898 Ch. 22 • The Great Warand Galicia. These actions, reflecting the brutalization of war and the
banalization of death, foreshadowed a new kind of war—a total war in
which civilians were not spared.
At the outbreak of hostilities in Britain and France, shops owned by people
with German-sounding names were pillaged (in the latter case, some victims
were French Alsatians for whom the war, at least in part, was supposedly
being fought). A publication for French schoolchildren told this story: “Your
little brother in your presence has lied to your mother. You take him aside
and tell him, ‘Do you want to behave like the Krauts?’ ” The younger boy
confesses, now understanding that “the French don’t lie.” A publication for
girls informed them that “pillage is a German word.” German propaganda
similarly smeared their enemies, particularly the British, who supposedly
used dum-dum bullets that exploded upon impact and gouged out the eyes
of German prisoners.
The outbreak of the war pushed aside bitter political divisions at home.
In France, competing parties proclaimed a “sacred union,” and the socialist
Jules Guesde became minister of commerce. There was little public criti
cism of the way the war was being run until later in the conflict when casu
alties mounted. In Germany, too, socialist opposition to militarism based on
class solidarity quickly turned to patriotic support. In Russia, at least in
the first few years, only the tsar’s will seemed to matter. In Austria-Hungary,
the ability of the imperial bureaucracy to supply its multinational army, the
prestige of which had helped keep the Habsburg Empire together, seemed
almost miraculous. Tensions between the empire’s nationalities remained
beneath the surface, at least in the war’s early years.
In Britain, the angry quarrels over strat
egy among the generals, as well as
between them and the cabinet, were well
hidden from the public. A volunteer army
was raised with remarkable enthusiasm
and speed, aided by an effective recruit
ment poster sporting the face of Lord Hor
atio Kitchener, the secretary of war. On a
single day in September 1914, 33,000 men
joined up. By the end of the year, the
British had 2 million men in uniform. The
volunteer force that German Kaiser
William II had called “a contemptible little
army” fought very well. In 1916, Britain
began military conscription.
David Lloyd George (1863-1945), the
Liberal politician who headed the wartime
Ministry of Munitions, skillfully oversaw
A poster showing support from the transition from peacetime to wartime
the home front. industrial production, using the powers