The Ten Year Rule

In August 1919 the Cabinet agreed that: It should be assumed, that the British Empire will not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years, and that no Expeditionary Force is required for this purpose.' This became known as the Ten Year Rule, and it justified immediate cuts in Britain's armed forces. Expenditure dropped from £692 million in 1919-20 to £115 million in 1921-22 and it did not rise again until 1934-35. Conscription was abolished in 1920, and manpower in the armed forces sank to below pre-war levels. In 1928, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, in order to keep the spending estimates of the service ministries in check, decided that the Ten Year Rule should be annually renewed. It was only abandoned in March 1932 as a result of the Manchurian crisis but, because the Disarmament Conference was still in progress, British rearmament could not begin until 1934,

The RAF

The First World War created exaggerated fears of the destructive potential of air power in any future conflict, In 1922, the Committee of Imperial Defence advised that, in the next war, 'railway traffic would be disorganised, food supplies would be interrupted and it is probable that after being subjected for several weeks to the strain of such an attack the population would be so demoralised that they would insist upon an armistice.' It followed that the only way to prevent destruction was to build a bomber fleet large enough to deter an enemy attack. The importance of bombing dominated strategic thinking about the role of air power until the late 1930s. But it did not mean that the RAF received any more money from the Treasury. The Ten Year Rule implied that there was no urgency to build a major bombing fleet, so the RAF suffered cuts along with the other two services. It was used as a cheap and effective method of policing far-flung Imperial territories. When the government concluded in 1934 that Germany was Britain's 'ultimate potential enemy', priority was given to rebuilding the RAF as an effective deterrent. The Defence White Paper of March 1935 declared that the 'principal role' of the RAF was 'to provide for the protection of the United Kingdom and particularly London against air attack.’  In the various expansion schemes produced between 1934 and 1938, priority was given to the production of bombers whose role in war would be to attack German cities in retaliation for any air assault on Britain. This strategy underpinned the government's reluctance to send the Army into Europe again - if we could bomb the Germans into submission, we would not need to send soldiers to fight them.  In September 1938 the Luftwaffe (German air force) was thought to be capable of dropping 945 tons of bombs on England in a single day. The Air Raids Precautions department estimated that there would be 50 casualties per ton. This explains why the Ministry of Health was expecting 600,000 deaths and 1,200,000 wounded from air raids alone in the first six months of war. In fact, German bombers did not have the range to reach England until their armies captured the Low Countries and northern France in 1940, and the total number of civilian deaths in Britain during the whole of the Second World War was 60,000.

The Royal Navy

After the First World War the Navy resumed its place as Britain's principal service. Its peacetime functions were to protect Britain's sea-borne trade route and defend the territories of the Empire. But its effectiveness was progressively eroded by government financial limitations and by international treaties. At the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22 the Navy had to accept equality with the Americans. Given that the likelihood of war against the USA was negligible, the Treaty at least ensured that Britain's navy was considerably larger than that of any potential rival. The Washington signatories also agreed not to build any new battleships or battle-cruisers for ten years. At the London Naval Conference in 1930 this ban was extended for a further five years, and Britain also agreed to limitations on the rebuilding of her cruiser and destroyer fleets. For most of the inter-war period the Royal Navy regarded Japan as its most likely potential enemy. This was welcomed by the governments of Australia and New Zealand, who relied on the British fleet to defend them. It appeared to be endorsed by the British government as well because, in response to the Manchurian crisis, the rebuilding of the base at Singapore was finally resumed in June 1932 after the postponements and delays of the 1920s. However in 1934, the threat posed by Hitler pushed Japan into second place in Britain's list of enemies. The Navy's strategic plans met a formidable obstacle in the shape of Neville Chamberlain, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1931 until 1937 and then Prime Minister. He was convinced that Britain could not afford to do anything other than ignore Japanese expansion.

The Army

The number of territories the Army was expected to defend had increased but, after 1918, its size was rapidly cut and by 1920 there were fewer men serving than there had been ten years earlier. The government's enthusiasm for cost-cutting came with a widespread feeling that the commitment of a huge army to fight in France had been a terrible aberration. British people remembered the costly losses of the battles such as the Somme and Passchendaele rather than the spectacular victories of 1918. It was assumed that only generals who were insensitive, ignorant and out of touch could have sent so many men to their deaths on the Western Front.  During the 1930s the British Army managed to squander the early lead in the use of machines and vehicles that it had established over its continental rivals. These failings were the result partly of government financial stringency and partly of squabbles between senior officers about the role of mechanised units in modern warfare. But they were also the product of confusion about the strategic role the British Army was expected to play.

Strategy and diplomacy

In 1922 the Cabinet told the Army that its responsibilities for the foreseeable future were home security and Imperial (Empire) defence. Throughout the inter-war period there were more British troops in India than anywhere else in the Empire outside the United Kingdom. In 1933 the government established a Defence Requirements Committee to advise on strategy and rearmament. Its first report, produced in February 1934, identified Germany as the 'ultimate potential enemy against whom our "long range" defence policy must be directed' The DRC recommended rebuilding all three services, including the preparation of a small Expeditionary Force of the British Army to fight on the Continent, it pointed out that the Low Countries were now more vital than ever to British security, because possession of their airfields would allow German bombers to reach industrial heartlands in the Midlands and the North. The Cabinet, dominated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, disagreed. Chamberlain wanted to deter the Germans, not fight them. He insisted that priority should be given to rebuilding the bombing capability of the RAF. The notion of equipping an army to fight in Europe was dropped. The Cabinet believed that public opinion would not accept it.

Avoiding a continental commitment

The DRC reported again in November 1035. The scale and pace of German rearmament was alarming, and the Abyssinian crisis had transformed Italy from a potential ally into a Mediterranean menace. The DRC report emphasised the fundamental problem facing British strategy and diplomacy: 'It is a cardinal requirement of our National and Imperial security that our foreign policy should be so conducted as to avoid the possible development of a situation in which we might be confronted simultaneously with the hostility of Japan in the Far East, Germany in the West, and any power on the main line of communication between the two.' The Cabinet scarcely needed reminding of this, but it reinforced Chamberlain in his hostility to the idea of preparing an Army for fighting in Europe, even though the DRC still recommended doing so. When the Arab Revolt broke out in 1937 the need to send more troops to Palestine pushed the 'continental commitment' even further into the background.