The Key to the Allies' Success
Marc Milner notes in 'Second Front' that the Anglo-American alliances in the two world wars functioned despite animosities ('The Allies on the Mend,' Bookshelf, May 19). What underlay that success was the prescient observation of Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, who is reported to have said that the greatest strategic fact of the 20th century was that the Americans spoke English. After World War I, Hitler identified the natural affinity of the Anglo-Americans as Germany's greatest threat. That common language came to serve the cause of freedom well.
Yet both sides couldn't resist irritating each other. At the end of the first war, Americans said that the BEF—British Expeditionary Force—stood for the fact that the Americans arrived 'Before England Failed.' The Brits in return said that the American Expeditionary Force, AEF, arrived so late in the war that it meant 'Almost Evaded Fighting.' Eisenhower wouldn't tolerate that sniping in the next war. He demoted an outspoken American critic of the British and sent him home. In all of the joint staffs with a senior and deputy, one had to be American and the other British. It's doubtful any other man could have made the alliance work better.
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