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The people of Britain watched anxiously as German control spread over Europe in the 1930s. But some had foreseen this dangerous situation. They believed that the reasons for German expansion could be found in the harsh peace terms forced on Germany by the Allies in 1919, and the failure to involve it in the post-war political settlement. In 1920 the Allies had created the League of Nations which, it was hoped, would enable nations to cooperate with each other. Although the League did not forbid war, its members agreed to respect and preserve the borders and territory of all other members. But in 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), a fellow member of the League. Britain and France were anxious to win Italy's co-operation against Hitler, who was illegally rearming Germany, and therefore decided against taking action against Italy as the rules of the League required them to do. This failure to use the League's authority had serious results. Italy's Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and Hitler realised that Britain and France lacked the will to make sure the standards the League demanded of its members were followed.
For the next four years Germany, Italy and their ally in the Far East, Japan, took advantage of this weakness to seize territory of interest to them. There was good evidence that the demands of Germany could not be satisfied. But in order to avoid war in 1938, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, accepted and co-operated in the takeover of German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia by Germany. Chamberlain returned from meeting Hitler in Munich. He reassured Britain that he had Hitler's written promise that Germany had no more territorial ambitions, in the memorable words, "peace for our time11. Six months later Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Britain, realising that war was inevitable, gave a guarantee of support to Poland if Germany invaded.
Chamberlain was widely blamed for his "appeasement" of Germany. But he expressed the feelings of many people in Britain, to avoid war at all costs. As one of his opponents, Ernest Bevin, generously said in 1941, "If anyone asks me who was responsible for the British policy leading up to the war, I will, as a Labour man myself, make the confession and say, 'All of us.' We refused absolutely to face the facts."
In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and Britain entered the war. The British felt again that they were fighting for the weaker nations of Europe, and for democracy. They had also heard about the cruelty of the Nazis from Jews who had escaped to Britain.
Few people realised how strong the German army was. In May 1940 it attacked, defeating the French in a few days, and driving the British army into the sea. At Dunkirk, a small French port, the British army was saved by thousands of private boats which crossed the English Channel. Dunkirk was a miraculous rescue from military disaster, and Britain's new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, persuaded the nation that it was a victory of courage and determination at Britain's darkest hour. Although the army had lost almost all its weapons in France, Churchill told the nation there could be no thought of surrender or peace negotiation: "we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight on the hills; we shall never surrender … until in God's good time the New World, with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old." And he offered his countrymen nothing but "blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Everyone in Britain expected Germany to invade, but the British air force won an important battle against German planes in the air over Britain. This, however, did not prevent the German air force from bombing the towns of Britain. Almost one and a half million people in London were made homeless by German bombing during the next few months. Once again Churchill brilliantly managed to persuade a nation "on its knees" that it would still win.
The war had begun as a traditional European struggle, with Britain fighting to save the "balance of power" in Europe, and to control the Atlantic Ocean and the sea surrounding Britain. But the war quickly became worldwide. Both sides wanted to control the oil in the Middle East, and the Suez Canal, Britain's route to India. In 1941 Japan, Germany's ally, attacked British colonial possessions, including Malaya (Malaysia), Burma and India. As a result, Britain used soldiers from all parts of its empire to help fight against Germany, Italy and Japan. But the weakness of Britain was obvious to the whole world when its army surrendered Singapore to Japan, described by Churchill as the worst surrender in British history.
In 1941 Germany and Japan had made two mistakes which undoubtedly cost them the war. Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and Japan attacked the United States, both quite unexpectedly. Whatever the advantages of surprise attack, the Axis of Germany, Italy and Japan had now forced onto the battlefield two of the most powerful nations in the world.
Britain could not possibly have defeated Germany without the help of its stronger allies, the Soviet Union and the United States. By 1943 the Soviet | army was pushing the Germans out of the USSR, and Britain had driven German and Italian troops out of North Africa. Italy surrendered quickly following Allied landings in July 1943. In 1944 Britain and the United States invaded German-occupied France. They had already started to bomb German towns, causing greater destruction than any war had ever caused before. Such bombing had very doubtful military results. Dresden, a particularly beautiful eighteenth-century city, and most of its 130,000 inhabitants, were destroyed in one night early in 1945. In May 1945, Germany finally surrendered. In order to save further casualties among their own troops, Britain and the United States then used their bombing power to defeat Japan. This time they used the new atomic bombs to destroy most of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, two large Japanese cities. Over 110,000 people died immediately and many thousands more died later from the after-effects.
It was a terrible end to the war, and an equally terrible beginning to the post-war world. But at the time there was great relief in Britain that the war had finally ended. It had lasted longer than the First World War, and although less than half as many British troops had died this time, the figures of over 303,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians in air raids was a very heavy price to pay for the mistakes of the inter-war years. The Soviet Union, Germany and Japan paid a fair more terrible price, as did ethnic groups like the Jewish and gypsy peoples, several million of whom were deliberately killed.
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