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| Passchendaele 1917 |
Today is the one hundredth anniversary of
the start of the Passchendaele battle, which was a series of linked battles, in
terrible conditions that have come to many people to personify the Western
Front. My family like far too many others in Wales and
elsewhere lost relatives in the First World War, one of my grandmother’s lost
two brothers in the First World War, including her elder being a regular
soldier, who wrote home and told them not to allow his younger brother to join
up and to come out to France, but he did answer the call and was killed in action
in the spring of 1918 and buried near Amiens.
Remembrance Sunday this year will fall at the end of
three years worth of former P M David Cameron’s (£50 million pounds worth)
"historic" commemoration of the centenary of the First World War I. I
have absolutely no problem remembering those who lost their lives and the
courage and endurance of those who served in the First World War and other
conflicts (including some of my relatives); but I have no time for rose tinted
nostalgic flag waving foot tapping pap as peddled by the usual suspect red top
newspapers, much as it was peddled some one hundred years ago.
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| In Flanders fields... |
As US President Abraham Lincoln rightly noted
that the fallen have given their last full measure of devotion. Soldiers don’t
die for the politicians, for patriotism or even us but for their friends and
comrades who they serve with. Too many lie in corners of foreign fields, are
names on a war memorial, faded photographs, faded memories or have no grave at
all. The Lions may well on occasion have been led by Donkeys (even if the
original quote was made up), but from our (21st century) perspective they were
governed by bumbling incompetent secretive idiots who were entirely out of
their depth and managed to plunge the UK into an entirely unnecessary war.
Fritz Fischer’s suggested that the Imperial German government’s foreign policy was developed after Social Democratic gains
in the 1912 election and that it aimed to start an aggressive war in 1914. He
developed this idea in Germany's
Aims in the First World War (1961) and War
of Illusions: German policies from 1911 to 1914 (1969). Fischer suggested that a
War Council held by the Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Reich's top military-naval
leadership on December 8, 1912 was a key point in the run up to a war of aggression
set for the summer of 1914. The Kaiser and the Army leadership wanted to start
a war in December 1912 but Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, successfully
argued that the German Navy needed more time to prepare and asked for the war
be put off until the summer of 1914. Fischer later denied claiming that
war was decided upon at this meeting.
Fischer’s work revealed Imperial German government documents which called for ethnic cleansing of Russian Poland and colonization to provide Germany with living space as a war aim, showed disturbing continuity between the foreign policies of Germany in 1914 and 1939. Andreas Hillgruber suggested that the Imperial German government tried to break the Triple Entente (Russia, France and Britain). Austria-Hungary was encouraged to invade Serbia on the assumption that Paris and London would have no interest in another Balkan crisis and would not support Russia. Austria attacked, Russia mobilized, German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg panicked and activated the Schlieffen Plan against France and a relatively localised Balkan crisis rapidly became a general European and world war.
A.J.P. Taylor's 1969 book
War by Timetable, suggested that none of the great powers wanted a war but all of them wanted to increase
their power in comparison with their rivals. This fatal combination of an arms race and complex railway timetables for mobilization came to a head in 1914 when a perceived need to mobilize faster than their rivals trapped the political leaders in a mesh of complex logistics. Mobilization failed to deter war and led to military action.
In 1972 US historian Paul W. Schroeder, in his "World War I As A Galloping Gertie" essay, blamed Britain for the war. He suggested that the war was a "Galloping Gertie” that it got out of control, dragging in the Great Powers into an unwanted war. The key to the situation was British foreign policy which as anti-German and even more anti-Austrian. Britain never took Austria-Hungary seriously, and British diplomatic policy aimed to constantly force concessions from the Dual Monarchyregardless of any consequences to the balance of power. So 1914 was basically a preventive war forced on Germany to maintain Austria as a power, which was faced with a crippling British encirclement policy aimed at the break-up of that state.
