Warren Kimball

{{Short description|American historian}}

Warren Forbes Kimball (born December 24, 1935) is a historian of the Second World War and American foreign policy. He was an academic adviser to the Churchill Centre in London.{{cite web |title=Warren F. Kimball |url=https://sasn.rutgers.edu/academics-admissions/academic-departments/federated-department-history/faculty-emeriti/warren-f-kimball |website=Rutgers SASN |access-date=31 January 2022}}

He graduated from Georgetown University and taught at Rutgers University.{{cite journal |last1=Kimball |first1=Warren F. |title=Warren F. Kimball on Learning the Scholar's Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars |journal=H-Diplo |date=May 15, 2020 |url=https://issforum.org/essays/230-kimball}}{{cite journal |last1=Kimball |first1=Warren F. |title=Naked Reverse Right: Roosevelt, Churchill, and Eastern Europe from TOLSTOY to Yalta-and a Little Beyond* |journal=Diplomatic History |date=January 1985 |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=1–24 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-7709.1985.tb00519.x}}

Kimball argues that the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt only sought a "limited war" against Germany at first,{{cite book |last1=Hogan |first1=Michael J. |authorlink=Michael Hogan (academic) |title=Paths to Power: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations to 1941 |date=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-66413-4 |page=232 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rcKEwnVi_IYC&pg=PA232}} and that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a geopolitical tool by the United States to assert its power over the Soviet Union through intimidation.{{cite book |last1=Pederson |first1=William D. |authorlink=William D. Pederson |title=A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt |date=21 March 2011 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4443-9517-4 |page=406 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r4-UnSYARiMC&pg=PT406}} He contends that Roosevelt had a consistent foreign policy during the war: that of a post-war liberal international order based on shared values and co-operation between the U.S. and its western wartime allies, the recognition of the Soviet Union and its integration into this system, and the dismantling of European empires and colonies after the war.{{cite book |last1=Beisner |first1=Robert L. |authorlink=Robert L. Beisner |title=American Foreign Relations Since 1600: A Guide to the Literature |date=2003 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-57607-080-2 |page=967 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rCQsQdqFyMYC&pg=PA967}}

He has also written on the Morgenthau Plan, and argues that the British Foreign Office knew of the plans ten days before the First Quebec Conference in 1943.{{cite book |last1=Dietrich |first1=John |title=The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy |date=2013 |publisher=Algora Publishing |isbn=978-1-62894-020-6 |page=53 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pbyAycr32g4C&pg=PA53}} He has argued against the notion that the plan was intended to be punitive, saying that United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.'s plans were intended to make Germany into "good, honest, democratic yeomen farmers, the Jeffersonian ideal".{{cite book |last1=Olick |first1=Jeffrey K. |authorlink=Jeffrey K. Olick |title=In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943-1949 |date=September 2005 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-62638-3 |page=91 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fBkGBcTRXfUC&pg=PA91}} He has also written about the history of the Lend-Lease Act{{cite book |last1=Dobson |first1=Alan P. |author1-link=Alan P. Dobson |title=US Economic Statecraft for Survival, 1933-1991: Of Sanctions, Embargoes and Economic Warfare |date=25 April 2002 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-46078-6 |page=294 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=81yBAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA294}} and the topic of white European guilt in postcolonial thought.{{cite book|author=Warren F. Kimball|quote=The politics of the players raised barriers - from European/white guilt to the exaggerated, I would argue, argument that imperialism 'caused' the failed-state syndrome that afflicts so much of the post-colonial world.|title=Journal of Transatlantic Studies|title-link=Journal of Transatlantic Studies|date=2013|publisher=Springer Publishing|pages=231–233|edition=Volume 11, Issue 3|chapter=Introduction}}