The First World War (1914 to 18) saw fighting on an unprecedented scale but also involved civilians as never before. For the first time, people hundreds of miles from the fighting front were vulnerable to air attacks. The war at sea dramatically reduced the availability of food supplies and other goods, so that rationing was imposed. Governments became just as preoccupied with maintaining public support as they were with military victories in the field, and so propaganda and control became lasting features of daily life. There were, too, societal changes as women replaced conscripted men in many industries, and the lower classes began to question their traditional deference to those who ruled, while the world experienced the most devastating conflict yet seen in history.

Those civilians unfortunate enough to be caught up in the actual fighting fronts suffered greatly. As towns were occupied by the enemy, innocent people were beaten, arrested, raped, and murdered, as civilian populations were often treated harshly to deter any uprisings. Farmers saw their fields destroyed by artillery barrages and the building of trench systems and fortified military posts. Paris twice came under direct artillery fire from Germany's massive guns; a barrage in the spring of 1918 killed 256 civilians. It is estimated that in France alone, over 300,000 civilians died in the war, killed by military action, famine, or disease.

Even those far from the front were vulnerable in this new kind of mechanised warfare. Airplanes and airships were used by both sides to strike terror into the civilian populations. The bombing of civilians was very often inaccurate or even entirely accidental, as the technology of the period did not allow bombs to be dropped with any precision, but innocent lives were still lost. German Gotha planes bombed Paris in March 1918 and killed 120 people. When gas was used at the fighting fronts, civilians worried the same terrible chemical weapons would be used against them, too.

The Zeppelin bombing raids of WWI targeted France, Belgium, Great Britain, Russia, and Romania and resulted in over 4,000 civilian casualties. The first Zeppelin raid on Paris took place in August 1914; in all, the French capital would be hit with 30 bombing raids during the war. The first Zeppelin raid on London was carried out in May 1915. Targets included docks and railway terminals. Raids went deep into Britain, attacking not only London but also targets in the Midlands, Yorkshire, Tyneside, and even Scotland. In total, during the war, air raids of all kinds in Britain killed 1,413 people and injured 3,407. David Kirkwood describes a Zeppelin attack on Edinburgh in April 1916:

Suddenly a terrifying explosion occurred. Windows rattled, the ground quivered, pictures swung. We all gasped. I ran to the window and saw Vesuvius in eruption. I opened the window. A great flash greeted me from the castle and then, above the roaring, I heard the most dreadful screeching and shouting.

(Williams, 41)

There was untold material damage throughout the war as strategically important sites like shipyards, railway hubs, and industrial zones were bombed. "In France, it is estimated that 250,000 buildings were destroyed, 500,000 damaged, and 6,000 square miles of territory devastated" (McDonough, 43).

Civilian workers could become casualties of unexpected events which had nothing to do with enemy action, such as this explosion in a British weapons factory, recalled by Ethel M. Bilbrough:

No news came that night, but next day we heard that it was the most awful explosion of its kind ever known, as a munitions factory in East London at Silverton had caught fire somehow (Ah! How?) and the fire spread until it reached all the explosives and then the whole place was hurled up into the air, and four streets were demolished, and the dead and the dying and the injured lay amongst the ruins, so that when a relief party arrived they hardly knew where to begin. Over 100 people were killed, and more than 400 injured and disabled.

(Williams, 53).

In most countries, although few adopted a full war economy until the war's later stages, industry was transformed to provide the materials most needed to face the enemy. Aircraft, shipping, tanks, and ammunition, in particular, had to be manufactured in huge quantities, and their designs were constantly improved to match the technological innovations made by the enemy. Several nations had already been bulking up their arms industries prior to WWI, starting notably with Germany and Great Britain, as each tried to win the Anglo-German arms race, which ran through the first decade or so of the 20th century. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the spending on arms in 1914 was as follows: Britain – 4.9%, Russia – 4.6 %, France – 3.9%, Germany – 3.5%, and Austria-Hungary – 1.9% (McDonough, 34). As a whole, "European arms expenditure rose from 4 per cent of national income in 1914 to a staggering 25 per cent in 1916" (ibid, 44). Governments were obliged to increase taxes and borrow heavily, notably from the United States in the case of the Allies, to pay for this massive increase in armaments.

In order to achieve the greatest efficiency and guarantee the supply of necessary raw materials, certain areas of industry commonly came under direct governmental control. Coal mines, steel industries, shipyards, and ammunition factories were geared to produce machines of war, and railway systems were controlled to better transfer those machines to where they were needed.

