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Patriotism in WWI
Patriotism in WWI
In the summer of 1914, Europe plunged itself into a conflict that had seemed inevitable,
but was to change popular conceptions of war universally. There was indeed much that
was new about the conflict from 1914 to 1918, most significantly in the scope of this
analysis, the unprecedented mobilisation of all the belligerent nations’ resources: human,
economic, military, and emotional included. Popular engagement with the national war
effort was by no means straightforward, however and regional and local differences in
commitment of the combatants serve as the focus for a daunting volume of literature on
the First World War. Deciphering the general feeling in 1914 in respect of both ‘war’ and
national community is an appropriate point of departure in discussing the extent to which
people in France, Germany, and Russia engaged with their national war effort. Naturally,
in each of these belligerents, considering the chronology of such commitment is also
profitable, particularly in weighing the events of 1917 both in Northern France and Russia
where mutinous and revolutionary courses, respectively, took place. Care must be taken
not to place too great an emphasis on governmental and political reactions to perceived
disengagement from the war effort at the expense of gaining an understanding of the
central participants of the war effort, the soldiers themselves. Some overarching questions
present themselves with this area of study: did soldiers’ fight for a national victory, or was
it something more complex? And for those troops who did reject authority, be it in Russia,
Germany, or in France, was it in hope of an end to the prosecution of an increasingly futile
conflict? Conclusions will rest partly on reconciling the array of accounts to form reasoned
assessments on the meaning of Russia’s revolutions, France’s mutiny, and the universal
weariness amongst soldiers in fighting a war in Europe.
If one examines the history of popular feelings about the ‘enemy’ specific to the Franco
German relationship, it can reveal important aspects of national consciousness during the
summer of 1914. The ferocity of any country’s war effort can be linked to their soldiers’
willingness to project anxieties and animosity onto the enemy. In the case of France and
Germany, both represented hereditary enemies for the other; the FrancoPrussian War of
187071 constituted a lasting paradigm of mutual suspicion, even in peace time1. However,
1 M.E. Nolan, The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the enemy in France and Germany, 1898-1914, (Oxford,
2005) p. 24
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the process of constructing a hereditary enemy was not rapid, and it was intimately linked
to the development of national feeling in the two countries. Representations of future
conflicts including preparations for them, reveal much about the mindset regarding war,
past and present: the influences that such mythologies produced carry some significance.
The long peace between 18711914 had contributed to a romanticised collective imagining
of war, and one which interacted emotionally with the aforementioned hatred of a
hereditary enemy to predispose French and Germans to assume future conflict was
inevitable, nay appealing2. This hereditary enemy status, did not exist in the same manner
between Russia and any European power, and where the tsarist state had enemies, they
were not prominent in the popular imagination of Russian citizens, and latterly citizen
soldiers. By 1914 then, attitudes toward war, past and present, reflected more generic array
of attitudes of French and Germans towards each other and neither side could rid itself of
the preconceptions of the other, derived largely from forty years earlier. Both national
communities failed to realise that the very shortcomings in character that they projected
on their enemy, may not correspond to reality3. In the case of France, war had assumed a
place of honor in memory, as a French tradition, albeit based largely on emotional rather
than empirical arguments. As Wesseling summarises, French history was an inherently
military one4.
The extent to which soldiers entered the fray enthusiastically has been heavily debated by
historians. It is perhaps insufficient to try to describe the manner in which enthusiasm
soared for war as it just began in rational terms. Something very basic moved soldiers and
citizens in support of an effort, which had hardly started at all. In many European
countries, the calls for mobilisation and conscription disguises an important reality of the
early war effort: in these months enlistment was largely voluntarist. It is impossible to
gauge mens’ various motivations for serving, but these months reveal the magnitude of
the surge in ‘national feeling’. This phenomenon merits further analysis. By September,
enlisted volunteers could hardly be deemed ignorant of the realities of the war; the first
casualties had returned, and so dispelled the myth of a short adventurous war. However,
numbers of volunteer soldiers reached its zenith after the autumn stalemate had been
established. Where fullscale conscription occurred, voluntarist enlistment still existed,
and volunteers came from men too old or too young to be conscripted5.
National mobilisation projects an unequivocal picture of national sentiment being
channeled towards an agreed goal, but national sentiment in this unilateral, innocent,
respect, fails to adequately explain why soldiers endured in the reality of industrialised
killing. For all the brutality of the first stages of war, when voluntarism was at its peak, the
expectations of a short war were unyielding even until 1917.
