“A Daily Influence of American Thought”: The Second Air Division Memorial Library, Commemorative Diplomacy, and Anglo-American Relations, 1944-1975

Edwards, Sam ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1433-8243 (2022) “A Daily Influence of American Thought”: The Second Air Division Memorial Library, Commemorative Diplomacy, and Anglo-American Relations, 1944-1975. Journal of Cold War Studies. ISSN 1520-3972 (In Press)

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Abstract

In the summer of 1963, with Cold War tensions still fresh in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, municipal authorities in Norwich, England, dedicated a memorial to the World War II American military. Originally initiated in 1944 by officers in the Second Air Division (then based in the region), the memorial—a library—provided a space in which the people of Norfolk could encounter a “daily influence of American thought and ideals.” Various dignitaries attended the dedication ceremony (including the Lord Mayor, the Bishop of Norwich, and representatives of the U.S. Embassy), together with a large crowd of locals, several hundred American veterans, and serving members of the U.S. Air Force. This was just one amongst many post-war commemorations of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, the broad contexts and chronologies of which I have discussed elsewhere. However, due to its long gestation together with the fine details of some of those involved, the Second Air Division Memorial Library is also deserving of a fuller analysis. Here is a revealing example of post-1945 cultural diplomacy and all in a region integral to Cold War American national security: eastern England. By 1960, indeed, there were almost 40,000 American service personnel in the region, whilst at the decade’s end an intelligence analyst in the State Department could still record—in a memo for President Johnson—that American “Airfields in England” together with other nearby “real estate for U.S. military Forces” were crucial components of the Atlantic Alliance, and of American defense.