The British Empire spanned the entire globe, which was great...except for the fact that it meant defending the entire globe.

Sources:

• Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919-1939 by David E. Omissi
• Anglo-American Strategic Relations and the Far East 1933-1939: Imperial Crossroads by Greg Kennedy
• The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600-2000 Volume III: The Military Dimension Edited by Ian Gow and Yoichi Hirama with John Chapman
• 'A Fearful Concatenation of Circumstances': The Anglo-Soviet Rapprochement, 1934-6 by Michael Jabara Carley
• Brave New World: Imperial and Democratic Nation-building in Britain Between the Wars Edited By Laura Beers and Geraint Thomas
• Britain at Bay by Alan Allport
• The British Defence of Egypt 1935-1940: Conflict and Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean by Steven Morewood
• British Establishment Perspectives on France, 1936-1940 by Michael Dockrill
• The British General Election of 1935 by James C. Robertson
• Patterns of the Future? British Mediterranean Strategy and the Choice Between Alexandria and Syprus 1935-8 by Manolis Koumas
• 'Living the Blackshirt Life': Culture, Community and the British Union of Fascists, 1932-1940 by Michael A. Spurr
• Economics, Rearmament, and Foreign Policy: The United Kingdom before 1939 - A Preliminary Study by R.A.C. Parker
• Fascism, Communism, and the Foreign Office, 1937-1939 by Donald Lammers
• Fighting the People's War: The British Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War by Jonathan Fennell
• Forgotten Armies by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper
• Franco-British Relations and the Question of Conscription in Britain, 1938-1939 by Daniel Hucker
• The Battle for Britain: Interservice Rivalry between the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy; 1909-40 by Anthony J. Cumming
• Malta and British Strategic Policy 1925-1943 by Douglas Austin
• Pacifism and Politics in Britain, 1931-1935 by Michael Pugh
• The Royal Air Force, Air Power and British Foreign Policy, 1932-37 by Malcolm Smith
• British Rearmament in the 1930s: A Chronology and Review by J.P.D. Dunbabin
• The Royal Air Force - Volume 2: An Encyclopedia of the Inter-War Years 1930-1939: v. 2 by Ian Philpott
• British Seapower and Procurement Between the Wars: A Reappraisal of Rearmament by G.A.H. Gordon
• The British Government and the South African Neutrality Crisis, 1938-39 by Andrew Stewart
• Strategy versus Finance in Twentieth-Century Great Britain by Paul M. Kennedy
• The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, 1890-1939 Edited By David French and Brian Holden Reid
• Deterrence and the European Balance of Power: the Field Force and British Grand Strategy, 1934-1938 by B.J.C. McKercher
• The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy 1865-1939 by Paul M. Kennedy
• British Rearmament 1936-39: Treasury, Trade Unions and Skilled Labour by R.A.C. Parker
• Winston Churchill's Parliamentary Commentary on British Foreign Policy, 1935-1938 by Richard Howard Powers
• British Rearmament and the 'Merchants of Death': The 1935-36 Royal Commission on the Manufacture of and Trade in Armaments by David G. Anderson
• Whitehall and the Control of Prices and Profits in a Major War, 1919-1939 by Neil Rollings
• Thinking the Unthinkable: British and American Naval Strategies for an Anglo-American War, 1918-1931 by Chistopher M. Bell
• Britain's War: into Battle, 1937-1941 by Daniel Todman
• British Armour Theory and the Rise of the Panzer Arm: Revising the Revisionists by Azar Gat
• Changing American Perceptions of the Royal Navy Since 1775 by John B. Hattendorf
• Military Innovation and Technological Determinism: British and US Ways of Carrier Warfare, 1919-1945 by Kendrick Kuo
• British Military Policy between the Two World Wars by Brian Bond

Contact sales@advertisecast.com to advertise on History of the Second World War. 

History of the Second World War is part of the Airwave Media podcast network.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices