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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... leading to the inconclusive Bermuda conference of April 1943. Its agents in countries like Turkey helped thousands of Jewish refugees to get to Palestine , despite the fact that this conflicted with official British policy . The Yishuv ...
... leading role in the affairs of the post - war Pacific . Finally , from 1942 Australia steadily became an appendage of America's Pacific War , and America was to prove as frustratingly impervious as Britain when it came to hearing ...
... leading to the creation of the Labour Battalion . Tens of thousands of Americans were based in Fiji until 1944 . For a long time Papua and New Guinea were in the front line of the Allied war against the Japanese . Some of the Europeans ...