The Naval Officer and Interwar Society

Abstract

It is impossible to understand what happened to the officers of the executive branch of the Royal Navy between the two World Wars and the way in which they reacted to change without some understanding of the officer, what kind of man he was, where (in the broader society of which he was a part) he had come from, and, above all, how he had been formed, even moulded. Apart from those of senior rank, the officers of the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries are poorly covered by the literature, Jones¹ and more recently Davison² being notable exceptions. Thus, this chapter and the next provide an essential background and describe the executive branch officer as he entered the interwar period: where he stood in society, how he had been educated and trained, but above all his motivations, in modern terminology his mindset, and attempts to divine his morale and the likely influences upon it.