April 28, 2023

Page 48

Review by Mark Klobas

Daniel Todman, Britain’s War, vol. II, A New World, 1942–1947, Allen Lane/ Oxford University Press, 2020, 848 pages, £30/$34.95. 978- 0190658489


The second volume of Daniel Todman’s comprehensive account of how Great Britain “fought, endured, and won a total war” begins where his preceding volume, Into Battle, left off: with the United States joining Britain in what was now a global conflict. It is an appropriate starting point, given that one of Todman’s recurring themes is Britain’s growing loss of direction over the war to its American and Soviet allies.

Todman divides his examination into four parts, each of which is characterized by a title. The first of these, “Nadir,” backtracks a little to provide a brief summary of the first two years of the war before moving forward to describe the nine months that followed America’s entry into the conflict. Early 1942 represented the lowest point in Britain’s war effort, as the nation’s forces suffered a series of reverses on nearly every front.

The succession of military defeats threatened Winston Churchill’s position as military supremo. Many in the public and in Parliament believed that too much responsibility was concentrated in his position and that the war effort would be better served if the Prime Minister delegated the role of Minister of Defence to someone else.

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Although Churchill successfully surmounted the challenges and maintained his power, Todman argues that the Prime Minister’s focus on wartime matters conceded control over the growing narrative of postwar construction to the Labour ministers in the coalition government, a decision for which Churchill would pay a price electorally three years later.

Securing his place as leader of the British war effort proved the easiest of Churchill’s immediate challenges. He also had to face the erosion of Britain’s empire on several fronts. While Axis troops battled the Eighth Army in northern Africa and Japanese forces swept aside poorly prepared Commonwealth units in Southeast Asia, the United States asserted its burgeoning power in negotiations with the British over questions of finance, industrial resources, and strategy.

Over the spring and summer of 1942, the British regrouped. By September their forces were ready to resume the offensive, thanks to a fully mobilized imperial economy and the growing amount of aid supplied by the Americans. The year that followed forms the second part of Todman’s book. Entitled “Peak,” it describes the turning of the tide, starting with the battle of El Alamein and running through the final defeat of Italian and German forces in Tunisia (a victory Todman regards as of greater importance than General Bernard Montgomery’s much-celebrated victory) and the invasion of Sicily.

Though Britain continued to lead the Allied effort in the West during this period, the shift towards American and Soviet dominance was already evident and was personified at the Tehran Conference by what Todman describes as Franklin Roosevelt’s and Joseph Stalin’s almost abusive treatment of Churchill in their exchanges.

Churchill had little choice but to accept such humiliation if he wished to maintain British power in the world. This is most evident in the third section, “Victory,” which chronicles the period between September 1943 and April 1945. Though the war had turned in their favor, the British were increasingly dependent on American support to maintain a global campaign. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than in Southeast Asia, where Churchill’s determination to recapture Singapore was wrecked on the shoals of the Americans’ unwillingness to approve the resources needed for such an operation.

Eclipsed by the sheer mass of the American war effort, the British found themselves relegated to a supporting role both on the battlefield and in the emerging arrangements for the postwar world. Todman chronicles the price paid for this in the final part of the book, “Resolutions,” which sees the bill coming due in the months following VE Day. For Churchill, this came in the form of his government’s defeat in the June 1945 general election, which left successor Clement Attlee to deal with both the economic consequences of the war and an empire that was fast unraveling.

The Britain Todman describes at the end of his book is a very different country from the one which had entered the conflict six years before. Among his many achievements is Todman’s success in capturing virtually every aspect of this transformation. From international financial conferences to relationships between Britons and Axis POWs, little escapes his examination. Even more remarkable is Todman’s ability to convey this in a narrative that moves fluidly from one disparate subject to another, making for an extremely readable work.

While some may take issue with Todman’s portrayal of Churchill as a nettlesome figure prone to strategic flights of fancy, it is an understandable view from one who comes to the subject as a former editor of Alan Brooke’s wartime diaries. Todman’s approach often results in a fresh take on some well-worn judgments. On its own this is a valuable account of how the British emerged triumphant in the war. Together with Todman’s first volume it is likely to serve as the standard history of Britain in the Second World War for years to come. 

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