Great Britain

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As World War II approached, Britain was at thecenter of an empire that, although it was about toenter its twilight, covered a quarter of the globe. Atthe outbreak of the war, the United Kingdom,encompassing Great Britain and Northern Ireland(the six northeastern Irish counties that remainedpart of the United Kingdom after the creation ofthe Irish Free State in 1922), had a population ofonly 47,700,000, but the territory and peoples tiedto Britain were vast. These included the dominionsof Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and SouthAfrica, since 1931 having the status in internationallaw of independent nations that shared the samemonarch with Britain (in the World War II era,King George VI). Also in Africa, Southern Rhodesiafunctioned as a self-governing British colony.India had been agitating for full independencesince early in the century but was, at the outbreakof war and throughout the war, governed by a viceroywho worked closely with a secretary of state forIndia within the British cabinet. The viceroydirectly governed about two-thirds of the Indiansubcontinent, the rest being governed by Indianprinces who were, in effect, political clients of theviceroy and of Britain. Beyond the dominions andIndia were the far-flung colonies, which were variouslygoverned, some closely by the Crown, othersmore directly by their own legislatures. Added tothese constituents of the British Empire, all of longstanding, were the recent additions of the Leagueof Nations mandates. These were territoriesentrusted to the governance of Britain under theTreaty of Versailles following World War I.They had formerly been parts of the German orTurkish Empires. In addition to British mandates,various Pacific territories were mandated to Australiaand New Zealand, and Southwest Africa (formerlya German colony) was mandated to SouthAfrica. Finally came the British protectorates, themost important of which at the outbreak of WorldWar II was Egypt. Legally and nominally independent,Egypt was, in fact, a British client state, whichmeant that Britain had the right to garrison thecountry. With Egypt, Britain shared a protectorateover Sudan.The British took comfort in their empire,believing that it gave them control over a vast portionof the world. In fact, it is unlikely that thenation would have prevailed in the conflict withoutits empire, whose troops and resources were invaluablein World War II. By the same token, the vastnessof the British realm and of British interestswas also a heavy burden of responsibility in thewar. Nor did the Crown take into account the precariouspolitical status of much of the empire. Theking's declaration of war on September 3, 1939,was simply assumed to bind India and the colonies.In fact, while many Indian troops participated inthe war, the high-handed assumption that Indiawas bound by Britain's declaration brought theissue of Indian independence to a head, and, in1947, shortly after the war ended, India becameindependent. As for the dominions, Canada, Australia,New Zealand, and South Africa, King GeorgeVI's declaration did not legally bind them, but theirparticipation was taken for granted. All declaredwar within days after the British declaration. Irelandremained neutral.Like its closest ally, France, Great Britainbetween the wars was suffused with a kind ofnational malaise compounded of economic depressionand an urge to avoid a new war at all costs.Unlike France, it was the British government thattook what it perceived as positive steps to avoidsuch a war. This amounted to sometimes unilateraldisarmament as well as attempts to establish a parityof arms among nations. Under Prime MinsterStanley Baldwin, British pacifism produced astate of collective denial, as the government closedits eyes to German and Italian aggression, the riseof Nazism, and the build-up of German arms andthe military. Under Baldwin's successor, NevilleChamberlain, Great Britain began to prepare forwar by increasing its domestic arms production,but Chamberlain simultaneously adopted an activeAppeasement Policy, hoping to satisfy AdolfHitler's aggressive expansionism by not contestinghis claim to the Czech Sudentenland. Thepolicy, of course, turned out to be disastrous, effectivelyencouraging Hitler's greater and wideraggression. However, it was not as craven as it appeared on the surface to be. Although a militarybuild-up had begun in Britain, Chamberlain recognizedthat the nation was woefully unpreparedfor war, and he hoped that appeasement would buytime to build up a credible defense against the twonations generally believed to offer more menacethan Germany: Italy and Japan. In the meantime,Hitler's aggression notwithstanding, Chamberlainregarded military action against Germany as preventivewar, and he refused to engage in it.The