War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Frank Roberts, 1986 [1]
Description:
Frank Roberts was with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office starting in the late 1930s, and served as Ambassador to the USSR from 1960-1962. He begins with a recollection of Neville Chamberlain's (and his own) views of the United States and USSR during World War II, as well as Churchill's attempts to get the U.S. into the war, and Churchill's relationship with Roosevelt. Before the end of the conflict, he recalls, the British Prime Minister had decided Stalin would not be an ally for long, largely because of Soviet actions in Poland. He explores each of the great powers' expectations for the Yalta summit. No one was surprised, he says, by the USSR's close ties to Eastern Europe after the war; the question was only whether their control would be "brutal," and he recounts examples of "crude" Soviet attitudes that he witnessed personally. Other detailed commentary covers George Kennan and his impact on Western policy-makers; British attitudes toward strategic bombing during the war; Soviet reactions to Hiroshima; and Western demobilization after the war. Turning to nuclear matters, Mr. Roberts discusses the U.S. monopoly and its effects on diplomacy, as well as the impact of the atomic bomb on notions of war, especially at the time of the Berlin Blockade and Czechoslovak coup of the late 1940s when the Soviets had a major advantage in conventional forces. He also addresses the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and U.S. containment policy, then - without excusing Stalin's actions - explains Russian thinking behind creating a cordon sanitaire in Eastern Europe.
![War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Frank Roberts, 1986 [1]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:s4658w58j/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)
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![War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Valentin Berezhkov, 1986 [1]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:8k71rv97c/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)
