Shock and friction as explanations for disaster at the Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918

The assault at Amiens was ‘the black day of the German Army’. British accounts treat the Germans as passive, of no more importance than the terrain, and victory as inevitable. Using German sources, and drawing on statistical ‘historical analysis’ of behaviour in battle, the article argues the frontline defenders panicked when thick fog left them defenceless against the British tanks. By contrast, when the fog lifted, the defence recovered. Although senior German commanders on the spot reacted well, Ludendorff fell into a state of shock, such that he convinced the Kaiser the war must be ended.     

Enigmas of the Great War: Thomas Kettle and Francis Ledwidge

Recent publications in the field of Irish Studies have begun to address the previously neglected issue of Irish involvement in the First World War, including some limited attention to Irish First World War literature. This article explores the poetry of two nationalist writers who joined the British army, namely Thomas Kettle and Francis Ledwidge. Kettle was a public figure who had served as a Westminster MP and his poetry expresses the political complexity of his responses to the outbreak of war and to the Easter Rising. Ledwidge was first and foremost a poet and the article explores and evaluates that aspect of his oeuvre which can be described as war poetry.     

Review Article: Professional,Political, and Mercenary Soldiers

Since the late 1970s, most scholarship on the origins of the Zionist–Palestinian conflict has emphasised the actions and agency of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, with a focus on the period before 1914. It is argued in this article, however, that the expectation of and commitment to political independence on both sides, a defining feature of the conflict, did not emerge until 1918, and that the actions of the British government in Palestine during the final year of the First World War drove this fundamental shift. Following Britain's occupation of southern Palestine in December 1917, the British administration undertook an extensive propaganda operation in the country to advertise their backing for Arab nationalism and Zionism. This campaign was part of the British government's wider endeavour to mobilise support for the Allied war effort and British imperial expansion in the Middle East in the new age of nationality. It led, the article contends, to a war for national sovereignty over Palestine between two statist nationalist movements. Rather than emphasise British colonial agency at the expense of that of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, the article argues that this development derived from a complex interaction between the three parties within the context of radical changes in international politics.     

‘Ambushed by Victory’: British,French and American Military Plans to Defeat Germany in 1919

The United States, Britain, and France’s discussions on how to achieve victory over the enemy reveal how widespread was the notion that the war would have to be carried into 1919 in order to ensure a military victory over the German army. With the British, political pressure to maintain a sizable army combined with the over-estimation of the abilities of the enemy meant that many considered victory only possible in 1919. The Americans were determined to expand their army substantially to play a leading role in the 1919 campaign; however, they had to negotiate what constituted a realistic contribution. Behind these deliberations stood the French who were promoting the idea of a decisive 1919 campaign and pressuring their co-belligerents to make the greatest possible commitment to ensure a victorious outcome.     

Sentiment vs Strategy: British Naval Policy,Imperial Defence,and the Development of Dominion Navies, 1911–14

This article examines British naval policy towards imperial defence and the development of autonomous Dominion navies in 1911–14. It shows that the Admiralty's main goal under the leadership of Winston Churchill was to concentrate British and Dominion warships in European waters, and ideally in the North Sea, to meet the German threat. Churchill's approach to naval developments in the Dominions was also shaped by his desire to fulfil the Cabinet's policy of remaining strong in the Mediterranean Sea. He made some concessions to sentiment in the Dominions, but his attempts to create a coherent imperial policy for the naval defence of Britain and its empire were ultimately unsuccessful. By 1914 it was clear that the Dominions would not provide the additional warships Britain required for the Mediterranean, and on the eve of war the Admiralty was beginning to prepare an imperial naval strategy that more accurately reflected the Empire's capabilities.     

'The Scars of Ravensbruck': Medical Experiments and British War Crimes Policy, 1945-1950

Although the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazi Doctors' Trialin 1946 and 1947 sparked significant debate about medical researchethics and the origins of the Nuremberg Code, historians haveso far paid little, if any, attention to Allied war crimes policyon the investigation of German medical atrocities, of whichthe Ravensbrück trials formed part. British war crimespolicy, in particular, was concerned with medical war crimescommitted by German scientists at the Ravensbrück concentrationcamp. Much of the evidence against some key defendants at theDoctors' Trial was compiled by British experts and made availableto the US prosecution. Although the British investigated thisgroup, some of the defendants were later extradited and triedwith the Nuremberg doctors. To date, little has been writtenabout the broader political and legal context of the first Ravensbrücktrial, its origin, and overall place in the context of Allieddenazification policy. The article investigates the genesisof the Ravensbrück trial and the extensive investigationsand discussions that preceded its opening. It looks at how membersof the German public perceived the Ravensbrück trial, andcontextualizes the British response to criticism levelled againstit at the dawn of the Cold War. It aims, in part, to reconstructthe wider historical context of postwar British policy on medicalwar crimes, and suggests that British war crimes investigationsconducted in preparation for the Ravensbrück trials formedone of the most substantial bodies of legal testimony and scientificexpertise on human rights violations in experimental human researchbefore the establishment of the Nazi Doctors' Trial. The articlealso acknowledges Britain's contribution to the war crimes programme,and emphasises that the memory of the first Ravensbrücktrial has largely been overshadowed by the publicity surroundingthe Nuremberg trials.     

