The British Empire

The Versailles Settlement after the First World War made the British Empire even larger than it had been in the 19th century. But the Empire was not united. There was no coherent system of government, no co-ordinated defence structure and no common economic policy, in the words of historian Michael Howard, the Empire had become a brontosaurus with huge, vulnerable limbs which the central nervous system had little capacity to protect, direct or control' (Continental Commitment, 1972).

The Dominions

In the 19th century Britain had begun the process of transforming the Empire into the Commonwealth. In 1867 Canada was granted dominion status, which allowed her complete self-government in domestic matters although London retained control of her defence and foreign policy. Dominion status was granted to Australia in 1901, New Zealand in 1907 and South Africa in 1910. The commitment of the Dominions to the Empire remained strong, probably because most of their white settlers were recent immigrants from Britain. Their contribution to the Allied cause in the First World War was enormous. More than a million men from the Dominions served in the various theatres of war, and 140,000 of them were killed. This debt had to be acknowledged. The Statute of Westminster of 1931 granted the Dominions complete independence. The Dominions remained well-disposed towards Britain, but they could not be relied on for unwavering support. Disagreements over trade policy surfaced at the Ottawa Conference in 1932. Australia and New Zealand were the most loyal of the Dominions. At the Imperial Conference in May 1937, the Canadian Prime Minister suggested that public opinion in his country recommended Britain to "leave the Germans and French to kill each other if they wanted to' but he also added that 'there would be great numbers of Canadians anxious to swim the Atlantic' to help Britain in war. All the Dominions disliked Britain's European commitments and did not want to see her drawn into another European war, but they exercised little influence over British policy. When war came in 1939, Australia, New Zealand and Canada joined Britain immediately. In South Africa, the pro-British premier had to overcome the hostility of Afrikaaners who remembered the Boer War before he could secure parliamentary approval for a declaration of war.

The Middle East

After the First World War Britain took control of Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine from the defeated Turkish Empire. Britain granted Iraq independence in 1932 but Palestine was to prove difficult and costly to govern. In 1937, Britain's proposal to divide Palestine between the indigenous Arabs and the immigrant Jews provoked an Arab revolt. At the height of the Czech crisis in the autumn of 1938, Britain had more than 20,000 troops tied down in Palestine.

Ireland

In 1919 militant Catholic nationalists declared Ireland independent and set up their own government in Dublin. Three years of vicious fighting with the British authorities followed. In 1922 southern Ireland was granted dominion status as the Irish Free State. The six counties of protestant Ulster remained under British rule and Britain retained the right to use three ports in the south. Relations between the Free State and Britain were frosty principally because of the Ulster issue, and from 1932 the two countries were engaged in a tariff war.

India

Britain had been preparing India for dominion status since 1909, when Indians were allowed limited participation in the legislative process. Further concessions were granted after the First World War in which 1,200,000 Indians had served and 62,000 had died. Limited self-government was introduced in 1919 and extended in 1935. Indian nationalists were not content with these cautious measures and demanded immediate independence. Britain's attempts to contain Indian nationalism were unsuccessful - the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, in which British troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd and killed 379 people, and the frequent arrests of leaders such as Gandhi served only to enflame the situation. The future of India was unresolved when war broke out in 1939, and the loyalty of India's population to Britain's cause could not be guaranteed

France

Despite victory in 1918, France was all too conscious of its weakness. The north-eastern corner of the country had been devastated and France had lost perhaps as many as 1,500,000 dead and 700,000 wounded in the war. These losses were smaller than Germany's, but the consequences for France were more serious. Her population was only two-thirds the size of Germany's and her birth rate was stagnant. In the words of Professor Jacques Nere, 'for the French and Germans in 1919, the ratio of men of an age to bear arms was 1:2. Moreover, in the case of heavy industrial potential, even alter reconstruction of the devastated French areas, the ratio was 1:4’ Furthermore, revolution in Russia had deprived France of the alliance that could pressure Germany from the east. By 1932 France was in difficulties with rising unemployment and political instability. During the 1930s French politics became increasingly polarised between right and left, making a coherent national response to the threat of Germany almost impossible.

The Disarmament Conference 1932-34

Attempts to limit the size of national armies proved even more difficult, and revived Anglo-French discord about how to treat the Germans. The French were, as ever, worried about their security, but the British believed that the inferiority imposed on Germany at Versailles could not be maintained forever. After a good deal of stalling, the Disarmament Conference opened in Geneva on 2 February 1932. The Germans walked out in September because they had not been granted equality. Although French concessions persuaded them to return three months later, Hitler withdrew Germany permanently from both the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933. It became an objective of British foreign policy over the next few years to try to tempt Hitler back into the League. In 1934 the Disarmament Conference broke up without agreement.

Hitler as Chancellor

There was little alarm in Britain when Hitler became German Chancellor in January 1933. The Daily Mail even rejoiced that Germany had a stable government at last' and welcomed Hitler, with his 'good looks and charming personality', taking on 'the mantle of Bismarck' In speeches and interviews during 1933, Hitler stressed his peaceful ambitions and emphasised his desire, first expressed in his autobiography Mrin Knmpf, for an understanding with Britain. The British government responded cautiously. While anxious to reach agreement with Hitler, they were exasperated by his behaviour. Soon the evidence of German rearmament in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles was plentiful, and in luly 1934 the murder by Austrian Nazis of Chancellor Dollfuss briefly excited fears of a German invasion of Austria.

The Stresa Front, April 1935

German rearmament in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles became public knowledge when, on successive Saturdays in March 1935, Hitler announced the existence of the Luftwaffe and the introduction of conscription. This alarmed Italy, France and Britain so much that their heads of government and foreign secretaries met, on Mussolini's invitation, at Stresa in Italy, The Stresa Conference produced an impressive declaration that the three powers would 'act in close and cordial collaboration' to oppose 'any unilateral repudiation of treaties which may endanger the peace of Europe' None of the three was prepared to act without the support of the others, and there were plenty of issues to divide them Mussolini was already moving troops through the Suez Canal in preparation for his invasion of Abyssinia in the autumn. He had already secured the secret support of the French, who were anxious to keep him as an ally against Hitler. The British Cabinet had agreed, before the conference began, to take no action against Germany except to threaten her.

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, June 1935

The emptiness of the Stresa declaration became apparent two months later when Britain signed her bilateral Naval Agreement with Germany Without prior consultation with France or Italy, Britain agreed to allow the Germans to build a fleet of up to 35% of the size of the Royal Navy.