During the Second World War, Britain and the United States forged a remarkably successful partnership. It endured the severe strains imposed by the Second Front dispute, Franklin Roosevelt's erratic management style, and the tremendous growth in American might relative to British power. Scholars of wartime Anglo-American relations have established a balanced perspective that depicts contention amid collaboration. Within that framework, this book scrutinizes an important and heretofore overlooked element of the complex Anglo-American wartime alliance: logistics diplomacy. The “conflict over convoys” discussed herein refers only tangentially to anti-submarine warfare. Rather, logistics diplomacy was the Anglo-American battle for control of allocations of American-built merchant ships. Where would these convoys of merchant ships sail? Who should decide? How would the decision-making process and its results affect grand strategy, the cross-Channel attack, and Anglo-American relations? Evaluating this struggle provides an innovative approach for exploring key aspects of wartime Anglo-American relations. Logistics diplomacy sheds new light on the correlations between British industrial policy, British decline, the Battle of the Atlantic, Allied strategy for the Second Front, Roosevelt's leadership, and America's rise to global power. In particular, this perspective helps explain British exercise of disproportionate influence beyond Britain's means. It also helps show why that leverage gradually dissipated in 1943, culminating in American dominance in the Second Front decision.

Four key facts dominated Anglo-American wartime logistics diplomacy. First, Britain depended upon American allocations of merchant ships to sustain its war effort.