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The Great War: A Personal View
Introduction
In these years of 2014 to 2019, we commemorate the centenary of the Great War. A war later
known as the First World War, or as Churchill put it, the beginning of the Second Thirty Years
War. This war, more than others, is popularly held to be the epitome of futility. In Australia in
particular, far removed from the battle lines, the lives of our soldiers are thought to have been
thrown away in a senseless effort to support the British Empire. The tactics used, which resulted
in such high casualties, are held to be due to the stupidity of the British generals. Gallant, though
hopelessly naive troops were marched in line towards the enemy barbed wire only to be
slaughtered en masse. The support of the home front was maintained by the most cynical atrocity
propaganda. Both extreme left and right wings of politics see the war as being due to, or greatly
influenced by, an international financial conspiracy.
This monograph, which follows an earlier publication “The Origins of the Great War” offers a
dissenting opinion. The war was due to efforts to maintain or improve national prestige or to
avoid or take revenge for national humiliation. This desire, at least in males, to seek status on a
personal, local or national level is buried deep in our genetic makeup and stems from the greater
reproductive success of high status males. Males are larger than females and in mammalian
evolutionary terms the greater the difference in size between the sexes, the greater the number of
females the male controlled sexual access to. If one male has four wives then three males have
none, which is a death sentence as far as genetic success is concerned with the consequence that
young males are desperate to gain status to attract females and pass their genes on. This desire to
be the “Top Dog” is felt at a personal, tribal and national level. On the other side of the coin,
humiliation, for males at least, is one of the most bitter human experiences since it relegates the
male to an inferior position from which he will never be able to attract females.
The nineteenth century had been a British century: The British Empire was the greatest the world
had ever seen. The Royal Navy was easily the largest and best in the world and projected such
power that no nation dared confront her at sea. At “Heaven’s Command”, British battle cruisers
patrolled the sea routes of the world and all international seaborne trade was undertaken on
British sufferance. Other European countries could only maintain overseas colonies with tacit
British permission.
Germany, in particular, didn’t see why she should remain in a permanently inferior position and
why she couldn’t also maintain a large navy and overseas colonies. Germans bristled at being
patronised by the dominant British and slighted by the French who regarded themselves as being
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the center of European civilisation. In the words of German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II,
Germany wanted “a place in the sun”. As General von Bernhardi put it in his very influential
book of 1911 Germany and the Next War Our next war will be fought for the highest interests of our
country and of mankind. This will invest it with importance in the world's history. "World power or downfall" will
be our rallying cry.
Russia was desperate to regain status as a great power after her devastating defeat by Japan in
1904 and at being forced by Germany into a humiliating backdown in a dispute over the Balkans
in 1908. France still seethed over the defeat by Prussia in 1870 and the resulting loss of the two
French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.
Britain virtually alone was happy with the international situation: it was in her interests to
maintain the status quo. Gifted British diplomats and politicians strove to prevent war which
could upset the advantages Britain enjoyed, but even pacifist leaning politicians spoke for the
people when they stated they preferred war to national humiliation. The leaders of the belligerent
nations could rely on the enthusiastic support of their citizens, at least in the earlier stages of the
war. Nations that, as the war progressed, could no longer rely on the support of the home front
were defeated. Rather than see the war as a great economic opportunity, as the conspiracy
theorists would have it, the captains of industry and finance, especially in Britain, saw the war as
a disaster.
Seen from this view, the Great War has echoes in the present. Both Osama bin Laden and
Colonel Qaddafi of Libya saw humiliation of the Muslim world by the West over the last two
hundred years as being one of the major reasons for the tensions in the Middle East. The small
but progressive and powerful state of Israel, backed by the United States, is a constant source of
Arab humiliation and is no doubt a cause for the current support in some quarters for the rise of
Islamic State.
In the initial lunge in 1914, Germany had occupied most of Belgium and much of northern
industrial France. It was incumbent on the western Allies to try to drive the invaders out. The
front line, however, stretched from the Swiss border to the English Channel, meaning that the
German line could not be outflanked: attacks had to be front on. The well recognized problem
the attackers faced was that the weapons of defence were superior to those of attack. This is
usually taken to mean the defensive barbed wire and machine guns, but the major problem facing
the attack was that from the onset the attackers were walking while the defenders were coming
by train. It was simply not possible to “break through”: attacks could easily be sealed off.
Though they needed to ascend a steep learning curve, by the end of the war, the British generals
in particular, had become masters of the tactics of offensive trench warfare.
Australians strongly identified themselves as being members of the British Empire. This large,
though thinly populated country, was seen as being a European island in an Asiatic sea and
Australia was especially disquieted by the rise of Japan which had formed an alliance with Great
Britain. The Australian volunteers sent to fight alongside the British were named the Australian
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Imperial Force to emphasise the dual loyalty to country and empire and thus maintain the
imperial protection. The vigorous Australian support for the war was thought to be partly due to
an attempt to supplant the British reliance on Japan for influence in this part of the world.
Apart from the many surrounding Asian countries, Australia, in fact, was closer to Germany than
were the British themselves. Australia administered southeast New Guinea which shared a long
border with the German colony of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, now north-eastern New Guinea. Few
thought that if the British were defeated in the war, Australia would be left in peace.
This review does not aim to be an exhaustive summary of all the campaigns and battles in the
several areas of operations of the Great War but does include some battles of special significance
or interest or which perhaps are less well known in the West. The Gallipoli Campaign is very
well known in Australia and is not covered.
Christopher R Strakosch MD, FRACP
Associate Professor of Medicine and Supervisor of Undergraduate Medicine
Department of Medicine, Greenslopes Campus
University of Queensland 2016
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The Western Front
The Failure of French Plan XVII: August 1914
After the defeat by Prussia in 1870, the French army had rethought the strategy needed to
confront a newly united Germany in future wars. Further plans were formulated but these were
all defensive in nature. The French General Staff, however, had observers in place during the
recent Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and noted that the Balkan nations had managed to defeat
strong Turk defensive positions by forceful infantry assaults, even though these positions were
protected by the latest Krupp artillery and machine guns. Marshals Joffre and Foch formulated a
new offensive strategy: Plan XVII. Officers who questioned the wisdom of this change were
retired. All that was needed was an aggressive spirit and victory would be theirs, the reasoning
went. The usual term used by the French was “elan” from the same origin as “lance” and
meaning to “hurl (oneself at the foe)”. After all, “The moral is to the physical as three to one”
had been a maxim of the legendary French general Napoleon Bonaparte.
German strategy for a war with France was based on that formulated by a previous Chief of the
German General Staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen (pronounced “Shleefn”). It proposed a large
assault through Belgium to outflank the French positions on the German border. It initially had
been planned against France alone but had been modified by Schlieffen's successor Helmut von
Moltke to take into account the French alliance with Russia. Still some 80 percent of the German
forces were to swing through Belgium into France leaving the other 20 percent to hold the
Russians until a French defeat by the Germans in the West would allow transfer of troops to the
East. It was assumed that with the vast distances involved and the paucity of Russian rail
networks it would take some weeks before the Russian “steamroller” was properly organized.
Time therefore, for the Germans, was vital. The French had to be outflanked and defeated as a
matter of great urgency or Germany would face her old nightmare of war on two fronts. Despite
great efforts at secrecy on the German part, the French were aware of the German plans. A
French intelligence officer had taken a bicycle trip through southwest Germany and noted the
vast army depots on the border with Belgium and that the railway station platforms there were of
immense length to allow for rapid detraining of troops.
Plan XVII took this into account and, in fact, it was thought that the more forces the Germans
placed on their right wing the fewer would be available to defeat the French attack which was
aimed straight at the heart of Germany through the former French provinces of Alsace and
Lorraine. The Germans, in turn, responded to the French plan by weakening the right wing to
keep more troops opposing the French. The French again countered this by also planning to
attack the center of the German line, reasoning that if the Germans planned a strong right wing
and now reinforced their left wing then the center of the line, around the Ardennes, must be
weak.
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As soon as their troops could be brought into position on the German border by the French
railway service, attacks were launched. Hundreds of thousands of French troops, splendid in blue
coats and red trousers (the famous “pantalons rouges”), lead by officers with drawn swords,
charged the German positions. It said much for the ‘elan’ of the French but was a scene from the
previous century. The French attacked with colours flying (the last time the British had uncased
battalion colours in battle was in 1881 during the First Boer War). The British and German
troops, on the other hand, were clad in camouflage uniforms which blended in with the
countryside and contrasted with the colourful French outfits. In the last three weeks of August
and in the month of September the French lost 260000 men of whom 75000 were killed in
action. It was later realised that infantry assaults against prepared positions could only succeed if
supported by massive artillery fire. Perhaps the French had forgotten that “God is on the side
with the best artillery” had been another of Napoleon’s maxims. In this carnage, it was the best,
most aggressive young officers, leading from the front, who were the first to die. The French
Military Academy at St Cyr lists the officers killed in the service of France. There is no need to
list all the individual officers killed in the “Battle of the Frontiers”, the inscription simply reads
“The Class of 1914”.
With the failure of Plan XVII went French hopes of re-establishing her place as the leading
nation in Europe. As the war went on, more and more she relied on British and then American
support. Only now, in the 21st century, is French resentment, made much worse by the
humiliation of French failings in the Second World War, starting to abate.
The British Retreat from Mons
The British had a defence understanding with both France and Russia: the Entente Cordiale, but
this was not a binding treaty and the Liberal Cabinet of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was
deeply divided as to whether Britain should enter the war. Britain, however, was a signatory to
the 1839 Treaty of London which guaranteed Belgian neutrality and when Germany invaded
Belgium following the Schlieffen Plan, public opinion in Britain swung strongly to the support
of Belgium and France. Britain declared war. Within a few days of the declaration on 4th
August, British troops were embarking for France. Germany and France both had universal male
conscription and their armies consisted of the regular army of the current call up classes
reinforced by the mobilization of the male population of previous years and were numbered in
the millions, whereas the British relied on a small professional army backed by the Territorial
reserves. Only 80,000 men were available but they were very well trained and excellent
marksmen. A soldier’s pay depended on his being able to hit a man sized target at 300 yards
every four seconds.
The British moved up to a previously agreed position on the left flank of the French army at
Mons, just over the Belgian border in Wallonia, right in the path of the German First Army of
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General Alexander von Kluck- the powerful right wing of the German envelopment plan of
Schlieffen. On 23rd August 1914 the Germans attacked the British dug in along a canal but were
met with very heavy fire and fell back. Finally, the overwhelming numbers of the attackers, and
the fact that the French on the right had retired, forced the British to begin a two-week retreat
which would end outside Paris.
The action at Mons occurred near to the site of the English victory over the French at Agincourt
during the 100 Years War, almost 300 years before. A Welsh author, Arthur Machen, published
a short story “The Bowmen”, recounting a tale of a British soldier who had prayed to St George
during the battle of Mons and had his prayers answered by a ghostly force of English archers
coming to the aid of their countrymen and engaging the attackers with their longbows. After the
successful defence, British soldiers found the German corpses to be riddled with arrows. Machen
did not mean the story to be a hoax but it was written in the style of a firsthand account and
spread like wildfire through Britain. The British had been assisted by Divine intervention!
Versions of the story persisted even when Machen quickly pointed out the work to be fiction. An
angel was seen in the sky according to some and in time it came to be accepted that if a soldier
hadn’t seen the angel then obviously he hadn’t been there.
The British commander, General Sir John French, was less confident about Heaven’s support. He
became very concerned about the heavy losses incurred by the small British regular army,
virtually the only soldiers the British had at the time. He withdrew his forces from the line and
only reengaged them in time for the Battle of the Marne in early September after a meeting with
the French commander Marshal Joffre and the British Minister for War, Lord Kitchener. French
was later replaced by General Sir Douglas Haig who seemed better able mentally to accept the
high casualty rates of trench warfare.
The Eastern Front
The Eastern Front in the Second World War is well known in the West with the battles of
Leningrad and Stalingrad well covered. The Eastern Front in World War 1, however, is much
less known, at least in the West, when compared with the campaigns in France and Flanders.
