This is a war to end all wars
Woodrow Wilson
28th President of the United States
The “Great” War…?
Great in size, not in nature
WWI, The First World War, the Great War, the War to end all Wars…
You’ll hear it called many things but are those names accurate?
The 1914-18 war was certainly great as in HUGE. Countries on both sides had enormous empires spanning the world, meaning that when they went to war those other countries got dragged in too. Two thousand years of history from the Romans onward had made Europe a seething mass of squabbling nations, and the fact that most of the Monarchs in Europe were related didn’t help.
Ever had to sit through a family dinner where a couple of people don’t get along? Imagine that on a global scale.
With bombs.
And you couldn’t even hide in the kitchen until they had gone home.
So what was WWI all about anyway?
To be honest, it’s a bit complicated. Even some grown-ups will have trouble explaining it, so don’t feel bad if it takes a while to make sense.
Who was friends with whom?
Previously, on Strictly Come Fighting…
Let’s see if we can put some of the main events in order. Drag and drop the words into the timeline and see if you can work out how it started to go wrong.
How WWi changed everything
How do you convince someone to go to war?
The scale of the war meant that professional armies would not be big enough to fight it, on either side. Governments asked for volunteers to join up, and eventually men were forced to join up through conscription. In Britain, that meant that from 1916 every healthy man between the ages of 18 and 41 was required to join the army, unless he had a job too specialised to leave (for example teachers, churchmen, and some industries).
Would you leave everyone you loved behind you to go to a foreign land and fight for a reason you might not fully understand?
It’s one thing, fighting to defend your home or your freedom, but would you go and fight for someone else’s? Because people thousands of miles away were having an argument?
Well, millions of people did. Millions of people from over 30 countries around the world. That’s why this was truly the first world war.
Until this point, most wars had been fought on battlefields with horses, rifles, handguns, cannons and even swords. Even professional soldiers were used to fighting in small battles, defending the Empire and putting down rebellions. The biggest war Britain had been involved in was 15 years before, in South Africa. It was called the Boer War and resulted in around 120,000 deaths, including civilians.
WW1 resulted in 20 million deaths.
Come on in, the war’s lovely
You might have seen this guy on the left. Or if not, you might have seen the poster recreated with other pictures.
It’s a very famous image, and it’s a recruitment poster for the army.
It’s a picture of Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War. It was his job to encourage people to join up.
Would this encourage you to join the army? How do you think this poster was trying to make people feel?
Propaganda
The poster above is an example of propaganda.
Propaganda (noun):
Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
Oxford English Dictionary
Why is the poster considered propaganda?
Why did governments use propaganda?
Do you think using propaganda is good or bad?
How would you convince people to go to war?
The pictures on the right are some more examples of recruitment posters used during the war. What are they trying to do? Do you think they would be successful?
Make your own recruitment poster
Think about what words and images would convince people to go to war, then make your own poster. Test it on your friends to see if it works!
So, you’ve joined the army!
Will you be as happy as those recruitment posters told you you would be?
Firstly, let’s see what clothing and equipment you’ll be getting to help you fight the enemy.
Can you remember how to dress the soldier?
Make some trench stew
Hungry? Why not knock up some tasty Trench Stew to keep you going through the rest of the day?
Create some Trench art
Bored of sitting around waiting to get shot or go home? Create some trench art from whatever you have laying around.
Make a trench periscope
When you’re stuck in the trenches, you’ll need to see over the top without losing your head to an enemy sniper. You can make a trench periscope to see them without them seeing you!
Come fly with me
You might think that all the fighting was done on the ground, and it’s true that most of it was.
But there was also a crazy new invention that would be used for the first time in battle during WW1.
So insanely new was this technology, that it had been discovered just 11 years before. For the first time in history, humans had been able to leave the ground under their own power, and soar like birds.
In 1903 the Wright Brothers invented the first ever airplane. Hot-air balloons had been around for around 120 years but there had never been a way to make them go where you wanted. Powered, steerable flying machines were as incredible to people then as a teleporter would be to us!
The first successful plane flight was just 37m. That’s under half the length of a football pitch. And yet, just 11 years later, airplanes would be going into battle in the skies above Europe as weapons of war.
British and German aircraft
This poster was issued in 1915 as a way to show people the shapes of aircraft to watch out for. If they saw a German one, they were told to take cover in case of bombs.
You might have heard of the terrible bombings of WW2, especially in London, Coventry and other industrial cities, but did you know that Britain also suffered air raids in WW1?
Over 5000 people died as a result of bombing campaigns by Zeppelins (hydrogen-filled air balloons), bombers and seaplanes between 1914 and 1918. Mainly targeting London and its docks, the Germans wanted to disrupt the capital and cause people to panic. Attacking the docks would also affect supply lines both in and out of Britain.
Click the pic below to download a 3D biplane puzzle. Stick the template to thin card, cut it out and see if you can put it together! Once you have, you can decorate it like a real WW1 biplane.
There’s nothing like a war to make people inventive!
Of course it wasn’t all fun and games back home
Back home in Britain life wasn’t exactly normal. You might not be getting shot at, but things were most definitely different.
For a start, women were having to go to work!
Women’s Work?
With all the men off at war, the day to day jobs were left to the women. While today women and men can do pretty much any job, it was very different before WWI. Most people thought that women weren’t intelligent or strong enough to do the jobs traditionally done by men. But things were about to change!
Watch the video then find out about the kinds of jobs women were suddenly allowed – and expected – to do here:
