The Rest Is History - 90. The Western Front

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

The slaughter and bloodshed on the Western Front in World War One helped shape the narrative of the 20th century. But was it a case of lions led by donkeys? Gary Sheffield, historian and author of Forgotten Victory: The First World War - Myths and Realities, joins Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook to explore events on the Western Front. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. What passing bells for those who die as cattle. Only the monstrous anger of the guns, only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle can patter out their hasty orisons. The opening of Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen, a famous war poet who died in action on the 4th of November, one week before the armistice brought peace at last to the Western Front. And it's kind of indicative really of the way that people in Britain have come to see the Western Front. From Wilfred Owen you can trace a line to the concept of lions led by donkeys,

the joke in Blackadder of Haig making yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin. And Dominic Sambra, you've actually written a book on the First World War. Is that right? A children's book. A children's book, yeah. Yeah, but that's fine. I mean, so you're kind of immersed in all this. I have been.

This hasn't been published yet. It's been published just before Christmas. So I have... It's such a fascinating subject, Tom. And as you say, that... It's funny because I was thinking when you were doing that, when you were reading that poem, that we did that... Did you like my sombre voice?

I thought it was beautiful. I think if the history doesn't work out, and who knows if it will, then a career as a reader of poetry audiobooks. War poetry. Yeah, war poetry. I think you'd be great at that, Tom. Thanks, Doreen.

Appreciate that. But anyway, I was about to say, Wilfred Owen, I did that at GCSE. And pretty much exactly that moment, Blackadder Goes Forth was going out on whatever it was, BBC One. So I was, as a teenager, completely steeped in that idea of the Western Front as a senseless waste. I mean, that's the classic things that people say about it. Or what is it good for? Yeah, precisely.

And actually, it was quite invigorating later on to start reading these books that said, actually, no, no, it was not a senseless waste. A lot of people on the Western front actually enjoyed it. The generals were much more canny than posterity kind of allows. And as it happens, we've got one of the absolute kind of key figures in that argument, professor gary sheffield anyway tom you've probably got a better introduction for him than i do well no i absolutely i mean gary sheffield is you know i mean he's completely transformed the the understanding of the first world war so really there's no one better to have on the show to to look at the history of the western front but also

the various ways in which it's been understood um and I guess, Gary, the book you asked me to mention before we started this podcast was Forgotten Victory, the First World War, Myths and Realities. So I guess we're going to be talking quite a lot about myths and realities in this show. I think the title gives a little clue to my views, yes. Okay. Well, before we get on to the myths and realities, could you just give us a sense of why the Western Front comes into existence? I mean, basically, it's because the war breaks out in the summer of 1914. And to begin with, it's very mobile, isn't it? That's right. Essentially, the Western Front comes into being because the

German attempt to win the war very quickly in the West fails. That the Germans, well, historians debate how close they came to defeating the Allied armies, primarily the French, because of course, the British army at this stage is very small. And so Gary, the measure of success for the Germans would have been to capture Paris. Is that basically? That's what they were aiming to do. Whether that actually would have knocked France out of the war is another matter. But they don't succeed in capturing Paris. And perhaps even more importantly, they don't succeed in inflicting a crippling blow on the French army.

Basically, what the Germans are hoping to do in 1914 is to repeat 1870, when the German field armies defeated the French field armies in a matter of months. And for a whole range of reasons, that does not happen in 1914. Instead, what happens is that both sides stumble upon something they've really known about already. That is that if you are about to be outflanked or defeated, you get your soldiers to dig holes in the ground, long, thin holes. You put your soldiers in them, in these trenches, and suddenly it becomes much more difficult to kill these soldiers for the simple reason that if you put a man in a hole, give him a bit of head cover, put a bit of barbed wire out in front, he's actually

quite a difficult target to hit. But the poor so-and-sos who have to advance across the open towards the trenches are of course much more vulnerable. And add to the fact that by 1914, weapons are extremely powerful. I mean, there's been a revolution in firepower over the last hundred years. Because don't forget, 99 years before the First World War breaks out is the Battle of Waterloo, in which you have armies basically standing up, you know, a few yards from each other, blazing away. By 1914, that is no longer possible because of the power of the weapons, the sheer size of the armies, which go from being perhaps 100,000 strong thereabouts at Waterloo to millions strong. And all, of course, these are major industrial powers

backed by vast economies, which become even more powerful as they are developed to support the war effort. Cut a long story short, all this means is that the armies are unable to break the deadlock, which comes into being by the middle of November 1914. And it's in place largely, although not entirely, until the spring of 1918. And in big handfuls, it's fairly easy to explain in technical terms why. It's that the defender, having these man's in a hole I've already mentioned, can bring a vast amount of firepower to bear and also that when an attacker uh breaks into an enemy position it normally they are so weakened by the effort that they they simply don't have enough men to throw through to exploit the gap that's made

and and also because they lack uh communications in the way that they would have in the Second World War by radio, or they lack the ability to pass messages by courier or rider or something, as had been the case perhaps even 50 or 60 years before, because armies are so big and so dispersed that they simply can't sum up reserves at the right place at the right time. Of course, the defender who is dug in has telephone wires buried deep beneath the ground, and he could actually get a message back and rush people up to the right place at the right time. And what happens is that over the next four years that the armies on the Western Front, the French, the Germans, the British, struggle with coming up with technological ways of breaking this deadlock. In the end, they do, but it's enormously bloody. And in a sense, the answer to the reason, to the question, why the casualties are so heavy, is that if you fight that sort of war,

that are the sorts of casualties you end up with. And really, the failure to come up with some sort of compromise peace, which is a political, not a military decision, condemns the armies to fight those sorts of battles. Now, you can argue about the competence of generals and competence of individual armies, but they're the fundamental reasons why the Western Front turns out to be as stalemated and as bloody as it is. So if we go back to the autumn of 1914, so the Germans have been pushed back from Paris at the Battle of the Marne. They've ended up on these, they have a race to the sea, don't they, where they try to outflank each other. And they end up with these lines etched into the map of Europe.