Persons thinking of the Great War tend to conjure up images of the massed attacks on the
Somme or the mud of Flanders. The war, however, was started over a dispute between Serbia
and Austria. The Austro-Hungarian government was concerned that the Serbs had plans to unite
all the Balkan Slavs into one country centered on Belgrade in the same way that Germany and
Italy had been united in recent times with the resulting unified powers being much greater than
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the sum of the parts. The Serbs relied on assistance from the Russian Empire, traditional
defender of the Slavs. (A position her critics say she maintains to this day). The Russian Empire,
commanding huge resources in manpower was perceived as the main enemy of the AustroHungarian Empire and was the major concern of the German Empire. The Germans felt they
would be able to defeat the French without too much trouble and then engage what they
perceived as the main threat, that of the vast Russian Empire with which they shared a long
border through what is now Poland. Imperial Russia with her ally Romania (from 1916)
confronted the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, in the South and the German Empire in
the North along a front which extended some 1600 kms from the Baltic to the Black Seas. The
roads and especially the railways were much less extensive than in the West. Huge armies
groped about for their adversaries with a front line much less defined and the war was much
more fluid than in the West. Supplies were more difficult to bring up and casualties to evacuate.
Losses were enormous, both from enemy action and the adverse consequences of fighting in
often appalling weather. The strain broke the heart of both the Austro-Hungarian and Russian
Empires. Both Empires disintegrated after the war whereas both victors and vanquished on the
Western Front remained more or less intact.
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Central Europe in 1914. Present day Poland is divided amongst the German, Russian and AustroHungarian Empires.
The initial plan for Germany was to follow that of Schlieffen, as modified by Moltke, and devote
most of her forces to defeating the French while a smaller force held a Russian attack until the
victorious forces from the West could be rapidly transported over the excellent German rail
system to assist. The Austrians planned to aid their German allies by launching an attack to the
North East to take the Russian push into German Poland from the flank. The Russians however
had a vast pool of men to call on and were able to bring another army into Galicia to take the
Austro-Hungarians on their exposed Eastern flank in turn.
The Battle of Tannenberg, August 1914
The Russians had promised the French that in the event of a German invasion of France, Russia
would attack East Prussia which jutted into Russian territory along the Baltic. Emperor Nicholas
II of “All the Russias” said, after war had been declared, that it would be an honour to come to
the aid of his Entente Cordiale Allies. It was also in Russia’s interest to keep France in the war.
If France were to be defeated quickly, as was the German plan, then the full force of the German
army would be turned against Russia with a likely further victory for the German forces. Within
days of war being declared, General Pavel Rennenkampf’’s First Army invaded Eastern Prussia
and General Alexander Samsonov’s Second Army advanced in the south from their base around
Warsaw. This was a great achievement carried out despite the difficulties in moving such vast
numbers of men and horses over poor roads and an inadequate railway system. The Russian
movement occurred earlier than the Germans anticipated partly because the Russian army had
been secretly mobilising some five days before war was declared. The Russian soldiers were
relatively well trained and equipped but, though ready to stoutly defend Mother Russia, were a
little less enthusiastic about invading their neighbours.
In the north Rennenkamp’s Russian First Army achieved some success until the great difficulty
in bringing up supplies started to tell and his advance was halted. The German commander,
General Maximilian von Prittwitz und Gaffron sent very pessimistic messages to German HQ
and was replaced by the elderly Colonel General Paul von Hindenburg, brought out of
retirement, and Major General Erich Ludendorff, a very intelligent if somewhat eccentric
strategist. Ludendorff would later promote the “Stab in the Back” conspiracy theory as the cause
of Germany’s defeat in WW1. His ideas were later used by the Nazi’s but Ludendorff was to
repudiate Hitler and in 1935 declined the offer of promotion to Field Marshall and refused to
give his support to the National Socialists.
The situation on the Eastern Front, however, was not as disastrous as had been reported and a
counter strategy had already been proposed by a relatively junior German officer, Colonel
Maximilian Hoffmann, based on pre conflict war games. The plan was to deploy a light German
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force to screen Rennenkamp in the north and use the excellent German rail system to speed the
bulk of the German forces south to meet Samsonov’s Second Army. Samsonov had turned his
attack Northwest to try to take the Germans in the flank but now found the Germans had
managed to get past his left wing and were able to take him in the flank from the south while also
attacking from the north. Rennekamp moved slowly to assist the southern force, perhaps partly
because he and Samsonov detested each other. Samsonov found his force surrounded and he,
himself, separated from his main force, wandered off into the night and shot himself. The
Germans then moved their forces north again and forced Rennenkamp’s First Army back into
Russia. The German plans were assisted by the paucity of telegraph lines in the region which
required the Russians to rely on wireless. Code books for a new code system had not been widely
distributed forcing the Russians to send transmissions unencyphered, making it easy for the
Germans to intercept and gain priceless intelligence as to the Russian plans. The situation in the
north stabilised until the German and Austro-Hungarian offensive eight months later in April of
1915.
The Russian Front in Galicia in 1914
Though suffering a heavy defeat at German hands in August 1914 in the north, in the south the
Russians were much more successful against the Austro-Hungarian army. The Austro-Hungarian
commander, Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, moved his army northeast to attack
the Russian advance into German Poland in the flank. The Russians, however, had a very large
supply of soldiers and could still field two armies to counter the Austrians. Initially Conrad’s
forces succeeded in attacks against the Russians but further south were defeated by Russian
forces under General Ivanov, losing the Imperial fortress of Lemberg and having the fortress of
Przemysl (pronounced pShemishl) besieged. The Russian rail system in this part of the world
was reasonably good and the Russians could bring up supplies faster than the Austrians who
were initially advancing into enemy territory. The Austro-Hungarian army was devastated,
losing 324,000 casualties including some 130,000 prisoners. Many of the Slav soldiers serving in
the Imperial Army surrendered willingly and even offered to fight on the side of the Russians
against their old masters. The Czech soldiers in particular were to form the famous “Czech
Legion” of the Russian army and go on to play a large part in the Russian Civil War which
followed the Russian defeat in 1917. Among them was Jaroslav Hasek, author of “The Good
Soldier Schweik”. The Austro-Hungarian army never really recovered from the defeat in Galicia,
and from this time, right at the beginning of the war, was reliant on its German allies for support,
forcing their government to follow German, rather than Austro-Hungarian strategic aims.
War in the Caucasus: November 1914
The war in the Caucasus between the Ottoman and the Russian Empires receives scant attention
in the English speaking world but was the scene of very bitter fighting and of one of the major
military disasters of the twentieth century; a century not short of these tragedies.
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At its peak in the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire had extended from just south of Vienna in
the northwest to Bahrain in the southeast and included much of what is now the Ukraine,
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The increase in power of the European empires and the
relative decline in that of the Ottoman Empire meant that the Turks had been gradually pushed
south. By 1914 the border between Russia and Turkey lay in a mountainous area in what is now
northeast Turkey. Both the predominantly Muslim Ottoman and Christian Russian Empires by
then included large communities of members of the other faith whose sympathies were suspected
by both powers as being with their coreligionists across the border.
The outbreak of the war saw the Ottomans electing to side with the Central Powers of Germany
and Austro-Hungary, hoping that a victory with them would lead to reclamation of territories
which over the years had been seized by the Allies. Great Britain administered Egypt, nominally
under Ottoman supervision, France had annexed Algeria and Russia had advanced south through
Georgia and Azerbaijan and now controlled the oil rich area around the Azer city of Baku.
Control of oil producing areas was starting to become of great interest to the competing empires
with the increasing use of oil fired steam ships and petrol driven motor vehicles.
The Russians were first to attack in November 1914 with General Bergmann leading an army
corps of about 100000 men into Turkey from the railhead at Sarikamis in what is now northeast
Turkey. The attack was driven back with a resulting great increase in confidence of the Ottoman
High Command.
Thus encouraged the Ottomans opened their campaign to drive the Russians north and hopefully
reclaim Baku by launching 120,000 men at the Russian positions around the towns of Sarikamis
and Kars. It was now December and bitterly cold. The Russians could resupply from the rail line
which terminated in Sarikamis whereas the Turks had to struggle to bring their men, food and
munitions along barely passable mountain tracks. To make matters much worse, the Turkish
troops were inadequately clothed and equipped for a winter campaign whereas the Russians were
well accustomed to fighting in the freezing conditions. The result was a disaster for the Turkish
forces. As many as 90,000 out of the 120,000 men engaged were lost, mainly from the effects of
hypothermia and starvation: probably the greatest proportional loss in a single engagement of the
whole war.
The Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, May-June 1915
Though the Germans had been successful in the North against the Russians at Tannenberg, in the
South the Austro-Hungarian army had been dealt a devastating blow with the loss of the
fortresses of Lemberg and Przemysl and an unsustainable 750,000 casualties. Vienna threatened
a separate peace unless the Germans came to their assistance. In response the German High
Command offered to support a counter attack but only if it were to be commanded by one of
their own, General August von Mackensen. A gas attack was organised at Ypres in April 1915
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and while the Western Allies were recovering from this, eight divisions of infantry with
supporting heavy and ultra-heavy artillery was moved from the Western Front to lead the attack.
The artillery barrage was the heaviest so far in the war with some 800 artillery pieces including
the huge Krupp 420mm and Skoda 305 mm howitzers crushing the Russian front line. The
Germans and Austro-Hungarians surged forward and finally recaptured the fortresses of
Lemberg and Przemysl to the great joy of their inhabitants. As well as overwhelming artillery
support, the Central Powers had excellent intelligence of the Russian positions and strengths
partly due to the breaking of the Russian codes by the Austrians, one area in which the
multicultural old empire excelled in. The Russians had also managed to alienate the inhabitants
of the area by their harsh methods which compared poorly with the much lighter hand of the
Austro-Hungarians in particular, who were well accustomed to dealing with peoples of different
languages and traditions.
By the end of the campaign, the most successful in the war, and about the only one in which the
attackers lost many fewer casualties than did the defenders, the Russians had been pushed back
almost 200 miles. Total casualties came to about 87,000 for the Central Powers but something
like eight times as many were lost to the Russians including about 250,000 prisoners. On the
other hand, the Austro-Hungarians were very resentful of the fact that they were now dependent
on the Germans and thoughts started to turn to a separate peace with their old friends in the
West.
The Russian Bear had been badly wounded by the reverses at Tannenberg in 1914 and now in
1915, but was still in the fight.
The War at Sea
Background to the Naval Engagements between Britain and Germany
British strategy over the previous few hundred years had been to support the second strongest
nation in Europe so as to maintain a balance of power and prevent any one nation becoming
overly dominant: a strategy her critics say she pursues to this day. Prior to the Franco-Prussian
War of 1870, Britain had been quite friendly with the German states and with the AustroHungarian Empire. The victory of Prussia in that war and the subsequent unification of Germany
meant that Britain now became more friendly with France, a country with which Britain had
engaged in countless wars over the prior centuries. The unification of Germany coincided with a
resurgence of the Romantic movement in Europe which emphasised the emotional over the
rational side of human existence. The rational “Age of Reason” which held sway in Europe
following the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries was felt to betray the true nature of
mankind. The Romantic movement elevated poetry over prose and glorified in the adventurous,
heroic side of human nature. Climbing Mount Everest “because it’s there” is a romantic rather
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than rational thing to do. The success of Prussia in the war with France resulted in an emotional
upwelling in Germany: she was destined for great things and would not be content with
remaining a second rate power.
The brilliant Chancellor of Prussia and then of the united Germany, Otto von Bismarck, had
conducted a series of limited wars against Austria, Denmark and finally France to establish
German hegemony in Europe. He was content with this dominant position and sought not to
antagonize the British. In 1890, however, he was dismissed from his post as Chancellor by the
German Emperor Wilhelm II, allowing Germany to pursue a path of overseas adventure. The
German navy had been a small affair and not taken part in the limited wars engineered by
Bismarck. Kaiser Wilhelm reflected popular opinion when he decided that Germany would
remain a second rate power unless she were to establish a powerful fleet of warships, knowing
this would be seen as a direct challenge to Britain. Previously the unspoken agreement had been
that Germany, as a continental power, would have a large army and small navy, whereas Britain,
an island, would maintain a large navy and small army. Though a powerful navy was indeed
necessary for defence of the island, it had the effect of giving Britain immense power in virtually
controlling all seaborne trade and a result that any European overseas colonies could only be
maintained with tacit British permission.
Kaiser Wilhelm's mother was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and the Kaiser had spent
much time in England as a boy and, in fact, was an admiral in his grandmother’s Royal Navy. He
greatly enjoyed this role and often took part in the Royal Yacht Regatta held each year at Cowes
on the Isle of Wight. Then occurred in 1895 a little known incident which had tremendous flow
on effects on the peace of the world for the next century. Kaiser Wilhelm attended the Regatta as
usual but this time was accompanied by two new battleships he wished to show off to the British.
