The Experience of War

Why the World Wars changed recruitment

Recruitment means bringing people into the armed forces. Britain needed far larger forces during the First World War, 1914–18, and the Second World War, 1939–45, than it maintained in peacetime. Soldiers were needed both to expand the army and to replace casualties. Fighting on this scale made recruitment a matter affecting families and communities across Britain.

The distinction between volunteering and conscription is fundamental. A volunteer chooses to enlist; a conscript is required by law to serve. Governments could encourage volunteers through propaganda, but compulsory recruitment gave the state a different way of meeting its demand for personnel.

From volunteers to compulsory service

In 1914, Britain appealed for volunteers. Patriotism, the prospect of adventure and pressure from friends helped encourage enlistment. Government propaganda encouraged men to join up, while Pals battalions brought together volunteers from the same community. Joining alongside familiar people made recruitment a collective local experience rather than simply an individual decision.

However, the mounting scale of casualties discouraged further recruitment at the same time that the army needed replacements. Returning soldiers also brought news of the realities of fighting. In January 1916, the Military Service Act introduced conscription for unmarried men aged 18–41, extending it to married men in May. The important change was that military service was no longer dependent solely on men choosing to volunteer.

In 1939, the National Service Act reintroduced conscription as Britain entered the Second World War. Recruitment obligations widened during the conflict: in 1941, they extended to men up to the age of 51, and unmarried women aged 20–30 became liable for compulsory service. This showed how the demands of a major war could draw a broader section of society into service.

National service and the return to a volunteer army

Compulsory service also continued in peacetime after the Second World War. The post-war national service system, introduced in 1948, initially provided for 18 months of military training and service followed by four years in the reserves. Reserve service meant that trained men remained available after their initial period of full-time service.

National service therefore differed from recruitment for an immediate wartime emergency: it provided a continuing supply of trained personnel after the war. During the 1960s, Britain returned to relying on a permanent volunteer army. The central contrast is between compulsory service for a period of a person’s life and military service chosen as a career.

Women’s expanding military and civilian roles

The World Wars greatly widened women’s participation in supporting and serving the armed forces. By 1916, women were working as nurses in Voluntary Aid Detachments, including behind the front line. Nursing connected civilian volunteers directly with the consequences of battle.

In 1917–18, women entered organisations including the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the Women’s Royal Naval Service and the Women’s Royal Air Force. These developments expanded women’s organised military roles; they did not mean that women immediately performed all the same duties as male soldiers.

During the Second World War, women’s participation became much larger, including service in uniformed support roles. Civilian participation must be distinguished from military service: the Women’s Voluntary Service, for example, had about one million civilian members in 1941. Women also contributed through factory and agricultural work on the Home Front.

Change continued after the wars. In 1992, women were integrated into units previously organised as male units. The longer-term development was therefore not simply increased numbers, but a change in how women were included within military organisation.

Training for a professional army

A professional army consists of permanent, paid soldiers who train for military service as a career. It is not a wholly new invention after 1900: Britain already possessed a professional force, and Haldane’s reforms of 1908 combined a regular army with a Territorial Force of part-time reserve soldiers. That force became the Territorial Army in 1921; the Territorial Army was renamed the Army Reserve in 2013.

Modern military technology has increased the importance of skill and specialist training. Operating complex equipment requires more than recruiting large numbers of people: personnel must learn how to use it effectively. Training consequently continues beyond the initial preparation shared by recruits.

For the modern arrangements described in the mid-2010s, basic recruit training lasted 14 weeks, while specialist training took longer. Officers trained for about a year, and over 80 per cent entered as graduates. These are dated examples of an army placing emphasis on sustained training and professional expertise, not fixed descriptions of every military role today. A trained reserve force supports the regular army when required.

Total war and the widening impact on civilians

The World Wars were examples of total war: the struggle involved civilian populations and national resources, not just soldiers on battlefields. Recruitment itself disrupted civilian life by taking people into service. Women’s military work and civilian volunteering further demonstrate how participation spread beyond the traditional male combatant.

Wars of attrition aimed to wear down an enemy’s manpower and resources. As warfare expanded, civilians also became targets rather than remaining separate from the fighting. Worldwide deaths indicate the scale of the consequences: approximately 10 million combatants died in the First World War; the Second World War killed approximately 15 million combatants and 45 million civilians. These are worldwide totals, not British losses.

