DOCUMENT STUDY: WAR—A POSITIVE VIEW...Ernst Junger was a German soldier. He was wounded fourteen...

The First World War 1914–1919 | 147

DOCUMENT STUDY: WAR—A POSIT IVE VIEW

Source 8.12

I adore war, it’s like a big picnic without the object lesson of a picnic. I’ve never been so well or so happy. No-body grumbles at one for being dirty. I’ve only had my boots off once in the last ten days and only washed twice but we cook good hot food in the dark in the morning before we start and in the night when we get back to our horses and we take our good cold rations with us in the daytime. It is all the best fun.

Captain Julian Grenfell, in a letter to his mother, date unknown. Grenfell was killed in action on 26 March 1915.

Source 8.13

Just recently I have discovered an old 12th Division man lives close to me and my heart leaps when I spot him walking up the road. We never miss a natter, and his eyes shine as we go over … our war experiences. We catch vivid memories of the past and are glad that we were young in 1914.

A correspondent writing to Coppard said: ‘Like yourself, I would not have missed it—hooray!’

G. Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, 1980, p. 136 & Appendix.

Source 8.14

Ernst Junger was a German soldier. He was wounded fourteen times with precisely twenty puncture wounds.

We learned, once and for all, to stand for a cause and if necessary to fall as befitted men.Hardened as scarcely another generation was in fire and flame, we could go into life as though from an anvil. It is not every generation that is so favoured.

E. Junger, The Storm of Steel, Howard Fertig, New York, 1993, p. 317.

DOCUMENT S TUDY QUEST IONS

1 Referring to each source in turn, can you explain why each man has written in the way he has?

2 Reading these sources, what impression does the historian get of the war? Is this a reliable impression?

3 How useful are these sources to a historian studying the morale of soldiers on the Western Front during the war?

4 How can you explain the fact that some soldiers would not have missed out on going to the war?

Figure 8.31 Fraternisation between British and German troops in no man’s land during the Christmas truce (Imperial War Museum Negative Number Q50719)

148 | Key Features of Modern History

On a more sombre note, the occasion was used to collect and exchange bodies of fallen comrades, who had lain out in no man’s land, for burial. Both sides also took the opportunity for a little trench maintenance and repairs to barbed-wire entanglements.

Though the initiative seems to have come from the lower ranks, o!cers of both sides were involved in these meetings. However, when Sir John French heard of the fraternisation he issued orders that it was to stop immediately. In many areas "ghting resumed as normal the next day, though in a part of the line near Messines Ridge, the truce lasted several days. On the last day of 1914 a message was brought over from the German trenches by a very polite Saxon corporal, which said that as the lines were to be visited by sta# o!cers around midnight, the Saxons would be forced to "re their machine-guns at the British. They would aim high but the British were nevertheless advised to keep under cover to avoid any regrettable incidents!

The uno!cial Christmas truce was never to be repeated to the same extent, though there are accounts of limited fraternisation at Christmas 1915.

CHANGING ATTITUDES AFTER 1916Initial enthusiasm for the war evaporated during 1915, as shown in the drop in voluntary recruitment in England for that year. As the worst aspects of trench life began to impose on the soldiers, despair replaced enthusiasm. This feeling was accentuated after the dreadful losses on the Somme in 1916, in which Kitchener’s new army was virtually wiped out. While some soldiers felt bitter about the war—a bitterness that can be felt in some of the war poetry of the time—there was for others a stoical acceptance of their lot. As Winter points out, many of the infantry came from a background of poverty with its associated passivity. They knew a popular culture that made light of hardship, were more familiar with sudden death, and experienced bereavement with a greater degree of fatalism than we do today.

DOCUMENT STUDY: INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE

Source 8.15

The crucial thing to note, however, is that distrust and scarcely veiled hostility were the features of these truces … Bodger described the exchange of smokes and the Germans stroking the English-issue goatskin overcoats but when a German urinated on British barbed wire he was shot. The English respected a brave and resourceful enemy but there was no love or liking.

D. Winter, Death’s Men, 1978, pp. 221–2.

Source 8.16

Bruce Bairnsfather, an English soldier and cartoonist of the war speaking of his feelings at the time:

There was not an atom of hate on either side that day; and yet, on our side, not for a moment was the will to war and the will to beat them relaxed.

B. Bairnsfather, cited in M. Gilbert, First World War, 1995, p. 118.

Source 8.17

I had taken the addresses of two German soldiers, promising to write to them after the war. And I had, vaguely, a childlike idea that if all those in Germany could know what the soldiers had to suffer, and that both sides believed the same things about the righteousness of the two national causes, it might spread, this truce of Christ on the battlefield, to the minds of all and give understanding where now there was scorn and hatred.

Henry Williamson, a soldier near Ypres, cited in History of the First World War, 1969, p. 556.


1 In what ways do the writers in the sources agree and disagree with each other?

2 Sir John French was quick to send orders to halt the fraternisation. How does Source 8.17 help to explain why he did this?

3 As a historian, do you find all these sources equally reliable? Explain your answer.


DOCUMENT STUDY: ATTITUDES TO THE WAR

Source 8.18

A German section were lying fully exposed to us on level ground where they had remained from the moment daylight caught them … We put bullets into the heads of the lying enemy … I felt disgusted. We had slaughtered too many already. I was miserable until the German line was still and I prayed for them as I killed them.

D. Winter, Death’s Men, 1978, pp. 216–17.

Source 8.19

We had a gorgeous killing yesterday. Macdonald saw 30 men go into a barn, which we had already accurately registered. We fired one salvo; one shell went right through the roof and blew out the door from the insides … We then tried the old trick of waiting for fifteen minutes, which allows time for people to gather round the scene of a shelling, actuated by motives of curiosity or desire to help the wounded, after which we opened [fire] … and fired fast for two minutes … One comes across only too many people who quite forget that the essence of war is to kill.

Lt Col. N. Fraser-Tytler, Field Guns in France 1915–1918, Tom Donovan, Brighton, 1922, pp. 50–1.


These two extracts, from later periods of the war, show a differing approach to killing, depending on the individual. How do the reactions of the soldiers differ? What difficulty does this illustrate for the historian trying to generalise about soldiers’ attitudes to war?

Source 8.20

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dunIn the wild purple of the glow’ring sun,Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroudThe menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowedWith bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear.They leave their trenches, going over the top,While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!

S. Sassoon, ‘Attack’, 1917.


1 What information in the poem in Source 8.20 allows us roughly to date the action described?

2 How are the men described?

3 How would you describe the mood or attitude of the soldiers, choosing words that are not necessarily from the poem?

4 Compare this poem with ‘England to her Sons’ in Source 8.11. What changes in attitude between 1914 and 1917 do the poems illustrate?

THE ARMISTICEWhen the end of the war came at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918, the overwhelming feeling of the soldiers at the front was one of anti-climax. For some the morning was spent peacefully, for others action carried on until the stroke of eleven.


DOCUMENT STUDY: SOLDIERS AND THE ARMISTICE

DOCUMENT STUDY: SOLDIERS’ EXPERIENCES OF WAR

There are seventeen men in the photograph (Figure 8.32). In 1914 a platoon was composed of around sixty men; by 1918 this was usually thirty. W. H. Connell traced the stories of these men in ‘Seventeen men’, an article in Wartime (the o!cial magazine of the Australian War Memorial), No. 3 Spring 1998.

Source 8.21

There was a parade and some sort of announcement made but no cheers raised. The occasion was too much for that. It was a curious physiological study of human nature too overcome with the significance of the good news to rejoice. The maffiking [celebrations] was left, as we saw afterwards, to those at home less in touch with realities.

Lieutenant R. D. Reid, cited in A. Simpson, Hot Blood and Cold Steel, 1993, p. 199.

Source 8.22

Folks at home apparently went frantic with joy and excitement … That we fellows did not conduct ourselves like a crowd of maniacs, as many at home seem to have done, was no doubt due to the fact that we looked upon the armistice merely as a truce … We had faced the Germans for many weary months, and knew by experience that they were fighters, by no means to be despised.

Private A. S. Dolden, cited in A. Simpson, Hot Blood and Cold Steel, 1993, p. 201.


