In 1915, the war intensified on multiple fronts. In the west, the Allies attempted attacks on the Dardanelles and at Ypres, where the Germans first used poison gas. Trench warfare became entrenched as the main style of combat, with elaborate trench networks stretching across northern France and Belgium. Soldiers endured miserable conditions in the trenches, dealing with constant rain, mud, lice, rats, and the omnipresent stench of death and decay. Both sides worked to normalize life at the front through routines, sports, and distractions, but the conditions and scale of violence marked a shift to total war and the industrialization of killing.

1. The Deepening of the War

2. 1915 Chronology: Not Over By Christmas
• January Introduction of food rationing in Germany
• Feb.-March Allied attempts to take the Dardanelles
• Feb.-Sept. Intensive German submarine warfare begins
• March 21 First German air raid on Paris
• April 8 Turkey initiates deportation and massacre of
Armenians
• April 22-May 27 Second Battle of Ypres; introduction of gas
warfare
• April 25 Allied land campaign against Turks in Gallipoli begins
• May 7 Sinking of the Lusitania by German U-boat
• May 23 Italy enters war on Allied side
• July Coal miners strike in South Wales; Munitions of War
Act passed in Britain
• Sept. 24 Battle of Loos

3. How the war proceeds: The Big Picture
Stuart Robson’s Distinct Periods of WWI by Year:
1914. War of Movement bogs down
1915. Badly planned offensive disasters in west and
trench warfare; German successes against Russia; at
home, state-controlled war economy emerges
1916. The “Classic” Phase
1917. The Despair Phase
1918. It’s over Phase

4. “Two Nations” and Many Fronts
• Between workers and middle class
• Between generations
• Between dominant power and ethnic
minorities
• Between women and men
• Between pacifism and militarism
• Between urban and rural

5. Fronts of War
• War Front: Trench
• Home Front: Women, Workers, Governments
• “Rejection” of Fronts
• Non-western Fronts
• “Internal” Fronts
How did these front experiences shape self,
state, and society during the war and after the
war? What becomes the new normal?

6. 5 Key Questions Posed
Heather Jones, “As the Centenary Approaches: The
Regeneration of First World War Historiography” in The Historical
Journal, Vol 56 (2013)
• Why did war break out? √
• Why did the allies win?
• Were the generals to blame for the high casualty
rates (especially Haig!)?
• How did men endure trench warfare?
• To what extent did civilian society accept and
endorse the war effort?

7. Endurance the norm?
• Alexander Watson’s Enduring the War (2008):
• Men adapted, resiliency most standard
response and kept fighting
• Good leadership made critical difference in
morale (especially with junior officers)
• Religion/Patriotism/Propaganda
• Military Discipline not so harsh?
• Mutinies rare, revolution rarer still

8. Structure of Army
• Army under General ~200,000 soldiers
• Corps under Lieutenant-General ~50,000 soldiers
• Division under Major-General ~12,000 soldiers
• Brigade under Brigadier ~4,000 soldiers
• Regiment under Colonel ~2,000 soldiers
• Battalion under Major ~1,000 soldiers
• Company under Captain ~250 soldiers
• Platoon under Subaltern ~60 soldiers
• Section under Lance-Corporal ~15 soldiers

9. 1915: The Death of Innocence?
Lyn Macdonald, 1915: The Death of Innocence
(1995).
Stalemate by 1915
Pte. L. Mitchell, 24th Field Ambulance, 8 Div. on
Battle of Aubers Ridge (British offensive on the
Western Front) 9 May 1915. A disaster.

10. Normalizing War
(or how to normalize the abnormal?)

11. 1915: The Subterranean World of Trenches and
the Institutionalization of War

13. The Troglodyte World
• John Ellis in Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in
World War I (1976)
• George L Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the
Memory of the World Wars (1990)
• Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker,
14-18: Understanding the Great War (French
2000, USA 2002).

14. “Total Battle”
“unprecedented Level of violence” (Stephane
Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14-18)
Argue war has been sanitized, “cleaned-up” so that
violence of war diminished. (Unacceptable)
French historians prefer not to dwell on the
violence of WWI; British and American historians
have done a better job of developing military
history (e.g. John Keegan’s The Face of Battle).
How to make sense of the violence?

