KEY POINTS:
In a series of edited book extracts this week we present visions of how our history might have developed if key events had taken a different course. Today Denis McLean ponders the consequences of New Zealand not going to war in 1939.
On September 5 in 1939, the Prime Minister appeared from inside Parliament Buildings and stood at the top of the long granite steps to make an announcement to be broadcast live to a waiting nation.
The day before, the people had heard over their large, boxy wireless sets the clipped tones of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Germany, he declared, had defied a British-French ultimatum and proceeded to invade Poland, and therefore a state of war existed between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.
Australia had immediately taken the position that when the King declared war, all his Governments throughout the Empire were likewise at war.
New Zealand, however, with an independent-minded Labour Government in power, was determined to make up its own mind on so grave a matter. This was a matter for Parliament to decide.
The Prime Minister, who had been in hospital the previous day, roused himself to make the pronouncement which stunned the nation and sent a shock wave around the world.
With gratitude for the past and confidence in the future, we declare that we no longer range ourselves alongside Britain.
Where she goes, we cannot blindly go; where she stands, we do not find cause to stand.
This war is not our war.
We are a small, proudly independent nation of the South Pacific.
We are a peace-loving people with a history of strong commitment to multilateral action through the League of Nations. We do not believe in the resolution of international disputes by one country unilaterally taking up arms against another. We believe it is for the League of Nations to mediate between the contending parties and to take collective action.
We live in a benign strategic area. Nevertheless, affinities between the totalitarian powers of Germany and Italy could yet extend to the Pacific to create an axis of evil. A militaristic Japan is already waging war in China. Other peoples' wars in Europe must not distract us from the responsibility to help secure the peace in our own region in the South Pacific.
New Zealand will help the Mother Country in every way it can - through the provision of food aid and humanitarian assistance.
Any military role, however, will be limited to the deployment of peacekeeping forces to help bring the warring parties together, and to engineering units to help repair the damage.
New Zealand had broken with its past. A Labour Government, which believed it had an overwhelming mandate for change following two sweeping election victories, was determined to set British inheritances behind in pursuit of an independent South Pacific nationhood. To this end the old alliance structure of Empire had to be renounced.
With that came a conviction that the prevailing power system in the world must be challenged. In particular, it was vital that the new weapons of mass destruction, which had been used in aerial bombardment against innocent civilians in Spain, be repudiated by New Zealand.
The New Zealand Aerial Bomb Free Zone and Disarmament Act of 1938 banned the entry into New Zealand ports of any warship carrying such or similar bombs and had been widely supported in the community. Seemingly only a few "geriatric generals" had been critical.
The roots of the decision not to follow Britain into war seemed to run deep in the community at large.
Nevertheless, an astonished nation divided immediately into bitter pro and antiwar factions. The newly opened British High Commission was besieged with young New Zealanders determined to serve with the British Armed Forces.
There was widespread alarm that New Zealand had let the "Mother Country" down in her hour of peril.
Even within the Labour Party itself, antagonism between World War I veteran John A. Lee, who had expected to be appointed Minister of Defence, and the ailing Savage, developed into divisions which threatened the Government's majority in the House of Representatives.
Despite wartime shortages of shipping, the British Government, recognising a crucial source of recruits for its forces, sent transports to New Zealand to carry off the many thousands of volunteers who felt it their duty to serve the Empire.
The loss of manpower soon caused economic disruption which threatened to reverse the progress that had been made to escape from the "Great Depression".
On the international front, New Zealand immediately lost all influence and standing in London.
For two years through the successive crises - as Nazi hegemony spread across much of Europe; the Battle of Britain; defeats of British forces in Greece and Crete; the invasion of Russia - New Zealand maintained its position of lonely abstention from the war on the other side of the world.
The growing crisis in Asia, however, could not be ignored.
In December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, New Zealand declared war on Japan. As Japanese forces pressed south into New Guinea and the Solomon Islands the threat of direct aggression against New Zealand became very real.
Geographic isolation meant nothing in a world war. Serious and strenuous military interaction with Australia led to the formation of combined Anzac air, sea and ground forces, with integrated command systems working within a unified Pacific war command under the overall direction of the United States.
The war in the Pacific was fully shared between the two Anzac countries. New Zealanders played an equal part in severe fighting in New Guinea as well as in the Solomon Islands.
Their reputation was such that the New Zealand division was nominated as part of the massive force preparing for the invasion of Japan in 1945.
There was widespread concern about the likely scale of casualties (expected to be massive). Accordingly New Zealanders across the country warmly welcomed the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan.
New Zealand emerged from the war with greatly strengthened ties with both Australia and the United States. The Anzac Pact of 1944 became an enduring touchstone for across-the-board collaboration between the two Tasman partners. "Australasia Inc" was born.
Things did not go so well for New Zealand in its dealings with postwar Europe. An impoverished Britain needed New Zealand agricultural products for a time. Although New Zealand's reputation had slumped, trade with Britain kept up for lack of alternative sources of supply for the British market.
Nevertheless, Britain was quick to learn the lesson that dependency on external trade in food had made it highly vulnerable to blockade in time of war.
Accordingly, agricultural production was stepped up and by the late 1960s, New Zealand had little or no leverage.
Those who had fought for Europe - such as Australia - were in a position to plead successfully for concessions.
For the rest, including New Zealand, there were to be no favours. The outcome was devastating for a New Zealand economy still hugely dependent on agricultural trade. At a time of growing world prosperity New Zealand was plunged into depression.
There was massive unrest in the country, accompanied by a sense of bitterness towards those who had ignored reality and tried to isolate New Zealand in the South Pacific rather than recognise that the country had global interests and global responsibilities.
Where was New Zealand to turn? Merger with Australia seemed the only feasible option, and there was widespread support for it.
But how that developed is a tale so well known as hardly to require retelling.
* This is an edited extract from New Zealand as it Might Have Been, 15 scenarios of alternate history edited by Stephen Levine and published by Victoria University Press.
* Denis McLean is a scholar and former diplomat who served as Secretary of Defence and as New Zealand's Ambassador to the United States.
