In 1916 Geoffrey Malins, a cinematographer, toured the Western Front filming what he saw. The footage was edited into an hour-long film that was shown in British cinemas. The Battle of the Somme was an extraordinary success with some estimating that it was the most watched movie in British history. Clips from it still regularly turn up when TV people want to refer to the war.
But it didn’t please everyone. The Dean of Durham has this to say:
I beg leave respectfully to enter a protest against an entertainment which wounds the heart and violates the very sanctities of bereavement.
The bereaved – or at least some of them – had different ideas:
Well, I have lost a son in battle, and I have seen the Somme films twice. I am going to see them again. I want to know what was the life, and the life-in-death, that our dear ones endured, and to be with them again in their great adventure.
My guess is that the Dean of Durham is referring above all to one particular scene; that scene, the famous scene, the one we are all familiar with, the one that above all others has come to represent the First World War. This one:
Sadly, I wasn’t able to track down the actual clip which has more evidence of fakery but even in this frame the puniness of the barbed wire and the lack of large packs suggest this was shot some distance from the front.
Which is a pity. Because it is a fake.
Some is included here. Your shot is just over two minutes in
A few points. Not every soldier went in with a full pack on the first day. It’s worth bearing in mind that the barbed wire shown was supposed to be the British Barbed wire. And there would have been cleared lanes. Not that I dispute your central point that the actual battle scenes in the film were faked. Of course they were – the cameras were bulky and had to be set up.
My understanding is that even British wire was rather more substantial. Also, if they weren’t carrying packs what were they expecting to do for food, water and other stuff when they captured the trench opposite?
Given the horrendous nature of the battle of the Somme starting in July and stretching through September, the impossible shell scarred landscape depicted in the numerous still photographs available and the bulky movie cameras of those times how do you possibly get to show a protracted battle which come at a cost of 430,000 British and Dominion troops and 200,000 French casualties?
A great deal of so called “actual footage” from WW1 and WW2 is staged and what is genuine, with some notable exceptions, rarely shows the actual horror.
Fake, but true.
Your linked video isn’t available in America. Or at least, that’s the message I get from Youtube.
I wonder how the Dean of Durham felt about (ie)Christian Crosses?
What I wrote was not clear. I don’t disagree with you about the wire.
Whilst I’m not close to say “Mud Blood and Poppycock” by Gordon Corrigan or “Forgotten Victory” by Gary Sheffield I seem to recall that the carrying of full dress pack in the first wave was an indicator of inexperience at best or hubris. It definitely occurred in the Somme but my point was only that it wasn’t universal. Later on in the war, soldiers would be laden with different arms like grenades and so forth but at least it was useful.
Apologies to those in the US who can’t see the video. I understand some people watch BBC via Proxy. Not sure how to do that but perhaps someone else can help.
‘because no packs asnd not a huge entanglement” doesn’t mean fake. If it’s training, where’s dude on the right’s tin hat?If it’s staged, why isn’t just shot man more central?
I don’t see anything internal to the picture that it isn’t of a genuine attack sometime in 1916. After helmets, before officers having to wear other ranks’ tunics.
I still find it amazing that so many people were prepared to fight for the state in 1914.
Perhaps a quick death was not do awful when the alternative was slogging away in a factory for forty more years.
“Fake, but true.”
Thank you, Dan Rather.
Perhaps the photograph was indeed faked. But assault troops (or whatever one wants to call them) should not be carrying “large packs” – they can not move fast enough if they are carrying “large packs”. In war “slow means DEAD”.
If a position is taken then more men and supplies can be moved in – but the actual assault itself would obviously not be undertaken by men with “large packs” on their backs. Unless whoever made that decision was a complete and total moron.
Pete – wages and conditions of work in 1914 may not have been wonderful, but they were better than they had ever been before in history.
And if you think the men were “fighting for the state” you are mistaken.
Firstly a country and a state are too different things.
For example the men of what became the Ulster Division were preparing to fight AGAINST the state in 1914 – that is is not because they were disloyal to the country, it was because they were loyal (very loyal) to the country, and believed the state (the government) was NOT.
Also ordinary soldiers knew perfectly well that German Declaration of War was a pack of lies – and often had quite a good idea that Imperial Germany had a rather different philosophy from their own.
I knew plenty of soldiers from First World War – they were still alive when I was a young boy.
Their understanding of these matters was rather better than that of many modern historians. Historians who write books about the First World War without even including the text of the German Declaration of War upon France (a pack of blatant lies) and do not address the IDEOLOGICAL differences between the two sides.
For example, no one despises General Douglas Haig more than I do – but anyone who does not understand that the man’s beliefs were utterly different from, for example, his German opposite number in the later stages of the war, General Lundendorff, has no business commenting on the war at all.
They were not just wearing different uniforms but still representing “the state”.
They represented fundamentally different ideas of what “the state” should be like.
General Ludendorff understood that very well – even if Haig was less aware of the ideological divide (indeed less aware of just about everything).
The German Declaration of War upon France in 1914 was not filled with absurd lies because they could not think of something more believable to say – it was lying ON PRINCIPLE. As the President of France said at the time – it was not really a declaration of war on France, it was a declaration of war on the universal principles of reason and justice themselves – and for a very specific reason. This reason being – that the ideology (the philosophy) of the Imperial German academic and political elite denied that such universal principles existed – and believed themselves to be in a war-of-cultures with people who did believe there were such things as universal principle (not determined by “historical period” or race).
Of course not all of the German elite supported “giving the finger” (as it were) to the very idea of of objective truth – for example the German Ambassador to London, on his return to Germany, removed the portrait of the Emperor from his house and the wife of the Ambassador forbad the name of the Emperor to be spoken in their home again. But such men as the Ambassador were no longer in power.