opposition, whose most eloquent and committedspokesman was Winston Churchill, sawappeasement for the disaster that it was and urged,first, preparedness and, later, military action. In theend, it was the German invasion of Poland onSeptember 1, 1939, that brought a British declarationof war against Germany. By that time, Germanywas fully mobilized, and both Britain andFrance were in far weaker positions than they hadbeen at the time of the German Anschluss of Austriaand the annexation of the Sudetenland. Moreover,as in France, widespread pacifism continuedto pervade the civilian population of Britain, andthe government was not unanimous on the necessityof war, with a sizable faction advocating a settlementwith Hitler.While war raged on the eastern front, the periodfrom September 1939 to April 1940 was static in thewest and so quiet that the British dubbed it thePhony War. Britain had hardly roused itself fromthe severe unemployment of the Great Depression,yet enlistment rates remained low and pacifismhigh. It was not until the failure of the NorwegianCampaign that the war began to hit home. Thatmilitary disaster resulted in the removal of Chamberlainand the elevation of Churchill as primeminister. On the very day that Chamberlainresigned, May 10, 1940, Belgium and the Netherlandswere invaded, and the Battle of Francecommenced. This quickly brought an end to thePhony War, and Churchill began to raise the collectivewar will of the nation with speeches and broadcastsof unparalleled eloquence and vigor. Britainsuffered one major defeat after another and wasunder imminent peril of invasion, saved only by theslim Royal Air Force (RAF) victory in the Battleof Britain. U.S. entry into the war following theBattle of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,brought new hope, as did Bernard Law Montgomery'ssuccess against Erwin Rommel in theNorth African Campaigns. Despite disastrousdefeats at the hands of the Japanese, the defeatismof the Phony War and the anxiety that had followedthe fall of France were replaced by a wildly overoptimisticconfidence in an early victory, which soongave way to a grim but resolute determination toprevail, no matter how long it took.Britons endured serious food shortages and theBlitz, which killed some 43,000 civilians and injuredanother 139,000. Beginning in January 1942, theyalso endured the presence of thousands of AmericanGIs. While the Anglo-American alliance wasextremely effective, it was not always smooth, anddespite a very real mutual affection between theAmerican and British peoples, there was also significantfriction between the American troops and theBritish population. Britishers said that there werejust three things wrong with Americans: they were"overpaid, oversexed, and over here."Whereas France had failed miserably to mobilizeits people for war, Great Britain mobilized agreater percentage of its citizens than any othernation in World War II. At the peak of military service,22 percent of the population were in thearmed forces and another 33 percent were directlyinvolved in civilian war work. In addition, manythousands more worked as civil defense volunteers.Ernest Bevin, head of the Ministry of Labor,exercised central control over civilian manpowerresources, and citizens were required to register formandatory assignment in the workforce. Men over41 were liable for such service (younger men wereliable for military service), as were women betweenthe ages of 18 and 60. Unemployment vanished,and, as in the United States, women assumed amajor role in war production, working in virtuallyevery industry except coal mining. A Women'sLand Army (WLA) was created, ultimately 80,000strong, to organize women for agricultural work.Although, early in the conflict, war productionwas criticized as inefficient, it soon rose to a veryimpressive height. For instance, whereas British firms had turned out 3,000 military aircraft in1938, they produced 15,000 in 1940, 24,000 in1942, and 26,500 in 1944. Some 52 major combatvessels were launched in 1940, 114 in 1942, and 76in 1944. While high employment brought prosperity,strict rationing severely limited what one couldpurchase, but many people made up for personalfood shortages by planting vegetable gardens inwhatever spaces they could find.As much as any other factor, the failure ofFrench morale had brought about the collapse ofthat country before the German onslaught. In GreatBritain, the onset of war and the Phony War werelikewise characterized by problems of public morale,but the ascension of Churchill and the imminenceof invasion rapidly coalesced the public will. If Hitlerhad hoped to break the British war will bybombing London and other cities, he badly misreadthe British public. If anything, the Blitz served tounite Britons all the more and strengthen theirresolve to see the war through to total victory.