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Business News/ Opinion / The honour of World War I
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The honour of World War I

If there is any virtue in saving the lives of civilians, the first world war was nothing short of an epochal success

More importantly, the First World War was a tipping point of sorts when it comes to one statistic that many are thinking of these days: civilian casualties. Photo: AFPPremium
More importantly, the First World War was a tipping point of sorts when it comes to one statistic that many are thinking of these days: civilian casualties. Photo: AFP

In recent days, countries and its citizens all over the world have been marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. In many places, especially in the countries that engaged each other on the Western Front, this has usually involved ceremonies to remember the soldiers who died there. These tend to be sorrowful rather than triumphant ceremonies. Ceremonies that exhort us to remember the countless lives ground out in the trenches for little gain.

In the UK, for instance, many marked the centenary on the evening of 4th August by switching off all lights except for a single burning candle. (This is also a hat-tip to a famous quote uttered by the British foreign secretary Edward Grey in 1914 on the eve of Britain’s engagement with the conflict.)

All of these commemorations help to reinforce a certain popular idea of the First World War as a brutal, pointless, inhumane war, fought over the whims and fancies of mad monarchs and rotting empires. As numerous articles and multimedia shows will tell you, this was the first war in which slaughter was unleashed on an “industrial scale".

This framing of the war is broadly true, but it also glosses over many other themes. For instance, many military leaders of the war had a complete and utter disregard for the lives of their own soldiers. Wave upon wave of troops were thrown into attacks whose futility was apparent to everyone involved except the General in the barracks. The industrial scale of the war’s slaughter was as much an outcome of technological progress, as it was of ghastly leadership.

The First World War was also, and this may come as a surprise to some, a uniquely humane and honourable war. It was humane and honourable in a way that very few major military conflicts have been since. For instance, the outbreak of the war followed a period of prolonged dialogue between the powers involved, before culminating in a series of formal declarations of war.

And even when new weapons of destruction were introduced, there was much consternation about the ‘honour’ involved. The machine gun, for instance, was not deployed with uniform enthusiasm. Many officers in the French army and elsewhere felt that such a killing machine had no place in ‘civilized’ warfare. There was as much consternation over the use of chemical warfare.

Clara Immerwahr, wife of German chemical weapons pioneer Fritz Haber, was shocked at the very first use of chlorine gas during Second Battle of Ypres, which was organized by her husband. A few days later she shot herself in the chest with his revolver and died. Unperturbed Haber packed his bags the next morning and went to the Eastern front to gas the Russians. Later Haber’s son committed suicide too.

Stories of humanity on the front during lulls in the fighting are numerous.

More importantly, the First World War was a tipping point of sorts when it comes to one statistic that many are thinking of these days: civilian casualties.

Children and women from Gaza to Sinjar tremble in fear, as war rages around them. This is uspetting but there also seems to be a notion these days that civilian casualties are invitable in any large military conflict. Our outrage about this, in a sense, has been numbed.

Ever since the Second World War, civilians have lost at least as many lives as soldiers through direct military action and crimes again humanity. Throw in deaths related to famines and diseases as a fallout of war, and the gap widens even more. This is roughly the case for most major military engagements from the Second World War itself through to Vietnam, Bangladesh in 1971 and right down to the Afghan conflict.

Due to a number of reasons—air power, technology, the nature of engagement, the manipulation of populations by armies—civilians now suffer at least as much as any formal fighting force in any conflict. It wasn’t always like that.

The First World War saw a total loss of around 17 million lives. Of these, around 10 million were soldiers and the remaining civilians. This 6.5 million deaths further breaks down into 2.4 million deaths due to action, and the remaining due to disease and starvation. And of these 2.4 million, at least half may be down to the annihilation of Armenians and other minorities by the Ottomans.

Which leaves us with a number of around one million civilian deaths due to direct military action in the four-year long first world war—a million caught in the cross-fire, if you will. Compare that to the two or three million civilians deaths estimated by some in the nine months of the 1971 Bangladesh war. (Keep in mind all casualty numbers for the First World War and other wars are often a matter of dispute. I’ve gone with the most popular consensus estimates.)

Perhaps one reason for the First World War’s somewhat lower civilian loss is the fact it was a static war in the west. With armies mired in the trenches, millions of civilians behind lines were saved.

So, perhaps, the traditional narrative of the war in the trenches being pointless is somewhat flawed. If there is any virtue in saving the lives of civilians and shielding them from the blind fury of marauding armies, then the trenches of the First World War were nothing short of an epochal success.

Every week, Déjà View scours historical research and archives to make sense of current news and affairs.

To read Sidin Vadukut’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/dejaview

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Published: 09 Aug 2014, 01:20 AM IST
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