Today, 1st November, is the day poppies traditionally go on sale in the United Kingdom to mark the fallen in Britain's wars. Their origins lie of course in the Great War of 1914-18.
At about this time the media picks up interest in the Great War and we can expect some articles and programmes accordingly. Watch for the received view of most of these, which might be described as ‘Lions led by Donkeys’.* We are all familiar with the imagery this phrase invokes: row upon row of hapless young men, living months on end in disease and squalor, deafened by shelling and choked by poisonous gas, before being lined up as if on parade and forced to march towards certain death at the hands of the German guns. Meanwhile the officers, chinless wonders who bought their commissions or were given them solely on the basis of an Eton and Oxbridge education, sat comfortably miles behind the lines in French Chateaux sipping champagne and totting up the ‘results’ of each successive strategic blunder.
This 'donkey thesis' is not confined to obvious comedy such as Blackadder goes Forth, or anti-war films such as Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War. It also appears in works as august and naturally conservative as the Oxford Illustrated History of Britain.
There is, however, one central problem with the donkey thesis: it is false. It ignores three rather fundamental interrelated points:
First, Britain actually finished on the winning side. I very much doubt she could have done so either by conducting the war with supreme incompetence or by being totally indifferent to the number of young men she sacrificed to do it.
Secondly, not only did Britain emerge from the conflict victorious, but her army was the only one involved in the conflict from the beginning that did not collapse at any point.
Thirdly, not only did Britain emerge with her army intact and on the winning side, but the army which she had fashioned by 1918 - and I should stress that it was the army of the Empire and Commonwealth, even if the majority were British - was the most powerful in the world. Given that Britain started with a small, colonial police force and had spent centuries concentrating on naval and economic strength at the expense of a large standing army, that was quite a phenomenal achievement.
It seems to me that, if Britain has rather overplayed her role in winning World War II, where the Russians clearly shouldered by far the largest burden of the battle against Hitler, then curiously the British have done the direct opposite with respect to World War I, where for decades they have continuously ridiculed and belittled those who led the fight.
Of course, I am not about to suggest that life in the trenches would have been particularly enjoyable, nor that mistakes, often terrible mistakes, were not made at both the tactical and strategic levels. But it is simply not true that the generals failed to learn from their mistakes, nor is it true that they were Luddites who deprecated new technology and tactics. To be sure, sometimes their mistakes were severe, and oftentimes new technology didn’t work, but in the overall analysis a successful result was obtained by our forefathers who were asked to do an incredibly difficult job in highly stressful circumstances.
Over the next few days, leading up to Remembrance Sunday, I intend to write a few more short pieces setting out why I think the First World War unfolded as it did, and why we should be as proud of what Britain achieved as we are regretful and shocked at the price she was forced to pay for it.
I should concede that I am only an historian in the most amateur, passing sense. I will accordingly be posting in a general, introductory sense. For those looking for more detail, the first place on the blogosphere to start would be Dreadnought’s recently constituted blog, devoted to military history which is his forte. In terms of general reading, the three essential books on the conflict are I would suggest Gordon Corrigan's Mud, Blood and Poppycock, Richard Holmes' The Western Front, and John Keegan's The First World War.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
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6 comments:
P-Ump: great stuff! I will await your future posts with interest.
By the way, the origin of the 'Lions led by Donkeys' phrase is unknown. Alan Clark, the former Tory MP, used it in his ‘trash’ history ‘The Donkeys’, claiming it came from the memoirs of Ludendorff. When challenged, he could not substantiate his claims. It is more likely that the phrase came from the Prussian siege of Paris in 1871.
Thanks so much D, I was aware of the origins of the phrase and indeed had a passage to that effect which inexplicably I left off the post when cutting and pasting it into the blog (I did the draft in word). But now you've added the explanation I don't need to bother, nor to add that Clark's book was a load of codswallop.
That's a very thought provoking piece PU. I suppose one of the reasons for the downplaying of WWI is that one of the long term consequences of it was Hitler. Perhaps no one in Britain wanted to admit that the Versailles Treaty led to the conditions in which he could flourish? Another reason is I think the sheer numbers of people who died. Have you ever been to the Menin Gate? It is dizzying to read the names there.
Every family in the country was affected. To have played up the victory might have caused bitterness perhaps? I don't know I'm only guessing.
I would also say literature has had a part - the War Poets, particularly Wilfred Owen aren't complimentary.
I'm thinking particularly of The Parable of the Old Man and the Young which ends:
But the old man would not do so and slew his son/And half the seed of Europe one by one
And also Dulce et Decorum Est - which talks about the old lie - of it being right and proper to die for your country.
Wilfred Owen perhaps articulates the feelings of betrayal that the soldiers had. They'd gone to fight for patriotism/duty etc and they felt betrayed. WW1 was such an horrific war it is inevitable blame would have to be attached somewhere, and where better then to the generals.
A whole generation really was wiped out - my grandmother lost her fiance and married his best friend (my grandfather) - but she was lucky so many of her generation ended up spinsters. We still have the letter the padre wrote to her telling her how they couldn't find his body. It is deeply moving.
I do think the fact that everyone in the country was affected pretty much has probably had an impact on the way the war was viewed. And the pointlessness of no man's land and inching back and forth for the same barren tracts of land. I know we won but it feels that it was a war that served less purpose then WW2 which did at least relieve the world of Hitler, if it created further problems.
Fascinating post, PU. I'll look forward to the rest.
Oh and on another personal note, both my husband's grandfathers fought on the Somme, and when they met compared battle positions. They got on famously!
However his English grandfather apparently always said that a part of him died on the Somme and he felt he never fully recovered. But perhaps that is true of every horrific trauma.
Having gone over to Dreadnought's blog I take both your points about poetry not being viewed as a proper historical source, but the literature of the day is always instructive in giving a flavour at least about what people were feeling even if they perhaps get their facts wrong. Owen is incredibly emotive, and I think his poetry has a place in debates about the nature of war rather then the history of it.
Many thanks Jane, just the sort of response I'd hoped to provoke. I will try and cover your points in the forthcoming posts - in particular the imagery of the pointlessness of fighting over tiny scraps of mud (in essence: this was not intended as a battle of attrition in which it was presumed the Germans would run out of soliders first, but repeated and largely unsuccessful attempts to break the line, and also, particularly with the Somme, a necessary attempt to take the pressure off Verdun which was in danger of falling and taking the entire French army with it).
Your family history is fascinating on that point, having representatives on both sides. In my own case one great-grandfather was on the Somme (gassed, but he survived), while another was engaged in square bashing at home as part of the Leeds Militia. The latter used to spend hours with my father and his brother when they were young children, teaching them drill etc. Eventually the actual veteran would lose patience (never speaking of the war as a rule) and snarl "shuuutupp" at the ex Militaman.
As to purpose: the options were either allow Germany to dominate Europe or stop them. In the light of What Happened Next, it is possible to argue that a century with Germany ruling all on Europe wouldn't be worse than what actually happened, but I'm not convinced on that front and certainly it would not have been reasonably foreseeable to those British Generals and politicians who took the fateful decision to commit Britain to a total war rather than step back and allow the French to lose.
More to follow - including I hope Corrigan's argument that there was not, in fact, a lost generation.
PU
Wonderful series, educating people about the real story, something I've tried to do in just two posts.
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