World War 1.2 Declared

“We should be clear that World War I was a war fought in a just cause, that our ancestors thought it would be bad to have a Prussian-dominated Europe, and that is why they fought. ”

David Cameron – interview with Mail on Sunday, 18/01/14

Preliminary thoughts on the centenary.

It is still, at the time of writing, six months until the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of the “First” World War, but already it has become controversial. In this post I don’t intend to present any hard conclusions or closed opinions about the topic, but rather try to set out some of the principal themes and issues. Nevertheless I should confess that it is my view that the war was a totally pointless, futile event. However, I think it is too easy to lump together a number of different issues and thereby elide one’s conclusions. Thus we should not muddle the causes of the war with its conduct by the combatants, or indeed simply gloss the entire conduct of the war in terms of clichés (lions led by donkeys, etc.). Finally, it terms of current attitudes to the war, it is also worth looking at the cultural and political contexts of today’s opposed positions.

Causes of War

That the causes of the war are by no means simple can be construed from the fact that even its date of inception is not simple. Whilst Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28^th July 1914, Britain did not enter the war until 4^th August, and for that matter the USA did not enter the war until 1917. As with all historical events it is all too easy to pick on some simple “cause” and indeed it seems that people intuitively prefer such simple explanations. In the UK and elsewhere, intimations of the impending conflict are evident from at least 1871, judging by the plethora of invasion literature published over the subsequent 43 years (Clarke 1997). Indeed, can we limit the causes of the war to even this period of time? Looking at ultimate, rather than proximate causes, one might argue that the most significant cause was the invention of the Bessemer process in 1855. Virtually all of the destructive capabilities that made the war what it was were dependent on mass production of steel. Without steel rifles, machine guns and artillery, the stalemate of the western front probably could not have occurred. Nor would the naval arms race between Britain and Germany from 1905 have occurred. A similar argument could be made in relation to the development of railways, in which case we should also indict Richard Trevithick and George Stephenson.

If we set these ultimate causes against the instability of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the mental state of Kaiser Wilhelm II or British imperial smugness (among a plethora of other situations and events), it becomes clear that it is ultimately futile to seek a “cause” for the war and to identify one is simply to ally oneself with a particular political agenda, rather than talking about what happened and why.

Conduct of War

i)Hindsight

Turning to the conduct of the war, a slightly different situation applies, in that the decisions of individuals and groups can be linked to particular consequences. But here we need to avoid allowing hindsight to colour our judgements, and to try to understand the contexts under which decisions were made. The principal basis for many “revisionist” accounts of the war is that military and civilian leaders could not have foreseen what was to come, and had to adapt to the new technological and strategic situation (e.g. Terraine 1980).

However, in this instance, whilst we must beware of our own hindsight, it is worth examining that of the participants in 1914. As McNeill (1982) points out, attitudes to war in July 1914 were largely dictated by the events of the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. Whilst we may now deride the belief that it would “all be over by Christmas”, these events, which reached very rapid conclusions, seemed to suggest this. Moreover, the relatively mobile conflict involved encouraged people to retain the heroic-chivalric conception of warfare that had pervaded Europe since the middle ages and had not been contradicted by the previous “world war” against Napoleon.

Conversely, there had been a number of conflicts that did point to the oncoming armageddon, but for one reason or another these were ignored. For example, the carnage of the Battle of Solferino in 1859 led to both the foundation of the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions. Perhaps most significantly, the American Civil War was a clear indication of what a large scale “industrial” war would be like, albeit that at this time the aforementioned mass produced steel was unavailable. British engagements in East Africa and the Sudan in the 1880s and 90s made it clear just how effective machine guns and artillery could be against infantry; at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, Kitchener’s force killed 10 000 Sudanese and injured 13 000 for the loss of 47 killed and 382 wounded. Finally, the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 also demonstrated the destructive potential of modern weapons, particularly at the Battle of Mukden in february 1905. In what was effectively a dry run for the western front, the Russians suffered 90 000 casualties and the Japanese 75 000 between 20^th February and 10^th of March resulting in the Japanese capture of the city of Mukden.

The Russian defeat was reportedly a shock to the European powers, yet this conflict, and the others mentioned, do not seem to have influenced either military or popular thinking on a European war. The obvious conclusion, as McNeill suggests, is that of eurocentrism and racism. The American civil war could be dismissed for its somewhat chaotic conduct, taking place within a state that, as yet, was not regarded seriously by Europeans. Similarly most of the other engagements mentioned occurred in “colonial” contexts, whereas the only recent European wars had passed off more rapidly and with less bloodshed.

ii)Inertia

Whatever the failures of hindsight, once it had become clear, by the end of 1914, that it would not be all over by Christmas, it is tempting to wonder why the European powers did not seek peace in early 1915. In virtually all previous wars this would have been the case; Austria-Hungary, in particular, tended to sue for peace quite rapidly when it faced the prospect of defeat. Indeed some would argue that it did so with too great alacrity in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.

Of course it might be that each side still believed that it could deliver the “knockout blow” that would resolve the conflict. However, I suggest, it might also be that the leaders felt unable to seek peace because of public opinion and here another potential ultimate cause – cheap paper pulp – intervenes. As Innis (1950) discusses, the development of cheap paper pulp sourced from the forests of north america brought about a revolution in communications. Although newspapers had existed since the 17^th century, and had already influenced public attitudes to war (e.g. in the Crimea), the advent of mass circulation newspapers, such as the Daily Mail (1896), Daily Express (1900), Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch (1909), radically changed the impact that such publications could have. As had been indicated by the supposed role of Hearst and Pulizer newspapers in the promotion of the Spanish-American war of 1898 (although they may have had little influence outside New York).

The circulation of the Daily Mail soared from 945,000 before the war to just under 1.5 million during the first weeks of August 1914, and remained at 1.4 million until June 1916. Even at the end of the war it remained above its pre-war level. The Times saw sales rise to 278,000 on 4 August 1914 and 318,000 the following month. The Evening News, too, gained nearly 900,000 readers in the second half of 1914. The Daily Express very nearly doubled its circulation during the war, while Horatio Bottomley’s John Bull was selling as many as two million copies by the end of the war, a figure beaten only by the new Sunday Pictorial and the News of the World. Figures from France, Germany, and even neutral Switzerland and America, tell a similar story.

Niall Fergusson 1998

According to Fergusson, many war leaders, such as Ludendorff, believed that it had been the Harmsworth brothers (owners of the Daily Mail) who had won the war for Britain (a view shared by Messers Hitler and Goebbels). But we might equally argue that once the “yellow press” had started the juggernaut of public opinion in favour of the war, to sue for peace became a political impossibility. Moreover, as Fergusson goes on to suggest, we need look no further back than the Malvinas conflict to see how the press can drive public opinion in war.

In the era of the internet and a plethora of other media, it is hard to imagine a time, as in 1914, when the only sources of news and information were popular newspapers and word of mouth. The power weilded by such newspapers at the time must have been phenomenal.

iii)Strategy and Tactics

Another popular trope of “revisionist” histories is that whilst the strategic and tactical approaches adopted in the early part of the war were a failure, the allies eventually learned from their mistakes such that they gained victory in 1918. Which, supposedly, counters the proposition that the generals were stupid. This would in some sense seem to be the case; by 1918 both sides were beginning to grasp the fundamentals of the blitzkrieg techniques that were to be central to the next part of the war in 1939-45. In the German Operation Michael in the spring and the allies subsequent 100 days’ offensive (Battle of Amiens, Second Battle of the Somme) both sides developed techniques to break through entrenched positions and disrupt the enemies rear supplies and communications. Unfortunately for the Germans, the allies managed a somewhat chaotic of defence in depth which counteracted this (although at one point the British considered a Dunkirk style evacuation) and the subsequent conteroffensive forced Germany to sue for peace. Nevertheless these new approaches were still costly in terms of lives. British deaths during operation Michael were around 177 000, with a similar number during the subsequent allied offensive.

Although it is beyond the scope of the present post, it is tempting to wonder why it took the leaders of either side so long to change their approach. Whether they were donkeys or not, they do seem to have repeated the same mistakes over and over again from 1915-1917 and to offer the excuse that in 1918 they had learned their lesson is not all that convincing.

Contemporary attitudes to the War

Another popular trope of revisionist histories is that, except at Etaples in 1917, British soldiers did not mutiny and continued to fight in a disciplined manner. According to Churchill (1965: 750):

If two lives or ten lives were required by their commanders to kill one German, no word of complaint ever rose from the fighting troops. No attack, however forlorn, however fatal, found them without ardour. No slaughter however desolating prevented them from returning to the charge. No physical conditions however severe deprived their commanders of their obedience and loyalty.

-albeit that something like two soldiers were executed every day of the war for mutiny or cowardice. However as Ashworth (1968) and Englander and Osbourne (1978) have documented, this did not mean that there was no resistance on the part of british troops. Despite some successes, working class movements were still fairly weak in 1914, but nevertheless there were attempts to organise NCOs and other ranks during the war. Particularly after the Bolshevik revolution, a number of attempts were made to set up Workers and Soldiers Councils. At one such meeting at Tunbridge Wells in 1917, a list of demands was compiled including:

(9) That the Government be asked to at once state in clear and unmistakable language, the terms on which they will consider negotiations with the enemy

Which is intriguing in the light of my earlier remarks.

Apart from organisation there was also a good deal of passive resistance. Early in the war soldiers deliberately committed minor offences in order to get sent to punishment battalions away from the front. After measures were introduced to prevent this, significant numbers of troops escaped the war by surrendering. It has also been suggested that, apart from shooting oneself in the foot, soldiers deliberately escaped combat by contracting venereal diseases. More generally, apart from the famous Christmas truce of 1914, there seems to have been a general practice of “live and let live” in the “inactive” parts of the front. Though frowned upon by the officers, soldiers on both sides went through the motions of conflict (Ashworth 1968).

Of course it can be argued that these phenomena were limited or isolated. It was in any case in the interests of those in charge to play down such practices. Moreover, when Ashworth and Englander and Osbourne were writing, many of the records of the war were still restricted under the 100 year rule instituted in the Public Records Act of 1958. Although amended and subsequently replaced by the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I have as yet found no studies of the records of Courts Martial, which would probably give a clearer picture of what actually happened. At the same time, many of the records of the First World War were destroyed by bombing of the War Office in 1940 and other records may have been deliberately disposed of. Finally, although the National Archive has recently placed Unit War Diaries online these were written by officers as an official record – soldiers themselves were forbidden to keep diaries under King’s Regulations.

The situation on the “home front” was equally unsettled, as indeed it was in the second world war. In 1917 alone, 200 000 workers went on strike, depite the fact that the 1915 Munitions of War Act had made strikes in the arms industries illegal. In 1918 even the Metropolitan Police went on strike; an event that led to a ban on strikes by the police (which persists to this day) and the formation of the now troubled Police Federation.

Aftermath

Much has been said about the empty promises of “homes fit for heroes” and the memorialisation of the First World War. But when I was a child, my Dad often mentioned that his father, who had fought in the war, complained most about war profiteering. I guess that he had read or read about the book Merchants of Death (Engelbrecht and Hanighen 1934) or had seen press coverage of the US Senate Nye committee, which came to condemn the activities of a number of companies, particularly DuPont, for their activities during the war. What is most interesting here is to examine the changing relationships between industry and government both before and after the two world wars.

As McNeill discusses, the command economy in military production, later described by Eisenhower as the “military industrial complex”, began in Britain (and to some extent France and Germany) in the late 19^th century. This was partly because the domestic requirements of nation states could not entirely occupy the production capacity of industrial manufacturers. Hence companies such as Krupp and Armstrong sold weapons to many foreign governments and in the process often forced domestic authorities to rearm where weapons sold abroad were superior to those of domestic forces. This integration was most marked before 1914 by the relationship between Armstrong and the British navy, particularly in the person of Admiral John Fisher. As McNeill points out, the involvement of industrialists in weapons manufacture had its advantages for government; not least because it relieved them of much of the cost of arms development. But such relationships could lead to unforseen circumstances – in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, it is said that the Japanese naval victory at Tsushima was attributable to the fact that all Japanese ships were armed with superior Armstrong guns. In any case it is no exaggeration that the 1905-1914 arms race between Britain and Germany was largely driven by the military industrial complex.

Revulsion at war profiteering created a quite different situation after 1918 (particularly in the USA) and led to moves toward disarmament on both sides of the Atlantic (except, after 1932, in Nazi Germany). Yet the situation after 1945 represents, in part, a return to 1914. More so than the first world war, the second had been extremely successful for the US economy, effectively rescuing it from the weakening post-depression recovery. Growth rates during the war rose to c.a. 10% and the needs of the Pacific war led to extensive industrial development on the west coast. For this reason, and in response to the emerging cold war, the United States could not, as it had in 1918, consider disinvestment in arms, and gradually during the 1950s the integration between arms manufacture and government became extensive (McDougall 1985). Hence Dwight D Eisenhower’s warning in his farewell address to the nation; “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.”

From the perspective of any consideration of the first world war it is worth remembering this diametrically different outcome – apart from Joseph Heller in Catch 22, few, since 1945, have ever questioned the profit motive in World War, albeit that this issue has arisen in the context of the two Gulf Wars.

Attitudes 100 years on.

The attitudes of the present British Tory government are, perhaps, easy to comprehend; for a population that is nearly 70 years away from the direct experience of war, Britain today is in a similar situation to 1914, where the illusions of heroism and patriotism can believable. What is perhaps less comprehensible is why historians and (to some extent) archaeologists, allow themselves to be co-opted into a revisionist account of 1914-1918. One root problem, I suggest, is that military history and warfare have been consistently treated as marginal “boys games” by those of us of a more liberal persuasion.

In the course of my research I have been drawn again and again into the consideration of the role of military technology in the development of 20th-21st century material culture. In one way or another, everything from the steam engine to the computer owes its origins to the requirements of war. But more than this one might argue that the very way we compartmentalise the past into periods of war and peace is illusory. Like the late Eric Hobsbawm, it seems to me that the period 1918-1939 is quite different from those before 1914 and after 1945. The latter resemble each other markedly in terms of economic and social trajectories, whereas the former can best be conceived of as a truce. Here it can be argued that the period of “peace” between the wars was much shorter than 20 years. Allowing for the Russian (and perhaps Irish) civil wars, hostilities did not cease until 1922. With the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War and German re-occupation of the Rhineland (1936), the peace is shortened to around 9 years. Admittedly, one must also acknowledge that the period since 1945 has seen in excess of 280 wars of one kind or another.

Given its marginalisation, it is not surprising that military historians are often military men, such as Gordon Corrigan or Richard Holmes, or have found employment within military institutions, as in the case of Gary Sheffield, who spent the first 14 years of his career teaching at Sandhurst. If nothing else, this leads to what one might call a “think tank” mentality, as epitomised by the Royal United Services Institute. In this context, military history has to have a practical utility for the military itself. According to Sheffield (2008:102):

Military history is useful: this is the simple, if controversial, argument of this paper. Used carefully, military history is an invaluable tool for decision makers, whether military or civilian, at every level from grand strategy down to tactics.

Despite acknowledging the dangers of this approach, Sheffield goes on to claim that the basis of his position lies in “The great divide in history writing…between those who practice scientific history and those who do not.” From this perspective, critics of the likes of Sir Douglas Haig failed to be “careful, scientific historians”.

