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Great Britain
Great Britain was with its Empire the most powerful of the major belligerents, the most politically and socially stable, and the best able to endure the strains of the war. Its great naval, financial and diplomatic strengths were critical to the Allied victory. Its unprecedented creation of a mass army was a major strain, and victory required progressive government involvement in economic and social matters. The immediate effect of the war was to slightly flatten the country’s social structure, but other effects are disputed. In political and military terms Great Britain was a substantial winner from the war, and except in relation to the United States it emerged stronger than before.
Propaganda: Media in War Politics
Propaganda played an important part in the politics of the war, but was only successful as part of wider political and military strategies. For each belligerent, the most effective and important forms of propaganda were aimed at its own domestic population and based on consensus. As part of this, the Allies largely managed relations with their own newspapers and other media by negotiated agreement, backed by coercive powers that were seldom used. Germany had a more coercive and directive approach to propaganda and the media, eventually dominated by its military. Post-war views of wartime propaganda misunderstood the reasons for Allied propaganda success.