Summary 4: Interwar Britain

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Walks through interwar Britain and its empire, charting economic shocks, imperial debates, and the difficult turn toward rearmament.

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Summary - The British Empire

Hello everyone and welcome to another History of the Second World War Summary Episode. This time we will be summarizing episodes 86 through 91 on the British Empire during the Interwar years. The Empire was in an interesting position as it exited the First World War, it had never been larger, with the territory gained either outright or as mandates taking the Empire on which the sun never get to a new level in terms of size, but at the same time there were new problems that leaders in London would have to try and find answers to in the brave new world of the interwar years. This episode will focus on some of these issues, broadly grouped into three different categories: challenges at home which were amplified by the Great Depression, the challenges for the Empire as discussions began to occur about what the long term future of the Empire would be, and then the challenges faced in British foreign policy and in military preparedness. But as always, our story starts with the First World War. The British had won the First World War along with their allies, but the conflict put a new level of strain on British society. Before the entry of the Americans into the conflict in 1917 the British were quite simply running out of money, after using both their reserves and their reputation to bank roll the Allied war effort for the first three years as they all sought to fight against the Central Powers. At the end of the war the British were in no way destitute, it was far from the economic challenges that would be experienced after the Second World War, but one thing was clear: the center of world finance had for the first time in generations began to shift away from London. The Empire still had several key economic advantages though, for one thing it had the largest merchant fleet in the world which helped British companies to best utilize the access they had to resources all over the world thanks to the connections built on the Empire. The end of the war also led to cuts in spending and a general economic downturn, just like it did in every country that participated in the First World War, this caused ripples throughout the British economy that would heal, just in time for the nation to run into what the British called the Big Slump, also known as the Great Depression.

The Great Depression hit the United Kingdom quite hard, especially in the areas of general employment, with the peak of the UK unemployment reaching 23%. This was very similar to what happened in many of the more economically advanced nations, but then the British did something that in retrospect was a good move: they left the gold standard. The Gold Standard was the idea that currencies of nations were tied to a fixed exchange rate between their currency and gold, and it had been a major part of economic orthodoxy before the Great Depression. There were benefits to the standard, for example it took much of the risk out of any kind of international currency conversion because you could always count on the money being backed by gold. The larger European nations had all went off of the Gold Standard during the First World War due to the spending required to prosecute the war, but the assumption was always that they would go back to the standard once the conflict was over, and the date for the transition back to the Standard was set to the end of 1925. There were many problems with the Gold Standard at this time, with countries making mistakes around how they valued their currency at the time that the standard was enacted which caused trade issues and then also the fact that it sometimes made economic expansion difficult because it was difficult to gather funds for large capital investments. This was one of the constraints on British industrial investments during the late 1920s. The departure of the British pound from the Gold Standard solved a lot of problems, with the British pound falling against other currencies, which actually improved the British economic position because it made their exports more attractive on the international market, a greater demand for British exports meant more work, more production, and more investment, all of which were a good thing. It would still take years for the British economy to properly recover, but it was clearly on the right course by the mid 1930s, just at the time when demands would be made upon it for rearmament.

While the British economy was evolving the British Empire was doing the same. The Empire is an interesting topic to discuss, particularly as it evolved during the interwar years, but it is also important to remember what is described in this quote from the excellent Britain at Bay by Alan Allport: “It is difficult, now, to remember just what a permanent fixture the British Empire once seemed. It was still one of the great facts of the world in the 1930s: impossible to miss, older than anyone could remember and apparently indestructible.” This was all about to change though, because even though the British Empire was larger in 1921 than it had ever been, well times were a changin’. The first major domino to fall would be at the 1926 Imperial Conference, where the Balfour Declaration would restructure pieces of the British Empire, giving some of the pieces of the Empire much more autonomy within the Empire, with the name the Commonwealth being adopted at this time. This did not give the pieces of the commonwealth full independence, but it did shift the official hierarchy away from strict UK dominance into, at least officially, a collection of equal pieces of the empire. For many of the areas that were now within the Commonwealth this transition was smooth and would remain the cornerstone of their relations with London for the next several decades, and then there was India. India was a sticky topic during the interwar years, there were movements in India, led by leaders like Gandhi, that wanted much greater autonomy for the people of India, like the ability to rule themselves. But there were many traditionalists in London who, fueled by racist beliefs of the capabilities of Indians, did not believe that the Indians were even capable of self-rule. If this did not result in some much violence, both real and verbal, throughout the interwar years it would be funny that when the Government of India Bill was finally passed in 1937 and British officials in India started to work with Indian nationalists, things went very well. The Indians were more than willing to take a more slow and methodical path towards full independence, instead of immediately seeking to tear down the systems that existed. The racists would once again, not for the first or the last time, prove to be completely incorrect in their judgement about another group of people. Funny how that just keeps happening.

