All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.03of26.We.Must.Hack.Our.Way.Through.divx.mp3

The lazy sinews of the nations
tautened.

The armies were on the move.

Peace exploded

into cheers and music.

In August 1914, Europe
marched to war with rejoicing.

Tense wires of apprehension
snapped.

To those in every nation
whose lives had been drab,

who had endured discontents,
who were restless,

disgusted, filled with
envy or with high ideals,

a cause was now offered,
and a duty.

Enthusiasm was reborn.

In valleys green and still
Where lovers wander maying

They hear from over the hill
A music playing.

Behind the drum and fife
Past hawthornwood and hollow

Through earth and out of life

The soldiers follow.

And down the distance they
With dying note and swelling

Walk the resounding way

To the still dwelling.

It was Austria's quarrel
but it was Germany's war.

Germany struck first, westward.

At 5am on August 4th, German cavalry
crossed the Belgian frontier,

their hoofbeats on the cobblestones
the signal of catastrophe.

In Berlin, the Kaiser addressed
the members of the Reichstag:

I have no knowledge any longer
of party or creed.

I know only Germans

and, in token thereof,
I ask all of you

to give me your hands.

When the Imperial Chancellor,

Bethmann-Hollweg,

asked for the unprecedented
war credit of £265 million,

the Reichstag voted
it unanimously.

Bethmann-Hollweg stated Germany's
position in the clearest terms:

Necessity knows no law.

Anyone who, like ourselves,
is struggling for a supreme aim,

must think only of how
he can hack his way through.

Through international agreements,

through the very concept
of neutrality,

through Belgium.

The invasion of Belgium was
demanded by the Schlieffen Plan,

the masterplan by which Germany
hoped to win the war.

To avoid the French fortress system,
the Germans would cross Belgium,

pass through Brussels, swing down
into France brushing the Channel coast,

pass round west of Paris and attack
the French armies from behind.

The whole thing was expected
to be over in 40 days.

One thing was vital to this plan,
and that was speed.

The point of first impact was Liege,

blocking the crossings of the River Meuse
and all routes to Brussels and the west.

This strongly-defended area
had to be seized

to open the way for the waiting
masses of the German field army,

seized quickly
and at whatever cost.

Or, alternatively,

defended at whatever cost.

General Leman,
commanding the garrison of Liege,

had been instructed to do just that.

The Belgian army
was weak, ill-prepared,

conscious that it could not face the
power of Germany in the open field,

but brave and willing to fight
behind the defences which existed

or which could be
hastily constructed.

They were facing the most powerful
military machine in the world.

The army was the embodiment
of Germany's soul.

All the hopes and all the pride of
this young, expanding, thriving empire

found expression in it.

Every young man was liable to serve, and
most of them were overjoyed to do so.

When the army marched,
all Germany marched too.

In peacetime, it numbered
nearly a million conscripts.

Behind them

stood over four million
trained reserves

and a final potential
of almost ten million.

The backbone, as everywhere,
was the infantry -

78 divisions, drawn from the
swelling cities, the famous old towns,

the wide and various countryside
of the German Empire.

They were mostly peasants,
sturdy, patient, brave, dependable

and their hard core was 110,000 superbly
trained non-commissioned officers.

The cavalry
numbered over 100,000.

They were the Kaiser's favourites,

Cuirassiers, Dragoons, Uhlans,

with flat-topped helmets
and fluttering lances.

The Crown Prince's regiment
was the Death's Head Hussars.

But it was the German artillery which
would shock the world and do the damage.

The field guns were not impressive
but behind them were ranged

over 3,000 weapons
of heavier calibre -

150mm, 210mm, 305s,
products of the firm of Krupps.

It was a crushing weight of heavy
guns, well supplied with shells,

waiting to tear a continent apart.

And yet, for a while,

all this might was checked.

Liege proved a tough nut.

The first German assaults
were repulsed with heavy losses.

They tried a night attack to avoid
the Belgian machine guns.

Slipping through the outer ring of forts,
an almost unknown German staff officer,

General Ludendorff,

made his way to the citadel
in the centre of the town itself.

I arrived. No German soldier
was to be seen

and the citadel was still
in the hands of the enemy.

I banged on the gates,
which were locked.

They were opened from the inside.

The few hundred Belgians who were
there surrendered at my summons.

CHEERING

There was jubilation in Germany.

The Kaiser kissed von Moltke "rapturously".
But the excitement was premature.

General Leman was
not in the citadel,

but in one of the forts and,
under his firm direction,

these continued to resist.

The way to Brussels
was still blocked.