He invited the British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury to a reception on his Royal Yacht, but
unfortunately Salisbury was delayed and kept the Kaiser waiting for two hours. Kaiser Wilhelm
was very offended by this perceived slight and declared he wouldn’t attend any more regattas at
Cowes but would establish his own version at Kiel. It was in this atmosphere that Germany
embarked on a major expansion of her navy. The principal architect of the naval expansion, in
collaboration with the Kaiser, was the German admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, also an anglophile
who, in fact, had sent his daughters to be educated in Britain. Tirpitz steered several naval laws
through the German parliament with the final version passed in 1900 aimed at a fleet of some 36
battleships to be ready by 1917. This was a direct challenge to British naval supremacy and
engagements between the British and German fleets in the First World War must be seen against
this background. Without such a challenge it was by no means certain that Britain would have
formed alliances with her traditional enemies of France and Russia and the war may have
remained a struggle between the Central Powers of Germany and Austro-Hungary on one side
and France and Russia on the other with Britain remaining neutral. A contest that the Central
Powers would probably have won.
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Germany had squandered her chance of peace with Britain by her naval build up, yet the German
surface fleet was never to play a major role in the war and Britain maintained her worldwide
naval supremacy throughout, sweeping German naval and merchant ships from the seas and
picking off German colonies in the Pacific and later in Africa.
The British had felt it necessary to respond to the German naval build-up so as to maintain
supremacy at sea and defend their island nation. In 1904, Admiral Sir John “Jacky” Arbuthnot
Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy. A brilliant, if somewhat eccentric,
though energetic officer, he revolutionized the service. He paid off older inefficient ships and
was instrumental in the design of the revolutionary fast steam turbine driven battleship HMS
Dreadnought. The minute she hit the water all other capital ships were out of date and henceforth
all battleships were rated as either “Dreadnoughts” or “Pre-Dreadnoughts” with the latter being
considered virtually a hindrance rather than an asset in a modern navy. A naval arms race was
sparked especially between Germany and Great Britain as to who could build the greater number
of these very expensive ships.
British and German Naval Engagements in the South Atlantic 1914
The German Empire had maintained a Far Eastern fleet based at German concession of Tsingtao
on the Chinese Shandong peninsula. With the entry of Japan into the war, this was felt to be
untenable and the German fleet under Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee, put to sea to raid
allied shipping in the Pacific. British command of coaling stations made supply very difficult and
von Spee decided to round Cape Horn and try to bring his ships back to Germany. Off the coast
of Chile his fleet was met by a much weaker British force commanded by Rear Admiral Sir
Christopher Cradock. The modern German armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau
were larger, faster and more heavily armed than Craddock’s elderly ships HMS Monmouth and
Good Hope. Cradock knew he had little chance against the superior ships and to make matters
worse his ships were to the west of the German cruisers and silhouetted against the lighter sky.
Towards the end the Monmouth’s guns were silenced though she was still afloat. The Germans
used searchlights to illuminate the White Ensign, still defiantly flying, but Craddock refused to
strike the colours. The British ships were finally sunk with the loss of all hands.
Craddock’s determination not to surrender to superior forces may have been influenced by a
naval action in the Mediterranean right at outset of the war. The German Mediterranean fleet
consisted only of a battlecruiser SMS Goeben and a light cruiser SMS Breslau. These ships were
initially a threat to French ships transporting troops from Algeria to mainland France, but were
then ordered to proceed to Constantinople where they were gifted to the Turkish government to
replace two dreadnoughts ordered by Turkey but requisitioned by Britain at the outbreak of war.
Rear Admiral Ernest Troubridge pursued the German ships with a force consisting of four older
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armoured cruisers with accompanying destroyers and since his ships were outgunned, elected not
to engage. He was bitterly criticised for this decision, thought to be not in the tradition of the
Royal Navy. An opinion strengthened by the use of the two German ships to shell Russian bases
in Crimea and bring Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers. Troubridge was court
martialed and, though exonerated, never held a sea command again.
The loss of Craddock’s ships Monmouth and Goodhope caused consternation in Britain and two
battlecruisers HMS Inflexible and Invincible were detached from duties with the Grand Fleet to
avenge the loss. Battlecruisers, heavily armed but more lightly armoured than battleships to
increase speed, had been designed by Admiral “Jacky” Fisher for just this purpose: destroying
raiding enemy cruisers “like an anteater gobbling ants”. They sailed in haste with attendant
armoured and light cruisers under the command of Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee. The British
ships caught up with the German cruisers off the Falkland Islands and this time with the
advantage of speed and a much heavier armament, Craddock was avenged. All the major
German ships were sunk. In November 1914, the light cruiser SMS Emden, also of the German
Far East Fleet, which had been detached to act as an independent raider in the Indian Ocean, was
caught and destroyed by the more powerful Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney.
The Battle of Jutland 31 May to 1 June 1916
The Battle of Jutland was the only major clash between capital ships in the Great War and
remains one of the most studied and controversial engagements in history. Both sides claimed
victory and there is no doubt that the British lost more ships and sailors, but battles are not
decided on which side loses more but on which side imposes its will on the enemy. The British
had undisputed control of the world’s oceans at the start of the battle and maintained this
dominant position at the end. Despite the losses in ships and men, Jutland was a major strategic
British victory. The German High Seas Fleet, the major cause of antagonism between Britain and
Germany, essentially remained in harbour for the rest of the war. On the other hand, the British
public had expected another Trafalgar: a great victory at sea in the Nelson tradition, and were
very disappointed at the outcome. A feeling made worse by the Germans, being closer to home
port, were able to be first to announce the battle, trumpeting news of a great victory over the
vaunted Royal Navy. The British fleet maintained radio silence until it reached port later and the
initial report was very low key, just a statement of the losses on each side. The strategic result of
the battle, that Britannia still “ruled the waves” was not immediately apparent, nor alluded to in
the British communication.
The opposing battle fleets were organized along the same lines, battlecruisers steaming ahead of
the main battle fleet with each side having the aim of luring the enemy towards these battleships
waiting in ambush. The German High Seas fleet under Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer put to sea
hoping to only encounter and destroy British battlecruisers. German naval codes, however, were
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being read by “Room 40 “- the Royal Navy code breakers, and the German plan was known. The
British Grand Fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, also put to sea hoping to surprise
and destroy the German fleet in turn. The British Grand Fleet comprised 28 battleships, 9
battlecruisers and supporting lighter ships. The German admiral commanded 16 battleships and 5
battlecruisers, with supporting ships, though the German battle line was fleshed out with a
further six “Pre-Dreadnought” battleships, whose slower speed was, if anything, a handicap to
the more modern German battleships.
The battle is usually divided into five phases. The initial phase saw the British battlecruisers,
under the bellicose Admiral Sir David Beatty encounter the German battlecruisers commanded
by Vice Admiral Franz Hipper. With the aid of the codebreakers the British ships were able to
get into position long before the Germans expected the fleets to meet. The British battlecruisers
were supported by four “Super Dreadnoughts” of the Queen Elizabeth class- fast oil burning
battleships which could keep up with the battlecruisers. The Germans fled south towards their
battleships with the British pursuing- this phase known as “The run to the south”. Upon
encountering the main German line, the British turned north and ran towards their own battle line
waiting in ambush. The “Run to the north”. To the Germans, things seemed to be going to plan
until the surprise appearance of the whole of the British Grand Fleet on the horizon. Admiral
Scheer ordered a “Battle about turn” and steamed away, but then seemed to have second
thoughts and again ordered his ships about, hoping to cross behind the British line. Beatty
however was steaming more slowly than expected and once again the Germans ran into the
British battle line. The German battle fleet was in line astern and the British were also line astern
but at right angles to the German fleet such that all the British ships could fire broadsides
whereas the German ships could only fire ahead: a classical naval maneuver known as “crossing
the T”. As a result, the British scored 27 hits on the German battleships while only receiving 2 in
reply. Again Scheer ordered a “Battle about turn” and sent his destroyers in on a torpedo attack
to cover his retreat. Jellicoe now made the most controversial order of the battle- he turned his
battleships away from the destroyers, allowing the Germans to escape. This maneuver had been
played out in war games and Jellicoe had stated that he would turn away from a torpedo attack so
as not to lose any of his precious battleships. All Jellicoe had to do to win and uphold British
sovereignty of the seas was simply to maintain the “fleet in being”, but his order was thought to
have prevented a clear British sea victory and was bitterly criticized at the time. Jellicoe was
replaced and the more belligerent Beatty was given command of the battle fleet but then became
just as conservative as Jellicoe had been. Recently the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth,
regamed the famous battle and announced that Jellicoe had made the correct decision after all.
By now, the short northern summer night was coming down, leaving Scheer and his battleships
to the west of the British who were positioned between the Germans and home. In the final phase
Scheer ordered his ships to try to get past the British, fight if they had to, but steam on at all
costs. There were several exchanges of fire but the German ships were not reported to Admiral
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Jellicoe, it being assumed he could see the situation for himself. Several more smaller ships were
sunk but Scheer managed to extricate his fleet without major loss and get home.
The British had lost three battlecruisers, which blew up during the battlecruiser duel leading to
Beatty’s famous statement “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”.
The “something “which dogged the British was twofold. British ships were designed for duties in
the far flung British Empire. The crews lived on the ships themselves which needed to be at least
moderately comfortable whereas the German crews lived in barracks onshore when not at sea,
allowing the German ships to be divided into myriad small watertight compartments and making
the ships very difficult to sink. Secondly, the British had made a cult of gunnery and the ships
which won the trophies were ones which could put the most rounds on target in the shortest time.
Fire doors were left open to facilitate the rapid movement of ammunition which gave an
advantage when the target didn’t fire back but made the ships fatally vulnerable in an actual
battle. A relatively small detonation could flash into the magazine and cause a catastrophic
explosion. During the battle, the British lost some 6000 sailors and the warships lost came to
113,000 tons, whereas the German losses were 2500 sailors and 62,000 tons sunk. The German
battlecruisers, however, were floating wrecks, and several battleships badly damaged but these
German ships hadn’t actually sunk and certainly had not blown up with the loss of the entire
crew. Indeed, so badly damaged were the German battleships and battlecruisers that the fleet
needed many months for repairs whereas Admiral Jellicoe signalled that his fleet was ready to
put to sea again within hours of returning to his base at Scapa Flow.
The result of the battle was that the British for the next few months at least were relatively the
stronger until the German ships could be repaired. The British were able to maintain their tight
blockade on Germany forcing the Germans to turn to their submarine fleet in what was to be an
almost successful attempt to turn the tables, blockade Britain and starve her into submission.
The German U-Boat Campaign
Part of British naval strategy in the Great War was to use the superior numbers of the Royal
Naval surface fleet to clamp a tight blockade on Germany. The British were able to adhere to the
“Cruiser Rules”; a series of war rules which had been worked out in several international
conferences during the 19th century. Passenger ships could not be sunk, but merchant ships
could be stopped, searched and if carrying contraband then either taken as a prize or sunk after
the crew had been placed in lifeboats with adequate supplies to get to safety. Only warships
could be sunk without warning. Germany could only counter this blockade by attempting a
blockade of the British Isles using submarines. The German U-Boats, however, experienced
great difficulty if they attempted to follow the war rules. Their greatest advantage, that of
concealment and surprise, was lost if they surfaced to search the suspect merchant ship: their
boats were slower on the surface than many of their victims and they became very vulnerable to
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attack by British warships summonsed to the scene by radioed distress calls. On the other hand,
the German politicians worried about the response of the still neutral United States if unarmed
ships were sunk and the crews and passengers drowned. Initially the U-Boats attempted to only
attack enemy ships but they were fighting with one arm tied behind their backs. By February
1915, orders were given to attack all ships, enemy or neutral, in the declared “War Zone” around
Britain.
Ther German boats had some initial success against British warships. Only weeks after the war
began, U-9 sank the obsolescent, but still useful, armoured cruisers Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy.
Thinking the first cruiser had struck a mine, the other ships stopped to give assistance and were
picked off in turn. Thereafter RN warships were forbidden to stop to pick up survivors of a
sinking ship.
The sinking of the RMS Lusitania
Britain and Germany had been locked in a commercial rivalry as to which nation had the fastest
and most luxurious ships carrying passengers in the lucrative transAtlantic trade between Europe
and the United States. The Royal Mail Steamer Lusitania was a Cunard liner and when launched
was the largest passenger ship in the world and for several years held the “Blue Riband” - a
virtual prize taken from horse racing, awarded to the ship making the fastest crossing. Her
building had been subsidized by the British Admiralty on the understanding that she could be
requisitioned in war time as an Armed Merchant Cruiser and she was listed as such in the 1914
edition of “Jane’s All the World’s Fighting Ships”. She was built with hard points for guns, shell
hoists and magazines but the Royal Navy elected not to use her and she had been kept on the
Atlantic passenger run.
