First World War

First World War. In August 1914 Britain ostensibly went to war against Germany because of the latter's unprovoked invasion of Belgium. In reality Britain fought the First World War to prevent Germany dominating Europe and, with the help of her Austrian and Turkish allies, threatening the British empire in Asia and Africa. Though from the outset British policy-makers recognized that co-operation with their Russian and French allies would be essential if they were to win the war, they were determined to give that co-operation strictly on their own terms, rendering only enough assistance to their allies to prevent them from collapsing. The men who made British policy during the war had reached maturity and formed their vision of the world in the late 1870s and early 1880s. They had learned to see Russia and France as Britain's most bitter imperial competitors and they did not forget that fact even after the German threat emerged in the decade before 1914. Their misgivings concerning their allies' ambitions played a major role in determining British war aims. They wanted a peace settlement which would reduce Germany's power and also ensure that neither Russia nor France could tilt the European balance against Britain or menace Britain's imperial possessions.

In 1914 the Asquith government believed that the war would reach its climax in 1917. Britain could achieve her objectives at least cost by allowing her allies to carry the weight of the continental land war with only token British assistance. Meanwhile the Royal Navy would undermine the German economy by blockade and Britain would offer financial help to her allies. Kitchener formed the New Armies in the belief that by the end of 1916 the armies of the other belligerents would be exhausted. His troops would be unbloodied and in 1917 Britain could intervene decisively in land war, crush Germany and her allies, Turkey, Austria-Hungary, and (after September 1915) Bulgaria, and impose Britain's peace terms on everyone.

This policy collapsed because France and Russia were not willing to fight for three years without British military support. By late 1915 the government had reluctantly accepted that if they failed to give their allies large-scale support on the continent, France and Russia might prefer to make a negotiated peace. But it was equally obvious that the cost of increasing Britain's commitment to the continental land war might be self-defeating. Some argued that if the New Armies were committed to a major allied offensive in France in 1916, losses could only be made good by conscription. But if more men were taken away from the civilian economy, Britain would be bankrupt before the enemy sued for peace. The British offensive on the Somme in 1916 was an enormous gamble. The government was wagering that the Entente could win the war before Britain went bankrupt.

The attack failed, for although both the British and German armies suffered enormously, the Germans had no intention of asking for peace terms. Instead they tried to starve Britain into submission by launching a campaign of unrestricted U-boat warfare against British shipping. This was the strategic situation which Lloyd George inherited when he became prime minister in December 1916. His aims were the same as Asquith's, but he was more aware than Asquith that he would have to work hard to sustain popular support for the war, for war-weariness was now rife in Britain. The armed forces were a serious drain on the economy, and nothing was more likely to undermine support for the war than shortages of food, fuel, and housing, especially if such shortages gave rise to the corrosive belief that ‘profiteers’ were making unfair gains from the war while the rest of the population suffered. But morale depended upon more than adequate supplies of food and fuel. Lloyd George knew that the people had to be convinced that their sacrifices were reaping tangible victories, and if they could not be won on the western front, they had to be gained elsewhere. One reason why he supported offensives at Salonika in Greece, in Palestine, and in northern Italy was his belief that a victory gained on one of those fronts would provide a much-needed stimulus to British morale.

The new government also knew that victory could only be achieved in co-operation with its allies. But in the spring of 1917 the pillars upon which British strategy rested began to crumble. In March 1917 the British greeted the first Russian Revolution with cautious enthusiasm, hoping that Russia would follow the same path as France in 1794; from the ruins of the tsarist regime would emerge a new military colossus. But news of the crumbling discipline of the Russian army meant that their hopes soon gave way to the fear that Russia would desert the alliance, and that the Germans would move large numbers of troops to the western front and break the allied economic blockade by gaining access to Russian food and fuel. In the mean time a large part of the French army mutinied, and although most French soldiers were ready to defend their trenches, they would not participate in further futile offensives. At sea German U-boats were sinking so many merchant ships that Britain was close to starvation. The only cause for optimism in the Entente camp was that in April 1917 the USA declared war on Germany. But any hope that the Americans would soon be able to throw their weight into the land war in Europe was quickly dashed. The USA had a tiny regular army and would not be able to deploy an appreciable force in France before 1918 or even 1919.

The debate about the future of British strategy in the summer of 1917 therefore concerned one question: what should be the new timetable for administering the knock-out blow against Germany? One option was to follow the French example. After the mutinies they had decided to remain on the defensive in the west for the remainder of 1917, and wait for 1918 and the Americans before trying to drive the Germans back across the Rhine. In the meantime the British might, as Lloyd George urged, divert troops to northern Italy. The Italians had entered the war on Britain's side in May 1915. If they could defeat the Austrians, and persuade them to make peace, they would destroy Germany's ambition of establishing an empire stretching from Hamburg, through Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, to Baghdad. The alternative was to permit the commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig, to have his way and mount an offensive in Flanders. If Haig drove the Germans from the Belgian coast he would remove the threat of invasion, inflict a major defeat upon the German army, and take German pressure off France and Russia. Haig believed that he could force the Germans to sue for peace by Christmas 1917. The politicians doubted, but allowed him to try. They expected little military help from the French, but they were afraid that if the British did nothing, France would go the way of the Russians and collapse.

The third battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) in July 1917 was a failure. Haig then launched a second offensive, using massed tanks, at Cambrai, but that also failed. In October Italy suffered a major defeat at Caporetto and in November the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and soon signed an armistice. The arrival of the American army was even slower than the British had anticipated. Lloyd George still believed that the war could be won only after the German army had been defeated on the western front but he also believed that, if the British mounted another large-scale offensive in France in 1918, their army would be exhausted, America would dominate the Entente in 1919, and America, not Britain, would dictate the peace treaty. He therefore decided that Britain must preserve her army and economic staying-power in 1918. The knock-out blow against Germany would be delayed until 1919, when the arrival of the Americans would give the Entente a crushing superiority.

In January 1918, and despite the opposition of his own generals, Lloyd George persuaded Britain's partners to agree to his new timetable for victory in 1919. In 1918 each partner would increase production of artillery, aircraft, and tanks in order to multiply the fire-power of her dwindling military manpower, and Britain would safeguard her own imperial interests in Egypt and India by defeating the Turks in Palestine. The British were not fighting only to re-establish the balance of power in western Europe, for Turkey's entry into the war on the side of Germany in November 1914 had made the First World War an Asiatic as well as a European war. In 1915–16 the British had mounted expeditions against Mesopotamia, Palestine, and at the Dardanelles to protect their Asiatic possessions. The war was a contest for the division of world power. The Germans wanted to replace Britain as a world power by creating a middle European empire. It was a war in which the British assessed victory or defeat by their success or failure in frustrating Germany's ambitions and by their ability to maintain their own security in western Europe and in India and the Middle East.

Lloyd George's timetable for victory in 1919 collapsed because in the spring of 1918 the Germans made their own final attempt to win the war before they became exhausted. Between March and July 1918 the survival of the Entente alliance was in doubt. At one moment the Germans threatened to divide the British army from its French ally. But by June the last German offensive had been stopped, and in July the Entente's armies began a counter-offensive, forcing the Germans back. The way in which the war ended surprised Britain and her allies. As late as August they were still preparing plans to continue fighting into 1919 and even 1920. As late as mid-October Haig did not think that the German army was so badly beaten that the German government would accept the armistice terms which the Entente wanted. When the armistice negotiations began in October the British had to consider several conflicting factors. Should they continue fighting into 1919, to invade Germany and inflict a Carthaginian peace upon the German people? Would such a settlement threaten the future peace of Europe by leaving the French too powerful and by making the Germans vengeful? Were the British people willing to fight for another year? Would the economic and political cost of doing so leave western Europe devastated and dominated by the USA? How could the allies devise armistice terms which would not be so harsh that the Germans would reject them but which would prevent Germany from gaining a breathing space after which it could start fighting again? It was only after weighing these factors they opted for an early peace and the guns fell silent on 11 November 1918, a year earlier than most British policy-makers had anticipated.

David French

Bibliography

Bourne, J. M. , Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (1989);
Turner, J. (ed.), Britain and the First World War (1988);
Wilson, T. , The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War 1914–1918 (Oxford, 1986).