Are The British The OverSeers?

It was exactly that, at that time Great Britain was the global power with Russia a great power and the USA becoming a great power, yet Britain peacefully handed over the reins of international power following WW2, the same war that Britain entered to help protect its allies, the UK was never ever under threat from Hitler, that madman wanted to come to peaceable terms as he considered the British of the same germanic stock yet they did take sides, a decision that cost them dearly, why? because it was the right thing to do.

On September 2, 1940, President Roosevelt signed a “Destroyers for Bases” agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States gave the British more than 50 obsolete destroyers, in exchange for 99-year leases to territory in Newfoundland and the Caribbean, which would be used as U.S. air and naval bases.

1945: End of World War Two

The collapse of British imperial power - all but complete by the mid-1960s - can be traced directly to the impact of World War Two.

The catastrophic British defeats in Europe and Asia between 1940 and 1942 destroyed its financial and economic independence, the real foundation of the imperial system.

Britain had survived the war, but its wealth, prestige and authority had been severely reduced.

It also erased the old balance of power on which British security - at home and abroad - had largely depended.

Although Britain was one of the victorious allies, the defeat of Germany had been mainly the work of Soviet and American power, while that of Japan had been an almost entirely American triumph.

Britain had survived and recovered the territory lost during the war. But its prestige and authority, not to mention its wealth, had been severely reduced.

With conditions as they stood, it was now becoming increasingly difficult to maintain even the semblance of British world power.In the 1960s, British governments attempted forlornly to make bricks without straw.

Britain tried and failed twice to enter the EEC, hoping partly to galvanise its stagnant economy, partly to smash the Franco-German 'alliance'.

Britain was finding it too costly to protect its remaining colonies.

To avoid being trapped in a costly struggle with local nationalist movements, Britain backed out of most of the remaining colonies with unseemly haste. As late as 1959, it had publicly scheduled a degree of self-government for Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. All became independent between 1961 and 1963.

British leaders gamely insisted, and no doubt believed, that Britain would remain at the 'top table' of world power - a status guaranteed by its nuclear deterrent and its continuing influence in the ex-colonial world, and symbolised by the Commonwealth which the ex-colonies had joined.

The situation did not go as planned. Britain's failure to stop the white settler revolt in Southern Rhodesia in 1965 was a huge embarrassment and drew fierce condemnation from many new Commonwealth states.

World War II had a profound effect on the colonial powers because it completely destroyed their economies. Although Hitler committed crimes against humanity, I give him credit—and not Gandhi—for India’s independence immediately after World War II. Hitler destroyed the economies of Britain and France to such an extent that they were no longer able to financially maintain their military forces, and were hence incapable of containing the burgeoning freedom movements in their colonies.[/b]