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. |
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... bases , such as the Cocos Islands , a busy base for RAF aircraft attacking Japanese shipping , supplying behind - enemy - lines units fighting in Malaya and dropping supplies to liberated prisoner - of - war camps . With the assault on ...
... bases provided a global network for the warships of the fleets and squadrons that had historically policed the world ... base for the invasion of Madagascar . As a global economic community , the transfer of resources by sea was the ...
... bases and imperial resources both for defence and for the projection of military power . Territories such as ... base facilities in the Empire and the wider world . British imperial forces - properly so called because nowhere did ...
... bases such as Aden , Alexandria , Bermuda , Cape Town , Colombo , Gibraltar , Halifax , Hong Kong and Singapore were ... base rights in the Caribbean , and new corvettes were the guardian angels of British convoys all over the world.1 ...
... bases across the Channel in northern France , as a prelude to Operation Sealion , the invasion of Britain itself ... base for Japan's attack on British South - East Asia . Similarly , the temporary eradication of American naval power ...
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 |