Based on my current read, Rick Atkinson’s WW2 books, there was considerable dissent and distrust between the American and English forces. Why was this? I’d always (mistakenly) thought that the US and UK were firm friends since our messy “birth”.
Personalities mostly, and national pride.
Huge egos on both sides. Especially Patton and Montgomery. Those two were very similar in their flamboyant styles. Patton had those pearl handle grip pistols. Monty the beret and scarves. Colorful figures that inspired their men.
I think different histories as well.
USA was like a hot-blooded, enthusiastic teenager with his blood up. He wanted to get in there and slug it out and show how manly he was.
Britain was like an older, more world-weary man who had seen too many fights and, while willing to fight, wanted to not take too many more hits to the face.
USA looked at Britain and saw timid, beaten down men and Britain looked at USA as a hot-blooded, unwise teen.
IMHO.
Americans were “over-sexed, over-paid and over here.”
Brits were “under-sexed, under-paid and under Eisenhower.”
Besides the legendary Patton/Montgomery rivalry, there were serious disagreements over strategic bombing and where to invade Festung Europa. Just because we were friends doesn’t mean we agreed on much.
To add to Duck’s post - The Brits had also been fighting the war for much longer than we had, and had been at the pointy end of things for years. That changes your perceptions a bit.
And the fact that many of the senior officers on the American side were how do you put this gently? Not good. Over their heads? Incompetent? And the British especially Montgomery did not put it gently.
Eisenhower was a man with no field command experience, Bradley made of meal of Army Group Command, Simpson seemed out of his depth and the less said about Clark the better.
The Americans did have good generals, Hodges was the best Army Commander in the ETO on the US side and Trsucott was excellent, but the American tendancy of not promoting excellent division commanders like Terry de la Mesa Allan or John Wood really hurt them.
Offering opinions of the worth of the various commanders will rapidly send this thread into GD. Don’t even get me started on Montgomery.
Now, to be fair, Eisenhower wasn’t picked because he was the best general. He was picked because he would have been less irritating/divisive to the Allies. He was picked because he was a good political choice. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. Imagine the alliance if Monty or Patton was in charge? 
It seems that we and the Brits got along well enough to get one in the win column. The personality conflicts and cultural differences were well reported, but maybe it wasn’t much different from the clashes regarding style that occur within our own military then and now. It’s easier for different countries to vent their dissatisfaction with each other than within a single military organization. There’s plenty of dissent within the US military right now regarding Afghanistan, but as recent events have shown, publicly airing that dissent is not good for your career.
Also, IIRC, the US and Britain were still at odds over historical issues going into the war. Part of the lend lease deal seemed to be based on the Brits selling some of there large property holdings in the US. Maybe for the senior staff these old animosities were still culturally ingrained.
Their immediate histories were of equal importance.
Britain was almost wholly unprepared for the war. So was everybody else that Germany attacked. Everybody on the continent fell to the Germans, leaving the British alone to continue the war. They suffered a humiliation at Dunkirk, had their cities bombed, saw huge numbers of supply ships sunk by German subs. Their people were on short rations, their troops were dying in combat. They wanted and needed immediate relief.
The U.S. was almost untouched by the war. They were fat and happy and dumb, even less prepared than the British. The isolationists kept Roosevelt from doing more than minimal advance work to a a war he saw America would have to get involved in.
After America got in, it took them another full year to really gear up to fight. Most of their effort in that time was going to the Pacific theater. Nothing happened in Europe until Operation Torch invaded Africa in late 1942. The British, with two-and-a-half-years of fighting the Germans in Africa naturally thought they knew more about the situation. The Americans thought that if the British were in as bad shape as they were they couldn’t know much. Things got worse from there.
The two countries had different pasts, different needs, different wants, different experiences, different types of troops and equipment, different manufacturing and supply capabilities, different political and military organizations, different immediate goals, and different cultures. It’s amazing that they got anything done together at all.
Churchill, however, demonstrated to FDR that he had nothing to hide.
Ivory. Pearl is for New Orleans pimps.
Never mind.
The British thought that they still had their empah. I worked for a British pharmaceutical PLC for 15 years. Many of these people have the above opinion. I left and found a better position elsewhere.
The main problem was the goals of the war. The USA didn’t like colonialism and the British were seeking to restore the status quo.
This lead to different visions. There wasn’t so much actual hate and conflict as different visions of what would happen when the war ended.
The British expected to go on having the best navy and a large colonial collection.
But now since the first time since Napoleon the British were in a weak position. And they were much worse off than with Napoleon.
The second main cause was Stalin.
The USA was prepared to deal with him, they were more realistic than the British.
The USA wanted the war OVER and Stalin and the Soviets could help. The British could only defend what they had.
Of course Great Britian was more concerned with the Soviets as they were a lot closer. The Americans didn’t like Communism but saw the Eastern countries as ruled by a bunch of iron willed dictators and sell outs, so if a Communist replaced a Facist, as long as there was peace, it could be dealt with later. That was the American angle
Churchill especially wanted to attack in Italy and the Balkans and join the Soviets in going East. This would protect the British interests. The Soviets bearing the brunt of the attack didn’t like anyone on their territory.
