Ten myths on WWI - debunked

[angrysoba]

According to Niall Ferguson, another myth was that Britain needed to fight World War I, when staying out would have been a better option:

Britain could have lived with a German victory in the first world war, and should have stayed out of the conflict in 1914, according to the historian Niall Ferguson, who described the intervention as "the biggest error in modern history".

In an interview with BBC History Magazine, Ferguson said there had been no immediate threat to Britain, which could have faced a Germany-dominated Europe at a later date on its own terms, instead of rushing in unprepared, which led to catastrophic costs.

"Britain could indeed have lived with a German victory. What's more, it would have been in Britain's interests to stay out in 1914," he said before a documentary based on his book The Pity of War, which will be screened by BBC2 as part of the broadcaster's centenary season.

The Laurence A Tisch professor of history at Harvard University rejected the idea that Britain was forced to act in 1914 to secure its borders and the Channel ports. "This argument, which is very seductive, has one massive flaw in it, which is that Britain tolerated exactly that situation happening when Napoleon overran the European continent, and did not immediately send land forces to Europe. It wasn't until the peninsular war that Britain actually deployed ground forces against Napoleon. So strategically, if Britain had not gone to war in 1914, it would still have had the option to intervene later, just as it had the option to intervene after the revolutionary wars had been under way for some time."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/30/britain-first-world-war-biggest-error-niall-ferguson

 

[llwyd]

We like to think World War One changed things, but it didn't really. Like clockwork, half a generation later the great powers were engaged in even more destructive warfare on an even greater scale.

Yeah, that's actually a large part of my point - you can't imagine the second without the first... Lenin would not be there, nor Stalin, nor Hitler. In many ways it was just one gigantic conflict with a period of very shaky and unstable truce in between. Anyway, I guess this argument is hard to quantify or prove in absolute terms, but to my mind those twin catastrophes dealt really devastating blows against rather a central optimistic and selfconfident strand of Western liberalism. We still are liberal, yes, but without much faith and selfconfidence in our immaterial values - those things, as much as they exist, are more linked to our material production and wealth. This is of course not a new thought, in fact it's almost a cliche these days, but cliches have often a way of being true in many ways. (But naturally this is a crudely simplified form of the argument and as said, hard to verify.)

 

[Corsair 115]

It was really World War Two that changed society's attitude to war, and I think it only happened because of the single characteristic of WW2 that was unique; there was no "safe ground", back home, away from the war.

With one major power exception: the United States. (And a few minor power exceptions, such as Canada.)

 

[erwinl]

I'm not sure what you are talking about. The horizon is about 6 miles away on flat ground. Warships during WWI routinely fired over the horizon whereas, on the battlefield, this was not the case. The support artillery was not firing from miles behind the front lines. Indirect fire only means that you are firing at low velocity in a ballistic arc at something beyond your view. This was done during the Civil War. If the enemy was within view, you would normally be using canisters of grape shot.



Bombardment by artillery before an attack was common during the Civil War. Coordination was done by flag and bugle signals. Obviously, you can't hear a bugle during a bombardment and flag signals require a direct line of sight which can be obscured by smoke. With these difficulties, I'm not surprised they relied on timing instead of signaling.

But they weren't on flat ground weren't they?
Except from the beginning in 1914 the gunners never saw their targets.

After a while they didn't use ranging shots either. Just firing based on maps, which were made on the intell from aerial photography.
Doing that is a total different kind of kettle from the shooting during the ACW.
It does need information, concerning air pressure, temperature, muzzle velocity (which is a function of gun type, shell type, propulsion type and amount, rate of wear of the barrel).

That is the kind of firing which was developed during WWI and which had not been done before.

 

[gumboot]

With one major power exception: the United States. (And a few minor power exceptions, such as Canada.)

And unsurprisingly, the USA has been the most notably war-favouring western country since WW2.

 

[gumboot]

Another myth; the ANZAC biscuit.

The myth is the biscuit was sent to ANZAC soldiers at Gallipoli, reputably the recipe invented because of war time shortages and ingredients that could be shipped a long way without spoiling (no eggs or milk, for example).

This never actually happened, and the hard tack eaten by ANZACs at Gallipoli was quite different, although NZ soldiers (and probably Australian too) were known to be sent a vaguely similar cake-like food from home while on the Western Front.

