Niall

Compare and contrast the effects of World War One with the effects of World War Two. Niall Rutherford

World War One and World War Two were the two most important world events of the past century. They have defined the geography of Europe and the politics of the past 90 years in many different nations. However, history does not often repeat itself in an identical fashion, and historians of the time and today often look to compare and contrast these two great conflicts in order to understand why and how they came about the way they did, how the nature of war has progressed up to the 20th century and why these wars had such an enormous impact on us as a whole. In this essay, I will argue that although the changing of rights and the propaganda situations can be compared, the nature of that propaganda and various other social factors cannot. Some of these social factors were linked to the way the countries came out of the war from an economical perspective, and the response and economic recovery of certain countries can be both compared and contrasted. I will contend that the German political situation contrasted with her economic recovery in both wars. In turn, Germany’s comparisons in her political situations reflected the similarities in her diplomatic and geographical sufferings at the hands of two contrasting international peace organisations. Finally, I will maintain that these international organisations differed due to the terrifying and efficient technology introduced in WW2, and that the motives and the nature of the war changed as well.

Firstly, the social aspect of the wars is similar when one considers who instigated the war and whether certain rights or privileges on the home front changed, but there are significant differences in how the people on the home front were actually affected and how they reacted to the war, as well as exactly what changed for women afterwards. In both wars, Germany was the aggressor. World War One saw Germany charge through Belgium and into France with the Schlieffen Plan, beginning the war outright and allowing the Allies to justify placing the blame on them after the armistice. In World War Two, Hitler attacked Poland with the USSR after having been expressly warned by the Allies not to do so. Both cases left them with a propaganda disadvantage. However, the nature of propaganda in WW2 had changed. WW1 focused mostly on the soldiers, in an effort to drive up support for the war effort and keep the offenses moving. The “Somme” propaganda film by Geoffrey Malins about the gruesome Battle of the Somme helped use the soldier’s plight as inspiration for the home front. On the other hand, WW2 focused on the leaders of Britain (Churchill) and Germany (Hitler), with Churchill in particular delivering rousing speeches and keeping morale as high as he could. Hitler used Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl to his advantage and influenced his people much more effectively than the previous leaders had in the first war. On the other hand, both wars did put a lot of emphasis on self-sufficiency and cutting back on food consumption (WW1: “the Kitchen is the Key to Victory”, WW2: Potato Pete). In addition, women’s rights after WW1 had improved from a political perspective in Britain (they got the vote after having worked as “munitionettes” and in the Women’s Land Army during the war) and in Germany (despite the fact that they were revoked when Hitler came into power). After WW2, France’s women got the vote and British women enjoyed better employment rights. German women had their rights returned to them. However, the main difference between the two wars for Germany’s home front was the Holocaust, an atrocity described by Churchill as “the most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world”. The Holocaust was an example of the victims having changed in the war: in WW1, the vast majority of deaths were soldiers, and in WW2 the majority were civilians. This will be further explored below.

In addition, the social rights gained by the Allied populations after both wars partly reflected the economic situation in that they emerged from both as the moral victors despite their bankruptcy; however, for some countries the responses to the outbreak of war were very different. Britain’s morale was high coming out of both wars due to the fact that they had beaten their enemies; however the high cost of the war had drained her economy on both occasions. Another comparison from an economic standpoint is that of Germany’s economic recovery. After both wars, Germany was propped back up onto her feet courtesy of the USA with the Dawes Plan after WW1 and Marshall Aid after WW2. In addition, at the outbreak of both wars, Britain reacted in a similar fashion with emphasis on propaganda, self-sufficiency and rationing. However, Germany’s recuperation after both wars was different. The economic recovery that Germany underwent in face of its social despair after WW1 was as a whole country, whereas after Yalta and Potsdam in WW2 Germany was fractured in two (GDR / DDR), with both sides recovering at wholly different rates and in different ways. In addition, despite the similarities in Britain’s response to war, Germany and Russia’s responses contrasted greatly. In WW1, neither country prepared correctly, with Germany risking all on a swift war (Schlieffen Plan) and Russia failing to mobilise its resources efficiently. Conversely, in WW2, Hitler and Stalin both planned for a long war (Hitler’s “Four Year Plan” and Stalin’s “Five Year Plan” reflected this). Furthermore, the money from the United States that went into Europe’s recovery was loaned after the first war and gifted after the second (apart from the Washington Loan to Britain in 1945). Marshall Aid was also more spread out than the Dawes Plan because of the emphasis on the recovery of Europe as a whole in order to defeat Communism, the enemy of Western democracy. In other words, the difference was in the delivery and the motive.

