THE DECLINE OF GREAT BRITAIN IN TWO WORLDS WARS

The history of Britain is in many ways the history of the rest of the world , because London
was the centre of the world in many ways. Britain, like all the other big empires, declined. In part,
Britain declined because other European powers , Germany in particular, copied and improved her
methods of industrialization.Then there was the rise of non-European powers such as the United
States and Japan.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Before the First World War, Britains pre-eminent position in the world was being
challenged by other countries. Between 1860 and 1871 there was a period of incredible industrial
growth in Germany, that challenged Britain's position: the coal production was growing, the
dynamo was invented, the chemical dye industry was developed producing half of the world's dye.
Britain did not respond to this new technological competition.Besides being a great industrial
power, Germany began to act like a world power and it started to build a great navy which to the
British seemed like a direct attack.Starting in 1908, an arms race began between Germany and
Britain. A series of alliances was made:Germany and Austria-Hungary formed one such alliance
and so did Russia and France.
The incident that set off the war was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria,
which caused Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. Russia had promissed to defend Serbia, so
it found herself involved. Germany and France became the allies of Russia and Austria, into the
war. Obviously, Britain could not remain out of the war for long. In August of 1914 Germany went
through Belgium on her way to attack France. Britain immediately declared war on Germany. The
war began when Germany was blocked by the French and a few British troops at the River Marne
in France. Four years of trench warfare followed. Modern technology made war deadlier than it had
ever been: artillery had been modernized , the machine gun, the tank and poison gas were all used
on a large scale for the first time. On 1 July 1916 the British attacked the Germans near the River
Somme. The British fought important battles at Gallipoli , on the Dardanelles,at Jutland, in Iraq
and Palestine against the Turks. Germany began to use submarines to attack British ships, but they
could not afford to stop American ships to inspect the submarines because they were too easy to
sink.As a result, America was forced to join the Allies in their efforts against the Germans. Thus the
Allies won after the entrance of the Americans in April 1917.
Unfortunately, there was also a great desire for revenge on the part of Britain's allies that
was expressed in the peace treaty signed at Versailles in 1919. Germany didn't pay the reparations,
and they pave the way for another and even more horrendous war in the future.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Germany started The Blitz in Poland in 1939 and in France in 1940.There were two
sides: the Allies and the Axes. In May 10 Germany invaded Netherlands, Luxemburg and Belgium
and conquered them rapidly.Later in the summer of 1940 they attacked the British cities in order to
wear down the morale of the British people. Even when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the
summer of 1941, attacks on Britain still took place.
In 1944, British and American forces launched the D-Day invasion, landing in Germanoccupied france via the coast of Normandy and succeeding in freeing Paris. By 1945, the Allies
were closing in on Germany from both east and west and after Hitler commited suicide, the Allies
won the war.
In Britain, the Blitz created a powerful sense of national unity at a crucial point in the war.
It also provided the moral justification for the Royal Air Force to bomb German cities, attack which
was led by Bomber Harris. After the war, he was condemned by the peace campaigners as a war
criminal, because according to them there had been no strategic reason to bomb Dresden. Although
this was true, the attack undermined German moral at a crucial late stage and helped the Britains
win.
In the end, the 20th century brought the decline of Great Britain because of the two major
wars that exhausted Britain's resources.
BODIAN BIANCA , X A