A B S T R A C T . This article takes afresh look at Anglo-American nuclear relations between 1946 and. It concentrates on the relationship between the military establishments of the two countries in general and the ties between the United States air force and the Royal Air Force in particular. The article argues that an understanding of military relations is essential for an understanding of the high politics of the nuclear relationship. It is shown that senior officers in the armed services were the main ''functional elite' dealing with nuclear delivery systems and the planning for their use. Relations between these groups were personally and institutionally close and on the whole cordial. In Britain the link sustained optimism about the possibility of close nuclear co-operation in the 1940s and early 1950s and suppressed fears about the loss of nuclear independence in the late 1950s. In the United States it was recognized that military relations were an important channel through which to influence British nuclear policy.
After World War I, the nonferrous metals trade played a critical role in Britain's preparations for a future European war. Yet it has attracted little attention. The British Metal Corporation (BMC) was formed at the end of the Great War as a state-sponsored corporation to conduct the development of the nonferrous metals industry on behalf of the British state. This article uses the papers of the BMC to explore the politics of a strategically vital trade, the functioning of the British state's institutional memory, and the role of business in appeasement and rearmament. It concludes that the state-sponsored corporation was, on balance, an effective strategic instrument. Although politics, trade, and strategy proved difficult to reconcile with one another, the pursuit of profit did not dictate business attitudes toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
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