and figuring out what the source of that obsession is and for as long as i can remember i've been obsessed about the first world war it's left some 20 million people dead. it left an even larger number wounded to i had a personal reason for my long time obsession which is that an uncle of mine by marriage fought in that. the captain of the imperial russian air force that's him at the center of the photographs

and the cross around his neck across of the order of st. george gave it personal private audience anytime day or night a privilege which was not of much use after 1917. there are other reasons why we've always been drawn to this war. the world as emperors and empresses that dominated europe up to that time. this is of germany marching with the six sons in a parade and just look at the hat.

you can't plan after 1914 nobody ever wore hats like that again that there is something about the world before 1914 that produce those to begin with. another thing that is always fascinated me about the first world war was that there was a war veldt as most of our on multiple illusions. one is that a victory would be quick and easy. these are berlin students marching off to fight in august of 1914 and told the troops you will be home before the leaves fall from the trees. here they are getting into the railroad heading for the front

and on the side it says paris. french fur to seen with enthusiasm and on the site is says to berlin. of course the war wasn't quick and easy as more sold amar. the illusion of 1914 would be shooting at the enemy, but they wouldn't be shooting at you. how else can you explain the uniforms that millions of french infantrymen born into battle in 1914 and these are not the dress uniforms these are combat uniforms.

deferred i think is the country was going to play a great role in this war as it had throughout history. the french call for the in this picture the british brought, the lanterns when germany invaded 1914 they did so with 40,000 soldiers on horseback. eight calvary divisions. what were they thinking in the days of barbwire? the machine gun which ended the days of heroic charges forever the result was on the western front where much took place. the line between the armies was roughly frozen in place for

almost the entire war. for example the 1915 it solved probably more than a million troops on both sides killed or wounded on the western front in northern france and belgium the year that saw several enormous territory from the germans, the allies over the course of the war over the course of a million casualties gained eight square miles, and instead of those called recharges from the found themselves fighting a devastated landscape. the town of this as a result of the hundreds of millions of artillery shells tie year over the course. they found themselves living below ground, sharing space with corpses. they found themselves fighting knee deep in mud.

and they found themselves facing terrifying new weapons they hadn't planned for like a flame thrower and like poison gas against which the improvised devices, but they often did not work. in addition to the injuries that came from people being killed or hurt dudley wounded by the frozen gas, millions more were wounded by bullets and shrapnel, and all you have to do is look at the picture of a wounded soldier and then in your mind multiply that by 21 million the number wounded in the war. now that enormous war dca dark

cynical view of the world that people had before. this cartoon appeared before the war. there was something else unusual about the first world war that made it different from those that we've experienced since then and that was in most of that we were accustomed to the poor doing most of the dying. think about iraq, afghanistan, vietnam, very, very few americans who were the children of corporate chief executives, senators, members of congress the man and the most exclusive

school more than 30 graduates were killed in a single day the first day in the battle. anywhere you look to find similar statistics who graduated from oxford in 1913 from example, 31% were killed and the death toll fell because the young captains and lieutenants who led the troops out of trenches. the british country estates for centuries, the family, lord salisbury who was prime minister of england for many years at the turn of the century had ten grandson's five of them in this

format and one of them was a character in this book. the prime minister of england lost a son in the war said of his counterparts the chancellor of germany the men in the middle in this picture the general who was chief of staff of the british army in the western front lost his two sons and the french army lost three sons. support for fascinated me about the war wanted to explore writing about what made main point the way they did, how could these ministers, the cabinet ministers day after day, week after week, month after month order their own sons into

battle with such a high certainty of being injured or killed. the very madness of the war meet me equally interested in another type. those who saw it at the time and spoke out and even refused to fight or support those that refused to fight in the united states for example eugene debs rose to give a tour against american participation in the war and was sent to prison and was still in prison in november 1920 when he received nearly a million votes for president on the socialist ticket. another america the pioneer social worker jane addams also was a strong opponent of the war for more than 500 americans were

jailed as conscientious objectors including these two at fort riley arkansas. in germany the great radical spoke out against the war and britain the meeting philosopher was most elegant of the war a hero for me writing this book. i will review one thing if you want describing the feeling he rode and i appreciate him because of this intellectual bravery and acknowledging the conflict in his feelings which is something that often most of us don't do when we take a political stand. they describe themselves as being tortured by patriotism as

ardently as any retired colonel. love of them was the strongest the motion i possessed and in a period setting aside such a moment making it difficult as truth, the national propaganda as all of the local civilization and the man of the feeling of the massacre of the young for his opinions spend six months in prison during the war. they came up against a relentless propaganda because this was the first big propaganda war. this is a u.s. army poster.