The war in Africa was an unnecessary mess. Had Italy stayed out, there would’ve been on African theatre.
Americans didn’t like fighting in North Africa to “save” what was basically colonies of the French and British. Yes, I realize Algeria was, at the time, an integral part of France and Egypt was technically independent, but they were still viewed as ruled by colonial powers.
Yalta was a great example of this. It’s often said, Roosevelet sold out America at Yalto or Stalin took advantage of a dying man. But in reality the Soviets got what they asked for simply because there was no way to stop them, short of going to war with them.
The Americans were not going to fight the Soviets in Europe, especially when they still had Japan to fight, which they were pretty much doing by themselves.
This brings me to a last point. Japan was the more hated enemy in America. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to a “Germany first” policy, but the American public opinion was the Japanese were the worst and the ones that were most hated.
So basically you didn’t have hatred but just a disagreement with the overall direction of the war.
You had Great Britian, now a weak power (indeed the UK fell from the top tier to a third rate power after the war) trying to dictate the war aims of their partner. This didn’t go over well as the UK didn’t have much to go on.
And while in all probability Hitler never could’ve defeated Britian, even without American help, Great Britian alone could never have re-entered the European continent without help.
Britain and the USA nearly clashed at several points in the 19th c., notably over the Trent case and the Venezuelan Crisis. Both nations knew very little of each other until the beginning of the 20th c., and much of what they did hear they didn’t like. Capt. Basil Hall’s * Travels in North America*, Dickens’s American Notes and Mrs. Trollope’s Domestic Manners Of The Americans aroused furious resentment when they recrossed the Atlantic. Many British visitors in the 19th c. reported getting the “I’m just as good a man as you are” speech from their cabbie or waiter. Militarily, there had been little exchange of views or personnel since 1918, at which time many American officers had arrived with the mindset that “We have nothing to learn from these people. They haven’t won the war in four years with their methods, why should we listen to them now?”
The British general staff naturally expected the new boys on the block to defer to their experience of the present war. The US Army soon decided that, with the preponderance of military means arriving in Europe or North Africa belonging to them, that wasn’t going to last very long.
A booklet issued to GIs arriving in Britain read, in part:
*"If you come from an Irish-American family, you may think of the English as persecutors of the Irish, or you may think of them as enemy Redcoats who fought against us in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. But there is no time today to fight old wars over again or bring up old grievances. We don’t worry about which side our grandfathers fought on in the Civil War, because it doesn’t mean anything now. We can defeat Hitler’s propaganda with a weapon of our own. Plain, common horse-sense; understanding of evident truths. The most evident truth of all is that in their major ways of life the British and American people are much alike. They speak the same language. They both believe in representative government, in freedom of worship, in freedom of speech. But each country has minor national characteristics which differ. It is by causing misunderstanding over these minor differences that Hitler hopes to make his propaganda effective … You can rub a Britisher the wrong way by telling him ‘we came over and won the last one.’ Each nation did its share. But Britain remembers that nearly a million of her best manhood died in the last war. America lost 60,000 in action. Such arguments and the war debts along with them are dead issues. Nazi propaganda now is pounding away day and night asking the British people why they should fight ‘to save Uncle Shylock and his silver dollar.’ Don’t play into Hitler’s hands by mentioning war debts. Neither do the British need to be told that their armies lost the first couple of rounds in the present war. We’ve lost a couple, ourselves, so do not start off by being critical of them and saying what the Yanks are going to do …
Don’t show off or brag or bluster - “swank” as the British say. If somebody looks in your direction and says, “He’s chucking his weight about,” you can be pretty sure you’re off base. That’s the time to pull in your ears.
If you are invited to eat with a family don’t eat too much. Otherwise you may eat up their weekly rations.
Don’t make fun of British speech or accents. You sound just as funny to them but they will be too polite to show it.
Avoid comments on the British government or politics.
Don’t tell the British that America won the last war or make wisecracks about the war debts or about British defeats in this war.
NEVER criticize the King or Queen …"*
Markxxx two third of Japans Army and more than half their airforce was stuck in the mess known as China. Hardly “pretty much doing by themselves”.
There were four fronts v Japan. The Central Pacific was all American. The SW Pacific was American and Australian. The Burma Front was British. ANd China was China. Doing by themselves indeed.
Indeed. Australians were fighting in places like New Guinea, when Churchill would have liked them fighting in Africa or Europe, partly because there was a chance that Japan would invade Australia. (It didn’t: it just bombed a few cities.)
Do you have a link to this booklet, or to the text it contains?
Note that I’m not asking for a cite–I’m sure such a booklet exists, and was distributed to GIs. But it sounds like all of it would be an interesting read.
A Short Guide To Great Britain seems to be available at several sites; here’s one http://ia311031.us.archive.org/2/items/AShortGuideToGreatBritian/UK2.pdf