1 How would you describe the mood of the soldiers, as described in Source 8.21 and Source 8.22?

2 What is the attitude of the soldiers towards those on the home front at this time?

3 Why does Reid say in Source 8.21 that the people at home are less in touch with realities?

4 Why was Dolden reluctant to celebrate?


DOCUMENT STUDY: CONTINUED

15

1716

1413

1211

109

876

54

3

21

Figure 8.32 The battle of Amiens, France, 8 August 1918. Lieutenant R. F. A. Downes MC addressing his platoon, from B Company, 29th Battalion, during a rest near the villages of Warfusee and Lamotte before the advance on to Harbonnieres, the battalion’s second objective. The background is obscured by the smoke of heavy shell fire. (AWM/E02790)



The photo shows how the men had broken the regulations. The metal entrenching tool, a small spade, was meant to be worn at waist level on the rump, but the men had moved the !at metal blade of the entrenching tool around to the front to protect an area they felt was more vital! You may be able to see this on Private Hall.


Using Figure 8.32 and accompanying information, answer the following questions.

1 What was the average age of the platoon?

2 How many of the men were wounded during the war?

3 How many of the men in the photo did not survive the war?

4 How many men survived the war without any form of injury?

5 Combining deaths and injuries, what was the casualty rate? Research how this compares to the rest of the Australian army and to other armies on the Western Front.

6 What can we learn from the stories of Private Olive and Private Thomlinson?

7 Can anything be concluded from the fact that so many of the men came from Victoria?

8 How reliable and useful is this photograph to the historian studying the war on the Western Front?

THE HOME FRONTS IN BRITAIN AND GERMANYTOTAL WAR AND ITS IMPACTWars had traditionally been fought by men on battle"elds, often in distant lands. But the First World War was di#erent. The communities left behind became more than spectators awaiting news of battle; they became participants. They joined another front in the war—the ‘home’ front—that became vital to the outcome of the con!ict.

The growing demand for munitions, men and machinery forced governments to intervene more and more in the management of the economy and the lives of its citizens. Winston Churchill described it as no ordinary war, but a struggle between nations for life and death that would demand a massive commitment of both human and material resources. The result was total war, with all activities of civilians and industry directed towards the war e#ort.

The war had a deeper and more profound impact on the German home front than it did in Britain. German food shortages were more severe; the regulation and control of domestic labour, industry and agriculture more extensive. Germany had over three and a half million civilians engaged in war work, the greatest number of any aggressive power. Food and fuel rationing eventually led to a breakdown


CONSCRIPTION

THE ROLE OF WOMEN

HOME FRONT

GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENTTHEN GROWING

FOREIGNERS

Figure 8.33 The home front

of the economy, strikes, and revolution. In Britain, civilians directly experienced the horrors of war when German warships bombarded east-coast towns, and Zeppelins dropped bombs on London. Here too there were food shortages and rationing.

ANTI-GERMAN HYSTERIA IN BRITAINThe German advance through Belgium soon gave rise to atrocity stories, which were repeated and believed by the British public. One told of the sight of German soldiers marching through Belgian towns with babies skewered on their bayonets; another told of the barbaric treatment of nuns who were raped then hung upside down inside church bells to act as living clappers. Under the headline ‘Horrible Stories of German Fiendishness’ the War Illustrated told how their correspondents in Belgium had seen little murdered children with roasted feet and explained that the children had been hung over a !re before being killed.

Though there were atrocities, such as the taking and shooting of civilian hostages, these more lurid tales were almost certainly false, but they served their purpose in whipping up anti-German hysteria.

In 1914 there were about 53 000 Germans living in Britain, with many more born of German parents but who classed themselves as thoroughly British, despite their German names. This made Germans the third largest immigrant group in Britain, after the Irish and the Jews. By the end of the war only 22 000 remained, many being deported at the end of the war despite their ties to Britain.

Suspicions about Germans were rife. It was the common belief that German watchmakers were actually bomb makers and that German waiters poisoned food. There were German spies in Britain, many of them known to British Intelligence. Thirty-six were arrested in the !rst months of the war and by its close a total of eleven spies had been shot in the Tower of London.

Anti-German hysteria led to the attacking of shops owned by Germans or people with German-sounding names, and the alteration of names to a more patriotic variant. Thus German sausage became Belgian sausage, German measles became ‘the Belgian "ush’ and German shepherd dogs became Alsatians. Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord and relation of the King, was forced to resign in October 1914 because of his German origins. The family changed their name to Mountbatten. In July 1917 the royal family changed their name from Saxe-Coburg Gotha (a re"ection of their German ancestry) to Windsor.


ANTI-BRITISH HYSTERIA IN GERMANYGermany also experienced spy scares. There were cases of mobilised military o!cers from the reserve being abused and roughly handled in the street, accused of being British spies because they had become overweight during peacetime and did not "t their uniforms as trimly as a German o!cer should.

In Germany too there were name changes to re#ect a more patriotic spirit. The café Piccadilly in Berlin became the Café Vaterland, the Hotel Westminster became the Lindenhof. A new anti-British greeting became popular—‘Gott strafe England’ (God punish England)—which was soon stamped on envelopes, engraved on cu$-links, pots and pans, and on the black, red and white braces worn by the German soldiers to keep their trousers up!

BRITAIN UNDER ATTACKBefore the end of 1914 the fact that this was a new sort of war was brought home to British civilians on the east coast. On 16 December the coastal towns of Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby were shelled by German battlecruisers, leaving 230 dead and 500 wounded. Though a small incident in the totality of the war, for the civilians concerned the e$ects were terrifying as they feared that a German invasion was imminent.

Modern warfare unveiled a new form of terror—the attack from the air. Until 1916, air raids on Britain were mainly carried out by Zeppelins, the great hydrogen "lled balloons with the crew slung underneath in a gondola. They usually came singly, the "rst raid being on 19 January 1915 with an

Figure 8.34 The smashing and looting of German-owned shops became common throughout Britain, as shown at this pork butcher’s in London.


attack on Great Yarmouth on the east coast. The attack took no more than ten minutes and killed Martha Taylor (72) and Samuel Smith (53), Britain’s !rst ever air raid victims.

At !rst, there was little protection against the Zeppelins. Anti-aircraft guns were hopelessly inadequate, the shells exploding well below the height of the airships. Even when better guns were provided they generally couldn’t reach the necessary height and were !red more to quell public disquiet than to realistically down the enemy. The capital, London, was attacked for the !rst time on 31 May 1915, when seven were killed and thirty-!ve wounded. Zeppelin raids came by night, and London defended itself by searchlight batteries and anti-aircraft guns. Restrictions varied from town to town. Some put their faith in searchlights and guns, others went to great lengths to maintain a complete blackout. In Norwich men were !ned for striking matches in the street after dark to light their cigarettes or pipes. In September 1916 the !rst airship was shot down over England. By the end of 1916 the Zeppelin had had its day as an o"ensive weapon, though there were sporadic raids until the last one in August 1918.

The Zeppelin was succeeded by the Gotha bomber. The daylight attack on London by twenty Gothas on 13 June 1917 killed 162 civilians, the highest death toll from a single air raid on Britain during the war. Less than a month later, on 7 July, a further raid in which !fty-seven more people were killed raised British anti-German sentiments to fever pitch. In all there were !fty-three Zeppelin raids and !fty-seven aeroplane raids over Britain during the war resulting in about 1400 deaths and 3400 injuries.

These air raids had mixed results. Civilian morale su"ered in the a"ected towns, but there were no calls upon the government to seek peace terms, and no prized targets were hit. However, the raids signalled an important change in the nature of modern warfare. Women and children, in their own homes, were now in the front line.

Britain was not the only country to face an aerial onslaught during the First World War. Gotha planes also attacked Paris. Although Berlin was too distant, British and French aviators bombed many other German cities, especially in the Ruhr and Rhineland industrial areas in 1918. As in Britain, civilian morale in Germany was shaken by these attacks. German casualties from Allied aerial bombing were 740 killed and 1900 wounded.

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 How would you define total war?

2 List the ways in which the First World War was different from wars of the previous century.

REV I EW TASKS

1 Use your available research facilities to investigate the conduct of the German army in Belgium in 1914. To what extent were there ‘atrocities’?

2 Design a propaganda poster on one of the following themes:

(a) Encourage civilians to switch from enemy to patriotic products.(This could be done from either a British or German perspective.)

(b) Use the impacts of the German air or sea raids to design a British recruitment poster.


