Poor little David, he’s only learned his history by watching American war films! They have made some really good ones but they haven’t all been historically accurate by any means.

The British Empire had the largest Navy in the World at the start of World War 2 and the US Navy only became larger after the sinking of HMS Hood by the German Battleship Bismark in 1941. The British Empire stood with France against fascist Germany and its allies following the invasion of Poland in September 1939. The USA chose not to join the war at that time preferring to wait and see who won. It is arguable that this gave Germany time to consolidate its victories in Europe and encouraged Japan in its colonial war, which was to cost the USA dearly in the future.

With the fall of France in 1940 there was only the British Empire that had the courage and determination to continue the fight against the combined evils of Germany, Italy and Japan. We could have given up as Hitler would have been happy to make peace with the British Empire, but we did the right thing and kept the hopes of so many alive.

The USA did organise the sale of war material to the British Empire and we finally finished paying for that a few years ago. Surely that must have been the only war debt that was ever paid in full!

We fought alone until the Japanese attacked the USA and a few days later Hitler declared war on them in December 1941. Hitler then attacked Russia too bringing another massive country into the war on the side of the British Empire. Was Russia another junior partner?

Then the filming started and from then on the efforts of British Empire Servicemen and Servicewomen seem to have escaped the attention of little David.

However, without the efforts of our Empire forefathers from around the globe, the door to freedom would have long since been slammed shut. The USA and Russia could not have beaten the combined forces of Germany, Italy and Japan with a neutral British Empire standing by. Without the British Empire to fight, Germany would have concentrated her efforts on defeating Russia. With Russia defeated who could then have stood against Germany? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a US President ever say to those peoples who made up the British Empire and whose combined service losses amount to over 578,000 against 416,000 US losses, “Thankyou for not giving up on freedom”.