BEF & Ten Year Rule

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BEF & Ten Year Rule

The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the name of the British Army in Western Europe from 1939 to 1940, in the early stages of the Second World War.

During the 1930s, the British government planned to deter war by rearming from the very low level of readiness of the early 30s and abolished the Ten Year Rule^^. The bulk of the extra money went to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force but plans were made to re-equip a small number of Army and Territorial divisions, potentially for service overseas.

The BEF had been established in 1938, in readiness for war, after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss of March 1938 and made claims on Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, that led to the Munich Agreement (30 September 1938), ceding Sudetenland to Germany and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia (15 March 1939). After the French and British governments had promised to defend Poland, the German invasion of Poland began on 1 September and on 3 September, after the expiry of an ultimatum, the British and French declared war on Germany.

The BEF (General Lord Gort) began moving to France in September 1939. The British assembled along the Belgian–French border on the left of the French First Army as part of the French 1er groupe d'armées (1st Army Group) of the Front du Nord-est (North-Eastern Front). Most of the BEF spent the Phoney War digging field defences on the French–Belgian border before the Battle of France (Fall Gelb) began on 10 May 1940. The BEF constituted 10 percent of the Allied forces on the Western Front. The BEF participated in the Dyle Plan, a rapid advance into Belgium to the line of the river Dyle but had to retreat through Belgium and north-western France, with the rest of the 1 er groupe d'armées, after the German breakthrough further south at the Battle of Sedan. The BEF, French and Belgian forces were evacuated from Dunkirk on the French North Sea coast in Operation Dynamo.

Saar Force, the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division (with reinforcements), had been detached for service along the Maginot Line as part of a plan for the BEF units to gain experience. The force fought with local French units after 10 May, then joined the Tenth Army along with the improvised Beauman Division and the 1st Armoured Division, to fight in the Battle of Abbeville (27 May – 4 June) on the south side of the Somme. The British government attempted to re-build the BEF with divisions training in Britain, troops from France and lines-or-communications troops south of the Somme river (informally known as the 2nd BEF) but after the success of the second German offensive in France (Fall Rot) over the Somme and Aisne rivers, the troops were evacuated from Le Havre in Operation Cycle (10–13 June) and the French Atlantic and Mediterranean ports in Operation Ariel (15–25 June, unofficially to 14 August).

^^ The Ten Year Rule was a British government guideline, first adopted in August 1919, 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".

The suggestion for the rule came from Winston Churchill, who in 1919 was Secretary of State for War and Air. Former Prime Minister Lord Balfour unsuccessfully argued to the Committee of Imperial Defence which adopted the rule that "nobody could say that from any one moment war was an impossibility for the next ten years… we could not rest in a state of unpreparedness on such an assumption by anybody. To suggest that we could be nine and a half years away from preparedness would be a most dangerous suggestion".

In 1928 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. In 1931 the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald wanted to abolish the Ten Year Rule because he thought it unjustified based on the international situation. This was bitterly opposed by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson who succeeded in keeping the rule.

There were cuts in defence spending as a result of this rule, with defence spending going down from £766 million in 1919–20, to £189 million in 1921–22, to £102 million in 1932.[4] In April 1931 the First Sea Lord, Sir Frederick Field, claimed in a report to the Committee of Imperial Defence that the Royal Navy had declined not only in relative strength compared to other Great Powers but "owing to the operation of the 'ten-year-decision' and the clamant need for economy, our absolute strength also has...been so diminished as to render the fleet incapable, in the event of war, of efficiently affording protection to our trade". Field also claimed that the navy was below the standard required for keeping open Britain's sea communications during wartime and that if the navy moved to the East to protect the Empire there would not be enough ships to protect the British Isles and its trade from attack and that no port in the entire British Empire was "adequately defended".

The Ten Year Rule was abandoned by the Cabinet on 23 March 1932, but this decision was countered with: "...this must not be taken to justify an expanding expenditure by the Defence Services without regard to the very serious financial and economic situation" which the country was in due to the Great Depression.

A group of retired admirals have called the planned decade-long gap between the retirement of the Ark Royal and the coming into service of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers a new "10-year rule"

British Expeditionary Force (World War II) .

British Expeditionary Force (World War II) - after Dunkirk .