Anarchist Anti-Imperialism: Guy Aldred and the Indian Revolutionary Movement, 1909–14

This article examines the British anarchist Guy Aldred’s involvement in the Indian revolutionary movement from 1909 to 1914 in order to reflect on solidarities and antagonisms between anarchism and anti-colonial movements in the early twentieth century. Drawing on Aldred’s writings, court material and intelligence reports, it explores, first, his decision to print the suppressed Indian nationalist periodical The Indian Sociologist in August 1909 and, second, his involvement in Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s disputed arrest and deportation, which was brought to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in October 1910. In spite of recent attempts by historians to bring the Indian revolutionary movement into much closer conjunction with anarchism than previously assumed, Aldred’s engagement with the Indian freedom struggle has escaped sustained historical attention. Addressing this silence, the article argues that Aldred’s anti-imperialism was rooted in his anarchist visions of freedom, including freedom of the press, and reveals a more unusual concern with the question of colonialism than shown by almost any other British anarchist in the early twentieth century. At the same time, it cautions that Aldred was blind to the problems of Indian nationalism, especially the Hindu variety espoused by Savarkar, which leaves his anarchist anti-imperialism much compromised.     

Command,Leadership, and Doctrine on the Great War Battlefield: The Australian,British, and Canadian Experience at the Battle of Arras,May 1917

Abstract

The experience on the Somme in 1916, and the unprecedented losses suffered in the attempt to break through the German defences, forced the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to re-evaluate its attack doctrine. James Edmonds, the of?cial historian of the British army in the Great War has stated, ‘It is not too much to claim that the foundations of the ?nal victory on the Western Front were laid by the Somme offensive of 1916’. Gary Shef?eld reaf?rmed this view more recently: ‘The battle of the Somme was not a victory in itself, but without it the entente would not have emerged victorious in 1918’. Historical assessments of the Somme campaign are divided regarding the success and/or failure of the battle, but it is clear that the experience spurred efforts to correct the problems encountered in 1916. Infantry tactics, weapons, training, artillery, machine guns, command and control, communications, and support services were all adapted based on the lessons learned at the Somme. Only seven months after the catastrophic losses suffered on 1 July, the BEF embarked on it next major offensive at Arras. This article will examine the ?ghting on one day of the Arras offensive to analyse the evolution of the British Empire method of attack. On 3 May 1917 Haig ordered an attack by First, Third, and Fifth Armies astride the Scarpe River. At 0345 hours fourteen British, Canadian, and Australian divisions launched an assault against German positions in the Drocourt-Quéant Switch and Hindenburg Line. By the end of the day all British divisions has been repulsed while the Australians maintained a toehold in the German line. Only the Canadians were able to capture and hold their objective. This article will argue that command and the application of doctrine made the difference between success and failure on that day.     

'The Klopper Affair': Anglo-South African Relations and the Surrender of the Tobruk Garrison

The loss of the Tobruk garrison in June 1942 proved to be oneof the worst military disasters suffered by the British Empireduring the Second World War. Following the surrender of Singaporeearlier that same year it represented something of a nadir inpublic confidence about how the war was being conducted. Atthe same time it also threatened the relationship between Britainand one of its Dominion wartime partners, the Union of SouthAfrica. The considerable military force based at Tobruk hadbeen commanded by a young and relatively inexperienced SouthAfrican general and included an entire South African division.The decision to surrender these forces—over 30,000 men—aftera siege lasting less than 48 hours led to allegations of cowardiceand treachery. Winston Churchill meanwhile faced a parliamentaryvote of confidence in his leadership. He ultimately had fewproblems restoring his position and proved adept at resistingcalls for a public enquiry. With the subsequent victory at thefinal battle at E1 Alamein the affair quickly receded from thepublic attention. During the summer of 1942 the possibilityhad however existed of a serious and damaging rift developingwithin the Imperial alliance.     

