The Cold War: A MILITARY History (5 page)

fn2
The official description of the defence organization is given in
Appendix 1
.

fn3
Finland was permitted 34,000 in the army, 4,000 in the navy, and 3,000 in the air force (including any naval air arm), while equipment limits included 10,000 tonnes of warships and sixty aircraft. Submarines and bombers were totally prohibited.

2

The Birth of NATO

AT THE END
of the Second World War by far the most powerful of the Western Allies was the United States. There were US garrisons all over Europe, including Austria, Belgium, Berlin, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and Yugoslavia, although manning levels were rapidly reduced wherever possible. The USA was hoping for a virtually total disengagement from Europe and sought to avoid any new commitments in the area, but in February 1947 the British dropped a bombshell when their foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, informed the US government that the UK, ravaged by war, striving desperately to administer a huge empire, in the throes of the worst winter on record and to all intents bankrupt, would be compelled to end its military assistance to Greece from the beginning of April. Indeed, Britain’s true position was revealed when its government had to go cap in hand to Washington with a request for a $4.4 billion loan later in that year. Faced with the British fait accompli, the Truman administration felt it had no option but to take the British place in supporting Greece, thus initiating a policy of involvement in European affairs which has continued to this day.

The United States’ most natural ally in Europe was the United Kingdom, with which it had close blood ties and with which it had been closely allied in two world wars. In the early post-war years, however, there were several stresses in the UK–US relationship, in which a variety of factors was involved. One was financial, and included problems such as the sudden termination of the provision of military equipment under the ‘Lend-Lease’ scheme and achieving agreement on how to work out a precise figure for the British debt incurred to the USA during the 1939–45 period. The British also felt frustrated by the US denial of access to atomic weapons, not least because British scientists had given substantial help to their development in the Manhattan Project.

Palestine was also a problem. The British administered the territory
under
the terms of a pre-war League of Nations mandate, and in 1946–7 British troops there were seen to be forcibly turning back Jewish refugees from Europe – something which did not go down well with the politically active Jewish community in the USA. The USA also had very firm ideas on the continued British imperial retention of the Indian subcontinent, as well as an instinctive mistrust of Attlee’s left-wing government. Above all was the realization (perhaps more clearly in the United States than in the United Kingdom) that, while Britain, with its empire, had entered the Second World War Two as the strongest single power in the world, it had emerged from it as demonstrably weaker – politically, militarily and economically.

Despite these strains, the Americans and British worked closely together in many areas, particularly when dealing with the Soviet Union. Thus, when Soviet intransigence led to the break-up of the Allied Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in London on 15 December 1947 Bevin took the opportunity to outline to George Marshall a proposal for a two-tier defence system for western Europe which would include the USA. Marshall’s immediate response was that any talk of a US military guarantee was premature, to say the least, but nevertheless he agreed that talks about such a treaty could start, albeit confined initially to the English-speaking north-Atlantic nations: Canada, the UK and the USA.

Meanwhile, the Soviet leaders were extending their control to countries outside the Soviet bloc. Thus, at the same time that the Communist coup was taking place in Czechoslovakia (February 1948), Stalin dispatched a formal invitation to the Finnish president to visit Moscow to negotiate a treaty of friendship, similar to those which Hungary and Romania had recently been compelled to sign. The Finnish president was seventy-eight years old, his country was small and devastated by war; there was little choice but to sign.

As these Soviet–Finnish negotiations were taking place, the Norwegian government received information from several directions that Stalin’s next ‘offer’ of a friendship treaty would be to Norway. These sources were clearly authentic and were sufficiently serious for the Norwegian foreign minister to hold urgent talks with the American ambassador on 11 March 1948 to inform him of what he had heard. He saw the British ambassador on the same day, but, having passed on the same information he had just given to the American, he then went significantly further, telling the Briton that Norway would refuse any Soviet demands for concessions, and that if this meant that the Soviet Union would attack Norway, then so be it: Norway would resist. That said, he then formally asked the ambassador what help Norway might expect to receive from Britain if attacked. To which the ambassador could only respond that he would contact his government and await a reply.

When the Norwegian enquiry reached London, Bevin immediately communicated his views to George Marshall, describing how the possession of
Norway
would turn western Europe’s northern flank and give the Soviet fleet access to the Atlantic. He also admitted that, as things were, the Brussels Treaty powers were insufficiently powerful to protect themselves, let alone to make a realistic offer of help to Norway. He therefore proposed a regional ‘Atlantic Approaches Pact of Mutual Assistance’, in which all of the countries directly threatened by a Soviet move to the Atlantic could participate, including, the USA, the UK, Canada, Eire, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, France and (when it had a democratic regime) Spain.

Marshall considered Bevin’s message, discussed it with President Truman, and replied to the British ambassador on 12 March, suggesting that talks should begin the following week. Bevin responded on 14 March, stating that a British delegation would arrive on 22 March and suggesting that Canada should be included in these further talks, which was agreed by both Washington and Ottawa within days. The British Cabinet considered the briefing to be given to their representative at these talks on 16 March, and thus, even as the Brussels Treaty was being signed on 17 March, the talks on its supersession were already under way. This did not mean that the Brussels Treaty had been superfluous; indeed, without it the US administration and Congress could well have doubted the European ability to rally together for the common good. The tripartite talks started in Washington on 22 March, and lasted for eleven days.
^fn1

Several events in late 1948 were of considerable importance to the eventual North Atlantic Treaty. First, in October the five Brussels Treaty foreign ministers announced their complete agreement on the principle of an Atlantic treaty and invited France to produce a first draft. On 11 November this document was duly presented to the Standing Committee of the Brussels Treaty, and the final draft was agreed by all five governments on 26 November and dispatched to Washington on 29 November, where on 4 December it was considered by the British and Canadian ambassadors and the US secretary of state. Considering the novelty, scope and importance of the subject, the usually stately progress of diplomatic negotiations and the involvement of five governments, this was quite breathtaking speed.

