Planning next year's first world war centenary, we shouldn't rely on Wilfred Owen's version of events

In announcing details of the official programme of commemorations for the centenary of the first world war, Maria Miller, the culture secretary, was careful to say the government would simply "set out the facts" about the origins of the conflict without any interpretation. I am not the only historian to be uneasy about this. The government, through its silence, is tacitly endorsing the popular view of the war as a futile one, a belief that is sharply at odds with most modern scholarship, and with how it was perceived at the time.

Britain went to war with Germany in August 1914 for similar reasons to those which the country fought Hitler's Germany in the second world war: to prevent an authoritarian, militarist, expansionist enemy achieving hegemony in Europe and thus imperilling British security. Most historians argue that Germany and Austria-Hungary were primarily responsible for initiating the war (recent attempts to blame Russia are not wholly convincing). Whoever started it, the fact is that in 1914-18, Germany waged a war of aggression that conquered large tracts of its neighbours' territory. As has often been pointed out, there were distinct continuities between the policy and strategy of imperial Germany and its Nazi successor. In the first world war, German refusal to seriously contemplate handing back the fruits of its aggression rendered null any attempt to bring about a negotiated peace. Not until Germany was clearly losing on the battlefield in 1918 did Berlin show any flexibility over this issue, and by then it was too late.

This was not a "cabinet war", remote from the concerns of ordinary people. Niall Ferguson's argument of the late 1990s that Germany was essentially benign and Berlin's victory would have led to "the Kaiser's European Union" has failed to convince the academic mainstream. Rather, the first world war was an existential struggle, just as much a war of national survival for the British as the second world war. If Britain and its allies had lost, it would have meant the end of liberal democracy on mainland Europe. As it was, civilians were kept docile in German-occupied France and Belgium by the routine use of terror. Forced labourers were deported to Germany under terrible conditions. Unlike Hitler's regime, the Kaiser's was not consciously genocidal, but it was aggressive and brutal enough. In 1918 the British army was fighting a war of liberation.

If Germany had won the first world war Britain, although probably safe from invasion thanks to the Royal Navy, would have been reduced to a state of siege, shut out of Europe. As British planners recognised during the first world war, had London been forced to come to terms with a victorious Germany, any peace could only have been temporary. Sooner or later Germany would have renewed the war and Britain and its empire would have been at a terrible disadvantage.

There is plenty of evidence that most ordinary British people understood what was at stake and, just as in 1939-45, more or less willingly committed to the struggle. The idea of mass war enthusiasm in August 1914 has been shown to be something of a myth. Instead, as the gravity of the situation became clear, there was a more nuanced response. One of the reasons why the support of the working classes for the war was so strong, even among those that lived in poverty, was the knowledge that they were better off than their parents and grandparents had been, and so had something to lose. The juxtaposition of the harsh terms imposed by Germany on Russia in March 1918, far harsher than those of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and the major German offensive of the same month, which seemed to bring the Allies to the brink of defeat, stiffened resolve among the industrial working classes. The war was seen as terrible, but defeat was worse.

Today, horrified by the casualties of 1914-18, (which were consistent with losses of other belligerents), we tend to see the conflict in terms of what the war poet Wilfred Owen called the "pity of war". This is right and proper, but we should not lose sight of why the war was fought and the significance of the fact that it was Britain and its allies, and not Germany, that emerged victorious. Like all wars, it was tragic, but it was certainly not futile.

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3. Lucy Mangan: lessons of the first world war

My friend Lotte Passer, who has died aged 99, was instrumental in rescuing some 60 German Jews – family, friends, children and strangers – during the second world war. Yet Lotte was modest about her remarkable achievement, putting it down to luck, timing and the help of others. "I was born under a lucky star," she would say.

Born Lotte Brock, she was educated in Berlin and went to the Sorbonne in Paris to study French. In 1934 she returned to Berlin and, having failed to persuade her widowed mother to leave, headed for London to live on her own. She found work as a home help for the family of the physicist Herbert Dingle. Coming from a wealthy, middle-class Jewish family, she knew little about domestic chores. But the Dingles became her family and remained so for the rest of her life.

