So I know someone is going to answer, “they never really did” because thats probably true. But what I’m asking is after Dunkirk the British were in no state for a war or even a battle, but when did they actually recover enough to be confident that their Military was once again a competent fighting force? Like was it a couple months afterwards? Or was it not till 44 when the Americans were really ready for war in Europe. Because I know about the North African campaign and the Italian one, but those seem to be more of warm ups and proving grounds for both the British and the Americans. Thank you.
... after Dunkirk the British were in no state for a war or even a battle
The British army was certainly in no state for a large-scale direct land battle with Germany in the summer of 1940, but in terms of the war as a whole that wasn't the plan at all. British strategy was based around a long-term, global, industrial and economic war of air and sea power. The idea of Britain standing alone, though in evidence at the time and perhaps even more so since, doesn't really stack up when considering the British Empire, also a point made at the time. For such a conflict the navy and air force were critical, and competent, branches of the military; Phillips Payson O'Brien points out in How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II that Britain, the US, Japan, and Germany devoted between 65 and 80% of their economic output to aircraft, ships and anti-aircraft equipment. The Royal Air Force was ready for, and successful in, the defensive Battle of Britain (though much less so offensively for the first years of the strategic bombing campaign); the Royal Navy guaranteed the safety of Britain itself and enabled the globe-spanning battlefield (the "super-battlefield" as O'Brien puts it). The army had not been the top priority during rearmament, and it took several years to implement the education, training and doctrine that enabled the citizen armies of democratic nations to take on totalitarian regimes; Jonathan Fennell's Fighting the People's War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War is very good on this, he puts the transformation as starting in mid-1942 with Montgomery's appointment and approach coinciding with the build-up of material enabling Commonwealth forces to take to the offensive in the Western Desert.