The means through which the initial commitment was extended can to some extent be
explained by reference to the portrayal of enemy atrocities, most notably in the French
popular consciousness. It is important to consider the mechanisms through which the
imagined atrocities were interpreted. They certainly spurred hatred of the enemy and
therein intensified the violence of the Great War. Personal testimonies of soldiers
assaulting their enemy’s character are normally received with little credibility as a
historical source, but this approach is illinformed; writings about the enemy are best
absorbed at facevalue, and were statements of profound hostility by an interpretation of
enemy atrocities. Perhaps this is best exemplified by the European tendency to animalise
the enemy: for instance a French pamphlet published by Physicians posited some
explanations for Germans abnormal defecation, and concluded essentially that ‘the German
urinates through his feet’6. It is quite natural to playfully dismiss such an account, but one
must remember that this was not published in jest, it was aimed at senior physicians,
which is quite revealing. There are intimate links between perceptions of the enemy and
national feeling, to the degree that they are one of its fundamental bases. The image of the
adversary is crucial but one should not present the animosity as monolithic in character.
German militarism and the civil leaders of Germany were more harshly derided in France
and Russia than the German nation as a whole as expressed in a French trench newspaper
in 1917: ‘ The emperors ordained an onslaught in which, alas, the dead piled up in the hecatombs, to
preserve the crown and to preserve their prestige, and it is the people stirred into fanaticism who [...]
5 S. Audoin- Rouzeau, 14-18 Understanding the Great War’, (New York, 2002) p. 100
6 Dr. Berillon, cited in Audoin- Rouzeau, ibid, p. 104
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suffer the cost7’. Trench journalism can reveal a great deal about the what soldiers expected
to gain from the war, and can contribute to our understanding of why they fought on, even
in 1917.
Trench newspapers largely dismissed national and international current affairs: it is
striking just how parochial their focus was. Their attention lay in anything that affected
dayday life, by example in 1916 a trench journalist wrote that ‘As for what is Right, for
Civilisation and Humanity, the poilu does not think about them much’’8. One might conclude
from such a statement that soldiers in northern France were apathetic, and not aligned in
any meaningful way with neither propagandist accounts, nor their country’s national war
effort. Additionally, the image of the the enemy improved through the course of war, and
trench journalism reflects this quite vividly, where accounts in 1917 spoke of an ‘obscure
sympathy’ in France toward the German9. One is therefore encouraged to ask whether
attitudes changed, or levels of commitment depreciated during the course of four years at
war: the most convincing answer is yes, but it is difficult to identify when exactly changes
in perception began, and defies easy explanation. Some historians have placed the change
in 1917, cited the mutinies in northern France, and the power vacuum in Russia, whilst
others have given primacy to the Somme as a transformational experience in soldiers’
commitment. If one can speak of an ‘indifference’ toward external events, and by
association the national war effort, at a macropolitical level, it can perhaps be linked to the
impossibility of thinking about the future; that is beyond the most pressing issue of one’s
own fate. Soldiers in all trenches became cutoff from current events, because life in the
frontline deprived them of any desire to know. French soldiers created their own world,
with its own social organisation and methods of coping and were fierce in their
commitment to the nation as they recognised it10. In fact this offers a better framework
within which to explain the magnitude of French, and indeed German, soldiers’ persistent
commitment to the war. The broadbased system of associations between soldiers formed
a much more resilient war culture than anything that could be engineered by super
7 Le P’tit pepere, cited in S. Audoin- Rouzeau, Men at War 1914-1918: National Sentiment and Trench
Journalism in France during the First World War, (Oxford, 1995) p. 163
8 Le Periscope, cited in, Audoin- Rouzeau, ibid, p. 156
9 Pierre Chaine’s memoirs, as cited in, Audoin-Rouzeau, ibid, p. 169
10 L. Smith et. al., France and the Great War 1914-1918, (Cambridge, 2003) p. 76
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structures of military authority. One author reflected that men ‘formed small communities, in
which it was not rare to see each one giving what he could, food, drink, tobacco...’11. These
primary social groups had a significance in the tenacity of soldiers’ commitment, and the
associations formed were never compromised throughout the war effort. In this sense, one
might conclude that soldiers in France particularly did not relate to their ‘national’ war
effort insofar as it was a infinitely more personal sacrifice than that suggests. Corporal
Louis Barthas wrote in 1916 that ‘ it is not the flame of patriotism that inspires this spirit of
sacrifice, it is only the spirit of bravado so as not to seem more chicken than your neighbor’12. This
cannot be accepted as the only reason for soldiers’ consent to an ordeal which was,
essentially, imposed on them by the Republic, but it certainly strengthens our
understanding of how soldiers managed the transition from imagined war to the
persistent brutality of 19151918.
