British Army during the Second World War
At the start of 1939, the British Army was, as it traditionally always had been, a small volunteer professional army. At the beginning of the Second World War on 1 September 1939, the British Army was small in comparison with those of its enemies, as it had been at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. It also quickly became evident that the initial structure and manpower of the British Army was woefully unprepared and ill-equipped for a war with multiple enemies on multiple fronts. During the early war years, mainly from 1940 to 1942, the British Army suffered defeat in almost every theatre of war in which it was deployed. But, from late 1942 onwards, starting with the Second Battle of El Alamein, the British Army's fortunes changed and it rarely suffered another defeat.
While there are a number of reasons for this shift, not least the entrance of both the Soviet Union and the United States in 1941, as well as the cracking of the Enigma code that same year, an important factor was the stronger British Army. This included better equipment, leadership, training, better military intelligence and mass conscription that allowed the army to expand to form larger armies and army groups, as well as create new specialist formations such as the Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS), Commandos and the Parachute Regiment. During the course of the war, eight men would be promoted to the rank of Field Marshal, the army's highest rank.
By the end of the Second World War in September 1945, over 3.5 million men and women had served in the British Army, which had suffered around 720,000 casualties throughout the conflict.
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Background[edit]
The main British Army campaigns in the course of the Second World War[edit]
The British Army was called on to fight around the world, starting with campaigns in Europe in 1940. After the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied Forces from France (May–June 1940), the army fought in the Mediterranean and Middle East theatres, and in the Burma Campaign. After a series of setbacks, retreats and evacuations, the British Army and its Allies eventually gained the upper hand. This began with victory in the Tunisian Campaign in North Africa in May 1943, followed by Italy being forced to surrender after the invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943. In 1944 the British Army returned to France and with its Allies drove the German Army back into Germany. Meanwhile, in East Asia the Japanese Army were driven back by the Allies from the Indian border into eastern Burma. In 1945 both the German and Japanese Armies were defeated and surrendered within months of each other.
Impact of the First World War[edit]
High losses had been sustained by the British Army during the First World War and many soldiers returned embittered by their experiences. The British people had also suffered economic hardships after the war and with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s had contributed to a widespread antipathy to involvement in another war. One of the results was the adoption of a doctrine of casualty avoidance, as the British Army knew that British society, and the soldiers themselves, would never again allow them to recklessly throw away lives.[1][2] The British Army had analysed the lessons of the First World War and developed them into an inter-war doctrine, at the same time trying to predict how advances in weapons and technology might affect any future war.[3] Developments were constrained by the Treasury. In 1919, the Ten Year Rule was introduced, which stipulated that the British Armed Forces should draft their estimates "on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years". In 1928, Winston Churchill, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 6 November 1924 to 4 June 1929 (and who later became Prime Minister), successfully urged the British Government to make the Rule self-perpetuating so that it was in force unless specifically countermanded (Cabinet abandoned the rule in 1932)[4]
In the 1920s, and much of the 1930s, the General Staff tried to establish a small mechanized professional army, using the Experimental Mechanized Force as a prototype. The structure of the British Army had been organized to sacrifice firepower for mobility and removed from its commanders the fire support weapons that were needed to advance over the battlefield.[5] The army had been equipped and trained to win quick victories using superior mechanised mobility and technology rather than manpower.[5] It also adopted a conservative tendency to consolidate gains on the battlefield rather than aggressively exploiting successes.[5] However, with the lack of any identified threat, the Army's main function was to garrison the British Empire.[6]
During this time, the army suffered from a lack of funding. The Royal Navy, being the first line of defence, received the major proportion of the defence budget.[7] Second priority was the creation of a bomber force for the Royal Air Force (RAF) to retaliate against the expected attacks on British cities.[7] The development of radar in 1935, which had the ability to track enemy aircraft, resulted in additional funding being provided for the RAF to build a fighter aircraft force.[7] The army's shortage of funds, and no requirement for large armoured forces to police the Empire, was reflected in the fact that no large-scale armoured formations were formed until 1938.[7] The effectiveness of the British Army was also hampered by the doctrine of casualty avoidance.
Alan Brooke the CIGS from November 1941 complained several times in the earlier entries in his private diary about the lack of suitable officers for command positions, which he puts down to high losses in the First World War[8]
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