The Great War: did I get it all wrong?

I was born just six year after the end of World War II, and growing up in the 1950s everyone was still talking about it, reading books and comics about it, watching films about it. And I soon learned there had been another war before that: a war of unparalleled ferocity that in terms of soldiers killed (though not civilians) was even greater than the one that followed it.


In 1964, when I was thirteen, the BBC showed a documentary series entitled "The Great War" and I watched every episode. Narrated by the great Michael Redgrave, it seemed to demonstrate (to my eyes at least) the utter pointlessness of the whole enterprise. With horrifying vividness it showed the terrible savagery of trench warfare: the needless slaughter of the working classes of Europe at the behest of the ruling classes. And this view was further strengthened by watching Richard Attenborough's brilliant film adaptation of Joan Littlewood's Oh! What a Lovely War some five years later.


Then last year I learned of Michael Gove's attempted revision of our perspectives on the Great War. Citing not only Oh! What a Lovely War but also Blackadder Goes Forth, he complained that the left has subverted our view of what was in reality a just war, a necessary war for the survival of our great nation. I was disgusted by this attempt by one of the darlings (at the time) of the Tory right wing to whitewash the generals and politicians who had sent so many young men to their doom.


Just last month I read Ranulph Fiennes' biography of Captain Scott which was written in 2003. And to my surprise I found in its closing pages a very similar view being promulgated. Fiennes had already explained how Scott's reputation had undergone a transformation since his lionisation by the British public in the years leading up to the beginning of the Great War. By the 1960s books were being written which challenged his decision making and leadership qualities. But Fiennes went further. He also suggested that this sort of "let's tear our heroes down"attitude penetrates our view of the Great War. He rejects the class analysis, reminding us that one of the greatest "villains", Haig, was not a member of the elite like so many of his contemporaries, but had actually risen through the ranks from sheer ability. And his methods, such as the sending of thousands of troops across No Mans Land to face a hail of machine-gun fire, were simply the best, or even the only, methods available. Fiennes believes that the real problem was that warfare itself was undergoing a sort of industrial revolution and that the upper echelons struggled to come to terms with what was a totally new way of waging war. Inevitably there was going to be a tricky (and murderous) learning curve as the leaders modified their tactics and strategies from the tried and trusted methods that had been deployed for centuries.


So, now I find myself thinking through these issues again, not because of the loathsome Gove, but because of one of the world's greatest explorers. But still I find myself unconvinced. In most wars it is the strong and powerful who order the weak and powerless to fight their wars for them, and to me the Great War demonstrates this grim reality more powerfully than any other conflict. Germany was flexing her muscles, keen on becoming the biggest power in Europe. France was desperate to settle the score of their humiliating defeat at the hand of the Germans fifty years previously. And Britain needed to prove once and for all that it was Number One, not only in Europe but in the whole world. A big conflict was inevitable and the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand was simply the flame that lit the fuse. I am not against all war. Right now I believe we should be going to war against ISIl, or whatever they are calling themselves today. But I do believe we need to be very cautious about establishment figures attempting to persuade us that something as terrible as the Great War was not such a bad thing. Why, the next thing they'll be telling us that Tony Blair really did have the interests of the British people at heart when he launched the invasion of Iraq...