British history: 1900 - 1945


 

James Joyce: Clay (1904 - 7)

The matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women's tea was over and Maria looked forward to her evening out ...

Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden (1909)

When Mary Lennox was a young girl, she lived in India ...

Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden: Introduction

After the death of her parents, Mary is brought back from India to live with her uncle in England ...

D.H. Lawrence: The Man who Loved Islands (ca. 1910)

There was a man who loved islands ...

George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion (1912)

London at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles blowing frantically in all directions ...

George Bernard Shaw - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Causes of the First World War

During the hundred years between 1815 and 1914 there was no large-scale war in Europe ...

Causes of the First World War - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Causes of the war

Probably the most important reason why war broke out in 1914 is that none of the great European powers (Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Austria Hungary) tried hard enough to avoid it ...

Political terms - PowerPoint-Präsentation

World War I

Sarajevo: 28 June 1914

Nobody could be sure when the war would come or what event would trigger it off

How did the war start? - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Causes of the war

Historians have given a large number of reasons for the outbreak of war in 1914 ...

The war in the trenches

Most people thought that the war would be short and 'over by Christmas' ...

The war in the trenches - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Life in the trenches

Life in a First World War trench consisted mostly of boring routine ...

Life in the trenches - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The war on other fronts - Russia defeated

There seemed little chance of making a decisive breakthrough on the Western Front - both sides were too strong ...

The war on other fronts - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The German Spring offensive

In March 1918 the Germans launched their final offensive of the war ...

The German Spring offensive - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The war in the air

Aircraft were used in a limited role in the war and did not have much of an impact ...

The war in the air - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The war at sea

There was not a great deal of fighting at sea during the war ...

Whose victory?

Jellicoe has been heavily criticised by historians for failing to destroy Scheer´s fleet and for breaking away from the battle by turning away from a torpedo attack by German destroyers ...

"Something's wrong with our bloody ships" - PowerPoint-Präsentation

"An August Bank Holiday Lark"

In the land war the defenders were in the best position and this meant the Germans ...

The changing face of war

The generals expected the First World War to be a war of movement: troops advancing shoulder to shoulder across open fields, bayonets fixed ...

A static war

Although there were some new weapons in this war, they were not successful enough to end it quickly ...

How warfare had changed

The feelings of the British war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, on the generals that ran the war are clear enough ...

How warfare had changed - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The civilian front

What was new about the First World War was the way in which each nation had to use every available resource ...

The military and industrial strength of the European powers in 1914 - PowerPoint-Präsentation

New developments in warfare

You will have been given some idea of the importance of industrial might in deciding who was to win the war ...

The machine gun

Machine guns were extremely important but they were not a war-winning weapon ...

Gas

Gas was a weapon which promised to lead to mass panic among defending troops ...

The tank

The tank was a British invention and a secret weapon until first used during the battle of the Somme in 1916 ...

New developments in warfare - PowerPoint-Präsentation

"Millions of the mouthless dead"

What was really different about the First World War is just that ...

The Volunteer Army

The British government quickly began a recruitment campaign once war had broken out in August 1914 ...

The Volunteer Army - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Why men enlisted

Some men enlisted out of patriotism, a sense of love for one's country ...

Why men enlisted - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Allied propaganda - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Conscientious objectors

Not all men responded enthusiastically to the call to arms ...

Mutiny at Etaples

War news in other areas was censored too - this time by the government ...

Conscientious objectors / Mutiny at Etaples - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Attitudes to the war

It is easy to criticise the way the government treated conscientious objectors and made life very difficult for them ...

Pre-war attitudes

The First World War affected Britain in many different ways ...

Asquith's Liberal government

The Liberal Party had been in power since 1905 and Herbert Asquith had been Prime Minister since 1908 ...

Opposition to Asquith

Some Conservatives believed that Asquith and the Liberals were not fit to run the country while it was at war ...

The Munitions Scandal

In March 1915 British, Australian and New Zealand troops attacked Turkey in the Gallipoli peninsula ...

The Munitions Scandal - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Conscription

Asquith's coalition government soon faced a new problem ...

Conscription - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Poem by E.A. Mackintosh

Changes in industry

It was clear that privately owned firms were failing to meet the huge needs of Britain at war ...

