Original subtitles

It was 1915, the beginning of a new year,

the beginning of new hopes.

The old hopes, the glorious ones of 1914, were buried in the mud and clay of trench warfare.

The Schlieffen Plan, Plan 17, the Russian Steamroller -

in the hangover of this cold dawn of 1915,

they were only memories of the time when all Europe had been drunk on the wine of quick victory.

It was stalemate, puzzling to generals reared on the concept of the sweeping manoeuvre,

frustrating to soldiers trained for wars of movement, disillusioning to new arrivals.

We'd been brought up on histories of the Boer War and patriotism

and...heroics and everything.

And we thought the war was going to be over before we could get there.

However, in about half a minute, all that had gone

and I wondered what the devil I'd got into, because it was nothing but mud and filth.

And all the chaps who were already there, they looked like tramps -

they were all plastered in filth and dirt, unshaven.

During the long winter, General Joffre, French commander-in-chief,

pondered the new problems of trench warfare.

"The enemy had been driven back, but he had firmly fastened himself upon our soil

"and we had been obliged to leave in his hands for a length of time no-one could estimate

"a rich part of our country. It was not enough that we had prevented the enemy from winning the war,

"it was essential to achieve a complete victory over him, reconquer Belgium, the north of France,

"and our precious provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

"This was the heartbreaking problem which faced me."

To hold their conquests, the Germans were building a fortress.

They threw up earthworks,

dug defensive interlocking trench systems,

they strengthened their lines with barbed wire and machine guns.

Wire and guns saved men - men to form a new striking force.

Falkenhayn, chief of the German general staff, wanted to use it to smash the British into the sea

while they were still weak in numbers. But Germany had two fronts - west and east.

In the east, the Russians pressed Germany's Austrian allies back and back into the Carpathian passes.

Beyond were the rich plains of Hungary's homeland.

Falkenhayn had to give up his plan to attack the British.

"The need for some relief to the Austrians by means of an attack in another spot became imperative.

"With a heavy heart, I had to make up my mind to employ my only available reserves in the east."

For this relief attack, Falkenhayn chose the Masurian Lakes region of east Prussia,

where the Russians still occupied a wide area of pine forest and lakes,

carved out by the glaciers in the ice ages of long ago.

Now it was winter, January 1915.

Through blizzards and temperatures below zero, men and beasts of two German armies

moved up to their assault positions opposite the Russian 10th Army.

The German plan was bold and simple -

outflank the Russians from the north, curl round them

and herd them into the Forest of Augustow and destroy them.

By the beginning of February, just as the Germans were ready,

fresh blizzards screamed through the endless forests,

piling snowdrifts across the roads and tracks.

Movement became almost impossible.

But Hindenburg, the dour and massive commander-in-chief, gave the order to attack.

On February the 8th, the two German armies struck.

Behind fire from batteries of Howitzers, they stormed forward, driving the Russians before them.

Once more, a great Russian army was retreating,

like a clumsy, helpless, bewildered beast under the blows of a drover.

For ten days, 350,000 men floundered through the snow

to escape the German pincers, but always they were remorselessly shepherded south and surrounded.

By the 21st of February, the German victory was complete and terrible.

The corpses of 100,000 peasant soldiers of the Tsar

lay frozen and forgotten.

The horror of the campaign chilled even Hindenburg himself

The name of the winter battle in Masuria charms like an icy wind or the silence of death

Men will ask themselves: "Have earthly beings really done these things

or was it all but a fable or a phantom? Are not these marches in the winter nights that camp in the iciest snow storm

that last phase of the battle in the forest of Augustow but the creation of an ispired human fancy?"

The people of Petrograd were told the stark facts of the disaster -

100,000 dead, 110,000 prisoners

and 300 guns lost.

But the reason for the defeat was concealed from them.

The Russian army was starved of weapons and ammunition.

In December 1914, the Russian chief-of-staff at the front had written to the Minister of War...

"The men are saying, 'Why should we perish of hunger and cold without boots? The artillery are silent

" 'and we are killed like partridges.' "

Russian prisoners liberated by the Cossacks abused their rescuers.

"Who asked you to rescue us?

"Fools! We don't want to hunger and freeze again."

