Western Allies

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Western Allies was a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of World War II. [1] [2]

Contents

Grouping

It primarily refers to the United States and the United Kingdom, and sometimes France, with the exclusion of the Soviet Union in the context of the European theatre of World War II. [1] : 3  [3] Western Allies has also been used more broadly to include lesser Allied countries from the British Commonwealth such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and some Western European countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway. [3]

The concept of Western Allies is usually used to denote the major differences between the "Western" Allies (capitalist and liberal democratic) and the Soviet Union (communist and totalitarian). [1] : 3, 10, 114, 194  [3] The cooperation between individual Western Allies powers (such as exchange of military intelligence) was much more intensive than that between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. [1] : 113–115  [4] Cooperation became more significant in later stages of the war (e.g. the Teheran Conference). [1] : 229  Nonetheless, the tensions remained high, with Western Allies and Soviet Union considering one another a threat, and drawing contingency plans for a war against one another (e.g. Operation Unthinkable, Plan Totality); [1] : 284, 289, 299, 317  [5] : 78  these tensions developed into the Cold War that lasted decades after the World War II ended. [1] : 2  In Allied-occupied Germany and Austria, the term Western Allies referred to the occupation zones of the United States, United Kingdom, and France, in contrast to the Soviet occupation zones.

Western Allies does not usually include Allied-aligned countries to the east of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, such as Poland, [6] [7] : 11–13  [8] : 200, 281, 289, 324, 345, 353–354, 357  Czechoslovakia, [9] : 14  [10] : 70  Yugoslavia, [11] : 354  [12] : 703 , as well as the Soviet Union [1] [3] and China [13] : 341  are not included in the concept of "Western Allies", even though some (e.g. Polish [14] and Czechoslovak [15] : 36–37  armed forces) fought alongside the Western Allies.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kahn, Martin (2017-03-27). The Western Allies and Soviet Potential in World War II: Economy, Society and Military Power. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-317-40396-8.
  2. ↑ Kavanagh, Dennis (1995). "The Western Allies 50 Years Later: Britain-Stirrings of Change" . Journal of Democracy. 6 (3): 19–30. doi:10.1353/jod.1995.0050. ISSN   1086-3214.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Imlay, Talbot (2015), Maiolo, Joseph; Bosworth, Richard (eds.), "Western Allied ideology, 1939–1945", The Cambridge History of the Second World War: Volume 2: Politics and Ideology, The Cambridge History of the Second World War, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 43–67, ISBN   978-1-107-03407-5 , retrieved 2025-01-11{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  4. ↑ Beardsley, E.H. (1977-11-01). "Secrets Between Friends: Applied Science Exchange Between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union During World War II" . Social Studies of Science. 7 (4): 447–473. doi:10.1177/030631277700700411. ISSN   0306-3127.
  5. ↑ Mazarr, Michael J. (1990-06-18). START and the Future of Deterrence. Springer. ISBN   978-1-349-11524-2.
  6. ↑ "Nieproszony gość? Zachodni alianci i Polska w II wojnie światowej - pobierz wykład prof. Richarda Overy'ego | Muzeum II Wojny Światowej". muzeum1939.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2025-01-11.
  7. ↑ Sanford, George (2012-12-06). Poland: The Conquest of History. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-136-65096-3.
  8. ↑ Davies, Norman (2005-02-24). God's Playground A History of Poland: Volume II: 1795 to the Present. OUP Oxford. ISBN   978-0-19-925340-1.
  9. ↑ Renner, Hans (2023-08-11). A History of Czechoslovakia Since 1945. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-1-000-96233-8.
  10. ↑ Piffer, Tommaso (2024). The Big Three Allies and the European Resistance: Intelligence, Politics, and the Origins of the Cold War, 1939-1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-882634-7.
  11. ↑ Bevc, Ladislav (2007). Liberal Forces in Twentieth Century Yugoslavia: Memoirs of Ladislav Bevc. Peter Lang. ISBN   978-1-4331-0008-6.
  12. ↑ Overy, Richard (2022-04-05). Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945. Penguin. ISBN   978-0-593-48943-7.
  13. ↑ Mitter, Rana (2013-09-10). Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945. HMH. ISBN   978-0-547-84056-7.
  14. ↑ Peszke, Michael Alfred (2013). The Armed Forces of Poland in the West, 1939-46: Strategic Concepts, Planning, Limited Success But No Victory!. Helion. ISBN   978-1-908916-54-9.
  15. ↑ White, Lewis M. (1991). On All Fronts: Czechs and Slovaks in World War II. East European Monographs. ISBN   978-0-88033-456-3.
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