they had a german invasion in australia, and some of the propaganda had a very nasty edge to eight. if you didn't in list you are letting down the women. you were guilty or you're a feminine. there were were reason all of the country's but for various reasons the sharpest conflict between people who believe the war was a crusade that wasn't worth of these millions of lives over being wasted the sharpest of the conflicts appeared in england. there were more than 20,000 men of military age who refused

induction in the british army after they started. many of them as a matter of principle also refused the alternative service that was prescribed for conscientious objectors which could mean that the front or working in the war industry co and more than 6,000 of them went to prison. this is the largest number of cable up until that point in time who had never been in prison for political reasons in a western democracy in south london many of them were kept. for the long this time i couldn't figure out how to get both of these types of characters and to the same book, the resistors on one hand and the general premise terse, the orchestra leaders on the other hand, and then suddenly when

unexpectedly s came to me how to do it. i was reading a very boring scholarly article about -- make sure she's on the screen, okay, a well-known british named charlotte, staunch radical she had been to prison four times in the battle for such rich before the war, strong backer of independence for india, strong opponent of the first world war, traveled up and down the country in the rallies many of which were broken up by patriotic malthus or shut down by the police and wrote the best-selling antiwar pamphlet published during the conflict. ..

the british government thinking it needed a small military man to put it down, send them to islands as viceroy and she went to ireland to work for the ir a.. anyway, that gave me the idea to try to tell the story of this period, of the first world war

focusing on britain because that is where the conflict was most intense. through looking at divided families. i don't have time to tell you about the several other divided families i found in characters from them to form the core of the book, but i also talk about other world resisters as well. fenner brockway for instance was a young man who had been a newspaper editor before the war, went to jail as a war resistor, continued to be a newspaper editor in prison, editing a clandestine newspaper for his fellow resisters published on toilet paper. it published for a full year before the authorities discovered it, shut it down and put them in solitary confinement for the duration. the war that people like him resisted left an incredible toll

behind it. it left entire cities destroyed through tactics in a way that europe had really not experienced before. by the time, by the last year of the war so many soldiers have been killed at the british were drafting 17-year-olds, and the germans were taking soldiers even younger. and still, the carnage went on and on and on. and by the time it was over, there were more than 9 million military dead and an estimated 10 to 12 million. we will never know the exact number of civilian casualties. and not only this of course, but the war remade the world for the worst in every conceivable way. one of its consequences of

course centered on the man on the far right in this picture, shown here with this first world war german army unit, who 20 years later, lead the world into an even more destructive war and the holocaust to boot. so, my hope is that, when we think back on this war, we will remember not just the politicians, and not just the generals but those who tried to stop the bloodshed even though they were in vain. and a further hope is that, thinking that way about the first world war might make us think the same way about other wars that have happened since

then, including some very recently. so thank you very much. i think we have a few minutes left if people have comments or questions. [applause] do you want to step up to the microphone here because this is being recorded for c-span and they need to hear your voice, as well as mind. >> you said the civilian casualties were perhaps even greater than the military casualties during the war. what most of them have taken place in the east, because the fighting in the west was confined to such a narrow area that one wouldn't expect many civilian casualties. >> let me repeat the question because i'm not sure the mic is turned on. the question is, the civilian casualties, were they greater than the east end in the west because of the west the fighting

was contained in the narrow strip of belgium. yes, that is absolutely true. in france and belgium there were some civilian casualties but they were not enormous in numbers. by far the largest number of civilian casualties were in russia and eastern europe, because they are, the fighting covered a vast area and unlike in the west, the front moved back and forth hundreds of miles at a time, and when it moves, each army left scorched earth behind. they blew up all the buildings and cut down fruit trees and poison the well so there would be nothing left of use to the other side. each of those moves set millions of people in flight. there were something like 6 million russian refugees alone who were in flight over the course of the war. nothing like this had happened before for a long long time in

europe. the other reason the casualties were enormous and occupy a eastern europe and in germany and austria-hungary was that this was really the first war between large constellations of nations, large power blocs where each side tried to starve the other into submission. the germans of course trying to do so by submarine warfare in the north atlantic, sinking ships that were from the united states and canada, bringing not just our limits but food -- armaments but food. the allies were much more successful in their attempts to try to starve the other side because they'd sure a tight naval blockade around germany and austria-hungary and the death toll from starvation there was enormous. the estimates are that the average citizen in germany lost