DOCUMENT STUDY: C IVIL IANS UNDER ATTACK


1 How are these sources useful to a historian in explaining the nature of total war?

2 State two ways in which Figure 8.35 indicates the new technology of twentieth-century warfare.

3 Research how Zeppelins were used as a weapon of warfare: their advantages and disadvantages.

4 In Figure 8.37 how has the paper made use of the deaths of children?

Figure 8.35 A Zeppelin is caught in searchlight beams over London. (AWM/A03991)

Figure 8.36 Cleveland Road, Hartlepool, and serious damage to private houses during the bombardment. People in other parts of the country found it difficult to believe that the attack had really happened.



Figure 8.37 Some of the 200 casualties caused by the German naval bombardment of Hartlepool, England, on 16 December 1914. In the Dixon family, three children (Albert, aged 7; Margaret, aged 8; George, aged 14 years) were killed, two were wounded (including Joseph, aged 12) by shrapnel, two escaped injury, and their mother had a leg blown off.


BRITAIN: ECONOMIC CHANGESDespite Britain’s initial wartime slogan of ‘Business as Usual’, it was no longer the industrial giant it appeared to be. In reality both Germany and the United States had outproduced Britain in many important areas. The British explosives and munitions industry also lagged seriously behind that of Germany in 1914. The British government normally relied on a few old !rms to meet the country’s armaments needs. These proved to be grossly inadequate, as the scandal of the shell shortage of 1915 revealed.

One of Britain’s major successes on the home front, therefore, was in creating an industrial complex capable of supplying an army of millions and meeting the needs of war. This did not come easily. It was a piecemeal change that developed by stages in response to speci!c problems.

The extension of government powers came with the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) in August 1914, which gave the government extraordinary powers over the lives of its citizens. People could be arrested without a warrant, and workers could be directed into speci!c jobs. Under the Act public houses were forced to close during the afternoons, and beer and spirits were watered down to reduce drunkenness, which was seen as a hindrance to war production. In 1916 the clocks were altered in summer time to allow more working hours in daylight. Flying kites, buying binoculars, feeding bread to animals and the ringing of church bells were all forbidden.

A "ood of major administrative and legislative changes followed, which transformed Britain’s economy from one dominated by the principles of free trade and the free market to one dominated by government controls and planning. Step by step, the governments of Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George used the provisions of DORA to increase the part played by government in almost all sectors of community life. Extensions of government powers included the creation of the manpower board in 1915, the Munitions of War Act of 1915 and the creation of the Ministry of Labour in 1916.

All extended direct government control over wages, hours and working conditions, as well as over the nature and volume of production.

Although the government made arrangements to purchase the entire Australian and New Zealand meat export, there were food shortages that led to long queues and the issuing of ration books. The Ministry of Food was created in 1916, and by 1917, at the height of the shortages, meatless days were imposed and people were urged to turn any spare land over to food production. Rationing of meat, sugar, butter and eggs occurred in 1918 and prices rose so that between July 1914 and June 1918 the cost of living for an unskilled worker’s family rose by 81 per cent.

At the same time the prime minister and the war cabinet, especially under Lloyd George, gained more executive power at the expense of parliament. The war demanded clear and often quick decisions, and this made long debates in parliament a luxury that Britain had to limit.

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 Why wasn’t Britain as well prepared for war as it appeared?

2 What was DORA? What was its purpose?

3 Assess the list of activities prohibited by DORA. Can you suggest why each one was forbidden?

4 How did the war affect politics in Britain?

DID YOU KNOW?Because the fuses in British shells manufactured by the Vickers company in England were actually made under licence from the Krupp company in Germany, Vickers was legally obliged to pay Krupp a fee for each of its shells fired at the Germans! The more shells Vickers produced, the greater the profit for the Germans! Payment was delayed until after the war, when the head of Krupp estimated that the British firm owed him 60 marks for every dead German soldier.


DOCUMENT STUDY: A CARTOONIST’S VIEW OF THE WAR’S EFFECTS


Refer to Figure 8.38.

1 To what class does the Brown family belong? How do you know this?

2 Write a description of each frame of the cartoon, pointing out what has changed.

3 From your own knowledge of the war, how can you explain these changes?

4 How does the family’s attitude towards the war change over time?

5 Draw a picture, or write an explanation, of the last frame of Christmas 1918. How would it differ?

Figure 8.38 A cartoon from 1917


GERMANY: ECONOMIC CHANGESGermany needed the war that broke out in August 1914 to be a short one. Although by comparison with Britain, Germany had a large, well-trained army from conscription and an e!cient industrial complex, it was badly exposed over imports. In 1914 one-third of Germany’s food came from overseas. Food became a critical issue for the German home front within six months of the outbreak of war. Surprisingly, in the initial euphoria that greeted the commence ment of hostilities in 1914, little was done at "rst to confront a problem that, due to the e!ciency of the Royal Navy’s blockade of German trade, proved disastrous.

A steadfast belief in the idea of a brief war in 1914 meant that there was little initial economic planning in Germany. One man who recognised the dangers of this lack of planning and coordination was Walter Rathenau. It is to Rathenau perhaps more than any other individual that Germany owed its ability to wage war after 1915. Rathenau understood Germany’s need for a coordinated program to ensure a supply of vital food and raw materials, which was done largely through a raw materials board or KRA. A three-part plan was adopted to maintain supply:

Regulation This was done by rationing and control of production. In addition, a central purchasing agency was set up in Berlin to buy whatever grain they could from other countries. Bread was rationed from January 1915, as were fat, sugar, meat and potatoes soon after. Ultimately, many of these items disappeared completely.

Synthetic manufacture Natural or imported products were replaced by products that had been created by other means. The best example of this was the production of synthetic nitrates (for use in the manufacture of explosives) that solved the problem of importing natural nitrates from Chile.

Substitutes These were the famous ersatz products of the German home front. This principle was normally applied to food, for example, ersatz co#ee was made from roasted barley, rye, chicory and "gs; and ersatz bread, the ‘K bread’ or Kriegsbrot (war bread) went through various stages. At times, potatoes, turnips and rye were included in the mix. By 1918 bread contained large amounts of sawdust and chalk.

The KRA was only one aspect of Germany’s Kriegswirtschaft (war economy). The Kriegsernahrungsamt was the agency charged with feeding the nation and controlling rationing and prices. All these organisations and regulations meant that Germany had an economy that closely resembled a socialist state. This impression is further reinforced when Germany’s labour regulations are considered. From December 1916 the Auxiliary Service Law controlled the bulk of Germany’s industrial labour force. This made every male between seventeen and sixty not in the army subject to a kind of labour conscription.

Despite all e#orts, production continued to drop and shortages increased: for example, between 1913 and 1917 agricultural production dropped by 50 to 70 per cent and industrial production fell by between 30 to 40 per cent as a result of a combination of factors. The limited supplies of nitrates had to be used for munitions; therefore they weren’t available for fertiliser, and crop yields dropped. Horses were needed for army transport, so fewer were available for farm work such as ploughing. The years 1916 to 1917 had bad seasons and poor harvests. Severe frosts destroyed much of the potato crop, and turnips became a standard part of the German diet as a substitute. This was the infamous ‘turnip winter’. Even though those workers in industry and doing heavy labour received extra rations, the lowered vitality and morale of the labour force made it di!cult to maintain production. By 1917 the o!cial ration was only half the normal individual calorie requirement. Opposition to the war grew in the face of these privations.

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 Explain the following terms: KRA, ersatz products, Kriegsbrot, Kriegswirtschaft, and ‘turnip winter’.

2 From an economic point of view, why did the Germans need a short war?

3 How significant was the contribution of Walter Rathenau to the German war effort?

4 What evidence is there of economic collapse as the war continued?


DOCUMENT STUDY: SHORTAGES AND DISRUPTION ON THE HOME FRONT

Source 8.23

At no time during the First World War was there any widespread privation in Britain, and what might justly be called ‘shortages’ were only really apparent in 1917, when scarcity of sugar, potatoes, margarine (butter was often quite unobtainable) and coal brought a new phenomenon on the civic scene, the queue.

A. Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War, 1967, pp. 205–6.

Source 8.24

This notice was prominently displayed on public transport, in shops, restaurants and other public places.

GERMANY IS STANDING AGAINST A WORLD OF ENEMIES WHO WOULD DESTROY HER!I. We have enough breadstuffs in the country to nourish our population until the next harvest, but nothing must be wasted.II. Breadstuffs must not be used as fodder.VI. Do not despise even a single piece of bread because it is no longer fresh.VII. Do not cut off a slice more than you need to eat. Think always of our soldiers in the field who, often in some far-off, exposed position, would rejoice to have the bread which you waste.VIII. Eat war bread. It is recognisable by the letter K. It satisfies and nourishes as thoroughly as any other kind …IX. Whoever first peels potatoes before cooking them wastes much. Therefore, cook potatoes with the jackets on.X. Leavings of potatoes, meat, vegetables, etc., which you can not use, do not throw away, but collect them as fodder for cattle.

H. W. Wilson, The Great War, Vol. 4.

40

60

70

80

90

100

50

20

0

10

30

Food rations as apercentage of theprewar consumptionJuly to December 1918

Vegetable fatsCheeseEggsMeatLard & vegetablesFish

Butter

Cereals

Sugar

Potatoes

STRIKES

Strikes Factories affected

1 304 236

100

90

80Index of industrial production

1913=100

Working days lostStrikers

Economic Political Total

925 120

379 116

772

531

241

7396

6302

1094

5 217 982

3 766 456

1 451 526

Figure 8.41 Berliners crowd around a mobile soup kitchen for a cheap meal—’Hot dinners, 35 pfennigs a portion!’

Figure 8.39 The decline in food rations in Germany

Figure 8.40 Germany 1918: economic collapse



DOCUMENT STUDY: RECRUITMENT POSTERS


1 Compare Sources 8.23 and 8.24. In what ways does the experience of Germany appear to differ from that of Britain?

2 What does Figure 8.40 indicate about the morale of the German workforce?

3 How do these sources and figures assist the historian in understanding the eventual outcome of the war?

RECRUITMENT AND CONSCRIPTIONThe outbreak of war was generally greeted with enthusiasm in 1914. Germany had in place a coordinated program of ‘calling up’ reservists. The German army had behind it a one hundred-year background of conscription

and reserve training, and service involving men from seventeen to forty-!ve. Therefore, at the start of hostilities, reservists and new conscripts were quickly added to the German army.

Figure 8.42 A 1914 recruitment poster featuring Lord Kitchener (Imperial War Museum Negative Number Q48378A)

Figure 8.43 A 1915 recruitment poster (Imperial War Museum Negative Number Q46428)



DOCUMENT STUDY: REASONS FOR ENLIST ING


1 Describe the methods used in each poster to persuade men to enlist.

2 How useful and reliable are these posters for a historian studying the home front in Britain at the beginning of the war?

Source 8.26

I think it was excitement more than anything else that made me join up. I was too young to understand what patriotism really was. I lived in the country and there were not many boys my age, so I thought it would be nice to be with a lot of lads on something of a picnic, because we all thought the war would be over by Christmas. When I told the manager [where he worked] he said ‘Well, it’ll be a nice six month holiday for you, yes, you join up’.

Robert Burns, cited in R. van Emden & S. Humphries, Veterans, 1998, p. 17.

Source 8.27

We thought it would be a novelty, you know, none of us had ever been out of England. To see another country, we thought that was a great thing. We were raw country lads who’d never seen nowt … you had the impression you’d grown up from being a lad to a man. We were patriotic. It had been driven into us a bit that Germany wanted England, that’s all we knew. We were young, strong lads, and thought we should go and help the old soldiers out.

George Littlefair, cited in R. van Emden & S. Humphries, Veterans, 1998, pp. 18–19.

Source 8.28

I never, ever, thought I would go into the army, it never entered my head, but doing my duty was automatic. Now England was in a dire strait … and I simply had to play the part of a soldier … I felt we had to fight Germany or they would take over our country and dictate English law … I did not want to join up, no, I think I can definitely say that, but I was of age so I had to, full stop.

Guy Botwright, cited in R. van Emden & S. Humphries, Veterans, 1998, pp. 26–7.


1 List the variety of reasons given for enlisting.

2 For each writer, choose one word that best describes his major reason for enlisting.

3 What do these sources indicate about the level of knowledge of many would-be recruits?

4 Is there any evidence that these young men had been influenced by propaganda?

In Britain the situation was di!erent. For the British, after their small professional volunteer army, the BEF, sailed to France, they only had the Territorials left. The Territorials were Britain’s reservists, the part-time soldiers. Like the BEF they were also volunteers.

In August 1914 Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war declared at a cabinet meeting, ‘There is no Army’. Kitchener pointed out that the size of the existing force was totally inadequate to "ght a major continental war. His sense of urgency was clearly re#ected in his call for more men.

Calls for volunteers went out in the newspapers, rallies and speeches, on the factory #oor, in universities,

gentlemen’s clubs and from the pulpits of churches. The British parliament passed a bill to recruit at least another 500 000 men. Newspapers of the day described the rush to volunteer, and historians have since labelled it the ‘August madness’. Those who volunteered appear to have been prompted by a range of emotions. Reasons expressed in public and ‘real’ reasons for joining up were not always the same. For example, some local magistrates in Britain in 1915 made it clear to young men appearing before them that time in jail could only be avoided by a visit to the local recruiting o$ce.


In Britain the medical standards for volunteers in 1914 were far higher than the guidelines applied later in the war. The British minimum height requirement was originally 5 feet 3 inches (157 centimetres) but by March 1915 this had been relaxed to 5 feet (150 centimetres). Some shorter volunteers who joined the army in 1915 were part of what was known as the ‘Bantam Division’. Observers suggested that their lack of height was in fact an advantage, because it was easier for them to stay under cover in the trenches.

CONSCRIPTION IN GERMANYOne of Germany’s advantages in 1914 was the quality and readiness of its conscript army. Every man in Germany between the ages of seventeen and forty-!ve was liable for military service.

Conscription did give Germany a large, well-trained professional army from the outbreak of the war. However, in the end, a lack of manpower at the front and reduced supplies of skilled labour, both male and female, on the home front cost Germany dearly.

CONSCRIPTION IN BRITAINBefore 1914, military conscription was held to be against the traditions of Britain, where individual freedom of choice was valued. When the war broke out, Lord Northcli"e’s Daily Mail began an enthusiastic pro-conscription campaign, but the government believed that such a move would threaten national unity.

The Derby schemeLord Derby had been the inspiration behind the idea of the ‘Pals’ battalions. This scheme encouraged men from the same town, football club, or factory to enlist with their pals (mates) so that they would !ght together—unfortunately, as was realised after the Somme in 1916, it also meant that whole towns were devastated when the pals died together. In 1915 Lord Derby was invited to prepare a scheme to deal with the shortfall in volunteers. The resultant Derby scheme of November 1915 relied on persuasion to pressure men into attesting, that is to undertake to serve if and when called upon to do so. The scheme carried the pledge that no married men were to be considered until unmarried men were no longer available. Every man was to attest, but there were provisions for exemptions, which ranged from being a skilled worker in a munitions factory to being the sole supporter of a widowed mother. To judge applications for exemp tions, local tribunals were set up around the country.

The Universal Conscription BillIt soon became clear that the Derby scheme would not produce enough men willing to attest. Con sequently, Prime Minister Asquith introduced a Military Service Bill in January 1916 that e"ectively conscripted all single men. Even this was soon seen to be inadequate, and in May 1916 a new Universal Conscription Bill a"ecting married and single men was introduced. Though there was opposition to the whole concept of conscription in certain quarters, the general public tended to accept the measure as a hard necessity; at least it imposed an equality of sacri!ce, the lack of which had drawn public complaint previously.

Conscientious objectorsKnown as ‘conchies’ or ‘Cuthberts’, these people opposed the war and conscription for political, moral or religious reasons. They were required to appear before their local tribunal, which would consider their ‘conscientious objection to the undertaking of combatant service’. The tribunals, composed almost exclusively of local ‘bigwigs’, were generally unsympathetic to the claimants. While there was


some understanding for those who were unwilling to !ght, but were willing to do an alternative form of war work, such as driving an ambulance or serving in another non-combatant form, there was little understanding or sympathy for the ‘absolutist’—the man who declared he could play no part at all in the war e"ort.

In Britain during the war there were about 16 000 conscientious objectors. About 3300 agreed to serve in non-combatant roles; rather less than 3000 undertook ambulance work or other work designated for them by the government to aid the war e"ort; rather more than 6000 went to prison at least once. Approximately 1300 absolutists su"ered the round of arrest, court martial, imprisonment, release, arrest, court martial, imprisonment and so on. About seventy men died because of their prison treatment.

PROPAGANDA AND CENSORSHIP

DOCUMENT STUDY: THE PRIME MINISTER’S VIEW ON ABSOLUTISTS

Source 8.29

I do not think they deserve the slightest consideration. With regard to those who object to the shedding of blood it is the traditional policy of this country to respect that view, and we do not propose to depart from it: but in the other case I shall consider the best means of making the lot of that class a very hard one.

Lloyd George, House of Commons Debates, 26 July 1916.


1 How did Lloyd George distinguish between different types of conscientious objection?

2 Choose a word or short phrase to describe Lloyd George’s view of the absolutists.

3 Can you suggest reasons why he should have such a view?

4 What information in the text supports the view expressed in the source?

5 What is your view of conscientious objection during wartime?

6 A favourite question posed by the tribunals was: ‘What would you do if a German soldier broke into your home and was about to rape your wife or mother?’ Why was this a clever question?

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 What was a ‘Pals’ battalion?

2 Explain the three bills that led to conscription in Britain, distinguishing between each (that is the Derby Scheme, the Military Service Bill, and the Universal Conscription Bill).

3 Explain the following terms: conchie; absolutist; and tribunal.

4 What various fates could happen to a conscientious objector?

Propaganda is an attempt to spread or encourage a particular idea or ideas. Though it can be a collection of lies, the best propaganda relies upon a seed of truth, even though it may be necessary to exaggerate or distort that truth.

BRITISH PROPAGANDAPropaganda proved to be one area of the war where Britain and her allies gained an early advantage over Germany, and never really lost it. The apparently ruthless behaviour of the German armies


PROPAGANDA

PURPOSES

EXAMPLES

Figure 8.44 Propaganda

DOCUMENT STUDY: RECRUIT ING PROPAGANDA

Figure 8.45 A spontaneous picture of men enlisting? (Imperial War Museum Negative Number Q30072)


1 Figure 8.45 does not show a mass of men enlisting, so what is its propaganda purpose? (Clue: look at the clothing.)

2 What suggests that the photo has been posed?


in Belgium and the use of U-boats meant that British propagandists had a wealth of material to draw on to picture Germans as inhuman, or as bullies and aggressors. British propaganda, both written and pictorial, employed a variety of techniques.

The war as a moral crusadeGermany and the Kaiser represented all that was evil. A single article in the Daily Mail from 22 September 1914 described the Kaiser as a lunatic, a monster and a criminal. He was also compared unfavourably with Judas. Rudyard Kipling, a beloved writer and poet of the Empire, was more direct. He wrote that the events of 1914 had split the world into two divisions: ‘human beings and Germans’.

The atrocity storyThis was a popular way to arouse enthusiasm for the cause and a passionate hatred of the Germans. The execution of British nurse Edith Cavell by German troops in Belgium on 12 October 1915 was constantly trumpeted as a murderous act and a crime against humanity. The fact that Nurse Cavell was an active member of a Belgian resistance group helping Allied soldiers and that the French had previously executed people for similar o!ences didn’t matter.

The other great British story of atrocity was the sinking of the Lusitania (see p. 176). The British used this to fan strong anti-German feelings, especially in the United States. Figure 8.46 A French poster, after the execution of Nurse Edith

Cavell in Brussels on 12 October 1915

DOCUMENT STUDY: A FABRICATED STORY OF ATROCITY FROM A BRIT ISH NEWSPAPER*

Source 8.30

News has reached Dumfries of the shocking death of a Dumfries young woman, Nurse Grace Hulme, who went to Belgium on the outbreak of the war. Nurse Hulme was engaged at the camp hospital at Vilvorde, and she was the victim of horrible cruelty at the hands of German soldiers. Her breasts were cut off and she died in great agony. Nurse Hulme’s family received a note written before she died. It was dated September 6th and ran:

‘Dear Kate this is to say goodbye. Have not long to live. Hospital has been set on fire. Germans cruel. A man here had his head cut off. My right breast has been taken away. Give my love to … Goodbye. Grace.’

The Star, 16 September 1914.

*There were other stories designed to remind the public of the evil they were "ghting. For example, on 16 April 1917 the Times newspaper featured a headline: ‘German Corpse Factory’. The article following made the unsupported claim that the Germans had built factories just behind their lines to boil down the bodies of the dead to distil fats for the glycerine used in munitions.


1 What are the newspaper’s motives for publishing this story?

2 What generalisations can be reasonably made about the audience for this article?

3 How useful and reliable is this report for a historian studying the early stages of the war?


Posters and cartoonsPosters and cartoons were a common propaganda device. The messages reinforced positive feelings about your own side and negative images of the enemy.

Much of the British propaganda was produced voluntarily by patriotic and eager publishers. However, the British began to organise and control their propaganda !ow through agencies like the War Propaganda Bureau.

Censorship was indistinguishable from propaganda and was designed to minimise bad news or keep it from the public entirely. In April 1915 a Directorate of Special Intelligence (DSI) was set up to coordinate all censorship and intelligence activities. Censorship of mail o"ered excellent opportunities for #nding suitable themes on which propaganda might be based.

DOCUMENT STUDY: PROPAGANDA—A COMPETIT ION FROM A CHILDREN’S COMIC

Figure 8.47 Comic competition, from Sparks, 13 February 1915


Refer to Figure 8.47.

1 What is the story of how Private McPherson won the VC?

2 What lessons does this teach the young reader?

DID YOU KNOW?Just before Nurse Cavell was to be executed, she asked for some large pins. When these were brought she pinned the hem of her dress tightly as she was afraid that it would fly up immodestly when she was shot. She was killed, but her modesty was preserved!


In the trenches, soldiers were forbidden to keep diaries, a regulation that was bypassed by writing on scraps of paper or keeping notes illicitly. It may seem surprising that there are so many war memoirs, but it should be remembered that nearly all letters were censored by a soldier’s own o!cers, and they often were not especially rigorous. There was also the green envelope system: these envelopes were liable to censorship at the base, but only a small proportion was opened. The system was based on trust, which enabled writers to record details of a more intimate nature that they did not wish their immediate superiors to see.

GERMAN PROPAGANDAThere is a dispute among historians concerning the nature and quality of German propaganda. One group argues that there appears to be little real di"erence between the aims and techniques of British and German propaganda. They point to posters of the female form of ‘Germanica’ standing against her enemies, and compare this with British images of ‘Britannia’. Another group suggests that there were real di"erences and that it had to do with the coordination of propaganda and its e"ectiveness both on the home front and overseas. They argue that in each of these areas British propaganda was superior.

Compared to the British propaganda e"ort, German propaganda did lack coordination. It was largely undertaken by a number of private groups. Circulation both of

newspapers and of magazines rose in Germany during the war, with people eager for news; however, there appears to have been a discernible and growing lack of public con#dence in these publications. The military was clearly unhappy with the domestic propaganda e"ort and set up their own news source, the Kriegsnachrichten (German War News).

A further indication of the di"erence in the outcomes of British and German propaganda was the bid to in$uence public opinion overseas, especially in the United States. Germany spent approximately US$100 million on a propaganda campaign aimed at the American public. The money was spread across a number of pro-German groups throughout the USA. By contrast a more e!cient, centralised campaign was coordinated by Sir Gilbert Parker for the British. The fact that the Germans didn’t have anything to compare to the British War Propaganda Bureau or the centrally focused campaigns that originated from Wellington House in London during the war ensured British leadership in propaganda and the manipulation of public opinion.

Nevertheless, there was an evident similarity in the ‘style’ of British and German propaganda. Like the British, the Germans sought to justify the war. ‘Encirclement’ of Germany was a constant feature of published stories, as was the suggestion that the war was somehow a plot by rivals to suppress German Kultur and deny Germany her true and deserved position of greatness. As with Allied propaganda,

Figure 8.48 A German propaganda poster featuring Germanica and reading ‘God punish England’


the Germans did not hesitate to use and embellish the story of atrocity: one report in a Berlin paper claimed that the Allies deliberately blinded German prisoners of war. The headline was designed to be sensational: ‘Ten-year-old boy reports bucket full of eyes’. The colonial troops !ghting for Britain and France also received attention. Charges were made that Gurkhas and Indian Sikh troops drank the blood of German soldiers.

Censorship and outright lies were well-established aspects of German propaganda. Five critical examples of this approach were as follows:

Note:

THE ATTITUDE OF CIVILIANS TOWARDS THE WAR

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 Why do many historians suggest that German propaganda was not as good as British propaganda?

2 Why is propaganda and censorship necessary in wartime? Do you think its use is justified? To what extent can it be counter-productive?

In both Britain and Germany in 1914 the reaction of the civilian population was to support the war and bury political di"erences. In Germany the socialists voted for war credits and the Kaiser responded with the phrase ‘I see no parties, only Germans’. In Britain the leader of the Labour party, Ramsey Macdonald, had to resign because he did not support the war while his party did.

CHANGING MOOD IN BRITAINIn Britain, the turning point came with the battle of the Somme, with the enormous losses for so little gain. People began to question the way the war was being fought. There was still a determination to !nish the job, but the early enthusiasm had evaporated.

Despite the change of government that brought the more energetic Lloyd George into power in December 1916, criticism continued. In July 1917 Sassoon’s ‘A soldier’s declaration’ was read out in parliament and published in the daily newspapers.

DOCUMENT STUDY: S IEGFRIED SASSOON’S ‘A SOLDIER’S DECLARATION’

Source 8.31

I believe that the war is being prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I believe that this war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of conquest and aggression. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

S. Sassoon, ‘A soldier’s declaration’, cited in B. Walsh, Modern World History, 1996, p. 54.


1 According to Sassoon, why was the war no longer justifiable?

2 The government reacted by sending Sassoon for psychiatric treatment. He returned to France to fight in 1918, having withdrawn his criticism. Does this mean that the declaration has no value to historians?


The year 1917 involved a series of setbacks that a!ected the public mood. Bad news from the front, the losses at sea, and some of the worst bombing raids of the war led the Spectator to label the nation ‘war-weary’. Queueing for food became a national pastime and the Times described scenes of women with babies having to queue from 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning to obtain margarine. Ordinary people were naturally angry at the stories of war pro"teers who made fortunes out of the trade in war goods.

Attitudes in 1918A soldier returning from the front commented: ‘England was beastly in 1918 … envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, fear and cruelty born of fear, seemed the dominant passions … Only in the trenches (on both sides) were chivalry and sweet reasonableness to be found.’ (History of the First World War, 1969, p. 2776.)

The victory, when it came, was something of a surprise. Only at the end of August had the newspapers begun to speak of the #owing tide of success, and when the armistice came there was an outpouring of joy and relief.

CHANGING MOOD IN GERMANYThe political unity with which Germany had entered the war began to crack in 1917. The masses were a!ected by the ‘turnip winter’ of 1916 to 1917, and the political left was inspired by the events in Russia in March 1917. Led by the Social Democrats, the parties of the left argued that if political reforms were not forthcoming, the government could not count on the continuing support of the working classes for the war e!ort. If the people could not have bread, they demanded political rights. The position of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the main party of the left, was challenged in April 1917 when the breakaway Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) was formed. The split was essentially over attitudes to the war, the USPD being "rmly opposed to its continuation.

Figure 8.49 Shortages on the home front in Britain. The well-dressed man seems to have got what he wanted, but for others in the rationing queue food, like his margarine, had to be spread thinly.

DID YOU KNOW?Plans to counter the menace of the German U-boats included training seagulls to defecate on the lenses of submarine periscopes to blind the enemy, and training seals to bark whenever they heard a U-boat’s engines. No successes were reported.


The growth of the peace movementGrowing hardship and disillusion with the war led to demands for peace. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, as leaders of the far-left Spartacus group, were outspoken in their opposition to the war, and broader support was shown in a peace demonstration in Berlin in December 1915. Bethmann-Hollweg raised the peace issue informally in December 1916, but his suggestions were dismissed by the Allies as ‘empty and insincere’. On 19 July 1917 the Peace Resolution was passed in the Reichstag by 212 votes to 120 votes. The resolution was dismissed by Chancellor Michaelis and the Kaiser, and an attempt to gain support for the resolution in the British parliament was defeated by 148 votes to 19—these !gures indicated that most British MPs didn’t even turn up for the vote.

Strikes continued to occur across the country in 1917 and even spread to the "eet, where hunger strikes developed into an anti-war movement supported by several thousand men. This was suppressed by the government with arrests and executions of the ringleaders.

At the end of January 1918 there was a week-long anti-war strike that involved about one million people across the nation. Increasingly, the e#ects of the British blockade and

the news from the front led to greater disenchantment both with the Kaiser, the government, and the war as a whole. By October 1918 Germany was on the fringe of revolution and the abdication of the Kaiser seemed inevitable.

THE IMPACT OF THE WAR ON WOMEN IN BRITAINWomen played a major part in almost all non-combatant !elds of the war e#ort.

WOMEN ON THE WESTERN FRONTLyn Macdonald’s book The Roses of No Man’s Land gives a graphic account of the contribution made by British women as doctors and nurses in military hospitals and casualty clearing stations in France. She records how women came under artillery !re and risked their lives to aid and comfort all who were in their care. They worked in battle!eld operating theatres where conditions were primitive by present-day standards and amputations were the most common operation. Diaries mention nurses moving from one operating table to the next, collecting an arm here and a leg there and placing them in a barrel already full.

In Britain women gradually became a key part of the industrial labour force, but there was an initial reluctance to put them in uniform. When doctor Elsie Inglis o#ered her medical services in 1914, she was told: ‘My good lady, go

home and sit still.’ Doctor Inglis later led a medical team to Serbia in 1915. Eventually, the pressure of war forced the British government to alter its policy and a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was established. As the war progressed, women moved closer to the ‘war zone’ as doctors, nurses and ambu lance drivers. In July 1917 the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was formed, enlisting 41 000 women and sending 17 000 overseas. This was followed by the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRENS) and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF).

WOMEN ON THE HOME FRONTThe Great War brought tragedy and su#ering into the lives of tens of thousands of British women who lost their men to the war. Women coped in di#erent ways. One woman placed an advertisement in the personal column of the Times newspaper, one year into the war: ‘Lady, !ancé killed, will gladly marry o$cer totally blinded or incapacitated by the war’ (T. Wilson 1986).

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 The attitude of soldiers and civilians towards the war seemed to have been the same in 1914, but by 1918 it was different. To what extent do you agree with this statement? How can you explain the change?

2 There was greater disenchantment with the war in Germany than in Britain. What evidence is there for this statement?

REV I EW TASK

Construct a diary of the home front, from a German or a British point of view, to show an individual’s experiences from 1914 to 1918. The diary should reflect the changing mood towards the war. Refer to previous sections of this chapter to help you.


DOCUMENT STUDY: A WOMAN’S WORK

Figure 8.50 Women war workers loading wheelbarrows from a limestone stockpile and wheeling the limestone to be loaded on to railway trucks (Donor: British Official Photograph BB575/AWM/H07734)

Figure 8.52 Women war workers loading a truck with coal at a gas works (Donor: British Official Photograph BB314/AWM/H08235)

Figure 8.51 A group of women who volunteered their services as ambulance drivers pose around a Buick ambulance (AWM/H08740)

Figure 8.53 Lancashire, England. Women war workers at an asbestos factory making asbestos cylinders for smoke shells. Note the absence of any protective clothing. The dangers of asbestos were not known then. (Donor: British Official Photograph BB604/AWM/H07763)


Refer to Figures 8.50 to 8.53.

1 In what ways would the work shown here be different from the pre-war concept of women’s work?

2 What dangers were involved in this work?

3 Why do you think women volunteered to undertake this sort of work?

4 How useful are these photographs to a historian investigating the contribution of women to the war effort?


The war brought sweeping changes to the world of British women. It should be noted, however, that the changes were not uniform. Some lives were changed radically, some slightly, others hardly at all. It depended on the class, location, education, personality and luck of the woman in question.

In broad terms, the war liberated many women: it allowed them to enter areas of employment and experience previously reserved for men. Between 1914 and 1918 an extra 1.6 million women entered the British workforce: half went into manufacturing industries, notably munitions. Some historians over-generalise and suggest that war work taught British women that they could cope with hard ‘physical’ labour. Such a claim might be true for some upper-class and middle-class women, but working-class women knew a great deal about strenuous physical work. The change for them was not in how hard the work was, but that it was often better paid.

In addition to manufacturing, women became involved in other sectors of the economy, including transport, education, banking, !nance and adminis tration. The number of female doctors increased, as did the number of policewomen: there had been six in 1914; by 1917 there were 650. The toll on manpower of the war meant women were a key element in maintaining production on the home front.

