Alan Turing

[Vigilias]

The loss of the 1945 election was a real kick in the teeth for the old order, the land-owning upper classes who were perceived as being the people who had taken us to war twice in a generation.

What else were we supposed to do?

Hitler was making all sorts of territorial claims in and around Europe and he didn't stop with those areas Germany lost under the Versailles Treaty. It was inevitable that Hitler would one day put the UK in his sights.

There is a school of thought that Britain wouldn't have faired too bad under the Nazis yet it would have been an occupation all the same and look what happened in the channel islands - Jewish people although British Citizens were required to register at their police station, wear the yellow star, forced to close their businesses and eventually transported to Polish death camps.

The territorial and racial policies of the Third Reich were simply too dangerous to ignore and someone had to stop Germany.

It could be said that this was a natural reaction to the obvious threat of the Empire being dismantled and the ruling elite didn't like that. If the sun wasn't already setting on the British Empire, then it was already late afternoon.

Ironic really, Britain dismantled the Empire after the second world war and the USA began to build theirs.

Another irony is that the war began and ended with the occupation of a foreign land by another people. Poland by Germany and Russia then Palestine by a group of people with a six-thousand year-old fairy story to back them up.

NIHIL NOVI SVB SOLE - Nothing new under the sun!

[cardiganwearer]

It doesn't matter what we were supposed to do, the people who did it were not reelected in 1945. My argument has nothing to do with the causes, progress or morality of the war but with the attitude of the home secretary in the early fifties.

[Spellbound]

This is off-topic, but there is a school of thought that if Britain had not declared war on Germany, then Hitler would have turned east and attacked Russia, the two exhausting each other. Britain would still have been wealthy and had the empire and America would not have grown so powerful etc etc. Of course, we'll never know....

[partisan]

VIGILIAS - THERE IS A SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THAT BRITAIN WOULDN’T HAVE FAIRED TOO BAD UNDER THE NAZIS.

Theres some truth in this, we certainly wouldve faired better than russia and poland. We were considered human and yes one time hitler stood up at the dinner table, slap his thigh and say "The British! What a fine people" but there was also a black book with 60 thousand names on, i believe (noel coward, being one) so yes after the initial invasion, the ss death squads wouldve been right behind them.