The Germans had declared the waters around the British Isles a War Zone and her sailing
announcement in US newspapers was accompanied by a warning from the German Embassy that
persons sailing on her did so at their own risk. Even though no great passenger liner, up till this
time, had ever been sunk without warning, the British took steps to protect her on the final leg of
the voyage to Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom). A destroyer was sent to escort her in
but the RN warship and the civilian liner did not have compatible radio codes and the destroyer
didn’t find the ship. Captain Turner of the Lusitania, however, had received warnings of a
submarine operating in the Irish waters and took what he thought were adequate precautions. He
doubled the watches and swung out the lifeboats. His efforts were in vain: at 1410 on the 7th of
May 1915, Lusitania was struck by a single torpedo fired by the German Submarine U-20 at a
range of 700 meters. Two explosions were heard and the ship heeled over to starboard and sank
within 20 minutes about 19 km off the Irish coast. Some 1200 persons were lost though there
were about 760 survivors, retrieved either from lifeboats or from the ocean itself. American
public opinion was outraged especially since the dead included 128 US citizens and lingering
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anger over the sinking was one of the reasons for the United States entering the war two years
later.
Debate over the sinking continues to this day. The ship had been carrying munitions, as she was
entitled to do, but the second explosion was not due to them. The torpedo blast had flung a cloud
of coal dust into the air, forming a “fuel air munition” and causing a thermobaric explosion when
the dust touched the furnace mouths. Though coal dust deflagrates rather than detonates and is
thus rated as “low explosive “, the blast blew the side out of the ship and greatly hastened her
sinking. The conspiracy theory that the ship had been deliberately sacrificed by the First Lord of
the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, to bring the United States into the war, is not supported by the
facts.
A German sculptor, Karl Goetz, struck a bronze medal to show, with a rather heavy handed
attempt at irony, the British sacrificing lives for profit. It depicted the ship sinking and, on the
reverse, a skeletal figure of Death selling tickets to the unsuspecting passengers. Only 500 of the
original medals were produced but the British Foreign Office gleefully used the medal as an
example of German “Frightfulness” and sold 25000 copies with proceeds going to war charities.
The Continuing U-Boat Campaign
Once freed from attempting to follow the “Cruiser Rules”, the German U-boats enjoyed several
advantages. At the time there was no way of detecting a submerged submarine. A passive
directional hydrophone, developed by the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Ernest Rutherford, was
not introduced until later in the war. Nor was there any way of attacking one, until the
introduction in early 1916 of depth charges- canisters of high explosive set off at a
predetermined depth by a pressure sensitive pistol. The U-boats were very slow when
submerged, so the plan was to stay on the surface where the low silhouette of the conning tower
made them hard to spot, then, when sighting a merchant ship, dive to get into an ambush position
to loose the torpedoes. The closer the U-boat was to the target the better, since the torpedo had to
be launched at a deflection angle so the target ship moving at, say 10 knots, and the torpedo,
moving at about 30 knots, collided. The deflection angle was calculated on a type of handheld
slide rule: electro-mechanical Torpedo Data Calculators were still some years off.
Prior to the availability of depth charges, the British tried other countermeasures. One was to arm
the merchant ship, though this didn’t assist in attacking a submerged U-boat, and the other was to
try to induce an unsuspecting U-boat to attack an apparently unarmed merchant ship on the
surface with its deck gun to save hazarding a shot with an expensive torpedo while submerged.
These decoy ships, known as “Q Ships” carried concealed guns and were successful in sinking
two U-boats in 1915. Interestingly, unmarked police cars which are used to detect unsuspecting
speedsters are still referred to as “Q Cars” in reference to this old naval tactic.
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The sinking of neutral merchant ships by the U-boats had caused great offence to seafaring
countries such as the Netherlands, Norway and especially the United States which were not yet
in the war and the unrestricted submarine campaign was called off towards the end of 1915. The
war on land continued to be in the balance and to try to gain an advantage and to counter the
crippling blockade the Royal Navy maintained on Germany, the campaign was recommenced in
1917. The risk that this would bring the United States into the war was accepted by the German
General Staff, though not by the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg who saw it as signing
Germany’s death warrant.
Initially the U-boat campaign was very successful. In the first few months of 1917 about one
quarter of all ships sailing for Britain were sunk. Bethmann-Hollweg’s fears did, in the end, turn
out to be well founded. Many of the ships lost were American with the result that President
Wilson of the United States declared war on 6 April 1917, entering, not as a full ally of Britain,
France and Russia, but as an associated belligerent. Brazil, which had also lost several ships,
followed suite in October 1917. It would, however, take many months for the Americans to have
any effect on the outcome of the war and in the meantime so many ships were being lost that the
situation in Britain was becoming desperate. Indeed, one of the reasons given for the British
launching the battle known as the “Third Battle of Ypres” was to recapture the Belgian ports
being used as a base for the U-boats. Third Ypres was to become known as the notorious “Battle
of the Mud”, known to history as “Passchendaele” in which the Allies were to lose 400,000 men.
Convoys, in which ships sailed together instead of individually, had been used to protect
merchant ships since classical times since a large group of merchantmen could be protected by a
few warships. The British Admiralty had long opposed convoys, arguing that the time lost in
marshalling the ships to form the convoy and the time then spent in waiting for docking facilities
at the destination ports meant that more time (and supplies) would be lost than would be by the
U-boat attacks. The huge losses of ships sunk by submarine, some 2.3 million tons in 1916,
meant that this argument had become untenable and convoys were finally instituted in mid-1917.
One of the benefits of convoys was that essentially a convoy was as difficult for a submarine to
find at sea as was a single ship. The distance to horizon from a U-Boat conning tower was only
about 7.5 km in an area of operations for the boat of some 3 million square kilometers. Convoys
and the use of the primitive aircraft then available resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number
of ships lost to a level that could be sustained by Allied shipbuilding programs. Aircraft of the
time had very limited range and were incapable of carrying much in the way of offensive
weapons, but were able to force the U-boat to dive to safety before surface warships could arrive.
Underwater the submarines were very slow moving and essentially blind, since they dared not
use a periscope and leave a visible track for the aircraft to spot.
The German response to the convoy system was to mass their own boats in a “Wolfpack” to
overcome the escort vessels. The war ended before the Wolfpack could be effective, but it was to
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be the standard and very effective method employed by the U-boats in the next round of the
“Second Thirty Years War” twenty years later.
The Western Front 1916-1918
The First Battle of the Somme as an example of trench warfare with lessons learned
The First Battle of the Somme, in July 1916, may be taken as a typical example of the problems
facing an attacking force in trench warfare and the means with which the Allies, and the British
in particular were able, if not to overcome the problems, then at least to evolve an increasingly
effective method of countering them.
By 1916 Italy had left the Triple Alliance with Germany and
Austria and joined the Alliance of Britain, France and Russia,
having been seduced with promises of territorial expansion in
the event of their success. Up till now each of the members of
the newly expanded alliance had launched attacks whenever
they saw fit in their own theater of operations, allowing the
Central Powers to switch troops between the regions to meet
each threat in detail. At a conference in Chantilly late in 1915,
the Allies decided to coordinate their attacks to divide the
enemy response. The main attack was to be by the French with
support of “Kitchener’s Army”, the newly trained army of
British volunteers who had responded to the famous and much
copied recruiting poster of Lord Kitchener pointing outwards:
“Britons (Kitchener) wants You”.
Rather than wait for the attacks to occur at places of their
opponents choosing, the German High Command decided to
launch on offensive at a site that seemed likely to bring success to them. The place chosen was a
large French salient into German lines in North East France at the old fortress complex of
Verdun. The plan was to capture high ground on the right bank of the river Meuse, from which
artillery could threaten the French positions, then let the French exhaust themselves trying to win
the high ground back. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t the French generals who wished to
defend this site. They felt that it would be best to evacuate the salient and, indeed, many of the
defending guns had been removed for service elsewhere. Instead it was the French politicians
who insisted that Verdun be defended to the end. Verdun had a great psychological hold on the
French people, it was the last French fort to fall to the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian war of
1870. The Chief of the German General Staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn was aware of this
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and reasoned that the French would be “bled white” in their efforts to save this French icon. The
Germans applied the lessons learned in their initial successful thrust through Belgium and
brought up their heavy 420 mm siege howitzers known as “Big Bertha” after Bertha Krupp,
owner of the vast Krupp steel empire. These guns had been very successful in the initial German
offensive and had reduced the Belgian fortress at Liege, but this success was not repeated at
Verdun since their large size made them very easy to spot and French counter battery fire soon
silenced them.
The Battle of Verdun raged for ten months, the longest continual battle of the war with attacks
and counter-attacks causing huge casualties on both sides. The French succeeded in holding
Verdun but at great cost. On the other hand, Verdun was about the only time in the war on the
Western Front when the attackers lost fewer men than the defenders with the French losing
380,000 casualties and the Germans 340,000. It was the desperate plight of the French position at
Verdun that caused the planned attack on the Somme to be brought forward from August and the
part played by the British expanded to take the pressure off their French Allies.
It is this battle, the First Battle of the Somme, that many people think of as the epitome of the
futility of the Great War and to demonstrate the pig headedness of the British High Command in
general and of General Haig in particular. The phrase, usually attributed to German General
Ludendorff, that the British army was composed of “Lions led by Donkeys” is often used in the
context of the Somme battle. The British soldiers emerged from their trenches in the early
morning of the First of July 1916, and proceeded across No-Man’s land at a fast walk, aiming to
cover about 100 yards per minute. Bayonets were fixed but the soldiers were forbidden to even
have a round in the rifle chamber until reaching the enemy trenches. These orders are usually
taken to reflect stupidity on the part of the British command, but they were issued for good
reasons. Once the soldiers left their own trenches, commanding officers and artillery spotters lost
track of them in the smoke and dust. It was reasoned that if they advanced at a given pace then
the British artillery would be able to shoot them in by advancing their barrage at the same rate.
The order against having a loaded rifle was to prevent soldiers under fire diving into a shell hole
and shooting back. They were facing the foe and engaging His Majesty’s enemies but the attack
stopped. It was decreed that no firing was to take place until the enemy trench was reached, so
any soldier “going to ground” could not use the excuse that he was fighting as best he could.
One reason for the attackers not reaching their objectives was that the artillery bombardment
which preceded the attack by days was inadequate. The British had attacked on a broad front to
prevent the planned advance resulting in a salient with the enemy on three sides. As well, many
of the shells fired were shrapnel which did little to cut the barbed wire entanglements and had
been manufactured in the hastily built new munitions factories by unskilled workers and many
were “duds”. The German dugouts were built deeper and to a higher standard than the British
ones since the Germans intended to stay whereas the British, once they left their trenches, had no
more use for them.
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Another reason for the failure to “break through” (as had been the original plan) was that once
the attack started, the attackers were walking, whereas the defenders were coming by train. The
problem of achieving the sought after rupture of the enemy line was that seizing the enemy front
line trenches was the easy bit. The attack on the Somme did succeed, at least on the southern part
of the front, in doing so. At other times and places the front line could be taken by a surprise
poison gas attack as was the case with the German use of the chlorine at Second Ypres in April
1915, or the use of massed tanks by the British at Cambrai in November 1917. The problem
remained. Not only were the attackers walking forward, but they needed to haul their artillery
with them over ground ploughed up by shell fire and often deep in mud due to the loss of
drainage in the low lying areas. The guns were horse drawn and moving the heavy guns was very
slow work. A six horse team had just that: Six Horsepower. Horses can only be worked for six to
eight hours a day and if forced to work longer, need to be rested for several days. Moreover,
horses were very vulnerable on a battlefield since they couldn’t “take cover” and it proved
almost impossible to get horses to accept any sort of gas mask protection. The British army lost
484,000 horses killed during the war. Any attack could easily be sealed off by even moderately
determined defenders secure in the knowledge that, unlike horses and men, trains can run for
twenty-four hours nonstop. The Berlin garrison itself could be brought up overnight if needed to
reinforce the defence while the exhausted attackers and their horses were resting.
A third reason for the relatively high German casualties was the order by General Ludendorff
that counter attacks were to be made immediately to recapture any ground lost to the Allies with
the result that German infantry attacks were launched before adequate artillery could be brought
up in support.
Attacks couldn’t be massed at one “knife-point” to achieve a local success since this would then
be sealed off leaving a salient in the enemy lines with opposing artillery ranged on three sides.
