Welcome to this deck on modern warfare and British society. We will explore the period from 1900 to the present day, a century of dramatic and rapid change. You'll learn how new technology transformed the battlefield, how the experience of war changed for both soldiers and civilians, and we'll look in detail at two very different conflicts: the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the Iraq War of 2003.

The First World War introduced warfare on an industrial scale. New weapons like the machine gun and heavy artillery created a deadly stalemate on the Western Front. The machine gun, in particular, made traditional infantry charges almost suicidal and became a defining feature of trench warfare.

To break the deadlock of the trenches, both sides developed new technologies. The British introduced armoured fighting vehicles that could cross barbed wire and trenches. At the same time, chemical warfare was used for the first time on a mass scale, with poison gas attacks causing terror and horrific injuries.