Formal group photograph of British and French officers and commissioners outside the house of the Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies of Occupation, Marienberg.18th Hussars in Cologne, 6 December 1918.General Lord Plumer, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief the British Army of the Rhine, taking the salute from the 29th Division entering Cologne by the Hohenzollern Bridge.Two tanks passing through Cologne for inspection by the VI Corps commander, Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Haldane, June 1919.
The first British Army of the Rhine was created in March 1919 to implement the occupation of the Rhineland. It was originally composed of five corps, composed of two divisions each, plus a cavalry division:[1]
In August 1920, Winston Churchill, as Secretary of State for War, told Parliament that the BAOR was made up of approximately 13,360 troops, consisting of staff, cavalry, Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, infantry, machine gun corps, tanks, and the usual ancillary services. The troops were located principally in the vicinity of Cologne at an approximate cost per month of £300,000.[2]The Cologne Post was a newspaper published for members of the BAOR during this period.[3]
From 1922 the BAOR was organised into two brigades:[1]
The second British Army of the Rhine was formed on 25 August 1945 from the British Liberation Army.[5] Its original function was to control the corps districts which were running the military government of the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany. After the assumption of government by civilians, it became the command formation for the troops in West Germany only, rather than being responsible for administration as well.[6]
There were significant reductions in the force in 1955-58. British financial difficulties grew in the autumn of 1957, with gold and dollar reserves falling significantly further.[10] As a result of continuing financial pressures, "Britain secured NATO's and [the] WEU's agreement to a second reduction in BAOR from 63,500 to 55,000 men (about 7 brigade groups) for FY1958/9."[11] In 1967, the force was reduced in strength to 53,000 soldiers, compared with 80,000, ten years earlier.[12]
There were a series of exercises in BAOR in 1975 under the code name "Wide Horizon" to test the new small-division organisation as thoroughly as possible in command post and field training exercises.[13] It culminated in a field exercise involving elements of two divisions. Following the exercises BAOR was reorganised from three to four divisions in January 1978.[14]
By 1984 the BAOR was the largest overseas deployment of British troops. While troops numbers in Hong Kong and the Falkland Islands numbered 9,000 and 2,500 respectively, the BAOR had 50,000 soldiers stationed in Germany, with a further 150,000 Germans working for the BAOR. The direct public expenditure cost of this force was about £2.6 billion in 1984.[15]
Blume, Peter (2006), BAOR – Vehicles Of The British Army Of The Rhine – Fahrzeuge der Britischen Rheinarmee – 1945–1979, Tankograd{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Blume, Peter (2007), BAOR: The Final Years – Vehicles Of The British Army Of The Rhine – Fahrzeuge der Britischen Rheinarmee – 1980–1994, Tankograd{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Dockrill, Saki (1997). "Retreat from the continent? Britain's motives for troop reductions in West Germany, 1955–1958". Journal of Strategic Studies. 20 (3): 45–70.