As male workers were conscripted into armies, their place was at first taken by those men deemed unfit to fight or who had previously been unemployed. Germany, in 1916, introduced a new law that compelled all males between the age of 17 and 60 to work. But more workers were needed, and so women were recruited. Societal norms were changed as jobs previously considered only suitable for men suddenly saw women fill these roles. Women did work in factories before the war, but the expectation that such workers would leave their post when they got married and the idea that women's work was somehow less valuable and so was paid less than men's began to be challenged during WWI, at least for working-class women.

Ammunition factories had an insatiable demand for workers, and positions usually paid higher wages than in other industries. In France, 75,000 women were working in ammunition factories in 1915, and by 1918, one-third of munition workers were women. In Britain in 1916, 520,000 women were working in the metal and engineering industries. By 1918, Britain's workforce included over 7.3 million women, and 90% of ammunition workers were women. In Russia in 1917, women made up around 43% of the industrial workforce. In Germany, women working in the chemical industry rose from 26,749 in 1913 to 208,877 in 1918. There were similar rises in the machine and armament industries.

The new opportunities were not without their risks. Factory work was often dangerous in itself. Beatrice Lee, who worked in the Yorkshire Copper Works, describes the physical effects of her job:

It wasn't what you'd call a healthy job. Because, well, at that time my hair was jet black and I used to have to bend over the boshes with the acid. You've seen the style today where people have their hair bleached at the front well my hair went like that, just at the front with bending over the boshes where the acid was, because we used to have to put the tubes in this hot acid. Well the hot tubes used to make the acid hot and then the fumes used to come up. It was a very unhealthy job but nevertheless I was very happy there.

(Imperial War Museums)

The general shortage of men on the home fronts led to new job opportunities for women outside of manufacturing, too, such as in agriculture and public services, like ambulances and the police force. White-collar jobs, such as in the administrative departments of companies, banks, and local government, were taken up by more and more women. There were still persistent barriers to women, such as in the male-dominated trades that required long periods of formal apprenticeship. Middle-class women who married were still expected to prioritise the family over working life. Although many more women became teachers in lower and middle education, universities still prohibited women from becoming lecturers in higher education. Finally, the vast majority of working women outside the larger towns, as was the case before the war, were limited to finding employment in domestic service. Here, too, there was change, though, as women in larger urban areas left service for better-paid jobs in industries and the public services when they could.

Across Europe, women workers were now suddenly visible everywhere, whether cleaning windows, driving delivery vans, sweeping roads, or clipping bus tickets. Even in the United States, where the home front was much less affected by the war compared to Europe, women began to work in factories, leaving their traditional roles in domestic service, which, in turn, led to opportunities for Black women who had previously worked on the land to take their places.

The move from domestic service and the agricultural sector to industrial and white-collar jobs is one of the main characteristics of the women's workforces in various countries during the war, since, contrary to popular myth, "there was no enormous influx of non-working women into men's jobs" (Strachan, 154). Rather, the vast majority of working women had already been working, but now they moved from one sector to another. Rarely, too, did women receive better wages than men in practice, despite doing the same job. Nevertheless, wages were better in factories than in domestic service, and so many women's spending power increased dramatically, and with it, their freedom to act as they wished, such as wearing the clothes they preferred or eating out without male company. There was a price to pay for this freedom, one only made possible because of the shortage of men and the expansion of certain industries. Over 4 million women lost husbands during the conflict, while millions more lost fathers, brothers, and sons.

A more positive consequence of women's new role was the growing movement to give women real recognition as important members of a hitherto entirely male-dominated economy and society. Women were recognised, too, for their vital contribution to the war effort in factories, as nurses and members of other volunteer services, and as mothers. In Russia, women won the right to vote in 1917. In Britain, women over the age of 30 were awarded the right to vote in February 1918. In Germany, women were given the right to vote in November 1918, after the armistice. In France, the lower house of parliament passed a law to give women the vote, but this was rejected by the Senate (upper house).

Everyone on the home front suffered privations of one sort or another during the war. As German U-boats tried to sink so much merchant shipping that Britain would starve, the Royal Navy blockaded Germany to impose the same suffering on the German population. Many previously common goods became scarce or unavailable. As a consequence of scarcity, prices rose dramatically. The German government imposed price caps on goods like sugar and tried to encourage people to eat less of the scarcer goods like meat by promoting "non-meat days". Germany introduced the rationing of bread in January 1915, and by the next year, meat, potatoes, milk, sugar, and butter were rationed, too. By 1918, people in the capital, Berlin, were permitted just one pound (450 g) of potatoes per week.

