Transcript Slide 1

Britain and World War II
World War II, or the Second World
War (often abbreviated WWII or
WW2), was a global military conflict
lasting from 1939 to 1945 which
involved most of the world's nations,
including all of the great powers,
organized into two opposing military
alliances: the Allies and the Axis.
It was the most widespread war in
history, with more than 100 million
military personnel mobilized. In a state
of "total war," the major participants
placed their entire economic, industrial,
and scientific capabilities at the service
of the war effort, erasing the distinction
between civilian and military resources.
Marked by significant action against
civilians, including the Holocaust and
the only use of nuclear weapons in
warfare, it was the deadliest conflict in
human history, with over seventy
million casualties.
The war is generally considered to have
begun on 1 September 1939, with the
invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and
subsequent declarations of war on
Germany by France and most of the
countries of the British Empire and
Commonwealth.
Many countries were already at war by this
date, such as Ethiopia and Italy in the Second
Italo-Abyssinian War and China and Japan in
the Second Sino-Japanese War. Many that
were not initially involved joined the war
later in response to events such as the
German invasion of the Soviet Union and the
Japanese attacks on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at
Pearl Harbor and on British overseas
colonies, which triggered declarations of war
on Japan by the United States, the British
Commonwealth, and the Netherlands.
While the USA proclaimed neutrality, it
continued to supply Britain with essential
supplies, and the critical Battle of the Atlantic
between German U-Boats and British naval
convoys commenced. Western Europe was
eerily quiet during this 'phoney war'.
Preparations for war continued in earnest,
but there were few signs of conflict, and
civilians who had been evacuated from
London in the first months drifted back into
the city. Gas masks were distributed, and
everybody waited for the proper war to
begin.
The war ended with the victory of the Allies in 1945,
leaving the political alignment and social structure of
the world significantly changed. While the United
Nations was established to foster international
cooperation and prevent future conflicts, the Soviet
Union and the United States emerged as rival
superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War,
which lasted for the next forty-six years. Meanwhile,
the acceptance of the principle of self-determination
accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and
Africa, while Western Europe began moving toward
economic recovery and increased political
integration.
The basic causes of World War II were the nationalistic
tensions, unresolved issues, and resentments resulting
from World War I and the interwar period in Europe,
plus the effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The culmination of events that led to the outbreak of
war are generally understood to be the 1939 invasion
of Poland by Nazi Germany and the 1937 invasion of
the Republic of China by the Empire of Japan. These
military aggressions were the decisions made by
authoritarian ruling Nazi elite in Germany and by the
leadership of the Kwantung Army in the case of Japan.
World War II started after these aggressive actions
were met with an official declaration of war and/or
armed resistance.
World War II Timeline
1939
Hitler invades Poland on 1 September. Britain and
France declare war on Germany two days later.
1940
Rationing starts in the UK.
German 'Blitzkrieg' overwhelms Belgium, Holland and
France.
Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain.
British Expeditionary Force evacuated from Dunkirk.
British victory in Battle of Britain forces Hitler to
postpone invasion plans.
1941
Hitler begins Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of Russia.
The Blitz continues against Britain's major cities.
Allies take Tobruk in North Africa, and resist German attacks.
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and the US enters the war.
1942
Germany suffers setbacks at Stalingrad and El Alamein.
Singapore falls to the Japanese in February - around 25,000
prisoners taken.
American naval victory at Battle of Midway, in June, marks turning
point in Pacific War.
Mass murder of Jewish people at Auschwitz begins.
1943
Surrender at Stalingrad marks Germany's first major defeat.
Allied victory in North Africa enables invasion of Italy to be
launched.
Italy surrenders, but Germany takes over the battle.
British and Indian forces fight Japanese in Burma.
1944
Allies land at Anzio and bomb monastery at Monte Cassino.
Soviet offensive gathers pace in Eastern Europe.
D Day: The Allied invasion of France. Paris is liberated in August.
Guam liberated by the US Okinawa, and Iwo Jima bombed.
1945
Auschwitz liberated by Soviet troops.
Russians reach Berlin: Hitler commits suicide and Germany
surrenders on 7 May.
Truman becomes President of the US on Roosevelt's death, and
Attlee replaces Churchill.
After atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Japan surrenders on 14 August.
On 10 May 1940 - the same day that
Winston Churchill replaced Neville
Chamberlain as Prime Minister of the UK
- Germany invaded France, Belgium and
Holland,
and
western
Europe
encountered the Blitzkrieg - or 'lightning
war'. Germany's combination of fast
armoured tanks on land, and superiority
in the air, made a unified attacking force
that was both innovative and effective.
