Chapter 7.4 War on the Homefront
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Explain how the combatant nations were transformed by the need to fight World War I
- Analyze the role played by women in World War I
- Describe life on the home front during World War I
- Discuss the events that led to the Irish Rising in 1916
The conflict of World War I mobilized not just soldiers but entire societies as civilians rose to meet the production levels needed to support the war effort. Home fronts were transformed as women took up new roles to replace men who had left for the war zone, families coped with shortages of food and consumer products, and civilian protests became more critical of the war and the national governments. Those governments often stepped in to set priorities and quotas for civilian entities like private manufacturers and even voluntary nursing associations in their efforts to prepare for and carry out their war aims. Some of these efforts were more successful than others. Meanwhile, Britain faced an additional challenge when tensions with Ireland reached a crisis point in 1916.
Nations Remade for War
The length and all-encompassing nature of the war forced each combatant’s home front to adapt. In the Allied countries of Britain and France, volunteer enthusiasm and conscription meant that many skilled laborers were now serving in the military, leaving manufacturing and production in need of new workers whose training took time. For other countries, such as Germany, the shortage of raw materials due to the Allied blockade forced a search for new sources.
Issues of production now also became political issues. In 1915, British commanders alleged that part of the reason they had been turned back during an attack was that they did not have enough artillery shells. This “shell crisis” raised the question of who was at fault in an industrialized government-directed economy. Was the government to be blamed for not making sure enough shells were produced? Were the workers not working hard enough at producing shells? The British government ended up blaming the army, claiming the military had not ordered enough shells. As a result, shell output from British munitions factories (and, in fact, from all combatants’ munitions factories) increased throughout that year.
The British government found itself under immense pressure during the war. The Liberal Party was in control, but historically it had been anti-war, so the coming of World War I threw the party into disarray. The shell crisis and the failures at Gallipoli made the government appear weak. Continued maneuvering against the prime minister by David Lloyd George, minister of munitions and a fellow Liberal, solidified divisions within the party that came to a head by the end of the war.
Once the United States entered the war, its government moved to control industrial output in a way it had never done before, with the creation of the War Industries Board (WIB). Run b