Introduction

The Second World War (1939-45) and the period leading up to it were a time of great characters, responsible for events of incalculable importance. The decisions made by these people, Churchill, Stalin, and Hitler among them, shaped the course which world events took, the effects of which are still being felt today. Moreover, their actions, and indeed, perhaps most importantly, their image, still exert a strong hold on the popular imagination decades after their death. Churchillian literature shows no sign of abating, and his victory in the ‘Great Britons’ contest of 2003 has installed him even more firmly as Great Britain’s leading political hero, as well as being identified as Britain’s most potent historical myth.1 Stalin, or the adjective derived from his name, is now used derogatively by the public when referring to any severe and repressive measure, from traffic wardens to bleak housing estates. It seems that a whole industry has grown up around television documentaries about Hitler. These leaders, and their immediate associates, played a critical part in the outbreak and outcome of the war. The decisions taken and the formulation of policy below this level will always hold less immediate attraction to the public, or even to historians. A.J.P.Taylor’s remark that a diplomatic history of Britain’s role in the early Cold War period was ‘at best…a competent précis of “what one clerk said to another clerk” during a period when great events were happening a long way from Whitehall’2 was made with the intention of reducing the ‘clerks’ to the role of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet. If this assessment were true, then there would be little or no value in the hundreds, if not thousands, of works on diplomatic history, including this one. The ‘clerks’, having no effect on or input into the great events happening in the world would be no more than a distraction, possibly an amusing one, but probably an unnecessary one.