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This chapter is based on John Hattendorf 's observation that British sea power was undermined in the 1930s by the strategic need to prioritise first the air force and then the army. The rise of the Luftwaffe posed a direct threat to London, and ministers were more willing to increase expenditure on the Royal Air Force (RAF) than on the other services. A change in the European balance of power after the Munich conference, and the consequent need to support France on land, forced a reluctant Chamberlain government to expand the army in 1939. Professor Hattendorf 's point can be illustrated graphically by measuring the navy's declining share of defence expenditure after Britain began to rearm in the mid-1930s (Figure 12.1).
The navy's leading share down to 1937 reflected its role in protecting trade routes and a worldwide empire. The army was engaged primarily in imperial defence, and would require heavy expenditure on munitions if it were committed to fight on the European continent. In the absence of a credible air threat before Hitler came to power the RAF had had the smallest share of defence expenditure, but in 1934 Stanley Baldwin, the leader of the Conservative party, gave a pledge that the National Government would ‘see to it that in air strength and air power this country shall no longer be in a position inferior to any country within striking distance of our shores’. The Air Staff claimed that fighter, army cooperation and coastal reconnaissance squadrons had no place in measurement of relative air strength, and that what mattered was parity in bombers, which it wished to order in large numbers. The Admiralty was well aware that it was in competition with the army and RAF for funding. It therefore sought to influence grand strategy in ways that would minimise the other services’ demands. In particular, it questioned both the necessity for the army to be ready to fight in Europe and the effectiveness of the RAF's Bomber Command.
Since the 1920s Admiralty planning had been on the basis that, if Japan threatened British interests, the main fleet would be sent to Singapore.
This book presents a wide range of new research on many aspects of naval strategy in the early modern and modern periods. Among the themes covered are the problems of naval manpower, the nature of naval leadership and naval officers, intelligence, naval training and education, and strategic thinking and planning. The book is notable for giving extensive consideration to navies other than those ofBritain, its empire and the United States. It explores a number of fascinating subjects including how financial difficulties frustrated the attempts by Louis XIV's ministers to build a strong navy; how the absence of centralised power in the Dutch Republic had important consequences for Dutch naval power; how Hitler's relationship with his admirals severely affected German naval strategy during the Second World War; and many more besides. The book is a Festschrift in honour of John B. Hattendorf, for more than thirty years Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the US Naval War College and an influential figure in naval affairs worldwide.
N.A.M. Rodger is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
J. Ross Dancy is Assistant Professor of Military History at Sam Houston State University.
Benjamin Darnell is a D.Phil. candidate at New College, Oxford.
Evan Wilson is Caird Senior Research Fellow at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
Contributors: Tim Benbow, Peter John Brobst, Jaap R. Bruijn, Olivier Chaline, J. Ross Dancy, Benjamin Darnell, James Goldrick, Agustín Guimerá, Paul Kennedy, Keizo Kitagawa, Roger Knight, Andrew D. Lambert, George C. Peden, Carla Rahn Phillips, Werner Rahn, Paul M. Ramsey, Duncan Redford, N.A.M. Rodger, Jakob Seerup, Matthew S. Seligmann, Geoffrey Till, Evan Wilson
Keynes's impact on economic policy has been the subject of widely contrasting interpretations. Most economists in the 1950s and 1960s, when unemployment rates of between 1 and 2 per cent came to be regarded as normal, credited Keynes (and their own profession) with providing the cure to the high unemployment that had marked the interwar years. Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) was developed and refined by his followers - known as Keynesians - to guide governments in how to achieve the goals of full employment, stable prices and a sound external balance of payments (and thereby a stable, but adjustable, exchange rate). Keynesian economists believed that fiscal policy (variations in the levels of taxation and of government expenditure) was more effective than domestic monetary policy (variations in interest rates and in banks' reserves) in influencing demand for goods and services, as regards increasing employment. In the event, it was not difficult to maintain full employment during the long postwar boom.
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