15. Fallen Soldiers Intro.
• Mosse: “More than twice as many men died in action
or of their wounds in the First World War as were killed
in all major wars between 1790 and 1914.” (p.3).
• “Some thirteen million men died in the First World
War, while Napoleon in the war against Russia, the
bloodiest campaign before that time, lost 400,000
men—some 600,000 fewer than fell on all sides in the
inconclusive battle of the Somme in 1916.” (p. 3).
• The greatest war in 19th C., Franco-Prussian War
(1870-1871): 150,000 French dead and 44,780
Prussians.

16. After WWI
Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker on loss of life per WWI to WWII:
“on average almost 900 Frenchmen and 1,300 Germans died
everyday between the outbreak of war in August 1914 and
the armistice in November 1918.” (p. 22)
When average # of daily casualties losses compared between
WWI and WWII, WWI mortality rates higher except for
Russia (which had heavier losses in WWII). Britain in WWII
(1939-45) lost 147 men per day, in WWI lost 457 men a day
(p. 22).
Somme (1 July 1916): 20,000 men from British empire killed,
40,000 wounded. “No day in the Second World War was so
deadly, even on the Eastern Front.” (p. 23).

17. Dehumanization of War
• Fire power turns skill, training, and courage into
gruel, matter of “luck” if survive?
• Hit by large-caliber shells no identifiable remains.

18. Endurance?
• Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker: “More than half
of the 70 million soldiers engaged in the Great
War suffered physically from its violence,
whether it killed them or “only” wounded
them.” (p. 25) “and we should not rule out the
possibility that almost half of the survivors
sustained more of less serious psychological
disturbances.” (p. 25)

19. The Troglodyte World (Fussell)
475 miles long, from North Sea through Belgium,
Flanders, and France to Switzerland.
Between trenches: “no-man’s land”
Over 12,000 miles of trenches on the allied side, add
Central Powers, about 25,000 miles of trenches, zig-
zagged, “equal to a trench sufficient to circle the earth.
Theoretically it would have been possible to walk from
Belgium to Switzerland entirely below ground . . . .”
(Fussell, 37)
The British part of the line normally populated by about
800 battalions of 1000 men each. Concentrated in Ypres
Salient in Flanders and Somme in Picardy.

20. The Inversion of War:
Trenches define combat
Inversion of war from offensive to defensive:
“Inverted” sieges of extended duration
Siegfried Sasson on trenches: “When all is said
and done, the war was mainly a matter of holes
and ditches.”
Transformation of war, transformation of
soldiers: Image of WWI combatant?

21. How the holes began
• Individual foxhole to protect from shells, then
individual foxholes linked. Become basis for trench
lines and soldiers become underground creatures.
• Trenches appear on all fronts but develop first on
western front
• Trenches on other fronts more rudimentary in part
because war remained more fluid.
• Germans better trained at building field defenses and
took the lead in creating systematic trench networks
and would always have better trenches, pioneered the
use of concrete blocks and use of electricity.

22. national differences in trenches
• Pimp my trench! Germans better: deeper,
even “comfortable” trenches. Doorbells, water
tanks with taps, cupboards and mirrors, real
kitchens, heated, wallpaper. Efficient, clean,
and permanent.
• French: nasty, cynical, efficient, temporary.
• British: amateur, vague, ad hoc, temporary
(always hoping for the break-out so trenches
not a priority) (Fussell, 45)

23. Trenches reflect views of war?
• Germans: Invaders. Durable trench viable
strategy: Principle of “in-depth defense”--
successive lines of trenches separated by 2-3
km., supported by concrete pillboxes with
machine gun posts. Sept. 1916 Hindenburg
line created fortified zone.
• French and Russian situation “temporary,”
hence trenches temporary. Accounts
obsession of the breakthrough, futile assaults.

24. Unseen World War I photos:
German Trenches
By Dean Putney

25. French trench at Côte 304, Verdun, 1916

26. Easier to Draw than Maintain
Trench construction diagram from a 1914
British infantry manual

28. Trenches
• Front-line trench
• Support trench line
• Reserve line
• Three kinds of trenches: firing trenches,
communication trenches, saps
• From the rear, follow communication trench
up line, by time reached reserve line, well
below ground level.

