The Mobilisation of Identity in the World Wars

The World Wars were the most catastrophic and monumental events in modern world history. With the First World War came the advent of a new kind of warfare - one that was total, and all encompassing, industrialised and truly global. The Second World War brought this even further, giving rise to technologies never before seen, warfare at almost every corner of the planet, and no continent left untouched.

What was also new in this war was the extent to which identity was mobilised to catalyse and fuel the war effort. Using First World War Britain and Second World War Germany as case studies, we can see that there were, among others, three main aspects that their governments used to weaponise their nation’s identity for war. Calling on the same three factors, they managed to mobilise their nation’s identities. These were Duty, Morality, and National Identity.

These they mobilised in different ways. Britain mobilised these to protect and come to the aid of a smaller nation; whereas Germany weaponised the same aspects to wage a mass persecution of those they identified as contrary to their national, cultural and racial standards.

As the First World War began in August, 1914, Britain’s government began to portray their involvement as their duty; it was their responsibility, their God-given burden, to come to the aid of Belgium after its invasion. They had made an alliance - the Treaty of London in 1839 - that promised that Britain would come to Belgium’s aid if they were to be invaded or threatened.

This is what helped drive the British sense of duty towards their involvement in the war. As David Lloyd George, said in his rousing speech:

‘She could not have compelled us; she was weak; but the man who declines to discharge his duty because his creditor is too poor is a blackguard. (Loud applause.) We entered into a treaty – a solemn treaty – two treaties – to defend Belgium and her integrity. Our signatures are attached to the documents. Our signatures do not stand alone there; this country was not the only country that undertook to defend the integrity of Belgium. Russia, France, Austria, Prussia – they are all there.’

It was therefore Britain’s duty to come to Belgium’s aid, lest they be considered among those Lloyd George unapologetically called ‘blackguards’. It was inescapable, and built deep within the core of Britain was this sense of responsibility to help those who could not help themselves.

It was a similar sense of duty that Hitler began to mobilise in 1930s Germany. And yet, this inbuilt sense of duty was for vastly different, even opposite reasons. Hitler argued that it was the duty of the German government to forge out the ‘Lebensraum’ or ‘living space’, that the German people deserved. As can be seen in the Program of the NSDAP in 1920.

‘We demand the union of all Germans - on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples - in a Greater Germany. […] We demand land and soil (colonies) for the nourishment of our people and for the settlement of our excess population.’

This itself was an idea forged in the fires of the First World War. Back them, it was under the guise of the Septemberprogramm in which the Germans, having won the War, would annex territories from Western Poland and create Lebensraum for the German people.

It was the duty of any German government, any true German, to fight for their Lebensraum, to create their living space and protect it. This is where the Nazi sense of duty became truly skewed. They viewed it as their responsibility to protect this nation from the inside out; from the ideological, cultural and racial threats within Germany. To the Nazi, Germany was just as much the race and culture of the people within it, as it was geographic and societal.

They were even willing to lay aside the rights of their people to pursue this duty. As Hitler argued:

‘The right of personal freedom recedes before the duty to preserve the race.’

The Jews were viewed as existential threats to the Nazi idea of pure race and Volk, as were drunkards, homosexuals, the disabled and mentally ill. This sense of duty to obtain living space for the German people very quickly turned into a duty to eradicate those viewed as ‘leeches on society’, as unfit to be German or as outsiders to the German Volk. And that duty turned deadly.

Alongside the in-built sense of duty, came a sense of morality driving it. For Britain in World War One, it was a moral obligation to fight for Belgium, not only because it was their duty, but also because it was the right and decent thing to do. This can be seen in some of the posters and cartoons circulated in 1914. 

As here (left), in Punch, Belgium is presented as a small child, being ruthlessly bullied by a looming, aggressive, overbearing stereotypical German man. This presented Britain’s involvement in the war as a moral cause, to stand up for those who were more defenceless, smaller, weaker or more vulnerable than they were.