And is this, so they tell the soldiers to dig and they dig the trenches. Now, is this something that people, there was a revelation to them. I mean, so Dave Walters, who's a regular listener to the Rest Is History, has said, you know, did each side expect the war to be so static?

So they have the technology. I mean, they know that both sides have got machine guns. They know they've all got barbed wire and all these things. But is this a great shock to them, the generals and the soldiers of this? It's putting it too strongly to say it's a shock, but it certainly comes as an unpleasant surprise, because they are well aware that conflicts of this sort can be stalemated.

Only 10 years before the Russo-Japanese War had seen a sort of Western Front-style conflict in Manchuria. And so you had trenches, you had stalemate, all the rest of it. The thing is, this was broken after about nine months, a year, for a whole host of reasons that was not possible on the Western Front. So nobody really ambiguous. And you had the British, actually, the most recent example of modern warfare was the Second Boer War in South Africa, 1899 to 1902. And the lessons from that war were rather different from those of Manchuria. And so people came into wars not necessarily having drawn the wrong lessons from history, but have not necessarily got all the lessons in the right balance the right balance so right at the beginning of of the first world war people still have a lot of faith in cavalry don't they so the french go famously

riding in colored uniforms and nice helmets and swords and all that sort of stuff and douglas haig of course is a great cavalry man isn't he uh he isn't he and he isn't now why i say that is if you if if by by a traditional cavalryman you know lots of waving swords and what have you no he isn't because cavalry as far as the likes of hague and the reformer school are concerned by this stage has reinvented itself as effectively a new form of as a new arm of warfare. Because cavalry in 1914, British cavalry anyway, they walk as much as they ride. They are very well trained in firearms. They have machine guns.

They have light artillery with them. And the idea is that they will form, effectively, a sort of mobile column, which we see much use in the Second World War and beyond. The difference is, of course, you're actually using horse flesh rather than vehicles. So yes, Haig does believe in charging forward, the armblanche, if the moment is right. These moments actually do occur during the war, but it's not traditional cavalry. And interestingly, in 1914, the British

cavalry is much better at doing the job of recce, scouting and covering the retreat than the French and the Germans, who are still much more wedded to traditional forms of cavalry. So I know it sounds heretical to say it, but in the British army, the cavalry is some of the most advanced troops that Britain has in 1914. And so when do the generals and when do the troops in the trenches begin to realise the nature of the war that they're involved in? Well, in one sense, very early on, because casualties are staggeringly high from the beginning, much higher than they had experienced in the Boer War, and in fact much higher than the planning for replacing troops and indeed for replenishing stocks of shells

before the war had taken on board. So no one is in any illusion at all by about September, October, November 1914. This is a very bloody war. Gary, had anyone actually said it will be over by Christmas, or is that a myth? Various people did say that, but it certainly wasn't a sort of planning assumption of the army.

After all, because when Kitchener becomes Secretary of State for War in August 1914, he immediately announces this war's going to last at least three years. Yeah, and the Germans too. I mean, the Germans, there's lots of quotes on it from Moltke and the other generals who sort of say, well, we hope we're going to win it quickly, but if we don't, it's going to be an absolute nightmare and all Europe will be consumed and all this.

Well, in fact, it's Moltke the Elder who famously says something that I think in the 1890s at the end of his life. So the Germans actually come into the war really staking everything on a quick win. And when it doesn't happen, they think, well, what are we going to do now? Yeah. They then have to improvise a prolonged form of warfare, which of course they do, you know,

up to a point quite successfully. They keep the war going for another four years. But there's no attempt at this when they start to realise that, you know, it's going to be a deadlock, a horribly bloody deadlock. There's no attempt to kind of arrive at a peace? fact, I'm about to reveal my complete numptiness by saying a book has been published very recently arguing there was a very serious attempt to negotiate peace in 1950, 1916. I can't remember the name of the author and I haven't read the book. So beyond that, I can't comment. Welcome to our podcast. I've listened to many of your podcasts. All I would say is that my take on it is it's difficult to see how there could be a compromise piece in the West because it would involve the Germans compromising.

And as far as I can see, they were never prepared to abandon territory in the West, even though it clearly would have been in their advantage to do so. So, for example, at the end of 1917, when they have knocked effectively, they've knocked Russia off the wall. The Germans win the First World War war part one which is against russia at that point had they come they had they sort of moved from the battlefield to the negotiating table i'm pretty sure they could have come up with a very favorable piece as in give back all the stuff they conquered in the west and you've still won you've got all of of the Russian Empire to exploit and to build upon. The Germans choose not to do that. They decide they're going to go for broke by attacking in the West. And of course, in the end, that actually brings them down. So I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on the argument. But actually, for my reading of the evidence,

there's very little scope for compromise because the Germans are simply not prepared to make those compromises. And the French have got the Germans sitting on their territory. Why should they compromise? Yeah. And also, Tom, I was thinking about this today because I knew this would come up. It's a bit like our Vietnam podcast that we did with Andrea Preston about why the Americans kept on with the commitment. I mean, politically, I think with wars, when you go in, you go all in and you sort of say, well, this is essential for our national honour and for our national survival. And it becomes very difficult then after a year or two years to say, you know what, actually, it's not really essential. We can just do a deal. I mean, not least because you're betraying, you're effectively betraying everybody who's already died and all the bereaved to whom you have said it was absolutely essential

that they died and we are now committed to winning the war and actually gary will know this much better than me if you read what the soldiers themselves were saying like the british soldiers for example they would often say well i'm determined you know we have to finish the job we're in this for a reason you know lots of lots of them were very patriotic and they wanted to win. Absolutely. If I could chuck in the name of a book I can remember the title of, by my friend Mike Nyberg, a very distinguished American historian of the First World War, Dance of the Furies. He argues that actually there wasn't a great deal of hatred which propelled the peoples of Europe into war in August