The key date is not 1916 or 1914 – it is 1888.
The tragically early death (from caner) of the brief Emperor Frederick left Germany unprotected from the men who manipulated his son – as for the son’s (the new Emperor’s) state of mind, see how he behaved. Armed soldiers put around the palace – not to protect people, but to control them. Forced searches of private papers (seeking evidence of the plots of Jews and so on – all these plots existing only in the minds to the people searching for them), and his own mother (the Empress) being treated as some sort of evil British spy.
Even Bismark soon came to regret the death of the brief Emperor Frederick (in spite of the hostility between the two men for many years) – indeed even before the death Bismark was filled with a sudden fears that he would miss the brief Emperor soon – even though he knew that Frederick would most likely have dismissed him.
It soon became clear that Bismark could not control the dark forces he had himself had encouraged, for very cynical reasons, in the 1860s and 1870s.
Bismark had let them out of the box – because these followers of the philosopher Fiche (and other such) were useful to him politically, but found that he could not control them. That they would end up controlling Germany.
And they did – and the defeat of 1918 did not change that, various forms of historicist collectivism (both “right” and “left”) dominated German thought.
Haig did not really fully understand that – and I must not be too hard on him (although it is hard for me not to be), after all he did instigate the compromise peace (which is what it turned out to be) although he supported it. And the British politicians did not fully understand what they were facing either.
A problem I often have with British people (and I speak as someone born and raised on this island) is their utter refusal to think in ideological (i.e. PRINCIPLED) terms.
O.K. be total muddle heads – if that is what you want to be, but at least understand that other people DO think (and act) in an “ideological” way.
Someone like General L. may speak very politely and be very cultured and know exactly how to hold a tea cup – but that does not mean he is like you. His beliefs (yes the “b word” beliefs, like the “p word” principles) are totally different from yours – and he knows that even if you do not.
This is why someone like General Foch (commander of the French and supreme allied commander in 1918 held his head in despair at the victory that left Germany still sitting there – it would indeed be only a “20 year truce” with another war being inevitable.
Because it was not one bad person (Emperor William II – who often was not actually bad, he was mislead and intellectually corrupted, and that is not the same thing) it was the ideas of the German elite in general. Both the collectivists of the right and the collectivists of the left.
Germany had to be smashed – and it was not in 1918, the Allies stopped just as they were winning. This is what led to 2nd World War.
“But we have all lost vast numbers of people, and the Germans have offered to STOP FIGHTING and will agree to all sorts of things – why are you throwing all this weird “ideas” stuff at us, we just want to STOP THE WAR”.
Paul shakes his head, and gives up trying to explain.
There are those dreary steeples. Again.
According to John Bourne on 1 July 1916 the more successful attacks were those where troops advanced slowly and in lines – presumably carrying large packs. The reason is simple enough: they were advancing behind a creeping barrage which moved forward (IIRC) at a speed of about 100yds every 3 minutes.
It is important to recognise that at the time the German doctrine was to recapture lost territory at the earliest possible opportunity. That meant that British troops would be likely to face an counter-attack before supplies could reach them. So the more they could carry in the initial assault the better. As German doctrine changed – one assumes – so the need for assaulting troops to be heavily laden became less.
There’s grass growing under the barbed wire.
It’s hard to see why troops conducting an assault would carry full packs. They’re assaulting from a prepared jump-off position an objective a short walk away. If they secure their objective, exploiting the breakthrough will be down to follow-up waves. So they’re still going to be a short walk from their packs, where they left them.
I guess it does look a bit iffy.
Guy on the left has cleared the wire but is standing bolt upright & not looking where he’s going.
Guy second from the right is not even looking at what he’s doing. Doesn’t seem all that bothered.
And if they’ve just gone ‘over the top’, shouldn’t they be a bit more spread out?
Patrick Crozier, September 11, 2016 at 7:03 am: “According to John Bourne on 1 July 1916 the more successful attacks were those where troops advanced slowly and in lines – presumably carrying large packs. The reason is simple enough: they were advancing behind a creeping barrage which moved forward (IIRC) at a speed of about 100yds every 3 minutes.”
The creeping barrage was not used in July 1916. Instead a series of ‘lifts’ were used – the barrage hitting the fon;t line enemy trenches then lifting to the next line at a fixed point (when it was thought the atttacking troops would be otherwise be entering the barrage, etc. Due to inexperience and/or confusion of orders, there was also some halting of bombardment at the moment of attach on July 1st.
By 1917, the creeping barrage was much used and many British units would walk 25 yards behind it, or even entered the enemy trenches before the barrage fully left them, calculating that the the trajectory of shells from behind their own lines threw mostly forward, so you could get very close from behind with low risk. Using this tactic, they expected to lose some casualties to their own barrage but thought it less than to the Germans if they did not stay so close.
@ pete
> I still find it amazing that so many people were prepared to fight for the state in 1914.
What was their alternative? Stay home and be ostracized as a coward? Possibly be arrested or shot? And when they were there you aren’t fighting for dolce et decorum but rather to save your friends from dying, or to prevent yourself being shot at by your own officers.
Adding to Fraser’s reply to Pete (September 12, 2016 at 12:17 am), I note that they were fighting against having another far-less-responsive state imposed upon them.
That the Germans were prepared to fight for their state in 1914 and 1939 is more surprising in the abstract – but less so when their history and culture is studied. Given that they were prepared to fight – to the tune of ten and more millions – and die – to the rune of millions – the question for everyone else was “So, what do we do about this?”
I think the motivations Fraser notes were secondary. They kept some in the trenches – probably many were stayed not to desert their friends – and some no doubt joined up to avoid embarrassment, but this was no case of large-scale preference falsification.