Hi everybody, It is well documented the state of Britain during WW2 with the hardships she had to endure. I am very interested to know more about the condition of Britain before war broke out. Was she still classed as a Super Power? How was she economically compared to the rest of the world? Strong and growing? What was Britain's reputation like abroad? I would be delighted if you could cast your opinion on this. Ross
Rosstcorbett Britian was just as hard up as it has to be remembered that the whole world was still emerging from the great Depression of 1929 - and it was a slow process - especially in Scotland as I recall with high unemployment and little benefits from Governments - there were NO super powers in those days and Britain still led in many areas of manufacturing and exports etc - the rest of the world was even more hard up - Reputation....? well the Indians had two sayings - "The sun never set on the Empire ' - as God couldn't trust them in the dark......and the " Map of Empire is coloured RED" - from Embarrassment ... ! All this changed in 1938 when real preparations for war began- and the unemployment situation was cured - with the Empire having less than ten years to remain... Cheers
Andrew Marr's (currently very cheap) history The Making of Modern Britain also deals extensively with the period. My students read it this term and enjoyed it a lot. Otherwise, the questions the OP asks are far too broad to be answered in a thread like this. Best, Alan
It was not only that there were no superpowers in the 1930s, but the US Congress having decided not to join the League of Nations, the USA largely stood aside from major international issues. When it came to sorting out the Munich crisis - engineered by Adolf Hitler - it was left to Britain and France to take the initiative (whether they took the right course is a matter far beyond the scope of this thread).
Gage and Alan beat me to the first two books I was going to suggest. I'd also recommend David Faber's "Munich 1938", Robert Kee's "The World We Left Behind: A Chronicle of the Year 1939" and for a world-view Martin Gilbert's "A History of the Twentieth Century Volume 2: 1933-1951". For a contemporaneous commentary, try Stephen King-Hall's "Our Own Times 1913-1939".
IMHO, the best book about this is David Edgerton's book: "Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War" (ISBN: 9780713999181) Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War | Reviews in History This cuts through most of the WW2 myth and gives a well-researched analysis of Britain's true economic and military strength in the 1930s and WW2. It illustrates just how rich and powerful Britain really was, even though this wasn't overtly visible in the form of military hardware. This book goes a long way to answering the other threads about "could Britain have defeated Germany on its own", to which the answer seems to be "yes" - given that Britain had vastly greater economic resources, not least international credit-worthiness.
This book is also worth a look ... The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939: Amazon.co.uk: Robert Graves: Books
What was the state of the UK pre war? Here I can speak with first hand knowledge, having lived through that period, or better. Existed in it. Wages were very low, and there was no health service. If you wanted the Doctor because your child was dying, and you never had the money Tough … Unemployment was rife and those that did have jobs were treated in many cases like serfs.. .When I was young my mother had a poisoned leg. So bad that the smell of the infection could even be detected before entering the house. It was ghastly…. We lived in hand me downs and a poor quality. From May to October our dress was sandshoes cotton shorts and a cotton top, that was all we could afford. In those pre war days, 1935 onwards, in the far distant back ground could be heard the first faint rumblings of the gathering storm over Europe. A cataclysmic storm that in the coming years would eventually envelope all the European continent. The ever increasing sounds of goose stepping jackboots, and the beat of war drums. It was in this pre war atmosphere of the impending death of millions that we grew up. You touched your forehead to the gaffer, You lined up at the Labour exchange, where you were treated worse than animals. Disease was everywhere, with a great toll of children from whooping cough and all the other childhood diseases. Trouble was that the kids could not resist like a healthy well fed child… Indicative of those times was the realisation when it came to conscription to provide gun fodder that huge numbers of the young men called up were so weak and undernourished, that they could not even drill on the parade ground. Tens of thousands of them were sent to special units that fed them and exercised them until they became what they should have been,sturdy young men. I saw many of these Young man from the Northern cities, their bones stuck out their chests….Class was everything….And that continued during the war. Where the officers would not tell the men what they were going to be doing in action that day. Unbelievable! That’s for sure. On the gates of Bournemouth park just off the square was a large notice. Service men not allowed in the park They were thought to be ruffians and criminals. “IT was Tommy this and Tommy that until the guns began to roar” IT was the service folk that voted en mass to end those days, they war never going back to those days and conditions And now? Well there have been several attempts to take us back to those adays.God Forbid yet the siren voices are trumpeting how good it was and we should privatise everything…. IT was the services and no one else that voted for a better life after the sacrifices of WW2
Andrew Marr's (currently very cheap) history The Making of Modern Britain. There is a reason for it being cheap - it is rubbish.