Despite greater numbers of air and army
personnel, the Low Countries and France
proved no match for the Wehrmacht and the
Luftwaffe. Holland and Belgium fell by the
end of May; Paris was taken two weeks later.
British troops retreated from the invaders in
haste, and some 226,000 British and 110,000
French troops were rescued from the channel
port of Dunkirk only by a ragged fleet, using
craft that ranged from pleasure boats to Navy
destroyers.
In France an armistice was signed with
Germany, with the puppet French Vichy
government - under a hero of World War One,
Marshall Pétain - in control in the
'unoccupied' part of southern and eastern
France, and Germany in control in the rest of
the country. Charles de Gaulle, as the leader
of the Free French, fled to England (much to
Churchill's chagrin) to continue the fight
against Hitler . But it looked as if that fight
might not last too long.
Having conquered France, Hitler turned his
attention to Britain, and began preparations
for an invasion. For this to be successful,
however, he needed air superiority, and he
charged the Luftwaffe with destroying
British air power and coastal defences. The
Battle of Britain, lasting from July to
September, was the first to be fought solely
in the air. Germany lacked planes but had
many pilots. In Britain, the situation was
reversed, but - crucially - it also had radar.
This, combined with the German decision to
switch the attacks from airfields and factories
to the major cities, enabled the RAF to squeak
a narrow victory, maintain air superiority and
ensure the - ultimately indefinite postponement of the German invasion plans.
The 'Blitz' of Britain's cities lasted throughout
the war, saw the bombing of Buckingham
Palace and the near-destruction of Coventry,
and claimed some 40,000 civilian lives.
With continental Europe under Nazi control, and
Britain safe - for the time being - the war took on
a more global dimension. Following the defeat of
Mussolini's armies in Greece and Tobruk,
German forces arrived in North Africa in
February, and invaded Greece and Yugoslavia in
April 1941.
While the bombing of British and German cities
continued, and the gas chambers at Auschwitz
were put to use, Hitler invaded Russia .
Operation Barbarossa, as the invasion was
called, began on 22 June.
The initial advance was swift, with the fall of
Sebastopol at the end of October, and Moscow
coming under attack at the end of the year. The
bitter Russian winter, however, like the one that
Napoleon had experienced a century and a half
earlier, crippled the Germans. The Soviets
counterattacked in December and the Eastern
Front stagnated until the spring.
Winter in the Pacific, of course, presented no
such problems. The Japanese, tired of
American trade embargoes, mounted a surprise
attack on the US Navy base of Pearl Harbor, in
Hawaii, on 7 December. This ensured that
global conflict commenced, with Germany
declaring war on the US, a few days later.
Within a week of Pearl Harbor, Japan had
invaded the Philippines, Burma and Hong Kong.
The Pacific war was on.
The first Americans arrived in England in January 1942
and in North Africa Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's
Afrika Korps began their counter-offensive, capturing
Tobruk in June. The Blitz intensified in both England
and Germany, with the first thousand-bomber air raid
on Cologne, and German bombing of British cathedral
cities.
The second half of the year also saw a reversal of
German fortunes. British forces under Montgomery
gained the initiative in North Africa at El Alamein, and
Russian forces counterattacked at Stalingrad. The news
of mass murders of Jewish people by the Nazis reached
the Allies, and the US pledged to avenge these crimes.
In the Pacific, the Japanese continued their
expansion into Borneo, Java and Sumatra. The
'unassailable' British fortress of Singapore fell
rapidly in February, with around 25,000
prisoners taken, many of whom would die in
Japanese camps in the years to follow. But June
saw the peak of Japanese expansion. The Battle
of Midway, in which US sea-based aircraft
destroyed four Japanese carriers and a cruiser,
marked the turning point in the Pacific War.
The second half of the year also saw a reversal
of German fortunes. British forces under
Montgomery gained the initiative in North
Africa at El Alamein, and Russian forces
counterattacked at Stalingrad. The news of
mass murders of Jewish people by the Nazis
reached the Allies, and the US pledged to
avenge these crimes.
February saw German surrender at Stalingrad:
the first major defeat of Hitler's armies. Battle
continued to rage in the Atlantic, and one fourday period in March saw 27 merchant vessels
sunk by German U-boats. A combination of longrange aircraft and the codebreakers at Bletchley,
however, were inflicting enormous losses on the
U-boats. Towards the end of May Admiral Dönitz
withdrew the German fleet from the contended
areas - the Battle of the Atlantic was effectively
over.
In mid-May German and Italian forces in North
Africa surrendered to the Allies, who used
Tunisia as a springboard to invade Sicily in July.
