2 - Mobilisation

Summary

The argument that the Second World War was a ‘good’ war has led to a ‘mythologised version’ of the conflict in the public consciousness. The war is remembered as Britain’s ‘Finest Hour’, when people, ‘both the “ordinary people” and the privileged put aside their everyday involvements and individual concerns, joined hands, and came to the nation’s defence. Public memories of the war continue to recall this as a historical moment when the nation was truly united.’ To many, the conflict was ‘one of the rare times in the past hundred years when the country lived up to what the British citizens thought it was’. This perception was no less powerful across the Dominions, if not India. It has been argued that the Second World War was for the Australians a genuine ‘people’s war, a war to abolish the injustice and insecurity’ of the interwar years.