rewind.
According to Dr Mary Dobson, the Spanish Flu was long known as the “forgotten flu.” Only recent historical research has revealed its enormous impact, killing between 50 and 100 million people. This makes it one of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history, second only to the Black Death. There is still a lot of speculation about why or how this was able to happen, what caused it to be so fatal, and why it has been “forgotten” until now.
To begin, we should examine where the Spanish Flu originated; it was not in Spain. There is little knowledge about how it actually started, but there are three main ideas about its origin. Firstly, some argue that it began in the trenches, stricken with disease and germs. However, this would not explain how it travelled to places that were not war-stricken, especially as quickly as it did. Secondly, it could have originated in China, similar to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Shanxi Province, where a respiratory disease outbreak in 1917 may have been the precursor to the Spanish Flu. Thirdly, it could have begun in Kansas at military Camp Funston, where 48 soldiers died from the flu right before an outbreak. This would’ve also explained how it spread with soldiers travelling to Europe from the US and is the theory most supported by historians.
Now, why is it so hard to pinpoint where this disease started? This is linked to why it was so deadly. One reason for this was that “[The] war, its privations and the Armistice distracted from the flu; […] its effects on society were ambiguous; and the press’s myriad obstacles and wartime deceit inhibited detailed documentation and popular trust.”. Countries did not want to dampen morale or divert attention from the end of the war, and so coverage was minimal and only really began once the war was over. It was difficult as governments “had to decide among three competing issues: national security (the country was at war), economic growth, and public health,” and they opted to prioritise the first two, “therefore, interventions were, in general, hesitant and limited in scope and time” this meant that limited measures were taken to control the outbreaks as “it was necessary to carry on and the relentless needs of warfare justified incurring the risk of spreading infections”. War was the priority for governments and newspapers, meaning the flu was overlooked and deliberately ignored. Obviously, this led to it being far more deadly than it would have been had countries had the time to control it. In fact, the death toll of the Spanish Flu was at least three times that of the total death toll of World War One.
The Spanish Flu was only reported and properly dealt with in neutral countries that had no reason to hide their death toll or impact, and so it was dubbed the Spanish Flu. This had a significant impact on its death toll and who it killed.
The pandemic itself was abnormal if compared to outbreaks of its scale, such as COVID-19, as the age group which was most impacted was young adults, which was “The most newsworthy ‘real-time’ feature of the pandemic”. This is possibly linked to the war; many young people were living in camps or travelling abroad, making them more likely to pick up and spread the virus. This was devastating for countries, as young adults also received the brunt of deaths due to WWI.
The long-term impacts that the virus had on scientific research could only be seen years later, as it took them 15 years to look at the virus itself. Eventually, it did aid the creation of the flu vaccine in 1938, and many soldiers, including all US soldiers, were given a flu vaccine before fighting in WWII, preventing another outbreak of its kind. Due to media outlets and governments overlooking the flu, opting to focus on the war, and then the Armistice, it is hard to see what impact the Spanish Influenza had, apart from causing an unprecedented level of death and suffering, “The most tangible reasons for this include Europe’s broken communication networks, the scarcity of material essentials, society’s rapid descent into ‘triage mode,’ the abruptness of the Armistice and its chaotic aftermath”. However, for modern historians and scientists, it can teach them a lot about the importance of communication around a pandemic, the effectiveness of vaccines and the importance of social distancing or isolation. All of these measures were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, making it far less deadly and the spread much more controlled.
The Spanish Flu’s global impact was devastating, intertwined with WWI, a lack of scientific knowledge and poor communication between countries. The death toll was completely unprecedented and to this day, is often overlooked, as people are often more interested in the atrocities of WWI or the beauty and decadence of the roaring twenties that followed. However, there is still a lot we can learn from the Spanish Flu with regards to outbreaks, how war impacts illness, and its spread and scientific advances.
Bibliography
Basco, Sergi, Domènech Jordi, and Rosés Joan R. 2022. Pandemics, Economics and Inequality : Lessons from the Spanish Flu (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan)
Cambridge University. 2018. ‘Spanish Flu: A Warning from History’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x1aLAw_xkY [accessed 14 December 2025].
Clay, Karen, Joshua Lewis, and Edson Severnini. 2018. ‘Pollution, Infectious Disease, and Mortality: Evidence from the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic’, The Journal of Economic History, 78.4: 1179–1209 <https://doi.org/10.1017/s002205071800058x>
Eicher, John P.R. 2025. ‘A Provincial Pandemic: European Ignorance of the 1918 “Spanish” Influenza as a Shared Event’, Contemporary European History: 1–22 <https://doi.org/10.1017/s0960777325000074>
Eyler, John M. 2002. Sir Arthur Newsholme and State Medicine, 1885-1935 (Cambridge University Press)
History. 2019. ‘The Spanish Flu Was Deadlier than WWI | History’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZD95Lp7ikU [accessed 14 December 2025].