Not everyone has bought into this theory, Samuel R. Williamson (a US historian) laid the blame on the Austro-Hungarian elite
rather than the Germans in his 1990 book,
Austria-Hungary
and the Origins of the First World War. Niall Ferguson (the Scottish Historian) in his book,
The Pity of War(1999) rejected the Fischer thesis, and squarely laid most of the blame on British diplomatic bumbling. More recently, David Fromkin (a US historian) in his book
Europe's
Last Summer(2004) blamed military elements in the German and Austro-Hungarian leadership.
Fromkin argued that there were two key war plans; one by Austria-Hungary (and the German Chancellor) to start a war with
Serbia to reinvigorate a fading Austro-Hungarian Empire. The other one, a secret plan created by the German Military aimed create a wider war with France and Russia. The German military leadership, in the middle of a European arms race, thought that they would be unable to further expand the German army without extending the officer corps beyond the traditional Prussian aristocracy.
Thus Austria-Hungary was encouraged to go to war with Serbia; Russian intervention would provide an acceptable excuse to launch
a preventive war. This theory suggests that the German military believed that by 1916–18, they could not win a war with France, Russia and Britain. Fromkin argued that Kaiser Wilhelm II was kept in the dark, as the German General Staff believed that he tended to resolve crises short of war. He also noted that all participating countries (especially the Central Powers) systematically destroyed or forged documents to shape future understanding of the origins of the war.
Some forty five years after its publication
Fischer’s theory is still not without its critics. Annika Mombauer (Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the Open University) suggested in her book,
Helmuth
von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (2005) that despite the debate and
research there was no direct evidence to suggest military decision-makers understood December 1912 as the decisive moment when the date of a future war had been set.
Christopher Clarke, in
The
Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (published in September 2012) argues
that the Europe (of 1914) was actually in a more of a mess than we realise with
clashing ideologies, terrorism, political and economic militancy and chronic
instability. To make matters worse Europe was lumbered with an exceptionally
ineffectual set of political leaders. The rulers of Europe, who boasted of
their modernity and rationalism, in reality stumbled through crisis after
crisis and until they ended up at war.
In the hundred years since its outbreak
interpretation of the origins of the First World War has often been shaped by
politics. Certainly since 1918 the left (from Karl Liebknecht onwards) has
always been more comfortable blaming militarism for the First World War rather
than their own failure to stop it at least until the collapse of the Soviet
Empire and the Soviet Union (1988 – 1992). The old SPD argument that
within pre war Germany there had been an alliance of agrarians and
industrialists who with the Prussian aristocracy had encouraged militarism and
this led to war.
The idea that militarism fed the industrialists
and fed popular state nationalism helping to reduce the influence of the left
is still popular in some circles. It sounds good; the problem is that it’s too
simple and explanation, and was probably not true, as noted by Niall Fergusson
amongst others. There were other factors which were increasingly important in
the run up to 1914. In many countries the franchise was expanding (if
admittedly only slowly in some countries) and political parties with an anti
militarist streak were rising in popularity. Industrial discontent and strikes
had also pretty widespread between 1910 and 1914 across much of Europe.
Closer to home, across the water in Ireland home
rule was the key issue and probably the most significant issue in domestic
politics on the UK mainland. Britain in 1914 rather than enjoying a post
Edwardian summer was on the verge of civil war over Irish Home Rule and faced
massive industrial unrest. Italy had been rocked by the Red Week of June 1914,
France and Germany were also faced with ever-increasing political strife. To
the east, Russia itself also faced a huge wave of strikes and Austria-Hungary
also faced rising ethnic and class tensions.
So rather than marching in step towards war
political anti militarism was increasing. Most businessmen, financiers and
bankers (including the Bank of England) were pretty unenthusiastic about the
prospects and consequences of war because of the loss of markets and the
economic disruption that war would bring. Liberalism itself was in deeply
trouble, collapsing in face of challenges from the extreme right and left in
Britain, France and Italy while it was pretty non-existent in Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Russia.
