<![CDATA[Conventional narrative: during the 1930s, the UK under PMs Baldwin and Chamberlain got complacent and obsessed with reducing military spending while Germany and Japan built their military machines.]]>Conventional narrative: during the 1930s, the UK under PMs Baldwin and Chamberlain got complacent and obsessed with reducing military spending while Germany and Japan built their military machines.

Actual stats: the UK built 1M tons of warships from 1928 to 1941, compared to 700K tons by the U.S. and 600M by Japan (Germany's production was almost too low to register).

(from N.A.M. Rogers, The Price of Victory).

So, pace Churchill's rants, the real moral isn't that the allies weren't prepared for (remember that the Spitfire and radar were also pre-war innovations, for example). The moral is that spending a lot of money on weapons — during a global depression, no less — didn't prevent war from happening and didn't make the allied generals and admirals any smarter. 🫤

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