Agreement with the trades unions

Lloyd George, as Minister for Munitions, brought all the companies that made shells and weapons ...

Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA)

The first of these was passed in 1914 ...

Rationing

By the beginning of 1918 severe food shortages were common, especially in butter and sugar ...

Agreement with the trades unions / Rationing - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Lloyd George: Prime Minister

Lloyd George's sense of purpose, his ability to get things done, impressed many people ...

Lloyd George: Prime Minister - PowerPoint-Präsentation

An increase in the power of government

Women before 1914

The role of women in Britain before the war was a traditional one ...

Women before 1914 - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Woman and the vote

One obvious area of change is that before the war women were not allowed to vote ...

Women and the vote - PowerPoint-Präsentation

"Words not Deeds"

When war broke out the suffragettes suspended their militant campaign for the vote ...

Women at war

At first, women found that the only roles available to them were traditional tasks ...

Women at war - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Women at work

The government was forced to allow women to work in all sorts of jobs ...

Women at work - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Woman at war and at work

It is difficult to be precise about the effect the war had on women ...

The First World War today

More people died in the Second World War than in the war of 1914-1918 ...

The First World War today - PowerPoint-Präsentation

T.S. Eliot: Morning at the Window (1915)

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens ...

Important factors of World War I - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Working with the First World War - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The legacy of the First World War

The effects of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany were harsh and there is no doubt that the Germans felt both humiliated and unfairly treated ...

The legacy of the First World War - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Back to square one?

Britain's economy suffered a depression in the early 1920s. Unemployment rose ...

Back to square one? - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Europe in the 1920s

After the First World War the major European powers - except Russia and Germany - set up the League of Nations ...

Europe in the 1920s - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Virginia Woolf: Solid Objects (1920)

The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of the beach was one small black spot ...

James Joyce: Ulysses (1922) - deutsch

Gravitätisch kam der dicke Buck Mulligan vom Austritt am obern Ende der Treppe ...

T.S.Eliot: The Waste Land (1922)

April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain ...

Europe in the 1930s: the decade of dictators

There were many changes in Europe during the 1930s ...

Europe in the 1930s - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Aldous Huxley: Schöne neue Welt (1932)

Ein grauer gedrungener Bau, nur vierunddreißig Stockwerke hoch ...

War by miscalculation?

There is no doubt that Hitler was determined to break the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, especially those restricting the size of the German army ...

Mussolini

There were other dictators in the world apart from Hitler and they encouraged each other ...

Mussolini - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Alfred Hitchcock - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Europe 1936-39: the slide to war

Hitler's actions between 1936 and 1939 did lead to war in Europe ...

Europe 1936-39: the slide to war - PowerPoint-Präsentation

Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia: more of the same

Encouraged by the easy victory over the Rhineland, Hitler made further plans for expansion, convinced his opponents would never try to stop him ...

Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia: more of the same - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The Nazi-Soviet Pact

Hitler paid no attention to the Anglo-French promise of help to Poland ...

The Nazi-Soviet Pact - PowerPoint-Präsentation

A. Paul Weber: Hitler - ein deutsches Verhängnis - PowerPoint-Präsentation

T.S.Eliot: Old Possum´s book of practical cats: The Rum Tum Tugger (1939)

The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat: ...

World War II

The war in Europe and North Africa 1939-43

Poland engulfed

The Germans invaded western Poland on 1 September 1939 ...

Blitzkrieg - The Allied strategy

The key to Germany's success over Poland and the string of victories that followed over Belgium and France was Blitzkrieg ...

Poland engulfed / Blitzkrieg - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The end of the Phoney War

The period from the defeat of Poland in September 1939 to the German attack on neutral Norway in April 1940 is known as the 'Phoney War' ...

Prime Minister Churchill

Chamberlain had considered occupying Norway before Hitler to cut off Germany's iron ore supplies, but he hesitated ...

Winston Churchill - PowerPoint-Präsentation

The invasion of western Europe

On 10 May 1940 Hitler ordered the invasion of Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium ...

The race to the Channel: Dunkirk

The German tank commander, Guderian, now planned to race directly to the Channel ports and seize them ...

The surrender of France - Vichy France

It was only a matter of time before the rest of the French army collapsed under the stunning force of the German blitzkrieg ...

