§ conscription

• Germany

  • • compulsory military service had been the norm since long before the war

• France

  • • similar to the German one with men undertaking compulsory training and service

• Russia

  • • similar to the German one with men undertaking compulsory training and service

• Britain

  • • late 1915 volunteers had slowed to a trickle

    • 1916 the Military Service Act was passed by the British Government

• United States

  • • entered the war late, but almost immediately instituted the Selective Service Act of 1917 or Selective Draft Act

• Conscription took men out of the labor force, and wartime leaders exhorted women to fill the gaps in the workforce.

§ political propaganda

• often designed to maintain the spirit of the home front and to counter threats to national unity

• The propaganda offices of the belligerent nations tried to convince the public that military defeat would mean the destruction of everything worth living for, and to that end they did their utmost to discredit and dehumanize the enemy

• vilification of the enemy

  • • Posters, pamphlets, and “scientific” studies depicted the enemy as subhuman savages who engaged in vile atrocities

    • German propaganda depicted Russians as semi-Asiatic barbarians

      • • One widely distributed poster in Germany invoked images of bestial black Allied soldiers raping German women, including pregnant women, to suggest the horrors that would follow if the nation’s war effort failed.

    • French authorities chronicled the atrocities committed by the German “Hun” in Belgium

• Ironically, public disbelief of wartime propaganda led to an inability to believe in the abominations perpetrated during subsequent wars to create posters designed to generate public support for the war

§ art

• all major government ran propaganda offices which used art and artist

• Independent artists, many of whom participated in the war, tried to depict its horror and devastation, both during the conflict and after it finally ended

  • • the war and its outcomes were subjected to artistic scrutiny

§ media

• England -- In 1917 the Times of London published a story claiming that Germans converted human corpses into fertilizer and food.

• • • • • later news story admitted that this information resulted from a sloppy translation: the German word for horse had been mistakenly translated as “human.”

§ intensified forms of nationalism

• effectiveness of propaganda campaigns depicting a cruel and inhuman enemy who killed innocent children and violating women resulted in labor unions suspending strikes and accepting sacrifices for the common good

§ war socialism

• governments abandoned long-cherished ideals of a laissez-faire capitalist market economy and instituted tight controls over economic life

• Planning boards reorganized entire industries

  • • set production quotas and priorities

    • determined what would be produced and consumed

    • established wage and price controls

    • extended work hours

    • in some instances restricted the movement of workers

    • military service requirements were extended

• restriction of civil liberties by governments

• censorship of bad news

§ New military technology

• stalemate leading to trench warfare

  • • Barbed wire

      • • invented to confine cattle on America’s Great Plains

        • proved highly effective in frustrating the advance of soldiers across “no-man’s-land,” the deadly territory between opposing trenches

    • machine gun

      • • compelled military leaders on all sides to rethink their battlefield tactics

        • First deployed by Confederate troops during the U.S. Civil War

        • key weapon for overcoming resistance to colonial expansion

    • poisonous gas

      • • first used by German troops in January 1915

        • Especially hated and much feared by troops in the trenches was mustard gas, a liquid agent that, when exposed to air, turned into a noxious yellow gas, hence its name

        • The effects of mustard gas did not appear for some twelve hours following exposure, but then it rotted the body from both within and without

          • • After blistering the skin and damaging the eyes, the gas attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane

            • Death could occur in four to five weeks

            • In the meantime, victims endured excruciating pain and had to be strapped to their beds

        • poisonous gas alone resulted in about 1.2 million casualties

    • tank

      • • British first introduced tanks in late 1915

        • Allies deployed them to break down defensive trenches and to restore fighting

        • during WWI, the tank did not produce the longed-for strategic advantage

    • airplane

      • • still in its infancy in 1914

        • Constantly refined and improved as the war progressed, the airplane by the end of the war showed dramatic improvements in speed, range, and altitude.

          • • airplanes could not carry enough weapons to do serious damage to troops or installations on the ground

        • their real asset during the Great War was aerial reconnaissance

    • naval blockade

      • • Military leaders on both sides used blockades to deny food to whole populations

        • hoping that starving masses would force their governments to capitulate

        • British blockade of Germany during the war contributed to the deaths of an estimated half million Germans

    • German zeppelin

      • • August 30, 1914 -- German zeppelin bombed Paris

        • killed 1 person, but significant because that event heralded a new kind of warfare—air war against civilians

§ mobilization of populations (home countries and the colonies)

Allies

Country Total Mobilized

Britain and Ireland 6,147,000

Canada 629,000

Australia 413,000

New Zealand 129,000

South Africa 136,000

India 953,000

France 7,891,000

French colonies 449,000

Belgium 365,000

Italy 5,615,000

Portugal 100,000

Greece 353,000

Serbia 750,000

Romania 1,000,000

Russia 15,798,000

United States 4,273,000

Central Powers

Country Total Mobilized

Germany 13,200,000

Austria-Hungary 9,000,000

Ottoman/Turkey 2,998,000

Bulgaria 400,000

Totals

Country Total Mobilized Total Killed

Allied 45,001,000 5,421,000

Central Powers 25,598,000 4,029,000

Overall 70,599,000 9,450,000

Source: J.M. Winter, The Great War and the British People. p. 75 Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass. 1986