It was most notoriously the case in the 1930s, consideration of which forms a substantial part of Victory to Defeat (★★★★☆), Lord Dannatt’s and Robert Lyman’s detailed account of the Army from the eve of the Armistice to the Fall of France. Both men are former soldiers, Dannatt having ended his career as Chief of the General Staff; and they bring their military perspective to their account of this vitally important period. As such, their work is highly useful; yet some of their interpretations are familiar, and their estimate of some of the political realities at times unjust.
They make the highly sensible point, for instance, that between the wars, the main failure of politicians on the Army was a lack of imagination: they simply could not envisage another war like 1914-18, and wanted an army for the Empire, not for Europe. The authors argue that the level of casualties endured in the Great War by the Empire was unsurprising given the numbers of men under arms, and proportionately far lower than those suffered by the Germans or French. They also argue that the fightback after the German spring offensive in 1918 was effective because the Army had learned so much about modern, mechanised warfare during the conflict. They wonder, therefore, why the experience of the war led to such entrenched pacifism, and such resistance to protecting the country.
Yet that was where political reality kicked in. Belief in the League of Nations and disarmament was nearly universal. The Fulham by-election of 1933, which returned a disarmament candidate, spooked Stanley Baldwin, who, though not prime minister, led the largest party in Ramsay MacDonald’s coalition. It was the year in which the Oxford Union said it would not fight for King and Country.