The Social Impact

- Important National variations
- Tremendous demand for workers
- Jobs available for everyone, brought about momentous changes

- Achieved greater power and prestige as a result of total war
- Cooperated with govt. on work rules, wages and production schedules in return for participation in important decisions
- Paralleled the entry of socialist leaders into the war govt.

- Changed drastically, as women left home and domestic service to work in industry, transportation and offices.
- Became highly visible (munition workers, bank tellers, mail carriers and police officers)
- Also served as nurses and doctors at the front
- changed attitudes towards women
- Women's right to vote was granted in Germany, GB and Austria

- Blurring class distinctions and lessening the gap between rich and poor
- More apparent in GB where hardship was never extreme
- Bottom 1/3 of the population lived better than they ever had
- Poorest gained the most from the shortage of labor

- Greater equality was reflected in full employment, rationing and sharing hardships
- Society become more uniform and egalitarian
- Death itself had no respect for traditional social distinctions, savagely decimated the young aristocratic offiers who led the charge at the front and fell heavily on the mass of drafted peasants and unskilled workers
- Spared the aristocrats of labor, the skilled workers and foremans, as they were needed to train women and older unskilled men laboring for the war