How and why were civilians affected in World War One?
By Sym
World War One brought about the advent of civilians becoming heavily involved in the countries war effort in much more practical ways than ever before. This phenomenon rode on the back of the industrialisation of wars. As immense armies of men and machines battled on the world’s fields, it was no longer possible to support these mammothilian armies without gearing all the available industrial and financial production as had previously been done in the Britain’s last major Continental wars, the Napoleonic War. Hints of this new way of waging warfare did arise from the American Civil War in the 1860’s and the Franco-Prussian War in the 1870’s yet it was not fully realised until the Great War that the Home Front was vital in supporting all other Fronts, be they Eastern, Western or otherwise. Wars had surpassed military strategy alone, instead, the entire nation must act in concert together, with their energies directed to the war. This became known as Total War, as quite literally, the entire country turned all concentration to the war effort.
This new Total War required many things of the Home Front, for one, the laissez-faire attitude to the economy proposed by the leading economists of the time, that is, to allow market forces to guide the economy and leave it largely to itself, was abandoned in favour of strict Governmental control. This was most prevalent in Germany, whose economy became the most nationalised of all. In response to the Allied blockade for example, war companies were organised by Rathenau to prevent waste and effort being poured into competition between rival companies. Under this system, the companies worked together to further the cause of the war rather than waste time and energy competing against each other. This was a perfect example of Total War, for Germany, who was effectively cut off from the outside world and surrounded by hostile powers in all points of the compass, had to maximise all of it’s production in relation to the war as it was outnumbered in industrial strength by the Allies. Similarly the Defence of the Realm Act gave the British Government almost dictatorial powers over all aspect of British society, especially concerning industrial production and labour allocation. It established the Ministry of Munitions which, in effect, oversaw, controlled and planned the entire British economy in the war period. Even in Australia, the government increased restrictions exports of certain goods and marketing boards were established, though the small Australian economy has always relied on a higher degree of governmental control than the British, French or German economies. From this, it is clear that there existed a rather large differential in the effect of this Total War concept on the various countries. Germany’s position surrrounded and isolated as it was necessitated a much stronger response than was required in Australia and even more so than Britain, which had it’s large navy and world-wide commercial and colonial network to sustain it.
Civilians were affected by this governmental control in the rationing of food that was introduced to combat the shortages that arose from various blockades. Again the same pattern of disparate effects across countries is apparent. For the Allied blockade of Germany, with it’s naval superiority effectively shut if off from the rest of the world and enabled supplies to still reach Britain while she only had to contend with the German submarine threat, which was quite serious. To combat a future perceived shortage of food, a great effort was made in Britain to increase the efficiency of food production in the Isles themselves, to this end, Government regulations were introduced that ensured the use of all available land for crops, to the extent of pastures being ploughed up and parks being sown with seeds. Lloyd George even went on to say “I am told that there are 100,00 gardeners in this country…when the food supply may become absolutely short, if the submarine losses continue, you ought not allow one of these men to cultivate anything which is ornamental, until they have utilised to the fullest of their powers for the production of food” to a meeting of trade unionists. Unfortunately, to meet this new effort to become self-sufficient, bad weather in 1916 ruined a great deal of crops in Britain, as well as Germany who were substantially worse off at the time. Thus rationing of a limited kind had to be introduced as a government department was established to deal with all matters relating to food from export/import to directing restaurants to limit the size of their servings. This and military counter-measures which had reduced the effectiveness of the submarine threat thus enabled Britain to survive until armistice was declared.
Germany was never able to seriously threaten the stranglehold imposed on it mainly because of the British naval superiority and the fact that hostile powers largely ringed Germany into isolation. Thus in effect, as the civilians were helping to wage war on the enemy, the enemy was waging war on the civilians in return. What this meant was that that war intruded into all aspects of civilian life, even those regarding such basic necessities such as food. The situation in Australia on food shortages was quite the opposite of Europe. Australia had the rather fortunate case of being separated from the main battleground by half the world and thus did not have to contend with German submarines, blockades or anything of the like and even if it did, it probably would not have made a difference for Australia was largely self-sufficient in food. Also, looking at a local level, this was also cushioned by the fact that many people had their own vegetable or animal plots they kept at home which would enabled an even higher degree of self-sufficiency. Thus again we see that the war affected the various countries to different degrees. Germany where strict rationing was imposed mostly out of an imperative need to reduce consumption throughout the country as it did not have access to boundless amounts of food as perhaps other countries such as Australia did.