Instead, the biscuits were a popular choice for bake stalls and other events at home which were staged to raise support for the soldiers. As a result they became known as "soldier's biscuits" and then "ANZAC biscuits".

As with the pavlova and the lamington, legions of Australian and New Zealand historians trawl old recipe books trying to find evidence that their country came up with the iconic food first.

However, the evidence strongly suggests that ANZAC biscuits were simply a pre-existing "oat crisp biscuit", renamed in a spate of patriotic fervor.

 

[catsmate]

According to Niall Ferguson, another myth was that Britain needed to fight World War I, when staying out would have been a better option:

Really? Does anyone with a functioning brain and a knowledge of history take Ferguson's ramblings seriously? A little reading of his previous rants, on the imminent Muslim takeover of Europe, the evil that was Keynes, the benevolence of the British Empire and the wonders of Mitt Romney would soon put paid to such delusions.
If not then his lie filled anti-Obama rant last year (rebutted here).

 

[Giz]

According to Niall Ferguson, another myth was that Britain needed to fight World War I, when staying out would have been a better option:



http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/30/britain-first-world-war-biggest-error-niall-ferguson

What? Britain did send forces to Europe immediately? (Both to the Austrian Netherlands and to Toulon). The campaign in the Netherlands being where the "Duke of York he had 10,000 men, marched em up a hill, blah blah blah etc" nursery rhyme comes from.

also notable for the British cavalry doing something right for once:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Villers-en-Cauchies

Basically, if Britain has a chance to join forces with a land ally, it has taken it (as being better than having to fight alone later). Ferguson is just being a contrarian - his theory doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

 

[Information Analyst]

2. Most soldiers died. For British soldiers it was 11.5%, less than during the Crimean War.

3. Men lived in the trenches for years on end. More like 10 days a month and three in a row at the front line tops.

These seem particualrly widespread myths. There have been times when I explained how troops were rotated through the various trenchlines and well behind them for periods of rest, and people are genuinely shocked. The same goes for when you point out that a good proportion of troops never saw the front line at all.

 

[Information Analyst]

As for enjoying the war. One of my Great Uncles was called up in to the Artillery and spent 4 years in the Caribbean, he loved it. Another was n the Royal Navy and spent the war on the China Station. He loved it.

My Grandad was in the Royal Horse Artillery on the Western Front. He was hospitalised after being gassed and was wounded. On the whole he enjoyed it. Apart from the prospect of sudden death he says most of the time was boredom. Actual fighting took up only a small proportion of their time.

Two of my father's older brothers joined up. One was in Iraq, the other never left the UK, working instead on anti-aircraft defences. On my mother's side, of the four of my great-great-uncles who served, one died of meningitis about a month after a severe head wound, but the other three came through (one was wounded, another got a bout of trench fever). My errant great-grandfather had been in the Grenadier Guards before the War, and was still a reservist but in Australia in August 1914 (he did a runner having got my great-grandmother pregnant, having neglected to marry her first). He was back in the UK by the end of 1914, actually in France in mid-January 1915, and managed to make it to the end of October 1918 before being wounded severely enough to be repatriated. He then insisted on going back home to Ireland, and contracted pneumonia in the process, so that's what actually killed him.

 

[llwyd]

There will always be factually erranous popular myths - obviously the main facts have always been familiar to historians. The comparisons to earlier wars though can be somewhat misleading: a volunteer army, even if consisting couple of hundred thousand men is a bit different proposition than a conscripted mass army fighting ferociously for years. And even if nutrition was better than in the East End of the time, it still might have not felt like a completely peachy situation... The fact that there are all these popular myths and the fact that the Great War has made such a mark to collective memory (especially in Britain) does tell about how unprecedented it felt at the time.

 

[Zelenius]

I finally learned something from a "top 10 myths" kind of post! It's been a while. #6 is something I've believed for a long time. I always thought they were just Australians and New Zealanders, hence the holiday of all holidays Down Under. When I was younger, I even pictured them foolishly riding kangaroos and emus into battle, and that's the reason they lost. They should have used ostriches! I feel embarrassed to admit this since my family lived pretty close to Gallipoli at the time.