The Russian guns needed 45,000 shells a day. In February 1915,

Russian factories were supplying them with only 20,000.

This was not a war for soldiers alone, but a war for industry too.

And only Germany, the most modern industrial power in Europe, was equipped for it.

Yet short of heavy guns and ammunition, short even of rifles,

the Russian army in Galicia continued

with indomitable peasant courage to force the Austrians back.

Before them stood the Austrian fortress of Przemysl,

the last rock against the Russian tide that threatened to engulf Hungary.

Behind the shattered forts of the perimeter, the Austrian garrison had been cut off for three months

and food was now so short that the population were eating cats and dogs, as well as horse meat.

The Austrian commander decided on a last, desperate attempt to break out.

It failed and on March the 22nd, the great fortress surrendered.

107,000 men and 20,000 sick and wounded fell into Russian hands at Przemysl.

Croats and Ruthenians and Hungarians and Germans,

the unwilling and willing soldiers of the emperor, Franz Josef.

The feeble state of the Austrian army haunted Falkenhayn.

"The appeals of the Austrians for assistance never ceased.

"Symptoms of disintegration became more and more evident

"in formations of Czech and southern Slav recruits."

Once more, Germany had to help Austria against the Russians.

But how? Hindenburg and Ludendorff still passionately believed that the war could be won in the east.

They repeatedly told the Kaiser that if enough forces were given them,

they'd destroy the whole Russian army by huge pincer movements.

But in the end, the Kaiser rejected their grandiose ideas and accepted Falkenhayn's less ambitious plan.

Falkenhayn proposed a breakthrough between Gorlice and Tarnow,

followed by a lightning pursuit across the communications of the Russian armies threatening Hungary.

It wouldn't win the war, but would be a smashing blow that would paralyse the Russian army.

April brought Europe her first wartime spring.

The grim Russian winter melted into a landscape of astonishing beauty.

The troops of Falkenhayn's striking force settled down

for the long train journey to the wide horizons of the east.

This was an army made for victory. Only the Marne and first Ypres marred a record of success

stretching back through Sedan in 1870 to Waterloo.

At fixed intervals, the packed trains rolled eastwards.

Speed - 19mph.

180 trains to each army corps.

With the army went the now familiar German battering ram -

medium and heavy Howitzers, huge stocks of shells to sweep away the Russian defences like a cyclone.

The breakthrough was to be made by the 11th Army under von Mackensen.

His orders were clear.

"The 11th Army must make quick forward progress. This is important.

"Only in speed lies the guarantee that we shall be able to stop the enemy bringing up its reserves."

By the 28th of April, 170,000 men and 1,000 guns had been slotted into an 18-mile front.

No shortage of ammunition here.

Falkenhayn wrote...

"By the spring of 1915, GHQ was relieved of any serious anxiety with regard to munitions supply."

May the 2nd.

From 6am to 10am, 1,000 guns, half of them heavy,

smashed the Russian defences to shreds.

Then the attack went in.

"Neither fire, trenches, nor barbed wire could stop the assault, and our ranks became thinner and thinner.

"After 35 minutes, and despite the tropical heat, we reached the enemy.

"The Russians clung ferociously to their trenches, but in another 10 minutes, the job was finished."

Von Mackensen signalled to the Kaiser...

"I report that the order to make the enemy's position in the Carpathians untenable has been carried out.

"The enemy is in retreat along the whole line."

Against the weight and power of the German pursuit,

the Russians could do nothing. A Russian commander wrote...

"The retreat from Galicia was one vast tragedy for the Russian army.

"No cartridges, no shells, bloody fighting and difficult marches day after day.

"No end of weariness, physical and moral, faint hopes followed by sinister dread.

"For 11 days, the German heavy artillery swept away whole lines of our trenches and their defenders.

"We hardly replied. There was nothing to reply with."

A Russian general had sent an urgent message to Petrograd.

"There are no rifles. 150,000 men are without rifles!

"From hour to hour, it is worse. We await the heavenly manna from you."

At the end of May, Mackensen's troops marched in triumph into the fortress city of Przemysl.

It had been in Russian hands for only two months.

Victorious Germans and Austrians had marched over 100 miles through the heat of the Galician summer.