By 1917, nay at any stage during 191418, it is inappropriate to posit a backlash against the
war as a cause. The Russian revolution is often given as a proof of the existence of such a
backlash; Russia did experience a total disintegration of its armed forces, with
unparalleled desertion. Peter Hanak’s analysis of the First World War soldiers’ letters
home highlights how late national sentiment became a factor in popular aspirations: as
opposed to other attachments hitherto, such as the Dual Monarchy13. There is no doubt
that soldiers played a key role in the proceedings of 1917 in Russia, and soldiers at the rear
were not the only ones to call into question one of the most basic social constructs, army
discipline. During the first two years of war, there was a significant disparity between the
experiences of those in the trenches and those at the rear, and it was one which played a
part in soldiers grievances. Soldiers resented directives from those with no knowledge of
their sacrifices14. The intricate status of the Russian citizensoldier had implications when
the powervacuum was created in 1917, and the demands soldiers made reflected deeply
personal aspirations, family allowances and more leave. And, the changes that took place
in the army, as Marc Ferro contends, reveal the widespread expectations that the war
would continue. One statements confirms, referring to combatants’ rights as national
citizens that ‘to take into consideration the soldiers wishes would strengthen the fight spirit of a
Free Russia’15. The Russian case is complicated. It is difficult to discern at what stage the
soldiers could be termed ‘revolutionary’, as for the most part whilst they were growing
weary of the conflict, there was absolutely no evidence until well into 1917 that they would
take direct action to overthrow the regime; if anything they displayed a startling
commitment, patriotically, to Russia. One can certainly draw parallels between Russia and
France on this issue; particularly, there is some merit in assessing the relationship between
soldiers and officers, and more extendedly the General Staff.
The danger of conflating soldiers’ animosity toward their officers and other superiors is
very present when exploring ‘patriotism’ in the context of the First World War trenches.
Historically, this relationship was very straightforward: army discipline was fundamental,
and soldiers were judged on their individual commitment and obedience. A succession of
dismal offensives in 191517 brought soldiers into sharp contact with the realities of
modern killing, but more significantly with questions over the efficacy of military strategy.
In 1917, for the first time, a short war seemed unrealistic. Years of warfare had contributed
to the evermore prevalent distaste for the interior civilian populations, who in the minds
of many soldiers were not entitled to comment on the prosecution of a war they had not
been involved in16.
The essence of the French mutinies in 1917, where around 40,000 troops refused to follow
directives, was a specific protest against the French High Command’s inability to solve the
military deadlock. Early historiography of 1917 remark that it showed the failures of state
mobilisation, and inherent political problems. In reality, the mutinies were a crisis in
military leadership and its blind relentless attachment to a strategy that almost brought
the army to its knees. Such a focus of historians on topdown state mobilisation does an
injustice to more profitable analyses of what one might term ‘selfmobilisation’. Never did
it transform into a refusal to fight for the Republic; the mutinies resembled a strike
infinitely more than a revolution, and they can better be understood as meaningful
demonstration of a collective need to be listened by the society for which they risked their
lives. One soldier wrote of the mutinies: ‘ We marched not to bring about a revolution, rather to
attract the attention of the government in making them understand that we are men...’17. The
French mutinies took place against the background of one of the most severe tensions
within French social democracy: that between direct democracy and representative
government. As Horne observes, citizens served the army as a representative of the
sovereign people. Thus, military service carried forth the notion of social contract. A
soldier’s source of authority originated in himself. When this identity combined with a
strong general will, as in 1917, soldiers found it legitimate to exercise direct democracy18.
But, the importance of the mutiny as a whole lies in how limited it was. Soldiers never
crossed the line into armed resistance, and were sufficiently ‘self mobilised’ that they
found it inconceivable that France could lose the war. Ultimately, one can conclude that
the mutinies in France, represented a basic act of patriotism. Soldiers mutinied out of
dissatisfaction at what they regarded as poor warmanagement. When strong leadership
emerged as in Petain’s offensive of 1917, the troops rallied behind the successful
campaign19.
