Why the British Army Performed Less Admirably at the Start of World War II - Essay Example

Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Why the British army performed less admirably at the start of World War II despite its strong position in 1918 At the end of the First World War which lasted between 1914 and 1918, the British army was arguably the finest in Europe. This is because prior to the war, Great Britain was one of the countries with massive resources and a vibrant economy, which enabled it to sustain the impact of the First World War. But these fortunes changed significantly thereafter because the war took a toll on the country’s economy. Thus in the subsequent years, the British economy was ailing such that the former military power could not command the position it held during World War I. This is largely because after investing massively in the First World War, Great Britain was left with little resources to sustain its economy and strengthen its military capability. After the war, there was a feeling that there was need to focus on other areas of the economy instead of building the military because there was no real threat of war in the near future. This lack of preparation left Great Britain in a precarious position such that when World War II eventually broke out, the British army performed dismally compared to other powers such as Germany. This paper discusses the factors that caused this reversal of fortunes for the British Army. To start with, it is important to look at Great Britain’s economic situation before the First World War. According to D’Anieri, before the advent of the First World War, Great Britain had played an influential role in organising the world economy (43). This was mainly attributed to the fact that Great Britain had considerable naval and financial power, which enabled it facilitate greater trade around the world (D’Anieri 243). Specifically, Tucker and Roberts note that “in 1914 Great Britain was the preeminent world power” (819). Britain’s might emanated from the fact that its significance in world affairs did not rely solely on the resources and population of the British Isles. The British Empire comprised the United Kingdom of the Great Britain and Ireland (the British Isles) as well as world’s greatest overseas empire in both territory and extent. Great Britain’s power was felt in every section of the globe with territories and empires that constituted sections of the empire. These included the self-governing dominions of Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and large sections of Africa and Asia (particularly India, which was an empire on its own) and islands in the West Indies and the Pacific region (Tucker and Roberts 819). As a country, Great Britain had a higher per capita income, a greater share of world trade and a greater utilisation of world investment than any other state in the world (Little and Smith 77). This financial capability and global presence of the empire’s territories meant that Great Britain could easily subdue its enemies during World War I because of its strong military base. As Broadberry and Howlett point out, Britain was a relatively rich nation in 1913, so that committing about 40 per cent of its national expenditure to world war resulted in an extremely impressive effort (6). Because of the massive expenditure in World War I, Great Britain was left with little resources to assemble another formidable army to deal with a major conflict such as the Second World War. According to D'Anieri, the costs of World War I substantially undermined Great Britain’s capacity to take a leading role in any other conflict as it did in World War I (43). In spite of Great Britain’s riches, Linehan notes that the First World War depleted the nation’s financial resources, and as a result it emerged from the war as a debtor nation, having borrowed huge sums of money to the sustain the war effort. For instance, it had borrowed £1027 million from the United States (40). In fact, by 1919, Britain lacked the capacity to withstand the physical cost of another large war. The large budget expended in the First World War curtailed the country’s ability to financially afford any large conflict. This state of affairs went beyond social attitudes into military and political policies to the extent that the Great Britain government definitively predicted a ten-year period in which the empire was not expected to engage in any great war (Royo 1). In addition, the British government stated that no expeditionary force was required for the purpose of engaging in any major war (Royo 1). Between the 1920s and the 1930s, protecting British economic interests became more important than protecting security interests. For instance, as a result of World War I, Britain had lost a significant share of its markets for industrial products to Japan and the United States. In addition, the post-war reduction in production capacities of staple industries such as steel, coal, and textiles led to a rise major economic problem – unemployment, which had reached the two million mark by 1921 (Duiker and Spielvogel 506). As a result, Britain’s weakened focus on security translated into policy constraints that limited revolutionary technological advances that compelled the country’s leaders to retract into a protective posture of isolationism and traditionalism that stood against relevant change. In particular, Britain carried out wide reductions in defence, pursued protectionist policies that neglected the European situation, and this made the country to stagnate in regard to doctrine and development due to hopeful assumptions (Royo 1). In terms of politics, the British government, which was inclined towards the body politic, became fed up with war and especially a military at war. This British society was discouraged with a military that had been perceived to have let down the public because of the massive expenditure during World War I. There was also the burden of industrial toll on foreign trade as well as the cost of maintaining the British Empire. Combined, these factors put pressure on the British government to significantly limit military expenditures (Royo 1). There is evidence of reduction in the number of British military personnel between 1918 and 1922 as presented by Aldred (68). According to this author, there was a rapid de-escalation of the size of the British army after 1918. Aldred tabulates the figures as having declined from 3,779,825 soldiers in November 1918 to 888,952 soldiers in November in 1919, and eventually to 231,062 soldiers in November 1922 (68). Going by these figures, it can be seen that the number of soldiers in the British army in 1922 was roughly about 6 per cent the number in 1918, meaning that the government embarked on a serious task of reducing its troops. This point also emphasises the statement put forward by Royo above that Britain was more interested in other areas of building the economy rather than enhancing its military capacity by increasing