Furthermore, Germany’s economic recoveries after both of the wars contrasted with the political vacuum left by the departures of the Kaiser and Hitler; on the other hand, the different political situations in Russia and Britain were not so easily compared. We can say, however, that in both wars Russia initially suffered a great deal; they were invaded by Germany early on (Tannenburg in WW1 and Operation Barbarossa in WW2) and struggled to drive the Germans back near the beginning. In addition, both wars brought drastic changes to the British party system, with new parties emerging and old ones fading away. WW1 and WW2 also saw Germany torn between democracy and dictatorship. However, the political debate in Germany was of a different nature between each war: after WW1 Germany developed from a pure democracy to a sheer dictatorship, whereas after WW2 the country was geographically split between the two. In other words, the contrast is that Germany chronologically developed into a dictatorship once Hitler began his rise to power after WW1, whereas Germany was geographically split after WW2 with East and West Germany set as dictatorships and democracies respectively. The British party system also changed in different ways; WW1 destroyed the Liberals as the dominant party in Parliament after division between Asquith and Lloyd George, whereas WW2 saw Labour emerge as a dominant force under Clement Attlee’s government, and they remain so today along with the Conservatives. The political abyss in Germany was also fundamentally different: the Kaiser’s flight destroyed Germany’s monarchy, whereas Hitler’s suicide destroyed a dictatorship. Germany’s leaders were also subject to “war trials” for the first time in WW2 in the Nuremberg Trials. Finally, Russia never quite turned the tables in WW1; they struggled militarily until the Communist Revolution of 1917 triggered their surrender, whereas Russia managed to turn her misfortune around in WW2, driving the Nazis out of Moscow and eventually back into Berlin. They also emerged more powerful than ever after engulfing most of Eastern Europe, whereas the Brest-Litovsk Treaty imposed upon her by Germany after WW1 left her weakened.

Additionally, Germany’s political vacuum also reflected how she was diplomatically damaged as a state by her losses of territory after both wars; however, the location of her land losses and the organisation that orchestrated their distribution were different. Both wars saw the creation of new countries in Europe after the war had been won, divided up by newly formed international peace organisations (the League of Nations after WW1, the United Nations after WW2). Colonial troops were also mobilised in both wars, and afterwards the state of the colonies belonging to the European empires changed. However, the state of the colonies and the way they were dealt with was different. Germany’s colonies were broken up as “mandates” and shared out between the victors with the Allied colonies remaining as before, whereas after WW2 most of Germany’s land losses were from the German state itself. After the war many colonies quickly gained their independence (e.g. India from Britain in 1947 and Algeria from France in 1962) due to a change in attitudes amongst the empires and the power of the USA over the West increasing, with the USA believing in decolonisation and independence. Furthermore, the UN was much stronger than the League after WW2. Military sanctions were now feasible and the USA was a member (as was the USSR). After WW2, there were also other international organisations too: the ECSC was formed, which then developed into the EEC and then the EU, putting the idea that economic unity was just as important if not more so than a military alliance into practice. Yalta and Potsdam also contrasted with Versailles: the WW2 conferences had been staggered and thoroughly planned, whereas the WW1 conferences were hasty compromises thrown together only after the war had finished. Finally, WW2 saw the creation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, or two opposing military superblocs keeping the peace in fear of nuclear war (otherwise known as MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction).

Finally, although international peace organisations were formed after both wars, the differences between them can be attributed to the differences between the nature of warfare during WW2, despite some superficial similarities. In both wars, technology dictated the nature of the conflict (machine guns and artillery meant that the soldiers had to dig into trenches in WW1, air raids meant that WW2 was less focused on the battlefront). A convoy system was also successfully developed by the UK in WW1 and WW2. Planes were also used by both sides in both wars for tactical purposes, including bombing. However, in WW1 stagnation resulted from technology being the master rather than the servant, with the new weaponry confusing and bewildering the generals (Churchill described this as “fighting machine guns with the breasts of brave young men” good). WW2 was different; movement resulted from Hitler being the master of the new technology rather than its servant (the Blitzkrieg tactics, V1/V2 rockets, Stuka bombers and Panzers exemplified this). In addition, Britain adopted a defensive naval strategy in WW1 with emphasis on a convoy system, whereas in WW2 their strategy was more offensive in the Battle of the Atlantic, with code-breaking at Bletchley Park and heavy production of battleships. Furthermore, in WW1 planes were used primarily for reconnaissance. In WW2, they were used as a direct military tool in many ways (Battle of Britain, the Blitz and Pearl Harbour), and were more regularly and heavily used to bomb targets. However, the greatest contrasts were the difference in the motives of the wars and the true power of the weaponry: the Nazi Einsatzgruppen and the death camps made WW2 a racial war where WW1 was a political one, and the display of sheer power through the atomic bomb in 1945 has terrified the world into shaky peace in a way that the end of WW1 never did.

In conclusion, we can see that despite these social, economic, political, diplomatic and military factors sharing some rather superficial and basic similarities between WW1 and WW2, it is easier to contrast the two wars than it is to compare them. Perhaps these differences came about as a result of the differences in leadership and motives; perhaps they were mostly a result of the development in technology or the political tensions. The situations before each war were different enough that it becomes too difficult to tell for certain whether we would be able to predict a similar outbreak of war in the future. Nevertheless, considering how these wars were different helps us consider how warfare has developed as a whole, and helps us judge our current day tactics against those of our past as well as helping us avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the wars in our past.