The Great War in Numbers

By the beginning of 1915 the horrific killing power of machine guns and artillery had taught all sides that the only way to survive was to find shelter and dig in. Nowhere was this illustrated more dramatically than at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915, where a handful of German soldiers with machine guns held off a British force of 9,000 men. Eventually 25,000 miles of trenches would cut across Europe. With conventional weapons unable to provide a breakthrough, new technologies took the war into the sky and under the sea. Britain started the war with just 193 planes, but by the end British factories were producing over 30,000 new aircraft a year. Germany responded to the British naval blockade by unleashing their U-boats on allied shipping, but the sinking of the liner Lusitania with the loss of 1197 lives, 128 of them Americans, came close to bringing the US into the war.

The Great War also had an impact on those on the Home Front, where the demands of modern warfare transformed the lives of the young and the old, women and children. One of the biggest changes was experienced by women across Europe and North America, Australia and New Zealand. Before 1914 most jobs were virtually closed to women. The war would change that. Meanwhile governments intervened in every area of daily life: in Britain the Defence of the Realm Act banned bonfires and whistling for taxis, carrying cameras and feeding the birds. Russia would even go as far as banning vodka. And in America the Sedition Act outlawed disloyal language, threatening peoples right to criticise the government. Propaganda and censorship became a feature of daily life as governments attempted to hide the awful truth of the war from those on the Home Front. Censorship also slowed down the postal service but soon people had greater worries than delays to the post.

Episode six tells how the numbers will favoured one side, then the other in 1918. When the Bolsheviks took Russia out of the war, millions of German and Austro-Hungarian troops were freed up to attack Britain and Belgium, France and Italy. But across the Atlantic, America was training an army of two-million men. The German commanders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, knew that if they didnt achieve victory in 1918, they faced defeat in 1919. In 100 days what had looked like a German victory was turned into defeat, and Germanys politicians were forced to ask for an armistice. The blood-letting lasted until the very last minute. Eleven-thousand men were killed or injured on 11th November 1918, the last day of the war, but the peace settlement demanded by the victorious Allies did not bring peace. The war to end all wars was over, but the anger and hatred it had generated found new outlets, and the rise of fascism and communism soon plunged Europe into war again in the decades to come.