page_title: British Army
section_title: World Wars (1914–1945)
hierarchical_section_title: British Army / History / World Wars (1914–1945)
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Großbritannien. Alfred Leete (1882–1933). Britons (Kitchener) wants you (Briten /Kitchener/ braucht Euch). 1914 (Nachdruck), 74 x 50 cm. (Slg.Nr. 552). Das als Titelblatt des „London Opinion“ 1914 erstmals abgedruckte Bild zeigt den durch seine Kommanden in Kolonialkriegen populären Kriegsminister Lord Kitchener. Das werbepsychologisch bahnbrechende Sujet des den Betrachter fixierenden Blickes mit dem perspektivisch vergrößerten ausgestreckten Zeigefinger wurde in verschiedenen Ländern kopiert – am erfolgreichsten in den USA und in der Sowjetunion. English: UK. Alfred Leete (1882-1933). Britons (Kitchener) wants you (British / Kitchener / needs you). 1914 (reprint), 74 x 50 cm. (Slg.Nr. 552). The title page of the "London Opinion" in 1914 for the first time printed images showing popular by its command posts in colonial wars War Minister Lord Kitchener. The advertising psychologically pioneering subject of fixing the viewer with the look in perspective enlarged outstretched forefinger was copied in several countries - the most successful in the United States and the Soviet Union.
context_page_description: The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of British Armed Forces. As of 2019, the British Army comprises just over 79,300 trained regular personnel and just over 27,200 trained reserve personnel.
  The modern British Army traces back to 1707, with an antecedent in the English Army that was created during the Restoration in 1660. The term British Army was adopted in 1707 after the Acts of Union between England and Scotland. Members of the British Army swear allegiance to the monarch as their commander-in-chief, but the Bill of Rights of 1689 requires parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army. Therefore, Parliament approves the army by passing an Armed Forces Act at least once every five years. The army is administered by the Ministry of Defence and commanded by the Chief of the General Staff.
  The British Army has seen action in major wars between the world's great powers, including the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and the First and Second World Wars.
context_section_description: Great Britain was challenged by other powers, primarily the German Empire and the Third Reich, during the 20th century. A century earlier it vied with Napoleonic France for global pre-eminence, and Hanoverian Britain's natural allies were the kingdoms and principalities of northern Germany. By the middle of the 19th century, Britain and France were allies in preventing Russia's appropriation of the Ottoman Empire, although the fear of French invasion led shortly afterwards to the creation of the Volunteer Force. By the first decade of the 20th century, the United Kingdom was allied with France (by the Entente Cordiale) and Russia (which had a secret agreement with France for mutual support in a war against the Prussian-led German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
  When the First World War broke out in August 1914 the British Army sent the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), consisting mainly of regular army troops, to France and Belgium. The fighting bogged down into static trench warfare for the remainder of the war. In 1915 the army created the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force to invade the Ottoman Empire via Gallipoli, an unsuccessful attempt to capture Constantinople and secure a sea route to Russia.
  The First World War was the most devastating in British military history, with nearly 800,000 men killed and over two million wounded. Early in the war, the BEF was virtually destroyed and was replaced first by volunteers and then by a conscript force. Major battles included those at the Somme and Passchendaele. Advances in technology saw the advent of the tank (and the creation of the Royal Tank Regiment) and advances in aircraft design (and the creation of the Royal Flying Corps) which would be decisive in future battles. Trench warfare dominated Western Front strategy for most of the war, and the use of chemical weapons (disabling and poison gases) added to the devastation.
  The Second World War broke out in September 1939 with the Russian and German Army's invasion of Poland. British assurances to the Poles led the British Empire to declare war on Germany. As in the First World War, a relatively small BEF was sent to France but then hastily evacuated from Dunkirk as the German forces swept through the Low Countries and across France in May 1940.
  After the British Army recovered from its earlier defeats, it defeated the Germans and Italians at the Second Battle of El Alamein in North Africa in 1942–1943 and helped drive them from Africa. It then fought through Italy and, with the help of American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and Free French forces, and took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944; nearly half the Allied soldiers were British. In the Far East, the British Army rallied against the Japanese in the Burma Campaign and regained the British Far Eastern colonial possessions.
caption: The iconic Lord Kitchener Wants You poster has been much imitated
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