Dominion Armies in World War II

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Far East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Desert ◽  
World War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
Home Defense

In September 1939, a committee of the British War Cabinet estimated that the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa could raise fourteen divisions of the fifty-five-division field force it hoped the British Commonwealth would assemble for the war against Germany and the other Axis powers. The British got what they were looking for, and then some. The Canadians raised three infantry divisions, two armored divisions, and two independent armored brigades. They also raised another three divisions for home defense, one of which was designated for the invasion of Japan when the war in the Far East ended in August 1945. The Australians generated four infantry divisions and one armored division for the 2nd Australian Imperial Force (2nd AIF), plus another two armored cavalry divisions and eight infantry divisions (not all of which were fully manned) for the militia and home defense. Two of those militia infantry divisions fought in the New Guinea campaign. The 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2 NZEF) comprised one infantry division (later converted to an armored division), which fought in the Mediterranean, and a two-brigade infantry division that deployed to the Pacific theater, where it worked under American command until its disbandment in October 1944. The South Africans raised two expeditionary infantry divisions, one of which fought in East Africa and the Western Desert until converted to an armored division and deployed to Italy in 1943. The other division fought in the Western Desert from mid-1941 until its capture at Tobruk in June 1942. The first serious studies of the dominion armies in World War II were the official histories, commissioned by the respective governments to record what their soldiers had done and accomplished. The works remain solid records of what happened, and, cost and profit being less of a concern for government publication projects than they are for independent presses, the official histories are almost invariably better illustrated with clear maps and well-chosen photographs than the histories that followed. A generation of dominion historians since the 1970s has continued to explore their nations’ wartime histories, challenge long-held assumptions, and fill in historical gaps left by the official histories, most along purely national lines. Combined with the official histories, these new national histories have formed a solid foundation for a growing number of transnational examinations of the British Commonwealth armies since the mid-2000s.

War News: Under New Management

Worldview ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 7-8
Author(s):  
Bernard Diederich
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
War News ◽  
Foreign Correspondent ◽  
The U.S

When, during the invasion of Grenada, Secretary of State George Schultz announced that newsmen were no longer “on our side,” he was correct. It's a far, far different world with wars far different from World War II, when our civilization was threatened and it would have been treason for a newsman to report from the “other side.” As a youth in the Pacific theatre of that war I saw my first foreign correspondent: He was uniformed and could have been a general.It all began to change during Korea; not all newsmen were accredited in that United Nations war. When, in April, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the U.S. Marines and 82nd Airborne ashore in the Dominican Republic, some of us went ashore with the first wave of Marines. Daily we crossed the Marines’ lines to cover the rebel side of the war.

The Costs of Compromise

2019 ◽  
pp. 156-179
Author(s):  
Thomas K. Robb ◽  
David James Gill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Strategic Alliance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
World War ◽  
British Commonwealth

This chapter studies the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). After almost a decade since the end of World War II, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand once again enjoyed a formal strategic alliance in the Asia-Pacific. The eventual creation of the SEATO in early 1955 complemented the short-term ambitions of all four Western powers in the region. Nevertheless, diplomatic bargaining preceding signature and ratification led to compromises that diluted the usefulness of the security alliance. The United States continued to limit commitments to joint planning after the implementation of the treaty. SEATO was therefore smaller, weaker, and less integrated than originally envisaged. The organization also lacked the necessary military and economic infrastructure to be effective, which helped encourage Australia and New Zealand to focus on regional rather than British Commonwealth interests, shifting focus away from the Middle East and Mediterranean and toward the “near north.”

