Quote:
Originally Posted by RN7
The British Empire was not industrialised outside of Canada, and contributed manpower and raw materials that were reliant on British shipping to transport it.
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Australia had an industrial base as well. Of course, our population in 1939 was, IIRC, around 7 million people.
We had an iron and steel industry and considerable engineering and production plant for a country of our size. We produced Corvettes, Fighter Bombers, Fighters, Tanks almost all of our small arms (Rifles, SMGs, Machineguns etc.) and ammunition.
No, we didn't have the same level of industrialisation as Canada, but that was mostly because of the small population.
The Kiwis, on the other hand, had virtually nothing, and that's still the case ... look at the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlton_Automatic_Rifle
for how hard up they were.
There was also a NZ movie some years ago about a loner in rural NZ during WW2 who refused to hand in his privately owned SMLE when the government confiscated all of them (I don't suppose there could have been more than several hundred all over NZ at the time, certainly not several thousand) because they were so short.
Phil