I am not sure what Sheffield can mean by “scientific” history, unless he is making some claim to objectivity. This would seem to follow from his goal of a history that is a “tool for decision makers”, but reveals an essential failure to comprehend that our understanding of the past is, and will always be, equivocal. In this post, despite my own stated prejudices, I have tried to set out some of the many and varied causes, ultimate and proximate, that impinged on the causes, conduct and aftermath of the First World War. I don’t expect that we will ever arrive at any simple answers.

Postscript: A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end

John Terraine was, as they say, the doyen of revisionist historians. Terraine worked for most of his life in broadcasting, latterly as a writer and producer. His work includes the excellent Great War documentary series made for the BBC in 1963-64. Only latterly did he turn exclusively to writing military history, being made a patron of RUSI in 1997. For whatever reason, Terraine concentrated his efforts on “debunking” the myths of the First World War, especially in his defence of Sir Douglas Haig and obvious contempt for David Lloyd George. Perhaps some degree of revision was, and is appropriate, but at times this seems to have been at the cost of common sense.

In The Smoke and the Fire (1980) Terraine dedicates several chapters to debunking the “myth” of the “Lost Generation”. His argument, as I understand it, is that British casualties (those actually killed) at around 900 000 were relatively small in comparison to those of France (1.3 million) or Germany (1.8 million). There are, of course, all kinds of problems with the statistics, not least that no figure exists for the number of deaths that occurred after the war as a result of injuries. But here I would prefer to take an anecdotal approach by introducing some of my relatives.

Humphrey Moseley, my maternal grandmother’s only brother (she had 9 sisters) died in hospital at Rouen in March 1917 aged 25. At the time he was a Sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery, having joined up in 1915. I have no idea whether he died of wounds or disease. Arthur Graves, my paternal Grandfather’s brother, was killed on 3^rd October 1918, aged 21. He was in the Tank Corps and from the date and location (Hargicourt) I would guess he was killed in the preliminaries of the Second Battle of the Somme. My Dad’s father, William Graves, was accidentally gassed whilst handling gas shells. He survived the war, but died of cancer in 1941 aged 52. Whether this was connected with being gassed is any one’s guess. By comparison, I know of no single family member or friend of my family that was killed in the Second World War, although most of my parent’s generation were involved. I doubt that my family history is that exceptional, and suggest that in spite of Terraine’s denials, the First World war did have a disproportionate impact, at least in Britain. In trying to balance our account of the past, it is all too easy to allow rhetoric to speak louder than the facts.

Two points by way of conclusion. i)This post is not in any way exhaustive or conclusive but is at best a snapshot of my own learning curve on this subject. ii)I wanted to add that my Grandfather, who had been a city clerk, found it hard to get work after his service in the First World War. At the time of his death in 1941 he had been working in a factory building Wellington bombers. Two weeks before he died, and was on sick leave, he was sacked from his job.

Sources

Ashworth, A E 1968 The Sociology of Trench Warfare 1914-18 The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 407-423

Churchill, Winston. 1965 The world crisis London

Clarke, I F 1997 Future-War Fiction: The First Main Phase, 1871-1900 Science Fiction Studies 24(3)

Englander, David and Osborne, James 1978 Jack, Tommy, and Henry Dubb: The Armed Forces and the Working ClassAuthor(s): The Historical Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 593-621

Fergusson, Niall 1998 Media: How the papers went to war The Independent 27^th October

Innis, Harold. 1950 Empire and Communications. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

McDougall, Walter A. 1985 …The Heavens and the Earth. A Political History of the Space Age. New York: Bssic Books.

McNeill, W H 1982 The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Sheffield, Gary 2008 Military Past, Military Present, Military Future, RUSI Journal VOL. 153 NO. 3 pp. 102–107

Terraine, John 1980 The Smoke and the Fire London: Leon Cooper