Organising the First World War Home Front

The Home Front was the civilian side of the war effort. The army depended on people at home producing weapons, transporting supplies and maintaining food production. These needs brought greater government control over everyday life.

The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), passed on 8 August 1914, gave the government extensive emergency powers. It could take control of industries and transport links, including railways, for wartime purposes. State-run munitions factories employed women, linking changes in civilian work directly to the army’s demand for ammunition. DORA also enabled restrictions on information and wartime behaviour.

Food shortages made organisation at home increasingly important. German U-boats attacked merchant ships carrying imports, while the departure of agricultural workers for military service reduced the labour available on farms. Hoarding made shortages worse by allowing some households to buy more than they needed.

The Women’s Land Army helped maintain agricultural production. Convoys protected merchant shipping, and the government encouraged people to save food. When voluntary restraint proved insufficient, compulsory rationing was introduced in 1918. Rationing controlled access to scarce supplies rather than leaving distribution entirely to people’s ability to buy them.

Civilians therefore experienced war through altered work, restrictions and shortages as well as bereavement. German airship raids and naval bombardments also brought direct danger to people in Britain: the separation between a distant battlefield and a safe civilian home was weakening.

Organising the Second World War Home Front

During 1939–45, Britain again organised civilian work and resources around the war effort. Industry shifted towards producing munitions and military equipment. The government gave aircraft production particular priority in 1940, directing materials and workers towards urgently needed aircraft. Civilian employment was therefore connected directly to the fighting: factory output helped replace military losses.

Women’s labour was important both in factories and on farms. The Women’s Land Army helped replace absent agricultural workers and increase food production. The Dig for Victory campaign encouraged civilians to grow food in gardens and allotments. It aimed to make ordinary households contributors to the national food supply, rather than simply consumers.

Britain remained dependent on imports, and German attacks on shipping threatened both food and industrial supplies. The Ministry of Food organised rationing to manage shortages, reduce waste and share essential goods more fairly. People registered at particular shops and used ration books containing coupons when buying rationed items. Shopkeepers cancelled the relevant coupons, limiting further purchases of the same allowance.

For families, rationing changed shopping, cooking and diets. Producing more food at home and limiting consumption also reduced pressure on shipping, leaving more capacity for war supplies. Rationing was thus both a household restriction and part of the organisation of the wider war effort.

Evacuation, bombing and civilian protection

The government also had to protect people from air attack. Evacuation meant moving civilians from threatened places to areas considered safer. Operation Pied Piper began on 1 September 1939, moving schoolchildren and other vulnerable people away from major cities to towns and rural areas.

Evacuation could reduce exposure to bombing, but it disrupted everyday life. Children were separated from parents and had to adjust to unfamiliar homes and communities. Schooling was affected by evacuation, school closures and the wartime use of buildings. Some evacuees returned home during the early months when expected bombing did not occur; renewed danger in 1940 brought further evacuation.

The Blitz, beginning in September 1940, made the danger to civilians unmistakable. Bombing killed and injured people, destroyed homes and schools, and left families homeless. In London, people feared not only their own death or injury but also the loss of relatives, homes and familiar places.

Civil defence aimed to protect civilians and help them cope with attacks. Air-raid shelters offered places to take refuge, while community organisations and churches assisted displaced people and comforted those who were frightened. Shelter use itself changed daily routines, bringing the possibility of sudden death into ordinary civilian life.

The two World Wars therefore shared important Home Front features: government organisation, women’s work, food controls and civilian danger. In the Second World War, mass evacuation and sustained urban bombing made the disruption of homes, families and education especially prominent.

Conscientious objection: belief, duty and hostility

A conscientious objector refused military service or participation in war because of deeply held religious, moral or political beliefs. Some were pacifists who opposed all war. Their objection was not simply unwillingness to face danger: it could mean accepting imprisonment rather than acting against their convictions.

Conscription made the conflict between personal belief and national duty especially important. The law allowed objectors to put their case to tribunals, which decided whether they should receive exemption. Some accepted non-combatant work, such as ambulance duties, while absolutists refused all work that supported the war effort.

During the First World War, official treatment was often harsh. Objectors who refused orders or service without exemption could be imprisoned, and some experienced hard labour. Public hostility added another form of pressure: many people called them cowards or traitors because others were fighting and dying. White feathers, a symbol of cowardice, were used to shame men out of uniform, although such men were not necessarily objectors.

