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Monday 5 August 2013

The First World War: What Can We Learn a Century Later?

In response to the respected War Historian Prof Gary Sheffield’s recent article for History Today entitled ‘The Great War was a Just War’ I felt it necessary to offer my own opinion on the subject. Regardless of the context, the idea of any war being 'just' is morally ambiguous at best.

While it is essential, as Professor Sheffield rightly argues, to encourage a balanced historical view, it remains highly contentious to declare who was or was not to blame for the war (See Chris Clark's The Sleepwalkers (2012)). While I would not argue that Germany did not seek to seize upon the opportunity to attack once the war broke out, the suggestion by Sheffield and others that Wilhelmine Germany was some kind of proto-Nazi state intent upon taking over the world is best left to counter-factual writers (e.g. Niall Ferguson) and novelists.[1]

As Richard Evans recently argued, this view was discredited fifty years ago during the Fischer Controversy. Evans rightly stated that even while the War was going well huge numbers of Germans (especially the Social Democrats, Catholic Centre and the Liberal Left) forced the Kaiser’s High Command to concede to Parliamentary Democracy by the middle of 1917. Evans stated clearly:  

‘Nobody can say with any certainty what would have happened had the Germans won the war, but it is safe to say that the rigid imposition of a monolithic dictatorship on Germany and the rest of Europe by the Kaiser would not have been on the cards.’

I am entirely in favour of honouring the memories of the fallen victims of a global conflict, but do we really need a 'bad-guy' explanation to make sense of it? We must not forget that the almost entirely British blockade of the Central Powers during the war led to the deaths of hundreds and thousands of civilians towards to end of the conflict, destitution and starvation. Furthermore, the infliction of a brutal and cruel peace treaty in 1918-19 by the Allied Powers cannot be considered 'Just' or morally neutral. Versailles precipitated many of the tragic consequences of the following decades. Britain also continued to impose its imperial rule upon increasingly restless populations across the world, despite signing up to US President Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’ self-determination pledge.

The war was tragic and was not entirely inevitable, but armed conflict was endemic in global culture during that period. Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Japan, the USA and Britain (the imperial powers) all coqueted with the notion of war with other ‘Great Powers’ throughout the pre-war period, all invaded other countries during the decades before the war and shared responsibility, to some extent, for the unprecedented mechanized butchery between 1914-18. As rightly pointed out by a friend the other day, “It takes two to make an Arms Race”, and Britain had been in many with France, Russia and Germany since the 1880s.

One aspect which has gone unmentioned during debates about the Centenary of the War has been the global nature of the First World War. At Queen Mary, University of London, I am working as part of a cross-institutional project to investigate the truly global nature of the conflict. It is important that in Britain we recognize the huge numbers of troops and civilians from the Indian Sub-Continent, Africa, Australasia, North America, the Caribbean, Ireland and many other imperial territories who lost their lives across the world for the British Imperial cause. Chinese migrant labourers were brought in en masse to work behind the lines in truly awful conditions, only to be dismissed back to China at the end of the conflict. Does this fit with the narrative of the ‘just’ war for national survival? Or does it fit better as part of a bloody imperial history in which Britain had previously invaded and dominated the nations of others? Imperial Britain might easily be accused of similar aims and objectives that Sheffield attributed to the Kaiser’s Germany.[2]

My view is that for a popular national commemoration we can step beyond the extremely divisive and contentious 'blame game'. As a multicultural and international society we should remember the tragic deaths of millions of humans regardless of nationality, the terrible legacies of the war, and respect all of those ordinary men and women, whatever their nationality, who suffered or died. The human experience of war - friendship, fear, loss, love, isolation, community, death and regeneration - should be the most important lesson we learn as a society.

The commemoration of the First World War Centenary during 2014-18 presents an opportunity to celebrate the steady overall decline in human violence (see Stephen Pinker, Better Angels of Our Nature) and the rise of supra-national cooperation, Human Rights and democracy. It should remind us to continue the battle to safeguard the social freedoms we as Britons, and Europeans, currently enjoy and to help others to achieve their own.

Most of all we should recognise that war itself is one thing which we can all feel justified in fighting against.






[1] 'Unlike Hitler's regime, the Kaiser's was not consciously genocidal, but it was aggressive and brutal enough. In 1918 the British army was fighting a war of liberation. If Germany had won the First World War Britain, although probably safe from invasion thanks to the Royal Navy, would have been reduced to a state of siege, shut out of Europe. As British planners recognised during the First World War, had London been forced to come to terms with a victorious Germany, any peace could only have been temporary. Sooner or later Germany would have renewed the war and Britain and its empire would have been at a terrible disadvantage.' http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/17/1914-18-not-futile-war
[2] By no means do I seek to blame Britain, merely to point out that the moral ‘high-ground’ is always subjective and divisive

2 comments:

  1. Well said, Patrick. A thoughtful intervention into a contentious field.

    I'm fascinated by the difference between the British and Australian contexts here. For Australia, the centenary of Gallipoli (1915) is looming ever larger in the public mind, with very few people seeking to question precisely what we are wanting to commemorate.

    As usual in this country, the war itself is taking a back seat to the campaign - bizarrely, people are more interested in the fact that 'we may have won the war, but we lost the battle'.

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  2. We should all reflect on the meaning of the centenary and its commemoration. Patrick has rightly pointed out some of the wider aspects of the issue.

    Ever wary of 'the lessons which history teaches us', I nevertheless feel that the following are important:

    Soldiers, who endure nightmarish conditions with great bravery, are only briefly hailed as 'heroes'. Some of 'our boys' of 1914-18 became the forgotten men of the '20s and '30s, marching from Jarrow rather than Etaples, mustering in dole-queues, embarrassing folk with their injuries..

    As Patrick says, war can reveal admirable qualities: stoicism, determination, comradeship and loyalty, amongst others. These were shared by all nationalities, making it easier for 'Tommy' to admire 'Fritz' than many of his compatriots at home.

    War still involves the sacrifice of the young because of the failures of the old. As Kipling said, after his son was killed: 'If any question why we died/ Tell them because our fathers lied'.

    There was a time when privilege was seen to be accompanied by responsibility and sacrifice, as displayed by the generation of young public-school officers who were first to be 'over the top' and killed. The structures of privilege remain intact; where may we find the spirit of public service, philanthropy and selflessness?

    We do indeed live in times of decreasing violence, and we should defend those international structures which have helped to achieve this, rather than, for example, indulging in cheap shots at the admittedly flawed EU.

    Let's celebrate humanity and its qualities, let us not over-simplify complex issues, let us reflect and learn.

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