WWII Britain self destructs to second-rate status by trusting its airplanes more than its empire

By far far and away the potentially largest army power of WWII was not Russia or America - it was the British Commonwealth!

(My variant on DAVID EDGERTON's Thesis)

True, it did not have as many bodies as China , though it came close, but it was not divided and weakened by civil war like China.

And, unlike China, it had both the industrial means and the money in 1939 to successfully mount and sustain a huge conventional WWI style army - heavy on machine guns, mortars and field artillery - an army in other words rather like Japan's in WWII.

And we know how effective that relatively low tech army proved to be !

Yes, Britain did also make both tanks and anti-tank guns in 1939 - but with both weapons,  it made very inferior versions indeed and would do so until about late 1944.

But if London had ever judged tanks and anti-tank guns to be very important (and it never ever did) , I am sure imaginative engineering across the British Commonwealth could have together improved both - immensely and quickly.

But Britain , along with the rest of the Anglo-American world , put all its abundant faith and most of its scarce time, money and men into airplanes instead.

Since all the world imbibed of the heady brew of globe-spanning airplanes and radio in those decades, (rather like the exaggerated promises made about the Internet today) one can't fault the British government leaders alone for this emphasis on the airplane.

But they were all - from Left to Right - strong British imperialists of various sorts and hence racists, admitted or not.

Young (and future PM) Laborite Jimmy Callaghan as much so as the much older Tory Winston Churchill.

No one powerful in Whitehall really wanted a large British Army invading North West Europe posthaste in early 1942 and rolling up to capture Berlin.

(It would happen while the bulk of the German Army was pre-occupied with fighting off the Russians and most American troops were still knee deep in the sands of the South Pacific islands).

That sort of victory might well have left Britain at least a moral Superpower for a few more decades.

At least none in Whitehall supported an early and massive land invasion if that meant that the bulk of the extra enlisted men and non-coms were darkies from the Indian Empire and Africa and Caribbean.

A truly large Commonwealth army meant a victory won by darkies and working class white men fighting with individual bravery in the mud.

Much preferred was a new type of war, conducted from afar and above by a relatively few middle class educated men directing modern mechanical tanks, planes and ships while dialling up long distance death from complicated instrument panels.

The war - to London - was never about the war, but was always about the postwar peace - not about suffering humanity today but more about the Conservative Party's prospects at the ballot box tomorrow...