German 1914 1918
Nov/100
Was WW1 futile?
Tell me about the opinion of the generation who fought in WW1.
Did they really think it was futile, or did they think there was still honour in fighting?
If the people of 1914-1918 actually thought the war was pointless, why did they continue to fight for so long? Why did some Germans feel that they had been "stabbed in the back"?
Doesn't this suggest that many people at the time believed that fighting in the Great War was justified?
Is it possible that people of today have judged WW1 as futile, whereas people at the time thought that they were fighting a righteous war?
Firstly, as you can observe from the war in Iraq, it is easier to keep a war going to to start one. Few people ask tough questions once a war is under way: there is a natural tendency to work together in a crisis.
Many thinking people were disgusted by World War 1, for a number of reasons. Fighting of privileged kings, who often appeared stupid and undeserving, was questioned. With education and media spreading, many became susceptible to communist ideas that all soldiers were simply being used to support rich capitalists. Professional soldiers and politicians were disgusted by the conditions before them: of tens of thousands dying to move the front line a few hundred feet.
Most especially, everyone was appalled by their inability to affect the situation: until the last few months of the war, it looked like it would last forever.
The Germans sought a ceasefire before the fighting reached Germany: the military leadership knew it was doomed. With all imports blocked, Germany was starving and there was much civil unrest. Authoritarians in Germany felt that the good work of the army had been let down by revolutionaries and 'soft' civilians. The Nazis later exaggerated this for their own propaganda purposes.
In the victorious countries, there was a feeling that the war had been worth it... that they had persevered and won. Many soldiers were disgusted by sentiments such as those in the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon or the novels of Erich Remarque. But with economic difficulties following the war, and with no real material gains compared to the situation before the war, there was a strong sentiment that such a war should never happen again.