A Brief History of Britain 1851-2010

by Jeremy Black

  The success in overcoming extremism was underpinned by the optimistic emphasis on social cohesion and patriotism offered by films and news reels. Lord Rothermere’s influential Daily Mail backed Mosley in 1934, but dropped him as he resorted to violence and increasingly strident anti-Semitism. Conservatism was not just a matter of politics. D.C. Thomson and Mills & Boon, two of the most successful publishers of popular fiction, actively disseminated conservative social and moral standards: sexual energy was restrained, while radicalism, social strain and moral questioning were ignored.

  Approach to War

  This was the idea of nation and empire that played the key role in resisting Hitler’s Germany in 1940–1 after the conquest of France in May–June 1940 left Germany dominant in Western Europe. In the 1930s, Britain had not been prepared for sustained and extensive Continental warfare. Its society was patriotic and, at times, jingoistic, but it was not militaristic. Unlike in much of the Continent, there were few men in military uniforms on the streets, no peacetime conscription and only a relatively small standing army. Moreover, both the Treasury and most domestic opinion were against an arms build-up and rearmament was not pressed hard until 1938.

  The Labour opposition was also for long unsure about how best to respond to Hitler. Due to a strong pacifist component, Labour was divided over rearmament, and in the 1935 election Labour politicians denounced warmongering. Yet, when it became clear that Hitler was not going to stop expanding beyond Germany’s 1919 treaty frontiers, the Labour leadership pressed for a firmer British response and for rearmament, as did a number of Conservatives not in office, most prominently Winston Churchill.

  German rearmament, publicly announced in 1935, made the situation in Europe more menacing. German expansionism indeed placed the spotlight on Anglo-French preparedness. In 1938, in the Munich Crisis, Hitler successfully intimidated Britain and France over the future of Czechoslovakia, leading to the Munich Agreement, which proved the centrepiece of the British attempt to secure a negotiated settlement to satisfy German ambitions, but at the cost of major territorial losses by Czechoslovakia that lessened its ability to resist Germany.

  The British service chiefs urged caution on the government, which anyway did not want to fight. Conscious of numerous global commitments, they warned about the dangers of becoming entangled in major military action on the Continent. There was particular concern about the likely impact of German bombing of civilian targets. The major impact on public morale of German raids on London in the First World War seemed a menacing augury. Anglo-French fears of war with Germany may have been excessive in 1938, given the weaknesses of the Nazi regime, including a lack of enthusiasm among German military leaders, but this is unclear, and, anyway, there was a well-founded fear of causing a second ‘Great War’. Furthermore, the military was poorly configured for war with Germany. As the Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff noted in May 1939,

  … under the plan approved in April 1938, the Field Force was to be organized primarily with a view to reinforcing the Middle East. The crisis in September 1938 … focused sharply the fact that, even when the programme was complete, our forces would be inadequate for a major Continental war.

  Delay in fighting Germany at least permitted investment in improved military effectiveness, as well as strengthening the moral case that Britain had tried every avenue to avoid war. In response to the threat from German bombers, attention was switched from building up a bomber force to fighter defence, with the development of the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire. These aeroplanes, which were the product of a key capability in British industry, reflected the transition of fighters from wooden-based biplanes to all-metal cantilever-wing monoplanes with high-performance engines capable of far greater speeds, range and armament. Alongside early-warning radar, a major achievement of applied industry, they were to be key to resisting successfully the air assault that Germany launched in 1940.

  In opposing the Munich Agreement, Churchill told the Commons on 5 October 1938 that ‘maintenance of peace depends upon the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor, coupled with a sincere effort to redress grievances’. The build-up of British forces did not provide a deterrent to further German action, but it was to help strengthen Britain’s defences. However, although Britain was allied to France in seeking to deter Hitler, the Soviet Union was willing to cooperate with Germany in 1939, while the US was not interested in action. As the US was the world’s leading industrial power, this gravely weakened the possible response to Fascist aggression. Indeed, the lack of Anglo-American cooperation in the 1930s was a major feature in international relations, and one that affected Britain’s options.

  The occupation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 starkly demonstrated Hitler’s failure to stick to the Munich Agreement and led the government, since 1937 under Neville Chamberlain, to join France in guaranteeing Poland and Romania against attack. As a result, the German invasion of Poland, in turn, led Britain and France to declare war on 3 September 1939. Parliament and public opinion now saw conflict with an untrustworthy Nazi Germany as inevitable. Churchill, who had been a harsh critic of the appeasement of Germany, especially the Munich Agreement, told the House of Commons that day:

  This is not a question of fighting for Danzig [Gdansk] or fighting for Poland. We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defence of all that is most sacred to man. This is no war for domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain; no war to shut any country out of its sunlight and means of progress. It is a war, viewed in its inherent quality, to establish on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man.

