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The Great War: 100 Years Ago


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The Lost Generation

July 9th, 2014

Many of the youth who came of age and served in the First World War were traumatized by their experiences.  While short term mental problems from direct action in the trenches was quickly recognized by scholars and given the name shell shock, another longer term psychological effect, never clearly studied by scholars but recognized by many, was called by authors such as Gertrude Stein "the lost generation," or a generation whose entire lives were negatively effected by their experiences with war.  The effect of the war was often denied by people of that generation, but 100 years later it may be easier to see.  

JRR Tolkien, who served as an officer in WW1, claimed that the war had little of no effect on his writing, but the effect can be plainly seen in the words said by his main character in the book series The Lord of the Rings.  For example Frodo was speaking to his loyal servant and fellow adventurer Samwise (who had a relationship similar to that of a British batman and officer) when he made this statement near the end of Return of the King:

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold."

He would explain that his efforts during the ring war were for civilization and the good of his home, but had resulted in his never being able to enjoy the fruits of the victory:

“We set out to save the Shire, Sam and it has been saved - but not for me.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the key philosphers of the twentieth century, was another example of a person profoundly effected by his service in the war.  Fighting for the Austria-Hunagarian army, he was decorated for his service, but he returned a far different person than when he left.  Bertrand Russell, a fellow scholar and admirer, would comment that Wittgenstien had returned from the war darker, with a more spiritual and fatalistic view of the world.  The profound effect the war had on the Lost Generation can be seen in fact by the effects it had on the lives of people who never served in the war.  Bertrand Russell himself was changed profoudly by the experiences of being arrested for speaking out against the conflict.

One aspect of the Lost Generation is the sense by the people living in it that their numbers and possibilities had been robbed of potential.  With so many dead, the survivors returned home to a feeling of fatalism.  The Edwardian confidence was replaced by a hectic over reaction to peace that would create the seeds of the next war.  Adolph Hitler, traumatized and depressed from his service in the trenches and Germany's loss, sought any way to justify the horror he went through, eventually becoming political and leading the German lost generation into the irrational rise of National Socialism.  Imperial Russia even before the end of the war was shattered by the experiences of its own yooung men and women at the front, resulting in the rise of radical communism that would plague Russian thinking until this day.


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"Over the Top" by Arthur Guy Empey

July 7th, 2014

Much of the literature from the war shows the tragedy of life in the trenches, from the poems of Siegfried Sassoon to the paintings of Claggett Wilson.  The book Over the Top by Arthur Guy Empey (published in 1917 by G. P. Putnam's Sons) is different in that it retains an overall positive tone while still successfully describing the horrors of trench warfare.

Empey was a larger-than-life figure who served in the U.S.Cavalry, the Pennsylvania National Guard, and the British Army from 1915.  He served in Europe with the 56th (London) Infantry Division and was severly wounded at the front.

When Empey returned to the United States he wrote the first person account of his own service in Europe called Over the Top, which became an instant best seller.  The book is a good read for understanding life in the trenches, and although it depends on a certian amount of propaganda that is not normal for first person accounts, it is a clean and easy to understand work.


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What made the Great War so deadly?

July 7th, 2014

Link: http://www.virdea.net/french/infantry-tactics.html

This article tries to explain some of why the Great War was so deadly.  While some horrors like poison gas were relatively new, the main cause of death on the battlefield was the same explosive and bullets as had been in use since 1650, only new technology had rapidly made them more deadly.


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Guide to Historians: What is a Division?

July 7th, 2014

One issue for civilians such as myself studying the Great War is understanding the meaning of military terms found in the original literature of the era.  One of the most important terms for tracking the movement of armies across Europe is the idea of a division.

Europe, through much of its history, fought wars with large masses of men that were not divided into tactical units.  This was because there was simply not enough people skilled in leadership and little formal training for soldiers through much of the middle ages.  Starting though with the French reforms of Jean Martinet, units became increasingly organized around the ideal of a maneuver team (a modern term).  Napoleon himself took this concept and defined it in practical terms with the invention of the division and the corps as tactical teams.  The division, the the Napoleonic understand, was an indivisible unit of maneuver  capable of providing its own logistics in the field for the period of a standard battle.  A corps was a unit that could have one or more divisions assigned to it as an intermediate step to army command, while the older term regiment stood for a unit that trained to use the same weapon system in combat (at that time a rifle).  

In the Great War a division started out with 4 infantry regiments, a single artillery regiment, and other units such as engineers and cavalry attached as needed.  For example, the 2nd French Infantry Division was made up in August 1914 of the 8th, 33rd, 73rd, and 100th Infantry regiments, the 27th Countryside Artillery Regiment, the 6th Squadron of the 6th Chasseur Regiment, and two companies of engineers.   Depending on the presence of reserve companies and attached subordinate units, regiments had around 4,000 soldiers at the start of the great war, giving the French division of 1914 as many as 20,000 men.

As the war went on the increasing firepower available to soldiers and the high casualty rate for infantry caused regiments on the western front to slim down.  In November 1916 most French divisions lost 2 of their regiments to allow formation of new divisions, while regimental manpower levels could fall to 2,500 soldiers each.  This meant a division in the line at the western front could fall to as small as 8,000 men.  The trade off was that the newly formed divisions had the same amount of artillery and machine guns as the older divisions, allowing for more firepower available to fewer men.  A corps by 1916 with two divisions would be smaller than a division was before the war.

A noted difference for this practice was the Americans, who joined the war in 1917.  American divisions entered France with 4 complete regiments in two brigades, an oversized artillery compliment of 4 field artillery units, a regimental sized machine gun compliment, and a full-sized support train that reduced the need to task infantry to anything other than fighting.  In practice, the size of American divisions caused problems for the French and Germans, as emotionally by 1917 a division had become a relatively small fighting unit, while American divisions had more firepower than a French or German Corps.

For historians reading maps, an infantry unit is symbolized by a rectangle with an X in it.  Above the rectangle is a set of letters that indicate its size.

 

Symbols used to represent units

I - Company

II - Battalion

III - Regiment

X - Brigade

XX - Division

XXX - Corps

XXXX - Army



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The French Army, 1914

July 7th, 2014

The French Army of 1914 was a large structure consisting of 5 field armies (numbered 1-5) made up of 21 field corps (including 1 corps of colonial soldiers numbered I to XXI).  A corps was usually 2 divisions, while an army would add 2-3 reserve divisions that could be attached to corps when needed.  

The French army was one of the largest professional military forces in the world, and until 1910, one of the most technologically impressive.  She was the first army to adopt smokeless power firearms (1888), and had one of the first recoil buffer artillery pieces (the famous French 75mm).  Unfortunately it suffered under poor leadership in the 1910s and adopted an outmoded theory of combat known as Élan vital, a school of thought taken from the philosopher Henri Bergson in his 1907 book Creative Evolution.  As a result it saw the human wave charge as the key to any attack when, in an age of machine guns, technology and firepower were essential ingredients in combat.

The French army of 1914 was lead by a mediocre general, Joseph Joffre, who was (along with the strategic thinker Foch) enamored with the potential for offensive spirit to overcome modern weapons.  Joffre's weak points were not quickly understood as extensive censorship was applied to the front line in the beginning days of the war, and the general staff created a myth after the battle of the Marne that Joffre was the architect of a great victory with stunning losses for the Germans that has become embedded in history books to this day.

Despite its failures the French Army of 1914 showed one characteristic that would be impressive in later years, the ability to sustain damage and still maintain cohesion.  The battle of the Marne may not have been a great victory that saved France, but it was a demonstration that the French had staying power and that the German hopes that a knockout blow followed by occupation of the industrial north would lead to a French negotiated surrender allowing them to turn east where there was more land and resources to be had was a pipe dream.  The French army, although hard pressed, never disintegrated, and with the formation of the 6th Army, was able to hold the far left with British help and dig in for a long war.