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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... established in territories such as Iceland , the Faroe Islands and the Azores . At the end of the war Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten's South East Asia Command was made responsible for the reoccupation of the Dutch East Indies and French ...
... established in Italian Somaliland , Libya , Madagascar , Sicily and Syria . Southern Iran was also invaded and taken over in order to prevent a German invasion from the north , to guard Britain's precious oil reserves and to maintain an ...
... established their governments - in - exile in London ) also aided Britain in imperial theatres . The Dutch contributed significantly , if vainly , to the defence of Malaya and British Borneo ; Polish servicemen fought in Iran , Iraq ...
... established following the First World War , and their ruling regimes had to varying degrees hitched their credibility to their capacity to revise the international system . All three Axis powers sought to challenge or supplant British ...
... established in other new areas , for example in the French Comoros Islands off the African coast , in Iceland , the Faroe Islands and the Azores . At the end of the war , Britain was responsible for the Dutch East Indies and French Indo ...
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 |