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BRITAIN AND WORLD WAR I The First World War was the first Great War and it was to be the war to end all wars. Its origins were complex. Its scale was vast. Its conduct was intense. Its impact on military operations was revolutionary. Its human and material costs were enormous. And its results were profound. The United Kingdom was one of the Allied Powers during World War I (1914– 1918), and developed as a nation throughout the war in order to further its goal of defeating the Central Powers (the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria). The country's armed forces were reorganised—the war marked the creation of the Royal Air Force, for example—and increased in size because of the introduction of forced conscription for the first time in the country's history. At the outbreak of war, patriotic feelings spread throughout the country. At the start of World War I, for the first time since the Napoleonic Wars, the population of the United Kingdom was in danger of attack from naval raids. For the first time ever, the country also came under attack from air raids by zeppelins and fixed-wing aircraft. German bombardments (naval and air raids) were concentrated on the east coast of England. The Raid on Yarmouth, which took place in November 1914, was an attack by the German Navy on the British North Sea port and town of Great Yarmouth. Little damage was done to the town itself, since shells only landed on the beach once German ships laying mines offshore were interrupted by British destroyers. In December 1914, the German navy carried out attacks on the British coastal towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby. The attack resulted in 137 fatalities and 593 casualties, many of which were civilians. The attack made the Germany navy very unpopular with the British public, as an attack against British civilians in their homes. Likewise, the British Royal Navy was criticised for failing to prevent the raid. British propaganda fuelled by the German raid on Scarborough German zeppelins bombed towns on the east coast, starting on 19 January 1915 with Great Yarmouth. London was also hit later in the same year, on 31 May. Propaganda supporting the British war effort often used these raids to their advantage: one recruitment poster claimed: "It is far better to face the bullets than to be killed at home by a bomb". British propaganda poster from 1915, drawing on the fear of zeppelin attacks to aid recruitment Throughout 1917 Germany began to deploy increasing numbers of fixed-wing bombers, the Gotha G.IV's first target being Folkestone on 25 May 1917, following this attack the number of airship raids decreased rapidly in favour of raids by fixed wing aircraft, before Zeppelin raids were called off entirely. In total, Zeppelins dropped 6,000 bombs, resulting in 556 dead and 1,357 wounded. Soon after the raid on Folkestone, the bombers began raids on London: one daylight raid on 13 June 1917 by 14 Gothas caused 162 deaths in the East End of London Morale remained relatively high due in part to the media; newspapers flourished during the period. Large quantities of propaganda were produced by the government under the guidance of such journalists as Charles Masterman and newspaper owners such as Lord Beaverbrook. By adapting to the changing demographics of the workforce, war-related industries grew rapidly, and production increased, as disparate groups of people pulled together. In that regard, the war is also credited by some with drawing women into mainstream employment for the first time, and forcing politicians to grant a large number of women the vote in 1918. Propaganda and censorship were closely linked during the war. The need to maintain morale and counter German propaganda was recognised early in the war and the War Propaganda Bureau was established under the leadership of Charles Masterman in September 1914. The Bureau enlisted eminent writers such as H G Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling as well as newspaper editors. By the summer of 1915, the Bureau had printed over 2.5 million books, speeches, official documents and pamphlets. Masterman also commissioned films about the war such as The Battle of the Somme, which appeared in August 1916, while the battle was still in progress as a morale-booster and in general it met with a favourable reception. The most popular papers of the period included dailies such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Post, weekly newspapers such as The Graphic and periodicals like John Bull, which claimed a weekly circulation of 900,000. The public demand for news of the war was reflected in the increased sales of newspapers. During the war, the British Royal Family, under George V, dissolved ties with its German relatives and changed its name from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the decidedly British House of Windsor. The causes of World War I are complicated and unlike the causes of World War II, where the guilty party was plain to all, there is no such clarity. Germany has been blamed because she invaded Belgium in August 1914 when Britain had promised to protect Belgium. However, the street celebrations that accompanied the British and French declaration of war gives historians the impression that the move was popular and politicians tend to go with the