All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.01of26.On.The.Idle.Hill.Of.Summer.divx.mp3 EN

A summer Sunday, 1914.

All across Europe, the bells were
peeling, calling men and women to church.

Sunday - the Lord's day and a day of rest.

It was a world of firm beliefs. The established
order was not widely questioned.

Father at the head of the family, The monarch
at the head of the nation, God in his heaven.

Sunday, after church, was a
day of quiet pleasures.

# Little Dolly Daydream, Pride of Idaho,

# So now you know, and when ye go

# You'll see there's somethin' on her mind;

# Don't think it's you,

# 'Kase no one's got to kiss dat garl but me!

In the Bois de Boulogne,
The Tiergarten or Rotten Row, ...

the aristocracy displayed themselves.

Carriages, servants, dazzling clothes.

Material progress had marched swiftly in
the peaceful decades before 1914.

It was a world of novelties, clashing
with established ways.

Wireless and telephones,
motorcars and motorcycles, ...

electric light and electric trains,
submarines and airships.

A world humming with
new energy and power.

But under the smiles, the relaxation,
it was a world of tensions.

The old order, with its economy based on land
and its society based on owning land, ...

was in conflict with the new order
of industry and teeming cities.

Industry had uprooted populations,
expanded them beyond belief, ...

tempted them, enriched them
and impoverished them.

The peace of Europe in 1914
was a fragile thing.

On the idle hill of summer,
sleepy with the sound of streams,...

far I hear the steady drummer,
drumming like a noise in dreams.

In the Germanic empire lying
across the heart of Europe, ...

the clash of old and
new was obvious.

Under the leadeshhip of Prussia,
under Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, ...

Germany had emerged as a nation
and as a world power.

In 1871, her 39 separate states, after
centuries of discord, had united at last.

The kings of Saxony and Bavaria, the
princes, dukes and electors of ...

Brunswick, Baden, Hanover,
Mecklenburg, Wurttemberg, Oldenburg, ...

all paid allegiance to the
King of Prussia, the Kaiser.

This unity fulfilled a deep wish in the German
hearts. It gave them a sense of destiny.

Even the leadership of Prussia
was better than insignificance.

And with unity had come an extraordinary
upsurge of energy and expansion.

In 1871, there were 41 million Germans.

In 1913, there were nearly 68 million,
an increase of more than half.

And more than half of them were
living in towns and cities.

But it was not merely an
expansion of population.

Foundations of economic strength at the
turn of the century was steel and coal.

Germany had made great strides with both.

Steel production multiplied by 12 in 30 years.

Coal production multiplied by nearly 5 in 30 years.

- Manufactures multiplied by 4.
- Exports multiplied by 3.

- Exports of chemicals multiplied by 3.
- Exports of machinery multiplied by 5.

In 30 years, Germany's share in world
trade had risen by a third.

Now, in 1914, Germany was, after America, the
most powerful industrial nation in the world.

The epitome of her industrial might
lay in the firm of Krupp.

Essen, city of steel, where the first Krupp
factory was built, became by 1902:

"A great city with its own streets, its own police
force, fire department and traffic laws. ...

There are 150 kilometres of rail,
60 different factory buildings,...

8500 machine tools,
7 electrical stations, ...

140 kilometres of underground
cable and 46 overhead."

Germany delighted in the
prowess of Krupp's.

When Alfred Krupp died in that year, the
Kaiser attended his lavish funeral ...

and called him
"a German of the Germans".

In 1914, the firm employed 80,000 workers.

They lived in Krupp houses, their babies were
delievered by Krupp doctors, ...

their children educated in Krupp schools.

They bought at Krupp stores,
borrowed books from Krupp libraries, ...

married in the Krupp church and were
buried in the Krupp cemetery.

Under Bismarck, Germany had come
closer than any other state ...

to modern conceptions of social welfare.
German workers enjoyed sickness, accident ...

and maternity benefits,
canteens and changing rooms ...

and a national pension scheme, before these
were even thought of in more liberal countries.

Yet the life of the workers was hard.

The steel mills operated a 12-hour
day and an 80-hour week.

Neither rest days nor
holidays were guranteed.

In Germany, as in every industrial state,
there was poverty and protest.

By 1912, the Socialist party was the strongest
party in the Reichstag, the German parliament.

But the Reichstag did not rule Germany.

The Keiser ruled Germany through officials
whom he personally appointed.

"No one", said Sir Winston Churchill, "should judge the Kasier Wilhelm II ...

without asking the question, 'What
should I have done in his position?'"

Imagine yourself brought up to believe that you were appointed by God ...

to be the ruler of a mighty nation.

