Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The British Army was called on to fight around the world, starting with campaigns in Europe in 1940. After the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied Forces from France (May–June 1940), the army fought in the Mediterranean and Middle East theatres, and in the Burma Campaign.
Conscription during the First World War began when the British Parliament passed the Military Service Act in January 1916. The Act specified that single men aged 18 to 40 years old were liable to be called up for military service unless they were widowed with children, or were ministers of a religion.
During World War I, the Dominions raised their own armies, but were under the British command structure, and very much integrated into the British fighting forces. Over 2.5 million men, which included Canada sending 418,000 men overseas, Australia sending 322,000, South Africa sending 230,000, New Zealand sending 124,000, and other volunteers ...
Conscription was reintroduced in 1939, in the lead up to World War II, and continued in force until 1963. Northern Ireland was exempted from conscription legislation throughout the whole period. In all, eight million men were conscripted during both World Wars, as well as several hundred thousand younger single women. [272]
The military history of the United Kingdom in World War II covers the Second World War against the Axis powers, starting on 3 September 1939 with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France, followed by the UK's Dominions, Crown colonies and protectorates on Nazi Germany in response to the invasion of Poland by Germany. There was ...
Among the approximately one million foreign volunteers and conscripts who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II were ethnic Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Finns, Danes, French, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles, [1] Portuguese, Swedes, [2] Swiss along with people from Great Britain, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Balkans. [3]
Impressment was essentially a Royal Navy practice, reflecting the sheer size of the British fleet and its substantial manpower demands. While other European navies applied forced recruitment in times of war, this was generally done as an extension of the practice of formal conscription applied by most European armies from the Napoleonic Wars on.
British troops evacuated from Norway on Lancastria, June 1940. During the German invasion of Norway, there were battles off Narvik on 10 and 13 April, which the British were able to win. On 10 May 1940, the German Wehrmacht began the Western Campaign. Due to the rapid advance, the British Expeditionary Corps was forced to retreat to Dunkirk.