popular mood. World War One technically began as a strictly European conflict with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia on July 28th, 1914. Within literally days it escalated as Russia initiated mobilization of its army and reservists as a precautionary measure, and in sympathy with its Serbian Slavic "cousins". Refusing Germany's ultimatum to stand down its mobilization, which had not yet taken any offensive action against any state, Germany subsequently declared war upon the Russian Empire on August 1st. Great Britain's entry also brought the "British Dominion" nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa into the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Japan's entry into the war, British and South African moves against Germany's African colonies, and Canadian, Australian and New Zealand contribution of troops to Britain's European war theaters were what converted a European conflict into a "world war". The German propagandists were the first to use the term "Weltkrieg" (world war), and it was soon picked up by both sides. The nations opposing the Germanic forces quickly became simply and universally known as "The Allied Powers". Participants in World War I The Central Powers and their colonies in orange, the Allies and their colonies in green, and neutral countries in gray. Certain specific problems also helped to create suspicion throughout Europe. The first was Germany's fear of the huge British Empire. By 1900, Britain owned a quarter of the world. Countries such as Canada, India, South Africa, Egypt, Australia and New Zealand were owned by Britain as part of the British Empire. Queen Victoria had been crowned Empress of India. Huge amounts of money were made from these colonies and Britain had a powerful military presence in all parts of the world. The Empire was seen as the status symbol of a country that was the most powerful in the world. Hence Britain's title "Great Britain". Germany clearly believed that a sign of a great power was possession of overseas colonies. The 'best' had already been taken by Britain but Germany resolved to gain as much colonial territory as possible. Germany’s main target was Africa. It colonised territory in southern Africa (now Namibia) which no-one really wanted as it was useless desert but it did create much anger in London as Germany's new territories were near South Africa with its huge diamond and gold reserves. A second issue that caused much friction between Britain and Germany was Germany's desire to increase the size of her navy. Britain accepted that Germany, as a large land-based country, needed a large army. But Germany had a very small coastline and Britain could not accept that Germany needed a large navy. Britain concluded that Germany's desire to increase the size of her navy was to threaten Britain's naval might in the North Sea. The British government concluded that as an island we needed a large navy and they could not accept any challenges from Germany. As a result, a naval race took place. Both countries spent vast sums of money building new warships and the cost soared when Britain launched a new type of battleship - the Dreadnought. Germany immediately responded by building her equivalent. HMS Dreadnought 17,900 tons; 526 feet in length; ten 12 inch guns, eighteen 4 inch guns, five torpedo tubes; maximum belt armour 11 inches; top speed 21.6 knots. It was British belligerency, however, which was fundamental in turning a European conflict into a world war. Britain was the world's greatest imperial power. The British had world-wide interests and world-wide dilemmas. They also had world-wide friends. Germany found itself at war not only with Great Britain but also with the dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa and with the greatest British imperial possession, India. Concern for the defence of India helped bring the British into conflict with the Ottoman Empire in November 1914 and resulted in a major war in the Middle East. Most important of all, perhaps, Britain's close political, economic, and cultural ties with the United States of America, if they did not ensure that nation's eventual entry into the war, certainly made it possible. The American declaration of war on Germany on 6 April 1917 was a landmark not only in the history of the United States but also in that of Europe and the world, bringing to an end half a millennium of European domination and ushering in 'the American century'. The British Army during World War I was small in size when compared to the other major European powers. In 1914, the British had a small, largely urban English, volunteer force of 400,000 soldiers, almost half of which were posted overseas to garrison the British Empire. (In August 1914, 74 of the 157 infantry battalions and 12 of the 31 cavalry regiments were posted overseas.) This total included the Regular Army and reservists in the Territorial Force. Together they formed the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), for service in France. The mass of volunteers in 1914–1915, popularly known as Kitchener's Army, was destined to go into action at the battle of the Somme. In January 1916, conscription was introduced, and by the end of 1918, the army had reached its peak of strength of four million men. The Royal Navy at the start of the war was the largest navy in the world due, in the most