BRITISH PRIME MINISTER CHURCHILL BETRAYS AUSTRALIA AT THE ARCADIA CONFERENCE
Although happy to take all the sailors, soldiers and airmen that Australia was prepared to place at his disposal for the defence of Britain, Churchill had no concern about Australia's fate when Japan's conquering armies menaced Australia.
His assurances of British military support for Australia against the Japanese were lies.
He had already betrayed Australia to the Japanese at the Arcadia Conference held in Washington in late December 1941.
Churchill even resisted the
return of Australian troops from the Middle East to
defend their own country.
(He wanted to use them In Burma to defend India against the advancing Japanese.)
Churchill and Roosevelt meet at the Arcadia Conference in Washington.
Churchill quickly sought a face to face meeting with President Roosevelt in Washington.
His purpose was to persuade President Roosevelt to adhere to the secret agreement between the American and British governments to give top priority to defeating Nazi Germany, and not to divert any of America's vast resources to halting Japanese aggression in the Pacific.
Churchill appreciated that the "Germany First" war strategy would put Australia, British Malaya, the Philippines, and the rest of South-East Asia at serious risk of Japanese occupation if Japan entered the war on the side of Germany and Italy.
However, this prospect does not appear to have greatly concerned Churchill whose top war priorities were the defence of Britain, support for the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, defending the Suez Canal, and protecting India.
As Churchill saw it, the Philippines, Australia, British Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies could be
recovered from Japanese occupation after Germany had been defeated.
On 14 December 1941, Churchill set off for Washington on board the newly commissioned battleship
HMS Duke of York.
He was accompanied by his top military chiefs and civilian advisers. The British Prime Minister and his entourage arrived in Washington on 22 December 1941, and an intensive series of secret discussions followed that later became known as the
Arcadia Conference.
Churchill was alarmed to find on his arrival in Washington that the American people were calling for an all-out war of vengeance against Japan.
The American people were unaware that their President, and his military chiefs, had secretly committed the United States to defeating Germany as its top priority, and that this agreement meant holding a defensive line between Alaska, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal.
They were
also unaware that the "Germany First" plan effectively made everything west of that line
expendable, including
American military forces in the western Pacific and Australia.
The US Navy refuses to accept an agreement that confined it to a purely defensive posture in the Pacific.
When Roosevelt and Churchill joined the American military chiefs in conference on 23 December 1941, Admiral Stark had been replaced as chief of the US Navy. The new Commander in Chief of the US Navy was Admiral Ernest J. King, and he was strongly opposed to any downgrading of the war against Japan to the status of a secondary theatre of war. Admiral King had found that Admiral Stark had been prepared to sacrifice everything west of the International Dateline to the Japanese, including Australia and the American army in the Philippines. Admiral King rejected Stark's approach. He believed that the United States would need access to Australia, its New Guinea territories, and the British Solomon Islands as major bases for a counter-offensive to recover the Philippines from Japan. He refused to adopt a defensive posture while the United States rebuilt its fleet.
Admiral King agreed in principle with Churchill's "Germany First" war strategy, but he insisted that the vaguely worded Arcadia agreement include words that would permit the United States to defend positions in the Pacific that were deemed necessary "to safeguard vital interests". The words "vital interests" were not defined, and King argued successfully for inclusion in the agreement of words authorizing the seizure of "vantage points" from which a counter-offensive against Japan could be developed.
The Arcadia Conference ended with Churchill and the US Army believing that the United States would pursue a war strategy that placed total priority on defeating Germany and relegated the Pacific to a secondary theatre in which the United States would pursue a passive defensive posture until such time as Germany had been defeated.
The US Army position was largely motivated by self-interest.
The generals knew that there would be little employment for two million under-trained American soldiers in the difficult island fighting that characterized the Pacific War.
The only place to deploy an army of two million recruits was on the continent of Europe, and the American generals were determined to send them there.
The US Navy was well satisfied with the final wording of the Arcadia agreement.
Churchill may not have realized it, but Admiral King was determined to prevent Australia becoming part of the Japanese empire and to secure the lines of communication between Australia and the United States.
The Pacific Fleet had been savaged by the treacherous Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but the four American fleet carriers had survived. Admiral King had been authorized by Arcadia to "safeguard vital interests" and seize "vantage points" in the Pacific from which a counter-offensive against Japan could be developed.
King interpreted the wording of the Arcadia agreement as allowing him to go on the offensive against Japan with the limited naval resources available to him.
Roosevelt and Churchill maintain the secrecy of the "Germany First" war strategy.
Appreciating that the American people and Congress would not tolerate an Allied war strategy that allowed the Japanese to proceed on an unchecked rampage across the Pacific, President Roosevelt decided to keep secret his government's commitment to the "Germany First" war strategy.
The secrecy attached to the "Germany First" war strategy obliged Churchill to conceal from leaders such as Australian Prime Minister John Curtin the total priority to be given to defeating Nazi Germany at the expense of countries threatened by Japan in the South-West Pacific region.
Churchill deceives Prime Minister John Curtin regarding the defence of Singapore.
Although repeatedly assuring Australia's Prime Minister John Curtin of the British government's commitment to the defence of Singapore, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already written off the defence of Singapore as a lost cause when he was giving those assurances. He knew that Singapore was only a "cardboard fortress", whose defenders lacked tanks, artillery, adeqate air defences, and modern fighter aircraft. After Japan entered the war on the side of its Axis partners Germany and Italy, Churchill was only interested in saving Burma and India in the Asia-Pacific region, and he ignored pleas from Curtin for meaningful reinforcement for the defenders of Singapore. Although not admitting this to Curtin, Churchill was obsessed with defeating Germany and was prepared to abandon Australia to the Japanese if they wanted it.