31. Trenches
• Funk Holes: One or two men holes
• Floor of trench: covered with wooden
duckboards with sumps to collect water. Walls
supported by sandbags, corrugated iron,
bundles of sticks.
• Barbed wire (an American invention)
• Directional and traffic control signs
everywhere in trenches, an underground city
or inverted fortress.

32. Kensington Gardens “Ideal” Trench
Trench exhibitions. Reality much different: wet ,
cold, smelly, squalid, shabby.

33. Soldiers Endure
• Soldiers march 15-20 miles per day; 10 minutes of rest
allowed each hour. Carried from 60-77 pounds of
supplies.
• British recruit weighed on average 132 pounds.
Grossly overloaded (the French even more so with a kit
of 85 pounds). Poor quality British boots weighed 5
pounds. Men confined to barracks waiting for new
boots. Great coat weighed 7 pounds before water and
mud added, add 20 pounds for water-logged coat, and
another 7 plus pounds for mud, coat averaged
between 34-58 pounds. (Ellis, 45)

34. A typical day in the British trenches:
5am - 'Stand-to' (short for 'Stand-to-Arms',
meaning to be on high-alert for enemy attack)
half an hour before daylight
5.30am - Rum ration
6am - Stand-to half an hour after daylight
7am - Breakfast (usually bacon and tea)
After 8am - Clean themselves, clean weapons,
tidy trench
Hear from veteran Tommies
Soldier on watch while others rest
Watch a clip with veteran Tommies describing
life in the trenches
Noon - Dinner
After dinner - Sleep and downtime (one man
per ten on duty)
5pm - Tea
6pm - Stand-to half an hour before dusk
6.30pm - Stand-down half an hour after dusk
6.30pm onwards - Work all night with some
time for rest (patrols, digging trenches, putting
up barbed wire, getting stores, replacement of
unit of soldiers every five days)

35. Night Creatures and “ant-work” (Fussell)
• Combat exception rather than rule.
• During day, men cleaned weapons, did repairs, slept, wrote.
• At night, work began: wiring parties, digging parties, carrying
parties, night patrols, raiding parties. Communication lines fragile
and field telephones in constant need of repair.
• By 4:30 back underground. I
• In trenches: “One saw two things only: the walls of an unlocalized,
undifferentiated earth and the sky above.” (Fussell, 51) Sunrise and
sunsets at stand-to’s. Sky became reference point, only escape from
ugliness of front. Often times sky reflects the shabbiness and
greyness of front by delivering torrential rains, constant drizzle, and
freezing, overcast days.

36. logistical problems
• Constant issues: Lack of troop mobility (how
to move in a maze?), transporting supplies
• Troops would get lost for hours in trenches,
compound exhaustion.

37. Who Will Stop the Rain?
Between 25 October 1914 and 10 March 1915, only 18 days without
rain and out of these 18 days, 11 had temperatures below freezing.
In 1916, Continent experienced the heaviest rainfall in 35 years;
torrential rains.
Flooded Trenches: Mud suck men in and not release them. Soldiers
forced to walk on top of the trench.
November 1916, one Guards battalion at Somme lost 16 men through
exhaustion and drowning in the mud. Drowning in the mud an
enormous fear for men at the front. (Ellis, 45)
Dampness creates “trench foot” problem which could lead to
gangrene. 74,711 British troops admitted to hospitals in France with
trench foot or frostbite. Need to keep feet dry and need dry socks.
Not enough dry socks and too much rain. (Ellis, 48)

38. Two British soldiers standing in a flooded
communication trench during World War One

39. Chateau Wood, Ypres, 1917

40. Lice, Rats, Flies, and Stench
• “Lousy”: Great War word
• Rats a constant. Big, black, wet, muddy. Swarms feed off of
cadavers and dead horses. One pair of rats could produce
some 880 offspring in a year (Ellis, 52).
• Flies cover everything.
• Stench of death Could smell front line miles before arrived.
• Ellis sums up combination of rain and stench: “Yet all the
rain that fell on the Western Front was not enough to wash
away the accumulated filth. The rubbish, urine, excreta,
corpses in the trenches, as well as the unwashed state of
the men, produced every type of pestilence and disease
associated with such conditions.” (p. 52)

41. Advertisement for
Sunlight Soap in
the trenches (1915)

42. Norming the Abnormal
Routines, rules and codes of conduct created.
Sports: boxing, football, rugby (manliness,
cohesion, team spirit)
Gambling
Concerts with songs and sketches.
Reading not very popular
Ultimately survival main focus.