When Kristallnacht erupted in November 1938 and Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were attacked or destroyed, Lotte contacted her mother. "Start packing," she said. At the time Lotte was dating a young man who hoped to marry her, but she turned him down. This was no time for a wedding; there was too much to be done.

Lotte looked for premises where she might house her mother, family and other Jews she hoped to get out of Germany. Her home in Swain's Lane, Highgate, soon became a kind of dormitory for refugees. Lotte worked tirelessly, helped by the Dingles and their friends, dealing with bureaucracy and documentation, and finding guarantors and homes for children.

After the war, Lotte became a PA to the managing director of an import/export business and, in 1959, married Kurt Passer, a lawyer from Prague.

When he died in 1985, her nephew, Tom, and his devoted wife, Ute, looked after her needs but she remained fiercely independent to the end. A well-loved local figure in Highgate, she was instantly recognisable with her shock of white hair and stylish clothes.

Lotte is survived by Tom.

Burning coal also costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days

Air pollution from Europe's 300 largest coal power stations causes 22,300 premature deaths a year and costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days, says a major study of the health impacts of burning coal to generate electricity.

The research, from Stuttgart University's Institute for energy economics and commissioned by Greenpeace International, suggests that a further 2,700 people can be expected to die prematurely each year if a new generation of 50 planned coal plants are built in Europe. "The coal-fired power plants in Europe cause a considerable amount of health impacts," the researchers concluded.

Analysis of the emissions shows that air pollution from coal plants is now linked to more deaths than road traffic accidents in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. In Germany and the UK, coal-fired power stations are associated with nearly as many deaths as road accidents. Polish coal power plants were estimated to cause more than 5,000 premature deaths in 2010.

The cumulative impact of pollution on health is "shocking", says an accompanying Greenpeace report. A total of 240,000 years of life were said to be lost in Europe in 2010 with 480,000 work days a year and 22,600 "life years" lost in Britain, the fifth most coal-polluted country. Drax, Britain's largest coal-powered station, was said to be responsible for 4,450 life years lost, and Longannet in Scotland 4,210.

According to the study, Polish coal power plants have the worst health impact in the European Union. The Polish government and Polish utilities are planning to build a dozen new power plants. The utility companies with the worst estimated health impacts, according to the report, are PGE (Poland), RWE (Germany and UK), PPC (Greece), Vattenfall (Sweden) and ČEZ (Czech Republic).

Acid gas, soot, and dust emissions from coal burning are, along with diesel engines, the biggest contributors to microscopic particulate pollution that penetrates deep into the lungs and the bloodstream. The pollution causes heart attacks and lung cancer, as well as increasing asthma attacks and other respiratory problems that harm the health of both children and adults.

"Tens of thousands of kilogrammes of toxic metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and cadmium are spewed out of the stacks, contributing to cancer risk and harming children's development," says the Greenpeace report, which does not emphasise the impact of coal burning on climate change.

The 300 plants produce one-quarter of all the electricity generated in the EU but are responsible for more than 70% of the EU's sulphur dioxide emissions and more than 40% of nitrogen oxide emissions from the power sector. The Greenpeace report notes that coal burning has increased in Europe each year from 2009 to 2012.

"The results are staggering. The only way to eliminate the health impacts associated with burning coal in Europe is to phase out these dirty power plants and replace them with clean renewable energy. The current EU renewable energy target has been proven to boost renewable energy and help modernise energy systems and the economy. Europe must continue down the path of clean renewable energy by setting an ambitious, binding 2030 renewable energy target," said Greenpeace International energy campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta.

The air pollution from coal burning comes on top of transport emissions that are still increasing despite attempts by the EU to force reductions. According to the European Environmental Agency, more than 90% of urban population in the EU is exposed to fine particle (PM2.5) and ozone pollution levels above the World Health Organisation guidelines.

Greenpeace International is calling on the European commission to come forward with proposals for a binding renewable energy target of 45% and a greenhouse gas reduction target of at least 55% by 2030.