20% of his or her body weight over the course of 1914 to 1918. and germany was better off than austria-hungary and austria-hungary was better off than the huge territory in eastern europe and russia that the austrians and the germans occupy. there were absolutely last in line for food. very difficult to estimate the exact death tolls in a situation like that because when there is near famine, people are just dying of diseases that they otherwise -- otherwise would have survived that most of the authorities on the subject set the civilian death toll is somewhere between 10 and 12 million altogether. yeah. >> there was talk after the war about control of the military industrial complex. what is your view about the role? >> the question was, what about

the role of the military industrial complex in than promoting this work? well, i think at this point in history, 1914 when the first world war broke out, as many points of history since then, including the times we are living in now, manufacturers of armaments of all kinds are always trying to persuade government that governments ought to buy their wares. that went on then and that goes on now. but there are times when we have been more successful at preventing war from breaking out because of that. you know, there were a unimaginable quantities of armaments sold by the american military-industrial complex to the u.s. government during the cold war. most of it supposedly directed at the soviet union. we have enough submarines and

everything else, bombs to destroy the soviet union 200 times over. somehow we were able to prevent that war from breaking out. what is so curious to me about the first world war and another thing that gives it bad haunting quality that i think draws me and many other writers to that period is that there does not seem to be in 1914 the conflict of ideology or erect lee of economic interests. up until a few weeks before the fighting began, everybody was getting along with each other quite well. the czar, nicholas the second of russia and his cousin would go on yachting vacations in the baltics together. germany was britain's largest trading partner. there was enormous amount of cross-border trade. everybody was getting along quite well.

there were of course all sorts of imperial rivalries under the surface. there was a system of alliances which guaranteed that if one country on either side went to war there were other countries that were committed to come and in and in its support in that proves disastrous and that is what made it so rapidly expand to a con that wide ward and really a world war because some of the early shots of the war were actually fired in africa and in asia as each side tried to seize the other's colony. but it seems so easily avoidable because there was not the kind of conflict that has opened a conflict between ideologies and people saying a lot of nasty things about the other side. not that kind of thing we have seen so often in history since then and yet it erupted into one of the greatest complex of all. there was a moment into it.

each side to leave that they could win the war quickly and one theory i have about why they believe that was that the actual experience of warfare that the british generals, the french generals in the german generals had was almost entirely relative to colonial warfare in africa or in the british case, in india, where over previous decade, they have been up against africans and indians who were not harmed with repeating rifles and were not armed with machine guns and were not armed with hardwire and who they had been able to defeat easley and they assumed the same thing what happened in europe in 1914 and of course it did. yeah. step up to the mic which i think is recording even if you don't hear it in here and i will repeat the question. >> and so much as there were so

many leaders, and because of the stalemate of the two or three years, was there any back story of people trying to stop it during the time of fighting? >> a good question. the question was, especially giving the interrelatedness of the families in europe, was there any sort of back story of people trying to stop the fighting while it was going on? much less than you would think. in so many wars, there are talks going on in the background. you know, the u.s. talked to the vietnamese for years before they finally made a peace settlement in paris. the u.s. was said to be carrying on negotiations of some sort with the taliban right now. there was really nothing like this between 1914 and 1918. there were a few attempts made by people outside governments, and in the book i talk about one of the most interesting ones to

me. there was a human rights crusader in england named emily hobhouse, a remarkable woman, who in the middle of the war, 1916, traveled to france, which you could do, from france into switzerland which was neutral and from switzerland into germany. and in germany she went to berlin and went to call on the german foreign minister whom she had known before the war. and she suggested peace terms. if you do this, we could do that and could this be possible on the basis of agreement and so forth. she left thinking she had, think it was an illusion, some idea of what could be a possible peace settlement. went back to england, tried largely unsuccessfully to see high-ranking people in the british government and convey these ideas to them. nothing came of it except that parliament then immediately passed a law which surprisingly

there had not been such a regulation on the books before, saying it was illegal for british citizen to travel to enemy territory during the war. nothing came of it but in this war that killed some 20 million people, she was the sole human being, traveled from one side to the other and back again during the conflict, trying to make peace. other people made stabs at it. the pope put forth a peace plan that nobody paid much attention to. a convention of women from both sides and from neutral countries was held in holland in 1915. jane addams the pioneer social worker played a role in that and both britain and germany and france as well placed enormous obstacles in the way of women from their country, although if you manage to anyway. nothing came of that.

the austria hungarian, austria-hungary was a much more shaky regime than germany was -- sent out a peace deal or to the allies at one point and got slapped down. and it really was not until the last four or five weeks of the war that the germans began extending peace. i think each side throughout the conflict still had that conviction that they could win. moreover they had sort of themselves into a corner because the rhetoric they had used to rouse the civilian population to take part in this thing was such that you know, they were declaring it civilization itself is at stake. when you back yourself into that kind of a rhetorical corner it becomes hard to have any kind of confidential or on confidential negotiations about peace. yeah.

