The British Empire and the Second World WarIn 1939 Hitler went to war not just with Great Britain; he also went to war with the whole of the British Empire, the greatest empire that there had ever been. In the years since 1945 that empire has disappeared, and the crucial fact that the British Empire fought together as a whole during the war has been forgotten. All the parts of the empire joined the struggle and were involved in it from the beginning, undergoing huge changes and sometimes suffering great losses as a result. The war in the desert, the defence of Malta and the Malayan campaign, and the contribution of the empire as a whole in terms of supplies, communications and troops, all reflect the strategic importance of Britain's imperial status. Men and women not only from Australia, New Zealand and India but from many parts of Africa and the Middle East all played their part. Winston Churchill saw the war throughout in imperial terms. The British Empire and the Second World War emphasises a central fact about the Second World War that is often forgotten. |
From inside the book
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... carrier - based aircraft , were rendering the battleship obsolete as the world's main index of military might . It was extremely unlikely that in a war against first - class powers the Royal Navy would be able to protect all of ...
... carriers trans- ferred from the Mediterranean Fleet . A second element of bad luck was that Britain , completely unexpectedly , was bereft of powerful allies . No one had conceived as possible , let alone planned for , the calamitous ...
... carriers , fighter aircraft , battleships and tactics were not commonly known about , and reports of them were discounted , or kept secret , because there was nothing that could be done about them as the clock counted down to December ...
... carriers in New Zealand and minesweepers in Australia . Early in the war these imperial sources of armaments were vital at ' a time when a few million rounds of small arms ammunition from India or Australia meant more to us than all the ...
... carrier USS Saratoga served for a time with the British Eastern Fleet , and the carrier USS Wasp was loaned at the ... carriers loaned to the Royal Navy gave Britain a surfeit of vessels in that class by the end of the war . In all ...
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
21 | |
41 | |
5 The Atlantic | 53 |
6 The Caribbean | 77 |
7 The Mediterranean | 97 |
8 Iraq Iran and Syria | 145 |
11 The Islands of the Indian Ocean | 307 |
12 India and Burma | 351 |
13 SouthEast Asia and the Far East | 405 |
14 Australia and New Zealand | 463 |
15 The Pacific | 513 |
16 Epilogue | 525 |
Notes | 535 |
Bibliography | 561 |