Divided sisterhood? Nationalist feminism and feminist militancy in England and Ireland

ABSTRACT

The generally accepted story is that British militant suffragists performed an unexpected and abrupt move away from the feminist movement and towards a fiercely jingoistic nationalist campaign once the war began in 1914. Yet, given the nature of exchanges between Irish and British militant feminists, Irish feminists should not have been surprised by this turn from gender solidarity to English nationalism. In this article, I argue that Irish-British militant feminist entanglements worked to expose the powerful role that English nationalism played in suffrage politics at a time when nearly all the focus was on the disruptive influence of Irish nationalism.     

'More carrot than stick', British Economic Warfare and Spain, 1941-1944

During the Second World War, economic factors became a centralaspect of Spain's relations to both Britain and Nazi Germany.In 1940, when the Franco regime was on the brink of joiningthe war on the side of the Axis, Britain tried to use Spain’sdependence on imports from the west to convince Franco to retainhis country's neutrality. Although, at the time, British ‘economicappeasement’ was not a major factor in the failure ofGerman-Spanish negotiations, it contributed to Spain's verygradual detachment from Nazi Germany over subsequent years.Between1941 and 1944, the focus of British policy towards Spain movedfrom keeping the country out of the war to restricting the servicesSpain rendered to the German war economy. Franco's sympathiesfor the Nazi regime and the economic and financial benefitsof continuing trade with Germany made British and US economicwarfare activities however only a partial success.     

The Crimean War and its lessons for today

Orlando Figes's book The Crimean War: a history, based on English, Russian, French and Turkish sources, throws a new light on the Crimean War in a number of ways. It shows that the conflict was far from being a small war, but a landmark event. It was the only example of a war between Britain and Russia—and it led to enormous casualties. It also represented a stage in medical history, since most of the casualties were caused by disease. In Britain, it marked a new advance in the power of the press, which did much to fuel anti‐Russian sentiment. The war was also fuelled, on both sides, by religious and nationalist sentiment—but its most important cause related to the fate of the Ottoman Empire, then in decline, and fears that its collapse could result in a dangerous power vacuum. The war still has a significance for the present day because the collapse of communism has failed to resolve the antagonism between Russia and the West. Here, the book throws an important light on the development of British and western attitudes towards Russia, many of which were shaped in the nineteenth century. The book deserves attention, both here and in Russia.     

The Boer War and the Media (1899-1902)

The South African War that broke out in October 1899 was bothvery old and very new. It was a traditional war, the last ofthe old-fashioned British imperial wars, with cavalry playinga significant part. But it was also a very modern war, for instancein the British Army's use of railways to subdue the Boers inthe early months of 1900, or the use of trench warfare by theBoers along the Modder river. It was disturbingly new in theway that it changed in the autumn of 1900 from a war betweenarmies to a guerrilla war against a civilian population, mostdistastefully so in the British concentration camps set up tohouse Boer women and children. Above all, it was a distinctlycontemporary war in its impact on the media, especially thenewspapers, and in the interaction between the media and thoseparticipating in the fighting. It was a significant war, farbigger than originally expected, and was therefore big news.The British Army, ill-prepared for the original Boer invasionof Natal, at first numbered 75,000 troops. In the end, the Britishand imperial forces totalled 450,000 with contingents from Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and India. The British lost 22,000 men,13,000 of them from disease. The Boers lost about 7,000 in thefield, while another 27,000 (many of them very young children)are estimated to have died in the concentration camps. Therewere also about 20,000 black and ‘coloured’ Africanswho died in concentration camps, though this was little reportedat the time. So it was a major episode in British military history.The impact on British opinion of the relief of Ladysmith andespecially of Mafeking in 1900 was quite overwhelming. In afrenzy of ‘jingo’ celebration, the verb ‘mafficking’entered the language. In these circumstances, the consequencesof the Boer War on the media and its representation of war wereinevitably massive.     

Foes or Allies? Portuguese Colonial Policies towards Islam in Mozambique and Guinea

Drawing its information from documents in Portuguese, French and British archives, this article examines the evolution of Portuguese colonial policies regarding Islam in Guinea and Mozambique. Such policies swayed between an image of the Muslim as foe and a more conciliatory picture, in which Muslims could be presented as potential allies of Portuguese power in the war against nationalist movements. Although the first image prevailed until the end of 1950s and the second one emerged in the mid-1960s as part of the last stage in the colonial wars, ambivalence was their common trait. That ambivalence did not hinder the development of a whole new strategy to address the Muslim communities, based on the ‘psychological’ and ‘sociological’ techniques of counter-insurgency war. The article analyses the transition from governing methods based on the control and repression of colonised Muslims to strategies aimed at co-opting them, sketching a comparison between the results achieved in Guinea and Mozambique.     

