An Unrealized Frenemy Alliance

This chapter examines the British and French leaders' failure to ally with the Soviet Union in the years leading up to World War II. It begins by discussing the magnitude of the German danger to the Western democracies based on the defining material variables of balance-of-threat theory. The size of this threat reveals the force of the incentives pushing Britain and France to ally with the Soviet Union. The chapter also explores the security overtures to the Soviet Union by British and French officials throughout the 1930s, before explaining why most British and French conservatives and French Radicals (especially after 1935) opposed allying with the Soviets. It then looks at socialists' consistent advocacy for an alliance with the Soviet Union and the ideology-based reasons that facilitated this preference. Finally, the chapter considers alternative explanations for the failure of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet coalition to form as well as these arguments' weaknesses.