I've heard somewhere before that the British Empire had undergone a disarmament programme after WW1 believing it was unnecessary to have such a large military. Also Britain neglected to improve military technology unlike Japan.
Is this true? Was Britain not ready for WW2?
UK didn't disarm so much as it fell into decline after a period of experimentation in the 1920's, due to the budgetary demands of policing the Empire and the Great Depression.
Arguably, no one was really ready for World War II. Even the Japanese, despite their extensive military build-up throughout the 1920's and 1930's, were not prepared for anything beyond acquiring territory in Manchuria and Northern China.
No one was, not even Germany was as prepared as they'd hoped in 1939 and the Polish campaign was considered a bit of a disaster compared to it's projections at the time
Britain never really relied on its land armies, and after WW1 they disarmed a lot. As said, they did some interesting experiments in the 1920's but they did not implement it. The exact same thing happened in France, though it was a more serious issue as it relied much more on its land forces to defend its territory.
The major British fuckup was their naval choices. The Washington Naval Treaty forced every major nation to experiment in the naval field, and the British choices were overall bad. At the beginning of the war, their best ships were vastly outclassed by the German and Japanese ones. Even the French had somewhat better battleships. The Navy managed to perform well during the war though, holding its own on several theaters.
Japan was ready for the war, they just had no capacity to wage a full scale war.
Germany was also more ready than the UK, their equipment still lacked quality due to their "covert" rearmament but it was battle-tested in Spain.
The US was not ready, though they showed their capacity to gear their economy towards war and did not risk an invasion in the meantime.
France and USSR were not ready either, and contrary to Britain they could not delay an invasion of their territory.
If no one was ready for WW2, then how come Japan so easily seized British territory, outclassed the royal navy (technologically) and outclassed the royal air force (considerably)? Britain had more manpower to draw upon, far more resources and a much larger economy than all but the USA. Surely if no one was ready then Germany wouldn't so easily take France and outnumber the royal air force. KMS Bismarck was the most advanced ship in the world at the time whereas the royal navy was huge, but dusty.
I do believe that if not "ready", Germany had made all possible preparations for war (stocking up raw materials in prevision of sea blockade, for instance).
It's like in SC2: you might not be at 200/200 yet, but if you've got a 30 army population lead, you must push -hence making you ready for war though there is always room for improvement-.
>KMS Bismarck was the most advanced ship in the world
Bismarck was the worst investment in the pre-war Germany made, absolutely useless contribution
it's true that the only air force that was ready in Europe was the German one...
Thankfully Britain got the French buffer to kind of catch up, but that's it
>KMS Bismarck was the most advanced ship in the world
Nah, she had horrible armor layout, her 4 x 2 turret layout was suboptimal, her fire control system sucked, and less said about her secondary battery the better. If you want good early WW2 BBs you should look for the Showboat and the like instead of Biscuit and Fjord hikikomori.
>kills the Hood and nearly finishes off the Prince of Wales
>terrifies the British navy which devotes a lot of resources to stop it
>gets sunk by fuckin biplanes
Bismarck was an awesome battleship, which is still a terrible investment.
>kills the Hood
Sinking a 20 years old battlecruiser that had been in a dire need of major refit for a better part of the decade by that point is hardly impressive.
Designing a battleship and then using it for convoy raiding when the British have 15 battleships, 66 cruisers and 7 aircraft carriers probably isn't the brightest idea you could have either
Regardless of whether it was useful or not it certainly had the best technology. How come Britain didn't enhance it's navy to that degree? Britain could afford it with all it's colonies, wasn't it fairly obvious for Britain that they were going to be in a war?
My point is that for all the might of the British Empire, it was still outclassed by Germany despite the economic differences.
Britain was spread thin. It had commitments all over the globe, making it impossible to concentrate resources to the extent of defeating either Germany or Japan.
Nobody was truly ready for war, but some countries were better prepared than others. Germany had a greater presence on the continent than Great Britain and got a headstart on rearmament; being forced to abandon heavy weapons after the Treaty of Versailles was something of a boon in this respect, since it wasn't burdened with old and obsolete equipment like the British and the French were. Japan able to attain local superiority through numbers and familiarity with the conditions of warfare in the Pacific.
