The Grand Alliance

The Grand Alliance was an alliance made during World War II, which joined together the United States (led by Franklin Roosevelt), the Soviet Union (led by Joseph Stalin) and Great Britain (led by Winston Churchill). Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill are often known as "The Big Three".

It is often called the "Strange Alliance" because it united the world's greatest capitalist nation with the greatest Communist nation and the largest colonial power.cite book|last = Ambrose | first = Stephen | authorlink = Stephen Ambrose | title = Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 | publisher = Penguin Books| date = 1993 | location = New York | pages = 15 ]

It was essentially an alliance of necessity, as all three needed to join together in order to defeat the threat of Nazi Germany.

Origins

Wartime Diplomacy

Tensions

There were tensions in the Grand Alliance, between "The Big Three" (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin), although they were not enough to break the alliance during wartime.

There were essential ideological differences between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the former disliking the authoritarian regime of the latter. Tensions between the two had existed for a long time, with the Soviets remembering America's armed intervention in the Russian Civil War and their long refusal to recognise the Soviet Union's existence as a state.cite book|last = Jones | first = Maldwyn | authorlink = Maldwyn Jones | title = The Limits of Liberty: American History 1607-1980 | publisher = Oxford University Press| date = 1983 | location = Oxford | pages = 505]

Tensions also emerged over the length of time taken by the Allies to establish a Second Front in Europe, which Roosevelt had promised.

References