How were civilians affected by World War 1?

1. How were civilians affected by World War 1? Aim: To revise key details about the British Home Front during the First World War

2. Total War • What was the Total War? • A war where the countries drafts all the people and collects all resources that they can. • When did this war take place? • Around 1916 • Where did it take place? • Europe • Why did the Total War occur? • The war turned into a Total War because the countries expected the war to be short so they weren’t prepared for long term war, when their supplies ran out, total war was their only option. • What was the significance of the war? • WWI turned into a Total War which affected the home front and government a lot. • It affected women too because with the absence of men they were expected to take over more jobs and help out with the war effort. • They received the rights to new jobs, to vote, and the right to apartments.

3. WWI on the Home Front • WWI was a Total War – required populations on the home front to mobilize their resources completely toward the war effort; civilian population centers also became targets of the war effort – not since the US Civil War & the Napoleonic Wars had the world seen such complete mobilization for war • Mass conscription was carried out by all nations – most European nations had armies of 1-2 million – eventually over 70 million would be drafted worldwide – many women would volunteer services as nurses at home & the front • Entire economies were geared toward war production – led to rationing of all sorts of essentials as raw materials & agricultural products were utilized to feed the war machine – led to increased centralization & gov’t control of economies • WWI saw an increase in restrictions of civil liberties – the press was censored as was speech & mail; due process of law was suspended for those suspected of treason; German books were burned, speaking German was banned & lynchings of German-Brits were interned in Britain and its colonies • Women played an important role in the war effort – taking up jobs as men were sent to the home front – over 35% of the workforce was women in many European nations during the war

4. Government Actions Government Control • Winning new type of war required use of all society’s resources • Total war, governments took stronger control of citizens’ lives • New controls changes nations’ industries, economies • Factories produced military equipment, citizens conserved food, other goods • Sought to control public opinion • Censored newspaper reports about fighting to keep from discouraging public • Created propaganda, information to influence opinions, encourage volunteers • Posters, pamphlets, articles about enemy’s brutal actions War on the Home Front

5. starter activity This was arguably the most successful recruitment poster of the War. It shows Lord Earl Kitchener, the man responsible for getting men to join the army. It uses a clever visual trick. Can you guess what it is?

6. Recruitment • Initial recruitment used posters, leaflets, etc. to build an army quickly • What is the message of this poster? • How would this poster encourage men to join the army?

7. Why did people ‘join up’?

8. Patriotism • Britain joined the War on 4 August 1914 • People encouraged to ‘do your bit for King & country’ • ‘King’s shilling’ • Pals brigades (including villages, football teams, orchestras, old school friends) • Over by Christmas • By December 1914, 1 million men had enlisted What is the artist of who made this poster trying to say?

9. Propaganda • Leaflets & posters • Women were told to encourage sons, husbands & boyfriends to enlist • By January 1916, 2.6 million men had enlisted What do you think the man in the poster is thinking?

10. Recruitment • Initial recruitment used posters, leaflets, etc. to build an army quickly • What is the message of this poster? • How would this poster encourage men to join the army?

11. Recruitment • Women’s organisations tried to boost recruitment • White feathers were given to men as a sign of their “cowardice” • The Mother’s Union urged its members to get their sons to join up

13. Recruitment • Initial recruitment used posters, leaflets, etc. to build an army quickly • What is the message of this poster? • How would this poster encourage men to join the army?

14. Recruitment

29. “Recruiting” by E. A. Mackintosh • ‘Lads, you’re wanted, go and help,’ • On the railway carriage wall • Stuck the poster, and I thought • Of the hands that penned the call. • Fat civilians wishing they • ‘Could go out and fight the Hun.’ • Can’t you see them thanking God • That they’re over forty-one? • Girls with feathers, vulgar songs- • Washy verse on England’s need- • God-and don’t we damned well know • How the message ought to read.

30. “Recruiting” continued • ‘Lads, you’re wanted! Over there,’ • Shiver in the morning dew, • More poor devils like yourselves • Waiting to be killed by you. • Go and help to swell the names • In the casualty lists. • Help to make a column’s stuff • For the blasted journalists. • Help to keep them nice and safe • From the wicked German foe. • Don’t let him come over here! • Lads, you’re wanted-out you go.’

31. “Recruiting” continued • There’s a better word than that, • Lads, and can’t you hear it come • From a million men that call • You to share their martyrdom. • Leave the harlots still to sing • Comic songs about the Hun, • Leave the fat old men to say • Now we’ve got them on the run. • Better twenty honest years • Than their dull three score and ten. • Lads, you’re wanted. Come and learn • To live and die with honest men.

