England and The Great War

Origins, Progress, and Meaning: 1906-1918

England’s Abandoning of Splendid Isolation

• Fear of and Rivalry with Germany—Krueger Telegram, 1898 Naval Law

• Dreadnought

• Concerns with Balkans

• Triple Entente (1907)

England responds to Von Schlieffen Plan

• Germany refused to evacuate Belgium

• Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914.

• Why honor an eighty year old treaty to protect Belgium

• Zara Steiner Thesis

Conduct of the War

• Ironically, since the naval arms race did so much to unsettle international relations, there was but one major surface ship battle at Jutland in 1916.

• U-Boats did challenge Britain’s ability to survive.

• German strategy dictated a major land war on the western front.

Triumvirate of Old Men

• Sir John French—commanded the Br. Expeditionary Force—forced to retire in 1915

• Sir Douglas Haig: even worse• Lord Kitchener—no innovator he.• These men thought of war as a chance to test one’s

mettle and struggled to adapt to new changes in warfare: machine guns, poison gas, aircraft, trenches. Haig even wrote that the role of cavalry would increase and that the bullet lacked stopping power against the horse.

French (1852-1925); Haig (1861-1928) Kitchener (1850-1916)

Attempts to Lift Stalemate

• Poison Gas—1915—Ypres—Germans

• Tanks—1916—Somme—British

• German attack at Verdun (1916)

• British reply by attacking at the Somme to relieve pressure on Verdun

• Passchendael (July-November 1917)

1916 Was Critical Year

Battle of the Somme(July 1, 1916-November 18, 1916)

• British suffered 58,000 casualties (1/3 KIA) on First Day• 420,000 casualties during entire battle.• Before dawn, in the darkness, I stood with a mass of cavalry

opposite Fricourt. Haig as a cavalry man was obsessed with the idea that he would break the German line and send the cavalry through. It was a fantastic hope, ridiculed by the German High Command in their report on the Battles of the Somme which afterwards we captured. In front of us was not a line but a fortress position, twenty miles deep, entrenched and fortified, defended by masses of machine-gun posts and thousands of guns in a wide arc. No chance for cavalry! But on that night they were massed behind the infantry. Among them were the Indian cavalry, whose dark faces were illuminated now and then for a moment, when someone struck a match to light a cigarette. –Phillip Gibbs

Tank used at the Somme

Somme—12 KM of Ground Gained

Passchendaele was no better• 4.25 million shells fired to set up the attack.• Germans used Mustard gas• Floods of rain and a blanket of mist have doused and

cloaked the whole of the Flanders plain. The newest shell-holes, already half-filled with soakage, are now flooded to the brim. The rain has so fouled this low, stoneless ground, spoiled of all natural drainage by shell-fire, that we experienced the double value of the early work, for today moving heavy material was extremely difficult and the men could scarcely walk in full equipment, much less dig. Every man was soaked through and was standing or sleeping in a marsh. It was a work of energy to keep a rifle in a state fit to use. –William Beach Thomas

310,000 British CasualtiesAt Passchendaele

Liquid Mud at Passchendaele

"…I died in Hell

(they called it Passchendaele)

my wound was slight

and I was hobbling back; and then a shell

burst slick upon the duckboards; so I fell

into the bottomless mud, and lost the light"

— Siegfried Sassoon

What Sassoon was describing

War at Home

• DORA—gave cabinet carte blanche to manage war—resisters were jailed including Labour leader J. Ramsay Macdonald—industry regulated

• All men aged 16 to 51 were eligible for military service

• Easter Rebellion (1916)—Eamon de Valera

Ending the War

• Friedensturm failed and U. S. entered war.

• Armistice—Nov. 11, 1918.

• 750,000 war dead—1.5 million wounded—national debt increased by 8 billion Ł.

• Income taxes rose from 5% to 30% an death duties rose to 40%.

• 5.7 million British citizens served in war.

1918 Election

• Current Parliament had been sitting since 1911

• “Coupon Election”—a few Lloyd George Liberals plus many conservatives.

• Liberal Party severely divided and Labour becomes number 2 party behind National Coalition

Treaty of Versailles

• 14 points are not an option• Security—Britain wants German navy• Revenge?• Mandate System for Ottoman and German

Empires• Post war foreign policy less concerned with

France and Continent and focused a bit more on relations with U. S.

War Changes ConsciousnessIf you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)