posted on 2009-10-06, 09:57authored byEric Yvon Whittle
It is often asserted that British army casualties in the
Great War were carelessly incurred and that this influenced
the way Britain fought in the Second World War.
Manpower was a prime resource in the mobilisation for
total war but its scarcity only fully realised by end of 1917
when the army was cautioned about casualties. The government,
however, had feared an early popular reaction against mounting
casualties. It did not materialise: the incidence of
casualties was diffused over time, and households had no mass
media spreading intimate awareness of battlefield conditions.
The army itself never mutinied over casualties or refused to
fight. The country considered the casualties grievous but not
inordinate or unnecessary.
Between the wars unemployment and 'consumerism' mattered
more to people than memories of the Great War., kept ritually
alive by annual Armistice Day services. Welfare benefits
increased, more children went to secondary school but social
and political change was tardy. Many intellectuals turned
pacifist but Nazi Germany made an anti-war-stance difficult.
Air raids rather than memories of Great War casualties
preoccupied the nation as it armed for war.
In the Second World War army casualty lists were not
regularly lengthy until the beginning of 1944 and did not have
an adverse impact on civilian morale. The manpower shortage
became acute earlier, in 1942, and army commanders were
alerted to replacement problems. Politically, Churchill
desired a strong, victorious British army but lack of men
induced caution about casualties, particularly in relation to
the invasion of Normandy, involving frontal amphibious attack
on the German army. This caution communicated itself to the
citizen armies in the field, which showed little natural bent
for soldiering. These circumstances governed the way the army
fought in the Second World War, not memories of Great War
casualties - which were more numerous because of the extent
over time and scale of the fighting.