A Birds Nest

David Cameron consideres Britain a ‘junior’ ally of the US

David Cameron seems to suggest that Britain is the inferior partner in the UK-US alliance. His claims that Britain’s role was on a ’junior'level in the 1940s makes me wonder whether this Oxford-education politician has any genuine knowledge of his own country’s history and the role it played in securing the from the onslaught of Nazism.

In reality, Britain lost 449,800 soldiers in World War II - which was over 30,000 than US casualties. Britain also fought alone during World War Two until the United States became involved in December 1941. Now, while no one should discount the tremendous role that the United States played in securing the allied victory (not to mention them being suppliers of nessecary war materials like gas oil to Europe), let us not forget that it was Britain who stood alone during those dark months of 1940 and 1941. Winning the Battle of Britain was one of the country’s greatest achievements. It was a victory against an enemy which was clearly superior both technically and numerically. In addition, the Germans were capable of drawing up an army that was exceptionally vast for a country of its size.

This was because Nazi Germany was not a democracy - it could literally achieve whatever targets Hitler would order, with not an ounce of thought for the hardship that all of the workers in the Nazi war machine would have to suffer. Britain could not do that - and the simple reason being that it was not a fascist dictatorship. It could not subject millions of Britons to torturous manual labour, to severe punishment and train millions of young soldiers to become killing machines.

Britain’s success at shooting down an overwhelming number of Luftwaffe planes meant that Germany’s ’Operation Sealion'plan had failed. This put Hitler in an incredibly difficult situation, especially after the Soviets emerged significantly stronger in the war than he could ever have anticipated, after Hitler invaded Russia in the summer of 1941.

To say that Britain played a ’junior'role is to completely undermine the role of some 449,800 British soldiers who sacrificed their lives to save their country from the most brutal regime in world history.