The Dominions and British Maritime Power in the Second World War

2019 ◽  
pp. 82-114
Author(s):  
Iain E. Johnston-White
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
North America ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Second World

Often undervalued in the existing historiography of the Second World War, the dominions provided assistance to the UK in many ways that proved fundamental to British strategy. This chapter seeks to demonstrate how important this was in one such area—bolstering British maritime power. The most crucial support was provided by Canada in the North Atlantic. Canada helped maintain the link between North America and the UK, which was essential to both British survival and the capacity to maintain offensives. More surprisingly, the Union of South Africa had a vital role to fulfill on the Cape Route once the Mediterranean was effectively closed to Allied shipping. The island dominions of Australia and New Zealand could do little more than fall in line with Allied strategy, since the direction of the war to some extent marginalized the importance of their role in the British maritime effort. In the long attritional war at sea, the dominions proved foundational in their importance to British maritime power. This effort kept the Commonwealth connected during one of the most challenging phases of its existence.

scholarly journals THE ANGLO-AMERICAN COALITIONAL INTERACTION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR AS ONE OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC UNION FORMATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (06) ◽  
pp. 91-98
Author(s):  
R.R. Marchenkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Aspect ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

This article highlights the main milestones of Anglo-American coalition cooperation during the Second World War. The military-political aspect of cooperation is touched upon. An approach to the fusion of military mechanisms through the development of the idea of the qualitative use of the forces and means of the allies in compliance with the principle of unity of command is considered. It is concluded that certain fruits of cooperation between the Western allies, primarily within the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, are taken into account in the post-war world. In addition, this article focuses on the position of the United Kingdom in terms of building a post-war security system.

“A Most Disagreeable Problem”

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-194
Author(s):  
Marcus Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
The North ◽  
Maritime Traffic ◽  
Vast Literature ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Second World

In the vast literature concerning the German attack on Allied maritime communications in the Atlantic theater during the Second World War, one particular factor has received little to no consideration – the potential threat that German aircraft carriers posed to Allied naval operations and the passage of maritime traffic in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. While ultimately the Kriegmarine never fielded an operational carrier, such a development could not be discounted at the time. This chapter addresses what the British knew about the German effort and what implications this had on British strategy, naval planning, and fleet deployments. In covering these aspects, this chapter by Marcus Faulkner fills an existing gap concerning the Admiralty's perception and contributes to understanding the complexity of the maritime threat Britain faced during the war. It also illustrates the problems involved in evaluating enemy military capabilities and intentions on the basis of a very limited intelligence picture. This in turn helps historians understand why the Admiralty remained so apprehensive of the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet until 1943.

Nato and Adenauer's Germany: Uneasy Partnership

1961 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 618-629
Author(s):  
Lawrence S. Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization ◽  
Second World War ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Second World

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has played a central role in the regeneration of West Germany since die Second World War, with the accession of die Federal Republic to NATO in May 1955 marking the official return of Germany to the company of civilized nations. West Germany, in turn, has become a not inconsequential member of the treaty organization. The bulk of NATO'S defense forces is located in die Federal Republic; an increasing amount of NATO'S military contribution is German; and the most controversial issue in Europe confronting the organization stems direcdy from die division of Germany and the exposed position of Berlin.

scholarly journals An Updated Global Species Diversity and Phylogeny in the Forest Pathogenic Genus Heterobasidion (Basidiomycota, Russulales)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Yuan ◽  
Jia-Jia Chen ◽  
Kari Korhonen ◽  
Francis Martin ◽  
Yu-Cheng Dai
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
Species Complex ◽  
Phylogenetic Analyses ◽  
Second World War ◽  
White Rot ◽  
World War ◽  
Plant Quarantine ◽  
The North ◽  
Second World

Heterobasidion species are amongst the most intensively studied polypores because several species are aggressive white rot pathogens of managed coniferous forests mainly in Europe and North America. In the present study, both morphological and multilocus phylogenetic analyses were carried out on Heterobasidion samples from Asia, Oceania, Europe and North America. Three new taxa were found, i.e., H. armandii, H. subinsulare, and H. subparviporum are from Asia and are described as new species. H. ecrustosum is treated as a synonym of H. insulare. So far, six taxa in the H. annosum species complex are recognized. Heterobasidion abietinum, H. annosum, and H. parviporum occur in Europe, H. irregulare, and H. occidentale in North America, and H. subparviporum in East Asia. The North American H. irregulare was introduced to Italy during the Second World War. Species in the H. annosum complex are pathogens of coniferous trees, except H. subparviporum that seems to be a saprotroph. Ten species are found in the H. insulare species complex, all of them are saprotrophs. The pathogenic species are distributed in Europe and North America; the Asian countries should consider the European and North American species as entry plant quarantine fungi. Parallelly, European countries should consider the American H. occidentale and H. irregulare as entry plant quarantine fungi although the latter species is already in Italy, while North America should treat H. abietinum, H. annosum s.s., and H. parviporum as entry plant quarantine fungi. Eight Heterobasidion species found in the Himalayas suggest that the ancestral Heterobasidion species may have occurred in Asia.

