The Impact of WW2 on Britain &

the United States of Europe’

 Structure of the Lecture
• Key Debate: British ‘exceptionalism’ &
‘conservative modernity’
• The impact of war on Britain & the ‘post-
war consensus’
• British foreign policy, Churchill’s ‘three
circles’, & the ‘United States of Europe’
• From Suez to ‘Super-Mac’
• Conclusions
 British ‘exceptionalism’ & ‘conservative
modernity’
• How to explain the major changes that Britain went through

• Why Britons viewed their country as a modern one before 1940 and
why things changed after 1945

• Were things different in continental Europe?

• Peculiarities of British history used to sustain evolutionary modernity

• Lawrence’s terms this ‘conservative modernity’ in Britain, not liberal

• Not until the 1980s did Britain revolutionise its view of modernity
 The impact of war &
‘post-war consensus’

Clement Attlee
(right)

•Basic set of policies adopted by Labour & Conservatives during 1947-76

•Mixed economy, ‘full employment’, & the welfare state

•Foundations built during the People’s War

•Churchill deals with strategy, Labour free reign on the Home Front

•Attlee’s Labour party win 1945 election, not Churchill!

Beveridge Report & National Insurance

The Architects of the ‘consensus’:

William Beveridge (left) & John Maynard
Keynes (above)
•A mixture of freedom & security
Aneurin Bevan’s NHS
Conservative victory, 1951
 British foreign policy & Churchill’s
‘three circles’
Foreign Secretary Ernest
Bevin was a trade unionist
but he had no time for
communism & wanted to
maintain Britain’s world
role

President Harry S. Truman, Stalin, and

Churchill at the Potsdam Conference in
1945. Cold War is about to begin
 Lend-Lease & Britain’s financial Dunkirk

Harry Dexter White of the US Treasury & Keynes at the White

House discussing the Bretton Woods agreements in 1944
Withdrawal from India & Palestine,
1947-48
 The Truman Doctrine

The Marshall Plan

Founding members of
NATO, 1949
The Berlin Airlift
The guerrilla war in Malaya
 The ‘special relationship’ with the USA
during the early 1950s

British troops on their way

to fight in the Korean War,
1950-53
An aging Churchill meets
Eisenhower, c.1953-55
 European Federalism
Schuman & Monet
launch the ECSC in
1950

The Treaty of Rome & the

EEC, 1957-58
From Suez to ‘Super-Mac’

Nasser, Eden, & the

Suez Canal
Harold Macmillan to the rescue

http://www.britishpathe.com/rec
ord.php?id=32594
Going Nuclear: the Sandys Review 1957

Britain’s V Bomber force

Duncan Sandys
 Berlin & Cuba, 1959-62

Kennedy &
Krushchev

The Berlin Wall

http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/john-
kennedy-harold-macmillan-jfk-and-harold-
macmillan-cuban-missile-crisis
Mac & JFK: reviving the ‘special relationship’

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=69643
Mac’s ‘affluent society’ & 1959
election win
 Some Conclusions

•Britain’s decision to apply to join EEC in 1960-61 just another example of

‘conservative modernity’?

•A wasted opportunity in the 1950s?

•Understandable considering nature of British past since nineteenth century,

imperial responsibilities, and as victorious nation in WW2?

•Britain still a superpower, one of the ‘big three’, during early 1950s? Half a
superpower? Or just a second-rate power?