Gentlemen of the Forum.

Some of you may have noticed that it's the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI this year. I am already irritated by the coverage. Seems to me we've already got into the War Poets and Lions Led by Donkeys cliches - all Western Front with not a mention of any other fronts.

I put myself into the position of a general in 1916 n the Western Front. I'm leading more men than was in the entire BEF in 1914, there's a line of trenches from Switzerland to the sea. My army were all civvies a year ago. Air power is is its infancy, cavalry are useless and tanks are a pipe dream. I have artillery, but never enough, and the PBI. Not a situation I would want.

The impression is of men going to France in 1914 and staying in the front line trenches until death or 1918. It's probably boring talking about the circulation of troops to rear areas, not in keeping with the "Journey's End" presentation. I'm not saying that the Western Front was a picnic, but surely it was a stalemate of technology and circumstance?

The only other theatre that gets any attention is Gallipoli which was - a stalemate. Certainly people are aware of Lawrence of Arabia because of twinkly-eyed Peter O'Toole, but I would humbly suggest that most people couldn't say who Lawrence fought. As for Allenby, he's hardly a household name is he? Then there's the running around in Africa with the magnificent and magnificently named Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck.

So, Gentlemen of the Forum, have I got it wrong? Are we up for a year of tired old cliches, or could we actually learn something new in 2014?

I think the Lion led by Donkeys view of the war has pretty much passed now. I have to say until about 20 years I had pretty much the same view of the Western Front until I went for the first time to Picardy and Flanders..I don't think its over exaggerating when I say it was 'life changing'

The whole WW1 views  though is strange, after living in Oz until recently very few were aware that the ANZAC's played such a big part on the Western front and all their views were concerning Gallipolli . I suppose you could say the same for the British there in regards to public perception


I think the major problem is that historians and other military experts still havent really come to any firm conclusions about WW1 and so sterotypes still abound

Personally I would doubt it fsn......But then I know so little compared to my esteemed colleagues on the forum regarding ANY period of history.
But.....You seemed to have sneaked in your promotion to Brigadier without me noticing.....Congratulations !!!
Cheers - Phil

Hopefully we will get more about the histories of Mesopotamia and Salonika and Italy

What should happen as the Australian Govt did is to put all the WW1 records online for free so people can access, in that way families learn about their relatives

Quote from: Techno on 16 January 2014, 09:24:01 PM
But.....You seemed to have sneaked in your promotion to Brigadier without me noticing.....Congratulations !!!

Blimey! So I have! I genuinely hadn't noticed! I feel so unprepared.

Must get down to the tailor's tomorrow and have some gold braid sewn onto this cardigan.

Congratulations Brigadier.

Have you read Kipling and Conan Doyles war poems. They change dramatically as the war goes on. Sassoon and Owen were in the minority of the published works.
It was only in the 20s did the sense of shame really get into the national consciousness.
My Great-Grandad signed up in 1914, fought at Loos all the way through without any home leave. Started as a private, left as a Captain (brevet Major) was very proud to have served, he even went back between the wars to the town where he was mayor between 1918 and 1921. His brother died at passchendale. By the thirties, he refused to talk about it and in 1939 had a total breakdown as war was declared again.

I have mentioned before he was a habitual artist, compulsive sketcher. He filled a dozen books a year. We have one that lasts the whole war. He designed the 1916 Christmas cards for the Sherwood Forresters. The officers card is a jolly Robin Hood figure with a glass of champers.
The men's is a squaddie, wrapped up, covered in snow, and his red nose sticking out, saying "Who the bloody hell said Merry Christmas!"
They are on display in Nottingham Castle Museum.

I suspect you are correct fsn, but then it is the media and it is an anniversary - which is never a good combination.

And it has to be said that the First World War is a problematic period because much of the 'history' relating to it is so tied up with current political totems. A brief glimpse at the comments section of the Daily Mail - shower afterwards - concerning Gove's statement reveals this. I particularly cringed at the repeated assertion that the generals were all upper class twits - Robertson, CIGS, was a private who worked his way up to being a Field Marshal, and Haig was 'trade' - and that the upper classes sacrificed the working class, while they were unaffected - Asquith, while serving as Prime Minister, had a son killed on the Somme.

What is frustrating is that the period is really rather interesting.

For instance the story of the Kitchener poster - which was never a poster (well it was but it didn't start to be used until @ Dec 1914), but a magazine cover that was then sold as postcards, so that when people recall seeing Kitchener's face everywhere, it was not on posters staring down from the walls of recruiting offices - as is portrayed in dramas, films and other artistic representations - but staring up at then from these postcards thrust into their hand in the street, or waiting for them on the door mat from one of the many daily postal deliveries.

What is also annoying is that the narrative is far more interesting than the standard version of events - which is in a sense closely tied in Lions Led by Donkey's and the war poets.

This standard narrative was wheeled out by Dan Carlin in his latest Hardcore History podcast, and was particularly cringe worthy because of his attempt to down play the events in Belguim - don't let's be beastly to the Germans - which while perhaps where not babies on bayonets, did include in the space of roughly 11 days, 6000 civilian deaths, the destruction of Leuvan, complete with the expulsion of its 10,000 population, and roughly 20% of the Belgium population being displaced. Not to mention the subsequent forced labour and repatriation of goods and machinery to Germany. But for some reason this is not considered as reprehensible these days, because it goes against later political narratives relating to victory and defeat, reparations, the war dead and whether or not Britain should have got involved in the war.