They forced the Russians to retreat along the whole Carpathian front.

As they entered Przemysl, their triumphant progress was celebrated 450 miles behind them in Berlin,

with flags and bell-ringing and the cheers of a proud and grateful nation.

The fall of Przemsyl marked yet another stage

in the dumb but terrible agony of the Russian peasant armies.

The Russian soldier was a very good soldier,

provided he was properly led.

But without officers, the officers were wounded or killed...

...the simple Russian muchik had not much initiative.

After all, they were mostly peasants,

very simple, good-natured men, very big and tough.

But without guidance, they were lost.

And very often, they, um... to our great surprise,

they surrendered in droves.

By the time they were captured, some Russian soldiers had been retreating for a month.

Over 100,000 of their comrades had been killed.

"The Russian army was at the end of its power.

"The uninterrupted fighting in the Carpathians cost it heavy losses.

"The deficit in officers and men was terrifying.

"The lack of arms and ammunition was catastrophic."

For the Russian prisoners, the unequal struggle against Germany's might was over

and they celebrated the miracle of still being alive.

On the western front, spring brought new hope.

It was the time for battle again and the Germans knew it.

Their 400 miles of trenches, behind barbed wire sometimes as thick as a thumb,

walled the French off from their lost lands.

As the weather improved, the French would be coming to take them back.

The Germans watched and waited for the attacks they knew must come.

Opposite them, sometimes half a mile away, sometimes only 20 yards, the Allies also waited.

The temporary lines where the balance of war had settled at the end of 1914

were acquiring a squalid permanence.

Haphazard sections of trench were deepened and joined to each other.

Drains were scooped in the mud and holes converted to dugouts.

They were at least splinter-proof, which meant much to an army fighting an artillery war.

The soldiers knew something must happen soon. A French dragoon wrote...

"In spring, the army stirred itself, stretched its legs and awoke to the fact that a new era was beginning.

"The change took place with the greatest mystery. Rumours, coming no-one knew wherefrom, circulated."

The basic question of 1915 was - could the Allies break through the German defensive works?

Lord Kitchener expressed the widespread doubts.

"We must recognise that the French army cannot make a sufficient break through the German lines

"to cause a complete change of the situation.

"The German lines in France may be seen as a fortress that cannot be carried by assault."

But the Germans left General Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, with no choice.

"The best and largest portion of the German army was on our soil,

"with its line of battle jutting out a mere five-days' march from the heart of France.

"This situation may be clear to every Frenchman

"that our task consisted in defeating this enemy and driving him out of our country."

But how?

French observers peered at the German front line. Week by week, month by month, battle by battle,

the Germans had strengthened and deepened their defensive position.

From behind the trenches, the gun flashes told the Allies

of the power and numbers of the artillery supporting the German soldiers.

The answer, the French concluded, lay in artillery and high-explosive shell.

Given enough, the infantry would occupy German defences already ploughed up and made harmless.

In the words of Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the British 1st Army...

"With sufficient shells, we could walk through the German lines in several places."

But were there sufficient shells and gun power?

When war broke out, France had only 300 heavy guns

to oppose 3,500 German medium and heavy guns.

Since then, only 48 new heavies had been delivered

and 18 of those had blown up in the gunners' faces.

Now, in a desperate attempt to catch up, they pressed into service

the old, slow-firing big guns stripped from fortresses like Verdun and Tulle.

The BEF, by the first half of 1915, had only 10 heavy guns per division, against the German 20.

Every time our artillery opened up on them, they'd come back tenfold.

If we fired five or six rounds, they'd fire 50 to 60 back at us.

But always, it was that unequal bashing that got the infantryman.

That if we got a gun at all... We had a machine-gun, it's true, but that was only a puny effort.

It was these colossal shells that rained on and on and we could do nothing about it.

The earthworks and barbed wire, such as they were, had been blown to pieces long since.

And the result was that practically the whole of the front line, around the town of Ypres...

...was a series of holes,

in which men crouched and waited for the end.

In February, Sir John French rationed heavies to 8 rounds a day

and his field guns to 10 for ordinary purposes. A British gunner wrote to Lloyd George...