Meanwhile, on 8 November a formal meeting took place between the Western Union Commanders-in-Chief Committee and the Commander-in-Chief, US Forces Germany. This was held at Melle, France, and considered the military aspects of a possible Atlantic treaty.

More important even than all of these, however, was the US presidential election in November, which, rather naturally, had diverted the attention of many members of the US government, not least of Truman himself.
Truman
was widely predicted to have little chance of success, but one of the fruits of his unexpected victory was that most of the principal US actors in this drama remained in place, the major exception being George Marshall, who took the opportunity to retire and was replaced by Dean Acheson.

Various schemes for a new alliance were considered. The first was simply to extend the Brussels Treaty to include the USA and, perhaps, Italy. Another scheme was to have an Atlantic pact running in parallel to the Brussels Treaty; this would include only countries with Atlantic coastlines – i.e. Canada, France, the UK, the USA and, of course, Norway. Some consideration was also given to yet a third body, a Mediterranean pact, primarily as a means of including Italy.

An Ambassadors Committee comprising representatives of Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, France, the Netherlands and the UK, chaired by the US secretary of state, also considered a number of geographical factors. In a move which has subsequently been misinterpreted, the Tropic of Cancer was adopted as the southern boundary of the treaty. This was simply meant to be a device to preclude any African, Caribbean or Latin American country from joining and not, as was subsequently believed, to place an absolute barrier on any collective planning, manoeuvres or operations south of the Tropic of Cancer in the Atlantic Ocean.

As in all negotiations, problems were encountered from time to time, but what came to be known as ‘the NATO spirit’ produced a feeling of mutual desire to reach a satisfactory conclusion, with the ambassadors managing to take their respective foreign ministers along with them, while the US State Department kept the Senate Foreign Relations Committee involved.

MEMBERSHIP

At the start of the Washington discussions it was clear that membership of the proposed alliance would include the Brussels Treaty powers (the Benelux countries, France and the UK), Canada and the United States, but there was some discussion over other potential members.

It was considered highly desirable that Denmark and Norway should join the proposed alliance, and, if possible, Sweden as well. These were long-established democracies and were as much threatened as any other country in Europe; indeed, in 1948–9 Norway was probably the most threatened of them all. Further, they occupied very important strategic positions. Denmark sat astride the western end of the Baltic, dominating (with Sweden) the Skaggerak and the Belts; it also owned the island of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic. Of greater importance to the United States, however, was Danish ownership of Greenland, which was a vital stepping-stone in the air route from the United States to Europe at a time
when
transport aircraft had a comparatively short range. Norway was also strategically important, since it lay along the southern flank of the Soviet Union’s naval routes to the Atlantic and shared (with the USSR) the island of Spitsbergen. Sweden, however, was adamant that it would not abrogate its neutrality, and its membership was not pursued.

Once talk of an Atlantic pact started, Canada, the UK and the USA all expressed a desire that Iceland should be a founder member, as did Norway when it joined the discussions. Iceland was a small, unarmed nation which found itself occupying a key strategic position in the North Atlantic. It had become independent from Denmark in 1918 and had made an immediate declaration of perpetual neutrality, although Denmark had retained responsibility for its foreign affairs until April 1940. During the Second World War Iceland had been occupied by British troops, who arrived on 10 May 1940, but in July 1941 these had been replaced by US troops, the last of whom departed in April 1947. The US had, however, negotiated the right for its aircraft to transit through Keflavik for as long as US occupation forces remained in Germany.

Iceland had been seeking its own partners, but appreciated early on that it could obtain no realistic guarantee of protection from the proposed Nordic pact. An Icelandic mission visited the USA on 14–17 March and was given an assurance that Iceland would have a special position in the alliance, that it would not be required to produce any armed forces, and that no foreign troops would be stationed in Iceland in peacetime. A very lively domestic debate eventually resulted in agreement to join.

Italy was a more difficult problem. It had emerged from the war in a weak position, having first fought as a partner with Germany and Japan in the Axis pact, before signing an armistice in 1943 and then joining the Allies as a ‘Co-Belligerent’. For some years after the war Italy was not a member of the United Nations, and when discussions about a potential Atlantic treaty began there was considerable debate on whether Italy should be included or not. Internally, there was no clear support among the Italian people for such an alliance, and the Left – in particular the very strong Communist Party – wanted to declare the country neutral. Externally, there was some reluctance among other potential members who had been at war with Italy until only a few years earlier, while the United States seemed to waver: on one hand it did not want to upset other potential members, but, on the other, it did not want to upset the large Italian community in the USA. Some even argued that the northern orientation of the proposed treaty – its title had already been tentatively agreed as the ‘North Atlantic Treaty’ – appeared, by definition, to exclude the ‘southern-tier’ nations.

The United States encouraged Italy to seek to join the Western Union, but the visit of the Italian Chief of General Staff, General Marras, to the USA in December 1948 appears to have hardened the US official position
in
its favour. Thus, when the Ambassadors Committee, now including a representative of Norway, met in Washington on 4 March 1949 Acheson’s opening speech included the statement that the United States favoured Italian membership. Ernest Bevin had included Italy in his original proposals for a Europe-wide defence treaty, but thereafter he expressed some reservations; faced with this firm proposal by the United States, however, these reservations were withdrawn and Italy was invited to join the talks on 8 March and accepted on 11 March.