There’s been a lot more coverage of the Second World War than the First, as most of
you are no doubt aware, and we’ve noticed that probably because of that lack of coverage,
people have a lot of misconceptions about the First World War, how and where it happened,
and who was fighting it.
We’ll try to fix that today.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode - the top ten popular misconceptions
about the war.
#10- Russia was only a second grade military power in the First World War.
Not true.
Russia may have left the war after the revolution and certainly the Great Retreat and disasters
like the Battle of Tannenberg don’t exactly make the Russian military record shine, but
the Russian army was anything but a pushover.
At this time 100 years ago they were just romping through Eastern Anatolia and the Brusilov
Offensive and the innovative tactics it used came seriously close to knocking Austria out
of the war or even collapsing the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire.
It certainly broke the back of their army.
The enormous growth and modernization of the Russian military industry by 1916 was also
nothing to sneeze at.
#9 - Everything’s already been said about the war.
Nope, new stuff is being discovered all the time.
Like that Edith Cavell actually WAS spying for Britain.
Or that Falkenhayn’s claim that the Battle of Verdun was to bleed France to death is
quite likely an invention after the fact.
Files are being declassified now, 100 years after the war.
Who knows what we’re going to find out?
#8 - The Germans were the bad guys in the war.
Really?
Since they were the bad guys in WW2 and wartime stories of the bloodthirsty Hun circulated
in Allied media, they had to be the bad guys, right?
And they got all the blame at Versailles in 1919 - that has to count for something.
Well, not so much.
Was it Germany’s fault that the whole house of cards came crashing down?
That the war escalated into the horror that it did?
Not so much more than anybody else in Europe - who all had outdated ideas about the necessity
of the war and how to pursue it.
And sure, you have episodes like the Rape of Belgium, but atrocities were committed
by all sides; the Armenian Genocide and the massacres committed by the Russians in East
Prussia in 1914 spring to mind.
Just because somebody is the enemy doesn’t mean that they’re the bad guy.
Sometimes there is no bad guy; sometimes everyone’s the bad guy.
#7- The war in the skies was a gentleman’s war.
The flying aces like the Red Baron and Billy Bishop were the rock stars of the war, gliding
above the carnage, and fighting man to man chivalrously.
Except not so much.
They were fighting with machine guns, and they were most often flying in formations
by the second half of the war, when the average life expectancy of the pilots could be measured
in hours.
And never forget, the perfect kill happened when the enemy never saw you coming.
#6- World War One was a European war and not a World War.
Not true.
It had its origins in Europe and there was certainly a lot of the fighting done in Europe,
but once the Ottoman Empire joined you should have a clue how it would spread.
Even before that Japan fought against Germany, the United States and Brazil would eventually
join the war, there were battles in the South Pacific and South Atlantic, soldiers from
every continent except Antarctica would fight, and of course there was fighting all over
Africa, mainly by colonial overlords, but there were fronts in Persia, Mesopotamia,
Libya, and even the borders of India.
Definitely a world war here.
#5- The war was only fought in the trenches.
The trenches are THE symbol of World War One, and while they appeared on pretty much every
front, the vast trench networks were only really common on the Western Front.
In the deserts or the huge open spaces of the Eastern Front, cavalry played a big role
and huge trench systems would’ve been most often impossible to maintain.
#4- tactics during the war didn’t change.
It’s easy to think that just looking at the week by week carnage, but if you look
at tactics in 1914 and those in 1918, it would be hard to find many real similarities.
The stalemate across the various fronts pretty much forced tactical innovation.
Heck, the war saw the advent of mechanized mobile warfare and certainly the techniques
Hitler’s Wehrmacht used at the beginning of WW2 grew directly out of those at the end
of WW1.
#3- navies didn’t play a real part in WW1.
Well, the biggest battle in naval history- the Battle of Jutland- happened in WW1.
And Britain’s Atlantic blockade of Germany was a big factor in depriving Germany of supplies.
There were countless naval skirmishes all over the world; Germany tried to turn the
tide of war with unrestricted U-Boat warfare, and if you look at the Mediterranean, the
major powers were using their navies to block each other.
There are also great stories of German raiders like the Moewe or the Emden out there.
#2- The German army wasn’t defeated in world war one.
Yeah, they were.
They endured far longer than anyone could have imagined, and their final offensives
in 1918 were real forces to be reckoned with, but the state of the army by the summer of
1918 was catastrophic in terms of supplies and morale.
And the state of their allies was worse.
Austria-Hungary never recovered after 1916, the Ottoman Empire had huge problems even
before the war, and the Bulgaria n Army collapsed.
And the German Army did call for a ceasefire before the Allies broke through the Hindenburg
Line, which they would’ve done.
#1- World War One was mainly fought on the Western Front.
There was the Eastern Front, the Serbian Front, the Italian Front, the Salonika Front, Gallipoli,
the Persian Front, the Mesopotamian Front, the Palestine Front, the Libyan Front, the
Caucasus Front, the Romanian Front, East Africa, Southwest Africa, Cameroon, the War at Sea,
and the Arab Revolt.
Did I miss any?
The Western Front was but a fraction, and not even that big of one, of the total of
the First World War.
Well, that’s my list for now.
No doubt you have many things you disagree with or many others you’d like to add to
the list.
Please let us know in the comments.
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See you next time!