At the start of the war, Britain relied on a highly professional cadre of volunteer soldiers, however in the aftermath of the Battle of Ypres, Britain found itself without an army that could participate in the offensive operations needed in the battlefields of France. Thus the drive to recruit the “New Army” began in earnest, relying on the traditional jingoism inherent in the British male population, suitably reinforced with propaganda and campaigns to embarrass non-enlistees. This largely worked, with seven hundred thousand men enlisting by November 1914. However, the battles of 1915 in which thousands of men were killed, depleted the British Army to such an extent that the volunteer system of enlistment could not keep up with the losses sustained on the Western Front and this was before any of the major battles which were to come next year. It was realised that when the major offensive operations would be initiated, that a more reliable and increased supply of men would be needed to maintain the British Army at a fighting standard and able to cope with it’s responsibilities. To cope with this, a quasi-conscription scheme was introduced called the Derby Scheme. This divided the nation’s men into various categories and exemptions based on occupations that needed to be maintained at the home front. This was unable to provide the men necessary and thus in May 1916, full conscription was introduced. The King introduced it with: “I have, acting on the advice of my Ministers, deemed it necessary to enroll every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-one”
This mean that theoretically every man who fitted the above criteria could be sent overseas to fight and perhaps was the ultimate effect that war had on civilians for two reasons, firstly the fact that all the British men would be in France or on the other battlefields of the war was a completely alien concept to that same public and secondly, the absence of men allowed women to assert some independence, something that will be discussed later on. An important part of this conscription scheme was that exemptions still existed based on occupation, so if a particular occupation was vital to the war effort, the men working in it would not be called upon to fight. Further exemptions were based on conscientious objections to the war, an example being Quakers whose religion advocated non-violence. These objectors to the war were subjected to various degrees of public and personal ridicule. The infamous white feather in an envelope signed by the young ladies of the immediate area was one example of this. There also existed an anti-conscription lobby in Britain, Bertrand Russell’s No Conscription Fellowship but obviously the were not able to influence the government to not introduced conscription for by and large, the British public backed these moves to conscription.
One side-effect of the initial rush to volunteer and the continued conscription was the competing demands of the need for soldiers versus the need to keep the industries alive which resulted in considerable friction between the Ministry of Munitions under Lloyd George at the time and Lord Kitchener’s War Office. Lloyd George in his memoirs makes reference to these conflicting needs:
“…everybody fighting to prevent men from coming away. I am not surprised, I am not blaming them. Skilled men at any trade are skilled men at every trade. Your intelligent skilled man is a good man in the trenches, and nobody wants to lose him…”
Australia also underwent a debate on whether to introduce conscription and actually underwent two referenda on whether to introduce it or not, as the Government only had the power to conscript for home defence not for duty overseas. At the beginning of the war, Australia had raised an Australian Imperial Force which was to be sent overseas to fight with the British, this was based on a volunteer system and at first this fulfilled the requirements with many Australians compelled to duty by various motivations varying from a sense of King and Country to the desire to merely get out of Australia and experience some adventure and by October 1914, there were twenty thousand men on their way to join the British forces in Europe. More than twice the required number had applied which allowed the army to impose high physical standards on the applicants which meant that many men who were fit, were disqualified. However, soon after this, the initial enthusiasm seemed to dampen somewhat as the predictions of the men being home by Christmas were proven untrue and it became obvious that this war was not going to end anytime soon. The short revival of interest following the landing at Gallipoli was not enough to replace the men lost and quickly subsided as the reports of the horrors of the front line slowly filtered back to the home front. This is shown in the figures of enlistment which took a sharp dive in the later parts of 1915 following the high of mid-1915, riding on the back of the Gallipoli landing, the manufactured ANZAC legend and the interest that the Australian public in the first action Australia was involved in.
It was towards the end of 1915 that the army and the government realised that they could no longer rely on men coming forward and volunteering to fight in the war, that they must be persuaded or ideally forced to do so. It was in response to this that the first call for conscription was made in Parliament:
“It is not a popular thing for me to go out, as I have done, and say I believe in conscription and in men being sent to the front as a national duty”
It was in September 1915 that campaign to introduce conscription gathered strength as the Universal Service League was formed and as the government propaganda machine generated posters and material encouraging men to enlist, and as in Britain, sometimes embarrassing them to join. The new Prime Minister, Hughes gave a stirring nationalist speech which all culminated in a sharp increase in the first month of 1916 however once again, this was not nearly enough to compensate for the losses incurred by the British and Australian forces. The urgency for conscription was also accelerated by the Battle of the Somme which had consumed many hundreds of thousands of men. The announcement of a referendum in October to give the government power to enlist men for service overseas showed that far from being the one-sided inevitability in Britain, there was much public opposition in Australia against conscription. One of the most vocal anti-conscriptionists was the Catholic Melbourne Archbishop Daniel Mannix, who among other things, argued that there was no need to waste more Australian lives on a war that was not theirs and was being fought on the other side of the world. With this, the very Irish and consequently anti-British, Catholic Church pitted itself against the Hughes Government even though some of his own party were against conscription. This vigourous and at times, very emotional, debate more or less split the country in two and exacerbated existing social tensions and unlike in Britain or Germany, party politics continued which aided the anti-conscription lobby in not presenting a united face to them. It was thus that the first referendum on conscription was defeated.
This meant that the Army would have to rely on volunteers to fill their ranks and a concerted effort was made by the government to encourage able-bodied men to enlist. This was done through a variety of means. The civilian population were now to be bombarded with pro-war propaganda advocating men to enlist and women to make their partners enlist. Government speakers addressed any form of public gathering, much fuss was made about the grave military situation in Europe and there was even hints that Australia’s safety could not be guaranteed if the British Empire collapsed. Again a referendum was held in December 1917 but once again, it was defeated and by a larger majority than in 1916.
A notable absence to the conscription debate is Germany, where conscription was and always had been a fact of life but even there, where all political parties had banded together for the good of the country at the outset of the war, attitudes began to change towards the tail end of the war, with bills for more money to the war being voted against and peace resolutions being passed. The Berufrieden (political truce) was split by the debate on the war aims with the leftist’s advocating defence of the Fatherland while the right wanted to conquer Europe.
Likewise in Australia, when the Governor-General invited prominent groups together to discuss ways to revitalise support for the war, certain groups refused, with the Industrial Council of Queensland replying:
“This Council considers the time has arrived when slaughter in Europe should cease; instead of sending recruits, peace by negotiation must be the first consideration.” This is just hard evidence of the changing of attitudes that many countries underwent concerning the war during the progress of the war. It would seem that Britain was least affected by these changing attitudes, though this is not to say that the attitudes did not change. Lloyd George himself remarked in his memoirs that while the national will was unbroken, the passionate ardour of the initial months of the war did not last till the end of the war as demonstarted by the need to conscript in the second year of the war and the very existence of an anti-conscription lobby.
One of the greatest effects that the war had on civilians be they British, German or Australian was the changing of the attitude of what women were capable of doing. However, as in all aspects, there were varying degrees of change. At the top end there were Britain and Germany were women were affected the most and Australia where women were affected the least. This is partly due to the fact that the need to mobilise women behind the war effort was greater in Germany and Britain than it was in Australia. This is one facet of the total war that affected Germany and Britain a great deal but not as much in Australia, largely because of the former two’s proximity to the actual war while the latter was substantially separated.
In Germany conscription was a part of life and indeed was active as soon as the war started, this meant that with a great number of men away fighting and as the war progressed more men were called to fight which mean that a labour vacuum began to develop and the only people that could replace the men were the women, This same scenario also happened in Britain where conscription was instituted in 1916. Thus, women began to be called upon to enable vital industries to continue to manufacture materiel for the war. In Germany women worked as guards on trains, miners or in light industry, jobs that were traditionally male, in Britain, at one point 60% of munitions workers were female or in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp where they provided drivers and communications, among other things, to the army to free up the men to fight. While in Australia, there was no great need for women to work in industry as conscription did not take all the men to fight. Thus, many women in the middle class established patriotic funds which were to provide comforts and assistance to the men at the front line. Such organisations as the Australian Red Cross were founded and run by women. They raised money for the war effort and collected socks, bandages and clothers for the sick and wounded or the Australian Comforts Fund whose members knitted 1.5 millions socks during 1916-1918, all which would have substantially improved the conditions on the front line, where clean and dry socks were a luxury. When some women did band together and offered to do non-combatant duties, the government rejected them.
What all this meant was a greater realisation of women as equals and capable of doing things that men could do. An example of this was the suffrage in Britain and Germany at the close of the war, though in Britain it was restricted to women over 30. With many women in Britain or Germany earning their own income, it afforded a greater degree of independence and did much to retard the notion that a women’s place was at the hearth. With this, relaxed social behaviour eventuated, in Germany shorter skirts and hairstyles became evident and in Britain, divorces increased 300% following the end of the are. Another side effect of the war was that a whole generation of women found it difficult to marry, in all three countries, as a substantial number of young men had been wiped out in the battlefields. In general, the war accelerated the equality of women to men.