part, to the The Naval Defence Act 1889 and the two-power standard which called for the navy to maintain a number of battleships such as their strength was at least equal to the combined strength of the next two largest navies in the world, which at that point were France and Russia. Particularly in the early stages of the war, many men, for a wide variety of reasons, decided to "join up" to the armed forces - by 5 September 1914, over 225,000 had signed up to fight. Over the course of the war, it is thought that a number of factors contributed to recruitment rates, including the work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee in producing posters, dwindling employment opportunities, and a want amongst some to escape humdrum routine The geographical scale of the conflict meant that it was not one war but many. On the Western Front in France and Belgium the French and their British allies, reinforced from 1917 onwards by the Americans, were locked in a savage battle of attrition against the German army. Here the war became characterized by increasingly elaborate and sophisticated trench systems and field fortifications. Dense belts of barbed wire, concrete pillboxes, intersecting arcs of machine-gun fire, and accumulating masses of quick-firing field and heavy artillery rendered manœuvre virtually impossible. Casualties were enormous. Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne. Both sides then dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France. This line remained essentially unchanged for most of the war. Between 1915 and 1917 there were several major offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. However, a combination of entrenchments, machine gun nests, barbed wire, and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties on the attackers and counter attacking defenders. As a result, no significant advances were made. In an effort to break the deadlock, this front saw the introduction of new military technology, including poison gas, aircraft and tanks. But it was only after the adoption of improved tactics that some degree of mobility was restored. In spite of the generally stagnant nature of this front, this theater would prove decisive. The inexorable advance of the Allied armies in 1918 persuaded the German commanders that defeat was inevitable, and the government was forced to sue for conditions of an armistice In World War I both sides constructed elaborate trench and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire. The area between opposing trench lines (known as "no man's land") was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even if successful, often sustained severe casualties as a matter of course. Trenches of the 11th Cheshire Regiment at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, on the Somme, July 1916 Trench warfare has become a powerful symbol of the futility of war. Its image is of young men going “over the top” (over the parapet of the trench, to attack the enemy trench line) into a maelstrom of fire leading to certain death, typified by the first day of the Somme (on which the British suffered 57,000 casualties). Trench warfare is associated with needless slaughter in appalling conditions, combined with the view that brave men went to their deaths because of incompetent and narrow-minded commanders who failed to adapt to the new conditions of trench warfare: class-ridden and backward-looking generals put their faith in the attack, believing superior morale and dash would overcome the weapons and moral inferiority of the defender. The British and Empire troops on the Western Front are commonly referred to as "lions led by donkeys." During the course of World War One, eleven percent (11%) of France's entire population were killed or wounded! Eight percent (8%) of Great Britain's population were killed or wounded, and nine percent (9%) of Germany's pre-war population were killed or wounded! The United States, which did not enter the land war in strength until 1918, suffered one-third of one percent (0.37%) of its population killed or wounded. The Battle of the Somme The Battle of the Somme started in July 1st 1916. It lasted until November 1916. For many people, the Battle of the Somme was the battle that symbolised the horrors of warfare in World War One; this one battle had a marked effect on overall casualty figures and seemed to epitomise the futility of trench warfare. This was one of the major battles on the Western Front for Britain. On 1 July, after a week of heavy rain, British divisions in Picardy launched an attack around the river Somme, supported by five French divisions on their right flank. The attack had been preceded by seven days of heavy artillery bombardment. The experienced French forces were successful in advancing but the British artillery cover had neither blasted away barbed wire, nor destroyed German trenches as effectively as was planned. They suffered the greatest number of casualties (killed, wounded and missing) in a single day in the history of the British army, about 57,000. The final phase of the battle of the Somme saw the first use of the tank on the battlefield. The Allies prepared an attack that would involve 13 British and Imperial divisions and four French corps. The attack made early progress, advancing 3.2–4.1 km in places, but the tanks had little effect due to their lack of