About First World War?

Question

I need to know which hardships were British people forced to suffer during the war. I'm Argentinian, so I'm not familiarized with British history...

Answer 1

First of all were the enormous casualties. Some battles killed more than 50,000 people in a single day. The soldiers who lived were often mutilated, deafened, blinded and psychologically wrecked. They required a lot of care in hospitals during and after the war.
Consumer goods were in short supply, as the German U-boats sank a lot of merchant shipping. The war was fantastically expensive, which resulted in inflation, higher taxes, and after the war, a nearly complete collapse of the steel industry and the shipyards.

Answer 2

'Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. The question was first world war not the second you clown.
To answer the question briefly. The main hardship was the human cost but in relation to second world war casualties even these were small. This was mainly due to the relatively low amounts of bombing to the civilian population. There was some rationing but again not to the same degree as the 1939-45 war as the shipping lanes remained pretty much in tact as the u-boat threat was not as great .

Answer 3

Do I detect the whiff of an Anglophobe then Oscar.
While I do not deny any of your accurate facts here are some more.

The second world war was for the British people a very unpleasant, nasty experience and it was the courage and resolution of the nation in the face of Nazi aggression which gave the Soviets, the French and the other allied nations time to regroup and recover. All the nations of Euorpe and the then British empire(not missed) played their part.

Answer 4

Shortage of money due to the breadwinner being in the forces and no social provisions. Shortage of food, no decent sanitation or health provisions. Dreadful housing.

The menfolk abroad often suffering appalling hardships on the front line where thousands of them were killed every day just to try and gain possession of a few metres of land-which would probably be lost the following day with even more bloodshed and with few if any messages being received by either party. In many cases their families had no idea whether they were alive or dead.

Answer 5

British civilians in WW1suffered like all civilians in a modern war when the government is incapable of organising relief. It was different in WW2 because then the government requisitioned the means of production either by a kind of nationalisation (farming, transport, water, electricity) or by commercial contracts.

One lady wrote in her diary in 1917, "There has been bad fighting again in Belgium (she meant Passchendale) and there is no jam in the shops." That may sound picky and childish. What she meant was, "After meat, cheese, eggs, fish, tea, coffee, flour and everything else - now there isn't even any jam". Malnutrition became common especially in towns and cities among the poor whose men-folk had been forced into war service. Deaths were recorded all over the country from starvation, and conditions such as ricketts, polio and osteoporosis became very common.

The rich and powerful, of course, were mostly insulated from these direct effects but even they suffered as families from the death duties levied by the government of the day. Every time the son of a landowner or a factory owner died, a large sum was due to the government. Some comfortable middle class families became poor and after the war the countryside was quite different. Can you imagine that happening in USA?

The bigger hardship came from the casualties among men. In some families, every man was killed - father, sons, cousins. In some villages, every unmarried man was killed. In almost every family, at least one of their men was killed or so badly injured that he couldn't work ever again. Marriages almost stopped happening towards the end of the war. After the war, during the 1920s, in some rural areas, farms and other land businesses were run by women because there were no men left. Children who had been born in 1910-1918 found themselves being brought up entirely by a group of women. We can't imagine now what this meant to families, villages, towns and whole counties in Britain. Of course, the same was true in France, Germany, Belgium and especially Russia. The USA lost very few men in WW1. They arrived too late to see much serious fighting because Europe was exhausted. Also, the USA economy and their home life was hrdly affected. That's why the predominant USA attitude has been, "War in Europe - easy. Let's get over there and sort it out." They arrived too late to save lives or countries, and should have come in May 1915 after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. By April 1917, the hardships of civilians across Europe were unspeakable and the conditions at the Front were like hell.

The situation among civilins was just beginning to recover 21 years later when the politicians failed again and sent another generation of young men into war. It's worth noting that politicians, on the whole, don't send their sons to war. They get them soft jobs in Intelligence or Communications. It's been true of all countries in the 20th and 21st century wars, and all politicians, and it explains a lot maybe about the way wars start.

Answer 6

Rationing affected everyone. There wasn't enough food to go around as many ships bring supplies were sunk. The women had to take men's hard labour jobs to keep the country running and of course for the four years of the war mothers had to bring up their children by themselves. During the year after the war, more people died of influenza than the number of people who died as a result of the war. It was an epidemic which had been fuelled by bad nutrition during the war.

Answer 7

~They suffered far less than did the Soviets. Poles, Ukaraines, Yugoslavians, Romanians and Germans or, for that matter, the Indians and other Asians who were still under the British heel. British casualties were light: fewer than 400,000 dead in both the Pacific and Europe including civilians (slightly more than US casualties but less than 2% of total war deaths. Rationing made some foods and consumer goods hard to come by, but no one was starving. Buzz-bombs, V-2's and the Luftwaffe made for some excitement but the Brits faced nothing remotely similar to Stalingrad or Dresden. It was not a pleasant time, to be sure, but all in all, it was pretty much life as usual for the populace. As in the US, woman were, of necessity, allowed to take on a larger and more significant role. To some, that may have been a hardship. To others, especially in hindsight, it was a godsend.

There are any number of books and articles on the subject. Get your answers there but compare what you find to what was going on in the rest of the world. "Hardship" is a relative term and, relatively speaking, the British suffered little in the overall scheme of things. What they did go through was a minor payback for the conditions they helped create with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.


edit: Oops, I misread the question. the above pertains to WWII. Take out the buzz-bombs and V-2's and the answers pretty much still holds. great Britain is fairly well insulated from a war on the continent and British citizens generally only suffer from the typical privations one would expect during wartime, such as a shortage of consumer goods and some foods. France suffered most in WWI, since most of the fighting happened there, but Germany felt her share as did other hot spots around Europe. My error simply underscores the advice that you go to a reliable source for legitimate information rather than to this site.

Answer 8

About like the hardships being suffered in Argentina right now, under Kirchner!

Answer 9

harry lauder