>> i've always wondered, because world war i is remembered both as the most senseless war and also the most inevitable war. has anybody sort of put forth the counterfactual of what plausibly might have happened if britain and france had not gone to war after the germans attacked? do we know what kind of world would have resulted? >> the question was, has anybody done a counterfactual history of what might've happened if the first world war had not happened and these countries have not gone to war? yeah. surprisingly, the person who has done the most interesting such work on this, and i say surprisingly because i find myself in almost total agreement with him on the subject and these are very conservative men. the scottish historian who was an adviser to margaret bacher and a big booster of the british

empire and how the united states has to replicate with the british empire did and so forth, but he has written a book and many articles describing the decision to enter the first world war on the part of britain as the worst thing that britain never did. moreover, was directly responsible for the loss of the british empire. i think that is one reason he thinks it was so bad. but he makes the case, as to many people in britain, you know, britain was not attacked at the beginning of the war. the germans expected and in fact rather counted on their staying out of the war. and were appalled when britain entered and, honoring a sort of secret understanding with france. and the british had their own geostrategic reasons for this. they regarded germany as a rival imperial power and didn't want them controlling the other side of the english channel. but one of the reasons why the

antiwar movement was stronger in britain than elsewhere was that many people thought there was no reason for the wear. war. so ferguson writes the counterfactual saying what would have happened if britain would d have stayed out? well, you know, the germans probably would have succeeded in conquering france that they did that in 1940 under a much nastier regime, and europe survive to. moreover he points out that one of the aims that kaiser wilhelm had when he started the war was to establish a common european customs union, which germany, because of its economic strength, was in effect dominating and ferguson asked, isn't that what the european economy is today? so you can imagine all sorts of counterfactual histories. i do find it hard to imagine a

counterfactual history that is as disastrous as what did result, not just the 20 million deaths from the first world war but the much greater number of deaths from the second world war and it's almost impossible to imagine the second world war happening without the first. yeah, yeah, sure. >> can you elaborate a bit on the impact of the united states entry into the war? >> okay, the question was to elaborate on the impact of the united states entry to the war. the united states was in effect economically part of the allied war almost from the beginning, because we were selling large amounts of armaments and food to britain and france, not to germany. and doing much of the sales on

credit. because they were on credit, one impact of the war was to make the united states wealthy because everybody ended up owing us money at the end of the wire. militarily, the u.s. entered the war in april of 1917, about a year in six months before the end. there was an enormous psychological boost for the allies win the u.s. entered. there wasn't much direct military effect immediately, except on the oceans because the u.s. had a surprisingly small standing army at that time. we did have a larger -- quite a large navy though which then joined the british in hunting down german submarines in the north atlantic. large numbers of american troops didn't began arriving in france until may or june of 1918, and then they really did have a considerable impact, because the germans had launched a sort of

desperate last ditch, to her die offensive in march 1918 which almost succeeded in getting all the way to paris and for a while, looked as if it was going to assure the germans victory on the western front. keiser actually declared and national holiday and the germans were very optimistic, but then starting a couple months after that offensive launched, many hundreds of thousands of american troops joined the british and french and resisting that advance and by the end there were two or 300,000 american troops arriving in france every month. that did prove a pretty decisive margin of victory. i think without the united states, the allies would have won anyway in the long run but it might have taken another two years or so and just in unimaginable number of additional deaths. i think we have got time for one more question and then we had better stop.

yeah. >> aside from the deaths, civilian deaths, from the flu, do you feel that the flu affected the outcome of any battles? >> the question was about the great influenza epidemic of 18 and 18 and 1819, how did it affect the war and did it affect any benefits? i don't think it affected any battles because the terrible flu epidemic, which actually all over the world killed even more people than this terrible war did, it hit the sides. they were desperate -- deaths in the hundreds of thousands, in germany, britain, france and the united states. there is a way in which these worldwide deaths from the flu epidemic have to at least partly be waived, the responsibility at

the foot of the war itself, because nothing makes epidemic spread faster than people being packed in tight confinement, whether it is an army barracks, prisons, ships, tightly packed railway cars heading for the front, moving entrenches together. the first time that the flu came to medical notice was at a u.s. army camp in kansas in 1918, and then it spread very rapidly to -- from there is huge numbers of u.s. troops went to france and spread the french civilian population, and it spread rapidly throughout the continent and throughout the world. so it is hard to disentangle these two tragedies from each other. i think we are out of time, so i'm going to have to stop but thank you very much. [applause]