Great War victory was worth the sacrifice

As debate rages over how to mark the centenary, we should respect the decision of our forebears

The First World War was the primal disaster of modern times, and debate is raging over whether to mark its centenary next month as a victory, or as a catastrophe that should have been avoided. The war began four decades of violence, hatred and cruelty that the peoples of 1914 could not have foreseen in their sickest nightmares. Across Europe, nine million soldiers died. In Britain, one in three men aged 19 to 22 in 1914 were killed. The cost could have paid for thousands of hospitals and schools, and a university for every city.

So the argument that Britain should have kept out of the war seems insurmountable. Most people in July 1914 assumed it would: the prime minister, HH Asquith, thought there was “no reason why we should be anything more than spectators”. The Cabinet, Parliament and public opinion agreed, and the government tried hard to defuse the crisis. So what changed?

Germany launched a surprise invasion of Luxembourg, France and Belgium. The social reformer, Beatrice Webb, decided that “even staunch Liberals agree that we had to stand by Belgium”. They thought Britain had to resist a direct threat to its security and uphold international law and order against “militarism”. Wrote the diarist Ada Reece: “We must fight, but all are agreed that it will be more terrible than any previous war [and] the ultimate consequences… none can foresee.”

Given that she was right about the consequences, should they still have kept out? Three arguments are produced to say yes. First, that it was not our fight. Secondly, that the war was futile. Thirdly, that without British intervention, Germany would have won quickly and Europe would soon have acquiesced in its domination – a lesser evil than the horrors to come.

All these arguments are founded on very optimistic guesses. More pessimistic scenarios are at least as plausible. As early as September 1914, the German government decided that Belgium would become a “vassal state”, with its ports “at our military disposal” to directly threaten England. To ensure “security for the German Reich in West and East for all imaginable time”, Germany planned to annex large parts of northern France, impose a crippling financial indemnity, make France “economically dependent on Germany” and exclude British commerce. Neutral Holland would become “dependent”. Vast territories would be taken from Russia to “thrust [it] back as far as possible” – precisely what happened in 1917.

Had Germany won, democracy and liberal government would have faced a bleak future. Authoritarian regimes would have been in the driving seat. French democracy might well have collapsed, as it did in 1940. What German soldiers and governors actually did is telling – more than 6,000 civilians in Belgium and France were massacred in the first weeks of the war by invading troops, occupied territories were subjected to military rule, and they subsequently suffered semi-starvation, mass forced labour and systematic economic devastation.

In short, Britain in 1914 faced a prospect not so different from that in 1939. It could have survived, even as a cowed and impoverished satellite state, and it is possible to consider that this would have been a lesser evil than the carnage of the trenches. But in 1914, government and people decided otherwise. For one thing, they feared being forced into a future war without allies against a German-dominated coalition. They were probably right to fear what a victorious Germany might do, but they underestimated – like everyone else – the cost of preventing it. Nevertheless, most of them always believed it was worth the sacrifice.

We can choose to disagree with our forebears, but theirs was not a senseless decision – they had no safe option. If tomorrow the Russian army marched through Poland, and we were faced with the prospect of hostile aircraft based just across the Channel, would we react any differently? Let us hope we never face such a choice as our great-grandparents did. Their determination gave democracy and freedom a chance, even though it took a second war to complete the victory.

Robert Tombs is emeritus professor of French history at Cambridge and author of The English and Their History. He will be participating in the Telegraph’s Great War debate series, appearing on telegraph. co.uk in the run‑up to November 11