And there are aspects about this standard narrative that are just plain wrong, and for some reason never get corrected. They are only little things, like the Entente Cordial was never an alliance, but an agreement relating to colonial matters. And that without understanding this, it is impossible to understand the significance of Belgium, or why the r*pe of Belgium was played up in propaganda (dreadful as it was), the tensions within the 'allied' forces in the early years if the war, and why the French were so keen to blood the British on the Somme - despite Haig's reluctance.

Or the theme that Russia was an under-developed, industrially backward country - which as Norman Stone points out in his book on the Eastern Front was far from the case, and that Stalins five and ten year plans far from dragging the county into the 20th century merely brought it back to roughly the level it had been in 1914 - but again for political reasons relating to left wing politics in the 1920's and 30's this was not something that was acceptable. Incidentally Stone's book has an excellent anecdote which explains the Russian defeat far more succinctly than the standard decadence model of the Tzar - though I suppose it also exemplifies Tzarist decadence. Because supply was arranged through a system of farming, and because the cartels operating the contracts were inefficient (as monopolies tend to be), contracts were placed with US manufacturers. However, in order to supply the boots, and to get around the monopoly of the cartel, the boots were sent through the post to the individual soldier, though they could not be sent as a pair, thus two parcels were sent, one with the left boot, the other with the right. Which while not only being very comical, also made the logistics impossible, especially when combined with the massive demand for fodder for the cavalry, and the problems of shell supply caused by the Russian fortress policy in the 1890's - which is a debate that occurred in all countries, and in 1916 would mean that the French fortresses at Verdun did not have any guns (which in the standard narrative is due to the French commander being a fool, but is more likely because he had taken an opinion contrary to the Russians in the artillery debates of the 1890's)

Recently I listened to the excellent podcast series of lectures by Margaret Anderson, at Berkley on the Rise and Fall of the Second Reich - https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/history-167b-fall-2007-rise/id461115995 - which gives a very interesting perspective on 19th century Germany - and for whom I thank for my Palmerston quip in another thread.

What I found interesting about her lectures was that it offered an explanation for war that made far more sense than the general tinder box theory, namely that though Germany was strong militarily and industrially, the only real diplomatic card it had was it's army - or perhaps more accurately the threat of the army. Thus when Britain was looking for allies after the Boer war, although it first approached the Germans - for reasons of blood and history perhaps - it made far more logical sense to come to terms with the two great European colonial powers of France and Russia - to reach understandings, not alliances - and contain the German fleet - rather than the standard version of the Anglo-German naval race (something that could be equally applied to the US).

Her assessment of the Sarajevo incident is equally more compelling than the standard narrative.

Sorry if I have rambled on a bit... it's just all the talk around this commemoration has been annoying me for weeks, and I wanted to get some things of my chest off my chest.

Which is not to say that I don't like the war poets, or think the Lions led by Donkeys meme has merit - it's just that it doesn't have merit for the knee jerk reasons that accompany it - and both colour the 'real' history in a way that it less than helpful, and relate more to later social and military debates of the 1930's and 1960's.

An interesting read rather than a ramble

Quote from: Fenton on 16 January 2014, 09:29:00 PM
What should happen as the Australian Govt did is to put all the WW1 records online for free so people can access, in that way families learn about their relatives

The National Archives are working on doing exactly that. They've scanned 1.5 million pages of unit war diaries, and are getting them online:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/905.htm

They're also asking the public to help tag the pages, to help researchers find relevant pages:
http://www.operationwardiary.org/

They're planning to get a lot more stuff relevant to WWI online over the next five years:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/

Russell beat me to the NA's efforts which are worth a look.

A friend of mine (who knows very little about military history) has just returned from a Legers Battlefield Tour and has been (like many others before him) very moved by the experience.

He posted his photos and thoughts on facebook and one of his friends 'liked' his posts and thought it appropriate to post a pic showing how 'futile the war was' which was of a GI in Vietnam....

Saw a WWI 'History File' (contains DVD's and printed material I assume) in WH Smiths the other week. The picture on the box lid was of a 'just' pre-WWII American soldier complete with an M1 rifle! He was wearing a respirator and a 'battle bowler' British type helmet so, 'Hey, that must be WWI, right?'

I hold out little hope that the 2014 anniversary will change the average person's view of the Great War. I'm going to ignore it and maybe read a couple of more books on the subject instead.

Yours in despair,

D.

Thank you Gentlemen of the Forum (Can we get a badge or a tee-shirt or something?) particularly fateeore for giving some validity to my ramblings.

I often intrigue annoy work colleagues by asking them random questions like "how large were the armies at Hastings?" or "name any other nationality represented in Wellington's army at Waterloo." Their ignorance (and I don't mean that in an offensive way) is quite staggering. These people who have never read anything about WWI will be the ones who I fear will have these stereotypes reinforced. 

Another good one is to ask, who invented concentration camps?
When they answer, the British in the Boer War.
Say, "so the Spanish didn't employ them in Cuba?"

At which point....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnQ65J02XA

Quote from: Russell Phillips on 17 January 2014, 07:19:00 AM
The National Archives are working on doing exactly that. They've scanned 1.5 million pages of unit war diaries, and are getting them online:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/905.htm

They're also asking the public to help tag the pages, to help researchers find relevant pages:
http://www.operationwardiary.org/

They're planning to get a lot more stuff relevant to WWI online over the next five years:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/

Yes and its a good thing...I know a lot were destroyed but the official unit records and individual army records would be nice as well

Quote from: Fenton on 17 January 2014, 10:28:48 AM
Yes and its a good thing...I know a lot were destroyed but the official unit records and individual army records would be nice as well

The 'personal' diaries are unit diaries not individual diaries - that threw me at first when I initially saw it