1914. But after war broke out, yes, that hatred did pile up, not least because of the vast losses. And it becomes, you know, are you going to betray the people who have died already by making compromised peace? And where is the hatred most visceral, in the trenches or back home? It tends to be on the home fronts, actually. There's a sort of a bit of a sort of sentimental idea that all the men in the trenches admired each other. They were all fellow sufferers. There's certainly a bit of that. There's also a lot of, I think, individual hatred

of shooting prisoners out of hand, of failing to take prisoners in the first place. I wouldn't overstress it, but it does tend to be on the home front that you get the real demagogues in Britain, France, Germany, and elsewhere kicking up this fuss. But it does feed into a total war mentality.

And once you have turned that on, it is very difficult to turn it off again. Right. So on the topic of the experience of the soldiers in the trenches, we had loads of questions about this. Sure. And we began with Wilfred Owen, and that's the kind of conventional sense,

is that it's all slaughter, blood, horror, rats, gangrene, whatever. But we've got a question from Mark Brooks. What do you think of the view proposed by Neil Ferguson that many soldiers actually enjoyed their wartime experience? And from Bariga, or Barija, many historians who interviewed First World War infantry veterans say the survivors never talked of the horrors of the trenches but more of mateship and comradeship um yeah did you know what what was it was war hell or was it actually okay people enjoy it I think a very few people actually enjoyed the war in a sense they liked the killing

and the violence. Hitler of course, famous example of that, Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel and all the rest of it and the British equivalents. I mean interestingly Siegfried Sassoon was known as Mad Jack within the regiment because he was a suicidally brave officer so you could actually have very ambiguous views about the war. You could actually enjoy it and still hate it in other ways. In a broader sense, I think many men did. Again, enjoys putting it too strongly, but actually they didn't mind the war, at least military experience, and all sorts of reasons for this uh if if you are poor on the margins of society the army will feed you three times a day and give you a stout pair of boots it comes up at that sort of simple level if you are a city clerk an incredibly boring job in london you suddenly are out out out in the fresh air training with your mates and all the rest of it of course once

you get to western front it's different and all the rest of it. Of course, once you get to the Western Front, it's different and all the rest of it. But people do have very mixed and ambiguous responses to the war. I actually interviewed a few Great War veterans. I was in my 20s in the early 80s doing post-grad degrees. And I didn't find any of them who really said, oh, the war was terrible, everybody hated it.

Many of them had a much more nuanced view. Quite a number actually dismissed what we would now call the Blackadder view, of course, it's slightly before Blackadder, as simply, well, you know, okay, it's a bit of knockabout fun. And in the same way, various work has been done on veterans who saw, oh, what a Lovely War, both the play and the film in the 1960s.

And some of them really enjoyed it because they're actually singing the songs of the trenches they remembered, but they rejected the overall message. Yeah, I've heard that story. Isn't there a story about a group of veterans who go on a trip to see the play or something? And at the interval, they're all kind of singing the songs and they're chatting. Oh, do you remember when that bloke had his head blown off? It's kind of these sorts of anecdotes, which in a way is not altogether surprising, is it?

Because am I not right in thinking that if you're on the Western Front, certainly if you're a British soldier, you don't actually spend that much time in the trench at the front. You spend a lot of time behind the trenches, don't you? Absolutely, you do. The idea that soldiers arrived in France in August 1914 and stood up to their waists in mud until November 1918 is simply untrue. In the classic period of trench warfare, in 19 in 1916 1917 there was a set period of time you might spend four days in the front line four days in the in the support line four days in reserve in other words behind the lines and how much leave would you get uh for the ordinary soldier actually

not not very much uh you might get a couple of weeks every year for officers it's more than that but there was also quite a lot of leisure time building. I mean, it sounds absolutely bizarre to us, but soldiers were sent off to the seaside to do some paddling and sandcastle building. Awful lot of football and cricket and other games are played behind the front. The Army sees sport as being really important as training, as building esprit de corps, and basically as recreation. I don't know if you remember, you've seen the Monocle Mutineer TV series from the 1980s. Now, historically, it's a complete travesty. But some bits of it, they got very right, largely because they relied, I think it was Jack, I can't remember who wrote it, but the writer actually, I think,

relied very heavily on some reliable sources. And there's one great one in which they have a series of monologues given by soldiers, which were typical things you would hear at concerts behind the lines. Now, given the sort of the culture of Britain at the time in which, you know, the music hall was really important and people made their own entertainment, they would gather around the piano and have sing songs. You get lots and lots of this sort of stuff. And all of this actually very mundane stuff was really important in keeping up morale. And I actually did my PhD work on this sort of stuff.

