LEADERSHIP IN CONFLICT 1914–1918

Abstract

‘Millions of individuals,’ to cite the words of Professor Derek Beales, ‘have found no defence against the juggernauts of history: the Cathars of Montaillou, the American Indians, or in the twentieth century those who fought in the trenches …’1 That the First World War was one of these so-called ‘juggernauts’, a movement so powerful that no one single soul could hope to influence, let alone deflect, its course single-handedly, seems at first glance self-evident. It entailed such a massive array of force and forces that clearly no one person could be its master. It was such an overwhelming combination of the dislocative and destructive that it could not help but engulf the participants in their millions. Those caught up in the grasp of this colossal cataclysm were the masses and not the singular or the solitary.