When did Australia declare war on Germany in WWII
score:18
from Australia's War 1939 - 1945:
On 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies announced that Australia was at war with Germany:
"Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement."
From speech made by Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies, 3 September 1939
A public announcement by one's duly elected Prime Minister seems definitive to me.
Update:
Australia's Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 explicitly states that five provisions of the Westminster Act (sections two, three, four, five, and six)
are adopted and the adoption shall have effect from the third day of September, One thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine.
Sections three and four of the Westminster Act bear on the question (my emphasis):
3. It is hereby declared and enacted that the Parliament of a Dominion has full power to make laws having extra-territorial operation.
4. No Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the commencement of this Act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless it is expressly declared in that Act that that Dominion has requested, and consented to, the enactment thereof.
Given:
- that the UK Declaration of War on Germany passed the House of Commons on Sep. 3, 1939; and
- said date of passage is not after the commencement of this Act [effective date of Statute of Westminster 1931, being Sep. 3, 1939, as regards the Commonwealth of Australia],
it seems clear that the date of effect was deliberately chosen to ensure that Australia was legally in a formal state of declared war against Germany prior to the Westminster Adoption Act taking effect.
Update #2 This interpretation is reinforced by the signed declaration beneath the Act by the Clerk of the House of Representatives (my emphasis again):
I hereby certify that the above is a fair print of the Bill intituled "An Act to ... by adopting certain Sections of the Statute of Westminster 1931, as from the Commencement of the War between His Majesty the King and Germany", which has been passed ....
This combines to ensure that Menzie's broadcast declaration above (of Australia being at war with Nazi Germany) was not impeached by the retro-active application of the Westminster Adoption Act 1942.
Upvote:1
Both.
The declaration in 1939 brought Australia, by virtue of its then status as a British dominion, into war with Germany.
Adoption of the statute of Westminster terminated Australia's status as a dominion and would have, by itself, resulted in the then newly independent Australia no longer being at war with Germany.
The backdated 1942 declaration brought the then independent nation of Australia into war with Germany.
More post
- 📝 How much faster were the printing presses than hand writing?
- 📝 How was planning done before computers?
- 📝 Was there relative peace in the Middle East before the end of the Great War?
- 📝 Constantine the Great created the Chi-Rho from the Greek word for "Christ". Why choose Greek over Latin, even though he was Roman?
- 📝 Is there a primary source for Black Monday, April 13, 1360?
- 📝 What was the nature of conflict between Helvetii and German in prelude to Gallic Wars?
- 📝 Why did Italy abandon its alliance with Germany in WW1 and join the Allied side?
- 📝 Why was Washington State an attractive site for aluminum production during World War II?
- 📝 Was the Native American population already decimated before settlers and conquistadors arrived in America?
- 📝 Were there any crops and livestock common to both the Old and New Worlds prior to the Columbian exchange?
- 📝 Did Abraham Lincoln have a duel with cannons?
- 📝 Would the trial of Jesus of Nazareth have been recorded on an Acta Diurna?
- 📝 Why was the Soviet Union unable to stop the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh?
- 📝 What evidence is there for chain stores or restaurant chains in Ancient Rome?
- 📝 Finding reviews of academic books?
- 📝 British Diplomat's Guide to the Balkan Races
- 📝 Why did Antiochus IV of the Seleucids work so hard to keep Coele-Syra from Ptolemy VI of Eygpt?
- 📝 National Symbology and Iconography of Carthage
- 📝 What are the dimensions of this pomerium marker?
- 📝 Have Germany and Poland ever signed a peace treaty after WWII?
- 📝 Why was Carpathia overloaded?
- 📝 (Why) are there two different versions of the photograph of inmates at the Buchenwald concentration camp?
- 📝 Must scopes have revealing reflections?
- 📝 Did "droit du seigneur" actually exist in medieval Europe?
- 📝 How did opinions of France and Britain affect American foreign policy up to 1820?
- 📝 What were tally sticks?
- 📝 Could prisoners be pardoned in 1832 France under the July Monarchy?
- 📝 When did UK working class women shift away from home birth?
- 📝 As American as the Apple Pie?
- 📝 Is there truth to the Dynastic Race Theory regarding Ancient Egyptians?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 When did Australia declare war on Germany in WWII
- 📝 Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- 📝 Did Russia declare war on Germany before its invasion of that country on August 7, 1914?
- 📝 Why did Hitler declare war on the USA?
- 📝 What did Germany do in World War II about the different rail gauge in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 When and why did war chariots stop being used?
- 📝 When planning Barbarossa, did Germany conceive of the Soviet migration of heavy industry?
- 📝 What did Germany do after World War II to recover so successfully that it became more prosperous than its WW2 victors?
- 📝 When and where did just war theory originate?
- 📝 What goods did Germany trade during World War II, and with whom?
- 📝 Did Emanuel Lasker write a book declaring that Germany had to win World War I if civilization were to be saved?
- 📝 When did the American War of 1812 actually end?
- 📝 Was the Zimmerman Telegram a ruse on the US or a way of Germany to incite Mexico to declare war on the US?
- 📝 Did Hitler make the right decision for Germany when he called off Operation Zitadelle (during the Battle of Kursk)?
- 📝 How did Germany rebuild so quickly after World War I?
- 📝 When did the First Barbary War start?
- 📝 When did the practice of formal declaration of war start?
- 📝 Why did Germany decide not to restore the Hohenzollern dynasty to the throne of a German Empire after the defeat of Hitler in World War Two?
- 📝 When did the parole of prisoners of war become unacceptable?
- 📝 Why did World War I victors let Germany pay reparations in German Marks and gave it the option to default via inflation?
- 📝 When did the "Great War" become "World War 1"?
- 📝 What route did the Hindenburg take when traveling from Germany to the U.S.?
- 📝 When did Soviet authorities first plan/conceive of migrating their industry if war broke out?
- 📝 Why did antique guns and swords from the Franco-Prussian War make part of the demilitarization program to which Germany was subjected?
- 📝 Did Germany have treaties imposed upon it after WWII that mirrored the weight of the Treaty of Versailles?
- 📝 During the Second World War, did the Germans expect that Japan would declare war on Russia?
- 📝 When did the Vietnam War start?
- 📝 Did Germany lose World War II when/because "kill ratios" started moving "against" her?
- 📝 When did Germany begin to store it's gold deposits abroad?
- 📝 How much in total did Nazi Germany spend on their war machine