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At the end of the Second World War, there were approximately five million servicemembers in the British Armed Forces. The demobilisation and reassimilation of this vast force back into civilian life was one of the first and greatest challenges facing the postwar British government.

Demobilisation plan

The wartime Minister of Labour and National Service and Britain's first post-war Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, was the chief architect of the demobilisation plan. The speed of its introduction was attributed to the tide of public opinion, which favoured slogans and policies that appealed to peace and disengagement. According to some sources, it was also driven by the labour shortage due to post-war reconstruction. The plan received bipartisan support, which was not seen during the 1930s when Labour and Conservative positions lacked consensus.

The details involving the criteria and framework for demobilisation were unveiled to the public on 22 September 1944. It was scheduled to be implemented on 18 June 1945 and, a month before that date, British soldiers were already well informed about the process, including the welfare system that would support the veterans. Under the plan, most servicemen and servicewomen were to be released from the armed forces according to their 'age-and-service number', which, as its name suggests, was calculated from their age and the months they had served in uniform. A small number of so-called 'key men' whose occupational skills were vital to postwar reconstruction were to be released ahead of their turn. Married women and men aged fifty or more were also given immediate priority.

Service personnel being demobilised passed through special demobilisation centres.

Release process

The release process began on schedule, about six weeks after V-E Day. Decommissioned soldiers received a one-time grant of £83 each, the promise of a right to return to their old jobs, and a set of civilian clothing, which included the so-called "demob suit", shirts, underclothes, raincoats, hat, and shoes. At the end of 1945, demobilised soldiers reached 750,000 and this number doubled two months later after Japan's surrender. By 1947, about 4.3 million men and women returned to 'civvy street'. The process was not without controversy. Frustration at the allegedly slow pace of release led to a number of disciplinary incidents in all branches of the armed services in the winter of 1945–6, most famously the so-called RAF 'strikes' in India and South East Asia. This frustration led to the abandonment of some of the pre-release programmes.

Personal challenges

Aside from the institutional problems of release, returning service-men and -women faced all kinds of personal challenges on their return to civilian life. Britain had undergone six years of bombardment and blockade, and there was a shortage of many of the basic essentials of living, including food, clothing, and housing. Husbands and wives also had to adjust to living together again after many years apart. One indicator of the social problems this caused was the postwar divorce rate; over 60,000 applications were processed in 1947 alone, a figure that would not be reached again until the 1960s.

Demobilisation centres

At the end of World War II, British servicemen and women returned to civilian life by passing through a demobilisation centre. Personnel returning to this country from abroad for the purpose of release passed first through a disembarkation unit. They then went on to a dispersal unit.

Military Disembarkation Camp Units

Military Dispersal Units

See also

• Civil Resettlement Units
• Demobilization
• Demobilisation of the Australian military after World War II
• Demobilization of United States armed forces after World War II
• Demob suit
• Military discharge
• Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II
• National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939
• Royal Air Force Mutiny of 1946
• Post–World War II demobilization strikes

References and sources

References

1. Allport (2009), p. 3
2. Nolfo, Ennio Di (1991). The Atlantic Pact forty Years later: A Historical Reappraisal. New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 79. ISBN 3110127385.
3. ^ Grant, Neil (2017). British Tank Crewman 1939-45. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 62. ISBN 9781472816979.
4. ^ Broad, Roger (2017-05-27). Volunteers and Pressed Men: How Britain and its Empire Raised its Forces in Two World Wars. Fonthill Media.
5. Hollowell, Jonathan (2003). Britain Since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 5. ISBN 0631209670.
6. ^ Dale, Robert (2015). Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 18, 19. ISBN 9781472590770.
7. Allport (2009), p. 23-4
8. Allport (2009), p. 26
9. "VJ Day 75: Troops Returning to a Changed UK". Royal British Legion. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
10. Allport (2009), p. 43
11. Allport (2009), p. 87
12. HL Deb 17 October 1945 vol 137 cc353-5, UK Parliament

Sources

• Alan Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War, Yale University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-300-14043-6
• Hansard - HL Deb 17 October 1945 vol 137 cc353-5

Further reading

• Allport, Alan. Demobbed: coming home after the Second World War (Yale University Press, 2009) in UK.

• Broad, Roger. The Radical General: Sir Ronald Adam and Britain's New Model Army 1941-46 (The History Press, 2010),ISBN 978-0-7524-6559-3
• Summers, Julie. Stranger in the House: Women's Stories of Men Returning from the Second World War (Simon and Schuster, 2009) online.
• Summers, Julie. When the children came home: Stories of wartime evacuees (Simon and Schuster, 2011) online.

• Turner, Barry, and Tony Rennell, When Daddy Came Home: How Family Life Changed Forever in 1945, Pimlico, 1995, ISBN 0-7126-7469-1

External links

• 1945 in the United Kingdom
• 1940s in military history
• Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II
• British Armed Forces
• Aftermath of World War II in the United Kingdom