Mr. Allport's comment is very just--you cannot get a quick answer to this question. I can give one based on my own reading and imperfect understanding, but you really need to read a lot of books on your own. Britain was very much a world power in 1939, no question. She had the greatest colonial empire in the world, one of the two greatest navies to link and protect the empire, and a large air force. The army was relatively the weakest of the three services, and for this reason among others the British had to find and depend on Allies with strong armies. The British had put a powerful army into the field in 1914-18, but in WWII they did not have the manpower to sustain a great army, a great navy, and a great airforce, as well as major war industry, so they maintained only the last three. I am not an economics expert at all, and I have read differing accounts of Britain's economic state at the end of the 30's. On the one hand, Britain seems to have made a quicker and more complete recovery from the Depression than some countries, and it was developing a sector of complex technological industries (aircraft, electronics, etc) that stood it in good stead during the war. On the other hand, unemployment had been a serious and intractable problem since the 20's, and the traditional heavy industries like coal, steel, and shipbuilding had not recovered their pre-1914 strength relative to foreign competitors. Also, the country was suffering from a drain of capital (particularly to the US). On the whole, Britain was a conservative power in terms of world politics--satisfied rather than growing. The British wanted to keep the empire and they did not want to see many changes in the order established at Versailles. Yet the Conservative government was highly conscious of Britain's economic weaknesses and thus loath to spend money on rearmament or risk war, even in defense of vital interests. This fear was not entirely unjustified; Britain fought much of the war on credit and Lend-Lease, and economic troubles persisted for years after 1945.
IT was the service folk that voted en mass to end those days, they war never going back to those days and conditions And now? Well there have been several attempts to take us back to those adays.God Forbid yet the siren voices are trumpeting how good it was and we should privatise everything…. IT was the services and no one else that voted for a better life after the sacrifices of WW2 Contrary to one of several popular myths about the Attlee administration, the service vote was in no way crucial - the overall turnout of servicemen and women was actually low compared to the "home" vote and they certainly didn't have much influence on more than a very few constituencies. Opinion polls taken among the general population actually predicted the result of the 1945 General Election fairly accurately, but were not believed at the time, since they went against what all the parties thought was going to happen. Labour expected to win, but thought they would need to go into coalition with the Liberals and others to get a working majority. Opinion polling was then a very new science.
Andrew Marr's (currently very cheap) history The Making of Modern Britain. There is a reason for it being cheap - it is rubbish. Go on, I'll bite. What do you dislike about it, specifically? Best, Alan
England must have been "minted" pre WW1 But all the money was in the hands of a few very wealthy people. Think of all those great stately piles that were built in the 19th century. Then we paid for a huge war,and were still standing after that! I guess it was what they called trickle down economics? give more to the rich and let,some of the money trickle down to us? Does that sound familiar? My dad lived through the 30`s depression and times were very tough for the ordinary bloke. But i remember him saying ,that shortly after WW2 broke out , the US president on the radio that America was going to start manufacturing munitions,and that money was no object! No object? people had literally starved to death,in the previous 5 years but they had money for munitions It always stuck with me I guess war is good for business RIP Tommy
England must have been "minted" pre WW1 But all the money was in the hands of a few very wealthy people. Think of all those great stately piles that were built in the 19th century. Then we paid for a huge war,and were still standing after that! I guess it was what they called trickle down economics? give more to the rich and let,some of the money trickle down to us? Does that sound familiar? My dad lived through the 30`s depression and times were very tough for the ordinary bloke. But i remember him saying ,that shortly after WW2 broke out , the US president on the radio that America was going to start manufacturing munitions,and that money was no object! No object? people had literally starved to death,in the previous 5 years but they had money for munitions It always stuck with me I guess war is good for business RIP Tommy Trouble is, people tend to look retrospectively at historical periods with reference to today and condemn them as "bad". Of course the reality is that we got to today by passing through those historical periods, and most of them (in Britain at least) were in fact better than all the previous periods. Hence popular perception paints the Victorian era in terms of industrial brutality, children down the pits, etc - but of course the reality is that the enormous wealth created in the country led to social improvement over social improvement. The Victorians were arguably the greatest progressives in our history - sanitation, education, public facilities, working conditions, workers rights, housing, and so on. The same with 1920s/30s Britain. The country was severely economically distressed after WW1, but it was nursed back to some sort of economic health, and the general population did benefit - although it may not appear so with hindsight. Britain enjoyed, among other things, the beginning of the consumer revolution, new suburban housing, more social and job mobility - mostly enabled by the wealth from trade and overseas interests. Lets not forget that, at the same time as Britain was in this state, countries like Germany were suffering mass unemployment, poverty, death from starvation, street gang warfare, disease epidemics, political revolution - leading to the situation upon which this forum is based.
Thatcher tried the "Trickle Down" economics The trouble with that was the rich hung on to the extra money like limpits....and started to press for more