During the Second World War, official treatment became more accommodating. Civilian tribunals granted many objectors complete or partial exemption, and fewer faced imprisonment. However, public hostility did not disappear: objectors could still experience social rejection and difficulties at work. This is an important distinction between change in official treatment and continuity in hostile public attitudes.

Controlling information: censorship and propaganda

Governments needed civilian support to recruit soldiers and sustain the Home Front. They used censorship to restrict information and propaganda to influence beliefs and behaviour. The two could work together, but they were not the same activity.

In 1914, reporters were initially excluded from the war zone, and an Official Press Bureau was established to censor information. Reviewing reports before publication could prevent military information from reaching the enemy. Restrictions could also limit news that might damage morale. DORA gave the government powers to censor newspapers and suppress damaging rumours.

Propaganda encouraged enlistment, maintained support for the war and promoted hostility towards Germany. Recruitment appeals used patriotism and a sense of duty to encourage men to join. Food-saving campaigns tried to turn an everyday household decision into a contribution to national survival. These were intended effects, not proof that every viewer obeyed.

A closely controlled relationship with the press continued during the Second World War. Reporters worked within a wartime system in which publication was subject to security restrictions and legal penalties. Even so, journalists and military authorities still negotiated over what could be reported; control did not remove every disagreement. Home Front campaigns such as Dig for Victory also sought to influence civilian behaviour in support of the war.

War reporting and concern for casualties

Reporting shaped attitudes because it affected what civilians knew about fighting. Pressure for more information helped bring accredited war correspondents into the First World War reporting system in 1915, followed by newsreel cameramen and press photographers in 1916. War could now reach the public through moving images as well as written accounts.

The government-backed film The Battle of the Somme (1916) combined actual wartime footage with staged scenes. It was intended to support the war effort, yet images of casualties also distressed viewers. This shows why propaganda did not have a single predictable effect: a film could encourage identification with British soldiers while also increasing concern about their suffering.

After the Second World War, strict wartime censorship was relaxed. Television and, later, internet communications made reports and images more immediate. Soldiers’ letters and photographs were joined by emails and blogs, widening the routes through which information could reach the public.

Military authorities nevertheless retained influence over access. In the 1991 Gulf War, Britain used a media pool system for journalists accompanying its forces; later arrangements included embedded reporters attached to military units. Such access could bring audiences closer to soldiers’ experiences, but it also shaped what journalists could observe. When assessing a report, consider both what it reveals about casualties and what access or security restrictions may have left outside the account.

Nuclear fear and protest after 1945

The development of atomic weapons in 1945 introduced the possibility of destruction on a new scale. During the 1950s and 1960s, the nuclear arms race between the USA and USSR raised the prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction: an attack could bring devastating retaliation against the attacker as well.

For British civilians, warfare’s impact now included fear of a possible conflict, not only experience of a war already being fought. Britain’s own nuclear weapons and tests were part of this debate. Concern extended to the health and environmental risks of nuclear testing as well as the possibility of cities being destroyed in war.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was launched at a public meeting in London in February 1958. The first Aldermaston March, at Easter that year, attracted attention to the anti-nuclear movement. Campaigning drew support from people including scientists, religious leaders, writers and trade unionists. Nuclear fear had become a reason for public protest and political participation.

CND advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament: Britain should give up its nuclear weapons regardless of whether other countries did the same. This was a campaign aim, not an outcome achieved by launching the organisation or holding marches. The protests demonstrate that some civilians challenged government nuclear policy rather than accepting it as inevitable.

Preparing households for nuclear attack

A different response was government preparation for civilian survival. Protect and Survive was a British civil-defence information campaign produced in 1974–76. It was originally intended for use if nuclear war appeared increasingly likely, but public interest led to publication of its pamphlet in 1980.

The advice brought the possibility of nuclear attack into the home. Householders were told how to prepare a fallout room, reinforce an inner refuge and store food and water for fourteen days. A battery-powered radio would allow them to receive information after an attack. These instructions were intended to reduce exposure to radioactive fallout; they did not promise that every household could survive every effect of a nuclear explosion.

The advice was controversial and attracted criticism and ridicule. Together, CND and Protect and Survive show two concrete effects of nuclear danger on British society: campaigning to remove the threat and official attempts to prepare civilians to live through an attack. Neither response meant that all British people held the same views.