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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... aircraft . The Royal Canadian Navy expanded to become the third largest navy in the world and played a key role in the Battle of the Atlantic , and by the end of the war the Indian - officered Royal Indian Air Force had 30,000 personnel ...
... aircraft cover . The first two and a half years of war were to show how important air power had become to imperial security , or rather its absence to the lack of it . Inter - war Britain , still mighty at sea and the world's greatest ...
... 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 1941. What made this ...
... aircraft . The Fleet Air Arm received 38 per cent of its aircraft over the course of the war from American factories . On the high seas many of the 2700 Liberty ships built in American shipyards joined the Merchant Navy and transported ...
... aircraft mounted on them to create what were known as Cata- pult Armed Merchant ships ( CAMs ) . Service personnel trained merchant seamen as part of the Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship ( DEMS ) organization to man guns on merchant ...
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 |