The Somme offensive was launched on a broad front to prevent this happening. The original plan
had hoped for a breakthrough into the open country which was then to be exploited by cavalrystill the only way of moving fighting men about a battlefield at a faster than walking pace. The
cavalry had to be kept well back and out of the range of defending artillery and even in the event
of a temporary breakthrough, by the time the cavalry could be brought up, the rupture point
could be sealed. During the second attack, two weeks after the initial offensive on July First
1916, an opening was made and the cavalry brought up but were mown down by enemy machine
guns hastily brought into place in the reserve trenches behind the recently captured German front
line.
The British losses were horrific, the highest number of casualties ever sustained by the British
army in a single day. On the First of July 1916 the British lost 56,000 men with some 20,000
being killed outright or dying of wounds. General Haig, however, had some 650,000 under his
command and he engaged 150,000 in the initial battle, meaning one third of the attacking force
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was lost to further combat, though many of the wounded returned to active service later. These
loses were thought to be acceptable and compared roughly with the percentage loss at Gettysburg
in the American Civil War. Gettysburg, though, only lasted for one day, the Battle of the Somme
would drag on for four more months and in the end cost the British 600,000 casualties and the
Germans 400,000.
The debate as to the outcome of the extended battle continues to this day. The questions, “who
won?”, “was it worth it?” remain hotly contested. A recent BBC television documentary “Spirits
of the Somme” had historians offering opposing views. One fact stands out: the relatively high
number of German losses. It might be imagined that the Germans as the defenders, hidden in
their trenches, firing rifles and machine guns and protected by vast barbed wire entanglements,
would inflict losses of say 100 to 1 on the British attackers advancing across open ground. It isn’t
much use massing to overwhelm a protected trench system since a machine gun could engage
one hundred men as easily as ten. Aimed rifle fire was also deadly as the British found to their
cost in the earlier Second Boer War. Much is also made of the relatively small gains in ground
taken for such huge losses. Haig is also criticised for being a cavalry officer who had little
understanding of modern warfare.
Haig’s tactics may be better understood by looking back at the battles of Napoleonic times. The
attacking force would threaten a cavalry attack, whereupon the defenders would form into
squares three or four ranks deep which gave an excellent defence against cavalry attack since the
line couldn’t be easily broken and the horses tended to flow between the gaps around the
squares. A British Square, however was not an efficient infantry formation since three quarters of
the muskets were pointing the wrong way and a dense square made an excellent target for enemy
artillery. The attackers’ plan was to threaten with cavalry then blast with artillery and continue
these “left and right punches” until the defenders were worn down and then make the final
charge with infantry, whereupon the surviving defenders would organise themselves into a “Thin
Red Line” to bring all their muskets into action. Haig was pursuing a similar tactic: threaten an
attack, whereupon the enemy would mass to defend their line and make a great target for the
attackers’ artillery. Massing artillery, as compared with massing infantry, does give an advantage
to the attackers. The guns can be concentrated at the chosen area, having as their first objective
to take out the defending guns which have been spotted by aerial reconnaissance and carefully
marked on maps. Once the attack starts and the enemy guns have been silenced and the Germans
brought their machine guns onto the parapets, the artillery switched to attacking the German
trenches. It is estimated that the life expectancy of a German machine gunner during an attack
was about 30 minutes. The ratio of casualties remained fairly constant at about three attackers
lost to two defenders. Six hundred thousand British to four hundred thousand German losses on
the Somme and about three hundred thousand to two hundred thousand sustained in the Battle of
Passchendaele the next year. The British had an advantage in manpower since they could engage
men from not just the British Isles but also from her vast empire. The leader of the Indian
Congress Party, Mohandas Gandhi, had called on Indians to support the British “with your lives
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and your property”. Some 1.3 million Indians answered the call with one million serving
overseas including about 130,000 on the Western Front. With these reserves, in the harsh
statistics of war, the British could afford to lose more. Battles, and indeed wars, are not decided
on who loses more men but on which side imposes its will on the enemy. General Haig realised
that casualties would be very high and had observed that the war would be lost by the first
headquarters that lost its nerve. The British High Command showed itself to be resilient and able
to quickly learn lessons from the battlefield and did not “lose its nerve”. Tactics were rethought
and the troops given thorough training in what was expected of them in the various battlefield
situations they might find themselves in. Both Australian and British, as well as the other
Imperial forces, were trained from the same pamphlets published by the British High Command.
SS (Stationery Service)143 “Instructions for Training of Platoons for Offensive Action 1917”
contained detailed information such as Appendix VIII “Trench to Trench Attack: Platoon in 1st
Wave Meeting a Point of Resistance” and Appendix IX “Trench to Trench Attack: Platoon in
2nd Wave Meeting a Point of Resistance”. In order to foster an offensive spirit and a feeling of
superiority over the enemy, it was recommended that on wet days the troops be kept indoors but
practice bayonet fighting to instill a “lust for blood”. By the end of the training, the soldiers
knew what they had to do and practiced battlefield tactics repeatedly before being sent into an
attack. The old, and much repeated story, of soldiers being sent into battle, baaing like sheep to
the slaughter, may have occurred during the French army mutiny of 1917, but there are no
reports of it occurring in British Imperial forces.
There is no doubt that the initial attack on 1st July did not meet the objective of a breakthrough
in the German line and ambitious objectives were not reached. After the initial attack, however,
further attacks were undertaken within days, but this time the objectives were more modest and
the attack better planned with better coordination and increased concentrations of artillery. The
initial objective of a breakthrough into open country gave way to the more modest “bite and
hold” tactic. The hope of a breakthrough in the Great War, however, persists in the colours of the
British (and Australian) Armoured Corps: Brown, Red and Green- “through mud and blood to
the green fields beyond”.
The Somme steeply increased the “learning curve” of the British generals and by 1918, the
British army was the most effective force in the field. The number of guns supporting an infantry
attack doubled from 1916 when artillery for the British was in relatively short supply to 1918
when there were many more guns available, allowing infantry attacks to be closely coordinated
with heavy artillery support. Each unit involved in the attack knew what they had to do and when
they had to do it so that an attack was said to resemble an orchestral recital with each instrument
playing its role at the appointed time.
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The Eastern Front 1916
The Brusilov Offensive June 1916
The severe reverses suffered by the Russians in 1914 and 1915 had resulted in a reorganisation
of the army. Equipment and training was modernised and the officer corps rejuvenated with
promotion of soldiers based on merit and not just on birth. All this effort towards improving the
military, however, came at a huge cost. Industry was converted to the manufacture of war
materiel and agricultural production plummeted with the conscription of the peasants into the
army and the requisition of draught animals. To make matters worse, the Tsar had banned the
production and sale of vodka at the beginning of the war, feeling that drunkenness had greatly
contributed the defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5, though the excise on vodka had
contributed more than 25% of the Russian state income. The government sought to pay for the
war by loans, especially from Britain and by printing more roubles. The result was rising prices
coupled with inflation meaning the real cost of some foodstuff quadrupled. What food there was,
was prioritised to the army with increasing hunger in the civilian population. But in 1916, these
problems were just brewing, though not yet to the point of major disaffection of the populace.
At the Chantilly Conference in late 1915, the Allies had agreed to synchronise their attacks on
the Central Powers to prevent the Germans, in particular, from using interior communications to
rapidly move troops and supplies from one front to another. The Russian part was a large
offensive against the Austro-Hungarians under the command of General Aleksei Brusilov. The
Brusilov offensive turned out to be most successful advance of the war but came a great cost to
the Russian attackers as well as to the defenders. The problem facing an attacking force was that
though artillery could be concentrated at an attacking point, a narrow point of advance resulted in
a salient with the enemy ranged on three sides. Broadening the attacking front, as the British did
on the Somme in July 1916, meant that the artillery barrage was more widely spread and less
effective. Brusilov’s answer was to have a broad front with several local concentrations of guns
and shock troops at weak points, like the tines on a harvester. The barrage was brief and accurate
and did not give the defenders time to bring up troops to reinforce the knife point attacks. Then,
instead of seizing a trench line and waiting for a counter attack, the attackers kept moving
forward, forcing the defenders between these breakthrough points to pull back to prevent being
outflanked. The attack pushed the Austro-Hungarians back about 50 miles and forced the
Germans to rush troops from the West to assist, taking some of the pressure off the French at
Verdun. Brusilov was only weakly supported by the Russian commander in the North, General
Alexei Evert and with his forces becoming overextended and further from their supply bases,
Brusilov called off the offensive after some four months. The Russian attack cost a further
500,000 casualties, but the Austro-Hungarians lost almost a million men and the Germans
350,000, which both the Russians, with the losses of 1914 and 1915, and the Austro-Hungarians,
could not sustain. Both empires were in danger of breaking up.
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The Western Front 1918
Michael: Final throw of the dice by the Germans
By the end of the fourth year of the war, 1917, the end result was still in the balance. On the
debit side for the Central Powers, the Austro-Hungarians had lost almost one million men killed,
wounded and taken prisoner in the Brusilov offensive of September 1916, forcing the Germans
to send men to prevent a complete breakdown on the Eastern Front. The Germans found the men
needed by shortening the line in the West and withdrawing to what was known by the Allies as
the Hindenburg Line, leaving behind the land devastated by the First Battle of the Somme. On
the positive side for the Central Powers, the Russian armies had become seriously depleted of
men equipment and morale by their very heavy losses and the Russian population was suffering
severe food shortages. The Czar abdicated in March 1917 and his place was taken by Alexander
Kerensky (who was to marry a Brisbane girl of the Tritton department store family). Kerensky
tried to keep Russia in the war but the heart had gone out of the fight and Russia was to succumb
to Revolution and sued for peace in March 1918. As well the French army had been very badly
shaken by their losses and suffered mutinies in 1917, which fortunately seemed to be kept from
German knowledge. On the positive side for the Allies, the United States had entered the war as
an Associated Power in April 1917, citing the German unrestricted submarine policy and the
German attempt to seduce Mexico into the German camp by its promise to restore territory
which had been lost by Mexico to the US. The American entry promised a huge increase in men
and supplies but it would take at least a year for these to have an effect.
The German High Command, cognisant of the fact that the British Naval blockade had resulted
in severe food shortages at home and that civilian morale was plummeting, reasoned that they
could make a last “all or nothing” attack on the Western Front to split the British from the French
and, if not gain an outright victory, at least be able to obtain a favourable peace. One million men
and ten thousand artillery pieces were transferred from the Russian front to the West. The attack,
known as the “Emperor’s Battle” or, Operation Michael, commenced on 21 March 1917 with the
heaviest artillery bombardment yet seen in the war. Some 3,500,000 shells were fired, initially at
command centers, then defending artillery positions and then finally to shoot in the attacking
infantry. Small groups of elite “Storm Troops” infiltrated British trenches, but rather than occupy
the trenches and prepare for a counterattack, kept moving forward, disrupting communications
and command and leaving British strong points to be taken by supporting infantry. Famous
British regiments were sent “up the line” only to find the Germans were already behind them.
The Germans were aiming for the vital French rail center at Amiens, which they had taken in the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and which would put them in a commanding position to take the
Channel Ports and force the Allies to sue for peace. Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, not an
P a g e | 27
emotional man, issued his famous order on 11 April 1918 “ With our backs to the wall and believing in
the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end...” . The Germans, however, were facing the
old problem: every step took them further from their supply base and every step brought the
British closer to theirs. The five Australian divisions, which had been in rest camps, were hastily
brought into the line and on 25 April 1918 pushed the Germans back out of Villers-Bretonneux,
just 10 miles east of Amiens. The Bishop of Amiens said the Australian army was “The greatest
army in the history of the world” and later the French Marshall Ferdinand Foch said to the
Australians, as only a Frenchman could, “You saved France, you saved civilisation”. The line
was stabilised and then on 8 August 1918, a British attack spearheaded by the Australians, with
the Canadians on their right, broke through the German lines and forced the enemy into a 5-mile
retreat. General Ludendorff was later to call this the “Black day of the German Army” and with
the American forces now in the war became increasingly aware that Germany could no longer
win the war. As the Allies advanced his mental health deteriorated such that his staff called in a
psychiatrist. He called a conference in Spa on August attended by the Kaiser where it was
decided that peace must be sought. The German generals, however, still hoped that by continuing
to fight, better peace conditions could be obtained, but the German front continued to crumble.
The final “Hundred Day” battle, again with the Australians and Canadians in the lead, resulted in
the Germans being pushed back along the old Roman road to the final battles of Mt St Quentin
and Peronne and the breakthrough of the previously thought impregnable Hindenburg Line.
Casualties remained very heavy, the Germans were still putting up a fight, though the quality of
their troops was diminishing. Finally, thinking that they had done enough, the Australian
government demanded the Australian troops be taken out of the line.
