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It was generally anticipated that the Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Moscow would be ‘the most momentous session’ of the Council and that its failure to bring progress on Germany would bring the ‘end of an era’. The collapse of the Council has subsequently been designated as the moment at which it became obvious that wartime unity had finally broken down, ending Rooseveltian aspirations for the cooperative policing of the world. The Moscow Council also produced a shift in the direction of French foreign policy, away from its vainglorious and isolated stand on Germany and, eventually, into the arms of the Western powers. Such a shift confirms the most substantial change of direction that both participants and historians have commented on, linking the failure of the Council with the birth of Western Europe under the umbrella of Marshall Aid. This chapter examines the role of Britain in the fundamental shift that took place in Moscow.

On April 25, 1946, The Times reported that the Paris meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers was ‘the last chance which the allies will have of working together to set up a new world order’. However, Germany, the litmus test of great-power relations, was not the central question on the agenda. Ernest Bevin was reluctant to commit himself to formal talks while international policy towards Germany was so unsettled and while he was still trying to probe American and Soviet thinking. But before the Council opened, he was forced to concede that German questions should be raised after the proposed satellite treaties had been discussed. The Council meetings were to culminate in a decision by Britain and the United States to begin to frame policy within the ‘Western’ option, while still publicly proclaiming a desire for quadripartite agreement over Germany.

The fifth Council of Foreign Ministers, and the last that was to be held for eighteen months, has generally been recognised as a failure. The changed international climate that George Marshall's offer brought about meant that by the summer of 1947 there was no serious expectation in any official quarter that the Council could now bring profitable four-power discussions on Germany. The Moscow Council had exposed the ideological gap between East and West, and to bridge that gap would require either much goodwill and a readiness to compromise on all sides, or a dramatic reversal of policy by one of the Allied powers. During discussions at the London Council, Ernest Bevin took and held the leading role with his allies, showing both skill and determination to construct the viable Western policy which he had worked towards over the previous eighteen months.

During the early postwar months, very little was achieved by way of implementing the Potsdam Agreement. Indeed, Ernest Bevin thought that the time had not yet come to take major political and economic decisions necessary to establish British long-term foreign policy towards Germany. The dust had not yet settled after the war and European affairs were still in ‘a state of flux’. This was a view that seemed to be shared by the Russians and the Americans, who agreed that major German questions should still only be discussed through diplomatic channels. At the Potsdam Conference, the Americans had formally proposed the establishment of a Council of Foreign Ministers to carry out the preliminary work on the peace treaties with the defeated powers. The Soviet Union suggested at Potsdam that France should not participate in the preparation of peace treaties with countries with whom it had not signed an armistice agreement, clearly fearing that the presence of a third Western power might tip the balance against the Russians.