The First World War – Myth and Reality

The Lancashire Fusiliers are trying to locate the last of the six Victoria Crosses ‘won before breakfast’ during the Gallipoli landings:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-25940865

With rare exceptions, a constant thread throughout the record of British military history – civil wars apart – is the attempt to do more with less.

Indeed. I suppose the small size of the British Army in 1914 (as in 1939) should not have been such a surprise to me as Britain was really a naval power with a small professional, and all-volunteer, army. The Royal Navy was the largest navy in the world in 1914 (and in 1939).

Still, the comparisons between Britain, Germany and France are very interesting. In 1914 Germany had an army of about 700,000 and France an army of about 820,000 but both also had conscription of all eligible men of at least two years giving them an immediate reserve of 3,000,000 and 2,750,000 trained men respectively.

Britain had an army of about 250,000 in 1914 but about 80,000 of this number were in India and smaller garrisons were spread across the Empire. And, of course, as an all-volunteer army Britain did not have conscription.

Even more interesting is the size of the Canadian and Australian armies in 1914 at just 3000 men each!

Even at its best wartime strength Britain never came close to the strength of France or Germany. In 1918 Britain fielded 51 divisions plus 10 more from the British Empire; in comparison France fielded 200 and Germany 240.

Most remarkable of all are the figures for the United States. In 1917 the United States army was only about 70,000 strong but by the middle of 1918 the United States army had over 1,000,000 men on the frontline in France…

…more than Britain did at the time!

The Unknown Soldier by Neil Hanson is well worth a read. The story of three different soldiers whose remains were never found. It also goes into the history of the Cenotaph and the aftermath of the conflict. The bits you don’t often hear about.

Indeed – which brings us back to the OP’s Myth and Reality, doesn’t it?

Re 13

Charlie

The winners always write the history.

Re 6

Try the Official History of the Great War.

Which is exclusively and exhaustively military, isn’t it, if we are talking about the James Edmonds volumes. And they were written from the British perspective from British records, so I wonder how objective an account it is.

Re 10

CD

With rare exceptions, a constant thread throughout the record of British military history – civil wars apart – is the attempt to do more with less.

Re 6

Try the Official History of the Great War.

Some interesting figures regarding the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that moved into Belgium in August 1914: it consisted of four infantry divisions, one cavalry division and one independent brigade.

In comparison, at the start of the war Germany put one hundred infantry divisions and twenty-two cavalry divisions into the field. France started with sixty-two infantry divisions and ten cavalry divisions. Even Belgium contributed more: six infantry divisions and one cavalry division.

I had the impression that he had dug rather deeper and thereby found some of the other versions unsubstantiated.

Are you sure – the last time I checked it was £9.00. I was looking for a friend – although I prefer this sort of book as a book!

Yes, and he explains well what he is setting out to do in the preface. However, the very fact that there are other takes on what actually happened leads me to seek some of them out, so I can form my own position. Whether I will ever get the time to do so is another thing.

I have a long way to go right now – but for those with a Kindle, it can be downloaded for 99p from Amazon at the moment.

Bruce

Would you agree that as far as the complex political and military machinations leading to the outbreak of hostilities is concerned, Hastings has tried to keep to the historical facts as much as possible, but with a degree of interpretation, rather than an expressed opinion?

The difficulty, 100 years on is getting to the truth of what happened at the time.

I’m not sure if Dan Snow is being revisionist, or if he is trying to analyse what actually happened at the time. I don’t know enough about it to comment more than that yet, but clearly, revisionism has been happening since 1918 or so, and has been built on, and on and on.

I too am reading the Max Hastings book – I am not far into it, but already it has raised more questions. The difficulty is in knowing where to get factual answers as opposed to opinion.

Bruce

And for a man with a 1st Class Honours degree in Modern History, inexcusable!

Going by the comments from Dan Snow, this has already started.

And he is as guilty as many before him. See the “Lions led by donkeys’ passage.

This phrase pre-dates WW1 and was not originated by Alan Clark by any means.

Moggy

I can’t recommend Max Hastings’ Catastrophe highly enough and I’m only half way through it. I have already learned a great deal and laid a few myths to sleep.

So, as it is one hundred years since the start of the First World War, how about a bit of gentle revisionism?

Going by the comments from Dan Snow, this has already started.

Something else which is not often mentioned, is the propaganda war. Aimed both at the British public, as well as the Germans.

Many of the film clips you see of soldiers “going over the top”, and picking their way through the barbed wire, were filmed way
behind the front lines, and sometimes here in the UK. This continued into WWI, where there were instances of British troops
wearing German uniforms, to act as POWs