In the following days,

the short pause while Germany's
battering train assembled,

the nations discerned
the countenance of war.

At this stage,
many found it pleasing.

The German Crown Prince wrote:

The electric spark
of the mobilisation decree

fired a train
of indescribable enthusiasm

from Memel to the tiniest hamlet
in the southern German mountains.

At that time, the vast majority
of the German people

regarded the military solution
to the increasing political tension

as the end of a nightmare.

A French officer was leaving Paris
with his regiment for Verdun:

A great nation's heart was beating
tumultuously as in days long past.

Crowds were gathered
at every station.

Behind every barrier and
at every window along our road,

cries of "Vive la France!"
and "Vive l'armee!"

could be heard everywhere

while people waved handkerchiefs
and hats.

The women were throwing kisses
and heaped flowers on our convoy.

The young men were shouting,
"Au revoir!"

"A bientot!"

At one grade crossing, a young woman
lifted her baby towards us, shouting,

"He, too, like you, will go someday
and do his duty."

It must have been like this in 1792.

The soul of France had again attained the
height of her greatest period in history.

Saturday, August 1st,
was a quiet day

for the officer-in-charge at
London's chief recruiting office,

Great Scotland Yard.

Precisely eight recruits
presented themselves to him.

Then came Sunday
and August Bank Holiday.

When he returned to his office
on August 4th,

the crowd awaiting him was so dense
that it took him 20 minutes,

and the help of 20 policemen
to get through to his desk.

And from that moment he worked
continuously through the day,

attesting men.

When Lord Kitchener's appeal went
out for the "First Hundred Thousand",

Your King And Country Need YOU,

the flow increased all over Britian.

One hundred men an hour,
three thousand a day,

six thousand
over the war's first weekend

joined the army.

So many came now,
they had to be turned away.

The whole country and the great
Dominions of the British Empire with it

were swept by the emotion
which Rupert Brooke

precisely put into words:

Now God be thanked
Who has matched us with His hour

And caught our youth
And wakened us from sleeping

With hand made sure, clear eye
And sharpened power

To turn as swimmers
into cleanness leaping

Glad from a world grown old
and cold and weary.

Neither religion nor socialism nor
the most pure pacifism was immune

from the surge of this worldwide
outburst of passion.

Among the cheering
London crowds on August 4th

was the philosopher
Bertrand Russell:

I had fondly imagined that wars were
forced upon a reluctant population

by despotic and Machiavellian
governments.

But now I was tortured by patriotism.
I desired the defeat of Germany

as much as any retired colonel.

Love of England is very nearly
the strongest emotion I possess

and, in appearing to set it aside
at such a moment,

I was making
a very difficult renunciation.

The Liberal Manchester Guardian,

an important platform
for pacifist opinion,

said in its editorial on August 5th:

England declared war on Germany
at 11 o'clock last night.

All controversy is therefore
at an end. Our front is united.

Now there is nothing for Englishmen
to do but to stand together

and help by every means
in their power

to the attainment
of our common objective -

an early and decisive victory
over Germany.

It was quickly obvious
to thoughtful men

that nations in this mood would
not easily give up the struggle.

Obstinate Liege was
already becoming a symbol.

General Leman
was the war's first hero.

The phrase
"gallant little Belgium" was born,

adding fuel to the emotionalism
of the moment.

Behind Liege,
the image of a brave king

and a resolute people rallying
against aggression was firmly planted.

The world applauded a small David

who did not fear Goliath.

Yet it was Goliath
who won this fight.

The great guns and mortars
were brought up against Liege,

the Krupp 420s,

the Skoda 305s
borrowed from Austria.

The Belgian forts
were pounded into rubble.

Steel plates were smashed
and buckled.

Human flesh
was turned to bloody pulp.

General Leman was buried
under the wreckage

and dug out
to find himself a prisoner.

His German captors
allowed him to keep his sword.

The war was young enough for such gestures,
and the Germans could afford them

for, with the fall of Liege, there
was nothing to prevent their masses

from pouring into Belgium towards
Brussels and down the River Meuse.

The Belgian army
could not hope to stop them.

It would be up to Belgium's allies.

MUSIC: "La Marseillaise"

They too were on the move.
Carefully in step with Germany,

the French army mobilised,
called in its reservists,

issued them with boots
and live ammunition,

drafted them to divisions,
army corps and armies,

and massed them
behind the frontier.

On foot and by train,

horses and men moved
to their ordained positions.

A regulation was turning
into a catchphrase:

Quarante hommes, huit chevaux.

40 men or 8 horses.

Neither men nor horses
found it comfortable.

France also had a plan.