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With the ongoing conversations about the exact relationship between the internal pieces of the Empire, the external threats to the Empire would see some wild swings during the interwar years. One important aspect that would loom over British military and foreign policy between the wars was the idea of the “ten year rule” which was put in place in the early 1920s and would be in effect until the early 1930s. This was a simply rule that the British military arms should plan based on the assumption that there would not be a major European conflict for 10 years, which drastically changed how the prepared and maintained their forces. While this would eventually be dropped in the early 1930s, it did still result in a kind of atrophy among the military arms during the 1920s that would take time and money to fix in the decade that followed. In Europe the existing structures that had been formed during the Paris Peace Conference continued, with the British and French still maintaining good relations and cooperation, even if the British were far less committed to that cooperation than the French were. In Eastern Europe the British government was supportive of the new nations that were created from the old Empires, however they were less willing to commit themselves to actions in the region that many leaders in London did not believe was of direct importance to Britain. Economic relations with both Germany and the Soviet Union were beneficial to the British economy during the 1920s and everything seem to be trending back towards normality, and then the 1930s happened. During the decade before the start of the Second World War the British government and military was faced with a long list of competing concerns and threats that would stretch British resources thin and require some compromises that would cause issues once the fighting started in 1939. Before we get to that though, we have to talk about the naval treaties which were a critical component of British foreign policy in the 1920s. In the years after the First World War it appeared very likely that three nations would enter into a naval arms race that would be even larger than the Anglo-German naval arms race that had preceded the First World War. The three prospective participants were the British, Japanese, and Americans. All three of these countries believed that maintaining a level of naval control around the world was an essential part of their future as a nation and so the stakes in any arms race was very high, until they all agreed to come together and find a diplomatic solution. This resulted in the Washington Naval treaty, which saved all of those involved from having to commit huge sums of money into naval construction over the following decade. The agreements that were made allowed the British and Americans to maintain rough parity between their fleets, with the Japanese allowed 60% of the total of either of the other powers. Some of the secondary naval powers also joined into the agreement with their own force levels agreed to in the treaty. While this prevented another arms race, which it is was very possible the British would lose, it also put a hard cap on how many ships the Royal Navy could have, a cap that was adjusted by renewed at the London Naval Conference in 1930. This was not really a problem during the 1920s when many nations were simply recovering from the previous war and were not yet looking at the next conflict, but then during the mid-1930s everything began to change and suddenly the British had to find a way to deal with a whole list of possible enemies.

Once again starting in Europe, the rise of antagonism between Britain and both Germany and Italy was a major problem. Both of these nations represented a major threat to core British interests. On the German side it presented the classic problem of one nation dominating the European continent, something that the British did not want, they wanted peace to be maintained on the continent so that they could focus on different challenges. Then the Germans made it known that they planned on building out their naval power, absolutely the last thing that the British wanted, and so they signed the 1935 Anglo-German Naval arms treaty which did remove some of the limitations that had been placed upon German naval construction by the Versailles treaty, but from the British perspective accomplished the very important goal of putting a cap on the total size of the German Navy, at least in the near term. This cap was important because there was a greater threat to British interests in Europe: Italy. Italy was in position to control the very important Mediterranean, a body of water that was seen as the second most important area for British naval power, after the waters around the home islands, because it ensured the connection between Europe and India through the Suez Canal. The antagonism with Italy almost resulted in war in the mid 1930s over the actions taken by the Italians in Ethiopia. The threat from Italy would have been manageable if it was not for the fact that it was just one of many nations that seemed to be moving into a position to threaten British interests around the world. The biggest problem was the growing threat posed by Japan. During the First World War the Japanese had been allied with Britain and France, hoping to use their support to expand their control in the Pacific after the war. Then after the war any conflict was delayed, but only delayed, by agreements like the Washington Naval Treaty. By the time that the treaties were set to expire in the mid 1930s it was clear that the Japanese were going to exit the treaty system, which many Japanese saw as unfair due to the lower number of ships that the Japanese could build. Once they did that it seemed to only be a matter of time before there was some kind of conflict between the British and Japanese.

In previous decades maybe the threat of war would not have been as much of a concern for the British, but by the 1930s it was a major problem because there were just too many military threats around the world for the British to be able to respond to. In Europe Germany and Italy demanded a response, and demanded resources, while in the Pacific the Japanese did the same. One of the ways that the British tried to solve this problem was through massive investments in the fortifications around Singapore, with the hope that it could serve as a point of British strength in the region where a British force could hold out and wait for the fleet to arrive from Europe. The answer to these problems was to start a massive building program for the Royal Navy, and that is exactly what would happen starting in 1937. During the last years before the start of the war the British would begin a building program that was unheard of at the time, with more aircraft carriers, battleships, and smaller ships under construction than any other nation. This would put the Royal Navy on the course to be able to rule the ways in the same way that the Royal Navy had done before the First World War. But then the war intervened and many of those construction programs were put on hold. Even with the increased building tempo from the prewar years, the Royal Navy simply did not have enough ships to cover the entire globe, and so the plan was for the bulk of the strength of the fleet to be kept in European waters, split between the home islands and the Mediterranean. Then in case of Japanese aggression a fleet would be put together and would then sail for Singapore. Or at least this was the stated plan, as the situation developed in the years before the start of the war it was unlikely that a large enough fleet could be collected fast enough to reach Singapore in time, especially as the tension in Europe continued to rise which would have tied more and more resources to European waters.

