Well, I thought the same as everybody else. Everybody said ‘It’ll be over by Christmas and you’ve got to get out soon, otherwise you won’t see anything’. But I don’t know if it was my opinion, or if everybody was saying it. One certainly changed one’s mind when we found how well-organised Jerry was compared with us for instance.
Bill Haine, a British Soldier in WW1
Despite what many claimed at home, the war was not over by Christmas. Winter was setting in and the fighting had slowed even more than before. Whilst the Christmas Truce of 1914 is seen as a unique one, ceasefires had been occurring all over the Western Front. A “turn a blind eye” attitude was becoming common place, despite orders from command. The harsh winter was also getting to the soldiers. The feeling of the first Christmas away from home was beginning to set in so gifts were sent. Kaiser Wilhelm sent cigars for the officers and pipes for the ranks while Princess Mary of Harewood sent out cigarettes, sweets and cards.
On Christmas Eve, the rain that had been flooding trenches for weeks had finally stopped, and the ice froze the floor of the trenches over, reducing the risk of trench foot significantly. Soon, snow fell upon No Mans Land and the gun fire slowly but surely dwindled into silence. Filled with merriment and joy, the German’s began to sing Silent Night in their trenches. The British officers, hearing this, believed it to be a challenge and began singing their own carols back at the Germans. However, what began as a competition eventually turned into a harmonisation of English and German voices. Many officers met by the wire, agreeing not to exchange gunfire the next day. However, such friendliness was not shared with the French or Belgian troops, as they were under occupation by the Germans at the time. However, they did agree to stop shooting in order to bury their dead.
Christmas Day came. Many British soldiers looked over the parapet to see German Soldiers standing upright in No Mans Land. The two sides got out and buried their dead. The two sides found they shared a communal experience, of having had their friends die and being sick of the war. Extra gifts given to them by their wives and families were exchanged. One notable exchange was between Captain Edward Hulse of the Scots Guard and Lieutenant Thomas of the 15th Westphalians. Thomas gave Hulse a Victoria Cross and a series of letters belonging to an officer who had been killed in a German trench in a previous attack, hoping to have them returned to his family. Touched by his empathy, Hulse gave Thomas his scarf he had received the night prior. Not having anything to give back, Thomas ordered a German troop to find the gloves given to him by his family in order to give them to Hulse. Unfortunately, Hulse ended up being killed in action the following April at the Battle of Neuve-Chappelle while trying to help his commanding officer. Thomas’ fate remains unknown
German and British troops playing football together on the battlefield
The most famous part of this truce were the football matches played between the two sides. Both sides brought out their own footballs, playing kick-about between the two trenches. However, not all was done with best intentions. This time of peace was used to repair dugouts and spy on the enemy. Some were cautious, with incidents of people spotting daggers being drawn and British soldiers not wanting to smoke German cigarettes for fear of poisoning.
Eventually, high command stepped in, fearing that the war would not go on if their troops knew their enemy as people. For some, the armistice was swift and done with by Boxing Day. Others carried on, pushing until New Years Eve. German command dispatched snipers whilst the French ordered artillery barrages. For high command, they believed the war machine had to go on and all human connection must be stamped out. There was never another ceasefire like this, not just in this war but any war since then.
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.
A notoriously glorified painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps during the War of the Second Coalition
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.
A painting of the declaration of the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War
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.
An image of early trenches on the Western Front
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.
An image of No Man’s Land
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.
An image often used to demonstrate shell shock
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.
An image of German Soldiers releasing some chemical gas
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.
Stormtroopers Advance Under a Gas Attack, an anti-war piece of art by Otto Dix
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.
Following Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia, Europe’s intricate alliance system rapidly transformed a regional conflict into a continental one. Russia began mobilising its vast army on 30 July 1914 in support of Serbia. Germany, honouring its alliance with Austria-Hungary, viewed Russian mobilisation as an act of war and issued an ultimatum demanding that it cease. When the ultimatum expired, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August. Two days later it declared war on Russia’s ally, France.
A newspaper announcing the outbreak of war
For German military planners, this was the nightmare they had long feared: a two-front war. France lay to the west, Russia to the east. Fighting both simultaneously would stretch Germany’s resources to breaking point. Although Russia possessed an enormous army, its mobilisation was expected to take several weeks because of its vast territory and comparatively underdeveloped railway network. Germany therefore believed it had a short window of opportunity to defeat France before turning its full attention eastward.
The strategy had been devised almost a decade earlier by Field Marshal Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff until 1906. Schlieffen argued that France’s eastern frontier was protected by an extensive chain of modern fortresses stretching from Switzerland to Luxembourg. A direct assault would likely become bogged down in costly siege warfare. Instead, he proposed an enormous sweeping manoeuvre through the neutral countries of Luxembourg, Belgium and, in his original plan, much of the Netherlands. The bulk of the German Army would advance around the French fortifications, swing south-west of Paris before wheeling east, trapping the French Army against the German border in one gigantic encirclement. If everything went according to plan, France would be defeated in little more than six weeks, allowing Germany to transfer hundreds of thousands of soldiers by rail to face the slowly mobilising Russians.
A photo of Schlieffen, 1906
By the time war broke out in 1914, however, Schlieffen was dead. His successor, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, believed the original plan was too ambitious. He modified it by reducing the strength of the powerful right wing that was meant to sweep through Belgium and abandoned the invasion of the Netherlands altogether, hoping to preserve Dutch neutrality and keep valuable trade routes open. Historians still debate whether these changes fatally weakened the plan or whether Schlieffen’s original design had always been unrealistic.
