Following the death in office of Joseph Lyons in 1939, Sir Earle Page, leader of the Country Party, had been appointed as a caretaker prime minister while the governing United Australia Party (UAP) chose a new leader. ‘No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader’Īt the time he gave his famous address, Robert Menzies had been Prime Minister for just over four months. Honest dealing, the peaceful adjustment of differences, the rights of independent peoples to live their own lives, the honouring of international obligations and promises, all these things are at stake. Force has had to be resorted to, to check the march of force. If such a policy were allowed to go unchecked there could be no security in Europe and there could be no just peace for the world. It is plain, indeed it is brutally plain, that the Hitler ambition has been not, as he once said, to unite the German peoples under one rule but to bring under that rule as many European countries, even of alien race, as can be subdued by force. He outlined a commitment to an international cause-fighting fascism, German expansion and militarism: In his speech, Menzies put forward arguments to justify why Australia should go to war. It is in this sense that Menzies has been described as having a similar attitude to an earlier prime minister, Alfred Deakin, albeit a generation later-as ‘an independent Australian Briton’. In his radio address, Menzies refers to Britain as the ‘Mother Country’. In the 1930s, Australians seeing themselves as British was not in conflict with a sense of ‘Australianness’. ![]() My announcement expressed the overwhelming sentiment of the Australian people … in 1939 neutrality for Australia in a British war was unthinkable unless we were prepared to add secession to neutrality. But while Australians did not like the prospect of fighting another war, there was almost universal support of Menzies’ decision to declare war and for his explanation of its necessity. There had been no Parliamentary debate on the decision to take Australia to war. There can be no doubt that where Great Britain stands, there stand the people of the entire British world. Menzies was a firm believer in the Commonwealth, ‘a great family of nations’ based on common ancestry and allegiance to the Crown. Accounting for the time difference between Britain and Australia, Prime Minister Menzies’ declaration of war came just over an hour after Britain’s. Because Australia was a self-governing British dominion at the time, if Britain was at war, Australia was duty-bound to support Britain. The second event identified by Menzies in his speech as justification for Australia’s declaration of war was Britain’s own declaration of war. In cold-blooded breach of the solemn obligations … Hitler has annexed the whole of the Czechoslovak state has, without flickering an eyelid, made a pact with Russia … and has now, under circumstances which I will describe to you, invaded with armed force and in defiance of civilised opinion, the independent nation of Poland. Menzies’ sober and detailed speech shows the circumstances leading to the outbreak of World War II from the perspective of an Australian government. The deepening of the crisis in Europe in the late 1930s meant that when war did come, in September 1939, Australians were not surprised. The subsequent invasion of Poland by Germany led Britain and France to declare war at around 11 am, London time, on 3 September 1939. When it looked like German expansion into Poland might be next, the British and French governments signed an agreement guaranteeing Poland’s sovereignty. This settlement allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland-the Allies’ unsuccessful attempt to appease Germany. Much of Germany’s territorial expansion occurred under the terms of the Munich Agreement between the major powers of Europe. On the basis of its historical ties to neighbouring land, and a desire for Lebensraum (living space) for a perceived wider Germanic people, Germany seized both Austria and the Sudetenland (a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia) in 19. In the mid- to- late 1930s, following a program of economic reconstruction and militarisation, Nazi Germany began making aggressive demands for territory. Hitler moved quickly to consolidate power and to eliminate any political opposition. In 1933, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (better known as the Nazi Party) came to power in Germany under its leader, Adolf Hitler. Become a Friend of the National Library.National Library of Australia Publishing.Using the Library Expand Using the Library sub menu. ![]()
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