32. “Recruiting” continued • You shall learn what men can do • If you will but pay the price, • Learn the gaiety and strength • In the gallant sacrifice. • Take your risk of life and death, • Underneath the open sky. • Live clean or go out quick- • Lads, you’re wanted. Come and die. • What aspects of Home Front changes are addressed in this poem? • What is the overall message?

33. While it is true that the start of World War One was greeted with vast amounts of patriotism throughout Europe and the Empire, there were those who were pacifists and refused to have anything to do with the war. The pacifists were few in number (the UK had about 16,000 in total during the war) and would have had no impact on the number of fighting men Britain had in the lead up to conscription. • However, despite their lack of numbers, the military and War Office came down on pacifists were great energy.   • In the autumn of 1914, so many men volunteered for the British Army, that the few pacifists in society were all but overlooked. • As the war would be over by Christmas 1914, most men were more concerned about missing out as opposed to thinking about those who did not want to fight. • Religion was the main reason why men did not want to join up. Many such as Bert Brocklesby were very religious. • On the day war was declared he said: “God has not put me on this Earth to go destroying His children. • Therefore, he refused to have anything to do with the military and the war. • Initially, the most these men could expect were white feathers being given to them and petty verbal abuse in the street. • However, when it became clear that the war would not be over by Xmas 1914, the stance taken on pacifists became more aggressive. • As the number of British casualties greatly increased from 1915 to 1916, it got worse. In public, known pacifists ran the risk of being assaulted and thrown in jail for the most trivial of reasons.

34. Conscription • Voluntary recruitment was decreasing, but the demand for troops was increasing • Voluntary recruitment didn’t share the burden between all parts of society • Conscription introduced in 1916 • All men aged 18-40 had to register • They could be called up to fight at any time

35. Conscription • The British army had consisted of all volunteers. • As hundreds of thousands of men were killed or wounded, more volunteers were needed. • Due to this the height limit was reduced. • And the upper age limit increased. • But the flow of volunteers was not enough. • In January 1916, the Military Service Act was passed. • It required all unmarried men between 18 and 41, except those in exempted occupations to serve. • On April 26, 1916, the Act was extended to include married men between the ages of 18 and 41 as well. • The law went through several changes before the war's end with the age limit eventually being raised to 51.

36. Conscription • It has been argued that enforced enlistment was more to do with employment circumstances, familial circumstances, physical fitness, skills and aptitudes and, to a much lesser extent religious and political grounds. • This was vetted very closely by the Tribunals who had to assess a man's fitness for military service and weigh that against his usefulness to the domestic economy. • As one historian has pointed out: "a farm lad, aged 19, might have escaped call-up in one part of the country whereas a 40-year old brickie from another part may have been drafted." • Conscription caused real hardships for the British people. • For example, in November 1917 a widow asked Croydon Military Tribunal to let her keep her eleventh son, to look after her. • The other ten were all serving in the British armed forces. • A man from Barking asked for his ninth son to be exempted as his eight other sons were already in the British Army. • The man's son was given three months exemption.

37. Conscription • Who took practiced conscription during the time of World War I? • Europe • When exactly did conscription occur during this time? • Between 1890 and 1914 • What was conscription? • Conscription was a military draft which made European armies double in size. • Why did countries choose to practice conscription? • European countries felt the need to become more powerful because of tensions tightening between them. • What was the significance of conscription during this time? • Conscription, which is an act of militarism, cause Military leaders to receive more power and gave countries the means to go to war.

38. Conscription • Casualties increased • News returned to Britain of horrors of trenches • Conscription introduced for all men between ages of 18 and 41 • Conscientious objectors (conshies) given white feathers • By 1918 2.5 million extra men had been enlisted Why did millions of men feel ‘obliged’ to fight in the War?

39. King George V, statement issued on 25th May 1916. • To enable our country to organise more effectively its military resources in the present great struggle for the cause of civilisation, I have, acting on the advice of my Ministers, deemed it necessary to enrol every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-one. • I desire to take this opportunity of expressing to my people my recognition and appreciation of the splendid patriotism and self-sacrifice which they have displayed in raising by voluntary enlistment since the commencement of the War, no less than 5,041,000 men, an effort far surpassing that of any other nation in similar circumstances recorded in history, and one which will be a lasting source of pride to future generations. I am confident that the magnificent spirit which has hitherto sustained my people through the trials of this terrible war will inspire them to endure the additional sacrifice now imposed upon them, and that it will, with God's help, lead us and our Allies to a victory which shall achieve the liberation of Europe.