To ease Curtin's deepening concern for Australia's safety, and resist Australia withdrawing its military forces from Britain, North Africa, and the Middle East, Churchill assured Curtin that a British fleet would be dispatched to save Australia if Japan invaded in massive strength.
This was a lie.
Churchill had no intention of sending a British fleet to save Australia from a Japanese invasion.
He had already betrayed Australia at the Arcadia Conference.
Curtin was becoming convinced during December 1941 that Churchill's assurances of British military support for Australia against Japan were worthless, and he was not prepared to see Australia abandoned by the British to a Japanese invasion.
On 26 December 1941, the Australian Prime Minister addressed the nation in a radio address that made it quite clear that Australia was in grave danger from the Japanese and reflected Curtin's disillusionment with Churchill's assurances that Britain would furnish powerful support if Australia was threatened with Japanese invasion.
In the course of this famous speech, which was published in the Melbourne Herald newspaper on 27 December 1942, Curtin said,
"Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom."
The statement caused a sensation.
Churchill was furious, and addressed an angry cable to Curtin.
President Roosevelt
mistakenly believed that Australia was a British colony in 1941, and felt that Curtin's speech smacked of disloyalty.
When it was explained to Roosevelt later that Australia was an independent nation, the American President came to respect Curtin's strong leadership and patriotism.
The fall of Singapore
Two brigades of the 8th Australian Infantry Division were lost with the fall of Singapore, and those Australians would endure cruel captivity under the Japanese.
The battalions of the third brigade had been stationed as garrisons of island outposts across the northern approaches to Australia, and were lost when the Japanese captured Rabaul, Ambon and Timor.
These Australians would also suffer cruel captivity at the hands of the Japanese. Some would be murdered by the Japanese after they had surrendered.
Australia faces the Threat of a Japanese Invasion.
At the end of February 1942, despite courageous resistance against overwhelming odds by British, Australian, American and Dutch forces, the advance of Japanese military forces across South-East Asia towards Australia appeared unstoppable.
When Prime Minister Curtin sought a response to his pleas for British military assistance to defend Australia against Japanese invasion, and mentioned the extent of the military assistance that Australia had provided to Britain in its struggle with Germany,
Winston Churchill made it very clear to Curtin that no British military support would be provided for the defence of Australia.
On 8 March 1942, the Dutch surrendered the capital of the Dutch East Indies to the Japanese. By that time, most of the islands of their vast East Indies colony were already in Japanese hands, although heavily outnumbered independent Allied forces were still resisting the Japanese on some islands. The capture of British Malaya, the British colonies in northern Borneo, and the Dutch East Indies provided Japan with the vast resources of oil, rubber, minerals and food that were one of the main reasons for Japan’s aggression.
The Dutch surrender left Australia as the last effective bastion against Japan in the South-West Pacific and exposed to the threat of a Japanese invasion. If the Japanese had immediately landed troops at Port Moresby or Darwin after the Dutch surrender, Australia would have had nothing to throw at them except poorly trained and equipped militia recruits and obsolete aircraft.
Having lost faith in British promises, Prime Minister Curtin appeals to the United States for help to defend Australia.
On 14 March 1942, with British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies now occupied by Japanese troops, and the Japanese on Australia's doorstep, Curtin addressed the people of the United States in another famous radio message.
The Australian Prime Minister urged Americans to stand with Australia to resist Japanese aggression. Curtin accurately reminded Americans of their own danger when he used these words:
"Australia is the last bastion between the west coast of America and the Japanese. If Australia goes, the Americas are wide open."
Curtin did not need to address these words to the Commander in Chief of the United States Navy, Admiral Ernest J. King, who was already convinced of the importance of Australia to the United States and the compelling need to keep Australia an American ally and a bastion of freedom.
Since his appointment in December 1941, following the Pearl Harbor disaster, Admiral King had been fighting the demands by top United States army generals that South East Asia, including Australia, Malaya, and the Philippines, be abandoned to the Japanese so that all military resources, including those of Australia already under British control, could be directed to the war against Germany.
It was not until the arrival of General Douglas MacArthur in Australia in March 1942 that Curtin received proof that Churchill had betrayed Australia at the Arcadia Conference and had been lying to him when he promised powerful British support to oppose a Japanese invasion of Australia.
MacArthur had been deeply shocked to learn while still in the Philippines that his army had been abandoned by President Roosevelt and Prime MInister Churchill to defeat and capture by the Japanese.
An American submarine commander had penetrated the Japanese blockade of the Philippines and brought the grim news of betrayal at Arcadia to MacArthur.
There is a considerable body of evidence, including the views of distinguished historians and senior Japanese Navy officers, to support a conclusion that the Japanese intended to become the masters of Australia in 1942, either by (a) invasion of northern Australia and severing Australia's lifeline to the United States, or (b) severing Australia's lifeline to the United States and then pressuring Australia into surrender to Japan.
Japan's top admirals and generals were aware even before Pearl Harbor that Australia represented a serious threat to Japan as an ally of the United States.
They knew that the Americans would be able to use Australia and its two Territories on the island of New Guinea (Papua and the New Guinea League Mandate) as bases from which to launch their counter-offensive against Japan's greatly expanded southern defensive perimeter.
Being conscious of this threat, Japan's military leaders were determined to isolate Australia from the United States, and compel its surrender to Japan.
It was only in the means deemed necessary to compel Australia's surrender to Japan that there was a difference of approach.
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History records Winston Churchill as a great man but as an Australian I don't share this view of him,
quite the opposite.
Thanks for nothing Winston, you back-stabbing bastard.
There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending. - Anonymous. 
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Are you ready for some ultimate?!?!!! 
Originally Posted by HMan
Please understand that my animosity towards Winston in no way reflects on my own opinion of the british people themselves as I really do like and respect the british people a great deal.
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