Imagine succeeding in your 20s to the
prizes of Bismarck's 3 victorious wars.

Imagine feeling the magnificent German race bounding beneath you ...

in ever-swelling numbers, strength,
wealth and ambition.

And imagine on every side, the
thunderous tributes of the crowds ...

and the skilled, unceasing
flattery of the court.

With this background, subjected to these pressures, trying to hide a left arm ...

withered from birth, for 30
years, Wilhelm the second ...

had vexed and perturbed the peace of
Europe, but always short of war.

His first public utterance when he came to
the throne was addressed ...

not to the people but to the army.

We belong to each other, I and the army.
We were born for each other ...

and will indissolubly cleave to each other.
I promise ever to bear in mind ...

that from the world above, the eyes of my
forefathers look down on me ...

and that I shall one day have to stand
accountable to them for the glory ...

and honour of the army.

These were not empty words. The German
Kaiser was also the king of Prussia ...

and it was precisely for the sake of
Prussian strength that the other Germany, ...

the Germany of the merchants,
the industrialists, ...

the musicians, the philosophers
had accepted her rule.

The Prussian influence was seeping
through the whole nation.

It was, above all, a military influence,
well described by one of its advocates, ...

General von Hindenburg.

The army trained and strengthened that
mighty organizing impulse ...

which we found everywhere
in the Fatherland.

The conviction that the subordination of the
individual to the good of the community ...

was not only a necessity but a positive
blessing had gripped the mind of the ...

German army and through
it that of the nation.

With Prussia as the core, the German empire
was the most powerful ...

military organism in the world.
And at its head, posturing, gesturing, ...

stood the all-powerful Kaiser,
challenging Europe.

Without germany, and without the German
Kaiser, no great decisions must ever be ...

taken. If this should happen, the position
of Germany in the world would vanish ...

forever and I do not purpose that this
should ever happen. To employ suitable ...

and, if necessary, violent means
ruthlessly is my duty, my fair privilege.

Germany's neighbours watched her
clamorous progress with alarm.

The republic of France uneasily remembered
her overwhelming defeat ...

at Germany's hands in 1870.

Then, the rich lands of Alsace and
Lorainne had been torn from her.

Patriotic Frenchmen bitterly resented
the loss and the bitterness ...

was passed on to new generations.

Think that the Motherland is your second
mother, that she weeps and suffers ...

over the children they have
torned from her bosom.

France had her iron, her coal, her industry,
but the French were above all, ...

tillers of the soil.

Produce of her fields and vineyards
made France self-supporting.

The French cared for good food. The
specialities of each province ...

acquired international fame. While the
ploughland and pastures ...

of the provinces fed Paris, Paris itself
fertilized not only France, but Europe, too.

The curiosity and enthusiasm
of Parisians matched a period ...

which seemed to produce
new novelties every day.

Louis Bleriot was the first
man to fly the channel.

I began my flight steady and sure. I have
no apprehension, no sensations, nothing.

I am making at least 42 miles an hour,
travelling at a height of 250 feet.

Below me is the sea. There is nothing to be
seen, neither France nor England.

I am alone. For 10 minutes, I am lost and
then I see the cliffs of Dover.

There were flying experiments of another
kind, not so successful.

Cranks or pioneers, the French greeted
them all expectantly.

A moving pavement was displayed at the
exhibition of 1900.

Looking down from it, Paris was truly,
"sovereign of cities, seemliest in sight."

The wide, bustling boulevards, the cafes,
the Louvre, storehouse of Europe's ...

treasures, the imprisoned sunshine of the
Impressionists, the acting of ...

Sarah Bernhardt, the Moulin Rouge and the
legs of Mistinguett, dinner at Maxim's.

Picasso and Matisse were painting. In her
quiet laboratory, Madam Curie ...

was discovering Radium.

Paris was the Mecca of the west.
But Paris is not France.

The glamour of Paris did not reflect the
deepest truths about the French.

It encouraged their optimism, but it
concealed unrest and violent agitation ...

among the industrial classes, who felt left
out of a rising tide of prosperity.

It concealed the backwardness of French
industry in a world where this counted ...

more and more. It concealed a declining
birthrate in a world ...

which paraded its millions. It concealed
the canker at the heart of ...

French politics, memory of the defeat of
1870 and fear of the rising might of Germany.

Because of this memory and this fear,
the army played a special part ...

in the life of France. Shattered in 1870,
it had made a remarkable recovery.

It became a national army, based on
universal conscription.

It schooled itself in colonial wars, but
its eyes were fixed on the German frontier.