Plan 17. It was as simple
as von Schlieffen's

but scarcely so promising.

Whatever the circumstances,

it is the Commander-in-Chief's
intention to advance,

all forces united, to the attack
of the German armies.

"Whatever the circumstances"
the French army would advance.

"Whatever the circumstances"
in full strength.

"Whatever the circumstances" through
the lost provinces of Lorraine and Alzace

towards the Rhein.

There were few who doubted,
for the army was France's pride -

a firm rock amid the shifting sands
of Republican government.

The French infantry were still dressed
in the red trousers and the red kepis

of 50 years before.

Like the Germans, most of them
were peasants, strong and hardy,

more enduring
than anyone supposed

and possessing a quality
of Gallic fury

which was heightened by
their mission - to attack.

Amid the historic costumes of old
France, there was a whiff of Africa.

Zouaves and Turcos
from Algeria and Morocco,

and the famous Foreign Legion.

The cavalry contained
Cuirassiers and Dragoons

whose dress had scarcely
changed since Waterloo,

and gay Chasseurs.

All of them were trained and eager
to charge with lance and sabre,

whatever the circumstances.

With uniforms drawn from history,

and ideas drawn from fiction,
the French army

was completely up-to-date
in one respect.

It had the finest field gun
in the world,

the 75mm, the soixante-quinze,

flexible, mobile,

able to fire 25 rounds a minute.

Above all, plentiful.

With these plans
and with these armaments,

Europe's two leading powers
collided.

Which would stand the test?

While Germany waited for the fall of Liege
to open the way for her masses in the north,

the French struck in the south,
into the green mountains of Alzace.

And France, in her turn,
could make a premature jubilee.

Frontier posts were torn down.

Mulhausen once again
became Mulhouse.

The Germans counter-attacked

and were soon in Mulhausen again.

The French retreated

in such a haste

that we actually
had to run after them.

At first we found heaps
of French army blankets

which the soldiers had thrown away.

Then we found French greatcoats.

Then we found French knapsacks.

Then we found French bayonets with
ammunition pouches full of cartridges.

And finally, in barns hidden,
or sitting just on the roadside,

the exhausted French soldiers.

So, each side's plan suffered
an early jolt. Each side's pride

was shaken.

Each side concealed the fact.

And both populations entered
a zone of silence and half-truths

in which they would linger
for years.

War was all a mystery,

laced with speculations,
boasts and fears.

What people read in the newspapers
only added to the confusion:

"Women Against Uhlans."

"Germans Repulsed
By Boiling Water."

"French Frontier Successes."

"Enemy's Guns Taken."

And this was the headline
over a short but confident

communique from the
French Ministry of War.

And from the same souce
came army despatches:

During the whole of yesterday,
August 17th,

we made ceaseless progress
in Upper Alsace.

The enemy retreated
in this neighbourhood in disorder,

leaving everywhere his wounded
and war material.

Behind this veil
of high-sounding phrases,

the truth was

that the High Commands
of both sides

had entered a zone of
uncertainty, of misty groping.

The test soon became
a test of nerves

and Germany
was at a disadvantage

for the man in charge of her vast
armies was a man of unsteady nerve.

General von Moltke was a cultured,
conscientious, reasonable man

but he was also a sick man

and an uncertain one.

Now, as the French army
made a second advance in Alsace

and began an all-out offensive
in Lorraine,

von Moltke's indecisions
grew upon him.

The ambitions of other generals
were a complicating factor.

Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria,
facing the French advance,

wanted to counter-attack.

Moltke agreed without demur.

It was his first step towards the
abandonment of the Schlieffen Plan.

No such indecision
yet possessed the French.

Four years younger
than Moltke's 66,

the French Commander,

General Joseph Jacques
Cesaire Joffre,

was not in any case
a man liable to indecisions.

"It would have been difficult,"

wrote Sir Winston Churchill,
"to find any figure

more unlike the British
idea of a Frenchman

"than this bull-headed, broad-shouldered,
slow-thinking, phlegmatic,

"bucolic personage."

There were few questions in the French
army during those early August days.

The prophets of the offensive

had laid down the doctrine:

For the attack,
only two things are necessary -

to know where the enemy is,

and to decide what to do.

What the enemy intends to do
is of no importance.

With this assurance, the French spilled out
over the fields and hillsides of Lorraine

bold, brilliant targets
in the sunlight.

At first, all went well.
On August 18th,

the day after the last fort
at Liege had surrendered,

General de Castelnau, commanding the
French spearhead, the Second Army,

announced to his troops:

The enemy is retiring on our front.

He must be pursued
with the utmost vigour and rapidity.