And I was actually quite surprised by, you know, it doesn't tend to be, you know, very heroic actions that keep men going. It's, are you playing football are you getting a letter from the missus at home uh you know is is there a decent ration of tobacco can you get hold of some some decent english beer as opposed to french mark it's that sort of sort of thing that keeps people morale up and and that question about the beer that point about the beer um sy james has a question about how similar or different were the experiences of the different kind of troops now am i not right in thinking that when british when people used to capture for example the german trenches they would say oh my god the german

trenches are fantastic you know they live in five-star luxury compared with us so were they sort of very different experiences of the different combatants uh they, but you must always take into consideration the rampant anti-foreigner prejudices which crop up. So whenever the British take over French trenches, they're dirty, they're unkempt, because they're French. I mean, whether they are or not, it's another matter. You'd expect that though, right? Absolutely. I mean, whether they are or not, it's another matter, but you see that time after time. With the German trenches, it is a bit different for a very interesting strategic reason. The Germans having captured their ground in the Western Front until March 1918, certainly against the British, they're not really seeking to advance. They are there for the long haul.

They are. So therefore, they're happy to build deeper trenches than the British to make them more livable in because people could be there for a long time. With the British, they're only ever a temporary expedient, at least in theory, because you're going to be leaving those trenches and capturing the ones in front of you. And so actually, there is some truth in the idea that German trenches tend to be deeper. They tend to be more comfortable than the British ones. But of course, there is a fair amount of, you know, scuttle about going about these things, these rumors about, you know, the Germans, oh, Germans have women in their trenches. Showers.

Absolutely, all that sort of stuff. So, Tom, there's a question here that I put in there that I got off Twitter just to appeal to you. And I'm amazed you haven't asked it yet. Is this one from Stev Hepp? It is Stev Hepp. Are you not going to ask Stev Hepp's question? Well, it's been staring out at me

and I've been heroically resisting it. Go on, go on, indulge yourself. There was a pause there and I thought, should I dive in? And I didn't. And then you served it up to me. Okay, so this is from Steve Hepp, who is a friend of the show,

sent in lots of fascinating questions. And Gary, I know you'll be interested in this question. On the topic of morale and how people's feelings in the trench, this is on an aspect that often I think gets overlooked, but obviously I also think is important. Of course, you would say that. Devotion to and visions of St. Therese of Lisieux were a widespread phenomenon on the Western front, and Wilfred Owen's war poetry is fused with Christian imagery.

Did faith, Christian faith, I guess, specifically, play an important role in the psychology of frontline soldiers? Well, I'm completely surprised, of course, you've asked me a question about Christianity, Tom. I didn't see that coming at all. I know, it's actually literally a bombshell. Can I just briefly, before I answer, it's a really good question, say something about Wilfred Owen. I meant to say that after you said this poem at the beginning. That's actually not entirely typical of Owen's view of the war. After all, he is a man who was decorated for gallantry and actually killed in a really excellent piece of low-level leadership

in November... It's crossing the canal, wasn't it? Yes, it's crossing the canal, wasn't it? Yes, it's crossing the canal. And what's always forgotten, almost always forgotten, is that the 4th of November 1918 is the last great British victory on the Western Front. And the reason it's the last great British victory on the Western Front is it played a large role

in breaking the German high command's will to fight on any longer. So the idea he's killed just before the end of the war, wasn't it a tragedy? Well, yes, it was a tragedy that this man was died. Was it a tragedy in the sense of completely futile and senseless? No, it wasn't. Britain being Britain,

we've completely forgotten the victory of the 4th of November 1918. But nonetheless, it is one of the most significant British military victories of the First World War. And so I think we need to see, oh, it's like other soldiers, actually had quite an ambiguous view about the war. To latch on to the pity of war and the rest of it actually is not to see the whole picture. Right, so not a pointless death. Not a pointless death. In military terms. It is not in a military sense, and I would argue it is not in the broader sense, because I think the First World War is a war that was forced upon britain and britain actually had to win but that's been come back

i think we should come to that after the break but if we could just look specifically on the on the issue of faith in the trenches right i've got a an admission to make here that when i was writing my phd on british morale uh in the early 90s i almost entirely overlooked christianity as a factor uh which is daft, actually, because I was a paid-up Christian member of the C of E and all the rest of it. But actually, it simply did not feature very highly in the literature of the time. In recent years, however, it has come back with a vengeance. There's a lot of really excellent stuff about faith and morale in the First World War by, for example, my former colleague at the University

of Birmingham, Michael Snape, by Alex Watson at Goldsmiths, and various other people. And I think it is really important. Now, I think that the number of people who were active practicing Christians, and it had a really impact on their morale, are fairly small, but in the sense of diffusive Christianity, that everybody in Britain at that time pretty well had some sort of belief however vague and they certainly signed up to a a Christian worldview it is really very significant and the war was sold at some level as a crusade I think it was understood at some level as a crusade and even at at the micro level, going to church services, I mean, church parades are never very popular, except on the eve of battle. Actually, they tend to be informal, voluntary

services. And soldiers did get an awful lot out of them. And indeed, the people at home got a lot of solace, I think, through faith. Now, some of this went off at slightly strange angles of course the first world war sees a massive revival of spiritualism uh because as people seek for answers outside the established balance of christianity and to contact the dead and all the rest of it arthur conan doyle of course that the fate that the uh the author of most famously rational detective sherlock holmes buys into this in a really big way. But what I would say in general terms is that historians now, myself included, would now see faith, and specifically Christian faith of various degrees, how orthodox or not, another matter, has a really important role in maintaining soldiers' morale. The same is also true, I think, in Germany and to some extent in

