Book-Cardiff in Gt War_Cardiff 20/03/2015 13:40 Page 8
Introduction A Looking back, with the full weight of history at our fingertips, it would seem that the First World War was inevitable. It may have taken an assassination in Sarajevo during a June afternoon in 1914 to finally tip the world over the edge and into the abyss, but for months, if not years prior to the event the dark clouds of war had been forming. The gathering together of gigantic forces could be felt across Europe as the world approached a truly terrible period in human history. Initially known as the ‘European War’, the conflict would eventually draw in all of the world’s great economic powers and result in shattering casualty statistics. Even today, after other terrible conflicts have been consigned to history, these statistics still seem incredible. In the end, more than 70 million military personnel were involved in what would become the biggest war in history. Nine million combatants would lose their lives, as the War employed new technology able to deliver devastation on a previously unthinkable scale. For a world accustomed to brief, quickly resolved wars, often won and lost in a single battle, the Great War would come as a surprise. Not only would the war be fought on land and at sea, but it also took place in the air. Brutal new weapons would be used: machine guns, tanks, flamethrowers and, perhaps most terrible of all, poison gas. By early August 1914 it was clear that Britain had no option but to enter the war. The complicated web of political allegiances across Europe meant that Britain, then Europe’s greatest superpower, could not stand back while the rest of the continent imploded. Even so, only two days before Britain declared war on Germany, the British