The history of the British Royal Navy goes back more than a thousand years to King Alfred’s first sea battle in 882. In 1660, the Kingdom of England created a national naval force after King Charles II was restored to the throne. In 1707, England’s naval force merged with the smaller Royal Scots Navy after England and Scotland joined together to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. The two had actually begun operating together from the time of the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

At the beginning of World War II, the British Royal Navy had a smaller fleet as a result of the World War I treaties. Great Britain had many global commitments and their first task was to protect the country’s trade. The country was very much dependent upon food imports and raw materials. The Royal Navy’s resources were allocated around the world between several fleets and stations.

Soon after the war started they supplied critical protection for British evacuation operations from Norway. During this evacuation six destroyers and an aircraft carrier were lost, but over 300,000 men were saved. Later on, at Dunkirk, 7,000 British Royal Navy men were killed.

At the beginning of World War II, the Royal Navy had 19 battleships and 80 cruisers. 50 older destroyers, along with other smaller crafts, were acquired from America in exchange for various naval bases. When World War II ended, the Royal Navy had 16 battleships, 50 carriers, 62 cruisers, nearly 200 destroyers, 131 submarines and also 9,000 other ships. Throughout the war they lost three hundred and fifty major warships and over one thousand smaller ships. At the beginning of the war there were 134,000 men in the Royal Navy and by the end of the war over 800,000 men were part of the navy. Over 50,000 sailors died in the war. The Royal Marines had about 80,000 men in 1945, and they took part in all of the important landings.

The Royal Navy defended Great Britain from invasion, fought enemies and also established the nation as the most dominant sea power during the nineteenth century. Today, the role of the British Royal Navy involves peacekeeping, as well as fighting drug trafficking and piracy. The story of the Royal Navy is an important part of the Great Britain’s history. The Royal Navy has a museum located in Portsmouth, England and is one of Great Britain’s oldest and most well-known maritime museums

On September 1, 1939, German forces under the control of Adolf Hitler bombard Poland on land and from the air. World War II had begun.

Germany invaded Poland to regain lost territory and ultimately rule their neighbour to the east. The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy.

Germany's blitzkrieg approach was characterized by extensive bombing early on to destroy the enemy’s air capacity, railroads, communication lines and munitions dumps, followed by a massive land invasion with overwhelming numbers of troops, tanks and artillery. After the German forces had ploughed their way through, devastating a swath of territory, infantry moved in, picking off any remaining resistance.

Once Hitler had a base of operations within the target country, he immediately began setting up “security” forces to annihilate all enemies of his Nazi ideology, whether racial, religious or political. Concentration camps for slave laborers and the extermination of civilians went hand-in-hand with German rule of a conquered nation. For example, within one day of the German invasion of Poland, Hitler was already setting up SS “Death’s Head” regiments to terrorize the populace.

The Polish army made several severe strategic miscalculations early on. Although 1 million strong, the Polish forces were severely under-equipped and attempted to take the Germans head-on, rather than falling back to more natural defensive positions.

The outmoded thinking of the Polish commanders coupled with the antiquated state of its military were simply no match for the overwhelming and modern-mechanized German forces. And, of course, any hope the Poles might have had of a Soviet counter-response was dashed with the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Nonaggression Pact.

Great Britain would respond with bombing raids over Germany three days later.

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1. ‘We lie within a few minutes’ striking distance’
   
2. ‘We take our stand for freedom’
   
3. ‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’
   
4. ‘We shall never surrender’
   
5. ‘This was their finest hour’
   
6. ‘The few’
   
7. ‘An iron curtain has descended’
   
8. ‘The nation… had the lion heart’