The Reputation of the AIF
There is no doubt that the soldiers of the First AIF built up a great reputation among allies and
enemies. The German General Hindenburg thought they, with the New Zealanders and
Canadians, were the elite troops of the Empire and the Australians certainly regarded themselves
as such. The Australians were, alone among the Allied troops, all volunteers and remained so the
whole time since there was no death penalty for refusing orders in the Australian army. The
desertion (to the rear) rate per division in 1917 was 32 for the AIF compared with 9 for the
British Expeditionary Force. This high rate of desertion led to Haig calling for a revision of the
Australian military law as a matter of “great urgency”. The Australians had the highest casualty
rate of the British Imperial armies but also the highest rate of detention in regimental gaols, 8.5
per 1000 soldiers compared with 1.5 for the British (the Canadians and New Zealanders were
somewhere in between) and the highest rate of venereal disease. It was said by the British, that
the Australians “may make fighters, but soldiers, never!” They were paid at a rate six times that
of the British soldier; six shillings compared with one shilling a day, and the better standard of
food in the Australian diet meant that the average Australian soldier was three inches taller than
the “Little Tommy”.
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Despite the level of ill-discipline the Australian soldiers were given a fighting value by the
British High Command as equal to the Guard regiments, as were the New Zealand and Canadian
troops. Indeed, so great was their contribution to the defeat of the German forces in the final
battles of the “Hundred Day Offensive” in late 1918, that Australia was to play a role at the
Peace Conference at Versailles that was vastly out of proportion to the small size of the
Australian population at the time- some three and one half million persons. The Japanese
delegation wished to have a racial equality clause inserted into the Covenant of the League of
Nations, but the Australian Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes, in order to protect the
“White Australia Policy” was able to use the prestige gained by his troops to virtually veto the
clause. The Japanese were very distressed by this rejection and this together with the fact that
their allies, the British and Americans, didn’t really support them, were to contribute to Japanese
disaffection with the world system and was to be one of the contributing factors to the Japanese
entry into the Second World War. As a sop to the Japanese, they were allowed to keep the
German colonies in the Pacific which they had seized. In the coming war, these islands of
Tinian, Truk and Saipan were to be the sites of major battles as the Americans strove to take
them back.
Though the Australian soldier was indeed valued as a fighting man, the “Legend of ANZAC” is
largely due to the writings of CEW Bean, the official Australian war historian. The laconic, selfsufficient Australian volunteer, stalwart in battle but dismissive of the petty requirements of
military discipline, led by officers selected on merit, was compared favourably to the hidebound
British soldiers, who lacked initiative and were led by officers selected by class. This observation
may have had some truth in 1914 but as the war progressed, the Australian and British armies
evolved to become more and more similar. The British began to emphasise the importance of
individual initiative so that soldiers could continue to fight when their officers were casualties
and the officers became more and more selected on ability. The more modern, and perhaps
Australian, idea that the officer served the men and not vice versa became more in vogue. On the
Australian side, discipline was tightened, but still some three quarters of the men of the AIF were
members of a trade union and continued to refuse orders thought to be unreasonable, resulting in
detention in a military prison. This plus loss from soldiers deserting to the rear, not to mention
the wastage from war casualties, meant by late in 1918, Australian battalions were very
understrength. To assist in improving discipline, the separation of officers and other ranks was
emphasised and men commissioned in the field were no longer returned to their old units. In the
1980’s, I remember seeing a patient whose husband had been commissioned on the field in
France. During a quiet time he had been sent to a British officer’s training school, where has was
told that “Officers don’t carry parcels”. Though a dairy farmer and used to hard work, for the rest
of his life he refused to be seen in public carrying anything in his hands, leaving his wife to
struggle with any purchases they may have made.
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Battlefield Medicine
As pointed out by Zinsser in his bestselling book of 1935, Rats, Lice and History, the greatest
threat to the lives of soldiers in premodern times was not enemy action but infectious disease.
Malaria, cholera and typhoid fever have stalked armies since ancient times. Towns were
deliberately built in marshy areas so the besieging host had to camp in the waterlogged area
where, before an understanding of sanitation, disease was almost certain to break out. The
Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in about 700 BCE was broken by a rampant disease, (probably
cholera) so that, as related in 2 Kings 19:35, and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they
were all dead corpses. The American Civil War cost some 620,000 dead but for every three soldiers
who died in battle, five died of disease. Interestingly, two thousand years ago, the Romans had
had a good understanding of sanitation and, for example, were very careful in selecting sites for
camp latrines. They also deployed expert army medics who had to pass a practical examination
before being allowed to practice in the field. The Roman surgical kit appears very modern to our
eyes with scalpels, instruments for removing arrow heads and even arterial clamps. They also
were familiar with opium as a potent analgesic and cleaned wounds with vinegar or beer, which
must have been agonising for the soldier but the rate of wound infection achieved by the Romans
was not equalled until the later years of the Great War. Unfortunately, this knowledge was then
lost for some 1500 years. Hospitals existed for treating the wounded but there was no way of
conveying the wounded combatant back to safety. Until at least the early nineteenth century,
wounded were not moved until the battle was over to prevent soldiers using the excuse of
assisting a wounded comrade to the rear as an honorable way of leaving the battle line.
The French military surgeon, Dominique Jean (later Baron) Larrey, was the first to introduce a
means of moving wounded to the rear while the battle raged. He drew inspiration from the
“flying artillery”- light horse drawn field guns that could be moved rapidly about the battlefield
to introduce “Ambulance Volantes” - light two wheeled horse drawn ambulances manned by
dedicated attendants who could not be requisitioned by the line officers. He also introduced the
“Triage” (from the French “trier” to sort) method of prioritising casualties- a practice still in use
in various forms today. In its simplest form it is a play on the word “tri” for three. Some soldiers
were so badly wounded that nothing could be done for them with the facilities available, some
were so lightly wounded that they would survive without immediate treatment. The effort went
into treating those in whom medical intervention meant the difference between life and death eg
stemming hemorrhage, clearing an airway or more commonly amputation of a limb as soon as
possible before gangrene could set in and while the soldier was “pumped up” by the battle
experience. I recall reading an account by the German surgeon, Ferdinand Sauerbruch, later
famous for introducing a method for operating on the chest without collapsing the lungs, of an
operation he performed on the arm of a junior German officer who was so excited by his recent
exploits that he didn’t notice that Sauerbruch was amputating his arm without anesthetic.
Larrey’s methods were soon introduced to most of the European armies.
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The next major advance in treating the wounded effectively was made during the American Civil
War by the Union Army Surgeon Dr Jonathan Letterman, known as the “Father of Military and
Emergency Medicine”. He reintroduced horse drawn ambulances, under the command of a
medical officer, which could not be used for any other purpose than bringing medical supplies
forward or taking wounded back. Prior to a battle he set out evacuation routes for the wounded.
First stop was at a triage point where lightly wounded were kept in the hope of returning them to
the field and initial treatment of more seriously wounded undertaken. These more serious cases
were then moved back to a temporary hospital where amputations etc could be undertaken and
the soldier remained for initial postoperative recovery. If further time was needed, the soldier
was moved further back to a large hospital usually in a permanent building near a railway line
for recovery and further treatment as required. Versions of this staged evacuation were used by
virtually all armies in both the First and Second World Wars and continue to be useful even in
these days of helicopter evacuation. Surgery cannot be undertaken too close to the front line
since wherever surgery is performed there has to be a hospital for recovery and this should not be
in an area under fire.
By the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), July to November 1917, the evacuation plan still
roughly followed that worked out by Letterman. Wounded unable to walk were carried by
stretcher bearers to the Regimental Aid Post (RAP) situated about 500 yards from the front line.
In fact, triage was carried out right on the battlefield. It was heavy and dangerous work carrying
a wounded man off the field and took in some cases an hour or two to make the distance over the
heavily damaged terrain. Bearer parties working under a Red Cross flag were not usually
engaged by small arms fire from either side but indirect artillery fire is not so discerning. Bearers
would not undertake to evacuate a soldier judged to be so badly wounded as to have no hope of
survival. The initial movement and treatment of the casualty from the battlefield to the RAP was
the responsibility of the relevant regiment. After this the casualty became the responsibility of
the Royal (Australian) Army Medical Corps.
The RAP was manned by a Regimental Medical Officer and any urgent treatment, such as
stemming hemorrhage, was undertaken. Very lightly injured soldiers could be sent back to the
front. Desperately wounded soldiers were treated “expectantly” and not sent further since
nothing more could be done. Otherwise, the casualty was carried to Ambulance Loading Points
about two thousand yards back by relays of stretcher bearers, (often German Prisoners of War).
There were Bearer Relay Stations every 300 to 400 yards where the bearers were relieved and
sent back for another casualty, though in practice the “carry” could be a lot longer than planned.
From the Loading Points, Motor or Horse Drawn Ambulances transported the casualty to
Advanced Dressing Stations (ADS) situated another two thousand yards further back and usually
in a dugout since the ADS was still in range of artillery fire. Until February 1918, an ADS could
be hit by enemy artillery fire directed at nearby gun emplacements. An order from British High
Command then required guns to be sited at least a quarter of a mile (400 metres) from an ADS
P a g e | 31
which were at least theoretically protected by a Red Cross flag. The ambulance vehicles to and
from the ADS followed a previously worked out route and returned by a different path so all
vehicles on a road were moving in the same direction. At the ADS the wounds were further
dressed and occasionally emergency amputations were carried out. The ADS, the evacuation
stations and the ambulance vehicles were organised and manned by members of a Field
Ambulance, referring to the medical unit, not the vehicle. Motor vehicles were used when
possible, but in some case where there were no roads or the roads were badly torn up by traffic or
shell fire, horse drawn ambulances needed to be used. From the ADS the casualty would be
evacuated further back to the Main Dressing Station (MDS) which could be situated in a building
if possible. Initially the ADS did not have surgical capacity but as the war progressed, surgery
could be performed and a few beds provided for the post-operative care. From the MDS, an
ambulance convoy would transport the wounded men back to a Casualty Clearing Station (CCS),
situated near a railway or canal for ease of transport further back. The CCS was the site where
major and more complicated surgery was undertaken. The ADS and MDS could sometimes be
combined and some evacuation tables mention only the ADS between a Regimental Aid Post and
the Casualty Clearing Station.
CCSs tended to be grouped together and unfortunately many of the wounded later died of their
injuries so some of the largest cemeteries of the First World War are to be found near the site of
these facilities. The second largest British Commonwealth Military Cemetery of the Great War is
the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery at Poperinge, just west of Ypres. Some 10,755 soldiers rest
there, with the major difference to the largest British cemetery, that of Tyne Cot outside
Passchendaele, being that at Lijssenthoek almost all the names of the fallen are known, having
been initially registered as wounded. At Tyne Cot (named after the German pillboxes said to
look like Tyneside cottages) the fallen soldiers were collected from the battlefield and the
majority were unable to be named. The British Cross of Sacrifice stands on top of a German
blockhouse which, after capture by the Australian 3rd Division, was used as an ADS. Four
German soldiers who died of wounds at the ADS are also buried just behind the Cross.
From the CCS, most casualties needed longer periods of recovery or further surgery to treat, for
example, disfiguring facial wounds. Patients could then be transported by rail, canal or sea to
large General Hospital situated well back from the front line and usually in a combination of huts
and tents. In the First World War, Australia operated 5 General Hospitals overseas. 1AGH was a
Queensland unit initially set up in various buildings in Cairo before moving to Rouen in France
where general battle casualties were treated. 2AGH was a NSW unit situated at Boulogne where
it came to specialise in the treatment of fractures but was to be overwhelmed by a flood of
influenza patients at the end of the war. 3AGH was a tented hospital at Abbeville 12 miles from
the mouth of the River Somme and treated gas casualties before sending them on to convalescent
hospitals. 10AGH was initially set up in “Harefield House” a mansion owned by a wealthy
Australian, Charles Billyard-Leake, and donated to the AIF for the use by convalescing
Australian soldiers. It became 1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital and by the end of the war had
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grown from what was initially planned to be a 150 bed unit to an establishment of 1000 beds. It
was also overwhelmed by the disaster of the Influenza epidemic of 1918 when the highest
monthly death rate for the whole war was recorded. It is now, incidentally, a leading cardiothoracic hospital of the British National Health Service.
At the beginning of the war, the British (and Australian) Army medical doctrine for treating
gunshot wounds was heavily influenced by the experience in the Second Boer War (1899-1902).
