Conscription and the army Flashcards
When did the first recruitment campaign start?
1914
How many men joined the army in the first month?
Half a million
When was conscription introduced?
2nd March 1916
Who had to join up due to conscription?
All single men aged 18 to 40
When was conscription extended to married men?
25th May 1916
How many British were killed or injured on the first day of the Battle of the Somme?
60,000
When was the Battle of the Somme?
July 1, 1916 – November 18, 1916
Define recruitment
The action of enlisting people into the army
Why did the army need to recruit men quickly in 1914?
When war broke out, Britain only had a small professional army, and so needed a larger one
How many men were in the British army at the start of the war?
733,514
How many men were in the German army at the start of the war?
13,000,000
Give 2 examples of German atrocities that were reported in Britain
Babies being killed in Belgium, and the German factory where they were supposedly making soap out of boiled-up corpses
How many men had signed up by 1916?
Over 2 million
Why was conscription introduced? (4 reasons)
- Recruitment in December 1915 was the lowest for any month since the beginning of the war
- The demand for troops was increasing because of the increasing number of dead or wounded soldiers who needed replacing
- The volunteer system was damaging Britain’s agriculture and industry- so many miners joined up that there were reports of them being sent back to ensure that there were essential supplies of coal
- Many people saw the volunteer system as unfair because not all parts of society took an equal share of the burden, and there was a feeling that some groups were avoiding the war altogether
Who were the ‘conchies’?
Conscientious Objectors- people who refused to join up to the army for religious or political reasons. They had to appear before a tribunal and prove that they had a genuine and valid reason for not joining up