France, although I don't have any expertise in those two armies. And Dominic, of course, the single most influential text to come out of the First World War was written by a very committed Christian. Gerard Tolkien, of course. Yes. And I think on that note, we should go to a quick break. And then we come back, Gary, perhaps we could talk the the strategy and the generalship and whether it was all a waste of time or whether it served served a purpose brilliant see you after the break I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus

episodes and early access to live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are with Professor Gary Sheffield, author of Forgotten Victory, expert on the Western Front. And we're about to get into something that I know he's very enthusiastic about. So we have a question from Stephen, which I'm sure you will welcome. Is the lions led by donkeys analysis unfair? So this is the idea that the generals of this kind of pack of

you know upper class twits and competent buffoons and the soldiers are heroic lions who have been betrayed and sacrificed and slaughtered in their in their thousands um and it's all the general's fault and i know you have very strong views about this the answer is no. Next question, please. Now, OK, it's to go back a bit. The whole lines led by donkeys thing is something which emerged really during the 1930s in a fully fledged form. You can see elements of that during the war itself, although not not very strongly out of the 1920s. But generally speaking, until Phil Marshall, Sir Douglas Hague, Earl Hague as he becomes, dies in early 1928, or was it 29? I've written a biography. I really ought to remember that. Anyway, sorry.

But he dies. If only we had a biographer of Douglas Hague. If only. I'm sorry. I had one as complete mental blackouts, not for the first time. Hague dies at the end of the 20s. Let's just fudge it like that and coincidentally it actually um coincides with what has become known as beginning of the great war books boom this outpouring of disillusioned uh war memoirs

uh novels rediscovery of poetry, people like Owen, for example. And this sort of sees the floodgates open and there's a huge backlash against the generals, the war, and this basic idea that it was a war worth fighting. And is this being sharpened by events in the 30s? And the sense that Germany, you know, there's going to be another war? It becomes sharper. So the course actually predates that.

I think in some ways it's quite a natural breaking point. We can see a similar sort of thing with Vietnam in the late 70s and early 80s. There's a backlash. The deer hunt and all the rest of it. I think that the real revulsion actually is not against the war itself, or at least if you read many of the books, it's not against the war itself. It's actually against the peace that emerged from the war itself uh or at least if you read many of the books it's not against the war itself it's actually against the peace that emerged from the war because if they were sold during the war with the idea that is that the war you know it's gonna be a land fit for heroes to live in

the land that soldiers can't ex-soldiers come back to in the 20s is actually quite hard. Economically, Britain is going through problems. The British Empire is clearly, you know, on the skids to some extent. And Germany, having been defeated, then emerges in the 20s as a democratic state, didn't last for very long. And there is a sense that why did we bother to fight this conflict? However, if you read the actual, if you read much of the disillusioned material, it's really not that the war wasn't worth fighting that people are saying. It's actually, well, what happened at the end of it? Was it all worth it? And I should actually say that this period of massive disillusionment, which of course brings at the end of it was it all worth it and i should actually say that this period of of massive dissolution which of course brings about the emergence of pacifism really is the only time in british history as a serious political force actually is quite short-lived

and it's quite quite shallow uh many of the people who was uh public school boys in the late 20s and early 30s are you know joining the peace pled union and rest of it are there as infantry officers in the in the army 1939 1940 uh michael howard professor sir michael howard who died only about about two years ago uh became the greatest british military historian of the 20th century, wrote very revealingly about how he was carried away as a school by Wellington in the 30s by these ideas. And of course, he ends up as an officer in the Coldstream Guards, winning the MC and becoming a great military historian, or the rest of it. But what this does do, I think, is actually have a major impact, which lasts long beyond the period of the 30s, about the way that the First World War is viewed. And the second major event, I think,

is the Second World War, which in very crude terms, the Second World War from the British point of view is a good war. The British are obviously wearing the white hats, the Germans are obviously wearing the black hats. In Germans are obviously wearing the black hats. When the First World War, things are much more ambiguous. And seen from 1945, why is Britain fighting Germany? Was the Kaiser really that bad? Was the Kaiser as bad as Hitler? The answer to all this, of course, is no. Well, the Kaiser wasn't as bad as Hitler.

But that ignores the really desperate threat that Imperial Germany posed to Britain, to the British Empire, which of course is extremely important in people's thinking in the First World War, to the stability of Europe, and I would argue to the existence of liberal democracy of Europe in 1914. So by being branched out of context, all of this suddenly, the First World War no longer makes sense. And the third major thing, I think, is what happens in the 1960s is CND, the Cold War on Nuclear Weapons,

whereby, I mean, oh, what a lovely war, I think in many ways, is basically projecting Cold War fears of mass deaths onto the First World War and using the First World War as a sort of analog for the Cold War. All of this fuels this sort of backlash against the First World War. And actually, it infects popular television, films, all the rest of it, and loads and loads of popular books,

possibly on a very long list of terrible books about the First World War. Alan Clarke's The Donkeys, which appears in 1961, is absolutely the worst. But only a year before that, a book by Cyril Falls, who is a combat veteran of the First World War and official historian, appears, which has a very balanced, very modern view of the First World War. John Turrain, the great enfant terrible of British military history, he starts writing at the end of the 1950s, rehabilitating Douglas Haig. So for those who want to read a bit more widely, there is a more balanced view of the First World War around. But it's not really until the 1980s that it starts to get into the academic mainstream extent it ever has, let alone into the public mainstream. Okay, so that sets up two brilliant questions.

One of which is, you know, what are the stakes on the Western Front for both sides? But let's stay focused on the British. And also how effective are the generals on the British and the French side in prosecuting the war? Now, I don't know if you heard our episode on the origins of the First World War. I knew you were going to bring this up, Tom.

