From Peace through War Foreign Policy and World War II: 1922-1945.

From Peace through War

Foreign Policy and World War II: 1922-1945

Foreign Policy

• Desire to avoid war by limiting commitments overseas illustrated in Chanak Crisis

• Geneva Protocol (1924) condemned aggressive war

• Locarno (1925)—Versailles settlement to be upheld; Franco-German guaranteed

Foreign Policy

• Disarmament: Washington Naval Conference (1922)—inter alia, England forwent naval supremacy.

• London Armaments Conference modified Washington Conference—ratios extended to cruisers, but Japan allowed to build as much as it wanted to—Britain and U. S. could adjust their tonnages upwards according to 5:3 ratio. (Aircraft carriers not mentioned)

• England ignored evidence of German rearmament

Not Facing the Dictators• Mussolini admired because he got things done• Appeasement mentality—it’s cheap and WWI

generation didn’t want another war• Hoare-Lavaal Pact over Ethiopia• England provided very little aid to Spanish

Republicans during CW• England did not challenge Germany’s

remilitarization of the Rhineland• England did not challenge anschluss• Neville Chamberlain acquiesced over Sudetenland

at the Munich Conference: “peace in our time”

Hoare and Chamberlain: The Appeasers

Appeasement and its limits

• Secret financial aid offered in Germany would just keep the peace

• Hitler seized remainder of Czechoslovakia in spring 1939

• Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden warned that Hitler couldn’t be trusted

• Sir Oswald Mosely (Nazi) and other Englishmen supported Hitler—bulwark for England in the inevitable war against Russia

WWII

• Britain declared war (Sept. 3) on Germany following Germany’s attack on Poland—Sept. 1, 1939

• Blitzkrieg yielded to sitzkrieg until spring 1940. Germany invades Scandinavia and then France

• “miracle” at Dunkirk—1940• Churchill in power

Evacuation of Dunkirk

WWII

• Battle of Britain – “never was so much owed by so many to so few”; “blood, toil, tears, and sweat;” “we shall never surrender;” “this was their finest hour.”

• Rhetoric, radar, enigma, and the Spitfire• Relocation of “East ender children” created

support for postwar social programs to help the poor.

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, 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 in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Spitfire and Enigma

WWII• 1942—El Alamein• U-Boats a real threat to British Surival• England desperately needed U. S. in war

(Destroyers for Bases—1940; Lend-lease—1941)• 1943 was critical year—Battle of Atlantic was

won and Sicily was invaded.• Agreement for Unconditional Surrender and

European Second Front• June 6, 1944—Operation Overlord• “A Bridge too Far” at Ahrnem

Tommies at 1st Battle of El Alamein, July 1942

Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976)

Arthur William Tedder, 1890-1967Deputy Supreme Commander—

Overlord and After

Alan Brooke, 1883-1963, Chief of Imperial General Staff, Chief military advisor to Churchill

WWII transforms Politics• VE Day, May 8, 1945• “hump my wife” broadcast• Churchill voted out at end of war• Labour ran on Beveridge Plan—nationalization, social

safety net• Clement Atlee was Labour Leader• Coal, the Bank of England, communications, Iron and

Steel were all nationalized; economically, this did not work, but there were few other options

• National Health Services Act and National Insurance Act were more successful

Clement Atlee (1883-1967)