Eighty years ago this week the fault lines of post-war diplomacy open further
After a lull of two months in the Pacific US forces landed on Iwo Jima, a small island some 1,000km from mainland Japan. The Japanese had reinforced the garrison to about 22,000 troops. The military value of the island was debatable. It was too small to serve as a naval base and its airfield was not being used by fighters to intercept B-29 raids on the home islands. As these faced little fighter opposition over their targets, Iwo Jima's value as a base of long range escort fighters was marginal. A major diplomatic row exploded between General de Gaulle and President Roosevelt. France had not been asked to attend the Yalta conference with the imputation that it did not rank as one of the senior allied powers. With matching insincerity Roosevelt proposed to meet de Gaulle somewhere on his way back to the US and de Gaulle invited Roosevelt to Paris. The first would have cast de Gaulle as a US dependent, who could be summoned to wait on his master; the second would have implied equali...
