However, after the fall of France in June 1940, the Navy was obligated to remain neutral under the terms of the armistice that created the truncated state of Vichy France.
Worldwide, some 100 naval vessels and their crews heeded General Charles de Gaulle‘s call to join forces with the British, but the bulk of the fleet, including all its capital ships, transferred loyalty to Vichy.
Concerned that the German Navy might somehow gain control of the ships, the British mounted an attack on Mers-el-Kébir, the Algerian city where many of them were harbored.
The capital ships were a primary goal of the occupation, but before they could be seized they were scuttled by their own crews.
A few small ships and submarines managed to escape in time, and these joined de Gaulle’s Free French Naval Forces, an arm of Free France that fought as an adjunct of the Royal Navy until the end of the war.
In 1944, after the landings of the Allies in France (Normandy, Provence), they expelled the German Army, putting an end to the Vichy Regime.
France and Britain declared war on Germany when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. After the Phoney War from 1939 to 1940, within seven weeks, the Germans invaded and defeated France and forced the British off the continent. France formally surrendered to Germany.
In August 1943, the de Gaulle and Giraud forces merged in a single chain of command subordinated to Anglo-American leadership, meanwhile opposing French forces on the Eastern Front were subordinated to Soviet or German leaderships. This in-exile French force together with the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) played a variable-scale role in the eventual liberation of France by the Western Allies and the defeat of Vichy France, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Japanese empire.
Vichy France fought for control over the French overseas empire with the Free French forces, which were helped by Britain and the U.S. By 1943, all of the colonies, except for Indochina, had joined the Free French cause.
The number of Free French troops grew with Allied success in North Africa and subsequent rallying of the Army of Africa which pursued the fight against the Axis fighting in many campaigns and eventually invading Italy, occupied France and Germany from 1944 to 1945 by demanding unconditional surrender to the Axis Powers in the Casablanca Conference.
On October 23, 1944, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union officially recognized de Gaulle’s regime as the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) which replaced the in-exile Vichy French State (its government having fled to Sigmaringen in western Germany) and preceded the Fourth Republic (1946).
Recruitment in liberated France led to enlargements of the French armies. By the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, France had 1,250,000 troops, 10 divisions of which were fighting in Germany.
An expeditionary corps was created to liberate French Indochina then occupied by the Japanese. During the course of the war, French military losses totaled 212,000 dead, of which 92,000 were killed through the end of the campaign of 1940, 58,000 from 1940 to 1945 in other campaigns, 24,000 lost while serving in the French resistance, and a further 38,000 lost while serving with the German Army (including 32,000 “malgré-nous“).
The RAF underwent rapid expansion prior to and during the Second World War. Under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan of December 1939, the air forces of British Commonwealth countries trained and formed “Article XV squadrons” for service with RAF formations. Many individual personnel from these countries, and exiles from occupied Europe, also served with RAF squadrons. By the end of the war the Royal Canadian Air Force had contributed more than 30 squadrons to serve in RAF formations, similarly, approximately a quarter of Bomber Command’s personnel were Canadian.[16] Additionally, the Royal Australian Air Force represented around nine percent of all RAF personnel who served in the European and Mediterranean theatres.[17]
The Avro Lancaster heavy bomber was extensively used during the strategic bombing of Germany.
In the Battle of Britain in 1940, the RAF defended the skies over Britain against the numerically superior German Luftwaffe.
In what is perhaps the most prolonged and complicated air campaign in history, the Battle of Britain contributed significantly to the delay and subsequent indefinite postponement of Hitler‘s plans for an invasion of the United Kingdom (Operation Sea Lion). In the House of Commons on 20 August, prompted by the ongoing efforts of the RAF, Prime Minister Winston Churchill eloquently made a speech to the nation, where he said “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.
While RAF bombing of Germany began almost immediately upon the outbreak of war, under the leadership of Air Chief Marshal Harris, these attacks became increasingly devastating from 1942 onward as new technology and greater numbers of superior aircraft became available.
The British Army The British Army during World War I fought the largest and most costly war in its long history.
Unlike the French and German Armies, the British Army was made up exclusively of volunteers—as opposed to conscripts—at the beginning of the conflict.