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| August 1914 |
The key factor as the countries on the European
mainland blundered into war in 1914 due to a complex web of treaties and
mobilization dependent war plans may have simply been ineptitude on the part of
their leaders. The British state drifted into the ensuing conflict because its
rulers were not bright enough to manage to stay out of it. Britain went to war
in 1914 for no particular great principal and certainly not for the sake of
Belgium’s neutrality. That alleged great principal was only created after the
fact to hide British diplomatic blunders and miscalculations which resulted in
the death and maiming of millions.
Putting the historical analysis to one side, I
personally have a major problem with wrapping up the consequences of a
combination of idiocy, short sightedness and lack of any understanding of basic
consequences on the part of a mostly public school dominated nominally
democratic elite in miles of bunting and union flags. Britain (in 1914) was
barely a democracy, votes for all (at 21) did not finally come in until 1928,
and post war governments soon found that live heroes (‘Homes fit for Heroes’)
cost far more to remember and honour than dead ones.
From former PM Cameron’s perspective even the
choice of dates to be 'celebrated' proved potentially controversial in itself?
June 28th (2014) marked the anniversary of the assassination in Sarajevo that
started the European slide into war. Yet the Brits never really got involved in
the mounting crisis until the very end of July 1914. August 1st saw Germany
declare war on Russia and Serbia, France mobilized on the evening of August
2nd, when Germany invaded Belgium and attacked French troops. On August 3rd,
Germany declared war on France. August 4th proved understandably more
significant on this side of La Manche, as Britain declared war on Germany,
nominally because of the invasion of Belgium.
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| Fusiliers at Mons August 1914 |
When it came to selecting battles to commemorate the
choice was interesting with Mons (23rd – 24th August 1914) and La Cateau (26th
August 1914) both relatively small and largely British battles. What
followed in rapid succession was First Marne (5th and 12th September 1914),
First Aisne (13th September – 28th September 1914), La Bassée (10th October –
2nd November 1914) and First Ypres (19th October – 22nd November 1914).After
the Mons and La Cateau much of the fighting of 1914 (on the Western Front)
largely involved mostly French and Belgian troops attempting to hold off the
German Armies.
Britain's involvement (aside from at sea) was
initially limited to its small regular army and the Territorial Army. The
larger British army’s never emerged until 1915 and 1916 (after conscription
came in). One result of the brutal and sustained fighting of the autumn and
early winter of 1914 was that by the end of the year the precision instrument
that was the regular army had almost ceased to exist. The grim battles of
Flanders halted the German advance short of the Channel Ports and Picardy and
established the trench line that would become the Western Front of 1915 –
1918.
It is worth noting and worth
remembering that Wales lost more men per capita than any other nation involved
in the conflict. After the Somme, Ypres became the grim focus of the
Western front. Back in 1917 where there was significant
Welsh involvement with the 38th (Welsh) Division, the 29th Division with the
2nd South Wales Borderers and the 2nd Battalion, Monmouthshire Regiment and the
Welsh Guards in the Guards Division all serving time at the Salient.
Many Welshmen
who served in many other Welsh units and non Welsh units throughout the Salient
from 1914 onwards and also in the multitude of non-Welsh units, not to forget
the artillery, medical, supply and Tunnelling Companies, amongst other units. The grim battle of
attrition lasted from the 31st July to the 6th November 1917.
It was fought in the heaviest rain for 30 years, which made the mud so
deep that men and horses drowned. The battle ground to a halt when British and
Canadian forces captured Passchendaele, this village was barely five miles
beyond the starting point of the offensive. There were approximately 325,000
Allied casualties and some 260,000 German casualties by the battles end,
amongst the many Welsh casualties was the poet
Hedd Wyn.
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| Homes fit for Heroes |
During the last 16 years successive Westminster governments have worked
hard to ensure that our service personnel have had a much higher profile,
making use of various important anniversaries of previous conflicts, sporting
occasions and regularly promoting armed forces day.
The direct involvement of UK service personnel in the cycle of Blair’s
wars has wound down, but we should remember how Westminster (with the
honourable exception of the 1945 Labour Government) has treated our war
veterans after previous war’s ended and faded into memory. We all need to work
to ensure that never again does a Westminster Government makes the decision
that dead heroes are cheaper and less trouble to maintain than live ones.