In 1914, there was a socialist government.
Anti-militarism, pacifism and ...

internationalism were being
proclaimed with swelling voices.

The delegates of the Workers' organizations
judge that wage earners obliged to go to ...

war have this alternative only, either to
take up weapons in order to menace other ...

wage earners, or to take up battle
against the common foe - capitalism.

Anti-militarist and anti-patriotic
propaganda must become ...

evermore intense and audacious.

Discordant voices in France, strident voices
in Germany. For, as Germany pursued ...

the destiny preached by her thinkers,
another neighbour took fright.

The Germans were not content with military
might and industrial supremacy.

They still felt cheated. They wanted a
place in the sun, an empire.

Between 1884 and 1890, German
sovereignty was proclaimed over an area

more than 4 times larger
than Germany herself.

And on the pretext of protecting these
colonies and her expanding trade, ...

Germany began to build a battleleet.

This was a threat that any British
newspaper reader could understand.

The sea served Britain in the office of a
wall or as a moat defensive to a house ...

against the envy of less happier lands.

Now envy was reaching across the sea.

Winston Churchill spoke for all Britain
when he said, "Our naval power involves ...

British existence. If our naval supremacy
were to be impaired, the whole fortunes ...

of our race and empire would perish and
be swept utterly away."

Britain awoke to the truths of the 20th
century. Reality jarred against ...

the romantic image of merry England.
Yet the image lived on, ...

reinforced by the royal family,
in its role of country squire.

Englishmen like to think of
themselves in these terms.

They attached magical virtues
to walking over fields.

They also found virtue in royal
pageantry, jubilees, coronations, ...

state openings, funerals.

The funeral of King Edward the seventh in
1910 provided a last glimpse ...

of royal Europe in all its panoply.

9 kings followed Edward's coffin
through the streets of London.

King George the fifth, his successor, the
Kaiser, his nephew, the king of Belgium, ...

the king of Spain, the kings of Portugal,
Denmark, Bulgaria, Norway and Greece.

The watching awestruck crowds were
reminded that ...

Britain was the centre of an empire
on which the sun never set.

The most glittering jewel
of all was India.

The Great Durbar at Delhi in 1911 seemed
to set the seal on British rule.

Wearing their papal coronation robes and
pursued by attendants carrying ...

peacock fans, yak tails and golden maces,
their majesties took their thrones ...

and faced the tens of thosands
of their subjects.

King George the fifth worte in his diary:
"The most beautiful and wonderful sight ...

I ever saw. I wore a new crown for India
which cost 60,000 pounds.

The amphitheatre contained about 12,000
people and about 18,000 troops."

119 princes and maharajas bowed and retracted ...

in a ceremony which
lasted a full hour.

The Delhi Durbar affirmed the bond
between the king-emperor ...

and more than 300 million
Indian subjects.

Africans, too, were subject
to the British crown.

To Cecil Rhodes had come the dream of
linking British possessions with a ...

railway from the Cape to Cairo.
The almost unbroken pink ...

up the map of Africa showed the
dream well on the way to realization.

And there were the white dominions,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

These were the lands where men of British
stock had driven down new routes, ...

creating British populations in far
distant places, half as numerous ...

as the Britons who stayed at home.

In the British Isles, life for many
was a struggle for daily bread.

The national wealth of the country in 1914
has been computed at 14,300 million pounds.

But in the black deserts of Britain's
industrial towns, ...

working class families could not afford
decent clothes or enough to eat.

In London, at the turn of the century,
30.7 per cent of the population ...

were living below the poverty line.

In York, 28 per cent existed on a diet
less generous than that of the workhouse.

Small wonder that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Lloyd George, wrote: ...

"Our working populations, crushed into
dingy and mean streets with no assurance ...

that they would not be deprived of
their daily bread by ill health ...

or trade fluctuations, were
becoming sullen with discontent."

As in Germany and in France, the
workers turned to socialism.

The Labouur Party was born.

But 40 Labour MPs could not
provide a remedy.

Only through the rapidly growing
trade union movement ...

could the workers assert their demands.

In 1911 and 1912, Britain was
swept by a wave of strikes ...

more complete and embittered
than any yet seen.

The trade union leader Ben Tillet said: "It
was a great upsurge of elemental forces.

It seemed as if the dispossessed and
disinherited classes were all ...

simultaneously moved to assert
their claims upon society.

The ruling classes reacted with
furious incomprehension.

In Liverpool, troops were brought in
to fire over the heads of the crowds.

A man told Sir Austin Chamberlain:
"I think the situation is so serious ...

that I went this morning to a wholesale
armourer's to buy 5 revolvers.