  The Second World War, 1939–45

  Once war had broken out, however, the Anglo-French forces were unable to provide any assistance to Poland, not least by attacking German forces on the French frontier. The British forces sent to France in 1939 were small, short of equipment, particularly tanks, transport, artillery, small arms and ammunition, and poorly trained for conflict with the Germans. Churchill, who had become First Lord of the Admiralty with the outbreak of war, advocated the dispatch of a fleet to the Baltic specially prepared to resist air attack, but this rash idea was thwarted by his naval advisers.

  Despite the rapid fall of Poland in 1939 and Hitler’s subsequent call for negotiations, Britain and France were determined to fight on in order to prevent German hegemony. They were correctly distrustful of Hitler, wrongly sceptical about Germany’s ability to sustain a long war, and confident that, as in the First World War, the Allied forces in France would be able to resist attack. In practice, military activity on the Western Front in what was the particularly bitter winter of 1939–40 was very limited, leading to its description as the ‘Phoney War’. The Anglo-French forces failed to respond to German success in Poland with altered training regimes. Instead, training was conventional, and there was little preparation for mobile tank warfare, although more than was subsequently alleged. The British Expeditionary Force, and the Allies generally, were not lacking equipment compared to the Germans, nor was the equipment really inferior; instead, it was a matter of operational vision, and command and control in the mobile battle that were deficient. Conscription, introduced in Britain in 1939, produced a large army, but, once the Germans attacked, neither the troops nor the officers proved able to respond adequately to the pace and character of the German attack.

  Chamberlain’s hope that a limited conflict, including the naval blockade of Germany, would lead Hitler to negotiate, or would result in his overthrow, rapidly proved abortive. Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in early 1940. In Norway, the hastily thrown together British force suffered from inadequate training and equipment and a lack of air cover and appropriate artillery. The Germans proved better able to seize and maintain the initiative.

  In the France campaign, the Allies were also outfought. The British were tied t
o French strategy and this bears much of the blame for failure, but the British also suffered from particular deficiencies, including poor training and command. The British were driven from the Continent, although much of the Army was successfully evacuated from the beaches near Dunkirk on 27 May to 4 June: the Navy evacuated most of the troops, but private boats also took off an important number, and this provided an important image of national resolve and unity.

  Britain, nevertheless, appeared to have lost the war. Defeat in Norway had helped discredit the leadership of Chamberlain, who had already been affected by disquiet over the energy and style of his war leadership. The need to bring Labour into the ministry and the unwillingness of the Labour leadership to serve under Chamberlain contributed to the change of government, and Churchill’s reputation as a resolute opponent of Hitler helped ensure he became Prime Minister. A National Government under Churchill was formed on 10 May 1940 with a Cabinet including Conservative, Labour and Liberal members. Clement Attlee (1883–1967), the Labour leader, became Churchill’s deputy. However, in the aftermath of the fall of France, a defeat far greater than anything suffered in the First World War, several leading politicians felt it necessary to consider a negotiated peace. These included the Foreign Secretary, Halifax (1881–1959), who had come close to succeeding Chamberlain. Moreover, David Lloyd George thought he might be able to succeed Churchill and settle with Hitler.

  Churchill, however, refused to trust Hitler and was determined to fight on with the backing of Labour and many backbench Conservative MPs. He successfully outmanoeuvred his rivals in the government, but the military situation was still parlous. Late 1940 and early 1941 was the nadir of Britain’s twentieth century. Isolated, apart from the crucial support of the empire, and effectively bankrupt, it suffered further defeats, notably with the fall of Greece to Germany in April 1941.

  Yet Operation Sealion, the planned German invasion of southern England, had been called off, after the German air force failed, in the Battle of Britain in July–September 1940, to gain air superiority over southern England, the English Channel and the invasion beaches. The strength of the British Navy made German air superiority crucial. In the event, British fighting quality, command decisions, growing numbers of fighter aeroplanes and radar, led to the outfighting of the Germans. Initial German attacks on the RAF (Royal Air Force) and its airfields, in what was an air superiority campaign, designed to force the British to commit their fighters and then to destroy them, inflicted heavy losses on the British, especially on pilot numbers. By early September, Fighter Command, under remorseless pressure from larger forces, seemed close to defeat.

  However, fighting over Britain, the RAF benefited from the support provided by the ground control organization and could more often recover any pilots who survived being shot down. Furthermore, RAF fighting quality, which had been underestimated by the German planners, was seen in the heavy losses inflicted on the Germans, and the Germans did not appreciate the extent to which the RAF was under pressure. Yet, although success in the Battle of Britain was crucial, it was a victory only in that it denied Germany triumph. There was still no sign that Britain was strong enough to challenge German control of the Continent, a situation that encouraged the traditional British recourse to a strategy based on maritime control and on diversionary attacks in secondary theatres, which was to mean in 1940–1 the Mediterranean and East Africa.

  German pressure on Britain increased, however, in the winter of 1940/41. The ‘Blitz’ – the bombing of Britain that began in September 1940 and lasted until May 1941, with later less intensive but still serious revivals – was very damaging, and made it clear how far Britain had been pushed back on to the defensive. The German decision to bomb London and other cities was designed to put the Luftwaffe (German air force) centre stage by bombing Britain into submission. Cities such as Coventry, London and Southampton were devastated, although fatalities were fewer than had been feared before the war, when large numbers of cardboard coffins had been prepared and there was widespread preparation for airborne gas attacks that were never mounted. Nor was industrial production badly hit by air attack.