I expect corps commanders to instil
into their troops the necessary dash.

Full-tilt into Prince Rupprecht's
advancing army crashed the French

and learned in this first great
encounter of the war some terrible truths.

What the enemy intended to do
WAS important after all.

At long range the German heavy guns,
and at short range the machine guns

devoured the gaudy lines
of Frenchmen.

"The sense of the tragic futility
of it will never quite fade,"

wrote Sir Edward Spears.

And added that many of
these gallant officers

thought it chic to
die in white gloves.

Nobody could tell exactly
what the French losses were,

but they were enormous.

"The French Second Army,"
said Joffre,

"came back under conditions
which almost resembled a rout."

The march of the great German
right wing was now unfolding.

As the Belgian army retired towards the port
of Antwerp, General von Kluck's First Army

entered Brussels with all
the panoply they could summon,

streaming through the city
hour after hour -

a deliberate display of power
to overawe the population.

On Thursday 20th August,

the Germans entered Brussels.

It was a marvellous sunny day

but, still,

I keep the vision of grey,

grey all over the town.

They arrived in long, long streams,

long, grey streams.

It was a sinister, greenish-grey.

Even the helmets had a grey cover.

They went along
in the main street of Brussels

with their war equipment,

with all their war material,
heavy guns,

their officers on horseback.

And their music -

that music of drum and fife.
And always the same little tune.

At the same time
as this demonstration,

the German Second Army,
which had taken Liege,

arrived in front of the
fortress of Namur.

The great guns were heard again.

Two things became clear
to the French High Command.

The Germans were
evidently strong in Belgium,

and the frontier fighting proved
that they were strong in Lorraine.

Strong on the right,
strong on the left.

What of the centre?

Surely they could not be strong
everywhere?

Hopefully, the French struck again

in a region where
everything favoured

concealment, ambush and
surprise - the Ardennes.

Once more,
the French swept forward.

Once more, their blind rush
was abruptly checked.

Machine guns and high-angle
artillery fire,

to which they had no reply,
tore through their ranks.

We were shot down like rabbits.

For them, it was a real target
because we had red trousers

and they were down in the hole
themselves.

Then we had to retreat, of course.

We'd lie down for a certain while,
trying to make some holes

and after that, when we could do
nothing, we had to retreat back.

Once more, the French armies
tumbled back in dire disorder.

The dream was wearing thin,

reality asserting itself -

the reality of the Schlieffen Plan unfolding
stage by stage with awful deliberation.

The reality of the great strength
of Germany.

Amid the fear and hatred

which surrounded
the advancing German armies,

other truths
were also being revealed.

We entered the village, a company
of approximately 200 men.

And we were just taking off
our knapsacks,

and queuing up for the soup kitchen
who wanted to give us some food,

when a terrific firing started -
from all sides we were fired at.

The cook and his mate were killed.

Quite a number of our soldiers
were wounded and killed, too.

We stormed into the houses
where the firing came from

but all we could find

were some innocent-looking
peasants

in blue blouses.

But, when we searched the houses,

we found infantry rifles
still hot from firing.

Whose rifles were they? Did they belong to
the soldiers or to the peasants themselves?

No time to find
out in hot blood.

Time only for harsh, immediate
reprisals - shooting and burning.

Terror soon became
a deliberate instrument of war.

A line of smoking ruins lay
behind the German advance.

A tide of frightened,
desperate people ebbed before it.

The Germans convinced themselves that they
were victims of systematic guerilla warfare.

General Ludendorff wrote:

For my part, I had taken the field with
chivalrous and humane conceptions of warfare.

This guerilla war was bound
to disgust any soldier.

My soldierly spirit
suffered bitter disillusion.

The bitterness increased.

The rage boiled over.

At Dinant, General von Hausen's Saxons
shot over 600 men, women and children,

among them a child
three weeks old.

A staff officer questioned how
this deed would look in history.

Von Hausen said, "We shall
write the history ourselves."

More of it was written at Louvain

on August 25th.

On that day began the sack of this
ancient Belgian university town.

Louvain Library had been founded
in 1426.

Among its 230,000 volumes

were 750 medieval manuscripts

and over 1,000
of the earliest printed books.

All were reduced to ashes.

A German officer, watching it happen,
told an American correspondent:

We shall wipe it out.

Not one stone
will stand upon another,

not one, I tell you!

We will teach them
to respect Germany.

For generations,
people will come here

to see what we have done.

The sense of outrage grew
on both sides of the line.

Over the neat, brick towns and
the clean, white farms of Belgium,

the war flowed westward.