The shop man said: 'We had a 100 yesterday,
we had 50 when we opened this morning.

We have not one left now.'"

This was England, facing a class
struggle such as she had not seen ...

for over a half a century.

Facing also the dispossessed who had
nothing to do with class - the women.

The old fight for women's rights
received a new impetus ...

from the militant
suffragette movement.

Nothing was safe from their attacks.
Churches were burned, public buildings ...

and private residences destroyed, bombs
were exploded, the police and ...

individuals assaulted,
meetings broken up.

At Epsom on Derby Day, a suffragette waited
to throw herself under the king's horse.

She died of her injuries.

Workers and women.

There were others, too, whose
discontents were coming to a head.

Southern Ireland was clamouring for home
rule. Her spokesman was Eamon De Valera.

The militarist power which has kept
Ireland within its grasp for centuries ...

can never be persuaded to let go. If
liberty is not entire, it is not liberty.

The Irish struggle brought Britain
to the very edge of civil war.

Poverty and envy, riches and arrogance,
ambition and frustation, ...

doubt and demand, these were the
tensions of ever industrial state.

And to them were added the tensions
between states themselves.

In Britain, alarm grew with the growth of
the German fleet just across the water.

Public opinion, disunited on
almost everything else, ...

was united on the need
for battleships.

Each launching, whether in
Barrow or in Bremen, ...

drove Britain and Germany
further and further apart.

Even men as sympathetic towards Germany
as Lord Haldane could say: ...

"Peace was to be preserved, but
preserved on what terms?

On the terms that the German was so
strong by land and sea that he could ...

swagger down the high street of the world,
making his will prevail at every turn?"

In 1908, Lloyd George met
the German ambassador.

I explained to him that the real
ground for the growing antagonism ...

in this country towards Germany
was not jealousy of her ...

rapidly expanding commerce,
but fear of her growing navy.

But the Kaiser did not care.

I do not wish for a good
understanding with England ...

at the expense of the
extension of the German fleet.

So, Germany's naval dreams made
Britain a potential enemy, ...

just as her military might had kept
alive the hostility of France.

The two nations were drawn
together by Germany's challenge.

The Entente Cordiale was forged.

By 1914, when King George the fifth paid
a state visit to Paris and rode with ...

President Poincare through cheering
crowds, the Entente was 10 years old.

In both countries, men welcomed
the end of centuries of rivalry.

It seemed a good omen for peace, but the
security offered by the Entente Cordiale ...

was delusive, for France had another ally
on the other side of Europe - Russia.

Britain, in turn, made an agreement with
her. Thus, Germany found herself ...

faced with what her statesmen had
always most dreaded - encirclement.

Potential enemies in the
west and in the east.

In the summer of 1914, it was not
Britain nor France nor Russia ...

which held the real threat
to the peace of Europe.

The real threat lay in the alliance of
Germany's making, her alliance with Austria.

This was a shackle linking the
swelling vigour of Germany ...

to the irresponsible policies
of an old, decaying empire.

Bismarck foresaw the danger.

I shall not live to see
the great war, ...

but you will see it and it
will start in the east.

For centuries, Austria had been
the leading German state, ...

Europe's shield against the east.

By 1914, her empire was an anachronism
whose fatal ambitions died hard.

At the head of this ancient realm stood
the emperor Franz Josef, 84 years old.

He had reigned in vienna since 1848,
Europe's year of revolutions, ...

when the Austrian empire
had come near to collapse.

Franz Josef held it together by a
mixture of compromise and repression, ...

but nothing could disguise
its decrepitude.

Lord Lansdowne wrote:
"To human calculation, ...

the Habsburg empire cannot survive the
decease of the emperor Franz Hosef."

Tha anachronism lingered on,
upheld by this old man.

Its ceremonies, its displays, its brilliant
uniforms, the rigid protocol of the ...

imperial court, the high-sounding titles,
the wit, the music, the culture ...

of Vienna, all belonged to a past which was
becoming ever more at odds with the present.

But this empire was not merely Austrian.
It was, in the first place, a dual monarchy.

The Austrians shared power
with the Hungarians ...

who kept their own
parliament and their own laws.

Austrians and Hungarians together
ruled over a mixture of peoples.

Italians, Poles, Czechs, Ruthenians,
Slovaks, Slovenes, Serbs.

Nearly half of Franz Josef's
subjects were Slavs, ...

who viewed their masters with sullen
hatred and yearned for liberation.

They looked for aide outside the Austrian
empire to the free Slav countries, ...

the rising kingdom of Serbia and the Russian
empire, protector of Slavs everywhere.