  German indiscriminate bombing, intended to destroy civilian morale, failed in its purpose, and, indeed, the experience of 1940 helped fashion a renewed patriotism, not least because it proved easier to support the war when there seemed no alternative and when Britain was unencumbered by allies whose policies led to criticism. German air attacks served to demonstrate the morality of the struggle against Hitler, as well as encouraging the sense that everyone, irrespective of their background, was under attack and ‘taking it’. This had a considerable effect, both at the time and for post-war Britain. As Churchill told the Commons on 21 November 1940, ‘The War Damage (Compensation) Bill … will give effect to the feeling that there must be equality of risk and equality of treatment in respect of the damage done by fire of the enemy.’

  Unsurprisingly, there is some evidence that spirits were lower than has been popularly thought. In Southampton, there was low morale and the mayor and civic leaders slept outside the town to avoid bombing, while ordinary citizens could seek the same only by sleeping on the common in summer. After a government report, the mayor resigned in disgrace. Yet, this response was unusual. On the whole, morale remained high, and fortitude in the face of the attack became a key aspect of national identity. In particular, there was no panic in heavily bombed London, and the docks continued working.

  Attempts to shelter from the bombing led some Londoners to seek refuge in the Underground system. Although initially banned from doing so, as the system was still running, citizens crowded into Tube tunnels, providing images for artists such as Henry Moore (1898–1986).

  The devastation in London and in other heavily bombed cities, such as Exeter, Liverpool and Plymouth, was one of the most important long-term consequences of the bombing. About 115,000 houses in London were destroyed, while 288,000 required major repairs. The damage to the built environment was accentuated by post-war reconstruction, much of which was of poor quality; although allowance has to be made for the cost of reconstruction, the massive need for new housing, and the extent of other burdens on the national finances.

  Britain was also under pressure by sea. U-boat (submarine) attacks on British trade routes, especially the crucial supply route from North America, threatened the economy and food supplies. In the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign people were urged to grow their own food. The fall of France had increased British vulnerability, as German submarines could now be based on the west coast of France, as had not been the case in the First World War.

  The Germans also challenged Britain’s position in north Africa. Italy under its Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), had entered the war as an ally of Germany in June 1940, and Mussolini launched attacks on British positions in East Africa and Egypt. These were swiftly checked and the Italian armies in their neighbouring colonies of Ethiopia and Libya were heavily defeated in December 1940 to early 1941. However, the Germans sent a force that in April 1941 drove the British back into Egypt. The Germans also defeated the British in Greece. The tempo of the German advance, especially its rapid use of airborne troops and armour, brought a decisive advantage, as did the effective use of ground support artillery. Churchill, who had backed the expedition to Greece in order to show that Britain was supporting all opposition to the Axis, swiftly recognized this as an error. Defeat in mainland Greece was followed by the successful German invasion of Crete.

  The empire played a key role in the war in Africa and the Middle East. Australian and New Zealand units took a major part, while Canadian forces were significant to the strategic reserve in Britain. Moreover, the degree to which most of the non-white empire was loyal was an important indication of imperial solidarity. Indian and African forces proved crucial in the defeat of the Italians in east and north Africa, as well as in the conquest in 1941 of Iraq, which was seen as a potential German ally. If nineteenth-century imperialism lacked a clear
moral basis, the empire demonstrated one in 1940–1 by giving Britain the ability to fight on. This role, however, has been underplayed in subsequent attempts to provide a sense of common history that could include immigrants from the Commonwealth.

  There were also signs of American support for Britain, valuable signs in light of the strength of isolationism there: indeed, the US had earlier followed policies towards German expansion that were as bad as those of the appeasers. In September 1940, as an important gesture to Britain, the US provided fifty surplus destroyers (seven of them to the Canadian navy) in return for ninety-nine-year leases on bases in Antigua, the Bahamas, Bermuda, British Guiana (now Guyana), Jamaica, Newfoundland, St Lucia and Trinidad. In practice, the deal was of limited value to Britain, as the ships took time to prepare, but, aside from the psychological value at a time when Britain was vulnerable, no other power was in a position to provide such help.

  Moreover, thanks to the passage by Congress of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, the President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), was granted a total of $7 billion for military matériel that he could sell, lend or trade to any state vital to American security. This opened the way for the shipping of American military supplies to Britain. That July, furthermore, American forces replaced the British in Iceland, keeping it out of German hands. The Americans also took a role in protecting convoys in the western Atlantic from submarine attack.

  Despite American support for Britain, Hitler mistakenly hoped that the British people would realize their plight, overthrow Churchill, and make peace. In the event, in the face of British obduracy, Hitler was reduced to trying to link his policies by believing that the defeat of the Soviet Union on which he focused in 1941 would make Britain ready to settle and to accept German dominance of Europe.