Women and the munitions industryThe most celebrated work undertaken by women was in the munitions industry, where they provided a large part of the workforce. In July 1914 the muni tions industry employed 212 000 women, rising to 819 000 within three years. Some worked in their home towns, but many had to move away from family and friends and go to new areas, such as the specially built town of huts at Gretna, in Scotland, which housed 9000 women and 3000 men. Shifts in the factories usually lasted for twelve hours, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The women faced many dangers. The varnish used on aeroplane wings produced toxic fumes, and it was common for women to be found lying ill or unconscious outside the workshops. Prolonged exposure to TNT, an important ingredient in explosives, caused toxic jaundice, an illness that turned the skin yellow, and gave a"ected women the nickname of ‘canaries’. Limbs would swell, and if the skin did not break to allow the enclosed #uid to escape, the illness could be fatal. A total of 106 women died in the period 1916–18 from the e"ects of working with TNT. Explosions were an ever-present danger. The most serious accident occurred in January 1917 when the munitions factory at Silvertown in east London blew up, causing widespread devastation. Two thousand people were made homeless, 69 killed and 450 injured. In Nottingham in July 1918 an explosion in a munitions factory killed 134 people.

Continuity and changeThe work that women undertook during the war helped to convince men of the physical strength and endurance of women, and of the sacri!ces they were making for the war e"ort. Many women felt a growth of self-con!dence as a result of their work. On a personal level, living away from their families gave many women a new sense of freedom, and the wages earned in the munitions factories and other places of work were usually superior to what they formerly had earned in domestic service, the main avenue for working women before the war.

Nonetheless, when the war ended there was a widespread feeling that women should give up their jobs to returning servicemen and return to the home or traditional workplace. Many women were reluctant to do this, having enjoyed the greater responsibility, higher pay, and greater freedom that their wartime occupations provided. Two years after the war had ended there were fewer women in work than there had been before the war. Among men, there was also the feeling that their jobs needed protecting against women, who were usually prepared to work for lower wages. Although on the work front, little appeared to have changed for women, politically there was a step forward.


The voteThe clear contribution of women to the war e!ort convinced most members of parliament, who were overwhelmingly male, that women had earned a fuller place in society. Previously, women in Britain had not been allowed to vote, but in December 1917 a bill was passed to give the vote to all women over thirty. In this way, the war had enabled women to achieve a change which a long campaign before the war had failed to do.

TURNING POINTS

DOCUMENT STUDY: A WOMAN’S PLACE?

Source 8.25

Women have still not brought themselves to realise that factory work, with the money paid for it during the war, will not be possible again. Women who left domestic service to enter the factory are now required to return to their pots and pans.

From the Southampton Times, 1919, cited in B. Walsh, Modern World History, John Murray, 1996, p. 56.


1 What appears to be the attitude of the writer towards the work that women had done in the factories?

2 Which readers would agree with the sentiments expressed by the newspaper?

3 Compose a letter to the newspaper either agreeing or disagreeing with the statements made in the source. Remember that a returning soldier or a female ex-munitions worker might have very different views.

Figure 8.54 The front cover of the magazine of 26 November 1915

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 List the ways in which British women aided the war effort.

2 What attitudes towards women were shown by men in wartime?

3 Why did working-class women welcome the extra opportunities for employment?

4 What benefits did women gain from their experiences of war work?

5 The war was a step forward for women. Do you agree?

ENTRY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAThe entry of the USA into the Great War was decisive. It is generally accepted that when the USA joined the war against Germany, the Kaiser’s armies were doomed to defeat. The American declaration of war came in April 1917. President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to bring the USA into the war made hundreds of thousands of fresh, eager troops available to the Allies, in addition to the seemingly limitless industrial


and economic resources of the USA. However, it should be remembered that the American role in military terms was potential rather than actual. In other words, American forces were not a factor on the Western Front until 1918; therefore, their actual contribution to the !ghting was limited. American potential, however, was a vital factor. From the date of US entry, the German general sta", dominated by Ludendor", knew that they were on borrowed time. The desperate Ludendor" o"ensive of 1918 was a direct response to the potential of the USA. Ludendor" hoped to achieve a victory before the full weight of its potential power became real. As the USA mobilised more and more men and focused its home front on the war, there could only be one result.

The decision to bring the USA into the war was a slow and complex one. From 1914 most Americans saw the con#ict as a European problem; they saw no reason for ‘their boys’ to become involved. This feeling was reinforced by a basic American ‘isolationism’, the opinion that they were better o" away from Europe’s problems. These sentiments were reinforced by the signi!cant German and Irish migrant communities in the USA who saw no cause to !ght Germany or help the British Empire. Gradually, however, American

anti-war feeling changed enough to allow President Wilson to declare war and win support for it from the US Congress. This change in attitude was gradual. The suggestion that it was simply triggered by a single event such as the sinking of the British passenger liner the Lusitania in 1915, with the loss of American lives, is a distortion of the truth. If the Lusitania’s sinking was the key event, why did it take the USA so long to declare war? Remember that the Lusitania went down in 1915; the USA didn’t join the war until 1917. The fact is that the USA’s decision to enter the war was an evolutionary change, and a key element in this slow and gradual development was Allied propaganda. From 1914 the Allies successfully presented Germany as the aggressor, as the villain. The ruthless conduct of the Germans in crushing Belgian resistance, the way the British and French reported U-boat warfare and the way the British propagandists uses the sinking of the Lusitania were all notable. This Allied ‘public relations’ exercise reached a peak in 1917 when the British made available to the USA information contained in the famous Zimmermann Telegram that Zimmermann, Germany’s foreign secretary, was actually encouraging Mexico to attack the USA.

Figure 8.55 The Lusitania sailed from New York to Liverpool despite a published warning from the German authorities that appeared in US newspapers the morning of her departure. On 7 May 1915, off the southern coast of Ireland she was torpedoed by a German U-boat. Of the 1959 on board, 1195 died, including 123 Americans.


These Allied e!orts were greatly aided by Germany’s attitude to the USA. An example of this was their early rejection of Wilson’s o!er to mediate a settlement and then the sinking of American ships as part of Germany’s unrestricted U-boat warfare.

THE RUSSIAN WITHDRAWALWhen war was declared in 1914 it seemed that the con"ict would save the threatened Romanov dynasty, not destroy it. Volunteers hastened to join the army and Tsar Nicholas II blessed the troops as they left for the front. Political di!erences were put aside as Russians joined to #ght the common enemy in defence of the homeland. After some initial successes, the pattern for the war on the Eastern Front was soon set by the German victories at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September 1914.

Russia was inadequately prepared for modern warfare. Supplies of weapons, ammunition and clothing for the troops proved hopelessly inadequate. Some soldiers fought barefoot while their incompetent generals used out-of-date maps, and the wounded were left untended on railway platforms for days. By the end of 1915 Russia had su!ered 3.5 million casualties.

In the cities, food supplies dwindled and prices rose. There were 268 strikes in January and February 1917 alone. Increasing discontent with the war and the leadership led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. Though the provisional government that replaced the Tsar attempted to continue the war, the failure of its last major o!ensive in July strengthened the calls of anti-war revolutionaries within Russia, led by Lenin’s Bolsheviks. With little direction from the government and increasing rates of troop desertion at the front the war on the Eastern Front e!ectively ended as a contest in 1917. When the Bolsheviks took power in November 1917 the formal ending of the war was only a matter of time and negotiation. Russian and German delegates signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. The Germans imposed severe terms. In return for peace, Russia lost Poland, the Baltic provinces of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, and the Ukraine. Russia was required to pay a war indemnity of 6000 million marks. The overall e!ect of the terms was that Russia lost 30 per cent of its population (62 million people), 32 per cent of its agricultural land, 85 per cent of its beet-sugar land, 54 per cent of its industrial undertakings and 89 per cent of its coal mines.

THE LUDENDORFF OFFENSIVE (OPERATION MICHAEL) AND THE ALLIED RESPONSE 1918Russia’s withdrawal from the war in November 1917 freed #fty-two German divisions for transfer to the Western Front. These reinforcements, as well as a desire to #nish the war before the Americans arrived, led General Ludendor! to launch his o!ensive on 21 March at several points along the Allied line. A second major attack was made on 9 April, directed against the Channel ports.

The key to the Ludendor! o!ensive was an initial attack, code named ‘Michael’, that aimed to smash through the Allied lines in northern France. The last great German o!ensive of the war began on 21 March 1918 when forty-seven German divisions attacked twenty-eight British divisions. The British and then the French were forced into retreat. The Germans gained more ground than at any other time since 1914. There were 300 000 British casualties in the four weeks after 21 March; they also lost 600 guns on the #rst day and were forced back 65 kilometres in a week.