"We don't know or care who is to blame, we only know we are being starved to death for want of shells

"and our infantry are being fated daily to a more and more terrible task."

Trench mortars and mine-throwers were lacking too.

The soldiers of the country dubbed "the workshop of the world" were reduced to home-made equipment.

They invented a hairbrush grenade - a slab of guncotton fastened to a piece of wood and lit with a match.

There was also a jam tin filled with shredded guncotton and nails.

Some units improvised trench mortars.

A corporal said to me, "Come here, we're going to let our mortar off."

It was a home-made mortar. It looked to me like a bit of rainwater pipe

bound all round with a leather thong to take the resistance.

There was a plate bolted on the back and a touch hole with a fuse in it.

The charge was a screw of gunpowder in a paper screw

and the bomb was a jam tin filled with explosive.

They lit the fuse and all stood well away.

The bomb went off, whizzed over, dropped somewhere near the German trench and went off with a big bang.

The French improvised too. In some parts of the country, manufacturing munitions was a cottage industry.

As the day of the Allied offensives approached,

the shell shortage remained desperate at the British depot.

It was the base ammunition depot for the southern armies and it was, I suppose, an ex-builder's yard.

It consisted of a couple of sheds, room to put a couple of railway trucks or wagons in,

and the total stock couldn't have exceeded about 2,000 rounds of ammunition of all kinds.

We used to issue it in half dozens, dozens

and sometimes single rounds to some of the bigger batteries.

I suppose one day's loading would be a couple of railway trucks. Of course, it was perfectly absurd.

The ammunition we had was treated as if it were gold ingots.

It was laid out in very neat rows, cos it had to be counted every day,

aligned every day and dusted every day.

Early in 1915, the Allies began a series of attacks to wear down and soften the German defences.

"Suddenly, a thunderclap right beside us.

"An enormous fountain of black smoke seems to spring out of the ground,

"hurling hundreds of clods up to the sky, and they rained like hailstones on our heads.

"It's a heavy melanite shell a few feet away. We run in all directions. Then, one by one, we recover."

The French spring offensives cost them 240,000 men,

killed or wounded.

On March the 10th, the British attacked at Neuve Chapelle.

There were enough hoarded shells to smash the German front-line trench.

But the German second line was not destroyed. The attack could go no further.

On April the 6th, the French attacked at Saint Mihiel to pinch out the German salient.

They failed. But these were only preliminary attacks.

The real attempt to break through the German defences was planned for May.

But it was the Germans who attacked on April the 22nd.

Their purpose was to cover up their troop movements away from the western front.

Against the French at Ypres, they let loose a hideous new weapon,

which science had added to the German soldiers' armoury - poison gas.

At about 4pm, a very heavy bombardment started

and a little later on, we saw the effects of this.

The first thing was hundreds of French troops running away.

They were just like ants.

They weren't sticking to roads or paths or anything else.

They were in the fields, breaking through hedges. No arms, they'd all gone.

And clutching their throats, saying, "Gaz!"

We tried to rally them as they got to us and they wouldn't stay.

All we got from them was, "Allez, bombe, bombe! Malade, malade!"

They kept going and we got orders to turn and shoot them, which we did.

And momentarily, we looked and we saw this green cloud coming along the ground.

The gas attack made a gap in the Allied lines 4.5 miles across.

The Canadians were thrown into the breach,

and for three weeks they held on, alongside British and French troops and braved the new horror.

One chap had his hand blown off and his wrist was fumbling around, tearing at his throat.

The effect of this gas was to form a sort of foamy liquid in one's lungs.

And more or less in time, drowned one...

if you were unlucky.

Of course, a lot of the men died pretty quickly.

Others were soon down, dying.

They were in fact drowning from this beastly foam coming up from their lungs.

There must have been 200-300 men, wriggling and wreathing in all positions, tearing at their throats,

their faces black, and an RAMC sergeant stood there...

I've never seen a man so despondent. He said, "Look at the poor bastards, I can't do anything for them."

A young German officer wrote...

"The effects of the successful gas attack were horrible.

"I do not like the idea of poisoning men.

"Of course, the entire world will rage about it at first... and then imitate us."

This was the day when the last vestige of glamour and glory went out of war.