By the end of the month Mussolini had fallen,
and in September the Italians surrendered to the
Allies, prompting a German invasion into
northern Italy. Mussolini was audaciously
rescued by a German task force, led by Otto
Skorzeny, and established a fascist republic in the
north. German troops also engaged the Allies in
the south - the fight through Italy was to prove
slow and costly.
In the Pacific, US forces overcame the Japanese at
Guadalcanal, and British and Indian troops began their
guerrilla campaign in Burma. American progress
continued in the Aleutian Islands, New Guinea and the
Solomon Islands.
As the Russian advance on the Eastern Front gathered
pace, recapturing Kharkov and Kiev from Germany,
Allied bombers began to attack German cities in
enormous daylight air raids. The opening of the Second
Front in Europe, long discussed and always postponed,
was being prepared for the following year.
The Allied advance in Italy continued with
landings at Anzio, in central Italy, in January
1944. It was a static campaign. The Germans
counter-attacked in February and the fighting
saw the destruction of the medieval monastery
at Monte Cassino after Allied bombing. Only at
the end of May did the Germans retreat from
Anzio. Rome was liberated in June, the day
before the Allies' 'Operation Overlord', now
known as the D-Day landings.
On 6 June 1944- as Operation Overlord got underway some 6,500 vessels landed over 130,000 Allied forces on
five Normandy beaches: codenamed Utah, Omaha,
Gold, Juno and Sword. Some 12,000 aircraft ensured air
superiority for the Allies - bombing German defences,
and providing cover. The pessimistic predictions that
had been made of massive Allied casualties were not
borne out. Overall, the landings caught the Germans by
surprise, and they were unable to counter-attack with
the necessary speed and strength. Cherbourg was
liberated by the end of June. Paris followed two months
later.
The New Year 1945 saw the Soviet liberation of
Auschwitz, and the revelation of the sickening horror of
the Holocaust, its scale becoming clearer as more
camps were liberated in the following months. The
Soviet army continued its offensive from the east, while
from the west the Allies established a bridge across the
Rhine at Remagen, in March.
While the bombing campaigns of the Blitz were over,
German V1 and V2 rockets continued to drop on
London. The return bombing raids on Dresden, which
devastated the city in a huge firestorm, have often been
considered misguided.
Meantime, the Western Allies raced the
Russians to be the first into Berlin. The
Russians won, reaching the capital on 21 April.
Hitler killed himself on the 30th, two days
after Mussolini had been captured and hanged
by Italian partisans. Germany surrendered
unconditionally on 7 May 1945, and the
following day was celebrated as VE (Victory in
Europe) day. The war in Europe was over.
In the Pacific, however, it had continued to rage
throughout this time. The British advanced further in
Burma, and in February the Americans had invaded Iwo
Jima. The Philippines and Okinawa followed and
Japanese forces began to withdraw from China. Plans
were being prepared for an Allied invasion of Japan, but
fears of fierce resistance and massive casualties
prompted Harry Truman - the new American president
following Roosevelt's death in April - to sanction the use
of an atomic bomb against Japan. Such bombs had been
in development since 1942, and on 6 August 1945 one of
them was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Three days later another was dropped on Nagasaki. No
country could withstand such attacks, and the Japanese
surrendered on 14 August.
The Blitzkrieg
The speed, flexibility and initiative of the German
Wehrmacht army took the Allies completely by surprise
during the blitzkrieg at the start of World War Two.
A stunned British military establishment struggled to
determine how it was that events had so quickly gone
so horribly wrong. The BEF had sailed for France
believing that they and their French ally were well
equipped and well trained to fight a modern war. In
truth, as events proved, they were completely
unprepared to face Hitler's Wehrmacht.
During World War I, the armies of the two
Allies had dug in for what became a long,
drawn-out conflict. And in 1940,
influenced by this experience, the British
and French leaders of World War II were
still expecting to fight a war in which the
defensive would dominate. With this
approach in mind, the French army was
sent to man France's heavily fortified
border with Germany, the Maginot Line,
and to await a German attack.
The Maginot Line: the Allies expected a protracted,
defensive war
The events in May and June 1940 proved
that this outdated vision of war could not
have been further from reality. This time,
unlike the Allies, the Germans intended to
fight the war offensively, and win quickly.
At dawn on 10 May, the Germans began an
invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands.
Accordingly, convinced that they were facing a
repeat of the German strategy of 1914, Allied
commanders moved the bulk of their forces from
the Franco-Belgian border into defensive positions
within Belgium to await the continuation of the
German attack. In so doing, they fell right into
Hitler's trap. Rather than repeating the World War
I plan, the Germans in 1940 advanced with their
main thrust through the Ardennes Forest, in order
to smash the vulnerable flank of the Allies.
