The British Army of the Rhine

The British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) began life in 1945 as a postwar administrative headquarters deployed in support of the civilian authority of the British zone of occupation, northern Germany. With the activation of a NATO unified command structure in 1951, BAOR became an integral part, along with Belgian, Canadian, and Dutch army units, of the Northern Army Group (NORTHAG). Deployed on the European Central Front with its NORTHAG sister formations, BAOR was a significant feature of NATO’s forward shield of ground forces to deter or, if deterrence failed, to repel a major Warsaw Pact offensive on the Continent. To improve its combat effectiveness BAOR was equipped since the early 1960s with tactical nuclear weapons, and in so doing, became the first formation of the British army trained to fight and prevail on a nuclear battlefield. The deployment of BAOR on the European Central Front was symbolic of British political intent vis-à-vis European security and was the military means by which Britain sought to deter a conventional or nuclear Warsaw Pact attack. The history of BAOR, then, is not simply a history of an army formation. It is a history of British European security commitments, of NATO military strategy, and of the changing character of land warfare after 1945. This annotated bibliography presents the best quality scholarship relating to BAOR, from its inception until its replacement under the conditions of the 1994 Options for Change defense review with the twenty-five-thousand strong British Forces Germany.