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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... territories as a reward for war - time support , but they certainly desired a larger slice of the political cake after the war . Until the 1960s ' imperial defence ' was an acknowledged term used as shorthand for the global military ...
... territories as bases.36 This was an important aspect of the Empire's provision of infrastructure during the war . Imperial territories provided Britain with a network of intelligence - gathering facilities to aid the work of the ...
... territories . Enemy prisoners of war were accommodated in isolated camps and put to work . Ports were full of warships and merchant vessels , gathering for convoys or for naval operations to hunt enemy vessels and protect the convoys on ...
... territories were lost to enemy invasion and occupation . This represented a profound rupture in the fabric of Empire , and a failure on Britain's part to perform one of its fundamental tasks in the colonies ; defence against external ...
... territories . Particularly to the fore at sea were men recruited in eastern India and China , with West Africa also being strongly repre- sented . Five hundred woodmen from British Honduras were recruited to work in the Scottish ...
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 |