Pushed into Pragmatism: British Approaches to Science in Post-War Occupied Germany

One of the most important dilemmas facing the British authorities when they occupied their zone of Germany at the end of the Second World War was what to do with German science. The contributions made by scientists and engineers to the Nazi war machine, in fields such as rocketry and submarines, meant that German science was both revered and feared, and was therefore closely linked to concerns about a post-war military resurgence in Germany. This article aims to chart the changing approaches which the British occupation officials adopted towards German science in this period. While the initial intention was to prevent Germany from ever waging war again, through demilitarisation, denazification and dismantling, the focus changed as British enmity shifted from a former adversary, Germany, to a former ally, the Soviet Union. Policy reflected this shift as technology transfer and the reconstruction of domestic German science won greater favour. This article aims to show that, in the face of growing hostility from the USSR and in the deeply suspicious climate of the early Cold War, Britain was forced to abandon its moral mission towards German science and adopt a far more pragmatic strategy instead.     

'You Cannot Hate the Bastard Who is Trying to Kill You...'Combat and Ideology in the British Army in the War Against Germany, 1939-45

During the Second World War the British Army faced a difficulttask when it tried to transform recruits who were mostly peace-lovingcivilians, into men prepared to kill. This article examineshow it went about doing so and how front-line soldiers respondedto the demand that they kill their German (and Italian) oppositenumbers. It also analyses the extent to which front-line soldiersin the British Army retained a sense of a shared common humanitywith their enemies that transended the political divisions ofthe war. It does so by analysing the ways in which they treatedtheir enemies when they were completely at their mercy, eitheras prisoners of war or as civilians in occupied territory. ¹N.McCallum, Journey with a Pistol (London,1959), 105.     

Napoleon,Jefferson, and the Louisiana Purchase

Why did Napoleon sell Louisiana to the United States? Unfortunately, he left very few written traces of his Louisiana policy and, therefore, historians disagree. Their explanations tend to emphasise one of three factors: the diplomacy of President Thomas Jefferson; France's coming war with Britain; or the impact of the black rebels of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). The most heated disagreements revolve around the differing assessments of the role played by Jefferson. This article argues that Jefferson played no role in Napoleon's decision to sell the colony. It acknowledges that the British were crucial, because war with Britain meant that Louisiana would be lost to France. But why was Louisiana undefended? The troops Napoleon wanted to send there never arrived. They went instead to Haiti. And they remained there. If black resistance in Haiti had collapsed quickly, as Napoleon expected, there would have been thousands of French soldiers in Louisiana by the spring of 1803, when the French war with Britain began. By defeating Napoleon, the men whom Jefferson deemed ‘cannibals’ made it possible for him to acquire Louisiana and achieve what an eminent US historian has called his ‘greatest triumph’.     

A Most Unmanly War: British Military Masculinity in Macedonia,Mesopotamia and Palestine, 1914–18

This article argues that the most severe crisis of masculinity among British and Dominion soldiers in the First World War did not take place on the Western Front. Instead, British and Dominion soldiers serving on the war's sideshows in Macedonia, Mesopotamia and Palestine believed most acutely that their manliness was in question. Unlike soldiers on the Western Front, they were not battling the main German Army, they were not fighting to liberate occupied France and Belgium, and their war was not to preserve the rights of small nations and the inviolability of international law. This article explores how military masculinity played out much differently on the war's peripheral fronts in two ways. First, it suggests that where a soldier fought mattered more to military masculinity than a soldier's method of enlistment or any other variable. British and Dominion soldiers were fully aware that the home front only considered France and Flanders as the real war, and they actively argued against this misconception to loved ones and in their memoirs. Second, this article demonstrates an additional crisis of masculinity on the war's peripheral fronts: the lack, or more often effacement, of non‐white colonial (Eastern Mediterranean and Arab) women. Not only was British and Dominion military masculinity under assault on the war's peripheral fronts, heteronormative sexual relations were also being transformed in a world where few, if any, racially acceptable women were available.     

Professor Penck's Bluff: Geography,Espionage and Hysteria in World War I

This article considers the image of geography during World War I through a discussion of newspaper controversies about the pre‐war activities of German and British geographers. Early in the war, Sven Hedin and Albrecht Penck, renowned geographers whose achievements had been widely celebrated by the British geographical establishment, were named in the media as enemy spies whose supposedly disinterested scientific inquiries in Britain and the Empire had masked their real intention to pass sensitive information to the German High Command. British geography stood accused of collusion with enemy ‘super spies’. This article examines how Britain's geographical community, represented by the Royal Geographical Society, sought to defend the discipline's patriotic virtue and head off a full‐scale media witch‐hunt. In so doing, the article comments on the media's role in shaping the image of geography and on geography's place in public debates about the sanctity of the national space.