This was something drawn out of Britain’s natural societal morality. As Catriona Pennell argues:

‘Explaining why Britain was at war involved constructing heroes, victims, scapegoats, and villains, however simplistic or idealistic. It was not enough to vilify the enemy: what Britain stood for in wartime had to be defined. Often these ideas were latent in peacetime but came to the fore once the nation was in crisis. Values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that were inherent and implicit in Edwardian society, became explicit.’

It was this British morality that the government drew on to justify and drive support for the war effort. And to this, the church rallied, beginning to present the war as a ‘moral’ or ‘holy war’. With many clergymen going as far as to embellish already horrific accounts of German brutality in Belgium and France in their sermons or articles. This can be seen in the sermons of the Bishop of London, Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, who became known for his graphic accounts supposedly given to him by British officers. He even went so far as to relay the story of a naked girl in a trench who had been attacked by German soldiers.

‘There is a girl naked in my trench. She had been wronged by a German soldier. I have given her my shirt and all I can. I saw another poor girl last night having her breasts cut off by an Uhlan officer. I dropped him at seven hundred yards. She is in my trench now, but I am afraid she will die.’

No matter how shocking or abrasive these stories may have been, they served a purpose: to appeal to the Briton’s sense of morality. They were used to present the British cause as the moral one, fighting against an enemy that was shockingly evil, morally corrupt and unChristian. It was a powerful recruitment tactic that both justified the war and called on the morality of the British men to push them towards enlistment.

This morality fuelled duty was something that the Nazi government utilised as well. For them, the war was a moral issue. It was an opportunity to spread their ‘Reich’ throughout Europe, creating a new, homogenous population of German Volk.

To the Nazis, the Jews were so much more than just a practical, economic or political problem themselves, they were a spiritual problem, an ideological menace and a threat to everything that was incorporated into Nazi existence. The Jews were supposedly the centre of a global conspiracy in which they would rule the world. They were seen, as explained by historians Roberta Pergher and Mark Roseman, as the ‘spiritual heart of the Bolshevik enemy’. The Jews were so much more than a human threat; they were a spiritual, mental, biological, ideological and moral threat to the Nazis. The war gave them an opportunity to remove this threat.

Selling this idea to the people, the Nazis used posters, their control of the propaganda machines, the radio and the political rhetoric to perpetuate this idea into a cultural norm. As seen in these posters, that present the Jews as responsible for the war, as the agents of the Devil himself and as an insatiable beast set to devour the world. 

The use of these two aspects in cultural mobilisation culminated in the weaponisation of national identity. For both the First World War Briton and the Second World War German, duty and morality were parts of their DNA. Their patriotism and nationalism would not allow them to think otherwise.

It was entirely British to fight for the ‘smaller man’, to stand up for the downtrodden and oppressed. There was some kind of hangover from the traditions of knights and chivalry that formed a large part of early twentieth century British attitudes. The British wanted to be heroic, crusading for the rights of those bullied by the evil German onslaught. And it was their duty to do so.

For 1930s Germany, scorned by the loss of World War One, morality and duty took on different tones. The Nazis managed to rise in a culture ripe for the taking. Their radical views didn’t seem so radical to the German people floundering in poverty, depression and a sense of distrust. They had been failed by their previous rulers, and the new party offered an alternative pathway to their former greatness. The Nazis brought with them a new sense of nationalism that the German people had lost in 1918. They could be proud of their nation again, they could be patriots again, because the Nazis provided them with some encouragement and an identifiable scapegoat and enemy.

Both these nations, in their different eras, and different ideological motivations, weaponised two of the fundamental aspects of their national identities to fight the most cataclysmic wars in human history. And the effects of this would be felt deep into the succeeding Cold War and beyond.

Bibliography and Further Reading:

Excerpts, speech delivered by David Lloyd George, Queen’s Hall, London 19 September 1914, later published as Honour and Dishonour by Hodder & Stoughton

Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland, (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Edward Madigan, ’The Church Of England And Military Service During The First World War’