The British attack at Mers el Kebir

Churchill was determined to make sure that none of Vichy France's four fine battleships were seized by the Germans ...

The Battle of Britain - The war in the skies

Before Hitler could launch an invasion of Britain, he had to gain control of the skies by destroying the Royal Air Force ...

7 September: the turning point

On 7 September 1940 the Luftwaffe suddenly changed tactics ...

The war in North Africa

When war broke out in September 1939, Mussolini decided that Italy should stay out of the conflict ...

Enter Rommel

In April 1941, Hitler decided that the Italians needed German help ...

Barbarossa delayed

By the end of 1940, it was clear that Britain was not yet beaten and an invasion had to be postponed ...

'Kicking in the door ...'

The German army of 3 million men, 3600 tanks and 1800 planes was hurled at the totally unprepared Russians on 22 June 1941 ...

Generals "December and January" to the rescue

The Germans got as close as 60 kilometres to Moscow, but a Russian counter attack in December 1941 meant that they would advance no further ...

Stalingrad

The failure to capture Moscow before the beginning of winter was a setback for Hitler, but it would not have made much difference to the war ...

The end of the war in Russia

The Germans were only able to launch one more serious offensive against the Russians ...

The war in Italy

The German-Italian army in North Africa was forced to surrender in Tunisia in May 1943 ...

Monte Cassino

The peaks around the town of Cassino, which overlooked the road to Rome, were controlled by the Germans ...

Victory in Italy

The bombing of the monastery did not lead to an immediate breakthrough ...

The Second Front

Ever since the German invasion of his country in 1941, Stalin had been asking his western Allies, Britain and the United States, to launch an invasion by sea of German-occupied France ...

Operation Overlord

From the beginning of 1944, plans were drawn up for the invasion of France ...

Mulberry harbours

The ingenious solution was to build an artificial harbour, called 'Mulberry' ...

D-Day

Allied casualties were much lighter than feared - just 2500 were killed on 'D-Day', 6 June 1944 ...

On to Berlin!

On 25 August 1944 the Allied forces, led by General de Gaulle's Free French troops, liberated Paris from the Germans ...

The bombing of Germany

The bombing of Germany's cities has caused a great deal of controversy among historians - and there were even protests in Britain during the war ...

The Battle of the Atlantic

Though doubts exist about how effective the bombing of Germany was in winning the war, there is no doubt as to the importance of the war at sea ...

"Massacre in Rome"

In March 1944 a group of Italian resistance fighters in Rome exploded a bomb in a dustbin as a German military police column marched past ...

"The July bomb plot"

By July 1944 a group of German army officers had decided that the war could not be won ...

The Holocaust

Civilians on the British mainland never had to go through the ordeal of occupation by the enemy ...

The Holocaust: an eyewitness

During the early stages of the Final Solution the Jews in the territories captured by the Germans were simply lined up in front of huge pits and shot in the back of the head by special execution squads of fanatical Nazis ...

A lesson of history

The Holocaust, the massacre of Europe's Jews during the war, is a terrible example of what happens when intolerance and racism are allowed to flourish inside a country ...

The civilians´ war

Civilians had quite often found themselves involved in previous wars - especially civil wars ...

Pre-war attitudes

The Second World War had a tremendous impact on British society and permanently changed some aspects of life in the country ...

Invasion precautions

After the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain faced Germany alone and expected an invasion to follow on swiftly ...

Evacuation

At the very beginning of the war, 800,000 schoolchildren were evacuated from cities likely to be bombed along with 550,000 mothers and children under five ...

Rationing

A generous rationing system was introduced in March 1940 ...

Workers at war

After Winston Churchill, the most powerful man in Britain was Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour ...

Strikes

Patriotic appeals to boost production and make endless sacrifices had a limited effect ...

Women at work

Perhaps the biggest change brought about by the war affected women ...

Women at war

Women also found themselves increasingly involved in military aspects of the war - much more than they had been in the First World War ...

The not-so-weaker sex

Women turned their hands to a great many new tasks during the war and proved their capabilities, especially in jobs considered too difficult for the 'weaker' sex ...

The people´s war?

Many of those who lived through the war, however, speak with warmth about what they remember ...