Western Civilization - History Of European Society

54 6Chapter 27

typically endured lesser hardships. The war brought
martial law in many countries (starting with Germany),
press censorship and the jailing of journalists (including
a cabinet minister in France), harassment of foreigners
and pacifists, suspension of many peacetime activities
(British schools even canceled cricket), and dreadful
propaganda (such as reports that the Germans were
bayoneting babies in Belgium). Transportation, food,
clothing, and fuel were requisitioned, regulated, or ra-
tioned by governments. The scarcity and inflated prices
of daily necessities frequently left the home front as
hungry as the army. The war doubled the price of con-
sumer goods in Britain, tripled prices in France, and
quadrupled those in Germany (see table 27.2). The Al-
lied blockade made the situation so bad in Germany
that even the invention of ersatzfoods (substitute foods,
often adulterated) left the people with less than half of
the nutrition in their prewar diet. During “the turnip
winter” of 1916–17, much of the population survived
on that humble tuber. In Russia, the scarcity of food
and fuel was so severe that it was a major factor in the
outbreak of revolution in 1917.
The war also led to dramatic changes on the home
front. The most important change resulted from the
mobilization of so many men to fight. In France, 43
percent of all adult men were conscripted, a total of 8.4
million men over five years. (All of the powers, except
Britain, drafted their armies before the war; Britain was
forced to end the volunteer army in 1916 when the
death rate became too high to replace with volunteers.)
To replace conscripted soldiers in their peacetime jobs,
the French government welcomed 184,000 colonial
workers into France, creating immigrant communities

that would later become controversial. The principal

solution for the labor shortage, however, was the re-

cruitment of women. The war sharply increased the

percentage of women in the labor force (especially in

Britain and France), and it put women into jobs from

which they had previously been excluded. In France,

for example, women had constituted more than 35 per-

cent of the prewar workforce. Then the French state

railroads increased women workers from six thousand

to fifty-seven thousand. The Ministry of Education

added thirty thousand women in secondary education.

Banks, businesses, and the government all hired women

to replace men on clerical and secretarial staffs. The

largest opening for women, however, was in munitions

factories, which employed fifteen thousand women in

1915 and 684,000 in 1917 (see document 27.3). With-

out such women workers, armies could not have contin-

ued to fight. The women received less pay than the men

they replaced (and typically lost their jobs at the war’s

end), but they contributed significantly to the long-term

evolution of women’s rights.

Exhaustion and Armistice, 1917–18

By 1917–18 Europe was exhausted. Combat deaths

were approaching eight million; total war deaths, fif-

teen million. Britain also experienced rebellion at home

in 1916: P. H. Pearse and the Sinn Fein(Gaelic for “our-

selves alone”) led an unsuccessful Irish nationalist upris-

ing known as the Easter Rising. Pearse and others were

executed, and many Irish nationalists were imprisoned,

although only temporarily halting the Irish Revolution

that produced a larger Anglo-Irish War in 1919–21 and

Irish independence. The Russian Revolution of 1917,

meanwhile, devastated that country. Before the war in

the west ended, the revolution brought about the aboli-

tion of the Romanov monarchy, the execution of Czar

Nicholas II, and a separate peace treaty with Germany.

Also in 1917 fully half of the units of the French army

mutinied. Twenty thousand men deserted, more refused

to fight, and discipline was not restored until three

thousand soldiers (often chosen by lot) had been exe-

cuted—more than the total executed on the guillotine

in Paris during the French Revolution. Similar demoral-

ization (but not mutiny) took root in the British army

after their commander, Sir Douglas Haig, ordered an-

other offensive in Flanders, known as the battle of

Ypres; 400,000 Britons died in that campaign. In Ger-

many, where the civilian government was directed by

the army high command (and the virtual dictatorship

of General Ludendorff), the Allied blockade was

Wartime Inflation in the Prices of Consumer Goods

Prices as a percentage of 1913 prices

Country 1914 1917 1919

France 102 262 357

Germany 106 179 415

Great Britain 100 206 242

Italy 96 299 364

Source: History of the World Economy in the Twentieth Century,vol. 2:

Gerd Hardach, The First World War, 1914–1918(Berkeley, Calif.: Univer-

sity of California Press, 1977), pp. 119, 172.

TABLE 27.2

Life on the Home Front in World War I