Shocked by their experience, the Allied military
observers who had survived the fall of France
attributed their defeat to the completely new form
of warfare pioneered by the Wehrmacht - the
blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg seemed to be based around
the pervasive use of new technology. After all,
during the disastrous campaign in Belgium and
France, it had seemed as if German tanks and
aircraft were everywhere. This view that the
Germans used technology, namely the tank and
the dive-bomber, to create a new and unique form
of warfare has often dominated understanding of
how the Germans fought in World War II.
The Allies believed that 'blitzkrieg' was dependent on
new technology, such as tanks and dive-bombers
DUNKIRK
As France fell rapidly, the Allies' northern and
southern forces were separated by the German
advance from the Ardennes to the Somme. The
Allied armies in the north were being encircled.
By 19 May 1940 the British commander was
considering the withdrawal of the British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) by sea. But London was
demanding more action and on 21 May, an attack
was launched from Arras. This attack lacked the
necessary armour and General Heinz Guderian's
tanks continued past Boulogne and Calais to cross
the canal defence line close to Dunkirk, the only port
left for an Allied withdrawal from Europe.
On 29 May, the evacuation was announced to the
British public, and many privately owned boats started
arriving at Dunkirk to ferry the troops to safety. This
flotilla of small vessels famously became known as the
'Little Ships'. The contribution these civilian vessels
made to the Dunkirk evacuation gave rise to the term
'Dunkirk spirit', an expression still used to describe the
British ability to rally together in the face of adversity.
By 4 June, when the operation ended, 198,000 British
and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been
saved, but virtually all of their heavy equipment had
been abandoned.
No surrender
When France fell with such rapid speed in June 1940
ten months after the outbreak of World War Two
and six weeks after German invasion, Germany
believed it had achieved an unprecedented triumph
in the most extraordinary conditions. To a large
degree, of course, it had. Traditional enemies and
apparently strong opponents had fallen with ease
and dramatic speed - not only France, but Poland,
Holland, Belgium, Denmark,
Norway and
Luxembourg had been over run and Britain's army
had been outflanked and ejected in late May from
Europe with the loss of most of its heavy weapons
and equipment.
But to Germany's surprise, Britain, although
apparently defeated and certainly painfully
exposed and isolated, did not surrender. It did not
even seek to come to terms with Germany. This
was a puzzling state of affairs for the Germans
who now had two options: to lay siege to Britain
and to wear it down physically and psychologically
through limited military action and through
political and propaganda warfare, which would
include the threat or bluff of invasion; or to
actually invade.
The Germans, surprised by the speed of their
military success in Europe, had no detailed
plans for an invasion of Britain. But this
absence of a plan did not prevent Hitler from
announcing on 16 July that an invasion force
would be ready to sail by 15 August. The
operation was given the codeword Sealion.
On 27 May Churchill had put General Sir Edmund
Ironside, Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, in charge
of organising Britain's defence. Ironside acted quickly.
He had a large force at his disposal, but one that was
poorly armed and equipped and generally poorly
trained. In the circumstances, his only option was to
set up a static system of defence which, he hoped,
could delay German invasion forces after landing and
so give Britain time to bring its small mobile reserves
into play. If the Germans could be delayed on the
beaches and then delayed as they pushed inland their
timetable could be thrown off balance, they could
lose impetus, direction and initiative and the British
army might be able to counter attack effectively.
During August, as the stop-lines were nearing
completion, the Luftwaffe's battle for the
control of the air over England and the channel
continued. But the assault on the RAF started
to go awry as Goering changed the emphasis of
attack from radar stations and airfield to
aircraft factories and more peripheral targets thus giving RAF front line squadrons a much
needed breathing space. While what became
known as the Battle of Britain started to reach
its crescendo, the debate about Operation
Sealion also continued to rage during August
between the German navy and the army.
The Battle of Britain 1940
In the summer of 1940, the German Luftwaffe
attempted to win air superiority over southern
Britain and the English Channel by destroying the
Royal Air Force and the British aircraft industry.
This attempt came to be known as the Battle of
Britain, and victory over the RAF was seen by the
Germans as absolutely essential if they were
eventually to mount an invasion of the British Isles.
Pilots rush to take off during the Battle of Britain
Although the fear of a German invasion was real, it
was perhaps unfounded, however, as German plans
were in fact somewhat amateurish - when planning
the air attacks they made the mistake of regarding
the Channel as a relatively minor obstacle, little
more than a wide river crossing. In addition even if
Hitler had achieved his aim of destroying the RAF,
Germany might still have failed to establish a
foothold after any invasion, because the British
Royal Navy was enormously strong, and very
capable of repulsing German troop ships.
