Chapter 6 opens by recounting Winston Churchill’s youthful boast that he would one day save London and the empire from catastrophe. Ferguson suggests that Churchill fulfilled that prophecy: He did help save Britain from Nazi domination. However, he could not do so and also preserve the empire. 

The author argues that by the time of Churchill’s death, Britain had lost its empire because it had to fight regimes whose imperial projects were markedly more oppressive. In the first half of the 20th century, the likely successors to British imperial power were Hitler’s Reich, Hirohito’s Japanese empire, Mussolini’s fascist expansionism, or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Ferguson contends that by choosing to fight Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Britain sacrificed its own empire but prevented far worse imperial systems from prevailing.

As the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1914, Churchill understood that German naval and industrial growth threatened Britain’s position as the world’s foremost power. When Germany invaded Belgium and France, Britain entered the First World War to prevent Kaiser Wilhelm II’s imperial ambitions. Germany turned the war into a global imperial conflict by targeting Britain’s overseas interests. The Kaiser cultivated an alliance with Turkey, which occupied a pivotal position and could threaten supply routes to India and Russia. The Turkish Ottoman Sultan’s declaration of jihad against Britain and its allies had potentially enormous significance, since vast Muslim populations lived under British, French, and Russian colonial rule. Britain responded by mobilizing imperial resources on a vast scale. Indian troops served in Europe, the Middle East, and African territories.

Britain’s involvement in World War I began unpromisingly. The Royal Navy failed to annihilate Germany’s fleet outright. Meanwhile, the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-16 revealed that the Allied forces could not defeat Turkish forces in an amphibious operation. Australian and New Zealand troops, later celebrated as some of Britain’s finest soldiers, suffered terrible losses in the attempt to force the Dardanelles and defeat the Ottomans. Churchill’s association with the failed campaign nearly ruined his career. 

However, an alternative British strategy proved more effective. Through the Arab Revolt, encouraged by the Englishman, T. E. Lawrence, Britain successfully undermined Ottoman rule from within. Lawrence was an enthusiastic “Orientalist,” and his affinity with the Arab people helped turn local resentment against Turkish rule into a potent military asset. By late 1918, Germany’s global strategy had collapsed. Britain emerged victorious and acquired new territories, including former German colonies and extensive influence in the Middle East. However, these gains came at immense cost. The war left Britain financially weakened, burdened by colossal debts and the expense of administering new territories such as Iraq.

The interwar period revealed growing uncertainty about imperial purpose. The 1924 British Empire Exhibition was supposed to celebrate imperial strength, but the financial losses it incurred exposed a faltering confidence. In literature, the empire was increasingly portrayed as archaic and absurd. Works such as E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief reflected elite skepticism about imperial rule. Nevertheless, Ferguson argues that ordinary popular opinion remained largely favorable. What truly undermined confidence was the price of the First World War: Enormous casualties, a tenfold increase in the national debt, and the wider economic instability that culminated in the Depression.

Even so, Ferguson contends that the benefits of empire softened the impact of economic crisis. Trade within imperial markets helped Britain fare better than Germany or the United States in the 1930s. “Empire Shopping Weeks” and imperial marketing campaigns encouraged consumers to buy goods from across the Empire, symbolically reinforcing Britain’s global network. Even as the Empire became more economically important, imperial defense slipped down the political agenda. Governments assumed there would be no impending major wars and cut military spending accordingly. Britain lagged in investment in submarines, tanks, and aircraft, despite mounting threats abroad. 

At the same time, unrest within the empire intensified. The Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland was crushed, but the violence of Britain’s response deepened Irish nationalist hostility to British rule. By 1921, a settlement created the Irish Free State, setting a pattern that would recur elsewhere: Repression was followed by backlash, then by negotiated withdrawal.

In India, the wartime sacrifice made by Indians for the British Empire strengthened demands for self-government. The 1917 Montagu Declaration promised gradual constitutional progress, but many nationalists found the pace of reform too slow. Mahatma Gandhi championed non-violent resistance, though unrest sometimes turned violent. 

The decisive rupture came with the Amritsar massacre of 1919, when Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire on a large, unarmed crowd in Jallianwalla Bagh without warning. Hundreds of Indian civilians were killed, and many more were wounded. Ferguson presents Amritsar as India’s equivalent of Ireland’s Easter Rising, but on a much greater scale—a moment that permanently discredited imperial legitimacy.

The greatest challenge to Britain during this period came from fascist and militarist empires, threats that culminated in World War II. In 1940, Churchill refused Hitler’s offer to let Britain keep its overseas empire in exchange for accepting German domination in Europe. Ferguson argues that, however flawed British rule may have been, Japanese rule was far worse in its cruelty toward conquered peoples. The 1937 massacre at Nanjing, in which approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed by Japanese soldiers, illustrated the brutality of Japanese imperialism in Asia. The fall of British-owned Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 was therefore a devastating wartime defeat. Japanese mistreatment of prisoners of war was demonstrated in the construction of the Burma-Thailand railway, where thousands died under starvation, disease, and forced labor.

During World War II, Britain raised more than five million troops from across the empire, including Indians, Africans, West Indians, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders. Still, victory ultimately depended on the United States and the involvement of the other Allies. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor secured American support of Britain, but it came with political implications. President Roosevelt was hostile to old-style colonialism and envisaged a postwar world of trusteeship and independence rather than revived European empires. Britain, financially dependent on American aid, was in no position to object. Meanwhile, the plans of the new Labour government, elected in 1945, to build a welfare state could only be financed by cutting overseas commitments.

The Suez Crisis of 1956 further exposed Britain’s new dependence on the USA. Although British troops had begun withdrawing from Egypt, Prime Minister Anthony Eden reacted furiously when Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, in which the British government held shares. Britain and France launched a military intervention, but the operation quickly revealed Britain’s weakness. Lacking American support, Britain could not sustain the crisis. President Eisenhower forced British withdrawal by making economic support conditional on retreat. Suez demonstrated unmistakably that real global power had passed from Britain to the United States.

From this point, decolonization rapidly accelerated. The British Empire, built over centuries, was dismantled in little more than three decades. The nationalist “Quit India” movement of 1942 was suppressed rapidly through force. However, Indian independence was finally granted in August 1947. The subsequent Radcliffe line, partitioning India and Pakistan, accompanied by a hasty British withdrawal, triggered mass migration and communal slaughter. An estimated 7 million people were displaced, and up to 500,000 were killed. In Palestine, British withdrawal likewise left behind an unresolved and violent conflict. Ferguson argues that once Britain decided to leave, it often departed too quickly, abandoning fragile settlements and creating conditions for civil war.