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Twisting the Lion's Tail: American Anglophobia between the World Wars

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Excerpted from the Sunday London Times, February 14, 1999 edition that prints a review by Robert Anson:

The Sunday Times (London), February 14, 1999

BOOKS: HISTORY

Uncle Sam's venom

Robert Sam Anson

As John E Moser's book opens in 1921, America is preparing for Armageddon against the British. In Congress, where Britain is termed "a red pox spreading across the Pacific", there are calls for the United States to "seize maritime control of the world". "We are nearer war today than ever before," an admiral warns. As war fever mounts, a bestselling tome declares, "We were Britain's colony once. She will be our colony before she is done."

It sounds like an especially fanciful Tom Clancy novel. But every word is true. All this happened in the US during the 1920s, and there would be years more of fear, loathing and near-catastrophe before the cold war finally locked "the cousins" in potentially permanent embrace. How dangerously lunatic those times were is a subject English-speakers on both sides of the Atlantic have done their understandable best to forget.

It is precisely that which makes this book so startling, and (for anyone who cares about the continued health of the "special relationship") so necessary. Written by an American professor in a style blessedly unacademic, this slender, fast-paced volume is a rarity among histories. Not only does it add to understanding, it supplies knowledge where there was almost none.

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Just as important, and making for some of Moser's most eye-popping paragraphs, was the role played by an ideological grab-bag of late-1930s opinion-makers, set on convincing the public that Britain was not appeasing Hitler, but joining in common cause with him.

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Ever since, Moser writes, America's dealings with the outside world have been a chronic contradiction: moral, selfless and naive one moment; immoral, selfish, and calculating the next. The one constant has been a need for a foe personifying utter wickedness. Britain has filled the requirement, as have Mexico, Spain, Germany, Japan, China, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Libya, Iran and now Iraq. Putting down this marvellous, disturbing book, one wonders why, with all the tragedy and mayhem that have been the consequence, lessons are never learnt. One wonders, too, whether the list of America's enemies will ever end. Probably not. There's always the French.

The Gold/Silver debates of the 19th Century and British Imperial power made the emerging US industrial nation react like Germany demanding "a place in the sun". Germany mortally wounded Britain's Empire through the First War; and the US sabotaged the Peace through Wilson's 14 Points being met and the US failing to stick around to enforce them; thus inviting Germany to demand 'Self-Determination'for Sudetenland, Saarland, Danzig, Bohemia.....and unravelling those new countries re-born at Versailles.

Britain, hobbled by War Debt was forced to concede on Ireland (De Valera being American) as Harding/Coolidge America demanded repayment from an enfeebled Britain and its incompetent 1920s Finance Minister, Winston Churchill.

Devaluation in 1931 and the disintegration of France brought Germany with its ally Russia back to the top table, and the successful Finance Minister, Chamberlain became the unsuccessful Prime Minister trying to match Foreign Policy to economic status...with a France trying to welch on its treaties to the East, and trying to involve Britain in the fallout....while the US stood aloof convinced Britain was too wily for the boys from the farm......where America could have led, she invented shadows; and the dying Imperial Power faced Japan, Italy, and Germany as potentially hostile.....alone.

The book is thorough and outlines how American obession with Empire and failure to see its stabilising aspects led them to saw at the pillars of the world order, as the demons of miliary expansionism prepared to plunge the world into war. Where American politicians saw British hyperpower; Italy and Japan and German saw a decadent empire ready for toppling........and thousands of GIs saw the consequences of US failure to bolster fading British power, rather than trying to undermine it and make a world safe for dictators.....then on 1st Sept 1939 Germany invaded Poland; 2nd Sept US declared neutrality; 3rd Sept at 11am Britain at War; 5pm France at War.

Dr. Moser writes compellingly about the resurgence of Anglophobia in the United States between the two world wars. He writes with style and the story he weaves is an interesting portrait of the various groups that looked with scorn and fear upon a British empire in its twilight.

German- and Irish-Americans loathed the British. American liberals saw the British as imperialistic. American isolationists, a term Moser is uncomfortable using, were wary of any British attempts to drag Americans into a European affairs.

The author is able to find Anglophobia as late as 1945. Although some historians may claim the author has found Anglophobia around every corner, Moser has the facts to support his argument.

An important contribution to interwar diplomatic and political history, _Twisting the Lion's Tail_ is a sign that important, archival research is still being done with skill and panache.