the number of troops. As Goldman indicates, prior to World War I, defence expenditure averaged approximately 44 per cent of government spending. But from 1923, until 1938, it averaged 23 per cent, as well as hitting a low of 18.7 per cent in 1933 (84). The de-escalation of the British military leads to the question of whether this was an indication of Britain’s inability to fund a large army or whether it was a pointer to Britain’s decline as a great power. To answer this question, it is worthwhile to note that Britain’s army planners regarded World War I as an exceptional phenomenon that would not be experienced again in the future (Aldred 68). Based on this view, the British army was supposed to revert to its pre-war role of acting as an imperial police force, which required a relatively small army size. It was also thought that it was not necessary to modernise the army through mechanisation because this did not augur well with the role that the army would play (Aldred 68). Had the government chosen to modernise the British army through increased mechanisation, this would have entailed an increase in the number of tanks, armoured vehicles, as well as general purpose military vehicles for instance. But since this was not done, the army stagnated (Aldred 68). This is highlighted by the fact that total military spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) after World War I averaged about 2.7 per cent, a level that was outstandingly similar to the period of “profound peace” that was experienced in the 1890s when there was no real likelihood of war with another great power (Goldman 84). The army leaders between the 1920s and the 1930s were from the cohort of the pre-1918 career officers who had more interest in getting horses and cavalry regiments instead of increasing tank units (Aldred 68). Their view was that expenditure on modern equipment was unnecessary to protect the British Empire and maintain peace within it. For instance, the British navy was no longer at risk from the threat of German expansion after 1918. Therefore, while American, Japanese and French fleets were expanding, British naval planners, as with the British army, made no strategic effort that would ensure that Britain’s global naval supremacy was maintained. In addition, an idea to have more aircraft carriers was rejected in favour of more heavily armed battleship (Aldred 68). The clear impact of this is that the British army would lack the swiftness characterised by the use of warplanes and other rapid response technologies in case of any major conflict – which later arose as World War II. A 1938 decision by Great Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to sign an agreement with Adolf Hitler permitting Nazi Germany’s occupation of some areas in Czechoslovakia eventually caused a war (Second World War) that Britain was not prepared for. According to Sanders, it is this agreement that made the Second World War inevitable (125). Prior to this war, Chamberlain seemed to believe that Britain’s biggest problem was averting a major war in Europe. He feared that Britain inescapably would be caught up in this unnecessary conflict. But according to Sanders, Britain’s most critical problem would be to stop Hitler from attaining his aggressive designs in Europe and in other parts of the world, even if this would require Britain to go to war (125). Because Chamberlain failed to recognise the real problem, he caved in to Hitler’s demand for Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region (which already had German population) in Czechoslovakia during their meeting with leaders of France and Italy in Munich in 1938. Although Chamberlain believed that the agreement was a sine qua non to peace, Hitler ignored much of the agreement five months later and occupied much of Czechoslovakia. About a year later, the Second World War erupted when the Nazi attacked Poland. At this time, the British army was not prepared for war largely because of a conspicuous policy by Prime Minister Chamberlain not to increase the military capacity (Sanders 125). According to Sanders, Chamberlain’s reluctance to equip the military and belief in the need to prevent war explains why Great Britain found itself so militarily feeble at the start of the Second World War (125). Since Great Britain had not prepared for an imminent war, its army “could barely fight for the first six months” of World War II (Taylor 15). This according to Taylor was because the British air force did not possess adequate planes and the British army was disorganised. Thus, during the initial six months of the warfare, between the autumn of 1939 and the summer of 1940, Germany won significant battles in Poland, Norway and Denmark. As Taylor asserts, the British army seamed too weak to stop the unified military of Germany, or the “Wehrmacht” (15). In conclusion, it apparent that the World War I took a toll on Great Britain’s economy, and in the following years, the British government paid more attention to building the economy than investing to build the military. There was also a feeling that after the First World War, another major war was not foreseeable. Britain thus concentrated on averting possible war by reducing its military personnel and not mechanising the army. This caused the British army to stagnate. Great Britain’s Prime Minister Chamberlain’s illusion that it was more necessary to prevent another war than to stop Hitler’s expansionist strategies saw him sign an agreement that allowed Nazi Germany to occupy parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. But Hitler soon disregarded this agreement and occupied larger parts of Czechoslovakia, which made World War II inevitable. By this time, the British army was too ill-equipped for any major war, hence it performed dismally in the first few years of the war. Works cited Aldred, John. British Imperial and Foreign Policy, 1846-1980. London: Heinemann, 2004. Broadberry, Stephen and Howlett, Peter. “The United Kingdom during World War I: Business as usual?” 14 March 2013. D'Anieri, Paul. International Politics: Power and Purpose in Global Affairs. New York: Cengage Learning, 2009. Duiker, William J. and Spielvogel, Jackson J. The Essential World History (3rd ed.). New York: Cengage Learning, 2006. Goldman, Emily. Power in Uncertain Times: Strategy in the Fog of Peace. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Linehan, Thomas. British Fascism, 1918-39: Parties, Ideology and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Little, Richard and Smith, Michael. Perspectives on World Politics (3rd ed.). London: Routledge, 2006. Royo, Joe. “British Military Decline 1919-1939”. Small Wars Journal, 11 Jul 2012. 14 March 2013. Sanders, Ralph. Executive Decision Making Process. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999. Taylor, Mike. The Leaders of World War II. Minneapolis: ABDO, 1998. Tucker, Spencer C. and Roberts, Priscilla Mary. World War 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005. Read More