The Battle of Britain began on 30 June 1940.
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göering, head of
the Luftwaffe, ordered his force to draw the
RAF into battle by attacking coastal convoys
and bombing radar stations along the south
coast, installations of the British aircraft
industry, and RAF airfields. This dilution of
effort, which became more marked as the
battle progressed, was one of the principal
reasons why the Luftwaffe eventually lost
the battle.
On 17 September, two days after the
Luftwaffe's worst day in the Battle of Britain,
Hitler cancelled Operation Sealion - the name
of his plan for the invasion of Britain. The
campaign of city bombing continued, but
Hitler by now was focusing on Russia - and on
22 June 1941, he launched the greatest landair campaign in the history of war. This
campaign was called Operation Barbarossa and its aim was the invasion of the Soviet
Union.
THE HOME FRONT
The Home Front is the civilian side of warfare. Away
from the battlefields with the cannons and guns and
bullets, the home front was where ordinary people
fought in their own way, to help their boys who were
fighting miles away on distant battlefields and it was
where great sacrifices were made by ordinary
mothers, fathers, wives and relations, to keep their
soldiers alive and safe, even though they might be on
the other side of the world. The Home Front was
important for supplies, information, moral support
and intelligence-gathering. The Home Front showed
that war touched everyone, not just the soldiers
fighting in the field.
Mass Evacuations
From very early in the war, it was thought that
the major industrial cities of Britain, especially
London in the south east, would come under
Nazi German Luftwaffe air attack. Some children
were sent to Canada, the USA and Australia and
millions of children and some mothers were
evacuated from London and other major cities
when the war began under government plans
for evacuations of civilians in Britain during
World War II .
Operation Pied Piper in action. These are just a few of the
827,000 children who were evacuated from London from 19391940. The cards attached to their clothes would allow their carers
or relatives to identify the children when they arrived at their
destinations.
It was a massive undertaking; Upwards of three and a
half million Britons were evacuated from southern
England. It was suggested, at one point, that the
British Royal Family should evacuate, either to the
country, and then later, to Canada, for their own
safety. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, horrified
at the thought of what the Royal Family abandoning its
people to its fate, might do to civilian morale,
famously declared that: “The children won’t leave
without me, I won’t leave without the king, and the
king will never leave!”
Preparing for War
All over the British Isles, people were preparing for
war. They bought miles and miles of sticky-tape to
tape neat, diagonal crosses onto the windows of their
houses and shops. The tape was to hold the windowglass together so that it wouldn’t shatter and become
lethal pieces of flying shrapnel in a bomb-blast.
Similarly, people filled sandbags (although usually
filled with soil) and stacked them up outside
important buildings, around air-raid shelters and
Underground railway stations.
People started digging Anderson shelters in their
back yards. An ‘Anderson’ shelter was a partiallyburied air-raid shelter, made of corrugated steel,
usually placed a few feet into the ground, or in
some cases, right under the ground.
One of the most enduring images of the Home Front
of WWII, was the organization of public air-raid
shelters in London, which centered around London’s
famous “Underground”, its subway-system, which
had existed since Victorian times.
Several of London’s lesser-used Underground
stations were converted to bomb-shelters. Bunkbeds, canteens, toilets and chairs were put in for
peoples’ comfort. Food was delivered on subway
trains towing specially-modified carriages, which
rolled into each station at dinnertime, to serve soup,
bread, coffee and other necessities.
All over England, people observed the ‘blackout’. The
blackout was the mandatory electrical blackout
which the government enforced on the populations,
for its own safety. After sundown, every single
person, every home, every business, had to either
turn off its lights, or it had to cover its windows with
heavy, jet-black blackout curtains. In the streets,
public streetlamps were turned off. Cars had their
headlamps covered, allowing only a tiny slit of light
to shine onto the road, windows were shuttered and
billboard lights were turned off. The purpose of the
blackout, which happened every single night for the
duration of the war, was to disorientate enemy
fighter and bomber aircraft.
In late 1940, the Blitz began. The Blitz was
the intense, night-by-night bombing of
London (and other cities, such as
Coventry), by German Luftwaffe bomberplanes. It was supposed to pound the
British into submission, all it did was wreck
London, kill people and waste valuable
German war-materials.
Finding food, clothing, water and other
essential supplies was a constant, daily
struggle during the War. On the Home Front,
housewives in the UK, all had to be incredibly
resourceful when it came to making ends
meet when there was barely anything to eat.
Rationing became a way of life for everyone,
rich or poor. When someone complained
about the rationing, the common reply was:
“There’s a war on, you know!”, or “Don’t you
know there’s a war on?”