In the dry conditions of the South African Veldt, wounds could be successfully sutured at the
outset and would heal quite well. This regimen turned out to be disastrous in the muddy, manure
fertilised, fields of France and Belgium. Tetanus and other wound infections became very
common and it was found to be best to just thoroughly clean the wound with an antiseptic such
as Eusol and let it heal by “secondary intention” -from the bottom up: the same procedure used
by the Roman medics two thousand years before. Sutured wounds were also found to travel very
poorly over the rough roads from the front back to the CCS.
Though the images of the First World War focus on machine guns and rifles, most wounds and,
indeed, most deaths, were from artillery fire. The metal shards from the exploding shell, caused
tearing injuries unlike bullet wounds which tend to leave straight line punctures. The metal
splinters were often referred to (not strictly correctly) as shrapnel after the Royal Artillery
Officer Major-General Henry Shrapnel who invented an artillery round which exploded releasing
many bullet like projectiles. The great number of head injuries inflicted by shrapnel from
overhead explosions led to the introduction, by the British, of the steel Brodie helmet, usually
known as a “Tin Hat”. The French introduced a more ornate, though lighter, helmet and the
Germans a steel version of the leather Pickelhaube, though without the pointed crest. The
German helmet more closely resembles the modern design with a stepped pattern to protect the
back of the neck, but was heavier and much more expensive to make and didn’t give as good
cover from overhead shrapnel.
Wounds to the chest and abdomen were often immediately fatal, and most of the injuries (63%)
seen in the CCS were to the limbs. There remained disfiguring facial injuries, again mainly from
shrapnel. The use of staged pedicle grafts to treat disfiguring facial wounds (usually inflicted as a
punishment) had been pioneered by the famed Indian surgeon Sushruta in about 1500 BC but the
ancient enemies of surgery; pain, infection and bleeding checkmated any major use. It was a
New Zealand surgeon in the British army, Harold Gillies, who reintroduced plastic surgery
especially for facial wounds. A special hospital in Sidcup was setup for these patients and
received some 2000 cases during the months of the First Battle of the Somme in 1916.
The war necessitated other major advances in the medical treatment of injuries. A gunshot
wound which resulted in a fracture of the femur was fatal in more than 80% of cases until, in
1916, a British surgeon, Sir Robert Jones, introduced a splint invented by his uncle Hugh Owen
Thomas. The Thomas splint stabilised the fracture and by the end of the war the fatality from
fractured femur had dropped to 8%.
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Saline infusions for resuscitation after severe dehydration or blood loss had been introduced by
the British during a cholera epidemic in India in the mid-19th century but was not a standard of
medicine until it was widely used during the war. Blood transfusion to replace blood lost had
been tried for years but the reason some patients died while others were greatly assisted was not
clear until the discovery of blood groups by Professor Karl Landsteiner at the University of
Vienna in 1900. The transfusion of blood of a compatible group was initially done directly from
donor to patient until, in 1917, a US Military doctor, Captain Oswald Robertson, introduced
citrate to prevent clotting of stored blood which could then last several weeks on ice. A reserve
could be built up prior to a major military operation and transported to the CCS when it was
needed.
Poison Gas
The First World War was, and still is, the only major war in which both sides deployed poison
gas, though poison gas has been utilised in a limited way by the Italians in Ethiopia in 1936 and
in the recent conflicts in the Middle East. The use of poison gas had been specifically forbidden
by The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, but then so had the use of of “balloons or other
new methods of a similar nature” to drop munitions from the air. Poison gas made its debut in
the West at Ypres in 1915 when chlorine gas was released from cylinders by the Germans to drift
in a toxic cloud over a part of the line held by French colonial troops. The Allied line
disintegrated but the Germans didn’t pursue their advantage since the plan was to take the Allies’
eye off the ball while the Germans and Austro-Hungarians launched their successful attack at
Gorlice-Tarnow on the Eastern Front. The chlorine resulted in a horrible death for soldiers who
had been sufficiently exposed and before the use of gas masks. The lungs were badly damaged
and the victim died of slow asphyxia, remaining conscious until almost the end. Chlorine was a
byproduct of the German dye industry and weaponising the gas was undertaken by the famous
German Scientist Fritz Haber, who was to win the Nobel Prize in 1918 for a method of fixing
nitrogen from the atmosphere to make nitrates. Germany needed nitrates for the manufacture of
high explosive and was unable to access the organic nitrate deposits in Chile because of the
Royal Naval dominance of the seas. It could be said that Germany could only wage the war
because of Haber and now he introduced the first poison gas. A situation made more ironic by
the fact that Haber was a Jew. His wife, a chemist in her own right, and the first German woman
to win a PhD in chemistry, was so distressed by her husband’s involvement in this new and
terrible weapon that when Haber was celebrating the military success of the gas at his home, she
went upstairs and shot herself dead.
During the war two main categories of poison gas were used. Non-persistent forms such as
chlorine and then phosgene, with the latter introduced by the Germans in December 1915,
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remain as a gas and rapidly dissipate. The second more persistent form exists as a liquid which is
delivered by shell fire and can contaminate clothing etc and continues to give off a poisonous
vapour for a considerable time. Mustard gas and Lewisite were the two major persistent forms
used in the war and, as well as being poisonous on inhalation, caused painful blistering on
exposed skin surfaces.
Poison gas became a general weapon used by all sides and in the end with the countermeasures
deployed, it was not as lethal as might be supposed: its main effect was to force the opposing
troops to wear the cumbersome and vision retarding gas masks and gas capes. During the month
of October in 1917 in the Third Battle of Ypres, the Australian Forces suffered 20,061 battle
casualties: 4,411 killed in action, 12,378 were wounded, with another 1,233 dying of wounds,
1,675 were gassed but only 34 died of gas poisoning. A further 245 were classed as “Shell
Shock” and 91 were taken prisoner of war by the Germans.
So terrible, however, was the memory of poison gas that even when Britain, and then Germany,
had their backs to the wall, poison gas was not used in the Second World War be either side for
fear of retaliation by the enemy. Still, prior to the outbreak of the war, the British, in particular,
were so fearful of a massed aerial gas attack on their cities that all civilians were issued with gas
masks and stories of projected gas casualties in the hundreds of thousands were widely written of
in newspapers.
Two Cases of Frontline Triage
When I was first appointed to what was then Repatriation General Hospital Greenslopes in
1983, there were still many men of the First AIF who were patients of the hospital. One patient
I recall had a thumb which was out of line. He had been a gunner at Third Ypres and in the
excitement of battle, as he was loading a shell into the breech of his gun, the breechblock had
been closed, almost severing his thumb. He applied a field dressing and made his way back to
the RAP. An orderly came out and dismissed him with “Piss off, we’re taking legs off here”.
So he just went back to his gun and continued the fight.
Another patient had been a trooper of the Australian Light Horse in Palestine and had
sustained a grazing wound to his right calf. He rode back to the RAP where the orderly applied
a dressing over the top of his legging and slapped the horse on the rump by way of farewell.
Malaria
Malaria has been a silent enemy of armies since classical times and was probably the cause of
death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. Malaria was a major health problem in the First World
War especially in Macedonia and Palestine, and greatly diminished the fighting efficiency of
armies, though is rarely mentioned in histories of the war. In Macedonia, in particular, malaria
P a g e | 35
virtually paralysed the large Allied Force there and caused the Germans to refer to the area as
“Our largest POW camp”. Quinine was available, but was very bitter and caused frequent nausea
and vomiting, making the troops very reluctant to take it. In the end, the soldiers were paraded
and the quinine actually put into their mouth by their officers, the men would take a drink and
open their mouth for inspection to show the tablet had been swallowed: a procedure copied by
the Australian army in New Guinea in the Second World War. In Northern Palestine, in the
region of the Upper Galilee, malaria was such a problem that the area was virtually uninhabitable
until Jewish settlers, who had been able to buy the land very cheaply, drained the swamps in the
1920’s. General Allenby had to plan his attacks so as to engage his fresh troops almost
immediately they arrived and before they were decimated by the mosquito borne plague. The
ANZAC Mounted Corps, about 7000 strong lost around 500 soldiers a week, disabled by
malaria. The loss to malaria and other diseases, which towards the end of the war, included
influenza, was some 37 times that due to enemy action.
Even on the Western Front, malaria was a problem with the engagement of British Imperial
troops from parts of the Empire where malaria was endemic who then infected other soldiers.
The AIF experienced 228 cases of malaria while serving in France, though this was a small
number compared with other illness such as the 3811 cases of louse borne typhus.
Shell Shock
Psychological breakdown due to the stress of battle is not a new phenomenon. The ancient
Hebrews were prepared to discharge a fearful soldier lest he be a bad influence on the morale of
his comrades. (Deuteronomy 20:1) And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say,
What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart
faint as well as his heart. The Roman
army maintained military hospitals for the legionnaires with
special wards for psychologically distressed soldiers and Shakespeare has a brilliant description
of what would today be described as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Henry IV, Part 1. Lady
Percy, the wife of the renowned English Knight “Hotspur” (Sir Henry Percy), asks... O, my good
lord, why are you thus alone? For what offence have I this fortnight been A banish'd woman from my Harry's bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee Thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep? Why dost thou bend
thine eyes upon the earth, And start so often when thou sit'st alone? ...In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars ...
With the routine use of exploding shells in the mid-19th century it was observed that soldiers
could be killed by the blast without showing any apparent wounds. It was supposed that lesser
injuries could cause a disruption of the nervous system and resultant symptoms of headaches,
anxiety and various psychological problems. The name “Shell Shock” was introduced to explain
the illness by RAMC Dr Charles Myers, but it soon became apparent, however, that many
soldiers with these symptoms had not been near exploding munitions and a psychiatric problem
was suspected. In World War 1, British soldiers who had been injured by the concussion of shell
P a g e | 36
fire were labelled “Shell Shock (W)” and were entitled to wear a wound stripe whereas soldiers
who suffered similar symptoms but had not been injured by blast were labelled “Shell Shock
(S)”. In the beginning of the war there was intense debate as to whether the symptoms were due
to damage to the nervous system or to psychological trauma. In fact, this debate had been going
on for years with the large number of persons injured in accidents in the early days of railway
travel. Many insurance claims were made for “Railway Spine” resulting in long and costly court
battles with opinions bitterly divided between opposing camps proposing psychological versus
neurological damage. This debate continues as to whether the many symptoms seen in the RAAF
personnel exposed to toxic chemicals in the F 111 “Deseal/Reseal” program, are psychological
or neurological. An Australian Federal Parliamentary enquiry of 2009, in the end, wisely decided
to just compensate persons who had been exposed without giving an opinion as to cause
.
By 1916, it had become apparent that most of the symptoms were due to psychological stress
incurred in the prolonged battles. Prior to the First World War, battles, though bloody, were
usually decided in hours or a few days, whereas in this new way of war, battles could go on for
months. In the Battle of the Somme, which lasted from July to November in 1916, some 40% of
British casualties in the largely volunteer “New Army” were suffering from stress breakdown
which put an unsustainable strain on the manpower available. New methods of managing the
crisis were needed and the British took note of the French method of handling men who had
undergone what was usually a temporary breakdown. War, whatever else it might be, is widely
perceived to be a very manly business and failure to stand up to the stress strikes at the very heart
of a soldier’s self-esteem. The best method for the more minor cases was found to be to give the
soldier a brief rest and then have his officer reassure him he was doing well and that this was just
a temporary and not unusual problem and then accompany the soldier back to the front line. This
approach was successful and by Third Ypres “Passchendaele”, said to be the “worst battle”, the
cases of shell shock had much diminished. Still, some cases were so severe that the casualty had
to be evacuated to the UK and sent to one of the specialised hospitals such as the one at Golders
Green for other ranks and the hospital for shell shocked officers at Craiglockhart (the building is
still standing and forms part of the Napier University of Edinburgh). The famed war poet
Siegfried Sassoon was sent there and another outstanding poet, Wilfred Owen, wrote his anti-war
poem Dulce et Decorum Est while a patient there. Officers did seem to have had a higher
incidence of psychological breakdown than did their soldiers, probably because of the greater
responsibilities and need to appear strong for their men. For them, night was the worst time:
activities and treatments were organised during the day but night was when the officer was left
alone with his fears and nightmares. The disorder, unfortunately, didn’t remit with the end of
hostilities. The famed and highly regarded, though extremely tactless Australian officer,
Brigadier General Harold “Pompey” Elliott continued to suffer the effects of the war until he
finally suicided in 1931.