Eating habits changed over time because of the lack of availability of previously staple items. For example, the consumption of turnips rose dramatically to replace much more scarce potatoes. The average weekly consumption of meat for an adult German before the war was 2.3 pounds (1 kg), but this plummeted to just 0.3 pounds (135 g) in 1918. Fuel, clothing, woollen blankets, and leather goods became difficult to buy as the Allied blockade went on. As elsewhere, there was a black market where those with money and few scruples could acquire rationed or scarce goods at a higher than usual price. Money itself lost its value because of high inflation; in some countries, prices rose between 40 and 75%; in others, there were much greater increases, leading to hyperinflation. In Austria, the real value of wages halved in 1916 and halved again in 1917. Many civilians were obliged to barter for goods, exchanging, for example, potato peelings for firewood.

The British government ensured another 3 million acres of land were used for agriculture, but rationing was still introduced in the last year of the war to at least ensure everyone, not just the wealthy, had access to most things, albeit in very limited quantities.

France similarly suffered privations, and the loss of the nation's iron and coal fields to Germany's occupying forces had significant consequences. Being predominantly agricultural, France was at least more or less self-reliant for food, although access to most sugar beet factories was lost when Germany invaded northern France. Controls on wheat consumption meant coarser bread became more common from 1916 (as it did in Britain, too). That same year, the food supply chain was badly hit by poor harvests, especially of wheat, rye, and potatoes. As in Germany, meatless days were encouraged, and butchers only opened three days a week. Restaurants also reduced their opening hours. In 1918, bread was rationed to just 10 ounces (283 g) per person per day.

The war on the home front became just as important as the actual fighting. Each country tried to disrupt as much as possible the way of life of the enemy's civilian populations in the hope that strikes and protests might topple the government and lead to a withdrawal from the war. Governments responded to this threat by seeking to control every aspect of daily life and by issuing mass propaganda using film, radio, literature, and posters to justify the conflict and instil loyalty to those who governed: "Consent was an essential element of mass warfare" (Strachan, 216). Sometimes the propaganda went too far, and so that very term has come to mean 'lies' for many. Even in the liberal democracies, government control was heightened to unprecedented levels as the traditional spirit of deference towards leaders evaporated over the 50 months of total war. Just as the military had to be mobilised to fight, so, too, the civilian population had to be mobilised to support the war effort.

There were protests against some of these controls on civilian life imposed by governments. Press censorship was seen in many countries on both sides. In France, there was a military censorship of news. In Britain, the government passed the Defence of the Realm Act in August 1914, which allowed the government to limit personal freedoms in all areas of daily life. Workers protested the long working hours imposed on them as governments became desperate to furnish their armies with the materials needed to win huge battles. In France, "the number of strikes in French industry and public services rose alarmingly from 98 in 1915 to 689 in 1917" (Simkins, 80). In Britain, 1918 saw 688 strikes involving over 800,000 workers. Protesters were also unhappy with rising prices, control over their mobility, poor housing, and rationing.

Russia saw the most dramatic of all anti-government protests. The Bolshevik Revolution of November (Old Calendar October) 1917, led by Vladimir Lenin, swept away the Tsarist regime. Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894 to 1917) had been obliged to abdicate in March following a series of disastrous military defeats, and his replacement, the Provisional Government, had failed to improve the situation. Workers in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) marched in protest over the continuation of the war in April, and over 1,000 strikes spread across Russia that summer. Food shortages caused bread riots. The Bolsheviks promised the Russian people an immediate withdrawal from the war, to fight the rampant inflation, and to provide a solution to the country's food supply deficiencies. Lenin did formally withdraw Russia from WWI with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918. Russia's withdrawal and the workers' revolution sent shockwaves through the governments of all sides in WWI, who all feared they would have to face a revolution in their own country.

In Germany, controlling unrest was a key factor in that country's continued participation in the war. As the Allied blockade began to bite ever deeper, people took to the streets to demonstrate to the government their dissatisfaction with how the war was progressing. Indeed, there had been anti-war protests earlier in the war, for example, 500 German women demonstrated in front of the German parliament calling for the soldiers to be brought home. In 1916, 10,000 German workers had marched to end the war. Further protests occurred through 1917 and 1918, especially in industrial cities like Hamburg, Essen, Leipzig, and Berlin. In January, 400,000 workers went on strike in Berlin and called for a withdrawal from the war without conditions. In response, the government put the seven largest industrial plants in Berlin under martial law, arrested the ringleaders, and sent up to 6,000 workers to the front lines.

After the failure of the German Spring Offensive in 1918, there were increasing instances of public protest against the German government and its conduct of the war. The protests, along with the military defeats on the Western Front and mutinies in the armed forces, finally convinced the German leadership to sue for peace. The fighting stopped in November 1918, but the effects of the war on the home front, here and in other countries, would be felt for decades thereafter.