Britain, America, and the Far East, 1937-1940: a Failure in Cooperation

1963 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Nicholas R. Clifford
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Far East ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Far East ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Government ◽  
Far Eastern

Most of the scholarly works on British policy in the years preceding World War II have neglected events in the Far East in favor of those in Europe. Any study of recent British diplomacy is, of course, seriously hampered by the lack of Foreign Office documents and by the generally uninformative nature of British memoirs. Nevertheless, the sources which do exist give a picture which, while still incomplete, is interesting for its own sake in showing how the Chamberlain Government met the problems of the Pacific, and also for the light which it sheds on Anglo-American relations in this period. Perhaps nowhere else was there as much consistent misunderstanding and disappointment between London and Washington as over the questions raised by the Sino-Japanese War. The Manchurian episode had left a legacy of distrust between the two countries; just enough was known about the approaches made by the Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, to the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, so that many on both sides of the Atlantic believed that Britain had rejected American offers for joint action against Japan in 1932, and that as a result nothing had prevented the Japanese advance. When Stimson's The Far Eastern Crisis appeared in 1936, it was read by many with more enthusiasm than accuracy, and seemed to confirm these views. In Britain it provided ammunition for the critics of the Government, while in the United States it increased the suspicions of those unwilling to trust Britain, and strengthened the trend to isolation.

Australia, New Zealand, and the United States since World War II

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
East And Southeast Asia ◽  
Rise Of China

The war against Japan (1941–1945) gave rise to a uniquely enduring alliance between the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Rooted in overlapping geopolitical interests and shared Western traditions, tripartite relationships forged in the struggles against fascism in World War II deepened as Cold War conflicts erupted in East and Southeast Asia. War in Korea drew the three Pacific democracies into a formal alliance, ANZUS. In the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, however, American hegemony confronted new challenges, regionally and globally. A more fluid geopolitical environment replaced the alliance certainties of the early Cold War. ANZUS splintered but was not permanently broken. Thus the ebb and flow of tripartite relationships from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the first decades of the “Pacific Century” shifted as the “war on terror” and, in a very different way, the “rise of China,” revitalized trilateral cooperation and resuscitated the ANZUS agreement.

The Formation of a Budding Man Alone: The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
World War ◽  
Value System ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
The Family

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.

Before the summit: News media framing, scripts and the flag-raising at Iwo Jima

2021 ◽  
pp. 175063522199094
Author(s):  
Matthew Pressman ◽  
James J Kimble
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
News Media ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Media Framing ◽  
Pacific Island ◽  
World War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Cognitive Scripts ◽  
New Interpretation

Drawing upon media framing theory and the concept of cognitive scripts, this article provides a new interpretation of the context in which the famous World War II photograph ‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima’ appeared. This interpretation is based primarily on an examination of American newspaper and newsreel coverage from the Pacific island battles prior to Iwo Jima. The coverage – especially the pictorial coverage – often followed a three-step sequence that showed US forces proceeding from a landing to a series of skirmishes, then culminating with a flag-raising image. This created a predictable cognitive script. That script, combined with other framing devices found in the news coverage (such as metaphors and catchphrases), conveyed the misleading message that the Allies’ final victory over Japan was imminent in early 1945. The Iwo Jima photo drove home that message more emphatically than anything else. This circumstance had profound implications for government policy at the time and, in retrospect, it illustrates the potency of media framing – particularly in times of crisis or war.

An ‘Age of Commerce’ in Southeast Asian History

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Reid
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Economic History ◽  
External Factors ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Increased Sensitivity ◽  
Asian History

Since the end of World War II the study of Southeast Asia has changed unrecognizably. The often bitter end of colonialism caused a sharp break with older scholarly traditions, and their tendency to see Southeast Asia as a receptacle for external influences—first Indian, Persian, Islamic or Chinese, later European. The greatest gain over the past forty years has probably been a much increased sensitivity to the cultural distinctiveness of Southeast Asia both as a whole and in its parts. If there has been a loss, on the other hand, it has been the failure of economic history to advance beyond the work of the generation of Furnivall, van Leur, Schrieke and Boeke. Perhaps because economic factors were difficult to disentangle from external factors they were seen by very few Southeast Asianists as the major challenge.

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