Unit 3 Experiences of war 1914-18 Introduction and 3.1 War enthusiasm Flashcards
3.1 War Enthusiasm
The August experience - a unifying event that allegedly replaced internal divisions and united all people behind the war effort
The Germans, by making everyone believe that Germany was the victim (which it was not) the government had achieved remarkable unity among the people - absolutely necessary for prosecuting the war
French public opinion not unanimous but not obstructive either. Conscription (except in Britain until 1916) was enforced. Crowds seemed patriotic - to begin with (French Army mutiny 1917 German Navy mutiny 1918), but there was no general enthusiasm for war in 1914 - Mombauer and Brunton
3.2 The nature of the First World War, 3.2.1 War losses
Total War - Not over by Christmas,
civilians cast in roles no less essential than soldiers
Commercial warfare, strategic bombing shelling of population centres carries the war to the home front eroding the distinctions between soldier and civilians
6 - 13 million deaths The figures for military and civilian casualties are shockingly high
3.3 The soldiers’ experience of war, 3.3.1 Medicine, disease and death
Machine guns, heavy artillery, tanks, aircraft, poison gas, modern communications radio/telephone
French trench newspaper, Le Filon, …in a word it (fighting in the trenches) means suffering
Gas dehumanises the war, dirt, vermin, lice, hunger, exhaustion, deadly diseases, mutilations, bombardments created horrific scenes
More soldiers experienced captivity in enemy hands than were wounded or killed on the front (Jones 2011)
3.4 War and medicine
Better medical services and more effective, first major war in which fewer soldiers died from disease than from wounds and the vast majority of wounded soldiers returned to front line service
A laboratory for medical innovation, Historians of medicine argue that the war was good for medicine and that both war and medicine was shaped by wider social focus, particularly that of:-
modernisation - industrialisation, secularisation, capitalism and growth of the state
and modernity:- the growth, differentiation and integration of bureaucracy and other organisational systems, the standardisation and routinisation of administrative action: and the employment of experts to define and order such systems (Cooter et al 1998)
3.4.1 Recruitment: standardisation and sorting, 3.4.2 battlefield medicine
Physical examination, had to be fit to fight as per certain criteria, grade A best, grade B sent abroad to non-combat roles (cooks, clerks, storekeepers and sanitary officers, Grade C served at home
Medical - treat wounded and get them back up to the front line as soon as possible. wounded moved from front through several stages to a CCS casualty clearing station
At every stage on the journey, triage - the sorting of casualties - was carried out, unlikely to survive receives minimal attention, resources focused on those with a good chance of recovery, staff on 16 hours on, 8 off to ensure they were not exhausted
3.4.3 The role of experts
Respiratory Physiologists - gas warfare , they identified gas used and helped design masks to counter effects and new gases to counter defences (Sturdy 1998)
Surgeons find that careful removal of damaged tissue combined with new antiseptics could save badly damaged limbs
3.4.4 Gender in war
Women stepped up to male jobs, but more recently, historians argue that little changed as after the war they were forced to resume their traditional roles
Hysterical Men - shell shock/war neuroses caused by stress/noise, deaths, seeing deaths, wounds, buried alive, trench life
Break downs, silences, fearfulness, uncontrollable movements, paralysis, officers typically - nightmares, depression. Armies forced to establish mental wards to deal with influx of nervous casualties
Cures ranging from psychological analysis to ‘Kaufmann eire’ i.e. electrical shock therapy
3.4.4 Gender in war 2
Heroic Women -
Worked in munitions, farms, railways, VAD Voluntary aid Detachments, Red Cross nurses, mainly middle class,
Scottish Women’s hospital refused entry to western front, instead worked on Serbian and French fronts
Ambulance drivers
3.5 The Civilian Experience of War
Some populations suffered heavy casualties when their cities/towns were overrun by battle
Hunger, disease and starvation due to blockades
Death, mutilation, psychological damage to husbands and sons and the depressing affects of bereavement
Upper classes suffered some of the heaviest casualties 1 in 4 Oxford and Cambridge studies (subalterns leading from the front) died - Winter (1986) disputes ‘lost generation’ argument ‘most casualties were in their twenties’
3.5 The Civilian Experience of War 2 & 3.5.2 Hunger
Gregory 2008 - if each soldier had an average of 6 close relatives (but does not account for close friends) = 4.5 million bereaved or 10% of the population but he concludes that fewer people experienced personal bereavement than is commonly suggested
Many civilians die of malnutrition making the susceptible to disease especially the Spanish influenza that would kill millions after the war
British naval blockade - economic warfare leads to war weariness, resentment and strikes e.g. German factory strikes December 1917 - January 1918 linked to food problems Magdeburg food riots women, teenagers and school children
3.5.3 Occupation
German atrocities in Belgium, Russian atrocities in East Prussia, Allied troops entering the Rhineland
Germans in Belgium, their attempts at economic exploitation and Germanisation
1915 Germans construct an electrified fence 180 Km long and 2 metre high along the Belgian-Netherlands border several hundred killed trying to cross it an it sealed Belgium off until October 1918, 20,000 managed to escape over it.
There was rape and murder however Horne and Kramer (2000) suggest that, ‘it seems equally clear that intense myth-cycles of enemy atrociousness accompanied the invasions’
3.6 The end of the war and its aftermath
Russia, defeat and collapse of military discipline = revolution and armistice with Germany 1917 The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
Germany loses due to attrition lack of men, resources huger and exhaustion and enemy with more resources esp. after USA joins, October Austria-Hungary falls and Germany surrenders 11 November 1918. Otto Dix ‘The match seller’ mutilated war veteran picture
Russia - civil war begins, influenza epidemic spreads across the world claiming millions of lives assisted by malnutrition and weakening of immune systems, soldiers passing the disease at the armistice to weaken civilians
Some soldiers regretted the end of the fighting and having to return home and there is to this day no commemoration of the First World War’s end in Germany, war widows and orphans face some very hard times in postwar years
They thought this was the war to end all wars, but of course it wasn’t
Number of times revised
20/5, 23/5, 5/6