The last of the French armies,

General Lanrezac's Fifth Army, facing
the swinging end of Schlieffen's flail,

edged slowly to its left,

constantly sensing the pressure
of the German right.

As the Fifth Army approached
Namur and Charleroi,

lining up along the River Sambre,

the fighting swelled to a roar all
the way down the line into Alsace.

And now another element was coming into
play - the British Expeditionary Force.

For once in British history,
an army was taking the field

with incredible efficiency.

At all the depot towns and barracks,
there was tremendous activity.

60% of these men were reservists,
summoned back to the colours

by telegram, by public notice,
even by town crier.

Uniforms and rifles were issued,
kits were made up,

transport was prepared.

New boots were fitted to feet
which had lost the feel

of hard army leather.

1,800 special trains carried
the British Expeditionary Force

to its ports of embarkation.

On one day alone, 80 trains
ran into Southampton docks.

MUSIC:
"It's A Long Way To Tipperary"

SHIP'S HORN BLASTS

An average of 50,000 tons
of shipping per day,

safe and unhindered under
the protection of the Royal Navy,

carried the Expeditionary Force
to France.

Landings began in deep secrecy
on August 7th.

The Commander-in-Chief of this army
was Field Marshal Sir John French.

Peppery, emotional,
a good cavalry tactician

but not an intellectual soldier,

French's task in those closing days of
August was difficult enough to tax a genius.

Sir John French believed
that he was about

to take part in a vast
Allied advance to the Rhein.

Of what had happened
to the French

or of what the Germans were
doing, he knew nothing.

The first thing he had to do

was to make contact with the French
general on his right, General Lanrezac.

The news had just come in
that the German armies.

were making for a
place on the Meuse...

..called Huy, "Hoo-ee",
H-U-Y.

It's a very difficult word
to pronounce in English.

And French started off gallantly
in French,

turning to Lanrezac and said,

"What do you think...
Qu'est-ce que vous croyez que...

"les Allemands vont faire a...

"What do you think the Germans
are going to do at..."

And then he stuck at H-U-Y.
He just couldn't pronounce Huy.

So, after a moment's hesitation,
he said loudly, "Hoi!"

"What are the Germans
going to do at Hoi?"

The Frenchman said, "What's
he saying? What's he saying?"

And then, very rudely,

Lanrezac turned to somebody
and said,

"Tell the Field Marshal the Germans
have come to the Meuse to fish."

It was a bad beginning.

Worse was to follow.

Each day the RFC
flew its reconnaissances.

Some discovered nothing.
But one,

scouting over the battlefield
of Waterloo, just south of Brussels,

was more fortunate.

We found the whole area

completely covered

with hordes of field-grey uniforms

and heavy stuff - transport, guns and
what-have-you, coming towards us.

In fact, it looked as though the place
was alive with the Germans.

The pilot landed and was rushed off to
tell Sir John French what he had seen.

I showed him a map, all marked.
He said,

"Have you been over that
area?" I said, "Yes, sir!"

I explained what I'd seen
and they were...

enormously interested.

Then they began reading
the figures that I'd estimated,

whereupon I seemed to feel
that their interest faded.

They seemed to look at each other
and shrug their shoulders.

Then French said to me, "Yes,
my boy. This is terribly interesting

"but tell me all about an aeroplane.

"What can you do in these
machines? Aren't they dangerous?

"Are they very cold?
Can you see anything?

"What do you do if your engine
stops?" All that sort of stuff.

I couldn't bring him back to earth

because, obviously,
he wasn't interested.

I again tried and he...
he looked at me and he said,

"Yes, this is very interesting,
what you've got.

"But, you know, our information -
which of course is correct -

"proves that
you really...

I don't think you could really
have seen as much as you think.

"I quite understand you may imagine
you have, but it's not the case."

But the French on the right knew
all about this and were falling back

at the very moment when the British
believed that they were advancing.

It was a bad moment for Lt Spears
who liaised between the two armies.

I knew that the British army was
absolutely relying on this advance

to complete its own movement.

And the position of the British army
was extremely dangerous

because we believed that
a couple of German army corps

were moving, quite unopposed,
round the flank of the BEF

which was on the extreme left
of the whole Allied line.

Well, I...

a young officer,

had come to tell,
on my own responsibility,

come to tell Sir John French

that...he couldn't rely

on the French advance.

And, indeed, that if he continued
advancing as he was planning to do,

it was the destruction
of the whole of the British army.

We were walking straight into the
mouth of a trap, an enormous trap.

The dream of advancing
through Belgium was at an end.

From here onwards,
it would be all harsh reality.

The date was August 22nd.

The position which the army reached
was the battlefield of Mons.