40. The No-Conscription Fellowship was founded as early as 1914 and it produced the following leaflet : • Repeal the Act Fellow citizens: • Conscription is now law in this country of free traditions. Our hard-won liberties have been violated. Conscription means the desecration of principles that we have long held dear; it involves the subordination of civil liberties to military dictation; it imperils the freedom of individual conscience and establishes in our midst that militarism which menaces all social graces and divides the peoples of all nations. • We re-affirm our determined resistance to all that is established by the Act. We cannot assist in warfare. War, which to us is wrong. War, which the peoples do not seek, will only be made impossible when men, who so believe, remain steadfast to their convictions. Conscience, it is true, has been recognised in the Act, but it has been placed at the mercy of tribunals. We are prepared to answer for our faith before any tribunal, but we cannot accept any exemption that would compel those who hate war to kill by proxy or set them to tasks which would help in the furtherance of war. • We strongly condemn the monstrous assumption by Parliament that a man is deemed to be bound by an oath that he has never taken and forced under an authority he will never acknowledge to perform acts which outrage his deepest convictions. • It is true that the present act applies only to a small section of the community, but a great tradition has been sacrificed. Already there is a clamour for an extension of the act. Admit the principle, and who can stay the march of militarism? • Repeal the Act. That is your only safeguard. • If this be not done, militarism will fasten its iron grip upon our national life and institutions. There will be imposed upon us the very system which statesmen affirm that they set out to overthrow. • What shall it profit the nation if it shall win the war and lose its own soul?

41. What Happened to The No-Conscription Fellowship? • The No-Conscription Fellowship was an organisation made up by members of the Socialist Independent Labour Party and the Quakers. • The men who signed the above leaflet were Clifford Allen, Edward Grubb, A Fenner Brockway, W J Chamberlain, W H Ayles, Morgan Jones, A Barratt Brown, John Fletcher, C H Norman and Rev. Leyton Richards. • All charged under the Defence of the Realm Act. • They were all fined; those who decided not to pay the fine were sent to prison.  

42. Conscientious Objectors • The Military Service Act that introduced conscription put many who opposed the war into a position of direct personal conflict with the British Government. • Exemption was allowed on grounds of conscience, and unsympathetic and biased trials were set up to assess those who claimed conscience as a reason for not fighting. • David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, promised the conscientious objectors a ‘rough time.’ • However, such was the decline in enthusiasm for the war, there were 750,000 claims for conscience exemption. • One was told that he: “was only fit to be on the point of a German bayonet.” • Of these tribunals, only 16,500 of the 750,000 were accepted as Conscientious Objectors. • The great majority of these men accepted some form of alternative service, working in hospitals, factories, mines, etc… • However, over 1000 refused all forms of war service. • These men were imprisoned, and most were brutally treated, resulting in physical and mental abuse. • 70 of these men dies in prison.

43. Herbert Morrison, An Autobiography (1960) A large anti-conscription conference was held at the Ethical Society's Hall near Liverpool Street Station, London. There were determined but unsuccessful efforts to break it up. Toughs who had obviously been encouraged to be present fiercely attacked us as we emerged, with the City police doing little or nothing to stop them. • When conscription came into force in 1917 I duly received my call-up notice. Of course, there was no question of my being fit for military service because of my blindness in one eye and it would, I suppose, have been easy to pretend that I wanted to put on uniform and then allow the medical officers to turn me down, but I was intent on sticking to my principles. In due course I was ordered to report before the Conscientious Objectors Tribunal for Wandsworth. Exemption could be absolute; conditional on taking up some form of national service; or refused on the grounds that the applicant had failed to prove the genuine nature of his objection. • There are many stories of the ruthless and sometimes insulting behaviour of the members of these tribunals in the First World War when the standard question to an absolutist (as men who were not willing to help the military machine directly or indirectly were called) was, "What would you do if you came upon a German attempting to rape your sister?". However, my inquisitors were both courteous and fair.

45. 'The Ideal' - one of many cartoon produced by COs (1917).This and several other were also produced and widelydistributed as postcard        

46. In The Daily Express on July 4, 1916, Lieutenant Colonel Reginald Brooke, Commander of the Military Detention Barracks for the C.O.s bragged about how he broke them: • “Some of the early batches, when nothing could be done with them, were taken singly and run across the yard to special rooms---airy enough, but from which they could see nothing. They were fed on bread and water and some of them presently came round. I had them placed in special rooms, nude, but with their full army kit on the floor for them to put on as soon as they were so minded. There were no blankets or substitutes for clothing left in the rooms which were quite bare. Several of the men held out naked for several hours, but they gradually accepted the inevitable. Forty of the conscientious objectors who passed through my hands are now quite willing soldiers.”

48. Conscription and Conscientious Objectors • Conscientious objectors opposed the war for political or religious reasons • They refused to fight, and were imprisoned – or executed – for doing so • Others helped the war effort, but not through military action • Field hospitals • Stretched bearers

50. The Conchies Conscientious objectors were people who simply did not want to fight in World War 1. Conscientious objectors became known as 'conchies' or C.O's They were a sign that not everybody was as enthusiastic about the war as the government would have liked.