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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... land , Bechuanaland , Ceylon , Cyprus , the Gambia , the Gold Coast , Kenya , Mauritius , Nigeria , Palestine , Rodrigues , Sierra Leone , the Seychelles , Swaziland , Tanganyika and Uganda . Further east , the war against Japan was not ...
... land surface , influenced much of the rest of it and had historically dominated its oceans . It was only because of Empire that Britain fought Italy and Japan at all ; Pearl Harbor would have had little significance for Britain had it ...
... land face down . Disarmament and appeasement had not increased world security as had been hoped , and Britain's pursuit of these policies left it in a poor position when the guns opened fire . The limitations imposed by the Wash- ington ...
... land , Canadian seamen hunted U - boats off Iceland , and Basotho muleteers brought wounded Australians down from inaccessible mountain ranges in Italy . They were all imperial soldiers , summoned to arms by the needs of a far - flung ...
... land targets was widespread by 1939 ( ' the bomber will always get through ' , as Stanley Baldwin phrased it in 1932 ) , at sea the spell of the battleship remained unbroken and British carrier aircraft were antiquated and few in number ...
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 |