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Army, Empire, and Cold War: The British Army and Military Policy, 1945-1971

Online ISBN:
9780191739224
Print ISBN:
9780199548231
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Army, Empire, and Cold War: The British Army and Military Policy, 1945-1971

David French
David French
Professor Emeritus, University College London
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Published online:
24 May 2012
Published in print:
26 January 2012
Online ISBN:
9780191739224
Print ISBN:
9780199548231
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The veterans of the Fourteenth Army who fought in Burma between 1942 and 1945 called themselves ‘the forgotten army’. But that appellation could equally well be applied to the whole of the British army after 1945. Histories of Britain's post‐war defence policy have usually focused on how and why Britain acquired a nuclear deterrent. This book takes a new look at it by placing the army centre‐stage. Drawing on archival sources that have hardly been used by historians, it shows how British governments tried to create an army that would enable them to maintain their position as a major world power at a time when their economy struggled to foot the bill. The result was a growing mismatch between the military resources that the government thought it could afford on the one hand, and a long list of overseas commitments, in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East, that it was reluctant to surrender. The result was that the British created a Potemkin army, a force that had an outwardly impressive facade, but that in reality had only very limited war‐fighting capabilities.

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