So if the Royal Navy was stretched thin, what about the other arms of the British military? The Army was a clear third in terms of importance when it came to defense budgets for the British, although there were moments during the interwar years when they would be in a position of leadership when looking at potential enemies. This was most apparent in the late 1920s, when many of the other armies of Europe were actually reading the writings and the results of the exercises of British mobile and armored units when trying to determine their own doctrine for future armored divisions. However, the major budget cuts that were put in place due to the Great Depression meant that the British Army would lose all of its leadership in these areas before 1939. There was still a recognition that the British would have to have a force available for dispatch to the continent, much like the BEF had been dispatched in 1914 and this resulted in the creation of the Field Force. The problem was, and always would be funding, because it was difficult for the Army to make a case for funding when the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force were also struggling to meed their own goals and to provide for their areas of defense, which were seen as more important to the overall safety of the British Empire. These views would begin to shift after Munich, and a large funding injection would be made into the Army, but as with everything it would take time to bear fruit.

While the British Army was at times starved of resources, one of the benefits of this was that more funding could be given over to the Royal Air Force. The RAF was one of the first truly independent air arms in any military around the world, having been created at the end of the First World War. This independence was not just a paper move either, and the fact that the RAF was completely free of Army or Navy influence during the interwar years was an important aspect of how British air power developed. During the interwar years there would be attempts at using the RAF and airpower to make the maintenance of peace around the Empire cheaper and easier, with policing from the air used in the Middle East to somewhat mixed results, but the big idea that the RAF focused its efforts on was strategic bombing. Much like other air forces many within the RAF believed that wars could be won through strategic bombing, and so they advocated for resources to be spent on the RAFs bombing capabilities. I will not go into a full discussion of strategic bombing, because a summary of that topic will be included in next week’s episode, but I will just say that the important impact this has on the RAF is that when combined with its structural independence from the Army it meant that there was a strong desire to not subordinate the RAF to the concerns of the fighting on the ground. Politically important the RAF would also be seen as a cheap, safe, alternative to a massive army and the idea of strategic bombing as a way to win wars would have advocates as high as the Prime Minister when Chamberlain’s government led the British into the war.

The final topic to chat about here in this summary episode is around British views on appeasement. This topic has been very controversial since the very moment that the ink was dry on the Munich Agreement that was signed between Britain, France, Germany, and Italy which essentially dismembered Czechoslovakia, who did not have representatives in the room when the agreement was signed, all in the name of delaying a possible European war. Appeasement, in general, was just the concept that regardless of what Hitler and other leaders were saying around Europe, they could be negotiated with, and if their grievances were answered with concessions then war could be at the very least postponed and maybe even prevented entirely. Proponents of the appeasement measures would claim that all efforts needed to be made to ensure peace, and to prevent another war on the scale of the conflict from 1914-1918, and even if appeasement just resulted in delay that was a critical delay because it would allow the British, French, and other nations to better prepare for a possible conflict with Germany who had raced ahead in rearmament during the mid 1930s. Opponents of appeasement would claim that a war was going to happen anyway, and any concessions made to Germany during the period of appeasement would just bring them more advantages, and also it was just the wrong thing to do. The people of Czechoslovakia would mostly have agreed with this idea, however nobody consulted them. While the apex of appeasement would be at Munich, there would be other examples of the concept in action and possible negotiations afterwards, although the invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939 basically ended British and French efforts at negotiating with German leaders. While appeasement was a controversial topic at the time, it remains one to this day. If you go online you can find those who support both sides, although the most prominent opinion, at least that I have seen, is that it was perhaps a necessary evil due to the volume of rearmament that occurred between Munich and the start of the war, although given the performance of the British and French armies in 1930 it was also clearly not enough. My views, with full hindsight clarity, is that it probably could not have gone worse if the war had started in 1938, and at least then the Germans would have been distracted by Czechoslovakia for some period of weeks and months. But as always with alternative histories, that is just an assumption. So to summarize this summary episode here at the end: The British Empire was facing some real challenges as war approached in 1939 but it was taking many of the steps required to build up the forces necessary to meet those challenges, they would however simply run out of time, and then after the war started their situation would only get worse for several years before it turned around.