At the height of rationing in England, around
1942, this was an ENTIRE WEEK’S rations in
food for one adult: Four small pieces of meat,
one egg, a little bit of butter, a bit of flour,
sugar, and precious little else. Housewives
had to stretch their cooking-skills to the
maximum, if they intended to feed their
families. The government even issued special
‘ration-recipes’, giving suggestions to wives on
how to use their rations effectively, to cook
delicious meals.
Colonies, Colonials and World War II
African, Indian, Caribbean and other colonial
troops and personnel played a crucial role in
supporting the Allied cause in World War II.
India
Troops from the British Empire fought in every
theatre of war through the years of World War II
- as they had fought in a range of conflicts, on
the side of Britain, for the past 150 years or so.
There were over two and a half million Indian
citizens in uniform during the war.
The land of India also served as an assault
and training base, and provided vast
quantities of foods and other materials to
British and Commonwealth forces, and to the
British at home. This necessitated the
involvement of more millions of men and
women in war work and war production.
Africa
Britain's colonies in West Africa, Gambia,
Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and
Nigeria also served as staging posts and
military bases during World War Two. Aircraft
destined for the 'Middle East' and the North
African front had to fly via West Africa ,and
were serviced there. Ships bound for India and
the east, unable to use the Suez Canal, had to
sail via the Cape, and were serviced and filled
with supplies at West African ports.
Although the colour bar in the British services had
been lifted for the duration of the war, in fact very few
black men served in the British army. With only two
exceptions, even qualified black medical practitioners
were refused. Although Churchill lifted the colour bar,
he sent telegrams to every Embassy and High
Commission, telling them to find 'administrative
means' to reject black volunteers. Among the
specialist units provided by West Africa were four
Medical Units, comprising orderlies trained by the
West African Army Medical Corps. They were attached
to British hospitals in Sicily and Italy. South Africans
were also drawn into the war. They and the
'coloureds' in the South African Army were not
trained in the use of firearms.
Caribbean
The British colonies in the West Indies were
under direct threat by German submarines, who
were hunting for oil tankers and bauxite carriers
making their way from the Caribbean to the USA
and the UK. On the islands, the available
manpower was taken up guarding the ports and
POW camps, as well as providing the labour for
the increased production of primary produce
necessitated by the war.
The Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was a fight for Britain's very
survival.
If Germany had prevented merchant ships from
carrying food, raw materials, troops and their
equipment from North America to Britain, the
outcome of World War II could have been radically
different. Britain might have been starved into
submission, and her armies would not have been
equipped with American-built tanks and vehicles.
Moreover, if the Allies had not been able to move
ships about the North Atlantic, it would have been
impossible to project British and American land forces
ashore in the Mediterranean theatres or on D-Day.
Germany's best hope of defeating Britain lay in
winning what Churchill christened the 'Battle of the
Atlantic'.
The British were consequently forced to divert
their own shipping away from vulnerable UK
ports, and were faced with the need to provide
convoys with naval escorts for greater stretches
of the journey to North America. The Royal
Navy was critically short of escort vessels,
although this problem was eased somewhat by
the arrival of 50 old American destroyers that
President Roosevelt gave in return for bases in
British territory in the West Indies. U-boats,
supplemented by mines, aircraft and surface
ships, succeeded in sinking three million tons of
Allied shipping between the fall of France in
June 1940 and the end of the year.
Admiral Dönitz, the commander of the U-boat
arm, introduced the 'wolfpack' tactic at the end
of 1940, whereby a group of submarines would
surface and attack at night, thus greatly
reducing the effectiveness of ASDIC. This
remorseless attrition of merchant shipping was
a far greater threat to Britain's survival than the
remote possibility of the Kriegsmarine landing
German troops on the English coast.
The British survived this period through a
number
of
factors,
including
the
development of improved tactics. The
emergence of powerful allies was also vital.
The Royal Canadian Navy, which was tiny in
1939, began an amazing period of growth
that eventually made it capable of bearing a
substantial part of the fighting in the North
Atlantic. Even more importantly, the United
States, although neutral, began to behave in
a most un-neutral fashion. From May 1941
the US Navy became a British ally in the
struggle in the Atlantic.
The crisis
The crisis of the Battle of the Atlantic came in
early 1943. Döntiz, by this time commander of
the German Navy, now had 200 operational Uboats. British supplies, especially of oil, were
running out, and it became a question of
whether Allied shipyards could build merchant
ships fast enough to replace the tonnage that
was being sunk. Mass production of Liberty
Ships in US shipyards, however, helped to
ensure that the Allies would win this race. By
April the U-boats were clearly struggling to
make an impact.
