For much of the nineteenth century, war still retained an element of glamour in the European imagination. Military service could be portrayed as an adventure, a test of courage and a path to honour. Paintings, newspapers and patriotic literature often presented battles as dramatic clashes between soldiers and their commanders, with cavalry charges, colourful uniforms and heroic acts of individual bravery. This did not mean that nineteenth-century people were unaware of the horrors of war. The Napoleonic Wars had killed hundreds of thousands, whilst conflicts such as the Crimean War and the American Civil War demonstrated just how destructive modern weapons could be. However, the image of the soldier as a heroic figure remained powerful. The First World War would fundamentally challenge that image.
The nineteenth century inherited much of its image of warfare from an earlier age. Battles were often depicted as grand spectacles in which generals directed armies from horseback whilst soldiers demonstrated courage and discipline on the battlefield. The Napoleonic Wars had helped create this mythology. Napoleon Bonaparte became one of the most celebrated military figures in European history, whilst paintings of battles emphasised movement, colour and heroic leadership. Military uniforms themselves were often deliberately striking, helping commanders distinguish units and contributing to the ceremonial character of armies. Nationalism strengthened this romantic view. As European nation-states developed, military service increasingly became associated with patriotism and citizenship. Soldiers were portrayed as men willing to sacrifice themselves for their country, whilst military victories became symbols of national greatness. By the late nineteenth century, this image could still be seen in popular culture. Young men were encouraged to view military service as an opportunity for adventure, friendship and honour. Yet warfare was already changing.
The technology of warfare was developing much faster than the romantic image surrounding it. The invention and improvement of the machine gun, modern artillery, smokeless powder, rapid-fire rifles and increasingly accurate ammunition meant that crossing an open battlefield was becoming extraordinarily dangerous. The American Civil War had already demonstrated some of these dangers. Rifled muskets increased the range and accuracy of infantry fire, whilst railways and telegraphs allowed armies to mobilise and coordinate on an unprecedented scale. The Crimean War had also demonstrated the consequences of industrial-age logistics and weaponry. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 provided another warning. Modern artillery and mass armies could produce enormous casualties in a relatively short period of time.
Yet military thinking did not always keep pace with technological change. Many European armies continued to place considerable emphasis on offensive spirit, discipline and morale. The belief that determined soldiers could overcome defensive positions remained powerful. When the First World War began in 1914, millions of men marched to war believing that the conflict would be relatively short. Few understood what industrial warfare was about to become.
The first trenches of the First World War were relatively simple defensive positions. Soldiers dug into the ground for protection from enemy fire, often creating little more than elongated foxholes. As the war on the Western Front settled into stalemate, however, these temporary positions developed into enormous defensive systems. A typical trench system was not simply one trench facing another. There could be several lines of trenches, connected by communication trenches and supported by dugouts, machine-gun positions, artillery batteries, supply areas, command posts and medical facilities. Reserve units could be stationed behind the front line, ready to reinforce troops during an attack. The front itself stretched for hundreds of miles from the Belgian coast to the Swiss frontier. What had initially been expected to be a war of movement had become a war in which armies could remain within the same general positions for months or even years.
Life in the trenches was rarely glamorous. Rain could turn the ground into mud, whilst poor drainage created an environment in which soldiers were constantly wet and cold. One of the most notorious consequences was trench foot, a condition caused by prolonged exposure to cold and damp conditions which could result in severe swelling, tissue damage and, in extreme cases, amputation. Rats became common around trench systems, attracted by food waste and the bodies of dead soldiers. Lice spread rapidly and contributed to the misery of daily life. Soldiers were also constantly exposed to the possibility of death. Artillery shells could strike without warning. Snipers targeted exposed soldiers. Machine guns could sweep exposed areas of the battlefield, whilst mines and grenades created additional dangers. Even when there was no major attack, the psychological pressure could be enormous. Soldiers could spend days or weeks waiting for an enemy bombardment or attack, knowing that they might be ordered over the parapet at any moment.
Between opposing trench systems was the area that became known as No Man’s Land. It was rarely the completely empty space suggested by the name. It was often covered in shell craters, barbed wire, broken equipment, destroyed trees and the remains of buildings. In some sectors, the landscape had been so heavily bombarded that it bore little resemblance to the countryside that had existed before the war. Crossing it was extraordinarily dangerous.
A typical attack might begin with an artillery bombardment intended to destroy enemy positions, cut barbed wire and suppress defending troops. Once the barrage lifted or moved forward, infantry would leave their trenches and attempt to cross No Man’s Land. Defenders could respond with machine-gun and rifle fire, artillery and grenades. The resulting casualties could be enormous. However, the popular image of commanders simply ordering soldiers to walk slowly in straight lines into machine-gun fire is misleading. Tactics evolved throughout the war. Armies experimented with creeping barrages, infiltration tactics, improved communications, grenades, mortars, tanks and coordinated infantry-artillery attacks. The problem was that military technology was developing so quickly that armies were constantly trying to adapt to it.
