Dan Todman, The Great War: Myth and Memory (London: Bloomsbury, 2005)
The First World War holds an important place in British memory as a watershed that shattered 19th-century notions of limited war and thrust the island nation onto the continent into a drawn-out, brutal war of attrition that energized the totality of British society. Historians have argued persuasively against the popular understanding of the war, but the idea that World War I was largely a tragedy persists in the modern imagination. In The Great War: Myth and Memory, Dan Todman, Professor of History and Head of the School of History at the Queen Mary University of London and author of a recently published a two-volume history of Britain’s Second World War, asks how that notion arose. His work contributes a nuanced understanding of how memory achieves mythical proportions through interpretations of the past. .
Todman’s primary theme revolves around the construction of misplaced myths that dominate the memory of the First World War in Britain. He explores how people thought about the war and how that perception shifted yet remained powerful. He defines myth as a belief about the past held by an individual but common to a social group. Myths are not always harmful, he argues, and often necessary for human society, and they can function for both good and ill. The memory of brutish, muddy battlefields littered with countless dead British soldiers led to their deaths by incompetent officers in the name of a futile war has persisted in Britain, in part through the poetry and writings of veterans of the conflict. But these soldiers were a subset of the greater whole; adhering to Victorian and Edwardian virtues, many veterans of the war chose not to speak or write about their experiences, at least until much later in life. Regardless, veterans’ presence in the first four decades after the war helped shield negative mythology from rooting too deeply, offering debate grounded in their experiences. Further complicating the role of veterans’ recollections is how memories from later in life do not always reflect reality, as age and exposure to more commonly held images and impressions alter personal recollections.
Nevertheless, Todman argues that perceptions of the First World War shifted over time due to fluctuating national views, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. Three interrelated factors influenced this shift. First, the period in which many artifacts of the war’s popular mythology were produced and consumed was a time of immense national social and cultural upheaval. This coincided with the passing of most First World War veterans. The second factor Todman identifies was a combination of human behavior and change. For example, Alan Clark’s infamous “Lions led by Donkeys” phrase rose to national prominence, not for its accuracy, but because Clark desired to profit from his writing. Perhaps most importantly for the author, the third factor was the use of myths perpetrated about the First World War. Nowhere was this more useful than preparing for the Second World War as the entire population tried to avoid previous mistakes. Of course, the idea that the later war was somehow “easier” with fewer combat losses and “worthy” with a clearly defined goal and outcome helped perpetuate myths about the previous war.
Throughout the book, Todman relies on pop culture images produced across the twentieth century to study how people thought in the past. This method, he laments, is a difficult undertaking. Wading into his subject, Todman examines the vast array of books, plays, television, radio programs, memorials, advertisements, films, and ceremonial activities that portrayed the war. From poetry and prose in the 1920s to documentaries and popular programs such as Blackadder later in the century, Todman explains how these artifacts were produced and received to determine popular notions and identify how myths were created and perpetuated. While charting these elements’ impact, Todman notes their popularity through book sales and television ratings to ascertain their impact on broader British culture. The book is organized into six thematic chapters that examine each of the smaller myths that make up the broader national myth: horror, death, generalship, futility, poets, and veterans. He finishes the work with a seventh chapter on the war in modern memory, contextualizing the previous chapters and tying them together. Todman’s work is readable and engaging but suffers from some repetition as the same sources are examined multiple times, albeit from multiple angles.
The Great War directly challenges Paul Fussell’s ideas from The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) that a handful of soldiers’ experiences are representative of the army in its entirety. Fussell’s work thus perpetuates negative mythology, and Todman describes that book as polemical rather than a scholarly, analytical work. Todman is thus complicating our understanding of memory and pop culture’s role in historical interpretations of the past. Because of its theoretical underpinnings as a history of memory and myth, Todman’s work is ideal for any academic interested in these ideas and their relation to other periods of history. Furthermore, those interested in the First World War and the popular culture that came of it would be well served by reading this book.