War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (London: St Martin’s Press, 1993).

  139. 139.

    David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 37–102.

  140. 140.

    A. D. Coox, Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939, Two Volumes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985); Stuart D. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939: The Red Army’s Victory that Shaped World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 2012).

  141. 141.

    Anthony Best, “The Leith-Ross Mission and British Policy towards East Asia, 1934–7,” International History Review 35, no. 4 (2013): 681–701; Watt, How War Came, 356–9.

  142. 142.

    Ashton-Gwatkin minute, 11 March 1937, FO 371/20659/2847/228; Treasury-BoT comments in minutes of meeting, 23 March 1937, FO 371/20659/2473/228; Simon [chancellor of the Exchequer] minute, 7 June 1937, T 172/1858.

  143. 143.

    Ian Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy, 1917–1939; Studies in Expansion and Protection (London: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 118–20.

  144. 144.

    CC49(38)9, CAB 23/96; Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, II, 102; C. A. MacDonald, The United States, Britain, and Appeasement, 1936–1939 (London: Springer, 1980), 109–10.

  145. 145.

    Drummond and Hillmer, Freer Trade, 147; Feis to Bullitt, 6 September 1938 and Feis to Schuster, 7 July 1938, Feis [Herbert Feis Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC] 12, 26.

  146. 146.

    Welles memorandum, 6 October 1937, FDRFA II, VII, 29–32.

  147. 147.

    Chamberlain to Roosevelt, 21 January 1938, Hull 42; Eden minutes to Chamberlain, 10, 11 February 1938, FO 371/21625/2127/64.

  148. 148.

    Eden to Chamberlain, 20 February 1938, CC8(53), Appendix, CAB/23/92.

  149. 149.

    FPC Meeting 26, 18 March 1939, CAB 27/623.

  150. 150.

    Cf. Eden to Baldwin, 19 December 1938, Baldwin 124; COS memorandum, “Situation in the Event of War Against Germany” [COS 716], 26 April 1938, Annex (2)(ii), CAB 53/38.

  151. 151.

    See his comments in FPC Meeting 35, 23 January 1939, CAB 27/624.

  152. 152.

    Kennedy to Moffat, 14 April 1938, Moffat 13.

  153. 153.

    Kennedy to Hull, 11, 22 March 1938, Hull 42.

  154. 154.

    Kennedy telegram to Hull, 14 September 1938, Kennedy to Roosevelt, 19 December 1938, Roosevelt PSF GB.

  155. 155.

    Davis to Hull, 28 February 1938, Hull 42. Cf. Davis to Hull, 7 August 1938, Hull 43.

  156. 156.

    For instance, diary, 30 March, 2 April 1938, in H.L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, Volume II (NY, 1954), 47–9, 351–2.

  157. 157.

    On appeasement, see diary, 2 April 1938, Ibid., 352; Morgenthau to Roosevelt, 17 October 1938, Morgenthau Diary [Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY] Reel 1. On Ickes restricting strategic raw material sales to Germany, see diary, 23 February 1938, Ickes, Diary, 324–5; on Morgenthau trying to support sterling and the franc to allow for Anglo-French defence spending, see J.M. Blum, ed., From the Morgenthau Diaries, Volume I (Boston, 1959), 514–16.

  158. 158.

    David Haglund, Latin America and the Transformation of U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936–1940 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).

  159. 159.

    Diary, 29 January 1939, Ickes, Diary, 571.

  160. 160.

    Chamberlain to Hilda, 5 February 1939, NC 18/1/1084.

  161. 161.

    David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–41: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 46–7.

  162. 162.

    Beith minute, 9 March 1939, FO 371/22800/1698/27.

  163. 163.

    David Reynolds, “FDR’s Foreign Policy and the British Royal Visit to the USA, 1939,” Historian 45 (1983): 461–72; Lindsay despatch (660) to Halifax, 16 June 1939, FO 371/22801/4435/27; Lindsay despatch (677) to Halifax, 20 June 1939, FO 371/22801/4441/27.

  164. 164.

    Lindsay despatch (679) to Halifax, 20 June 1939, FO 371/22801/4443/27.

  165. 165.

    Reynolds, Alliance, 48–9.

  166. 166.

    Kennedy telegram (479) to Hull, 14 April 1939, SDDF 711.41/441.

  167. 167.

    FPC Meeting 38, 27 March 1939, CAB 27/624.

  168. 168.

    Halifax to Roosevelt, 21, 23 March, 5 April 1939, Roosevelt PSF GB.

  169. 169.

    Chynoweth [military attaché] reports (13, 14, 16), 19, 28 April, 5 May 1939, all Chynoweth [Bradford Chynoweth MSS, US Army Historical Centre, Carlisle Barracks, PA].

  170. 170.

    Halifax despatch to Lindsay, 17 March 1939, DBFP III, IV, 364–5.

  171. 171.

    For example, Johnson to Moffat, 29 December 1938, 27 April 1939, both Moffat 15; Kennedy to Roosevelt, 20 July 1939, Roosevelt PSF GB Kennedy.

  172. 172.

    G. W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 134–5; Dallek, Roosevelt, 172–5; J. L. McVoy et al., “The Roosevelt Resurgence (1933–1941)” in R. W. King, (ed.), Naval Engineering and American Seapower (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1989), 161–200; J. D. Millett, The Army Service Forces. The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1954), 18–22.

  173. 173.

    Roosevelt to Merriman, 15 February 1939, Roosevelt PSF GB.

  174. 174.

    Conference with the Senate Military Affairs Committee, 31 January 1939, FDRFA III, XIII, 197–223.

  175. 175.

    Dallek, Roosevelt, 101–68.

  176. 176.

    Chamberlain to Hilda, 5 February 1939, NC 18/1/1084.

  177. 177.

    FP(36), Meetings 38–40, 27, 30, 31 March 1939, CAB 27/624.

  178. 178.

    B. J. C. McKercher, Britain, America, and the Special Relationship since 1941 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 23–9.

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    B. J. C. McKercher

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McKercher, B.J.C. (2022). Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt and Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain: Amelioration of Rivalry in the 1930s. 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_6

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