First World War - Mobilization

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Introduction

  • Harnessing power of the countries potentional
  • Key indicatior of the totality of the war
  • Conscription - Young men into the military - Sending them up after they have done their service, ready to be called up if needed 
  • This model is designed for short wars - If you find yourself in a long war - You have to adapt this in order to increase the size of your army 
  • If you are taking these mass armies into the fields - Mobilise economy to support them 
    • Reconfigure your industial secture - Come up with processes to turn your peace good factories into war time factories
    • Make interventions to ensure the basic supplies of warfare - Keep civilians and soliders going - Must be mobised - Coal and food - Well organised enough to keep economy going 
    • Process of mobilising minds - Get full engagment of the community into the war effort - Harder to measure - More complicated to do 
  • Purseigle (2012) - Highlights the type of resoruces you wish to mobilise 
    Self mobilisation - Segments of society mobilisating themselves - Do things to support the war effort - More nationalist, right wing and middle class parts of society 
    • Material 
    • Technical 
    • Human
    • Financial 
    • Cultural
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Raising Mass Armies

  • Measuring the armies in millions - Along with the casulties 
    • Losing 3/4 million military dead - Britian
  • Scale of expansion:
    • 1914 - Only 3/4 of a million strong - Scattered across the globe 
    • Mobilised 5 million men - By end of the war
      • Half of them are volunteers 
      • Half of them conscripts - Beginning of 1916
  • Military contribution on the Western Front grows from the six division in 1914 to seventy in 1916 - Explanentional growth in the size of the army 
    • Problem - Britian does not have the infastructure to be able to do this rapidly - Unlike other European countries who have had conscription in place for years - Britian have to build their infastructure at the same time of building their army
  • Americans - Also don't have a prewar army - Rate of expansion is more impressive than the British 
    • 100,000 men in April 1917
    • By the end of 1918, around 2 milion had been deployed to Europe - Not the whole of the American Army, this is just what they are able to move over
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Mobilizing Economies

  • The economy grew about 7% from 1914 to 1918 despite the absence of so many men in the services - The German economy strank 27% 
    • Soared from 8% in 1913 to 38% in 1918
  • Despite fears in 1916 that minitions production was lagging, the output was more than adequate 
    • The annual output of artillery grew from 91 guns in 1914 to 8039 in 1918
    • Warplanes soared from 200 in 1914 to 3200 in 1918
    • Production of machine guns went from 300 to 121,000
  • By 1916, Britian was funding most of the Empire's war expensitures, all of Italy's and two thirds of the war cost of France and Russia, plus smaller nations as well 
  • Shipments of American raw materials and food allowed Britian to feed itself and its army while maintaining her productivity - Financing was generally successful - City's strong finacial position minimized the damaging effects of inflation, as opposed to much worse conditions in Germany
    • Consumer consumption decline 18% from 1914 to 1919
  • Trade unions were encouraged as membership grew from 4.1 million in 1914 to 6.5 million in 1918, peaking at 8.3 million in 1920 before relapsing to 5.4 million in 1923 - Women were avaliable and many entered munitions factories and took other home front jobs vacated by men 
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Mobilizing Minds - Imagination and Organisation

  • Richard Bessel - 'Psychological mobilisation'
  • David Stevenson - 'Mobilisation of emotions and intellect'
  • John Hourne - Mobilising minds 
    • Mobilisation of Imagination - Through collected representations which are linked to existing belief systems and persieved values - Trying to go with the grain with what your people already think - Natures values - In viewing the enemy - Enemy demonised - Patriotic side - Fighting for our country and our way of life - Demonising the enemy - Stereotypes and creating a negative represation of the opponent 
    • Oganisation - Can be either government propoganda organisation - Ministrys focused on propoganda dymension - Pro war organisation mobilising - Right wing - Patriotic organisations come forwards - Mobilise the minds of their fellow citizens in support of the war - In Britian - National War Aims Committee - Making arguements for Britian should be getting from the War - Religious organisations - Churches - Mobilising in support of the war efforts 
  • Propoganda is an important part of this - Positive view of war effort - Negative view of the emeny - Police descent - What if someone disagrees with the propoganda preduced and what if they disagree with it and produce counter propoganda - Saying that the Germans are just like us etc - Use the legal frameworks - Use this security legislation - To clamp down on any descent on the propoganda messages - Defense of the Rhelm Act - Used in order to clamp down on those who have a differing message to the one of the government 
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Nationalism and Propoganda

  • When you start to demonise the enemy - Release various forces within your country - Outbreak of mob violence in Britian - After the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 - Any shop that has any persieved connection to Germany, people who are of Germany extraction - Subjected to mob violence - You have people who have been in Britian for 30-40 years - Who because they have a German name, are treated as the Enemy - Irony is that they left Germany to escape the unple asant ruling of the Kaiser 
  • Heratio Bottomley - Extreme example of something that is released as a result of these forces in Britian - Editor of John Ball magazine - Hyper nationalist publication - Crude in its propoganising - When war breaks out he is about to caught up in his fraudulant businesses - War allows him to relaunch himself as a patriotic speaker and recruiter of troops - Brands himself as the 'soilders friend' - He is able to tap into this cultural, political and psychological mobilisation and create for himself, harness and enhance this sence of hypernationalism 
  • John Ball Magazine - Towards the end of the war - Anyone who has a German family connection should be made to wear a special ribbon so everyone will know they have some connection to the Germans - Careful with there interactions with them there on wards 
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Defense of the Realm Act (DORA)

  • Passed in the United Kingdom 
  • 8th August 1914
  • Four days after it entered the First World War
  • Added to as the war progressed 
  • Gave the Government wide-ranging powers during the war, such as the power to requisition buildings or land needed for the war effort, or to make regulations creating criminal offences 
  • DORA ushered in a variety of authoritarian social control mechanisms
  • Anti-War activists, including John MacLean, Willie Gallacher, John William Muir and Bertrand Russell were sent to Prision 
  • Designed to help prevent invasion ot keep morale at home high - Imposed censorship of journalism and of letters coming home from the front line - The press was subject to controls on reporting troop movement, numbers or any other operational information that could be exploited by the enemy - People who breached the regulations with intent to assist the enemy could be sentenced to death - 10 people were executed under the regulations 
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