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The Foreign Office and the Failure of Anglo-Soviet Rapprochement

A central argument common to almost all histories of the origins of the Second World War has been the culpability of the British National Governments of the 1930s in failing to form an alliance with the Soviet Union aimed at containing or, if necessary, warring against Nazi Germany. In the Soviet histories a quasi-Marxist class analysis is employed which explains the failure of Anglo-Soviet relations in terms of the pro-fascist, anti-communist prejudices and interests of a 'section' of the British ruling class whose European policy was in essence to grant Germany a 'free hand in the east'.' Several non-Soviet books, which view the history of British foreign policy in the 1930s as a morality play in which the anti-Hitler, proSoviet-alliance 'anti-appeasers' were pitted against the pro-Hitler, anti-Soviet 'appeasers' have exerted considerable influence.2 More importantly, almost all British histories of the origins of the Second World War from the sombre moralism of F. S. Northedge to the irreverent dissent of A. J. P. Taylor have taken the British governments of the 1930s to task for their failure to ally with Soviet Russia.3