See my points on "old and obsolete equipment" and "commitments all over the globe". Germany and Japan were able to focus their attention on specific areas of their military, whereas Britain had to keep old things working, if only because it would have cost too much (both in time and resources) to replace them.
Do you know how many years it takes to build a battleship? Up until 1939 and the annexation of Czechoslovakia the government was under leadership who believed war with Germany had been avoided, and what do you mean "outclassed"? The pride and joy of the Kreigsmarine was BTFO by a Fairey Swordfish and a bunch of old outdated ships from the First World War and all it had to show for it was it sunk the Hood, a ship launched in 1916. Meanwhile Britain had several aircraft carriers (the actual new technology) and Germany had an abandoned project of one doing nothing
>it certainly had the best technology.
>8 15-inch guns vs North Carolina's 9 16-inchers
>almost 5000 tons heavier but still only had 1 knot of speed and 15mms of belt over NC
>hell, even the fucking french managed to pack equal amount of armor and guns to Biscuit into 35k ton Richelieu
>The pride and joy of the Kreigsmarine was BTFO by a Fairey Swordfish and a bunch of old outdated ships from the First World War and all it had to show for it was it sunk the Hood, a ship launched in 1916.
Still a better rum than Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had desu, there is no excuses when you lose a fight 2 VS 1 against a ship that is 20 years older than yours, has significantly less armor and only 6 large caliber guns to your 18.
>burdened with old and obsolete equipment
Its free steel! Literally just melt it all down, its easier than making new steel, especially when its in big solid chunks and you know its of the same type.
You meet some germaboos on this site, but this is the first time I've seen one claim the German navy outclassed the British.
I don't mean numerically, no navy did until 1943, i mean in terms of technology. Lots of ships in the RN were from ww1 whereas German ships like Bismarck, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst all had superior tech.
Also it took a long time for the RAF to surpass the Japanese Zero.
>Bismarck, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst all had superior tech.
They were obsolete when they were made. Aircraft carriers were where it was at. Battleships were irrelevant
Didn't Japan have superior Aircraft carriers to the RN? The RN may have invented the carrier but i thought Japanese carriers had larger capacity.
Britain wasn't ready for war due to the following of the policy of appeasement. They were intent on preventing a war, not improving technologies that they had no plans to use at all. It wasn't until 1938 that they considered the prospect of going to war so obviously they would have been behind the Germans who began re-arming in 1935.
Retracted the statement about british invention of flat-top carriers, i recall it was le French.
>Bismarck, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst all had superior tech.
All of those had shitty armor schemes, were undergunned for their displacement (especially Scharnhorsts), had overengineered fire control system that tended to knock itself out in basically every fight, and had horrible AA-suites.
I thought Scharnhorst and Gneisenau weren't designed to fight other Battleships. They were pretty successfull at comemrce raidung, sunk a carrier and Scharnhorsts end was way more badass than Bismarcks.
>Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us. I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today
>Swerves in
How long would Britain have needed to mobilise and upgrade a force large enough to successfully prevent an Invasion of France and push into Germany?
So instead of disarming and stagnating (as people have now answered the original question), what if like Germany, Britain re-armed?
If the french would had seen troops to the Ardenes they would had stopped the german spearhead
>Laughs in maginot line
They'd break their economy.
Britain's response to the challenges of WWII was pretty much optimal considering its capabilities.
Most Japanese fleet carriers didn't even have armoured flight decks
If Britain's economy would break then Germany's definitely would.
Germany has the advantage of being paradoxically in debt to itself rather than foreign or pirvate creditors
How they do that?
MEFO bills with indefinite 3 month extensions
Of course it would. The constant influx of plundered resources and slave labor was the only thing that kept it going to 1945.
War was not a choice for the Germans. It was a necessity.
Japan developed carrier operations to a higher level than the British, integrating them successfully as a major striking arm of their fleets. However, this was in part due to them learning from the British. Furthermore, their carriers and aviation suffered from defects as a result of design compromises. Avgas and munitions storage areas on carriers tended to be poorly protected, an issue further compounded by poor damage control. Their planes sacrificed armour to attain long range and low-speed manoeuvrability. Pilots were probably the best in the world by 1940, but this was only possible through a highly selective training program.