Cultural legacy of the First World War

Continuing the posts below on how the First World War might have helped create a
culture that was adapted to total war. From Picture Post, April 4, 1942, an advertisement for Sunlight Soap.
Previous posts here and here.

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A few bits and bobs at the end of (another) hectic week.

1. Questions:
a) Steve Badsey writes to ask for help locating a documentary -

I have a recent memory of having seen a reference to an article (and I can’t be more definite than that) about the mythology of the First World War tank, very much from the ‘it didn’t win the war but it won the post-war literary battle’ perspective – rather like the Timewatch I appeared in some years back, but more scholarly. Have you come across this, and if so can you point me to the reference for it?

b) Astrid Erll would like to know if she’s helping to perpetuate a myth:

I’m not sure if the following anecdote relates to British myth or British history: ‘When Arthur Nicolson congratulated Edward Grey on his speech of 3 August 1914, Grey cried ‘I hate war, I hate war”. A German editor of an article of mine inserted this as a note, and I’m not sure if with this anecdote I’m perpetuating what I was actually going to reflect upon in this article: the British memory culture.

2) Dave Budgen, a postgraduate student at the University of Kent, has asked me to post this:

Rethinking War

An Interdisciplinary Colloquium

Throughout the centuries warfare has been a dominant factor in the shaping of societies. From civil wars to the growth of empires, conflict has remained a constant presence in the history of civilisation. This colloquium aims to bring together research from across the academic spectrum, giving postgraduate and post-doctoral researchers an opportunity to present their work.

We welcome proposals from postgraduate and post-doctoral students on any aspect of warfare.

Subjects you may wish to consider include:

War and Diplomacy, Science and Technology, Justifications for War, War and Society, The Psychological Effects of War, Film and Literature, Guerrilla Warfare and Terrorism, Imperialism, Total War, War and Ethnicity, Art and Visual Representations of Warfare, Heritage and War, National Identity, Medicine and Warfare, Philosophy of War, Propaganda, War and the Media, War and Religion

3) Don’t worry, there is an account of Stefan Goebel’s talk on Coventration and some new thoughts of my own all upcoming. Just trying to find the time… because

4) The book is finally out!

Learning how to fight total wars

I should, of course, have acknowledged my partial intellectual debt to David Edgerton in concocting the idea at the base of the last post: although what I am proposing is a more cultural approach to a topic that Edgerton deals with in terms of science, technology and industry. But I’ve just re-read his review of Correlli Barnett’s The Audit of War (‘The Prophet Militant and Industrial’, 20th Century British History, 2, 3 (1991), 377-8) and highlighted:
‘We might note, too , that many of the ‘New Jerusalemers’ did indeed have the backgrounds Barnett claims they did not have. Beveridge and Keynes were senior civil servants in the Great War. … Major Attlee volunteered in 1914 and fought in Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia, and on the Western Front where he was wounded for the third time just before the end of the war. Stafford Cripps, who had a degree in chemistry, spent part of the Great War as assistant superintendent of the largest chemical explosives plant in Britain.’

Intellectual legacy of the First World War

Just a quick one – more details coming soon on last night’s Writing War seminar, once I’ve digested it a bit. Today: I’ve been doing some work on evacuation in the Second World War. Particularly in light of recent events in the States, and bearing in mind the short timescale available, British civilian evacuation just before war broke out seems a remarkable achievement. A million and a half people moved without a casualty (at least according to Titmuss). Not least, it was a magnificent conception to believe that this sort of move (and they’d planned for 4 million) was possible.

At the time of the Munich Crisis evacuation plans were pretty much non-existent, but fear of the bomber was high. As the official historian puts it:

‘the London County Council had become alarmed, and pressed the government to reach certain decisions in order to allow transport planning to begin. On 5^th August, the Clerk to the Council (Sir George Gater) saw the Home Secretary and offered the services of members of the Education Officer’s staff. With political tension increased by 12^th September, Mr Herbert Morrison (leader of the council) urged upon Sir Samuel Hoare the need for immediate decisions. The Council, then drew up plans, necessarily of a primitive and faulty nature, for the removal of some 637,000 children from London.’ (Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, (London, HMSO, 1950), 29).

Even though it was never carried through, to draw up plans to shift this many people at short notice takes some doing. But what struck me as a First World War historian was George Gater’s appearance. Gater was a civilian in August 1914. By 1918 he was one of the youngest brigade commanders in the BEF, successfully leading improvised combined forces in the Hundred Days campaign which finished the war on the Western Front. He is an excellent example of the ‘learning curve’ and of the successful incorporation of civilians into the wartime army.

Evacuation in 1938 or 1939 was dependent on railway movements and billeting. Where had British administrators learned how to use these tools? How could they deploy them, at short notice, with confidence and relative competence (evacuation didn’t run perfectly, but it was, I repeat, a remarkable achievement)? Could we construct a case that some had learned these skills – or at least honed them – in the First World War? Obviously more research is needed – but let’s at least float the idea that we can.

Now, we are accustomed to participants in the SEcond World War complaining that all the best men of their generation had been killed in 1914-18. Alan Brooke, for example, often remarked on the poor command resources enjoyed by the British Army in the Second World War for just this reason. But we could reverse this argument. It might have seemed like the best and brightest were killed, but what about all those who took status, achievement and newfound abilities from their wartime experience? Perhaps, what the British had been doing was to create a skill set which, twenty years later, would serve them well in the second great conflict of the twentieth century.