By April the U-boats were clearly struggling to
make an impact. Even worse, from Hitler's
point of view, was the fact that Allied sinkings
of German submarines began to escalate, with
45 being destroyed in the months of April and
May. Dönitz, recognising that the U-boat's
moment had passed, called off the battle on 23
May 1943. This was not the end of the threat
in the Atlantic, but thereafter it was greatly
diminished.
The Battle of El Alamein
The Battle of El Alamein, fought in the deserts
of North Africa, is seen as one of the decisive
victories of World War II. The Battle of El
Alamein was primarily fought between two of
the outstanding commanders of World War II,
Montgomery and Rommel. The Allied victory
at El Alamein lead to the retreat of the Afrika
Korps and the German surrender in North
Africa in May 1943
.
By November 2nd 1942, Rommel knew
that he was beaten. Hitler ordered the
Afrika Korps to fight to the last but
Rommel refused to carry out this order.
On November 4th, Rommel started his
retreat. 25,000 Germans and Italians had
been killed or wounded in the battle and
13,000 Allied troops in the Eighth Army.
Since World War II was a world war, many of
the campaigns and battles were fought in the
Far East, with the Axis power Japan. Two of the
famous conflicts between the Britain and Japan
were the Burma campaign and the Battle of
Singapore.
The Battle of Singapore was fought in the
South-East Asian theatre of World War II when
the Empire of Japan invaded the Allied
stronghold of Singapore. Singapore was the
major British military base in South East Asia
and nicknamed the "Gibraltar of the East". The
fighting in Singapore lasted from 8 February
1942 to 15 February 1942.
Lt Gen. Arthur Percival, led by a Japanese officer, walks under a flag
of truce to negotiate the capitulation of Allied forces in Singapore,
on 15 February 1942. It was the largest surrender of British-led
forces in history.
It resulted in the fall of Singapore to the
Japanese, and the largest surrender of Britishled military personnel in history. About 80,000
British, Australian and Indian troops became
prisoners of war, joining 50,000 taken by the
Japanese in the Malayan campaign. Britain's
Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the
ignominious fall of Singapore to the Japanese
the "worst disaster" and "largest capitulation"
in British history.
The Burma Campaign 1941 - 1945
The campaign in which Allied forces defeated
the Japanese in Burma was unique in that
neither side particularly wished to wage war
there. When Japan entered the war on the side
of the Axis powers in December 1941, her
main aims were to acquire raw materials,
particularly oil, rubber and tin and, through
expansion of the so-called Greater CoProsperity Sphere, to create space for the
population of the over-crowded home islands.
There were two reasons for the Japanese
invasion of Burma. Firstly the Japanese knew it
would serve them well if they cut overland access
to China from Burma via the famed Burma Road.
Along this road a steady stream of military aid
was being transported from Rangoon, over the
mountains of the 'Hump' and into Nationalist
China, but if this supply route was closed, the
Japanese could deprive Chiang Kai Shek's
Kuomintang (Nationalist Chinese) armies of their
life-blood, permitting the Japanese to conquer all
China.
Furthermore, possession of Burma
would place the Japanese at the
gate of India, where they believed
general insurrection against the
British Raj would be ignited once
their troops had established
themselves in Assam, within reach
of Calcutta.
The Burma campaign had no decisive effect on the war
as a whole; but it did a great deal to restore respect for
British arms following the humiliations of Hong Kong,
Malaya and Singapore. The re-opening of the Burma
Road permitted the resumption of supplies to
Nationalist China, but there was to be no long-term
benefit here, and American dreams of establishing an
All-China trade zone after the war evaporated when
Mao Tse Tung's Communist forces thrashed the corrupt
regime of America's client, Chiang Kai Shek, within four
years of the Japanese surrender in 1945.
By 1944, the Allies (Britain, Canada and
the USA) were ready to dislodge Hitler
from ‘Fortress Europe’. This involved a
(very dangerous) invasion of the
mainland. The invasion was codenamed
‘Operation Overlord’ and was led by the
American General Ike Eisenhower. The
invasion day (D-Day) was set for some
time in June – the actual date to be
decided by Eisenhower at the last
minute.
The operation began on 6 June 1944 with the
Normandy Landings when a 12,000-plane strong
airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault
involving almost 7,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000
troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and
more than 3 million troops had landed by the end of
August. Allied land forces that saw combat in
Normandy on D-Day itself came from Canada, the
United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Free French forces and Poland also participated in
the battle after the assault phase, and there were
also
minor
contingents
from
Belgium,
Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and
Norway. Other Allied nations participated in the
naval and air forces.
