Claymore said:
Lord Londonderry said:
Churchill had a deep resentment for the Australians in WW2. Why was this?
From what source do you draw this statement? I have read his series on WW2 and several biographies of the man and have never seen anything other than a possible personal dislike of the Aussie PM of the time...
In his 6 volume set on the war he wrote very much in praise of the Austrailian soldiers throughout the series.
Winston Churchill was more than willing to see Australia handed to the Japanese so he could defeat the Germans in Europe:
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 proved worthless, and he even resisted the return of Australian troops from the Middle East to defend their own country.
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. Churchill was now only interested in saving Burma and India, and 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. 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. There was no truth in the assurance. Churchill had no intention of sending a British fleet to save Australia from a Japanese invasion.
Curtin was becoming convinced during December 1941 that Churchill's assurances of 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.
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 a 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 demand by Winston Churchill and the top United States generals that Australia be abandoned to the Japanese so that all military resources, including those of Australia, could be directed to the war against Germany.
It was not until the middle of 1942 that Curtin received concrete evidence that Churchill had been lying to him when he promised powerful British support to oppose a Japanese invasion of Australia. Curtin learned that Churchill had travelled to the United States shortly after Pearl Harbor and had persuaded the American President to give priority to the defeat of Germany. This involved treating the Japanese threat in the Pacific as a secondary priority. The American public was infuriated by the treacherous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and could not be told about the "Germany First" strategy. Adoption of Churchill's "Germany First" strategy effectively meant that Britain and the United States were abandoning Australia, the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies to Japanese occupation. Fortunately for Australia, Admiral King refused to accept that it should be abandoned to the Japanese.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforaustralia/battaust/Austinvasion.html