The Need for West: Hans Kohn and the North Atlantic Community

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Geographic Locations ◽  
New West ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
East And West ◽  
Second World

In the writing of historian Hans Kohn (1891—1971) East and West were never geographic locations, but rather geographic metaphors. They were ideas, which served as his major tool of analysis throughout his career: in Habsburg Prague as a young spiritual Zionist; in Jerusalem in the 1920s as a ‘bi-national Zionist’; as comparative historian of nationalism as of the second world war; and finally as an American Cold Warrior. This article situates the evolution of Kohn’s notions of East and West in a primarily Jewish context, and toward a Cold War horizon. It also seeks to illuminate the genealogy of the ideas he propagated as a notable purveyor of Cold War ideology, particularly the need for a ‘New West’.

At Bletchley Park

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Copeland
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Machine Building ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Country House ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Army Air Force ◽  
Coded Messages ◽  
Second World

This chapter summarizes Turing’s principal achievements at Bletchley Park and assesses his impact on the course of the Second World War. On the first day of the war, at the beginning of September 1939, Turing took up residence at Bletchley Park, the ugly Victorian mansion in Buckinghamshire that served as the wartime HQ of Britain’s military codebreakers (Fig. 9.1). There Turing was a key player in the battle to decrypt the coded messages generated by Enigma, the German forces’ typewriter-like cipher machine. Germany’s army, air force, and navy transmitted many thousands of coded messages each day during the Second World War. These ranged from top-level signals, such as detailed situation reports prepared by generals at the battlefronts and orders signed by Hitler himself, down to the important minutiae of war such as weather reports and inventories of the contents of supply ships. Thanks to Turing and his fellow codebreakers, much of this information ended up in Allied hands—sometimes within an hour or two of its being transmitted. The faster the messages could be broken, the fresher the intelligence that they contained, and on at least one occasion the English translation of an intercepted Enigma message was being read at the British Admiralty less than 15 minutes after the Germans had transmitted it. Turing pitted machine against machine. Building on pre-war work by the legendary Polish codebreaker Marian Rejewski, Turing invented the Enigma-cracking ‘bombes’ that quickly turned Bletchley Park from a country house accommodating a small group of thirty or so codebreakers into a vast codebreaking factory. There were approximately 200 bombes at Bletchley Park and its surrounding outstations by the end of the war. As early as 1943 Turing’s machines were cracking a staggering total of 84,000 Enigma messages each month—two messages every minute. Chapter 12 describes the bombes and explains how they worked. Turing also undertook, single-handedly at first, a 20-month struggle to crack the especially secure form of Enigma used by the North Atlantic U-boats. With his group he first broke into the current messages transmitted between the submarines and their bases during June 1941, the very month when Winston Churchill’s advisors were warning him that the wholesale sinkings in the North Atlantic would soon tip Britain into defeat by starvation.

The Imperial Army Project

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

How did British authorities manage to secure the commitment of large dominion and Indian armies that could plan, fight, shoot, communicate, and sustain themselves, in concert with the British Army and with each other, during the era of the two world wars? This is the primary line of inquiry for this study, which begs a couple of supporting questions. What did the British want from the dominion and Indian armies and how did they go about trying to get it? How successful were they in the end? Answering these questions requires a long-term perspective—one that begins with efforts to fix the armies of the British Empire in the aftermath of their desultory performance in South Africa (1899–1903) and follows through to the high point of imperial military cooperation during the Second World War. Based on multi-archival research conducted in six different countries on four continents, Douglas E. Delaney argues that the military compatibility of the British Empire armies was the product of a deliberate and enduring imperial army project, one that aimed at ‘Lego-piecing’ the armies of the empire, while, at the same time, accommodating the burgeoning autonomy of the dominions and even India. At its core, this book is really about how a military coalition worked.

THE ALLIED NEUTRAL? PORTUGUESE BALANCE OF PAYMENTS WITH THE UK AND GERMANY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939-1945

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-110
Author(s):  
Eric Golson
Keyword(s):  
Raw Materials ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Balance Of Payments ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Third Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Portuguese Empire ◽  
Active Choice ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTIn September 1939, Portugal made a realist strategic choice to preserve the Portuguese Empire maintaining by its neutrality and also remaining an ally of Great Britain. While the Portuguese could rely largely on their colonies for raw materials to sustain the mainland, the country had long depended on British transportation for these goods and the Portuguese military. With the British priority now given to war transportation, Portugal's economy and Empire were particularly vulnerable. The Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar sought to mitigate this damage by maintaining particularly friendly financial relations with the British government, including increased exports of Portuguese merchandise and services and permission to accumulate credits in Sterling to cover deficits in the balance of payments. This paper gives an improved set of comprehensive statistics for the Anglo-Portuguese and German–Portuguese relationships, reported in Pounds and according to international standards. The reported statistics include the trade in merchandise, services, capital flows, loans and third-party transfers of funds in favour of the British account. When compared with the German statistics, the Anglo-Portuguese figures show the Portuguese government favoured the British in financial relations, an active choice by Salazar to maintain the Portuguese Empire.

A ‘Sound Investment’? British Cultural Diplomacy and Overseas Students: The British Council's Students Committee, 1935–1939

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283
Author(s):  
Alice Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Overseas Students ◽  
British Council ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Run Up ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Second World

This article explores the UK government's first foray into cultural diplomacy by focusing on the activities of the British Council's Students Committee in the run-up to the Second World War. Students were placed at the heart of British cultural diplomacy, which drew on foreign models as well as the experience of intra-empire exchanges. While employing cultural internationalist discourse, the drive to attract more overseas students to the United Kingdom was intended to bring economic and political advantages to the host country. The British Council pursued its policy in cooperation with non-state actors but ultimately was guided by the Foreign Office, which led it to target key strategic regions, principally in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document