On 2 August German forces occupied Luxembourg before crossing into neutral Belgium the following day. Belgium had refused German demands to allow its army free passage, and Britain – one of the guarantors of Belgian neutrality under the Treaty of London of 1839 – issued an ultimatum demanding Germany withdraw. When Germany ignored it, Britain declared war on 4 August 1914.
A newspaper announcing the British declaration of war on Germany
The invasion did not unfold as German commanders had hoped. The heavily fortified city of Liège offered unexpectedly fierce resistance, delaying the German advance for almost two weeks. Although enormous siege guns eventually reduced the Belgian forts, the delay disrupted Germany’s carefully planned timetable and allowed both France and Britain additional time to mobilise their forces. As German troops advanced through Belgium, reports emerged of civilians being executed and entire towns, most famously Leuven, being burned in retaliation for suspected resistance. Whether every allegation was accurate or not, these events became known collectively as the Rape of Belgium and were widely used in Allied propaganda, severely damaging Germany’s international reputation.
Meanwhile, the French launched Plan XVII, an ambitious offensive into Alsace and Lorraine in the belief that aggressive attacks would overwhelm the Germans. Instead, French armies were met by devastating machine-gun and artillery fire during the Battle of the Frontiers. Within weeks, the offensive collapsed with enormous casualties, forcing the French into a general retreat towards Paris.
An illustration of the French attack in the Lorraine offensive
To the north, the small but highly professional British Expeditionary Force (BEF) entered the war alongside France. On 23 August it fought its first major engagement against the Germans at the Battle of Mons. Although heavily outnumbered, British rifle fire inflicted surprising casualties and briefly slowed the German advance. Nevertheless, the BEF was eventually forced to retreat alongside the French, beginning what became known as the Great Retreat. By early September, German armies had advanced to within forty miles of Paris, and it appeared that the Schlieffen Plan was on the verge of delivering the rapid victory Germany had expected.
Instead, the offensive reached its breaking point. Exhausted soldiers had marched hundreds of miles in little over a month, supply lines stretched ever longer, and communication between German armies became increasingly difficult. Crucially, General Alexander von Kluck, commanding Germany’s powerful right wing, altered his line of advance by turning east of Paris rather than sweeping around the city as Schlieffen had envisaged. This exposed a dangerous gap between the German First and Second Armies.
The original intended direction of attack of the Schieffen plan
Recognising the opportunity, the French commander Joseph Joffre ordered a massive counterattack. Reinforced by troops famously transported to the front in hundreds of Parisian taxis, French and British forces struck the exposed German flank during the First Battle of the Marne in early September 1914. Facing encirclement themselves, the Germans withdrew to the River Aisne. The Schlieffen Plan had failed.
Neither side was willing to accept defeat. Instead, both armies repeatedly attempted to outflank one another in a series of manoeuvres known as the Race to the Sea, extending the front further and further north until it reached the Belgian coast. The final major engagement of this race took place at the First Battle of Ypres, where repeated German attacks failed to break the Allied line.
An illustration of Germans surrendering to British Highlander Divisions at Ypres
Unable to outmanoeuvre one another, both sides began digging defensive trenches. Within weeks, a continuous line of earthworks, barbed wire and fortified positions stretched from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier. What many had expected to be a short, decisive war had instead become a brutal war of attrition that would last more than four years and claim millions of lives.
On 28th of July 1914, Gavrilo Princip, member of the Serbian organisation “The Black Hand” shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife in Bosnia, killing them both. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination, so declared war. Russia had an alliance with Serbia, so declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany had an alliance with Austria-Hungary, so declared war on Russia, thus bringing both Germany and Hitler into World War 1.
He was attached to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 and was a runner on the Western Front in East Belgium. He was awarded an Iron Cross (2nd class) for his bravery, one of the highest awards given to soldiers in the German Army, similar to the Victoria Cross or Medal of Honour.
Hitler in a dugout in the war. He is furthest left.
During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, he suffered an injury from an artillery shell which wounded his left thigh. He was sent to hospital and returned in March 1917.
In September 1918, Hitler claimed that in a battle was unarmed and a rifle was pointed at him by Private Henry Tandey, one of the most highly decorated privates of the war, having gained a Victoria cross for his bravery at the fifth Battle of Ypres. He held his gun on Hitler but then told him to go. Hitler told this tale to Former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he visited his house in Bavaria, saying “That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again,”. When first hearing this Tandey denied all claims but later on he says he remembers doing something like this and if it was Hitler he should’ve pulled the trigger, saying, “If only I had known what he would turn out to be […] When I saw all the people and women and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go.” when an interviewer went to his house in Coventry. The paper wrote “Nothing Henry did that night could ease his sickening sense of guilt. […] It was a stigma that Tandey lived with until his death […] He could have stopped this. He could have changed the course of history.” Tandey passed away in 1977 at his home in Coventry.
This is a painting at Hitler’s home in Bavaria which he showed to Prime Minister Chamberlain. Hitler claimed that the injured man being carried at the front of the line is him and the man carrying him is Tandey.
A month after he was nearly killed, Hitler was partially blinded by a mustard gas attack and was sent to hospital. It was during this time when he learnt of Germany’s defeat. Hitler said that when he learnt this he had a second wave of blindness. Hitler and many others believed that Germany had been stabbed in the back from the home front and Hitler blamed it on the Jews and Marxists. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles didn’t help matters, making the German people hate the countries that made them sign the Treaty even more than they already did.