Once the beachheads were secured, a three-week
military buildup occurred on the beaches before
Operation Cobra, the operation to break out from the
Normandy beachhead began. The battle for Normandy
continued for more than two months, with campaigns
to establish a foothold on France, and concluded with
the closing of the Falaise pocket on 24 August, the
subsequent liberation of Paris on 25 August, and the
German retreat across the Seine which was completed
on 30 August 1944.
Tuesday 8 May 1945 was 'Victory in Europe' (VE) Day,
and it marked the formal end of Hitler's war. With it
came the end of six years of misery, suffering,
courage and endurance across the world. Individuals
reacted in very different ways to the end of the
nightmare: some celebrated by partying; others spent
the day in quiet reflection; and there were those too
busy carrying out tasks to do either. Ultimately
nothing would be quite the same again.
The final document of unconditional surrender was
signed at General Dwight Eisenhower's headquarters
in Reims on 7 May. Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and King George VI wanted Monday 7 May to be VE
Day, but in the event, bowing to American wishes,
victory was celebrated on 8 May. The USSR waited an
extra day before beginning their formal celebrations.
In much of Britain, VE Day was marked by street
parties. The people of Britain badly needed to let
their hair down. The country was war-weary by
May 1945. There had been years of austerity and
rationing: five inches of water to a bath, few eggs,
no bananas and the motto 'make do and mend'.
Half a million homes had been destroyed, and
many millions of lives disrupted. Although the
casualty lists from the battlefields were lower than
in World War I, they were still terrible. When in
1944 the primitive V1 'doodlebug' missiles and V2
ballistic missiles began to rain down on south-east
England, the morale of civilians who had already
endured the Blitz of 1940-1 took a knock.
People were already on the streets celebrating on 7
May, and huge crowds gathered in London on the
following day. At 3.00pm Churchill made a radio
broadcast. In Trafalgar Square, an eye-witness noted,
'...there was an extraordinary hush over the assembled
multitude', as Churchill's voice was relayed over
loudspeakers: The King and Queen appeared eight times
on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, while the two
princesses - Margaret and Elizabeth (the present Queen)
- mingled with the crowds. Churchill gave an impromptu
speech on the balcony of the Ministry of Health, telling
the crowds, 'This is your victory.'
The effects of World War II had far-reaching
implications for most of the world. Many millions
of lives had been lost as a result of the war.
Germany was divided into four quadrants, which
were controlled by the Allied Powers — the
United States, Great Britain, France, and the
Soviet Union. The war can be identified to
varying degrees as the catalyst for many
continental, national and local phenomena, such
as the redrawing of European borders, the birth
of the United Kingdom's welfare state, the
communist takeover of China and Eastern
Europe, the creation of Israel, and the division of
Germany and Korea and later of Vietnam.
In addition, many organizations have roots in the
Second World War; for example, the United Nations,
the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and
the International Monetary Fund. Technologies, such
as nuclear fission, the electronic computer and the
jet engine, also appeared during this period.
A multipolar world was replaced by a
bipolar one dominated by the two most
powerful victors, the United States and
Soviet Union, which became known as
the superpowers.
One of the greatest outcomes of the war was the
great world power shift. For more than a century
Great Britain had been the wealthiest and most
powerful nation in the world. But it used up too
many resources in the wars and its status greatly
decreased. The fact is that all of the countries,
excluding the US, lost much more than what they
gained. Britain lost its power, France lost lives and
land, Germany lost everything and Japan was
totally crushed after the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. So the United States emerged as
the
greatest
world
power.
Britain was devastated by the war, having
experienced extensive bombing during the
1940 blitz by the Germans. The economy
depended for recovery upon aid from the
United States. Britain rapidly phased out
most of its remaining imperial holdings in the
years immediately following the war.
After World War II self-government advanced rapidly
in all parts of the empire. In 1947, India was
partitioned and independence granted to the new
states of India and Pakistan. In 1948 the mandate
over Palestine was relinquished, and Burma
(Myanmar) gained independence as a republic. Other
parts of the empire, notably in Africa, gained
independence and subsequently joined the
Commonwealth. In 1997 Hong Kong passed to China
and, in the opinion of many historians, the British
Empire definitively ended.
While the empire may have faded into history,
Great Britain still continues to administer many
dependencies throughout the world. They include
Gibraltar in the Mediterranean; the Falkland
Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands,
and St. Helena (including Ascension and Tristan da
Cunha) in the South Atlantic; Anguilla, Bermuda,
the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands,
Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands in the
West Indies; and Pitcairn Island in the Pacific. These
dependencies have varying degrees of selfgovernment.