Tribal memories and tribal fears
agitated all these people ...

whose borders stretched
to Europe's edge.

Russia would stand by the Slavs.

Against Russia, Austria would need strong
help. Germany had promised that help.

Whatever comes from the Vienna
foreign office is a command from me.

Yet, there were those in
Germany who felt misgivings.

In 1914, the German ambassador in Vienna
said: "I constantly wonder whether ...

it really pays to bind ourselves too
tightly to this phantasm of a state, ...

that is cracking in all directions."

But the Austro-German alliance was a
fact, leading to inescapable conclusions.

In 1914, the Kaiser noted: "As a soldier,
I have no doubt, on the basis of ...

information reaching me that Russia
is systematically preparing ...

for war against us and I frame
my policy on that assumption."

Russia, also, was a
troubled anachronism.

The Tsar of all the Russias ruled
over countless millions of people.

More than 130 millions of them had
been counted in the census of 1897.

How many more were contained
in the deep hinterlands ...

of the Russian empire,
none could say.

This was the largest state in
the world, a sprawling giant.

Communications across it were
primitive and difficult, ...

during the thaw, almost impossible.

A British diplomat wrote: "No one
can have the slightest idea ...

what the country tracks in Russia are
like during the spring and winter.

It took me 16 days to
traverse 80 miles."

Over these limitless distances, the
Romanov dynasty in the person of ...

Nicholos the second, emperor
and autocrat, ruled absolutely.

In 1895, answering a demand for more
representative government, ...

the Tsar said: "Let all know that in
devoting all my strength to the ...

people's well-being, I shall preserve
the principle of autocracy ...

as firmly and as undeviatingly
as did my father."

In 1905, Russia suffered humiliating
defeat at the hands of Japan.

The very foundations of
tsarism were shaken.

The peasants, the vast, illiterate
masses of Russian people, ...

living on a chancy borderline of
famine and ruin, rose in revolution.

They found allies in the
growing industrial proletariat.

But the 1905 revolution
was bloodily crushed.

In 1906, the principle of
autocracy was restated ...

by the Imperial Council
more firmly than ever.

To the Emperor of all the Russias
belongs supreme autocratic power.

Submission to his power,
not from fear only, ...

but as a matter of conscience,
is commanded by God himself.

With this imperious rejection of democracy,
the regime recklessly tightened ...

the tensions, exasperated the feelings
and embittered the thoughts of the people.

There were riots and strikes.

A strike in the Lena gold
fields was ruthlessly suppressed.

The Tsar and his court consume
their time with simple pleasures, ...

heedless of the Russian people.

Interior tensions were coming
to the boil in this pious, ...

passionate, intensely
patriotic nation.

And as they did so,
external tensions also grew.

The Balkans, where the Slav lands
lay between the scowling frontiers ...

of three crumbling empires,
were their point of impact.

In 1908, Austria, with
outdated ambitions, annexed ...

the Slav territories of Bosnia and
Herzegovina on the borders of Serbia.

Russia, still weak after defeat
by Japan in 1905, let that pass.

Then in 1912, the small Balkan kingdoms
joined together to inflict a ...

crushing defeat on the Turkish empire,
but they quarrelled among themselves.

Out of the Balkan wars of 1912
and 1913, Serbia emerged ...

as the strongest of the Balkan
states, an inspiration for all Slavs.

Austria watched her inconvenient
progress with a jealous, calculating eye.

The British ambassador in Vienna reported
in 1913: "Relations between Austria ...

and Russia are growing
worse day by day.

Serbia will, one day, set Europe by the
ears and bring about universal war."

The French president, Poincare, came to a similar conclusion.

Whatever be the issue, small or great,
which may arise in the future between ...

Russia and Germany, it will not pass
by like the last. It will be war.

In Austria, the issue was clear.

The Austrian chief of staff, Conrad
von Hotzendorf, said openly: ...

"We must crush this viper Serbia."

By 1914, Europeans had
learned to live with fear ...

and fear is the midwife of war.

On Sunday, June the 28th, Europe
entered upon her final, fatal crisis.

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to
the Austrian throne, and his wife ...

were visiting Sarajevo, capital of the
recently annexed province of Bosnia.

From Serbia, just across the border,
a group of Slav terrorists ...

had also come to Sarajevo,
pledged to kill Franz Ferdinand.

As the archduke and his wife took their
departure, one of these terrorists, ...

a Slav schoolboy called Gavrilo Princip,
fired two pistol shots.

They hit Franz Ferdinand
and his wife.

A quarter of an hour later,
both were dead.

The peace of Europe died with them.