In which Dominic presented a radical thesis that we should have sided with the Germans against the French. So I'm just going to sit back and... Like Switzerland. Yeah. Like the Swiss and watch you two... And everybody loves the Swiss, don't they? Nobody looks at the Swiss.

Nobody thinks of them as smug. I don't mind being smug on a occasion like this. Strangely enough, a number of British soldiers in 1914 actually would have agreed with Dominic's view. Yeah, of course. Because the Germans played football, drank beer and all the rest of it. They're much more like us than the French. But Gary, listeners have heard Dominic's ludicrous views on this.

So give us the measured sensible perspective on what's at stake. Well, it's difficult to be measured on the origins of the First World War. It's also difficult

to spend less than five weeks on it. My take on it actually is a very simple view, perhaps a simplistic view, is that ultimately the triggers for the First World War come from

Berlin and from Vienna. The Austro-Hungarians, from their perspective, good reasons want to go and sort out the Serbs, which they regard as being an existential threat to the Habsburg Empire. The trouble is the Serbs are, of course uh protected by russia which is allied to france which is has a loose allegiance to to to britain the germans in uh the blank check in early july 1914 effectively say to the austrians we will back whatever you do, knowing full well that that is likely to unleash the dominoes which bring in Russia, which bring in France, which even bring in Britain. So up to the point at which the Austrians attack Serbia on the 23rd of July 1914, the First World War is eminently avoidable, in my view.

After that point, it is not, because basically this is starting to bring the great power structures into play. And it's very deliberate decisions on the part of the German and Austrian decision-making elite. Now, no one is completely free of blame in the sense that everybody, to some extent, contributed to the pile of tinder, to the hackneyed phrase, which actually a flame is set to it, and it blows up in the summer of 1914. But it's the Germans, the Austrians, who actually make decisions consciously that they could have chosen not to have made and kick off the war.

Gary, could I just jump in? Please do. Did you not make the same claim, for example, about Russia? No. No, Dominic. Dominic, this is about the Western Front and you're dragging us around. I'm going to be like Melvin Bragg.

Oh, this is shocking. No, I'm really going to have to. This is absolutely shocking. Because this is about the Western Front. So what I really want to know is, Gary, your position as someone who really knows about this. I think we should end the podcast here. No offence, no offence.

What is at stake for the British and the French in the Western Front? So if the Germans break through and they capture Paris or whatever, what follows? What is at stake? Right, what is at stake? First of all, for the French, now actually we know what the Germans are intending to do

because actually they wrote a memorandum in September, so after the war had broken out, about what they will do in the event of the victory they think is going to happen very shortly. Basically, it's to reduce France

to a second-class power, to take big chunks of key French industrial land in the north of France. Belgium becomes a German protectorate. Belgium actually is one of the most highly advanced industrialized states in Europe, of course. And in the east, effectively, they create, well, basically what Hitler set out to do in the east 25 years later, minus the conscious genocide, which of course is a very big thing, but nonetheless, it's effectively reduced the Romanov Empire to a series of German client states.

So that completely tips the balance of power in Europe. And a French would have been reduced to the situation, you know, pre-1870, pre-1815. So that stuff with the French sounds great to me, Gary. I'm staying out of this one. For the British, obviously, that has an enormous impact on stability. One of the great tenets of British foreign policy, English foreign policy going back centuries, of course,

is to maintain a balance of power in Europe and also to keep the low countries specifically in this case belgium free of uh an aggressor particularly an aggressor with a powerful navy which of course germany is and also of course very unfashionable today but the british empire is critically important to british thinking not merely of the british government but actually to the british people and not so much canada because they've got the united states on on its doorstep but australia new zealand uh south africa lots of places actually really scared by the threat not so much what will happen uh if if the germans turn up because you know the germans aren't there in any great strength but actually

if the shield of the royal navy is removed so So if I put Australia and New Zealand really worried about Japan, a British ally at this stage, but the Aussies and the Kiwis are not very keen on this. And really their defence rests upon the Royal Navy. Remove Britain, remove the Royal Navy from the board, suddenly everything's up in the air. So for the british as they see it it is an absolute existential threat that everything is going to to to um

to to to to be up up up okay so the stakes are very high um absolutely so seen in that light what case would you make for the performance of the British military and particularly the high command? I actually don't think you could link the two things, because the ability to end the war by a compromise piece and negotiation, that's actually up at a higher level, at least the British military actually don't have very much say in that at all. The performance of the British military is patchy, to put it mildly i think it's related to having to learn to fight a new style of warfare for the reasons i gave at the very beginning of the program basically they haven't done this sort of stuff before british army before the war is very small it's very experienced but in colonial warfare which only has limited crossover to what they are

doing on on the western front and the if you if you think that the british army sees major combat really for the first time on the somme in july 1916 um yes last but not before but this is brilliant on a major scale it's an army which is largely composed of men who had been civilians 18 months before not terribly well trained and their officers although they don't have quite a lot of experience, not at the level at which they are commanding, and not at the sort of experience that is relevant. And I'm not for one moment going to try and whitewash the mistakes that were made, the lives that were cost and all the rest of it. All I would say is that by the end

of the war, the learning process has been pretty impressive. And the British Army is by no means flawless, but actually it is highly effective. It is better, I would argue, than the German Army. It is better armed. It's better trained. It's better commanded. It's got higher morale. And all of this means that the victories in 1918, in my view, are the greatest in British military history. Certainly in terms of scale, they're bigger than Wellington's victories. They're bigger than Montgomery's victories. And also, I would argue, in terms of what is at stake.

