World Wars of the Twentieth Century 327professions. Their loosely liberal biases and preconceptions con
trasted with the more socialist and technocratic tone of the French
Munitions Ministry and stood in still stronger contrast to the
military-business management of the German war effort. Yet the
practical results were much the same in each country. Shell production
in Britain, for example, multiplied ten times over in the first year, thus
relieving the crisis that had precipitated the establishment of the
Ministry of Munitions in the first place. By July 1916 the volunteer
army was ready for action and brought a weight of artillery to the
Battle of the Somme that dazed and shocked the Germans, whose own
attempt to overwhelm the French at Verdun had to be broken off to
meet the new attack. But that was the only success achieved at the
Battle of the Somme. Enormous casualties,^44 like those the French
had suffered in the first weeks of fighting, took all the bloom off the
war for the British public; and as the trench warfare prolonged itself
endlessly, the Cabinet became increasingly loath to dispatch re
placements to France lest still further futile bloodletting ensue.
Across the Atlantic, the United States was in a position to profit
enormously from the upsurge of demand that the war provoked. Ex
port markets formerly supplied by British and German firms beck
oned enticingly, especially in Latin America. The result was a boom
of unusual proportions. Early in the war, sales to Germany tapered off
to insignificance. The United States did not insist on defying the
British blockade, even though, when the war started, a blockade con
ducted at long range had no standing in international law. Yet, as long
as Allied purchases sufficed to keep American farms, factories, and
mines at full stretch, there was little incentive for trying to evade
British trade regulations.
As time passed, therefore, American supply meshed more and more
massively into the Allied war effort. At first the British were able to
pay for their purchases in the ordinary way, even though this involved
selling off capital investments in the United States. Then when ready
cash ran dry, American banks kept business booming by lending
money to the Allies. As American populists later pointed out, this
gave New York bankers an enormous financial stake in an Allied
victory by 1917 and wedded American economic resources more and
more closely to the British and French war effort.
- Something like 50,000 on the first day; 419,652 in all by official count. John
Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York, 1977), pp. 204–80, provides a superb analysis of
the reasons for the British failure at the Somme and, incidentally, explains the realities
of trench warfare for the entire 1915–18 period more concisely and luminously than
anyone else has been able to do.