The German success was due to several factors:


0 80 km

KEYGerman gains in Ludendorff’s Spring offensive March–June 1918

Under League of Nationssupervision 1919–1935

Transferred to France 1919

Transferred to Belgium 1919

Only German territoryoccupied by the Allies 1914–1918

Front line before Alliedattack 18 July 1918

Armistice line 11 November 1918

Allied advance

N

YpresCalais Brussels

Antwerp

MonsArras

Montreuil

Peronne

Armentières

Le Cateau

CompiègneSoissons

Château ThierryChâlons St Mihiel

Nancy

EpinalChaumont

Thann

Belfort

Strasbourg

Mulhouse

Rheims

Amiens

Paris

Verdun

Sedan

Metz

GERMANY

SWITZERLAND(neutral)

LUXEMBOURG

SAAR

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

FRANCE

EupenLiège

Malmédy

CologneGhent

Ostend

River Somme

Oise River

River Marne

Meu

se R

iver

Moselle

Riv

er

Rhine River

River Seine

LORRAINE

ALS

ACE

Belgian

British

Briti

shFrench

French

USA

British

Figure 8.56 Germany’s final offensive

Figure 8.57 Hindenberg (left) and Ludendorff (right), the effective rulers of Germany from 1916 to 1918, seen here in May 1918 (AWM/H12354)

Sturmtruppen

For a while German success seemed inevitable, and their armies got within shelling range of Paris. On 11 April, in his ‘Order of the Day’, Haig decreed that every position should be defended to the last man, with no thought of retirement. The near collapse of the Allied armies led to the appointment of a supreme commander with authority over all Allied armies at the end of March, the French Marshal Foch.

The German advance halted on the Marne. On 18 July Foch launched a counter-attack that sent the Germans into full retreat. It was their !rst major setback of 1918.


Figure 8.58 Joffre (left) and Haig (centre) leaving their Somme headquarters in 1916. The Ludendorff offensive resulted in them handing supreme command to Marshal Foch (right). (AWM/H08416)

REV I EW QUEST IONS

1 Why did the USA enter the war?

2 What factors encouraged Ludendorff to launch an offensive early in 1918?

3 Who was appointed as overall commander of the Allied forces, and when?

4 Why was the second battle of the Marne (the first had been in 1914) a significant event in the story of the Ludendorff offensive?

5 Explain why each of the following may be considered a ‘turning point’ in the war. Rank them according to their significance, explaining your reasons.

ALLIED VICTORYEVENTS LEADING TO THE ARMISTICE, 1918Before considering the major events of the !nal period of the war it should be realised that the closing months have often been underrated or glossed over by generations of historians and popular myth. For years there has been a tendency in writings, particularly in Britain and Australia, to dwell on the images of 1916—static trench warfare and the horrors of attrition typi!ed by the Somme.

This may be the correct picture for the middle years of the war, but the year of 1918—the year of Allied victory—presents a di"erent picture. After the launch of the Ludendor" o"ensive in March it becomes a war of movement. With the passage of time and the experiences learned it becomes, for the Allies at least, a time of technological success. After a long and bloody apprenticeship there is !nally evidence that the generals are coming to terms with the conditions and requirements of modern warfare.

Winston Churchill wrote in the 1920s that the victories of the British and Dominion troops in 1918 ‘will excite the wonder of future generations’. They didn’t! They became more or less forgotten as British and Australian memory wallowed in the misery of the Somme. Because of the emphasis on the middle years it is often not realised that the closing months of 1918 provide some of the most intense !ghting on the Western Front, as the following !gures show.

British Expeditionary Force (BEF) daily casualty rates on the Western Front

Battle Year Duration Casualties Rate/dayArras 1917 39 days 159 000 4 076

Final o!ensive 1918 96 days 350 000 3 645

Somme 1916 141 days 415 000 2 943

Passchendaele 1917 185 days 244 000 2 323

The changing techniques of warfare and, through them, some of the reasons for Allied victory, can be seen in an examination of three major battles leading to the armistice.


The Battle of Hamel, 4 July 1918This battle was planned by the Australian general John Monash. Les Carlyon, in his book The Great War (2006) lists Monash, and his Canadian counterpart, General Arthur Currie, as two of the best generals on the Western Front. They were a new breed who planned meticulously and incorporated the technology available to them. The planning for Hamel was a world away from those futile battles of former years:

The battle was largely fought by Australians, but also included 1000 American troops. Monash timed the battle to last 90 minutes. It lasted 93. The battle of Hamel shows some of the reasons why the Allies were to win the war.

They had developed an overwhelming industrial supply of weaponry. Artillery, and the constant supply of it, was a key factor for victory on the western front. The British war economy, now increasingly aided by the Americans, could supply it: the German war economy could not.

Figure 8.59 The box-like German A7V tank was inferior to the British and French tanks. The Germans preferred, if possible, to capture Allied tanks and rebrand them as their own.


The innovative technology of the tank was now being properly exploited. The tank had begun poorly in 1916 and was not without its faults in 1918, but it was a weapon worth having and the Allies had over 4000 of them. The Germans never realised the potential of the tank and built about thirty of their own—large machines, with a crew of about eighteen, that were both cumbersome and of little use.

Better tactical thinking in the preparation of battles now meant that armies were unlikely to be bogged down into attrition situations as in previous years.

By the summer of 1918 the Americans were arriving—fresh, enthusiastic, well equipped and in numbers. The Germans could not match this. On 29 September their ally Bulgaria asked for an armistice (news which caused Ludendor!, his nerves stretched to the limit, to foam at the mouth and collapse in a "t). By the "rst week in November Austria–Hungary and Turkey had gone too. Germany was alone, and "fteen-year-olds were being sent to the front.

The Battle of Amiens, 8–11 August 1918Once again, a coordinated attack with artillery, tanks and aircraft pushed the Germans back. The Australians, this time with the Canadians, were largely responsible for the main thrust. Although the battle went well for the Allies at "rst, after four days the advance slowed, and casualties began to mount. Instead of going into attrition mode, as in previous years, General Haig called a halt.

When we look for the reasons for Allied victory, the signi"cance of Amiens is twofold. Ludendor! famously referred to 8 August as the ‘Black Day’ for the German army. On 11 August he told the Kaiser that ‘the balance had "nally come to rest on the side of the Entente and the war must be ended’. He o!ered his resignation, which was refused.

This is the battle which "rst clearly showed the extent to which the morale of the German army had collapsed. There are tales of "fty to sixty Germans surrendering to one Allied soldier. Around 30 000 prisoners were taken at Amiens. There had been tactical reverses before, and Germany had lost ground before, but never before had the Germans surrendered to the Allies in such high numbers. It was in this sense that the Battle of Amiens signalled the beginning of the end for Germany.

It must not be inferred from this that German resistance evaporated from this point. There was much "erce "ghting to come. But the deeds of the resisters cannot hide the fact that desertion and surrender became endemic in the German army. Cases of men not returning from home leave or deserting from rest areas were frequent. In Brussels, the numbers of deserting German soldiers living in groups in attics and cellars had assumed such proportions that by the late summer of 1918 (August–September) the German military police had given up their raids to capture them.

Heinrich Bruning, then an infantry lieutenant, and later a chancellor of Germany, wrote of his surprise when towards the end of the war he found that desertion was not an isolated occurrence, but a mass phenomenon.

During the last months of the war it is estimated that between 750 000 to one million German soldiers avoided battle by surrendering, disappearing, or feigning light injury or sickness. The German historian Wilhelm Deist has spoken of this as a ‘covert [hidden] military strike’.

The capture of the Hindenburg Line (end of September to early October)The Hindenburg Line was a formidable, many layered construction of barbed wire, trenches, tunnels and concrete forti"cations that the Germans had completed in early 1917. But it was not to be the defensive rock upon which waves of Allied soldiers were to dash themselves, as the Germans had hoped. The reasons for its capture were threefold.

Firstly, in structure the basic layout was linear, that is a line of strong forti"cations. Once a hole had been punched through the line the way lay open for the attackers. The more advanced and

DOCUMENT STUDY: WAR—A POSITIVE VIEW...Ernst Junger was a German soldier. He was wounded fourteen...

Documents

Transcript of DOCUMENT STUDY: WAR—A POSITIVE VIEW...Ernst Junger was a German soldier. He was wounded fourteen...