The quality of trenches varied enormously depending on the location, the soil, the length of time a position had been occupied and the resources available. German forces generally had an advantage in the construction of defensive positions, particularly in sectors where they had time to establish permanent fortifications. Their trenches were often deeper and more elaborate, with substantial dugouts beneath the ground. Some German dugouts could contain sleeping quarters, command rooms, medical facilities and storage areas. Certain positions were remarkably sophisticated by the standards of the battlefield. Allied trenches varied considerably. British and French forces also constructed extensive defensive systems, and their positions became increasingly sophisticated as the war continued. The difference was partly a consequence of strategy. After the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line in 1917, German forces deliberately constructed deeply fortified defensive positions designed to absorb artillery bombardments and resist infantry attacks. The idea that British trenches were universally shallow while German trenches were universally deep therefore oversimplifies the reality. Conditions varied substantially across the Western Front.
Although machine guns became one of the defining symbols of trench warfare, artillery was responsible for the majority of battlefield casualties. Artillery could destroy trenches, bury soldiers alive and turn entire landscapes into craters. Soldiers could be exposed to bombardments lasting hours or even days. The psychological consequences could be devastating. Men subjected to prolonged bombardment sometimes experienced uncontrollable shaking, paralysis, blindness, nightmares, panic and emotional collapse. During the war this was often called shell shock. At first, many military authorities believed that men suffering from shell shock were cowards or were attempting to avoid combat. As the scale of the problem became apparent, however, medical understanding gradually changed.
What we now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not exactly synonymous with shell shock, and historians and psychologists debate how closely the two conditions correspond. Nevertheless, the experience of shell shock demonstrated something that the romantic image of warfare had largely ignored: modern warfare could inflict psychological injuries as profound as its physical ones.
In 1915, another terrifying weapon appeared on the Western Front. Germany used chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. The gas was released from cylinders and carried towards Allied positions by the wind. The attack demonstrated the terrifying potential of chemical warfare. Chlorine damaged the lungs and could cause suffocation. Other chemical agents, including phosgene and mustard gas, were introduced later. Chemical weapons had been restricted by international agreements before the war, including the 1899 Hague Declaration concerning the use of projectiles intended to diffuse asphyxiating or deleterious gases. The First World War nevertheless saw their widespread use by both sides. Gas did not become the dominant killer of the war – the vast majority of casualties were still caused by conventional weapons – but it became one of its most feared symbols. Protective equipment also evolved. Soldiers were issued increasingly effective gas masks, and armies developed warning systems and procedures for responding to attacks. The image of soldiers choking beneath clouds of poisonous gas became another powerful reminder that warfare had entered a new technological age.
The greatest shock of trench warfare was perhaps not any individual weapon, but its duration. The soldiers who went to war in 1914 had often expected a short conflict. Instead, the Western Front became a largely static battlefield lasting for more than four years. The Battle of the Somme in 1916 became one of the clearest demonstrations of the scale of industrial warfare. On the first day alone, the British Army suffered tens of thousands of casualties. The offensive ultimately produced enormous losses on both sides for relatively limited territorial gains. Verdun, Passchendaele and numerous other battles produced similar experiences. This did not mean that every attack achieved nothing. Armies learned, adapted and sometimes captured strategically important territory. But the enormous cost of attempting to break through heavily defended positions demonstrated how difficult it was to achieve decisive results against a prepared industrial defence. The battlefield had become a machine in which enormous quantities of ammunition, equipment and human lives could be consumed.
The First World War therefore transformed the popular image of warfare. The cavalry charge remained a powerful symbol of military heroism, but tanks, aircraft, machine guns, heavy artillery and poison gas increasingly defined the battlefield. Individual bravery still mattered, but courage could not protect a soldier from an artillery shell exploding hundreds of metres away. This was perhaps the most important change in the perception of war. The nineteenth-century image of war had often focused on the individual soldier’s courage. The First World War increasingly demonstrated the power of impersonal forces: industrial production, artillery, logistics, communications and mass mobilisation. A soldier could perform an extraordinary act of bravery and still be killed moments later by an artillery barrage whose source he could not even see. Artists and writers increasingly reflected this change. The patriotic literature of the early war years gradually gave way to a much darker cultural memory. Poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon described the mud, exhaustion, fear and destruction of the trenches rather than the glory of battle. Owen’s poetry in particular challenged the idea that dying in war was inherently noble, famously describing the experience of soldiers dying from gas and the suffering of men exposed to industrial warfare. Photography and newspapers also brought the war closer to civilians, although censorship meant that the public did not see the full reality of the front. For millions of families, however, the absence of a son, husband or brother made the cost of war impossible to ignore. The war had not simply changed warfare. It had changed the way Europeans understood it.
The First World War did not completely destroy the romantic image of military service. Heroism, patriotism and sacrifice remained important ideas throughout the twentieth century. Governments continued to use them to encourage recruitment and maintain morale. But the experience of industrialised warfare made it increasingly difficult to portray war simply as an exciting adventure. The trenches became a symbol of something fundamentally different: a war in which ordinary soldiers endured prolonged fear, disease, exhaustion and bombardment, often for objectives they could barely understand from the front line. The transformation was not instantaneous, nor was it entirely caused by the trenches. The nineteenth century had already seen devastating industrial wars, and people had long understood that warfare could be brutal. What the First World War did was bring the consequences of modern technology, mass armies and industrial production together on an unprecedented scale. By 1918, the old image of the glorious battlefield had been profoundly damaged. War could still be presented as heroic. But it could no longer so easily be presented as glamorous. The trenches had become one of the defining symbols of the twentieth century: a reminder that modern warfare was no longer primarily a contest between individual warriors seeking glory, but an industrial struggle capable of consuming entire generations.