The central differentiation that one can make when discussing the Russian revolutions, is
the problem of political legitimacy, or lack thereof in tsarist autocracy. France was able to
rely on a greater basis of political legitimacy and internal cohesion, as a liberal democracy,
than either Russia or Germany20. This was emphasised not only by the renegotiation of
soldierofficer relationships in the French mutinies, but also by the depths of national
tensions which were exhibited when authority collapsed in Russia in 1917. Ethnic tensions
crystalised, which made matters even more critical for military authority, presiding over
Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians, all of whom tried to assert themselves in the power vacuum.
Various groups established to form a separatist agenda, something short of a national
liberation movement. And it is important not to exaggerate the impact of these group, as
Christopher Read points out, they have tended to be overstated in Soviet historiography,
and it is difficult to treat them as a serious political force, given that so many Jews,
Ukrainians, and Georgians were principally opposed to separatism21. Many of the political
figures of these ethnic group were wholly committed to one ‘Great Russia’.
AlsaceLorraine was a very interesting feature of German wartime mobilisation, and an
equally poignant aspect of French soldiers’ war aims. It offers a comparative framework
within which to analyse popular consent and ethnic tension; given that Alsatian soldiers
and civilians were regularly accused of dissent, and fraternisation with Frenchmen.
Overall, AlsaceLorraine was a exceptionally intricate web for the German empire to
handle: its meaning for the French Republic did not pass the Reich by. German soldiers
marched into AlsaceLorraine largely conditioned to believe that they should expect at best
disobedience, at worst totalised revolt22. Whilst there was tangible apathy toward the
Reich in the border region, opposition was more the product of German paranoia than of
reasoned observations. The figures of desertion among Alsatian troops need to be handled
with caution: 80 out of every 10,000 recruits apparently deserted, compared to one out of
every 10,000 elsewhere in the Reich23. Such paranoia had unintended results, in that
repression only exacerbated the Alsatians’ feelings of exclusion and victimhood. Many
were transferred to the eastern front to serve, and it was not until 1917 that the Minister for
War accepted the illtreatment of soldiers from AlsaceLorraine.
In the background of all soldiers’ experience was the issue of peace. It was an issue which
manifested itself differently in Russia than in France and Germany. Whilst one can easily
confirm the existence of such weariness, understanding why events unfolded differently in
revolutionary Russia is complex. One Frenchman remarked that ‘the weariness of our soldiers
has reached an altogether unexpected level’24. Since the French were able to reestablish
consensual authority, and renegotiate officerpoilu relationships, there was no real threat of
desertion. Indeed, during the mutiny, soldier on the frontline did not involve themselves
in the process at all. Whereas in Russia, if we assume that the soldiers were simply
‘peasants in uniform’, then it promotes a conclusion that troops simply deserted to go
home in the absence of any meaningful authority25.
To conclude, one of the most significant and novel aspects of the First World War was the
extent of statemobilisation by all the main belligerents. It is exceeded however, in its scale
by the nature of commitment from soldiers serving in the trenches through four years of
brutal conflict. The levels of ‘selfmobilisation’ were quite remarkable, but not unending
and not without particular limitations in different protagonists. One historian commented
of the French mutinies that ‘Any army is but a flicker away from becoming an armed gang. The
only thing that prevents this is military discipline, which is actually an incredibly flimsy
institution, if the subjects but knew it’26. All the convincing evidence suggests that the
protagonists in the mutinies did know it and selected a different course of action. French
and German history from 1870 played significantly on the minds of voluntarists in 1914,
most of whom believed sincerely for most of the war that the end was but a few months
away. The mutinies were very revealing of the nature of military authority, but also of the
scale of French patriotism: the soldiers revolted in the face of visibly poor leadership. They
exercised their rights as citizens, to direct democracy, and rearranged the structures of
authority through this means, not revolution. Russia lacked several of the conditions
which existed in France to rearrange military authority effectively without violence. In the
French and German trenches men forged closeknit primary social groups which did not,
or could not, exist in British or Russian trenches. It is more correct to say therefore, that
German and French soldiers associated with each other, and to loved ones back home,
which drove them forward in the conflict. At the same time, the utterly inconceivable
prospect of defeat was universal, even in Russia for most of the war. In spite of the
gradually easing hostility toward the enemy the sense of shared experience never
overcame the desire to return from the Great War victorious.