Although many Britons welcomed the end of czarist rule in Russia in 1917, they saw the Communist decision to make a separate peace with Germany as a sellout. Only the entry of the United States into the war made possible General Douglas Haig’s successful tank offensive in the summer of 1918 and the German surrender in November. The election called immediately thereafter gave the Lloyd George coalition an overwhelming mandate. The Labour Party, now formally pledged to socialism, became the largest opposition party, while the Asquith wing of a divided Liberal Party was almost wiped out. By then the Reform Act of 1918 had granted the vote to all men over the age of 21 and all women over 30.

Changes Wrought by the War

Lloyd George represented Britain as one of the Big Three (together with France and the United States) at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The resulting treaties enlarged the British Empire as former German colonies in Africa and Turkish holdings in the Middle East became British mandates. At the same time Britain’s self-governing dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—became separate treaty signatories and separate members of the new League of Nations. An intermittent civil war in Ireland ended with a treaty negotiated by Lloyd George in 1921. Most of the island became the Irish Free State, independent of British rule in all but name. The six counties of Northern Ireland continued to be represented in the British Parliament, although they also gained their own provincial parliament. The immediate postwar years were marked by economic boom, rapid demobilization, and much labor strife. By 1922, however, the boom had petered out. That year a rebellion by a group of Conservative members of Parliament ended the prime ministership of Lloyd George, and the wholly Conservative ministry of Andrew Bonar Law represented a return to “normal times.”

The Interwar Era

During the early 1920s a major political shift took place in Britain. The general election of 1922 gave victory to the Conservatives, but another one, called a year later by Bonar Law’s successor, Stanley Baldwin, left no party with a clear majority. As a consequence, Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Party leader, became the first professed socialist to serve as prime minister of Great Britain. His first ministry in 1924, rested on Liberal acquiescence; it lasted less than a year, when yet another election brought back Baldwin’s Conservatives. Lloyd George’s and Asquith’s efforts at Liberal reunion failed to restore the party’s fortunes, and it has remained a minor party in British politics. The Baldwin ministry restored the gold standard and enacted several social-reform measures, including the Widows’, Orphans’, and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, a national electric power network, and a reform of local government. In 1928 women were given voting rights that were equal to those of men.

Between 1929 and 1932 the international depression more than doubled an already high rate of unemployment. In the course of three years, both the levels of industrial activity and of prices dipped by a quarter, and industries such as shipbuilding collapsed almost entirely. MacDonald’s second Labour government found itself unable to cope with the depression, and in 1931 it gave way to a national government, headed first by MacDonald and then by Baldwin and made up mostly of Conservatives. The Labour Party denounced MacDonald as a traitor, but the national government won an overwhelming mandate in the general election of 1931. It took Britain off the gold standard, restored protective tariffs, and subsidized the building of houses. Between 1933 and 1937, the economy recovered steadily, with the automobile, construction, and electrical industries leading the way. Unemployment remained high, however, especially in Wales, Scotland, and northern England. Interwar society was influenced by the radio (monopolized by the British Broadcasting Corporation, which was begun in 1927) and the cinema, but British life was little affected by the continental ideologies of communism and fascism. The empire remained a fact, even though the Statute of Westminster (1931) proclaimed the equality of Commonwealth nations such as Canada and Australia. Religious attendance declined, but King George V maintained the prestige of the monarchy. When his son, Edward VIII, insisted on marrying a twice-divorced American in 1936, abdication proved to be the only acceptable solution. Under Edward’s brother, George VI, the monarchy again provided the model family of the land.

Britain and World War II

Memories of World War I left Britons with an overwhelming desire to avoid another war, and the country played a leading role in the League of Nations and at interwar disarmament conferences such as those in Washington, D.C. in 1921 and 1922 and London in 1930 that limited naval size. Conscious that Germany might have been unfairly treated at the 1919 peace conference, the British government followed a policy of appeasement in dealing with Adolf Hitler’s Germany after 1933. Germany’s decisions between 1934 and 1936 to leave the League of Nations, rearm, and remilitarize the Rhineland in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles were accepted. So was the German annexation of Austria in 1938. In his efforts to keep the peace at all costs, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain also acquiesced to the Munich Pact of 1938, which gave Germany the Sudetenland portion of Czechoslovakia. Only after the German annexation of Prague in March of 1939 did Britain make pledges to Poland and Romania.

When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war, and World War II began. The defeat********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************at achieved by any other power. Although a German invasion plan was foiled by British air supremacy, large parts of London and other cities were destroyed and some 60,000 civilians were killed. Beginning early in 1941, the still-neutral United States granted lend-lease aid to Britain.

The nature of the war changed with the German invasion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in June 1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Churchill then forged the “Grand Alliance” with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt against Germany, Italy, and Japan. In the immediate aftermath of the Japanese intervention, much of the British Empire in Southeast Asia was overrun, but late in 1942 the tide turned. The British contribution included the Battle of the North Atlantic against the German submarine menace and the campaign led by General Bernard Montgomery against the German army in North Africa. Churchill corresponded continually and met often with Roosevelt, and British forces joined American in the 1943 invasion of Sicily and Italy, the invasion of France in 1944, and the ultimate defeat of the Axis powers in 1945.