While World
War One may not have been the first global war (the Seven Years War featured
fighting in Europe, North America, Central Asia, and numerous naval skirmishes
all across the globe), it was certainly the first total war. To be considered a total war, a war must have
profound impact on the daily lives of nearly every citizen in the combatant
states. Their social, political,
economic, and cultural lives become directed by the state in such a manner that
it benefits the military effort.
Once the European powers realized
that the war would not be over as quick as they initially believed, they had to
make adjustments to the lives of their citizens in order to sustain what was
quickly becoming a war of attrition. In
previous centuries, European states were perfectly equipped to wage war because
nearly all political power was concentrated in the hands of a single
individual, be it a king, queen, emperor, or empress. By 1914, however, nearly every state had some
sort of electoral system, although France and Britain were the only two
countries with completely democratic institutions. This popular form of governance, inherently
slow, was not suitable for wartime. Thus
states quickly consolidated power not to oppress the citizenry, but to allow
for the government to operate more quickly to address war needs. As such, there were no elections in any
combatant state during the entire duration of the war.
The nature of industry changed as
well in the first era of total war.
Since industrial technology allowed for new battlefield innovations, a
military-industrial complex began to emerge.
Governments began giving very lucrative military contracts to
corporations, allowing them to grow very large as the government desired quick
production and was willing to pay almost any price for new weapons of war. Factories were completely redesigned to
address the needs of the military as the government required a quick,
streamlined, and steady flow of products to send to the front.
Due to the need for quickly produced
manufactured goods, the power dynamic within the industrial field changed. While the factory owners gained significant
influence in the government, the labor unions began to win political power as
well, providing them their first success in decades. As strikes would cripple the war effort, the
industrial leaders were forced to give the union leadership a seat at the
decision making table in order to ensure that production did not slow down.
Culturally, the war changed the home
front as total war shifted women into roles which typically were assigned to
men. As men were drafted into the
military, women were needed to enter the factories in order to keep production
moving at the clip the war effort required.
This allowed women to earn more money than they ever had in the past,
granting them a sense of independence.
Men, on the other hand, were jammed with traditional gender role images,
as they were instilled with the value of honor, courage, strength, and violence.
The sheer impact the war had on the
collective psyche of Europe tore apart the liberal ideals which had dominated
intellectual discourse for decades. The
liberal secularism and rationalism were thrown away in favor or renewed
spiritualism as a reaction to the unimaginable violence and horror the war
created. The wave of death brought by
the war exposed rationalism’s deepest flaw; no sense of afterlife. The populace could not accept the
rationalistic outlook when it did not dive life—which the war was revealing as
very fragile—a sense of purpose.
The economic life of regular
citizens also experienced changes during World War One. Goods which were considered vital to the war
effort, which was nearly everything, were rationale domestically in order to
provide for the troops. Home front citizens
were also inspired and encouraged by propaganda to purchase war bonds to
sustain the war effort. Additionally,
with the government funding the war effort by massive spending and foreign
debt, inflation began to spread, often with the approval of the government, as
it increased the ease of payment for tools of war. When the war machine slammed to a halt in
1919, this inflation exploded across the continent, devastating the economies
of almost every European nation. It
wiped out wages in the cities, driving urbanites towards socialism, while
wiping out debt in the rural countryside, allowing for increased profits and a
drift towards fascism to defend these profits from the socialists.
World War One had a profound impact
on the ways of life in nearly every European state. Economic, political, social, and cultural
changes which occurred either during or immediately after the war planted the
seeds for the tumultuous inter-war years as well as setting some members of
society (women and industrialists in particular) for a century of profound
improvements and social and economic growth.
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