IN
this centenary of the First World War, no one should be surprised that Michael
Gove has been quick to let us know how we should learn from its history “in the
right way”. His verdict in the Daily
Mail (2 January) has at least the merit of
simplicity. WW1 may have been a horrific
war but it was also a Just War. General Haig was not a butcher but a patriotic
leader “grappling honestly with the complexities of industrial warfare”. And we
should not be taken in by the “Left-wing” views of some academics – or by Oh What A Lovely War and Blackadder.
Whether
or not we accept the theory of Just War, it would be intriguing to debate its
meaning here with Gove, for it is
probably a more complex doctrine than he realises. To have a “just cause” (in
this case, Germany’s invasion of Belgium and France) is not enough. There are
other criteria to be met, including crucially the “probability of success” and
“proportionality”, meaning that there should be a reasonable timescale for
success, and that the benefits of waging a war should outweigh the harm it will
do. Does a four year war and the deaths of at least ten million, plus other
consequential losses such as the vast number of those seriously wounded, the
suffering of civilian populations, the epidemics which ensued etc. really meet
these standards?
Yet
we should be less concerned with Michael Gove (what else did we expect him to
say?) than with the tide of post-revisionist
analysis along much the same lines which has appeared in the media –
particularly in the BBC’s output -- so far. Presentation has been tilted towards
assigning all, or almost all, blame to Germany. As stated by Jeremy Paxman at
the start of his four-part series, “In 1914 Britain faced its greatest threat
for nearly a thousand years…. Kaiser William aimed to dominate all of Europe by
invading both France and Russia. He also had his eyes on a chunk of the British
empire”.
The
confused military and diplomatic build-up – on all sides – to the war has been
brilliantly charted in two recent histories – by Christopher Clark (The Sleepwalkers)
and Sean McMeekin (July 1914: Countdown
to War), but their view that the great powers blundered
into war, and that there was no German master-plan, has hardly been heard on
the BBC. There has been no attempt to delineate the framework of imperialist
rivalry over the preceding years
which created the climate for war. The argument for or against Britain’s
decision to enter the war is being put in narrow terms as I write by two
right-wing historians: Max Hastings who believes that Britain had no alternative
but to take part in this “necessary war”, and Niall Ferguson who argues that
Britain should have stood aside, perhaps
to intervene more effectively at a later stage.
An
online BBC series of guides to the war (under the title “iWonder”) has been launched
to clear up what it calls “common misperceptions”. The first, by military
historian Dan Snow, argues against “the widely held view that the majority of
soldiers died in the trenches”. This is wrong, he says:, actually 88 percent of
British soldiers survived “to return home.and rejoin their families”. Yet
Snow’s statistics are suspect. It is true
that the death rate among all British servicemen during the war was about one
in ten, but that includes everyone who served everywhere, not only those in the
trenches, He also minimises the large number of soldiers who were seriously
wounded.
Another
allegedly myth-busting article is written by Professor Gary Sheffield, the
historian (much admired by Michael Gove) who claims that history has misjudged
the generals, and especially General Haig. Sheffield “partially acquits” Haig
of the charge that he lost too many lives, with the argument that “win or
lose, Western Front battles were costly in human life.” And he insists
it is wrong to say that Haig
never won an offensive: didn’t he win
the last battle of the war?
These
are early days in what will be four years of remembering this terrible war. The
BBC promises 130 TV programmes spanning 2,500 hours. Let us hope for more
balanced argument and judgement to come.