Furthermore, the British Army was considerably smaller than its French and German counterparts.
Men of the Wiltshire Regiment attacking near Thiepval, 7 August 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.
During World War I, there were four distinct British armies.
The first comprised approximately 247,000 soldiers of the regular army, over half of which were posted overseas to garrison the British Empire, supported by some 210,000 reserves and a potential 60,000 additional reserves.
This component formed the backbone of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which was formed for service in France and became known as the Old Contemptibles.
The second army was provided by the approximately 246,000-strong Territorial Force, initially allocated to home defence but used to reinforce the BEF after the regular army suffered heavy losses in the opening battles of the war.
The third army was Kitchener’s Army, comprising men who answered Lord Kitchener’s call for volunteers in 1914–1915 and which went into action at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
The fourth army was the reinforcement of existing formations with conscripts after the introduction of compulsory service in January 1916.
By the end of 1918, the British Army had reached its maximum strength of 3,820,000 men and could field over 70 divisions.
The vast majority of the British Army fought in the main theatre of war on the Western Front in France and Belgium against the German Empire.
Some units were engaged in Italy and Salonika against Austria-Hungary and the Bulgarian Army, while other units fought in the Middle East,
Africa and Mesopotamia—mainly against the Ottoman Empire—and one battalion fought alongside the Japanese Army in China during the Siege of Tsingtao.
The war also posed problems for the army commanders, given that, prior to 1914, the largest formation any serving General in the BEF had commanded on operations was a division.
The expansion of the British Army saw some officers promoted from brigade to corps commander in less than a year.
Army commanders also had to cope with the new tactics and weapons that were developed. With the move from manoeuvre to trench warfare, both the infantry and the artillery had to learn how to work together.
During an offensive, and when in defence, they learned how to combine forces to defend the front line. Later in the war, when the Machine Gun Corps and the Tank Corps were added to the order of battle, they were also included in the new tactical doctrine.
The men at the front had to struggle with supply problems–there was a shortage of food; and disease was rife in the damp, rat-infested conditions.
Along with enemy action, many soldiers had to contend with new diseases: trench foot, trench fever and trench nephritis.
When the war ended in November 1918, British Army casualties, as the result of enemy action and disease, were recorded as 673,375 killed and missing, with another 1,643,469 wounded. The rush to demobilise at the end of the conflict substantially decreased the strength of the British Army, from its peak strength of 3,820,000 men in 1918 to 370,000 men by 1920.
During the First World War, the Royal Navy’s strength was mostly deployed at home in the Grand Fleet, confronting the German High Seas Fleet across the North Sea.
Several inconclusive clashes took place between them, chiefly the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
The British numerical advantage proved insurmountable, leading the High Seas Fleet to abandon any attempt to challenge British dominance.
Elsewhere in the world, the Navy hunted down the handful of German surface raiders at large.
During the Dardanelles Campaign against the Ottoman Empire in 1915, it suffered heavy losses during a failed attempt to break through the system of minefields and shore batteries defending the straits.
Upon entering the war, the Navy had immediately established a blockade of Germany.
The Navy’s Northern Patrol closed off access to the North Sea, while the Dover Patrol closed off access to the English Channel.
The Navy also mined the North Sea.
As well as closing off the Imperial German Navy’s access to the Atlantic, the blockade largely blocked neutral merchant shipping heading to or from Germany.
The blockade was maintained during the eight months after the armistice was agreed to force Germany to end the war and sign the Treaty of Versailles.
The most serious menace faced by the Navy came from the attacks on merchant shipping mounted by German U-boats.
For much of the war this submarine campaign was restricted by prize rules requiring merchant ships to be warned and evacuated before sinking. In 1915, the Germans renounced these restrictions and began to sink merchant ships on sight, but later returned to the previous rules of engagement to placate neutral opinion.
A resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 raised the prospect of Britain and its allies being starved into submission.
The Navy’s response to this new form of warfare had proved inadequate due to its refusal to adopt a convoy system for merchant shipping, despite the demonstrated effectiveness of the technique in protecting troop ships. The belated introduction of convoys sharply reduced losses and brought the U-boat threat under control.
