British Army in World War II

Abstract

There is a very extensive volume of literature on the British army and World War II. This is not solely down to the iconic status of the war in British memory, or its role in shaping British identity. The debates surrounding the causes of great victories and defeats still fire the imagination. The role of the army in the collapse of the British Empire provokes controversy, as indeed does the part played by citizen soldiers on the “road to 1945”—Labour’s unexpected landslide election victory at the conclusion of hostilities. The great generals—Montgomery, Slim, Auchinleck, and others—were remarkable characters, who closely guarded their reputations; their interventions in the decades following the Axis defeat provoked much rancor. A pervasive desire to understand “what it was like” has led to an upsurge of personal memoirs and “experience” books and analyses of how the war, and the institution of the army, impacted individuals in terms of their mental and physical health, their politics and identity. And still there is a debate about whether the army was any good. Did the country mobilize effectively for war? Did wartime leaders get strategy right, in terms of the lead up to and conduct of the war? Did senior officers devise an effective doctrinal and conceptual solution to the challenges of 20th-century industrial warfare? The answers to many of these questions can be found in the sample of literature below. A careful examination of these works will also, undoubtedly, lead to more questions and hopefully spark new histories and perspectives on Britain’s army in World War II.