The Great War in Imagination and Fact

In repeating the dictum that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, commentators on the present are not presumably thinking about television, but it is the repeats on the latter that are proving especially potent in Britain at present, and will soon spread their effects more widely. In its second season, Downton Abbey, an extremely successful soap set in a fictional stately home, has entered the First World War. As the first season won four Emmys in 2011, it can be assumed that its successor will also be successful outside Britain.

Downton Abbey is the sole major British soap set in the past, and the first season offered a mixture of nostalgia, catharsis, and the idea of a more ordered (although still troubled) past. It is this world that is blasted apart by the war, with the men called away to fight in horrible circumstances, the country house converted into a convalescent home for casualties, and attitudes and hierarchies transformed.

The series contributes to the powerful grasp that the war has over the British imagination. Indeed, at times it appears as if the British historical consciousness, maybe national identity itself, is bound up with two years: 1916 and the Battle of the Somme, notably the first day, July 1, which with 57,470 casualties was the bloodiest day in British military history, and 1940, the year of both the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

These memories are vitally important as a key element of the bond between generations that gives meaning both to nationhood and to time passing, but they can also be misleading. This is particularly the case with the First World War, which has served as a powerful testimony for anti-war advocates and indeed for critics of the old order. It has proved all too difficult for most commentators to distinguish between the horrors of suffering and loss (for example, the French corpses "glistening and rotting in the sun and smelling nauseous and vile" noted by Private Stanley Green in his grim memoirs housed at the London Metropolitan Archives) and the fact that the conflict was not a mindless slaughter.1 Indeed, the frequent failure to distinguish between the two means that the war can claim to be the most misunderstood major conflict in history.

The horror of what appeared to be military futility in the First World War has distracted attention from the important and worthwhile issues at stake. In the face of the German invasion of Belgium, and later of the German unwillingness to consider peace unless they made significant territorial gains, this was a war fought by the British on behalf of legal and civilized international conduct. These were themes understood at the time and in the 1920s, but largely lost sight of from the 1930s, as the impact of the war lessened and as the new crisis with Germany came to the fore.

The heavy casualties of the First World War reflected not so much the futility of war but rather the determination of the world's leading industrial powers to continue hostilities almost at any cost. More specifically, casualties were high because of the strength of counter tactics: weapons technology gave the defense an advantage. Yet it would be unwise to present the inability to end the war rapidly as a consequence of tactical stasis. The stalemate of the Western Front was due to a combination of factors. The firepower of the prewar armies was not understood in 1914, and the consequences of escalating that firepower as happened during 1915 and 1916 were not anticipated either. Tactics of maneuver and of attack did not initially take into account the effects of massed artillery or modern rifles.

But the stalemate was not stasis since tactics and munitions continually evolved. This process led not only to a number of expedients, but also to a rethinking of combined-arms operations. The emphasis on strong firepower led to technological innovations, particularly with regard to gas, aircraft, and tanks. The necessary coordination in time and space put a premium on command skills and practices, both of which advanced...