How much power do economical factors have in deciding the struggle for global power? To explain the event of WWI economic historians stress the increasingly mechanised nature of warfare, waged for years on end past massed forces. They emphasise things like numbers of tanks, guns, ships, airplanes and ammunition, or amass indices of munitions production. Armed forces historians object that this leaves no room for factors such equally leadership, discipline, heroism, or villainy.

The opposition between cold figures and hot blood is to some extent false. Leadership and psychology clearly did matter, simply less so than in previous eras. In WWI, multi-million man armies took the field and remained there for years, giving and taking appalling losses without disintegrating. In these circumstances of 'full state of war', numbers of men and the book of supplies played the decisive role (Chickering and Förster 2000). Before 1914, Total War was not possible considering people lived much closer to subsistence. As well many people were required to labour in the fields and workshops just to feed and clothe the population, and it cost also much for government officials to count, tax, and directly them into mass gainsay. The Total War era lasted only betwixt 1914 and 1945, later on which betoken it became impossible once again as nuclear weapons fabricated devastating armed forces force bachelor to any small rich or large poor country.

Which factors mattered most?

Some economical historians stress the importance of size. Ferguson (1998) argues that given the overwhelming size advantage of the Allies in terms of population and production in 1914, the event of Globe War I was inevitable. He also concludes that given the scale of their reward, the Allies should take won quickly. He sees the Allies as squandering their advantage through mismanagement, with economical factors only coming into play after much fourth dimension had passed.

But the quality every bit well as the quantity of national resources mattered. The principal factor in quality was the level of peacetime development, which can be measured by the average existent income per capita. Richer countries were able to mobilise product, public finance, soldiers, and weapons in disproportion to their economic size; the level of development acted as a multiplier of size. For Britain, control of the vast but impoverished territory of India mattered little compared with access to the rich markets of the United states of america.

Allies versus Central Powers: The quantity and quality of resources, 1914-1918

Table 1 shows how the balance of resources betwixt the Allies and the Primal Powers changed over time, taking account of quality besides as quantity. Quality is measured by Gdp per capita expressed in international dollars at 1990 prices. In 1914 the Triple Entente of the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, France, and Russia was augmented by Serbia and Japan plus the British and French colonies and Dominions, while the Central Powers of Austria-Hungary and Germany were joined past the Ottoman Empire. In 1916 the Central Powers were joined by Bulgaria and the Allies were joined past a 2nd moving ridge of countries including Italy, Portugal and Romania (though Italia defaulted on its treaty obligations). By the beginning of 1918 the Allies had lost Russia to the 1917 Revolution, but had been joined by U.s. and a further moving ridge of countries.

The Triple Entente was hampered past the depression level of evolution in the British and French colonies, only also by Russian economic backwardness. For their function, the Cardinal Powers were held back by depression levels of development in the Ottoman Empire, Republic of bulgaria, and besides the Hungarian half of the Habsburg Empire. The output of less developed economies was less available for fighting because:

  • much of it was needed to meet subsistence requirements of the population,
  • information technology was difficult to mobilise considering of the lack of development in the regime assistants, and
  • in the case of colonies, it was as well difficult to mobilise considering of its distance from the master theatres of state of war.

Table i. The alliances in Globe War I: Resources of 1913

Source: Broadberry and Harrison (2005: 7-10).

Table 2 computes the size and development ratios for three benchmark dates: November 1914, November 1916, and November 1918. The ratios are calculated for great powers simply (i.east. excluding poor colonies) as well as for the full alliances.

If attention is confined to the quantity of resources, the situation appears hopeless for the Central Powers from the outset. In 1914, the Allies had access to v.two times the population, eleven.5 times the territory, and 2.9 times the output of the Central Powers. Looking merely at nifty powers, the Allied reward was smaller in population and output, but larger in territory, since the German and Turkish colonies were largely in the deserts of Africa and the Middle East.

But quality also matters. The Centrolineal reward in population and output was limited at this stage by low average incomes in Russia and in the British and French colonies. Allied average incomes were only 60% of the Central Powers or 80% if attention is bars to groovy powers (counting Russia as a keen ability). By November 1916, the Allied advantage had grown moderately in population and output, but the Key Powers retained an advantage in average incomes. By November 1918, the situation had changed dramatically, since the United States had replaced Russia. Confining attention to peachy powers only, although the Allied advantage in population and territory decreased, the advantage in output actually increased markedly. For the get-go time, the Allies had an advantage in boilerplate incomes amid the bang-up powers (but not for the alliances as a whole). Information technology took fourth dimension for the American presence to be felt on the battlefield, only it sealed the fate of the Cardinal Powers.

