Ebook: Britain and the Cold War, 1941-1947

Rothwell, der har undervist i nyere historie ved University of Edinburgh siden 1970, skriver på grundlag af Foreign Office's arkiver i Public Record Office om Storbritanniens udenrigspolitik 1941-47, specielt forholdet til Sovjet og USA.

This book examines the British role in the origins of the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, which rapidly came to be known as the Cold War, from the vantage-point, primarily, of records in the Foreign Office. This stress on the opinions and actions of officials clearly requires a word of justification. At the beginning of 1943, R.A. Butler, who had been Foreign Office junior minister at the relevant time, was asked to comment on preliminary drafts of an official account by Professor E.L. Woodward of the origins of the war then going on. He found it good except ‘that it struck him as being very much written from the standpoint of a Foreign Office official. That is to say extracts from minutes written by members of the Central Depart¬ ment seemed to bulk much more largely than references to Ministers, the Cabinet or Parliament.