Historic Background
Why was Singapore important to Australia, and to those fighting over it?
After the end of WWI, Britain concluded that the greatest threat to national security lay with Japan and its desire to expand across the Pacific. Many parts of Asia remained part of the British Empire, including India, Burma, Malaya and Hong Kong, all of which Britain wanted to protect from a Japanese advance.
With support from Australia, Britain formulated its Singapore Strategy - it would build a huge naval base on the island as a means of protecting its interests in the region. |
Prime Minister Robert Menzies declared war on Germany on Australia’s behalf on 3 September 1939. Menzies identified with and felt great loyalty towards the British Empire, and his declaration of war stated that: ‘Great Britain has declared war upon [Germany] and that, as a result, Australia is also at war’.
At the start of the Second World War, Australia deployed most of its forces to assist British forces in Europe and North Africa.
The early stages of WWII were fought in Europe and the Middle East, and the 20,000-strong volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force (2nd AIF) was formed to fight overseas. The 2nd AIF fought through late 1940 and 1941 in the Western Desert in North Africa, Greece and the Syria–Lebanon campaign. However, Britain’s military and strategic focus on Europe in the early 20th century caused many Australians to worry about a Japanese invasion of our resource-rich continent. |
John Curtin secured support from the independents for a Labor government, and he was sworn in as Prime Minister on 7 October 1941.
The new Prime Minister had a background as a socialist union organiser and left wing journalist, and he had worked his way up through the ranks of the Labor Party. Through the 1920s and 1930s, Curtin and the Labor Party had refused to endorse the Singapore strategy whereby Australia supported, financially and militarily, the construction of a large British naval base at Singapore as the primary line of defence against potential Japanese expansion into the South Pacific and South Asia. Curtin had campaigned during the 1940 election that the ‘primary responsibility of any Australian Government was to ensure the security and integrity of its own soil and people before contributing to a common cause’. |