During the First World War some 306 British soldiers and 3 officers were shot by firing squad
for cowardice or desertion. Many of them were probably suffering from “Shell Shock” and in a
P a g e | 37
final act of recognition in 2006, the British Prime Minister of the day, Tony Blair, issued a
retrospective pardon to these men. Australian soldiers, on the other hand, could also be tried for
cowardice and desertion, but until 1916, the punishment was to be sent home with the offender’s
name published in the newspapers. After 1916, Australian troops could be sentenced to death,
and in fact 121 soldiers did receive the death penalty, mainly for desertion, but the sentence had
to be ratified by the Australian Government and since all the troops were volunteers, and
following the immense controversy over the execution of Harry “Breaker” Morant by the British
in the Second Boer War, it never was. Despite immense pressure from the British Commander in
Chief, General Haig, supported by many senior Australian officers, the Australian troops
continued to have the “Honour of facing death without the death penalty”.
Though the greater acceptance of “Shell Shock” as an honourable way out of frontline duties
became more accepted as the war progressed, the great fear of many in the High Command that
the fighting strength of the army would be depleted by a flood of malingerers, did not happen.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the great majority of men wanted to stay with their comrades
at the front. Bean speaks of lightly wounded men resisting being evacuated to an Aid Post.
The opinion persisted, however, even in officers who had seen a lot of action in the war, that
Shell Shock was a sign of poor morale. The highly decorated British soldier, Lord Gort, who had
won a VC in the Great War, advised the Post war ‘War Office Enquiry into Shell Shock’, that the
problem was virtually unknown in First Class divisions. This feeling continued, and continues
now in some military circles. A recruit in the famed British regiment “The Black Watch” (The
Royal Highland Regiment) in WWII, writes that at the welcome to the regiment the RSM warned
that the Black Watch did not recognise shell shock. During the siege of Tobruk in 1941, any
Australian soldier accused of having a self-inflicted wound was send to a special hospital ward
situated right next to an anti-aircraft battery, and therefore likely to be in the path of German
bombs, by way of discouragement to others.
The feeling that Shell Shock, or its new iteration Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is
unbecoming of soldiers, especially those in elite organisations such as the Special Air Service
remains even in these enlightened times. PTSD is still seen by the soldiers themselves to be
rather demeaning. One of the extra burdens we see the volunteer Australian soldiers facing, who
are diagnosed with PTSD in the current Middle East wars, is a sense of failure as a soldier,
resulting in a great deal of anger and self-recrimination.
P a g e | 38
A Special Case of War Neurosis
Towards the end of the war, an Austrian soldier serving in a Bavarian regiment was gassed and
lost his sight. The condition was diagnosed as “Hysterical Blindness” and he was sent to a
psychiatric hospital in Pasewalk, a town now close to the border with Poland. His name was
Adolph Hitler, and whatever his crimes later, in the First World War his bravery and
dedication led to his being awarded the Iron Cross First Class, a medal usually only awarded to
officers. After the Second World War, his then commanding officer, Fritz Weidemann, was
asked why, when the German army was so desperate for senior NCO’s in the later stages of the
First World War, Hitler was never promoted beyond Lance Corporal. He replied that “When I
knew him, Hitler had no leaderships qualities at all”.
It later transpired that, in Pasewalk, Hitler was treated by an eminent neuropsychologist,
Professor Edmund Forster, who realised that his patient, whom he diagnosed as a “psychopath
with hysterical tendency”, was genuine in his desire to return to the front. He decided to try a
type of hypnosis where he induced Hitler to believe that his blindness was permanent unless he
could summon up the willpower, usually only granted to persons such as Jesus or Muhammed,
to overcome the affliction. As Hitler later recounted “the scales fell from my eyes” and
henceforth he believed himself to be destined to be the one person who could lead Germany to
overcome her many deadly enemies and to regain her former greatness. So persuasive was
Hitler, that my own father, a Jewish veterinary surgeon working in a small town in Austria,
told me that all his friends, who previously had been socialist or communist, joined the Nazis,
and had he not been Jewish, he would have joined as well!
Propaganda in the First World War
The war is remembered, in part, because of the extensive use of extreme propaganda by both
sides accusing their enemies of the most bestial atrocities. British propaganda, in particular, was
thought by the Germans to be very effective and to largely have contributed to the entry of the
United States into the war and thus to the defeat of the Central Powers. Indeed, so successful
were the British that the Nazis copied the British methods in the Second World War and were
able to defuse rumors of their own atrocities against the Jews and other minorities as just “British
Atrocity Propaganda”.
On the other hand, much of the atrocity propaganda was issued in good faith and the Germans
did seem to go out of their way to make the job of the British propagandists easier. Kaiser
Wilhelm had made a famous speech to his troops on their departure to China to assist in
suppressing the “Boxer Rebellion” of 1900 where he called upon his soldiers to emulate the
excesses of the Huns under King Attila. The British propagandists gleefully labelled the
Germans as the “The Hun” in both World Wars, exemplified by the RAF slogan “Beware of the
Hun in the Sun”. The Germans were the first to use poison gas and flamethrowers as weapons of
P a g e | 39
war and the first to attack open cities from the air with their Zeppelins. The sinking of the RMS
Lusitania in 1915 was the first time a submarine had sunk an ocean liner without warning. Nurse
Edith Cavell, who had trained nurses in Belgium before the war, was arrested by the Germans
and accused of aiding British and French soldiers to escape to the neutral Netherlands. She
admitted her guilt and was shot by a German firing squad in October 1915, despite a warning by
the United States that this would rank with the burning of Louvain and the sinking of the
Lusitania to further damage the German reputation in American eyes. Monuments to her sprang
up in many parts of the world. In my own corner, a college of the University of Queensland and
a sports house of a local girls’ school are named after her. The French singer Edith Piaf bore her
name.
There had been rumors of German atrocities in Belgium right at the start of the war and the
British set up a Royal Commission under the eminent barrister and former ambassador to the
United States, Lord James Bryce, to investigate further. The report was published in May 1915
and contained detailed eye witness accounts and extracts from captured German diaries. The
German army was accused of the deliberate killing of civilians and the burning of property and
was especially well received in the United States. The Germans had, in fact, acted with “great
harshness” even according to the German General Helmuth von Moltke since the Germans
needed to adhere to a strict timetable to defeat France before the Russians were organised and the
army had been instructed to be ruthless in suppressing attempts to slow them down. There were,
no doubt, incidences when numbers of civilians suspected of firing on troops while in civilian
clothing were shot, and the Germans had set a fire which burnt down the Louvain University
with the loss of a priceless ancient manuscript collection, but the report was somewhat
discredited after the war due to only being from one point of view. Official reports on atrocities,
either by the side making the report, or by the enemy have been viewed with suspicion since.
There even was an echo of the Bryce Report in Australia in a response to the “Stolen
Generations” report of Sir Ronald Wilson tabled in the Australian Federal Parliament in 1997.
Evidence was only taken from Aboriginal persons and not, for example, from Government
P a g e | 40
Welfare Officers involved at the time. The report was said to be exaggerated, as had been the
Bryce Report of 80 years before.
Conclusion
The armistice which concluded the Great War saw the end of one of the greatest of human
endeavours in recorded history in which we engaged the only enemy worthy of us: ourselves. A
war between such mighty and equally gifted forces was bound to be a ferocious fight with vast
casualties and enduring consequences. In my opinion, the British generals, and Haig in
particular, do not deserve their reputation as being “donkeys”-stubborn, unthinking leaders. The
tactic of marching men into battle in line as at the First Battle of the Somme, for example, was an
innovative attempt to coordinate the infantry with the artillery. It was not successful but was not
an example of lack of thought. Tactics were constantly reevaluated and updated so by the end of
the war, the British were masters of offensive trench warfare. Ludendorff, however, seems to
have got off lightly in the reputation stakes. It was his demand that the German troops
immediately counterattack to retake lost positions that resulted in such high losses for his men.
Men his smaller force could not afford to lose. On the other hand, there is little doubt the
generals had what would today be termed psychopathic tendencies, but there was no room in this
struggle of titans for soft hearted leaders.
Many peoples have folk stories of a final battle between the Forces of Order and the Forces of
Chaos and, at the time, the Great War was interpreted as such, with many Christians, for
example, seeing it as presaging the Second Coming of Jesus. Each side, of course, saw
themselves as representing the “Forces of Light”. The British, in particular, usually portrayed
Kaiser Wilhelm as the Devil Incarnate, while the Germans saw themselves as defending the
highest level of European Culture against a sordid combination of forces, backed by established
financial interests, united in trying to keep Germany subservient.
From the point of view of the British, this war was indeed started by the Central Powers. But
Britain was the leading nation in Europe at the time and it was in her interests to maintain the
status quo. Germany wanted peace as soon as she had righted this imbalance. This Herculean
struggle left a legacy which still persists one hundred years later. Though peace is said to be a
universally desired state, it tends to be favoured by the victors or persons or nations in a superior
position. In the Middle East, the Israelis would love there to be peace. So would the Palestinians
just as soon as they have established the Nation of Palestine. Until then an undeclared state of
war will continue. The rise of Islamic State is partly due to the division of the Middle East
between the victors of the Great War, Britain and France which led to the states of Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan and Israel/Palestine being created. ISIS would like peace in the Middle East as
P a g e | 41
soon as they break down the artificial borders created by the Europeans and put in place a single
Caliphate. They also see the war as being a final struggle between God’s People and the Infidel.
This desire to be in a superior or at least equal position is universal in human if not all
mammalian species and is due to the greater reproductive success of high status males.
Humiliation is one of the most bitter human experiences, since it relegates the humiliated one to
an inferior position from which he will never be able to attract mates and so will sentenced to
genetic death and be eliminated from the gene pool. The defeat of Germany and Austro-Hungary
left a legacy of bitterness regarding what was seen as the grossly unfair humiliation of the
Versailles Peace Conference. Adolph Hitler only needed to say what his people wanted to hear.
This had not been a defeat on the battlefield but that Germany had been brought down by a
conspiracy of international finance capital, of mainly Jewish origin, in which German Jews had
been collaborators. The heroic German army had not been defeated: Germany had been “stabbed
in the back”. By appealing to instincts that go back millions of years, the National Socialists
managed to gain a much tighter hold on the German population in the six years leading up to the
Second World War then did the Communists in Russia in seventy years.
The Great War also left lasting influences on the political and economic front. People saw how
great things could be achieved if everyone in a country worked in a disciplined way for a
common cause. Communism had been proposed much earlier by Karl Marx and now the war
seemed to fulfil his prophecy as being the final collapse international finance capital. If everyone
could cooperate then a socialist paradise could be achieved. Unfortunately, people will only
cooperate in war time or in other times of great emergency. As soon as the crisis is over, the old
urge to compete to gain status in order to attract mates will again predominate. Communism only
lasted for a single human lifetime. On the other hand, some of the socialist influences resulting
from the much greater involvement of governments in domestic affairs, necessitated by the war
effort, became accepted by all advanced nations. Taxes have been levied since the dawn of
civilisation but at a low level. In the nineteenth century, income tax in Australia had been at a
level of a few percent, when it was levied at all. The enormous expense of the war forced the
Australian Federal Government to introduce a nationwide income tax in 1915 and now tax rates
of 25 to 50 percent of GDP are universally accepted in the West.
Other veterans of the war, cognisant of the collective achievements, but aware of the devastation
of the class wars of communism, felt countries could benefit from popular cooperation if an
easily identified enemy could be found. Mussolini, in Italy, attempted to unite the Italian
population in a struggle against communism. Like Mussolini himself, persons found it easy to
convert from communism to fascism. Classes would cooperate in advancing the national cause
while introducing a lot of domestic social measures and destroying the class warfare advocated
by the communists. Once communism was defeated, however, another enemy needed to be
found. In the case of Italy, Ethiopia offered a country to conquer, thereby enhancing the prestige
P a g e | 42
of Italy in bringing what was portrayed as European civilisation to a backward country and
suppressing the still very active slave trade.
In Australia, the Great War is fading into history but the attitude to the war is changing. The
terrible casualties are now being portrayed as not senseless waste, as was the case in the past, but
as an heroic offering by the volunteer soldiers of their lives for the benefit of their countrymen.
Though the Australian troops gained their greatest fame in the final year of the war in France, it
is only since 2008, some eighty years after the end of the war, that ANZAC services have been
held at Villers Bretonneux on the Somme rather than just at Gallipoli. Young Australians are
flocking to the Dawn Ceremonies, often draped in an Australian flag. Perhaps it is only now that
we can more clearly see the heroism and sacrifice of the soldiers of all the combatants of the
Great War as they strove to advance the cause of their country in bitterly adverse circumstances.
We may need such people again as Western civilisation faces the great challenges of the future.
P a g e | 43
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