And one of the problems we have of the Blackadder view, or indeed the photo that you put on Twitter to advertise this podcast. I agree with you, Gary. That was shocking. Well, I wasn't surprised you did it, but it sets up a particular set of assumptions. Now, of course, if the First World War, in fact, going back to the 1920s, had been seen largely through the prism of 1918 and the victories,

rather than 1916 and the disasters, we would have a very different view of the First World War. And something I and a number of other historians have tried to do over the last few years is simply say, there's more to it than the Somme. It's a lot more complicated than all that. It's very sad, Gary, that people like Tom are trying to undo all the work that you've done. We should just explain. We should say that the photo was a picture of people carrying stretchers through the mud of Passchendaele. Well, this is what I want to ask about. So let me, before we get on to 1918,

and I know you're brilliant on 1918, and I really want to do that, the German offensive and then the Allied counterattack and so on. But if I was, you know, some people who disagree with you would say, and if I'm sort of going to ventriloquise them, they would say, you've leaped pretty quickly from the Somme to 1918, and there's a long period in between where they're making the same mistakes again and again,

and they're not learning from their mistakes. At Pashtun Dale, for example. Is that fair, or do you think that criticism... So, in other words, you know, they keep sort of trudging through the mud and being shot down and not using enough artillery and stuff. Is that fair, do you think? No, no, it isn't fair,

although it has an element of truth in it. Now, we used to talk about the learning curve that the British Army had, which we largely moved away from that because it implies a smooth upward transition. Actually, it isn't. I've baffled some of my students over the years by saying it's more like the learning Loch Ness Monster. It goes up and down and up again. There is not consistent learning of lessons.

You do see mistakes made, same mistakes made over different periods. But it's more like a stepped progression. It's gradually going upwards. And during the Somme itself, I mean, the Somme is a battle which lasts from July to November 1916. And you do see some really significant advances,

both on the ground and actually in terms of technique you also see them say by same mistake over and over again in 1917 you see a major major advance in both sense the battle of arras in april and passchendaele which is a really interesting example because yes you do see some failures at the very beginning of the campaign. And that photo, Tom, is from, I think, early August 1917, where there's unseedably heavy rain. Actually, having looked out the window here, it's pouring. But only a month or so later, you have three dramatic victories as part of the third battle of which is the correct term for for passchendaele which brings the germans very very close to to to defeat in fact in the end i think it's only the breaking of the weather on the 4th of october 1917 which makes it very difficult for

the british to continue their advances other factors as well which which would say it saves the germans uh nick lloyd's book on Passchendaele, published three or four years ago, is actually very good on this. And one of the questions which actually was posed on Twitter was why was it that the Germans broke through in March 1918 and the British and French had spent three years trying to do without failing? Well, the British had broken through on the 20th of November 1917, the first day of Combré, and it had much the same

impact as the German breakthrough in 1918. They broke through the enemy trenches through the use of innovative tactics, in the British case technology as well, use of tanks, but they could not sustain the advance. So both sides were learning from their own mistakes, from their allies along the trenches, and indeed from each other's advances and mistakes. So actually, it is a continuous progress. It's not a perfect one. And at the end of the war, you still find some units are rather better than others, for all sorts of reasons. But there is a steady improvement. Certainly, the British Army of November 1918 is light years away from that of the 1st July 1916, which I think is a fair

point of comparison. Okay. The Germans are conscious, aren't they, there? In a sense, the Germans are always going to lose from the end of 1914 onwards, and they're finally rolling the dice at the beginning of 1918 because that moment is looming and it's go for broke and gamble or inevitable defeat will will follow well as i think i've already mentioned i actually think the germans should have gone for a diplomatic settlement which they would have come out of you know with a compromise i they give back the stuff in the west they would emerge much much stronger and in fact it's a real fear with the british british foreign officers that's what they're going to do, that the Germans will come out of this stage of the war

with a compromise speech which leaves them stronger, and there'll be a renewal of war 5, 10, 15 years down the line with the Germans in a much stronger advantage. They're actually looking back to what, until 1914, was called the Great War in Britain, that is, Napoleonic Wars, where you had a series of campaigns and then pieces, or at least there's not much going on, and then there there's another belt of fight they think it's going to be going to be like that the germans basically make the wrong decisions largely because i think that the

people that the two key players who are running effectively running the german government at this time are hindenburg and ludendorff the senior commanders who have largely pushed the civilian government to one side and certainly the kaiser is not much more than a cipher at this stage. And they have very, very limited strategic vision. And they can only see the way to win is on the battlefield rather than by negotiating. And so they go in to win everything. I should actually mention the Americans at this point, because someone's bound to go ask a question, you know, did the Americans win the war? No, they didn't. Now, they are really important because they are arriving in very large numbers by the spring of 1918. And the Germans realise if they're going to win a military victory, it has to be soon

before the Americans arrive in so large numbers they cannot possibly win. So Gary, could you just give, for people who don't know the details of what happens in 1918, just give a brief account of the swings and two and three of what happens. Sure, well, the Germans launched their major, the Kaiserschlag, the Kaiser's Battle, on the 21st of March, 1918.

They attacked British Fifth Army, which is the weakest British army, kept deliberately weak by Hague because there's only a limited number of troops. And actually that's the one furthest to the south. British Fifth Army, which is the weakest British army, kept deliberately weak by Haig because there's only a limited number of troops. And actually, that's the one furthest to the south. It's the one in which he could most afford to give ground because it's quite a distance to the coast. The Germans break through, but all they succeed in doing is pushing the British and the French back without actually significantly breaking through their

lines. And the reason for this is that something which handicaps all troops on the Western Front is the lack of a use of exploitation. In Napoleon's day, he had horse cavalry, you know, you bang a hole in the enemy lines, send the cavalry through, they can the infantry they can get among them they can chop them down 25 years later you have tanks which can move faster and do the same thing in the first world war cavalry well it's there and it's useful up to a point but really you cannot use it in the same way as in the polio period or tanks in the second world war therefore it as infantry is advancing uh the enemy infantry is falling back at roughly the same rate. And the Germans simply are unable to get among the retreating British, Canadians, Australian, French and all the rest of them and disperse them.

