The British and American Armies, 1917–1941
University Press of Kansas, 2022, ISBN 9780700633180, 304 pp, RRP USD$59.99 (hardcover)
Author: Tyler R Bamford
Reviewed by: Megan Hamilton
The alliance between Great Britain and the United States of America in World War II was deemed to be ‘the most complete unification of military effort ever achieved’ by General George Marshall, US Army Chief of Staff during the war.[1] However, as other scholars of alliance warfare in the 20th-century Anglosphere have shown, such tight collaborations rarely materialised out of nowhere. These relationships required nurturing over many years, especially in peacetime when limited military budgets forced creative problem-solving.[2] Tyler Bamford illustrates this theme clearly for the Anglo-American alliance in his book Forging the Anglo-American Alliance: The British and American Armies, 1917–1941.
In a departure from previous literature, particularly Niall Barr’s Yanks and Limeys, Bamford ‘asserts that an informal Anglo-American defense relationship existed before the outbreak of World War II and uses the armies as the platform to demonstrate this relationship’s existence’.[3] By focusing on the interactions between the British and American armies in the late World War I and interwar years, Bamford demonstrates how the two nations were able to harmonise their efforts so quickly when the US officially joined the war in 1941. While top generals feature in this narrative, Bamford places most emphasis on the influence of the military attachés stationed in London and Washington. His evidence conveys that personal relationships and precedence were more important than formal structures. Shared class, culture and religion also helped to cement the bonds between officers of the two armies. The close levels of cooperation that became so apparent during World War II were the product of a long military-diplomatic process that began in 1917.
Bamford structures his content chronologically, beginning in 1917 with the dispatch of the American Expeditionary Force to the Western Front. Chapter 1 explores the encounters between the UK and US armies through training and frontline service in 1917 and 1918. By using postwar memoirs, Bamford finds that relations between officers were warmer than those between the rank and file due to the officer classes sharing more comparative social backgrounds than other ranks. On the whole Anglo-American relations in this period were warmer than those with the French Army, a point of comparison that Bamford employs throughout this study. Chapter 2 deals with the years 1918 to 1923, during which both armies fought in Russia as well as in the occupied sectors of south-west Germany. It was during this time that the wartime bonds were crystalised and Anglo-American ‘military diplomacy’ began in earnest with the establishment of formal military attachés.[4] While politicians from the two countries did not always agree on the postwar international order, Bamford explains how informal relations between the British and American occupation forces set a positive tone for the interwar years.
Chapters 3 through 5 illustrate how the Anglo-American armies maintained close peacetime ties after the American occupation force left Europe. The two countries viewed each other as their most important international partner, but also as a rival. This balancing act played out through various degrees of formal and informal information sharing, with military attachés being the key informants. Bamford explains how the British War Office was often the more secretive partner, forcing the American attaché to create strong personal relationships that enabled him to bypass formal channels. However, shared language, class and culture allowed for officers from both armies to enjoy warm personal relationships. All of this was essential to maintaining peacetime bonds between two armies that were suffering from Depression-era budget cuts. As Germany, Japan and Italy began to show signs of aggression in the mid-1930s, the Anglo-American alliance focused on the topic of rearmament. Even while unpaid British war debt and differing international outlooks caused tension, Britain and the US watched each other’s rearmament efforts and technological developments closely.
When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, there was no guarantee that the US would officially get involved. However, as Bamford demonstrates in chapters 6 and 7, American politicians and military officials did much to prepare for the possibility that they would go to war alongside the British. Military attachés continued to play essential roles in the transatlantic dialogue, but after the fall of France in June 1940, the connections became much more formalised. Secret staff talks commenced to discuss formal structures in the event that the alliance was to become official, while large military and scientific missions were established in London and Washington. Bamford focuses largely on the higher strategic perspective in these final chapters, such as the ‘Destroyers-for-Bases’ deal, Lend-Lease and the Atlantic Charter, but makes it clear that it was the strong personal bonds of the interwar years that allowed for the alliance to be bolstered so quickly. His conclusion discusses how the Anglo-American alliance of the Second World War was based on lessons from the countries’ experience of World War I. Bamford ends the main narrative in January 1942 before briefly discussing the postwar legacies of the alliance.
Forging the Anglo-American Alliance is a thoroughly researched study that deserves to enjoy a prominent place in the busy historiography of alliance warfare in the 20th century. By conducting an in-depth exploration of the mechanics of the transatlantic alliance, Bamford reveals the influence of individuals and long-term relationship development. He goes beyond the strategic links of the two nations to consider the impact that shared culture, language and values had on the strength of the alliance. While Bamford sets out to tell the narrative from both sides of the Atlantic, and bases his book on the conduct of multi-national archival research to support this aim, the book nevertheless tends to use the American perspective as the default lens, likely stemming from the author’s greater familiarity with American sources.[5] More could have been made of the importance of Britain’s dominion armies in the relationship. The armies of the British Commonwealth were closely integrated into the British Army’s strategic plans, as London knew that its imperial forces were a critical asset, allowing for British strategic aims to be projected in all theatres of war.[6] With the Commonwealth armies serving as an extension of the British Army, and considering America’s own involvement with the Commonwealth armies in various theatres of war, this study would have been enhanced by a few pages dedicated to acknowledging these wider ties. Bamford’s preference to consider ties as purely bilateral does not reflect alliance warfare in a networked and imperial war, the globality of which is increasingly being unearthed by modern scholars. In addition to Douglas Delaney’s The Imperial Army Project, Jonathan Fennell’s Fighting the People’s War would have been a useful addition to the bibliography in this regard.[7] Use of Sam Edwards’s Allies in Memory would have given the conclusion further support.[8]
Despite having some areas for improvement, this book remains highly readable and will be of utility to academics and military professionals alike. It will engage not only those studying the Anglo-American alliance but also those interested in the mechanics of alliance development through history. Bamford’s study highlights the impact of both formal and informal relationship building on wider strategic synchronisation. In regard to the Australian Defence Force, military personnel and public servants working in the areas of international engagement and in military strategic plans would benefit from an understanding of this history, as would senior leaders who influence the tone of relationships with their international counterparts. In the age of collective security, the takeaway for modern readers should be that alliances must be nurtured in peacetime if they are to be relied upon in times of war.
Endnotes
[1] Quoted in Niall Barr, Yanks and Limeys: Alliance Warfare in the Second World War (London: Jonathan Cape, 2015), pp. 1–2.
[2] One prominent example is Douglas E Delaney, The Imperial Army Project: Britain and the Land Forces of the Dominions and India, 1902–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
[3] Tyler R Bamford, Forging the Anglo-American Alliance: The British and American Armies, 1917–1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2022), p. 3.
[4] Ibid., p. 48.
[5] Ibid., pp. ix–x.
[6] Delaney, The Imperial Army Project, pp. 2–6.
[7] Delaney, The Imperial Army Project; Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
[8] Sam Edwards, Allies in Memory: World War II and the Politics of Transatlantic Commemoration, c.1941–2001 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).