 

[catsmate]

What? Britain did send forces to Europe immediately? (Both to the Austrian Netherlands and to Toulon). The campaign in the Netherlands being where the "Duke of York he had 10,000 men, marched em up a hill, blah blah blah etc" nursery rhyme comes from.

also notable for the British cavalry doing something right for once:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Villers-en-Cauchies

Basically, if Britain has a chance to join forces with a land ally, it has taken it (as being better than having to fight alone later). Ferguson is just being a contrarian - his theory doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Mmmm, much as I hate to defend the idiot he does make a few good points about the cultural myths that have grown up around WW1; however he's writing for a particular audience with specific views, there's very little truly new in his books and his main theses (that a CP victory would have lead to basically an early EU and allowed the British Empire to survive to the modern day) have been rubbished by better historians.

He also fails miserably to understand the British obsession with maintaining the Balance of Power in Europe and the origin of the alliance systems and the fact that these were linked.

 

[ddt]

According to Niall Ferguson, another myth was that Britain needed to fight World War I, when staying out would have been a better option:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/30/britain-first-world-war-biggest-error-niall-ferguson

What? And not honour its obligations under the Treaty of London? Also, he doesn't mention the upset of the balance of power a German victory would have given,

What? Britain did send forces to Europe immediately? (Both to the Austrian Netherlands and to Toulon). The campaign in the Netherlands being where the "Duke of York he had 10,000 men, marched em up a hill, blah blah blah etc" nursery rhyme comes from.

also notable for the British cavalry doing something right for once:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Villers-en-Cauchies

Those are different campaigns. Villiers was in 1794, and had 300 British cavalry. The Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland was in 1799, and comprised a force of 40,000, of which 13,000 British (and Britain supplied the ships).

 

[gumboot]

There will always be factually erranous popular myths - obviously the main facts have always been familiar to historians. The comparisons to earlier wars though can be somewhat misleading: a volunteer army, even if consisting couple of hundred thousand men is a bit different proposition than a conscripted mass army fighting ferociously for years.

You have it backwards. Historical armies were conscripted. The armies of WWI (at least on the allied side) were mostly volunteers. In Australia, for example, conscription was never introduced. In Canada it was only introduced late in 1917. In the UK it was introduced earlier - in 1916 - but nonetheless, approximately half of all soldiers who served in the British Army were volunteers.

 

[llwyd]

You have it backwards. Historical armies were conscripted. The armies of WWI (at least on the allied side) were mostly volunteers. In Australia, for example, conscription was never introduced. In Canada it was only introduced late in 1917. In the UK it was introduced earlier - in 1916 - but nonetheless, approximately half of all soldiers who served in the British Army were volunteers.

I don't know how to put it - the scale of compulsion was unprecedented in WW1 (especially in the British context). That was warfare on level not seen before as increasingly modern and industrialized states faced each other. As regards British conscription pre-WW1, I really would not use the term at all. (Btw, much of the enlisting happened under de facto compulsion due to changes in legislation - purely voluntary enlisting on the levels needes started drying out already during 1915.)

 

[Andy_Ross]

You have it backwards. Historical armies were conscripted. The armies of WWI (at least on the allied side) were mostly volunteers. In Australia, for example, conscription was never introduced. In Canada it was only introduced late in 1917. In the UK it was introduced earlier - in 1916 - but nonetheless, approximately half of all soldiers who served in the British Army were volunteers.

Prior to WW1 when did the British use conscription?

 

[Garrison]

Interesting article at the BBC on the postal system that could deliver up to 12 million letters a week to British soldiers; even those in the frontlines:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25934407

It's a nice illustration of how seriously the British took the morale and well-being of the troops.

 

[jimbob]

Prior to WW1 when did the British use conscription?

One could argue that press gangs were.

I was told* that one reason why more expensive pewter tankards had glass bottoms was so that you could look to see if the King's Shilling had been put in the bottom.


*by someone a long time ago that I can't recall, so YMMV...

 

[azzthom]

One could argue that press gangs were.

I was told* that one reason why more expensive pewter tankards had glass bottoms was so that you could look to see if the King's Shilling had been put in the bottom.


*by someone a long time ago that I can't recall, so YMMV...

Here's a link to a discussion on the QI forum on this very subject. There's some interesting stuff in there.

http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.ph...&start=0&sid=85ee21ed3f31a9dbe2b6438a3ef55aa8