This article examines the interaction between the French campaign for the introduction of British conscription during 1938–9 and the ebbs and flows of British public opinion on the same issue. In particular, it will demonstrate how French pressure for conscription varied in intensity depending on French perceptions of British opinion on the subject. It was this interaction between diplomatic and domestic pressures that ultimately compelled the British government to introduce conscription in April 1939. Furthermore, the issue of conscription also sheds light on the wider issue of Franco-British relations, revealing how French foreign policy was neither dictated by an ‘English governess’ nor pursued independently of Great Britain.

Until recently Dutch historiography of the Second World War focused on subjects typical for this period: repression, resistance, the Hunger Winter of 1944–5 and, above all, the Holocaust. If anything was written about the economy, it was about exploitation resulting in impoverishment and hunger. New calculations of macroeconomic statistics for the period 1938–48 show that industrial production did not in fact decline until after the end of 1941, and that the first one and a half years of the occupation were the best in a decade. This article addresses the central question of how the Dutch economy, and especially industry, developed during the German occupation of 1940–5, especially during the first years. The development of employment suggests that economic decline and exploitation do not form the only story to be told about the economy in those years. Nevertheless, in Dutch popular publications, and in the international literature, the opinion still persists that during the occupation the economies of occupied western Europe slumped. Another problem is, therefore, how to explain the positive elements in economic development, and how it is possible that in memories and historiography it took more than fifty years before the traditional story of decline and exploitation as the sole elements of wartime economic development were even questioned.

The relationship between US soldiers and west European women has been a relatively well-studied aspect of European social history in the twentieth century, during two world wars and the early cold war. Here, a less known chapter of this general European experience is explored: the efforts of the British government in the 1950s to direct and regulate contact between some 45,000 US airmen based in Britain and British women. The negative public effects of the resulting relationships were deemed by the British government and the social elite as potentially disruptive to US and British commitment to the Atlantic alliance. This concern led to persistent official and voluntary activity designed to resolve, or at least ameliorate, various social and gender-related problems; and it even included officially sponsored meetings between US servicemen and carefully chosen ‘decent’ British girls.

This article examines the complex relationship between Catholics, communists, and democrats in connection with the battle over the nationalisation of Slovakia's schools in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. While the Catholic Church defended parochial education, at times in ways that the state would not tolerate, the communists championed a state education monopoly, although with some tactical regard for Catholic sensibilities. The democrats used the education issue to curry favour with Catholics, a move that backfired when they were unable to deliver on the hopes that Catholics placed in their party.

In the early 1950s, Norway attempted to join the sterling area. This article argues that this futile attempt can be used as a point of departure for understanding the country's ambivalence towards multilateralism in the early post-war period. The attempt was triggered by the prospects of an early move to convertibility under conditions Norway believed to be premature. Norway saw closer association with Britain through the sterling area as a buffer against the negative effects of multilateralism and at the same time as a window of opportunity for becoming part of a larger market. Moreover, I argue that both the perception of the costs of multilateralism and the positive view of Britain as a natural ally was deeply embedded in the prevailing economic thinking of Norwegian social democracy.

For twenty years before the famous crisis of 1976 Britain was a regular borrower from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Through this lending role, the Fund in these years played a key part in determining the credibility of British policies. Borrowing from the Fund meant that British policy had to be seen as conforming to certain norms, but these norms were always negotiable, albeit within shifting limits. This article uses archival material from London and Washington to examine these processes of negotiation, showing how far British policy was shaped by the desires of the IMF, and how far it was able to maintain autonomy in national economic policy.