Allied Grand Strategy

Abstract

On 1 January 1942 in Washington the United Nations declaration affirmed that the signatories — China, the US, the USSR and Britain, and later 22 others — would collectively use their resources to defeat the Axis and would not make a separate peace. The central core of the United Nations was the ‘Grand Alliance’ of the ‘Big Three’ — the US, UK and USSR. It was a less than perfect alliance, full of mistrust. Suspicion was reinforced by geography to mean that the Soviets essentially fought a separate war against Germany, and they only joined the war against Japan days before it ended. The Grand Alliance, however, was a necessary, functioning entity, and without it the defeat of the Axis would have been impossible. For all the tensions, the alliance stayed together to gain the victory that was its purpose.