Behind its ancient moat and ramparts,

Ypres itself became a symbol of resistance and unstinted sacrifice.

The great German shells set the town ablaze.

Centuries of history crumbled at each blast.

"But on a sudden, fierce destruction came, tigerishly pouncing.

"Thunderbolt and flame showered on her streets

"to shatter them and toss her ancient towers to ashes."

The shelling had started again in Ypres and by the time we'd got marching up to the town,

it looked as though the whole place was on fire.

Buildings right and left of us were blazing away.

And the heat was so intense in some of the narrow streets

that as we were marching up in column of four,

the men on the flanks had to creep into the middle to avoid the blistering heat.

And one could see the haggard desolation...

...on their faces, as they also surveyed the havoc around them.

The German attacks at Ypres rammed home the terrible lesson -

this was a new kind of war, a war of engineering and chemistry

and industrial power.

The German successes at Ypres and in Russia were gained in the Ruhr.

Lloyd George, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, saw what the Allies were up against.

"The Germans and Austrians between them had, even at the commencement of the war,

"much larger supplies of war materiel

"and more extensive factories for the turning out of supplies than the Allied countries.

"And they have since made much better use

"of their manufacturing resources for the purpose of increasing that output.

"Germany is the best-organised country in the world, and her organisation has told."

In Britain, guns and shells were still being produced by a system designed for small armies and wars.

The main supplier was Woolwich Arsenal.

Woolwich was an arsenal, not a factory, like Krupps, geared for mass production.

By the spring of 1915, the War Office had placed munitions orders with over 2,500 firms in Britain.

But there is a long gap between demand and delivery.

Less than a quarter of what was contracted for was delivered in time

and no attempt had yet been made to mobilise all of British industry.

For Lloyd George, a crusader by nature, here was a cause.

Soldiers were dying in France and muddle and inefficiency at home were letting them down.

On February the 22nd, he wrote to Asquith, the Prime Minister...

"I sincerely believe that we could double our effective energies

"if we organised our factories properly.

"All the engineering works of the country ought to be turned on to the production of war materiel.

"While this process is going on, the population ought to be prepared

"to suffer all sorts of deprivations and even hardships."

On May the 9th, the French and British armies launched a new offensive.

The British artillery had shells for only 45 minutes of bombardment

and nine out of ten shells were shrapnel, useless to smash deep, defensive works.

Once more, the Allied soldiers opposed their muscles and flesh

to the cruel lash of German steel.

Half of us were knocked out, either killed or wounded.

And going across a meadow, there were a lot more killed.

And we all stopped and laid down...

...trying to get what shelter we could from the tremendous rifle fire coming over.

Then a sergeant just in front of me jumped up and said, "Come on, men, be British!"

We jumped up, followed him. He ran about six yards and he went down.

We ran on about another 20 yards towards the German trenches which were literally packed.

They stood four deep, firing machine guns and rifles straight at us.

The attack on the Aubers Ridge had been stopped in its tracks.

But the worst of the shell and gun shortages was yet to come

in the offensive at Festubert a week later.

We were in a battery of 15-pounders, four guns

and consistently short of ammunition,

being allowed four rounds per day for registering, etc.

As the intensity of the battle grew to May the 24th, we ran completely out of ammunition

and were left absolutely helpless.

Silent guns, a mutilated army,

spring hopes dashed.

Yet all this was still hidden from the British people at home.

In their censored newspapers, they read comforting accounts of devastating British gunfire.

"At 5am, the bombardment began. Then the infantry swept forward.

"The dazed German soldiers in their front-line trenches were helpless

"under the intense bombardment and determined attacks of the British."

Sir John French, commander-in-chief in France, put an end to the conspiracy of silence over shells.

He told the story of the shortages and their effects to the military correspondent of the Times.

On the 14th of May, the truth was out.

"The infantry did splendidly, but the conditions were too hard.

"The want of an unlimited supply of high explosive

"was a fatal bar to our success."

The reality of the war was at last coming home to Britain, as it had already to the French and Russians,

the reality of a new kind of war -

a war of industrial might, in which Germany was so far overwhelming.

This was a war which France and Britain had hardly begun to fight.