British Army During World War I - Aftermath

Aftermath

Further information: History of the British Army, Inter-War period (1919–1939)

The British Army during World War I was the largest military force that Britain had put into the field up to that point. On the Western Front, the BEF ended the war as the strongest fighting force, more experienced and larger than the American Army, its morale was in better shape than the French Army.

The cost of victory was high. The official "final and corrected" casualty figures for the British Army—including the Territorial Force—were issued on 10 March 1921. The losses for the period between 4 August 1914 and 30 September 1919 included 573,507 "killed in action, died from wounds and died of other causes" and 254,176 missing (minus 154,308 released prisoners), for a net total of 673,375 dead and missing. Casualty figures also indicated that there were 1,643,469 wounded.

For some, the fighting did not end in 1918. The army dispatched troops to Russia during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, which was followed by the Anglo-Irish War in January 1919 and the Third Anglo-Afghan War in May 1919. The third Afghan war was followed by the 1920 conflict between British forces and Somaliland dervishes. Those not involved in fighting or occupation duties were demobilised. The demobilisation of 4,000,000 men that followed the end of the war had, within a year, reduced the army to 800,000; by November 1920, this figure had fallen to 370,000 men.

The Ten Year Rule was introduced in August 1919, which stipulated that the 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, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, successfully urged the Cabinet to make the rule self-perpetuating and hence it was in force unless specifically countermanded. There were cuts in defence spending as a result of this rule, falling from £766 million in 1919–1920, to £189 million in 1921–1922, and to £102 million in 1932.

The British Army tried to learn the lessons of World War I, and adopt them into its pre-war doctrine. In the 1920s and much of the 1930s, the General Staff tried to establish a small, mechanised, professional army and formed the Experimental Mechanized Force, but with the lack of any identified threat, its main function reverted to garrison duties around the British Empire.