Table 2. Allies versus primal powers: Size and development ratios

Source: Broadberry and Harrison (2005: 11).

Agriculture and mobilisation

Why did being less adult than the UK and the United states thing for the Key Powers, and besides for Russia, which dropped out of the war on the Allied side following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917? The answer can be found in the functioning of agronomics during World State of war I. Austro-hungarian empire, Turkey, Germany, and Russia all ran brusque of food long before they ran out of guns and shells, considering of the negative impact of peasant agriculture on mobilisation. Gimmicky observers expect a country similar Frg – where peasant farming remained important – to have had an reward considering most people could feed themselves. By dissimilarity, United kingdom with its high dependence on food imports, was expected to starve. This analysis could not accept been more incorrect. When war bankrupt out, British farmers were offered higher prices and – responding normally to incentives – boosted production. Expansion was relatively easy because British farming had contracted as grain was imported from the New World, leaving large reserves of unused land (Olson 1963). The high productivity of farm labour likewise meant that large increases of subcontract output were possible with few additional resources.

By contrast, in Germany wartime mobilisation redirected resources abroad from farming – particularly men and horses. In one case in the army, these men and horses nevertheless needed to be fed, requiring the diversion of food supplies from rural households to government purchasers. But the motivation for farmers to sell food was reduced, not increased. Many farmers were peasants who grew food partly for their own consumption. What they sold they took to market primarily to buy articles for their families. But state of war dried up the supply of manufactures to the countryside, as the industrial sector full-bodied on supplying the armed forces with weapons and munitions. Peasant farmers thus retreated into subsistence activities and the economy began to disintegrate. What nutrient the authorities could go was given to the army, since hungry soldiers won't fight. Urban workers were thus defenseless in a double squeeze betwixt the peasantry and the army.

Every bit the war connected, the market supply of food dried up in the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires, and also in Russian federation. Food prices soared and urban dearth set in. Government deportment frequently made things worse. The German language, Austrian, and Russian governments all began to ration food to their urban populations, while attempting to purchase food from farmers at low stock-still prices because of budgetary bug. Weighed downward past peasant agronomics, economic mobilisation in the Central Powers led to urban famine, revolutionary insurrection, and the downfall of emperors – just as it did in Russia, which was the start economy to fissure under the strain in 1917. The same procedure began in French republic, which even so had a large peasant sector in World War I, but Allied support nipped it in the bud.

Conclusions

Voltaire wrote "It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions" (often misattributed to Napoleon). Here, the importance of resources has been reaffirmed, but with a more nuanced view: quality matters too every bit quantity. The level of economic development is crucial in the mobilisation of resources for the 'total' warfare that characterised the first half of the twentieth century. This does non mean that only economic science mattered – only in WWI economic factors were decisive once the Central Powers failed to achieve an early on victory on the ground of not-economic advantages. This failure gave the Allies the chance to bring economics decisively into the equation.

Editor's annotation: This is part of a series of Vox columns past leading economical historians on the Get-go Globe War, which will be collected in a Voice eBook at the end of the year: "The Economics of the Get-go Globe War", edited by Nicholas Crafts, Kevin O'Rourke, and Alan Taylor.

References

Broadberry, S and M Harrison (eds.) (2005), The Economics of World War I, Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Printing.

Chickering, R and South Förster (eds.) (2000), Great War, Full War: Gainsay and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ferguson, N (1998), The Pity of War, London: Allen Lane.

Olson, Grand (1963), The Economics of the Wartime Shortage: A History of British Food Supplies in the Napoleonic War and in Globe Wars I and II, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Published in collaboration with VoxEU

Author: Stephen Broadberry is a Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economic science.

Image: Soldiers of the 2d Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland carry an empty coffin at a WWI memorial during a rehearsal for a reburial anniversary at the Loos-en-Gohelle Commonwealth war cemetery most Lens in northern France, March 13, 2014. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol.