Did WWI have a bigger impact on Britain than WWII?

Posted by northcarolinian9595@reddit | AskABrit | View on Reddit | 174 comments

I'm a huge history buff and I recently visited England and Scotland. Traveling around Britain, I noticed far more historic sites and references to World War I than World War II. For example, lots of monuments to the fallen soldiers of World War I such as the one at Edinburgh Castle. Is there a reason for this? It seems like World War I was a much bigger event than World War II, despite the fact that one of Britain's greatest heroes (Churchill) led the nation through the Blitz, etc.

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Indignant_Woodlouse@reddit

There was a lot more military personnel killed in WWI than there was in WWII, but the the general public were affected more in WWII because of food rationing and the bombing of towns and cities.

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prjones4@reddit

Just to add to this, in WW1 there were *Pals Batallions* which allowed for people from the same villages/towns/schools to sign up to fight together. This meant that a bad shell attack would leave an entire town widowed, orphaned, and financially damaged. All the families lost everything all at once. This ended after the damage was realised following The Somme

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LaMerde@reddit

To illustrate just how devastating these losses were for town, here's the map of deaths in Tynemouth during WW1. A Roll of Honour in a newspaper in 1923 put the total deaths at 1668, however the number is estimated to be higher because the list relied on readers to submit names. 13% of the lives lost came from just 10 streets and the first day of the Somme claimed 80 lives from Tynemouth. https://ibb.co/5W7HHpmT

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Gisschace@reddit

My gosh that map, there are a couple of streets where every house lost someone

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HMSWarspite03@reddit

it hits quite hard when you see the men mapped out like that.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

There are loads of places where that happened. A major trigger were the so-called “Pals Battalions” of Kitcheners 1916 army (recruited in 1914), which consisted of people from the same village / town / professional occupation. It sounds a really good idea - you serve with your pre-existing mates, making you more likely to volunteer and keeping your morale higher in training. The problem that became apparent was that if one of these units had a “bad day” - and loads did, especially early in the Somme - units could take 50+% casualties leading to entire towns losing essentially most of their young men, simultaneously. One of the big learnings from the Somme is that this was a really bad idea and the Pals approach was rapidly abandoned.

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Fit_Manufacturer4568@reddit

The Accrington Pals that were wiped out in the first 30 minutes of the Somme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accrington_Pals

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MeesterMartinho@reddit

Friend of mine found out his Grandad had volunteered for one of these in his 40s and was then killed in France. Ended up writing a book about it. [https://westhampals.blogspot.com/](https://westhampals.blogspot.com/)

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Available_Round_3172@reddit

Thanks for this. Unimaginable pain. One of those things that's seems like a great idea on the drawing board but when put into practice quickly becomes a horror show, literally. Incredibly harsh lesson but sadly so many at those times were simply disposable, their lives not given any respect until it was too late.

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Rowing_Boatman@reddit

The telegram boys and postmen had to deliver the messages to a whole street in a couple of particular examples.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

To be fair to all concerned, it wasn’t that people didn’t care about the deaths. They did. But the pretty settled view was that the war needed fighting and nobody could work out “better ideas” as to HOW to fight it given the scale and technology involved.

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SatiricalScrotum@reddit

They were constantly trying new things. New tactics and technologies. But it took time to find out what worked, to train the entire army, re-equip them, and to develop the new techniques and machinery into one cohesive battle plan which would work. That really came together in late 1917, and then in 1918, the hundred days offensive put it all into action on a big scale, and ended the war.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

This. Absolutely. The 1960s / Oh What A Lovely War / The Donkeys / Blackadder view of the British officer class is basically a complete myth.

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Available_Round_3172@reddit

Thank you for this explanation and examples. The Tynemouth map is truly awful to even contemplate. The amount of loss, devastation, hopelessness and pain is unimaginable. Rip to all those fallen in all wars who we can thank for our freedom.

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hoverside@reddit

I remember seeing a memorial in a tiny village in Norfolk and being astonished by how many names were on it. I just looked it up, they lost 17 men in WW1, three of them had the same surname, and two of the three died on the first day of the Somme.

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jimmywhereareya@reddit

There's a sadder story from the Isle of Mann. I think every house on one street lost at least one husband, father or son

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baabthecat@reddit

There was a bbc tv programme about a pals battalion, called all the kings men, about a battalion from sandringham estate, that basically vanished one afternoon https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Lost-Sandringhams/#:~:text=The%20Mystery…,have%20been%20a%20little%20confused.

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littlerabbits72@reddit

I think Britain lost nearly 20,000 men on the first day of the Somme alone.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

20k killed, 60k injured. An appalling day for the army.

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Different-Try8882@reddit

My grandfather was from a mining village in Scotland, there are over 80 names on the WW1 memorial, including his two brothers. Most of a generation of young men wiped out.

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Choice_Technology791@reddit

Or an incompetent officer sending everyone over the top into machine gun fire

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Alecmalloy@reddit

No one has fought a war like this ever before. Britain hasn't fought against major powers in any great strength since the Crimea. The generals were developing tactics as they went along, it's just the nature of the battlefields on the Western Front heavily favoured defence. By 1918, they've cracked it. It helps the Germans are exhausted and the Americans are turning up in strength, but the Western Allies have basically developed combined arms. They couldn't do that if they weren't constantly developing how to approach trench warfare. Some absolutely are incompetent, like French, but others like Monash are at the absolute cutting edge of military tactics. Also remember, the war wasn't just fought in France and Belgium. The Commonwealth is fighting all over the world. The war in the Middle East is far more mobile for example. Very different to what went on on the Western Front.

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Foundation_Wrong@reddit

The American Civil War had a few battles that were a pretty good warning.

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Zingalamuduni@reddit

Not sure why you’re being downvoted voted for that. It’s pretty much factual.

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Choice_Technology791@reddit

Downvoited or this by people saying they got it right three or four years in... let's all just ignore before that. Sheesh

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under_ice@reddit

Over and over. The end of Blackadder really brought home to me the absolute certainly that you were going to die going over the top...grim scene

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

The end of Blackadder is a great scene but rubbish history. By 1917, attacks were not made in that way - for very obvious reasons. The officers in command of the army were neither as stupid not as unfeeling as Blackadder implies - they were just faced with a nearly insuperable problem given the scale and technological situation.

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under_ice@reddit

Sure, but the point stands, even if it was not accurate as to the date.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

Indeed.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

Don’t believe the myth about incompetent officers. Generalising wildly, they were as skilled as you could expect, given lack of experience in the type of war they were forced to fight. And by 1918, the British Army was probably the most skilled of the combatant armies. It’s just that WW1 was an unusually lethal combination of factors.

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shortandfelly@reddit

As they said about the Sheffield Pals Battalion, "two years in the making, ten minutes in the destroying". I read a quote from a chap in the Sheffield Pals who went over the top in the Somme. He said that as far as he could see in either direction, it was just him and one other. He looked away briefly, turned back, and he was entirely on his own.

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htimchis@reddit

Yeah - I was raised by my grandparents, and my nan's father lived with us when I was a kid. He'd been at the Somme, and basically his whole Company was wiped out. He took a piece of mortar shrapnel in the spine almost immediately after going over the top, and spent the next couple of days laying wounded and semi-concious in a shell crater, until someone eventually retrieved him, which is the the only reason he survived, along with a couple of others for similar reasons. He had the same recurring dream till the day he died - something to do with laying on a cot in the dark basement of a church somewhere, packed with other casualties, calling out to see if any of his mates had made it there, while a lone Belgian nurse went around trying to cope with all these lads with limbs missing, shooting them up with morphine or whatever... we all knew what it was because he'd wake the house up often, shouting out in his sleep, so although he never really talked about it we heard the details in the night, at one time or another, still reliving it, 58 years after the event. And, I suppose, another 51 years later, I'm here remembering being a kid woken up in the night, wondering what it was like to wake up with 100 others, packed like sardines into a candle lit crypt, all wounded and helpless, all knowing that *all* their mates were gone... so it's definitely something that left a scar of some kind across the consciousness of the nation A weird sort of footnote is that, over a decade after he died, I came off a motorbike after a hit and run sideswipe from a builders van that drifted onto my side of the road, and cracked the exact same vertebra that he got broken by the shrapnel, and ended up with a very similar looking scar in the exact same place, from the hospital - where I was mostly attended by a (very lovely) young Belgian nurse I'm not much of a believer in any supernatural stuff, but that one always felt kinda spooky!

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Northerlies@reddit

I heard that shouting back in the early 60s. The bus ride home from school stopped in a dark woody area and, one winter, a big hunched-up man boarded every evening. He sat at the back talking and shouting, locked in a world of his own, which was very frightening for young teens. But all the bus crews knew him and took care to quietly explain to passengers that the man had wartime shell-shock and wasn't to be reproached under any circumstances. There must have been many like him.

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BedaFomm@reddit

The Pals Battalions were the “Kitchener Army” raised in 1914 to bolster the old regular Army that was too small to fight a major continental war. Kitchener (Minister of War) promised that friends would not be split up, to encourage volunteers. Whole towns took up the idea and raised 1000 men to present the Army with a ready made battalion. When trained, these men were destined for the “Big Push” to finally defeat the Germans, planned for 1916. This was the Battle of the Somme. Due to woeful planning and naive tactics it was a disaster. The first day (1 July 1916) is the worst day ever for the British Army - almost 60,000 killed and wounded, and approx 450,000 casualties over the whole battle. Then remember all those casualties came from the same streets and neighbourhoods, so the impact on families and communities was enormous. This still resonates to this day, perhaps more so than WW2 , and has become part of our national consciousness in things like “Oh What a Lovely War” and of course “Blackadder”.

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JimDixon@reddit

American here. Speaking of “Oh What a Lovely War”--I saw the film when it was new, around 1969. I'm old now (obviously) but I was young then, and didn't know much history. I was unaware that all those songs were authentically old, and were popular during the war. I assumed they had been written for the film, or the play. (That's true of most musicals.) I can't remember when I learned the truth; it may have been much later, after I became interested in researching and listening to old songs on the internet, which has become a hobby of mine. Websites like the [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/78_keep-the-home-fires-burning-til-the-boys-come-home_john-mccormack-lena-guilbert_gbia0010539a) and the [National Library of Australia](https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-166257778/view?partId=nla.obj-166257786#page/n0/mode/1up) make tons of stuff available. I wish the British Library would do that.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

This. A very good summation.

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caife_agus_caca@reddit

Yip. In Speyside, Scotland, they used to have several shinty teams. Some of the clubs lost essentially the whole team in the war, the club shut down and there are villages there that just haven't played Shinty ever since.

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SurpriseGlad9719@reddit

Isn’t that the story of Ballachulish Shinty? I’m sure I read something very similar over on the Camanachd page.

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Eren-Alter-Ego@reddit

For years we thought there was no grave for my great, great uncle, until my dad did some research and found he was buried at Bards Cottage outside Ypres. There's a row of young Welsh lads all from the same village, all died on the same day... The commonwealth graves in Belgium are so beautifully managed. As an aside, I Thoroughly recommend visiting the Menin Gate in Ypres. Beautiful, thought provoking, but devastating.

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GoldenArchmage@reddit

I have a friend who used to work for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission - there are very dedicated people.

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No-Character-4275@reddit

For years we thought there was no grave for my great, great uncle, until my dad did some research and found he was buried at Bards Cottage outside Ypres. There's a row of young Welsh lads all from the same village, all died on the same day... The commonwealth graves in Belgium are so beautifully managed. As an aside, I Thoroughly recommend visiting the Menin Gate in Ypres. Beautiful, thought provoking, but devastating.

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Vlada_Ronzak@reddit

Source for more military killed in WW1 v WW2?

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Indignant_Woodlouse@reddit

Nearly 900,000 killed in WWI Approx 380,000 killed in WW2

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HomeworkInevitable99@reddit

5.5 million served in UK military in ww1. 4 million in ww2. The considering ww2 took place in a much wider area, Europe, Africa and far East. In ww2, you had, overall, a 10% risk of being killed.

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One-Web-2698@reddit

That is still such a shocking stat.

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ExoneratedPhoenix@reddit

I honestly only recently realised WW2 deaths for UK soldiers was lower than WW1, and I thought very low for the scale. Don't get me wrong, 380,000 is horrific, but I would have thought it would be millions given it was 5-6 years and many of our operations to get to mainland Europe was just fish in a barrel such as Normandy.

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Northerlies@reddit

Most of the fighting was done on the Eastern Front, where the Soviets took the millions of deaths.

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Sorry_Nothing5006@reddit

D day itself was fine, relatively, but the Normandy campaign itself had a higher casualty rates for British infantry soldiers than the Somme. It was brutal and this isn't widely appreciated. Buckley's Monty's Men is good on this.

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plentyofizzinthezee@reddit

The losses of the Great War shaped the tactics and mentality of the leaders of WWII; many times they were called too cautious or too worried about casualties by their allies

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No-Pause6574@reddit

The calculus of WWI tactics - We have 60,000 men, they have 50,000 - we'll win and have 10,000 left!

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Unlucky_Feature1620@reddit

The expected casualty rate in an assault was 3:1 (ie to win, you needed to suffer 3x as many losses as the enemy)

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Itchy-Gur2043@reddit

? British deaths on the D Day beaches were in the hundreds. Britain only lost 1500 soldiers on the whole of D Day. Hardly fish in a barrel.

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under_ice@reddit

I could be wrong, but I think a lot of the beaches were uncontested or lightly defended. It's the hot ones that get the attention.

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Itchy-Gur2043@reddit

It went mucb better than expected apart from on Omaha beach which was the only beach manned by competent troops, also a lot of other things went wrong there. Everywhere else the defenders, whether they were Germans or Eastern European conscripts basically shat their pants when they saw what was coming and only put up a token defence. Not to trivialise the loss of course, our soldiers got shot and killed on every beach but the planners were basically expecting a Omaha type bloodbath on every beach, fortunately it didn't happen like that.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

Even Omaha was not nearly as bad as the myth has it. It was very tough for the first couple of hours and go much more under control after that. And in reality, the most deadly beach, in terms of % killed, was the Canadians on Juno.

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under_ice@reddit

For the longest time I thought the first guys up in front of the landing craft were doomed when the ramp opened. All along the beaches. I almost had nightmares thinking about those poor guys..

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

To be fair, the 2 months of the Battle of Normandy were actually MORE dangerous for the average infantryman than any of the big WW1 battles, including the 4 months of the Somme. It’s just that Normandy was virtually the only time the Army had to fight through a really significant, large scale, attrition style battle against formed, effective and dug in defenses.

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Whulad@reddit

Only Omaha can possibly be described as fish in a barrel and that was Americans

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littlerabbits72@reddit

6% of the adult male population at the time of WWI.

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ChipCob1@reddit

I only found out recently that over 2000 people died in air raids in England during world war one.

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Gauntlets28@reddit

We had a memorial to a lad at my school which explained that he went home for the holidays and died in a zeppelin attack.

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Normal-Height-8577@reddit

>the general public were affected more in WWII because of food rationing Yes and no. The government didn't ration food in WWI, but that doesn't mean people weren't affected. Market forces meant that food prices rose sky high due to scarcity, and while rich people could still afford whatever food they wanted, some poorer people were becoming very malnourished (which also adversely affected the fitness of new troops and factory workers). The government was horrified by the scale of malnutrition. It was a disaster only partially averted by local community groups organising their own sharing systems, soup kitchens and similar. Which was why, when the government realised that WWII was becoming likely, they started employing nutritionists and buying up massive food reserves, to try and avoid the disaster by planning for *everyone* to go on a restricted diet that still managed to provide all the essentials.

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LaidBackLeopard@reddit

A friend who visited Germany and saw some war memorials noted that it's very much the other way round for them - the Russian front was brutal.

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theguiltiestpenguin@reddit

MO op

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NorthBase710@reddit

WWII is part of the impact WWI had on Britain and the world So yes it did.

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RobPez@reddit

I used to think 'yes' - but now i feel the way the UK became totally subservient to the US after WW2 has been a disaster.

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bengreen04@reddit

Yes, 100%. I am always surprised at how WW2 plays as big or bigger a role in public discourse. WW1 is probably the most society-altering event in British history since the Norman conquest; the death toll alone is so significant that the demographic impact was relevant until fairly recently, it pioneered a rapid growth in technology, science and medicine, and perhaps most importantly it marks the point that Britain became a truly class-conscious nation. If we didn’t have WW1, we would not have seen the Labour Party rise at the rate it did, strikes wouldn’t have been as rife as they were throughout the twentieth century, we probably wouldn’t have an NHS.

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clovenheart1066@reddit

They probably still had some money after ww1. And it was the first horrific war in recent memory. They probably hoped it wouldnt happen again and then got jaded when the young men of ww1 found in ww2. My grandparents were children during ww2 and the stories of rations, of families having more mouths to feed than they could afford, of families blending because one mum died in childbirth and anothers dad died in the war are rampant. My nana was lucky, she was only 1 of 2. My grandpa was the eldest of 7 and remembers sleeping under his dads army greatcoat because there wasnt enough blankets.

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gominokouhai@reddit

Every town, village, and hamlet in the country built a memorial after WW1. After WW2, we just added the phrase "and also 1939--45" to the text of the existing monument.

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Calculonx@reddit

Hopefully there's not a big suspicious space underneath that last engraving

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Krakshotz@reddit

There is an estimated 52 “Thankful Villages” in England and Wales that didn’t lose a single resident in action in WWI (none in Scotland or the entire of Ireland) 14 of these 52 or so are “Doubly Thankful” as they lost no one in both World Wars

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Stunning_Anteater537@reddit

This is an amazing fact I'm going to try to keep in my head for future use.

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Krakshotz@reddit

Ironically one of these “Doubly Thankful Villages” is called *Upper Slaughter*

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sailingdownstairs@reddit

It only has about twenty houses so definitely the numbers were on their side. (I'm exaggerating of course, but it's really tiny.)

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Shezzanator@reddit

Both the slaughters are beautiful picture perfect villages made of thatch and Cotswold stone

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GoldiBlogs@reddit

FYI, there are around 6,000 - 7,000 villages in the UK in total.

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Albannach02@reddit

When people in Scotland heard of an English village with no casualties in the First World War, they were shocked.

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BedaFomm@reddit

There were only 40-odd villages in the whole country that didn’t lose any of their men in WW1.

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Paul17717@reddit

Its maybe less relevant now but I grew up with people who remembered WW2 and talked about their first person experience, WW1 maybe had a few left but nobody I ever spoke to. WW2 always felt much more relevant to me as a result. Also Churchill is not a universally popular figure. I don’t know enough myself the why but he is hated by a lot of people.

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Open_Bumblebee_3033@reddit

I believe so, arguably it set up Germany and Hitler on the path to WW2.

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Werthead@reddit

Britain lost more than twice as many dead in WWI than WWII, at a time when the country's population was lower, impacting a much wider swathe of the population. WWII was also a much more justifiable war against a totalitarian evil regime committing astonishing atrocities (some of which came out during the war, most afterwards), as opposed to WWI where the rationale for the war was much murkier. WWII did have direct bombings of British targets which brought the war closer to home and hardened attitudes against Hitler (WWI did have some bombings of Britain from zeppelins, but this was much more limited). Discussions of WWI often devolve into people talking about the war starting because of train timetables and the whole thing developed from a spat within the same pan-European royal family that should have been sorted out behind closed doors, and the war itself was so static that it felt utterly pointless, so there is a view that WWI was more traumatic because it could and should have never happened, whilst WWII was much more of a justified "great crusade" against fascism. The degrees to which that was true at the time or a post-conflict rationalisation is arguable: German atrocities against Belgian civilians were very widely-reported during the early stages of the conflict and may have played a key role in convincing the British government to send reinforcements to the British Expeditionary Force rather than withdrawing as some were arguing.

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Neat-Ostrich7135@reddit

The loss of many historical buildings, leaving space fur horrendous concrete architecture means that ww2 had a bigger impact. You are just not seeing it.

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Alternative-Ad-2312@reddit

I would argue the answer is inevitably yes, because world war 2 was a natural successor to WW1, insomuch as it may not have even happened had WW1 come to a proper resolution. WW1 was almost unavoidable based on the world order we'd created in the 200 years running up to it, WW2 in hindsight was pure madness created by the actions within and immediately after WW1.

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Matt-J-McCormack@reddit

Well WWI could be argued was a cause of WWII so kind of wins by default?

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Alexander-Wright@reddit

A lot of the WW1 memorials have had WW2 deaths added to them, rather than erect separate memorials.

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Longjumping_Win_7770@reddit

Yes it was the catalyst for the welfare state. British kept losing soldiers because the working class were so malnourished and ill. Fitter soldiers make better cannon fodder.

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Agniology@reddit

There is a church in North Wales (Bodelwyddan) with a load of well tended graves of WWI Canadian soldiers who died from a mixture of flu & wounds after WW1. It's more complicated than that I suspect, but nevertheless humbling to visit. we live local to it, and stop by quite often. It's a beautiful church and a moving experience.

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Hollyhop_Drive@reddit

We lost a huge number of young men. It forced huge changes. A lot of traditional crafts were lost, I would argue it was also the loosening of religion on the populace. The only silver lining was lots of people stopped putting up with the BS of being indentured servants.

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Neat_Hair_4821@reddit

the way certain regiments were made in ww1 was particularly devastating with towns often signing up to regiments. look up the accrington pals

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Neat_Hair_4821@reddit

it also depends where you go in the uk a lot of cities hit by the blitz really struggled to recover from the physical damage: Liverpool, Coventry , Hull etc

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oldfartpen@reddit

In context, uk ww1 deaths were approx 1M and 350k in ww2 1914 population was approx 45m of which say 22m were men, of which 5m were 18-35yo.. That is one in 5 men of fighting age were killed, with high local geographical concentration All approx, but have vivid memories of ww1 casualties in my youth

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ejcg1996@reddit

Great opportunity to read some books about this if you’re a huge history buff!

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EdgarPoole@reddit

Lots of good responses - but to add. Most of the War Memorials were put up after WW1 and the WW2 references are often added underneath or on the side of the WW1 info - so they do look like WW1 was more important.

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Zingalamuduni@reddit

In addition to what others are saying about Pals Battalions, I think there was also the “lions led by donkeys” point which led to a huge shift in societal structure in the UK. The aristocracy were automatically senior officers, sitting behind back from front lines and giving orders which led to the deaths of thousands of lower ranking soldiers from poor (regular) backgrounds. That had a real effect on the “rich man in his castle, poor man at the gate, …” attitude of knowing your place.

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court996@reddit

My take having my grandparents fighting in WW1 and parents in WW2 and what they told me was the social changes were more impactful after WW2. In 1914 the social classes were very strong. All officers were from the upper classes and despite many battlefield commissions the brunt of the losses were working class by far. At the end of WW1 people were starting to question the idea of doffing their caps to their so called betters. My grandfather hated the toffs with a vengeance having witnessed their contempt of the “Tommy”. With the depression there was a significant rise in the strength of the Unions and the Labour Party. The Second World War was just over 20 years later and I believe the speed of the German advances made our government realise that not only was trench warfare a thing of the past it was highly unlikely that we could either sustain waves of cannon fodder, nor could we be sure the troops would actually comply. At the end of the war the labour government introduced massive social reforms - the housing act, the health service and the education act being the ones that changed Britain in a massive way.

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WallsendLad70@reddit

It’s a good point relating also to the way WW2 was fought across Europe by the Allies. Both Churchill and Eisenhower were accutely aware of minimising troop casualties so at times took a more risk-averse strategy.

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WallsendLad70@reddit

Great points all made but WW1 also resulted in the beginning of the end of deference to ‘our betters’ and unquestioning loyalty to lay down lives for the flag.

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Boldboy72@reddit

in WW1, "Pals Brigades" were encouraged. Regiments were made up of people who worked together at home, in the same factories or farms. When they went over the top, a small town would lose an awful lot of people in a matter of hours. on 1st July 1916, entire streets of men were wiped out. That sort of loss hurts In the early 20s, towns wanted to commemorate these men so built a lot of memorials. Most memorials commemorate both wars.

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rh6078@reddit

You should also consider posing your question to or searching the subreddit of r/AskHistorians for similar answers

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Shannoonuns@reddit

Ww1 killed a lot of military where as ww2 had a bigger impact on civilians You wouldn't necessarily have war memorials to honour people who were made homeless, injured or killed during an air raid. Also why make another memorial for military personnel when you can add them to the one you just made?

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ALA02@reddit

WW1 had a bigger societal impact - it was essentially the end of the traditional Victorian-style social model and the time when 20th century social movements began to seep into the mainstream conciousness. Also, everyone either died or knew someone who died in the war, so you ended up with an entire traumatised generation. It also shattered the myth of British invincibility and I think that caused a lot of inward soul-searching as from the 20s onwards large government welfare programmes commenced earnest. WW2 had a far bigger geopolitical and economic impact though, and totally reshaped the world order which massively influenced pretty much every country, certainly including the UK. Firstly, being directly bombed and tens of thousands of civilians dying obviously had an immense impact. It totally killed off any sense that Britain could go toe to toe with any great power and come out the winner, and by the end of the war we were no longer a superpower. The post-war recovery laid the foundations for modern Britain, the motorway network, most council housing, the NHS. It also drew us much closer to Europe in the following decades, as well as to the US. I think personally WW2 had a greater effect, to the point that it’s difficult to even quantify.

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Headlight-Highlight@reddit

WW1 changed England fundamentally. Someone wrote until 1914 the average Englishman man could go his whole life without encountering the state other than policemen and the post office. The government got big and has grown massively ever since. WW2 was just a continuation.

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apexmusic0402@reddit

It's not about which one had a bigger impact. WW1 happened first. After the war ended, we built memorials to the dead all across the country. Then some time passed, and then WW2 happened. Pretty much all of our war memorials, seen in every city, town, and village around the country, were built after WW1, but before WW2.

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allancmurphy@reddit

WWI also saw a dramatic shift in British society ushering in the decline of the class system (as it was) and opening the eyes of the nation to the horrors of war waged by elite royals seemingly unfeeling at the losses, at the expense of an entire generation of the lower classes

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Distinct-Dance-4671@reddit

What doesn't get talked about so much is the enormous impact to those elites. Their sons were disproportionately represented at junior leader levels in the infantry, and junior leaders in the infantry in both wars suffered disproportionate casualties vs private and NCO soldiers. It was the nature of the job to be up, exposed, and leading. It made a huge contribution to the shrinkage of the aristocracy, along with other factors such as inheritance tax, access to cheap labour to work in their homes etc etc.

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Distinct-Dance-4671@reddit

In World War I, British junior officers—specifically infantry subalterns (Second Lieutenants and Lieutenants)—suffered significantly higher casualty and mortality rates compared to "Other Ranks" (enlisted men). While the overall death rate for the British Army was approximately **12% to 13.5%**, the death rate for officers was roughly **17%**. Comparative Mortality and Casualty Rates Statistical analysis of British military effort shows a consistent disparity between officers and enlisted men throughout the conflict: |**Metric** |**Officers**|**Other Ranks (Enlisted)**| |:-|:-|:-| |**Probability of death (entire war)**|\~26% (Survival rate: 0.74)|\~15% (Survival rate: 0.85)| |**Average Monthly Fatality Rate**|5.76 per thousand|3.12 per thousand| |**Wounded (First year of war)**|24%|17%| |**Likelihood of death (vs men led)**|50% more likely to be killed|Baseline|

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Tall-Reputation-9519@reddit

Specifically the 1918 law change that allowed some women over 30 and all men over 21 the chance to vote - there was a general feeling of these young men were dying for the government but had no right to vote.

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Dapper-Bird-8016@reddit

WW2 was the straw that broke the camels back in a financial sense for the British empire. I'd say WW2 had the larger impact as it was the final 'passing of the baton' of British empire hegemony to US superpower.

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Mav_Learns_CS@reddit

WWI had an enormous impact on society as others have mentioned - entire villages lost their entire adult male population. WW2 destroyed us economically and killed the empire

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Another_Random_Chap@reddit

To an extent, I think WW1 had a bigger psychological impact than WW2. Going into WW1, Britain saw itself as a superpower that had more or less swept all before it for years, so it came as a massive shock when they didn't simply walk in and win (the 'home by Christmas' belief), and that so many died so quickly for seemingly very little. It also greatly reduced blind patriotism, and trust in the ruling classes who by and large ran the military, as people saw the impact of their often very poor decisions.

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Dazzling_Look_1729@reddit

WW1 killed many more people. WW2 probably lives more in the general culture today.

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Obvious-Water569@reddit

Depends how you're measuring impact. General loss of life was higher in WWI, but cities weren't bombed to rubble and there wasn't food rationing. I'd say in terms of how much it affected our way of life, WWII had the biggest impact.

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Another_Random_Chap@reddit

One different outcome of WW2 was that it gave women a lot more freedom and independence. So many women took on jobs during the war, and when their husbands came back, a lot of them were reluctant just to go back to the role of housewife, which very much started to change the rigid gender structure that we had before. My grandparents ran a café on Jersey before the war, and my grandfather signed up and had left the island before the Germans invaded. My grandmother then ran the café on her own right through the occupation whilst bringing up 3 boys. When my grandfather came back he found that his role had greatly diminished because grandma ran everything, and his answer was to climb in and out of the bottle for the next 40 years.

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Damo0378@reddit

Demographically and socially, WWI probably had the more significant immediate impact. However, WWII literally broke us as a country and was the final nail in the coffin of Empire (and I am no supporter or apologist for imperialism). Britain and the Commonwealth fought on when almost no other country did during the first 3 years of the war and it literally cost us everything, leaving us in debt to the Americans for decades and decades and destroyed the economy so thoroughly that we have never really recovered hence the slow gradual decline that has brought the country to the sorry state it is in. In Europe, we didn't have an existential reason to continue fighting after the fall of France and the Battle of Britain, but we did, knowing it would ruin us. To me, it's one of the real tragedies of WWII that we gave everything, and in return got nothing more than a pat on the back and a participation trophy. We were so broke that we had rationing far longer than any other major participant of the War - even the agresssors!! It seems this sacrifice was quickly forgotten as soon as it was convenient to do so by the continental Europeans who got the full benefits of reconstruction whilst pulling the ladder up behind them (looking at you DeGaulle). Europe was rebuilt with Marshall Plan money whilst we had to borrow and repay the money to rebuild from our "friends" and allies who benefitted by keeping us broke and leveraging this to their maximum advantage. In the long run, it turned out cheaper (economically) to be invaded and occupied by the Germans than to have fought on whilst others sat by, twiddling their thumbs and actually continued to trade with Nazi Germany whilst ensuring that Britain could never again compete with them economically as we had before the war. This is not to trivialise the sacrifices made by all those other countries and citizens (the Russians, the resistance groups and the victims of the Holocaust for example), but in terms of long term economic and social destruction, I think WWII had by far the greater impact on Britain than WWI. TLDR - WWII

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WinkyNurdo@reddit

I would argue that both wars had enormous societal impacts, just in different ways, and you can’t really quantify that one war had more effect than the other. The labour government after WWII wouldn’t have come about if it wasnt for the decimation of the upper and lower classes in WWI for example. But you’re spot on about this aspect of the consequences of fighting on and fighting alone in WWII. The yanks rinsed us as much as they could before being dragged in (same as WWI), and the Europeans effectively closed the door behind them as they went home when it was all done. Britain was effectively strung out to dry with an almost unbelievable mountain of debt, whilst Europe rebuilt with cheap credit and investment from the US. The two wars drained us of every last penny, most of which ended up in the US coffers.

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Whulad@reddit

I think it’s more mixed than most on here. Obviously the trenches, constant operations, the casualties and the war poets etc means WW1 had and has a big impact but WW2 has a lot more cultural references in terms of films, has more defines separate operations, battles etc, is still, just, in living memory and also has a few things that are considered key to our national identity , although fading . So the Blitz spirit , Dunkirk, the Few, how we stood alone for a while against tyranny etc , etc h

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Dartzap@reddit

As others mentioned, the death toll was immense. It it wiped out a generation of men which in turn also lead to the vast Downton Abbey style estates becoming increasingly unsustainable due to a lack of cheap labour. It traumatised the country, which lead to much of the dithering before 1939. It's cultural impact really can't be underestimated.

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MinaZata@reddit

The answer is WW1. You don't get WW2 without WW1. The scale and destruction for the European powers were colossal. It broke the world, it effectively ended the Empire, and the number of deaths were higher. It reach nearly every community. It uprooted civil society. It change culture, the language, psychology. The opportunity cost of all those bright and brilliant minds extinguished on the battlefield.

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Ok_Biscotti2533@reddit

Prior to the first world war, there were just over 40m people in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). 1.1m died during that war. To give that some context, there were just over 50 "Thankful Villages". Those are villages where none of their sons died. Even worse, because of the way the army allowed friends to join and serve together, there were instances where the majority of military aged men in some villages were lost. These deaths touched every household in the country in one way or another. Then, there was the lack of a body to bury. The inability to mourn your loss. To bury your son, father, brother or uncle. Some towns and villages created their own memorial to those lost soldiers. A national program was created to give a form of closure. To give those lost a grave, a memorial. The Cenotaph was built in 1920, as was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Memorial to the Missing was completed in 1925. Smaller memorials were financed in those towns and villages which hadn't already built their own. Churches had plaques carved. Many other memorials were built to individual companies or branches. The names of those who lost their lives in the Second World War and many subsequent wars were added to those memorials. So, yes, there are a great number of memorials to those who died in the First World War. Those memorials were used to remember those who died in later conflicts, but that might not be obvious unless you get up close enough to read them. In general, though, the First World War had much more of an impact on the population and an unimaginable impact on the psyche of the nation. It was truly the first industrialised war and a mass slaughter on a scale not seen before. Unfortunately, it was only the first.

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Ewendmc@reddit

There are no thankful villages in Scotland.

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Ewendmc@reddit

The impacts were different. WW1 did not have the scale of bombing raids as WW2 did. WW2 did not have the sheer loss of men that WW1 did, especially as in many small villages and towns the loss in one day due to the local and pal recruitment model could devastate it. Interestingly after WW1 they found 14 thankful villages and towns in England and Wales that had had no losses. There were none in Scotland and (what was then UK) Ireland. Every town and village there lost someone. Growing up in Scotland with silent generation parents born in the war, the TV was full of WW2 movies, comics full of WW2 stories and toys were WW2. All my male relatives were involved but everyone avoided talk of WW1. It was quiet but everywhere. Every village and town and collection of houses in the middle of nowhere had a war memorial with lists of men from WW1 but sometimes with none from WW2. I think it was still so much of a shock that people avoided it. Just to put it into perspective. Some figures claim that 1 in 4 Scottish troops were killed. That is a huge loss for a small area that represented 10% of the UK population at the time. In WW2, Scotland did not have the scale of air attacks as England had. The major one was Clydebank. My mother was born in Middlesex in the South of England in an area surrounded by RAF fields. She lived her life with a big scar on her back she got as a baby when an explosion blew out the glass of a hurricane lamp. For her WW2 was the bigger impact. For my Grandparents and great Uncles that served in WW2 , WW1 was a topic they avoided talking about. Too many losses and too many people that came home broken.

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AndrewOngley@reddit

We lost more lovely, plump speckily pigeons in WWI. This left a unassailable psychological scar on the nation, Darling.

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mkmike81@reddit

With 50,000 men getting killed every week who's going to miss a pigeon?

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Fullchimp@reddit

The meta plot of WW2 was adopted in place of religion after it ended and is still going strong. A little esoteric maybe, but it changed the national psyche.

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AnneKnightley@reddit

More young men were killed in WWI - whole villages suffered from the loss but towns etc were affected physically by WWII. eg The house I grew up in (in the north) had a bomb shelter attached and there was an airfield nearby which often got targeted. There are places where you can see the affects of the bombing still throughout the country, it’s just become part of the fabric so is less talked about.

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GoldenArchmage@reddit

Something you can do when you're walking down a street of Victorian or Edwardian terraced houses is to look for gaps in the rows. If you see more modern construction that's where a bomb fell. Some of the smaller parks in London in particular used to be streets of houses that were completely destroyed, so they just grassed them over. Mile End Park springs to mind, where the only surviving building is the pub, the Palm Tree.

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keithmk@reddit

I think that it is an impossible question to answer. True many more men (boys) were slaughtered in WW1 in the trenches and so on. (My grandfather fought in the trenches at age 15, not yet legally old enough to sign up!) but the devastation of WW2 was of a different nature. My mother and her sisters were evacuated from London, coventry was near wiped out, not counting the devastation suffered in Germany. WW1 was a war of generals sacrificing soldiers like pawns in a game, WW2 was one of devastating civilian populations. Both were just total obscenities

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Sufficient_Creme2872@reddit

WW1 broke the country, WW2 broke the Empire and the country. The next 2 events finished off the UK for good. The financial crash of 2008 and the final nail was Liz Truss

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Drewski811@reddit

After WW2 we were monumentally financially fucked, we couldn't afford grand gestures to commemorate what had happened. Most WW1 memorials also have plaques for WW2 on them, rather than having a new monument.

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papayametallica@reddit

/s To a significant extent we can thank the United States for their support and a huge debt that wasn’t repaid until December 29, 2006. The final installment, including interest, was approximately $83 million (£45.5 million). The loans, originally totaling $3.75 billion in 1945, were repaid over 60 years

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celtiquant@reddit

If you look closely, those memorial monuments originally erected to commemmorate those horrendously lost during WWI were later also used to commemorate the dead of WWII (and indeed subsequent conflicts). Others have mentioned how almost everyone in Britain was tragically touched by WWI — my grandmother lost two brothers whose bodies were never recovered. They are both commemorated on the memorial in their home village on the border between Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire in south Wales. My grandfather was injured in France during WWI, but thankfully survived otherwise I wouldn’t be here to write this. He never spoke of his wartime experiences with his family. For me, born in the 60s, WWII had overtaken WWI in general social consciousness. The conflict was fresher in peoples’ minds. Although, as far as I know, my family didn’t lose members to WWII, as kids in the 70s we were constantly reminded of the war. We’d construct Airfix models of Spitfires and Messerschmidts, we’d have toy soldiers, we’d read about wartime heroics in our comics, we’d see the weekly WWII action movies on Sunday night TV. The First War was rarely referenced. The true horrors of both World Wars only became evident to me as an older teenager in the late 70s, and I was only directly touched by war when one of my school classmates was killed in the 80s Falklands conflict. He is commemorated on a dedicated Falklands memorial in the gardens surrounding the National Memorial of Wales in Cardiff. I don’t know, but I imagine he’s also commemmorated on the original memorial erected after WWI in his own home village. There are physical memorials in almost every community. There are also memorials in many peoples’ heads, like mine.

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Key-Struggle-5647@reddit

When a persons introduces you to another friend as " this is (your name) He's a massive nonce." Then you know you've a life long friend that has your back

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bcscroller@reddit

I think WWII has a greater influence on those alive today. Children or grandchildren of those who fought are still alive. Rationing continued for many years after the war and it was the beginning of the end for Britain as an imperial power, it cemented the role of women, the blitz destroyed the cities which were later rebuilt. We saw the brutality of the holocaust.

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Different-Try8882@reddit

An impact that gets overlooked is that junior officers had a higher casualty rate than the ranks. Most of them had come from upper and middle upper classes; minor nobility, gentry and landowners, university students and graduates. After all, as Wellington said The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Easton’. Dynasties and estates were left with no heirs, this was the reason the National Trust owns so many historic houses. The ‘Brightest and Best’ young minds were gone (e.g. Brooke, Owen, Moseley) and many that survived became the ‘Bright Young Things’ and the ‘Lost Generation’ of the 20’s - blitzed out on alcohol and drugs, dedicated to hedonism. It completely altered the social structure of the UK.

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AudioLlama@reddit

You're better off asking actual cultural historians rather than a gaggle of uneducated fuckles like us.

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Leading_Study_876@reddit

Most of the replies here are actually pretty knowledgable and informative. As Reddit, at its best, can often be.

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Ill-East-4746@reddit

The role of women in the UK changed forever after WW1. They had to ‘step up’ into traditional men’s jobs while the men were at war and continued after the war because so many men were killed. Within a few years women could vote on an equal footing and many were confident enough to develop careers - science, medicine, go to university, performing arts etc.

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Cold-Society3325@reddit

I think the post-war societal impact of WWI may have been greater. All men and some women got the vote after the war and it triggered real changes for women and working class men.

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Flashy-Nectarine1675@reddit

WW1 was the first war when loads of toffs were killed.

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Albannach02@reddit

Yes. There was not a family in Scotland that was unaffected by the First World War. The Second World War was bigger globally, but people don't think globally: the local is what matters.

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MiddleAgeCool@reddit

In part it was due to a WW1 recruitment campaign called "Pals Battalions". Get men from the same town all in the same unit / batallion which proved great for morale. It was stopped when it was realised all the young men from towns died on the same day during battles. If you don't think that sounds bad, walk around your local area and imagine every guy aged between 18-30 was killed on the same day and how that would effect the families, friends amd wider community.

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Realistic-River-1941@reddit

Yes. Massively so. At the most basic level, more people were killed. WWII in the UK can't be understood without WWI.

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Twinklekitchen@reddit

WW1 wiped out pretty much or permanently damaged an entire generation of young men. Proportionally, that was far more than were killed in WW2. To put some perspective on it, there were between 12,000 separate cities, towns and villages recognised in England and Wales at the start of WW1, of these only 54 had ALL the men return that had left to fight in the war.

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NaniFarRoad@reddit

After WW1 universal suffrage was going to be introduced in the UK, but they realised women would outnumber men (due to wartime losses), so they set an age limit of 30 for women, as "it would not do" to have a majority female electorate. Still, the electorate tripled since the previous elections in 1910 (the 1915 election was cancelled due to the war). A coalition (with a Coalition Liberal PM David Lloyd George) won an overwhelming majority, and at the following elections in 1923, Labour won their first election.

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I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS@reddit

WW2 ended Britain's tenure as the global superpower and signalled the beginning of the end of European imperialism in general. Britain woke up to a new world in 1945 and had an entirely new place in it. Some might say we still haven't fully accepted that place even today. The reason it seems like there are more monuments to WW1 is, as the other person said, simply because they were all built specifically to remember that conflict, with text commemorating WW2 added later. The Festival of Remembrance - the annual commemoration of fallen troops that is associated with the wearing of poppies and the laying of poppy wreaths - was first held in 1927. So, again, it was set up after WW1 - hence it being held on or around 11th November - with recognition of other conflicts being added later.

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FedUpFrog@reddit

There were about 886,000 military deaths in WWI (approx 6%of the adult male population) compared to around 380,000 in WWII. So the scale of deaths was different, this was exacerbated by the Pals Battalions recruiting of 1914 & 1915 leading to huge localised impacts.

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metal_jester@reddit

That was the name! Thank you I couldn't remember the battalion idea that just led to whole villages losing all their men.

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Slight_Horse9673@reddit

Not to mention the effects of the flu pandemic just after WW1, probably killing another 200,000–250,000 people in the UK, often in prime adult ages.

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ThatBandicoot4769@reddit

WWI was a massive slaughter of young men. Men were sent to war with other men from the same villages, towns and cities. So often a whole generation of men from a town were wiped out together. Usually teenagers, many underage. It was horrendous. On all sides. Read All Quiet on the Western Front. Watch Blackadder Goes Forth. And we wouldn't have had WWII without WWI.

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miemcc@reddit

The main issue with the deaths in WW1 was due to the creation of the PALs battalions. The men from towns and villages joined up together and we're kept together. When the war degenerated into trench warfare and the units were wholesale slaughtered, it meant that those towns and villages lost a significant percentage of their men. So the impact of the losses was greater.

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orbtastic1@reddit

Ww2 hit civilians much, much harder. 70k or something died in the blitz. People look at the deaths but the total injuries is genuinely staggering. Nearly 2 million injured in ww1 and under half that in ww2. Absolutely crazy stats for the population at the time

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cjdstreet@reddit

Paying back americas extortionste interest on loans fucked the uk. Germany and Russia didn't pay...so the nazis got off scott free. Shocking really

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campbelljac92@reddit

World war 1 was unprecedented in it's scale so it became known as the great war or the war to end all wars. By the time the second world war rolled around we already had a cenotaph on every village green so they just became symbolic of every serviceman killed going forwards.

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cjdstreet@reddit

Out of everyone involved in ww2 it hurt the uk the most. Thats because of americas extortionate interstellar on loans.....they forgave germanies debt and Russia refused to pay....

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Krakshotz@reddit

WWI’s lasting impact was the human cost. The use of outdated tactics and Pals Battalions wiped out entire workforces, streets and neighbourhoods of men. WWII’s impact was that the war came to Britain in a way that was never seen before. Rationing, fears of invasion, the Blitz, V1 and V2 attacks

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quartersessions@reddit

As well as the much-mentioned deaths, let's not forget the political impact. WWI was what kick-started the end of the British Empire and Britain being overtaken by the United States as *the* global superpower, as well as the collapse of great European powers.

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LuKat92@reddit

The reason you don’t tend to see specific monuments to WWII is because we started putting up WWI monuments in the 1920s, then in the late 40s/early 50s a lot of those monuments just got WWII added on. In many cases there was enough space to do this, as other commenters have noted that the military death toll was considerably lower in WWII. That said, the civilian impact was much higher. If you go to Coventry today, you will barely see any buildings more than 80 years old - because pretty much the entire city was flattened in the Blitz.

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Starboard_1982@reddit

In terms of physical memorials then yes, WWI has a bigger presence. However, I'd say that most of us aged over, say, 35, probably have some memory of a relative who was alive during WWII even if they weren't old enough to fight, or who remembers rationing and playing on bomb sites in the years afterwards. I'd also say that because WW2 happened here - bombing raids, air bases, the departure of troops for D Day, Bletchley Park etc. it has had a huge impact on us. The geography/architecture of most of our major cities has been affected by bombs, we're still using the same tube stations that people used to shelter from bombs in London, you can see boats that rescued troops from Dunkirk still in harbours across the country, etc.

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Lau_kaa@reddit

Far more deaths. It's particularly shocking in small villages, like the one I live in, when you see the list of names on the war memorial. There were three war deaths in WW2, ten times that in WW1. One family lost four brothers between 1915 and 1917. I think as well the senselessness of WW1 makes it more poignant. Objectively, WW2 was a fight with a purpose. WW1 was just mass slaughter.

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Hellboundpoddy@reddit

Most cenotaphs/war memorials for WW1 were already built or in the process of being built. So it was easy to add the WWII dates and dead to the memorials lists.

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Dennyisthepisslord@reddit

Pals battalions where towns essentially served together meant when there were big losses some towns and communities were specifically hit hard. By ww2 they stopped that so deaths were more spread out. But in terms of long lasting impact ww2 did more damage. My closest pub was bombed by a V2, there's impacts in the ground to this day from other bombs, there's a 17 year old who died in a plane crash serving buried literally a 2 minute walk from me right this second

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No_Earth_5912@reddit

I would say the war where our cities were consistently bombed probably had a bigger impact on

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InitiativeOver7314@reddit

The death toll in WW1 was at least double that in WW2 but WW2 had a far greater socialogical effect. The post war years saw the end of automatic deference to the upper classes, the setting up of the welfare state etc in a effort to build a Britain "fit for heroes"

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Turbofox_89@reddit

As others have said, WW1 wiped out the entire working age male population of a lot of small towns. WW1 enlisted a lot of Pals battalions, it allowed friends, families, neighbours, colleagues to fight together but also resulted in massive losses for those communities.

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ExoneratedPhoenix@reddit

It had a bigger impact on psyche and what to expect. Given Britain's wealth and naval might even the US and other nations thought it would be fairly quick. Most analysts expected a quick few months of blockades by Britain and it would end due to logistics while France smashed through the land. It ended with an absolute horrific meatgrinder mass death no war had seen before. By 6 months in, most nations were shocked and realised it was going to be a very long, very costly war. WW2 feels different because it was ideological and survival, people were being pushed through genocide. WW1 was just the usual empire building, WW2 was personal. World War 1 was never called World War 1 until after World War 2. It was called the Great War and The War to end all Wars. World War 1 was the first true mechanised war, and the death count was shocking.

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rising_then_falling@reddit

Yes, far bigger. It was Britain's first peer conflict in a very long time and the most lethal war Britain had fought for 250 years (the English Civil War being *even more* destructive than WWI), and had radically new technology. WWII was a major conflict but lacked the shock value, and deaths were about half that of WWI.

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Haunting-Track9268@reddit

A million dead. Some towns and villages were left with no men, just children and the elderly.

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Ok-Dress-341@reddit

Practically every village lost men in WW1. UK Casualties in WW2 were half those of WW1

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parabolicuk@reddit

After the first unpleasantness, pretty much every town and village in the country out up a memorial to the war dead. Then when round two kicked off, in many places the names of the fallen we're added to the existing memorial, rather than build a new one.

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Comfortable_Ad_4267@reddit

Both wars were just as bad. Remember our cities were absolutely devastated by bombing. I've been lucky to chat to people who served in both wars and my late mother survived the Blitz.

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Accomplished-Map1727@reddit

I suppose doing something for a 2nd time isn't as "exciting" as the first time. They said WW1 (The Great War) was the "War to end all Wars" and then to find that 20 years later we were doing it again... I also noticed the monuments to WW1 being more prevalent. Also, a lot more men were lost in Britain during WW1 than WW2.

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Expensive-Dingo-2573@reddit

The amount of deaths we suffered

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ReplacementFeisty397@reddit

WW1 wiped out a whole generation of entire communities.

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qualityvote2@reddit

Hello u/northcarolinian9595! Welcome to r/AskABrit! --- For other users, does this post fit the subreddit? If so, **upvote this comment!** Otherwise, **downvote this comment!** And if it does break the rules, **downvote this comment and report this post!**

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