So therefore, the Germans wear themselves out by launching fruitless attacks, having left their artillery behind because they've outrun their artillery. And they just waste their forces in attack after attack after attack. They become exhausted. The boot is on the other foot from late July, early August onwards when the Allies go on to the offensive. First of all, at the Second Battle of the Marne and then at the Battle of Amiens, the 8th of August 1918, the Black Day of the German Army, as it's described by senior Germans, when the British actually advance for eight miles in a single day. I should say British, it's the British, Australians, Canadians and French. And whereas the Germans in the spring have bashed a hole in enemy positions and just gone hell for

leather until they run out of steam, the Allies advance for about eight or ten miles, stop, move the point of attack to somewhere else, advance, stop, do the same again, pushing quite shallowly all along the Western Front until the Germans simply cannot sustain the Front any longer and it collapses. And one of the ways they're able to do this is because the British logistics has improved dramatically even since Passchendaele. You now actually have light railways and enough motor transport to move men and supplies and critically artillery from place to place and smash a hole in the enemy lines. And that's how the Allies win. Actually, they advance a series of quite shallow advances. They advance 50, 60, 70 miles in the end.

It's not a dramatic advance. It's not the advance that Haig wants, but nonetheless, it's highly effective. And in the end, the Germans throw in the towel on the 11th of November, 1918, because they cannot stand any longer. They know if they go on any longer, the German army will collapse. So just to quickly jump in.

So the question that a couple of our listeners, Andrew Kelman and Stephen Clarke, both friends of the show, have asked, which is how close the Germans come to winning in the spring offensive of 1918. Your answer would be they don't really come close at all because they're never breaking through. They're just pushing back. In purely military terms, no, they don't. But the real question is, what does the Allied high command think is going on? Because, of course, it's entirely possible you don't achieve much success on the battlefield,

but you persuade the enemy that they're beaten and they give in. And there's a brief period in late March, say around 24th, 25th, 26th, when it does seem a bit wobbly. Haig, really for the only time, well, the only time after trench warfare begins, gets an attack of the collie wobbles actually he rapidly regains his nerve but he really fears that the french army is going to go one way the british army is going the other and the germans will go through the center what happens here is that a french general um ferdinand foch is put in, not as commander of the French army, that remains with Pétain, but Foch is put in as supreme allied commander to coordinate the operations of all the armies. And Haig says it's to the effect that, you know, I slept well for the first night after Foch was appointed because he knew and trusted Foch and knew he was capable of actually taking decisions

in the interest of the coalition, not just of the French army. And so Foch basically was there sort of dolling out forces, you know, saying to, you know, we'll send a few French divisions here to relieve the Brits and Brits here and so on and so forth. What's ironic, actually, is that Haig himself was one of the principal reasons that someone like that had been appointed before March 1918, because Haig was keen to hang on to his autonomy. But when push came to shove, he realised you needed someone like him in place. Of course, it had to be a Frenchman, because the French army was the largest, and the French were the senior partners in the war. So no, the Germans did not come close to winning on the battlefield. They came perhaps closer than one might think to persuading the Allied commanders that actually they were beaten. But actually,

it was only a brief window of opportunity and in the end, nothing came of it. Okay, so Gary, we're drawing to a close. But one last question, which I think is a really interesting one from David Paxton, again, great friend of the show. And he asks, I guess looking ahead to the sequel, World War II,

how many more weeks would the war have to have lasted for the germans to have experienced undeniable unspinnable collapse and defeat and kill off all risk of the stab in the back um as a credible and useful um tool of propaganda that's a really great question i suspect not many actually two or three interestingly haig came quite defensive about this after the war and i think the only time I ever saw him comment on this, he argues basically that, well, you know, the Germans were obviously beaten, so why carry on and cause more casualties? Also, pertinently, the Allies actually

are outrunning their supply lines. So they would have found it very difficult to sustain a major advance for very much further. But there's another way around this problem, because actually the Germans are at such a state on the 11th of November, that actually the Allies could have asked for much harsher armistice terms than they give. So basically had all the German armies had to pass into prisoner of war camps, and you had Allied victory parades in Berlin and Munich,

I think that would have rubbed it home. As it was, I think, a combination of Allied war weariness and actually very good logistic reasons for not wanting to push on. And the fact the German army may have lost the war, but they're extremely good at winning the narrative about how it wasn't really them that lost the war. It was actually the politicians, the Jews and the Bolsheviks at home, which of course is complete nonsense. The German army did really well at shaping the narrative, even though they were hopeless at fighting the war. All I'd say as a concluding point about this, come the sequel, as you call it,

the Second World War, the Allies make really, really sure they're not allowed to do that again. There's a very, very different, much harsher piece imposed on Germany in 1945, of course. Okay, well, that's brilliant, Gary. Thanks so much. I mean, so much to talk about, you know, lifetime of scholarship compressed into an hour. So thank you.

Thank you so much. And I hope that all your listeners have enjoyed it. It's, you know, I mean, it's a tough subject, but such a fascinating one. And we will be back soon with more historically themed podcastery we will indeed, thank you Gary

goodbye everybody, see you next time bye bye thanks for listening to The Rest Is History for bonus episodes early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.