43. Germans playing cards
next to the garden.

44. A barber in a French trench

47. 1915: The first football kickoff
First Battalion of the 18th London Regiment at Loos
in 1915. Kick football while attacking. War is sport,
sport is war.
Most famous football episode: Capt. W.P. Nevill
(company commander in 8th East Surreys) at the
Somme, brought 4 footballs, one for each platoon,
and offered a prize to the platoon who kicked its
football to the German frontline first. Nevill killed
instantly.
Reinforced the sporting image and sense of fair play
that was seen as so important for the Brits.

48. A cartoon depicting the men of the London
Irish Rifles booting their football towards the
German Front Line

49. 1915: first use of poisonous gas.
• Jan. 1915 used on Eastern Front at Bolimov . Weather conditions poor (too
cold, gas—xylyl bromide—could not evaporate.
• Second Battle of Ypres, Germans test poisonous gas as new weapon.
Mortars begin to fire (April 22) and at same time Germans released
chlorine gas from canisters (cylinder gas) from their own trenches. Gas
drifted towards Allied lines, caught by surprise (although German
deserters had warned them). Yellowish-green cloud. Chlorine a choking
agent that silently attacks the lungs and respiratory system. Painful death,
frightening, panic. Left 4 mile wide gap while French colonial troops from
Algeria and French fled. German Commander failed to take advantage of
opportunity for breakthrough. Canadians resisted advancing Germans,
also caught up in gas attack but drenched rags in canteen water and
covered their mouths. By 1916, artillery shells could deliver gas,
eliminating dependence on wind direction.
• Gas too unpredictable to be war-winning weapon but morale affected.
Cause panic, soldiers hated gas mask.

50. Gassed (1919) by John Singer Sargent

51. Detail from Otto Dix's Stormtroopers
Advancing Under a Gas Attack, from his 1924
set of first world war drawings,

52. Gas
• All sides used gas but Germany produced and used more gas (more than 68,000
tons), France (almost 37,000 tons) and Britain (more than 25,000).
• Cylinder gas in vapor form; shell gas liquid. Classified as lethal or irritant. Some
compounds resulted in instant death, some delayed-action. Some create years of
suffering. Gas dependent on climatic conditions, besides wind directions, also rain.
Some gas might remain active for days, others dispersed quickly—most frightening
aspect of gas was the uncertainty if gas had been released and if still active. Gas
casualties small (3-4% overall) but TERROR effective.
• Best weather conditions: little wind, moist atmosphere, and no sun. Many
varieties of gas compounds: best known “mustard gas” (Dichlorethylsulphide), also
known as yellow cross. Introduced in 1917. One of the most effective, though not
officially lethal, blistered and burned the skin, even through clothing, caused
blindness (usually temporary) and if inhaled could cause death from bronchial
pneumonia, burning the respiratory system. Shell carried and remained potent for
several days in favorable climate. Blue Cross, Germans introduced in 1917, fine
particles could penetrate gasmasks—effects of retching, headaches, severe
headaches. Phosgene (carbonyl chloride) introduced in 1915, delayed action,
could cause sudden death after 48 hours of exposure with victim not realizing he
had been gassed.

53. 1915 and Tanks
(a weapon of the future)
Tank not fully utilized. British navy developed
heavy armored vehicle on treads and the stalemate
of 1915 created more favorable environment to
idea.
Haig hoped that its use would lead to the highly-
anticipated breakthrough. Didn’t happened.
Dehumanizing, frightening. Heavy tanks as the
“land version of the naval warship” and light tanks
as the battlefield successor of the horse”. (Audoin
Rouzeu, Combat, 183)