numbers and mechanical unreliability. The final phase of the battle took place in October and early November, again producing limited gains with heavy loss of life. All told, the Somme battle had made penetrations of only 8 km, and failed to reach the original objectives. The British had suffered about 420,000 casualties (including nearly 60,000 on the first day alone) and the French around 200,000. It is estimated that the Germans lost 465,000. The Third Battle of Ypres The Battle of Passchendaele, fought July 1917, is sometimes called the Third Battle of Ypres. For the soldiers who fought at Passchendaele, it was known as the 'Battle of Mud'. Few battles encapsulate World War One better than the Battle of Passchendaele. On 11 July 1917 during this battle, the Germans introduced a new weapon into the war when they fired gas shells delivered by artillery. The limited size of an artillery shell required that a more potent gas be deployed, and so the Germans employed mustard gas, a powerful blistering agent. The artillery deployment allowed heavy concentrations of the gas to be used on selected targets. Mustard gas was also a persistent agent, which could linger for up to several days at a site, an additional demoralizing factor for their opponents. Along with phosgene, gas would be used lavishly by both German and Allied forces in later battles, as the Allies also began to increase production of gas for chemical warfare. Beginning in late July and continuing into October the struggle around Ypres was renewed with the Battle of Passchendaele (technically the Third Battle of Ypres, of which Passchendaele was the final phase). The battle had the original aim of pushing through the German lines and threatening the submarine bases on the Belgian coast, but was later restricted to advancing the British Army onto higher (and drier) ground around Ypres, no longer constantly under observation from German artillery. Canadian veterans joined the depleted British forces and took the village of Passchendaele on 30 October despite extremely heavy rain and casualties. Again the offensive produced large numbers of casualties for relatively little gain, though the British made small but inexorable gains during periods of drier weather. The ground was generally muddy and pocketed by shell craters, making supply missions and further advancement very difficult. . However, the Third Battle of Ypres or Passchendaele had been a very costly battle. For the sake of a few kilometres, the British had lost 310,000 men and the Germans 260,000. Haig was heavily criticised for the attack and for failing to modify his plans as the attack clearly was not going to be a success. Haig argued that any German loss of men was of greater importance than British loss as the Allies could sustain more losses as America had joined the war by the end of Passchendaele Final allied offensives In July, Foch initiated an offensive against the Marne salient produced during the German attacks, eliminating the salient by August. A second major offensive was launched two days after the first, ending at Amiens to the north. This attack included Franco-British forces, and was spearheaded by Australian and Canadian troops, along with 600 tanks and supported by 800 aircraft. The assault proved highly successful, leading Hindenburg to name 8 August as the "Black Day of the German Army". The German army's manpower had been severely depleted after four years of war, and its economy and society were under great internal strain. The Entente now fielded a total of 216 divisions against 197 under strength German divisions. The Hundred Days Offensive beginning in August proved the final straw, and following this string of military defeats, German troops began to surrender in large numbers. As the Allied forces broke the German lines, Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed as Chancellor of Germany in October in order to negotiate an armistice. The Battle of Jutland was the largest naval battle of World War I, and the only full-scale clash of British and German battleships in that war. Jutland had all the ingredients to be a great British naval victory, but in the event the result was much less clearcut. It was fought on 31 May – 1 June 1916, in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. The combatants were the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, and the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The German fleet's intention was to lure out, trap and destroy a portion of the Grand Fleet, as the German numbers were insufficient to engage the entire British fleet at one time. This formed part of a larger strategy to break the British blockade of Germany and to allow German mercantile shipping to operate. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy pursued a strategy to engage and destroy the High Seas Fleet, or keep the German force contained and away from Britain's own shipping lanes. Why was the battle fought? It was generally believed that Britain had naval supremacy not only in Europe but also throughout the world. One of the major clashes involving Germany and Britain before the outbreak of war in August 1914, was what was described as the naval race between the two nations. The British public had grown to believe that Britain could not be challenged when its navy was concerned. The song “Rule Britannia” was very much in this mould as the song starts “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, Britain never, never, never shall be slaves.” A strong British navy was expected by the public, as was the inevitable naval victory Both sides claimed victory. The British lost more ships and twice as many sailors, and the British press criticised the Grand Fleet's failure to force a decisive outcome. But Scheer's plan of destroying a substantial portion of the British fleet also failed. The Germans continued to pose a threat that required the British to keep their battleships concentrated in the North Sea, but the battle confirmed the German policy of avoiding all fleetto-fleet contact, and they never again contested control of the high seas. Instead, the German Navy turned its efforts and resources to unrestricted submarine warfare and the destruction of Allied and Neutral shipping. The Germans claimed that Jutland was a victory for them as they had sunk more capital ships than the British. Jellicoe claimed that the victory belonged to the British as his fleet was still a sea worthy entity whereas the German High Seas fleet was not. The British did lose more ships (14 ships and over 6,000 lives) than the Germans (9 ships and over 2,500 casualties). But the German fleet was never again to be in a position to put to sea and challenge the British Navy in the North Sea. In addition to Europe, Britain also fought on other fronts in World War I. In the Middle East the British army fought the Turks in a major conflict with farreaching consequences. Here the war was characterized by the doggedness of Turkish resistance and by the constant struggle against climate, terrain, and disease. The British attempted to knock Turkey out of the war with an attack on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915, but were compelled to withdraw at the end of the year, having failed to break out from their narrow beach-heads in the face of stubborn Turkish resistance. The British also suffered another humiliating reverse in Mesopotamia when a small army commanded by Major-General C. V. F. Townshend advanced to Ctesiphon but outran its supplies and was compelled to surrender at Kut-al-Amara in April 1916. Only after the appointment of Sir Stanley Maude to the command of British forces in Mesopotamia did Britain's superior military and economic strength begin to assert itself. Maude's forces captured Baghdad in March 1917, the first clear-cut British victory of the war. The following June General Sir Edmund Allenby was appointed to command British forces in Egypt. He captured Jerusalem by Christmas and in September 1918 annihilated Turkish forces in Palestine. Turkey surrendered on 31 October 1918. The war also found its way to tropical Africa. Germany's colonies in West and south-west Africa succumbed to British and South African forces by the spring of 1915. In East Africa, however, a German army of locally raised black African soldiers commanded by Colonel Paul von LettowVorbeck conducted a brilliant guerrilla campaign, leading over 100,000 British and South African troops a merry dance through the bush and surrendering only after the defeat of Germany in Europe became known. The End and Aftermath of the War The war along the western front led the German government and its allies to sue for peace in spite of German success elsewhere. As a result the terms of the peace were dictated by France, Britain and the United States, during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The result was the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919 by a delegation of the new German government. The terms of the treaty would effectively cripple Germany as an economic and military power. The Versailles treaty returned the border provinces of Alsace-Lorraine to France, thus limiting the coal required by German industry. The Saar, which formed the west bank of the Rhine, would be demilitarized and controlled by Britain and France, while the Kiel Canal opened to international traffic. The treaty also drastically reshaped Eastern Europe. It severely limited the German armed forces by restricting the size of the army to 100,000 and disallowing a navy or air force. Germany in 1919 was bankrupt, the people living in a state of semi-starvation, and having no commerce with the remainder of the world. The allies occupied the Rhine cities of Cologne, Koblenz and Mainz, with restoration dependent on payment of reparations. Europe's political and military leaders have been subjected to much retrospective criticism for their belief that the ‘war would be over by Christmas'. This belief was not based on complacency. Even those who predicted with chilling accuracy the murderous nature of First World War battlefields, such as the Polish banker Jan Bloch, expected the war to be short. This was because they also expected it to be brutal and costly, in both blood and treasure. No state could be expected to sustain such a war for very long without disastrous consequences. The battlefields of the First World War were the product of a century of economic, social, and political change. Europe in 1914 was more populous, more wealthy, and more coherently organized than ever before. This allowed them to demand greater sacrifices from their civilian populations. Improvements in agriculture reduced the numbers needed to work on the land and provided a surplus of males of military age. Changes in administrative practice brought about by the electric telegraph, the telephone, the typewriter, and the growth of railways allowed these armies to be assembled and deployed quickly. Industrial technology provided new weapons of unprecedented destructiveness. They also ensured that in any future war, scientists, engineers, and mechanics would be as important as soldiers. The First World War redrew the map of Europe and the Middle East. Four great empires, the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, the Habsburg, and the Ottoman, were defeated and collapsed. They were replaced by a number of weak and sometimes avaricious successor states. Russia underwent a bloody civil war before the establishment of a Communist Soviet Union which put it beyond the pale of European diplomacy for a generation. Germany became a republic branded at its birth with the stigma of defeat, increasingly weakened by the burden of Allied reparations and by inflation. France recovered the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, but continued to be haunted by fear and loathing of Germany. Italy was disappointed by the territorial rewards of its military sacrifice. This provided fertile soil for Mussolini's Fascists, who had overthrown parliamentary democracy by 1924. The British maintained the integrity and independence of Belgium. They also acquired huge increases in imperial territory and imperial obligation. But they did not achieve the security for the Empire which they sought. The cost of all this in human terms was 8.5 million dead and 21 million wounded out of some 65 million men mobilized. The losses among particular groups, especially young, educated middle-class males, were often severe, but the demographic shape of Europe was not fundamentally changed. The real impact was moral. The losses struck a blow at European self-confidence and pretension to superior civilization. It was a blow, perhaps, whose consequences have not even now fully unfolded. The experiences of the war in the west are commonly assumed to have led to a sort of collective national trauma afterward for all of the participating countries. The optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought in the war became what is known as "the Lost Generation" because they never fully recovered from their experiences. For the next few years, much of Europe mourned privately and publicly; mourning and memorials were erected in thousands of villages and towns. The death of over 10 million men in combat left a gaping chasm in the social and economic life of the postwar world. Many of those who survived the war returned home with physical disabilities that prevented them from rejoining the work force. Others suffered the lasting effects of what in those days was called shell shock and what is today labeled post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological affliction that prevents a successful adaptation to civilian life. Many of the dead left widows and orphans who had to cope with severe economic hardship and emotional loss The war also profoundly disrupted the revered cultural tradition of the Western world. Optimism about human nature and about the glorious future of civilization was discredited as soldiers from what had been hailed as the most highly civilized societies on earth slaughtered each other without mercy. Artists began to produce works that mocked the self-confident assertions of humanism and portrayed the sordid realities of modern life. Social scientists and psychologists probed the sources of human aggression in an effort to explain the orgy of violence that had ended. Philosophers bemoaned the decadence of civilization and the decline of the west. Certainly a sense of disillusionment and cynicism became pronounced. Nihilism grew in popularity. Many people believed that the war heralded the end of the world as they had known it, including the collapse of capitalism and imperialism. Communist and socialist movements around the world drew strength from this theory, enjoying a level of popularity they had never known before. These feelings were most pronounced in areas directly or particularly harshly affected by the war, such as central Europe, Russia and France. 'Everybody knows' what World War One was like and what it meant. Modern Britons think of the war as a muddy, bloody mess - a futile massacre in which a generation of young men were slaughtered at the behest of asinine generals. Those who survived barbed wire and machine gun bullets went mad or wrote poetry. Their sacrifice achieved nothing, succeeding only in laying down the foundations for another bloody conflict 20 years later. World War One has become a byword for how awful, stupid and useless war can be. The positive meanings ascribed to the war have been all but forgotten. Notwithstanding the enormous casualty lists, in 1918 many Britons thought they had achieved a miraculous deliverance from an evil enemy. They celebrated a remarkable military victory and national survival. For those who had served in the trenches, and for those left at home, the war experience encompassed not only horror, frustration and sorrow, but also triumph, pride, camaraderie and even enjoyment, as well as boredom and apathy. In the years after the war, Britons commemorated it in print, on stage, in stone and in ceremonies.