how many troops did great britain have in ww2
British Army during the Second World War The pre-war British Army was trained and equipped to be a small, mechanised, professional army. Its main function was to garrison the British Empire. It became evident early in the war that its initial structure and manpower was woefully unprepared and ill-equipped for a war with multiple enemies on multiple fronts. The British Army, an all-volunteer force until 1939, was small in comparison to its enemies at the start of the Second World War in 1939, as it had been in the First World War. By the end of the Second World War, however, over 3.5 million men had served in the British Army.