All language subtitles for 1996-The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century-EP1-Explosion

On one of the last nights
of the First World War, a

company of soldiers took
refuge from enemy bombardment.

Their officer wrote to his mother in a
spirit of hope.

My dearest mother, so thick
is the smoke in this cellar

that I can hardly see by a
candle twelve inches away.

And so thick are the inmates that I can
hardly write for pokes, nudges and jolts.

On my left, the company commander snores
on a bench.

It is a great life.

I am more oblivious than a less yourself,
dear mother, of the ghastly glimmering of

the guns outside and the hollow crashing
of the shells.

I hope you are as warm as I am,
as serene in your room as I am here.

I am certain you could
not be visited by a band

of friends, half so fine
as surround me here.

There is no danger
down here, or if any, it

will be well over before
you read these lines.

A fortnight later, the guns of the Great
War fell silent.

It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh
day of the eleventh month of 1918.

One hour later, there was a knock on the
door of the officer's home.

As neighbours celebrated
the end of the war,

the officer's mother
was handed a telegram.

In the war's final week, while taking part
in an assault on the German lines,

her son had been killed.

The dead soldier, 25-year-old Lieutenant
Wilfred Owen.

Yet Owen was just one of the lost
generation.

Nine million people killed during four
years of world war.

In which people, land and nations were
changed forever.

The years 1914-18 set the violent 20th
century in motion.

The first use of chemical weapons.

The first mass bombardment of civilians
from the sky.

The century's first genocide.

Never in history had so many taken up
arms.

Never had war reached so far beyond the
battlefield.

Never had war cut so deeply into society.

Eighty years on, diaries, letters and film
from expanding archives around the world,

tell the story of the men and
women from five continents,

for whom this war was the
defining moment of their lives.

It would be called the Great War,
for it coloured everything that came

before, and shadowed everything that
followed.

Every search for the origins of the Great
War comes back to Germany.

Its state, militaristic and volatile.

Its people, modern,
industrious, and determined

to better their
position in the world.

Its generals, obsessed
with shows of greatness, but

insecure about Germany's
status as an imperial power.

All these tensions were symbolised in one
man.

The Kaiser.

Wilhelm II.

The figurehead of German imperial
ambition.

He was destined to be the living emblem of
national pride.

A difficult role for a crippled man.

An accident at birth
had made him partly deaf,

affected his balance, and
left him with a withered arm.

What medicine could not improve, Wilhelm's
parents had hoped discipline would.

Their son's tutor, Dr Georg Hinzpeter, was
to make no allowances for his pupil's arm.

He was to force the boy to ride in the
posture of a true German warrior.

When the prince was eight years old,
a lackey still had to lead his pony by the

rein, because his balance
was so bad that his unsteadiness

caused intolerable anxiety
to himself and others.

It had to be overcome, no matter what the
cost.

Therefore, I set the weeping
prince on his horse, without

stirrups, and compelled him
to go through the various paces.

He fell off continually.

Every time, despite
his prayers and tears, I

lifted him up and set
him upon its back again.

After weeks of torture, the difficult task
was accomplished.

He got his balance.

England was where the young Prince Wilhelm
found an escape from such humiliations.

As a grandson of Queen
Victoria, he frequently visited

her seaside estate at
Osborne, on the Isle of Wight.

In a specially built playground,
with trenches and a miniature fort,

he and his British cousins would fight out
their version of an ancient rivalry.

It was here that he began a lifelong
obsession with the sea.

I had a peculiar passion for the Navy.

It sprang, to no small extent,
from my English blood.

When, as a little boy, I was allowed to
visit Portsmouth and Plymouth,

I admired the proud English ships.

There awoke in me the wish to build ships
of my own like these some day,

and, when I was grown up, to possess as
fine a navy as the English.

When Wilhelm became Emperor of Germany in
1888, at the age of 29, the insecurities

of his youth were played out on the stage
of German affairs.

To his commanders, he explained his role.

All of you know nothing.

I alone know something.

I alone decide.

You've got to imagine a man who has all
kinds of terrible complexes.

He wants, in a sense, to be as big a figure
on the world stage as his British cousins.

He wants to be as striking and impressive
a political figure.

And, to some extent, the Kaiser,
I think, is cut off from reality.

Wilhelm's dreams of naval
glory were exploited by German

admirals who longed to
match the sea power of Britain.

By 1905, a huge fleet of warships was in
the making.

With such symbols
of imperial power and

progress, Wilhelm struck
a chord with his people.

The Kaiser was universally seen as being
the symbol of the new Germany.

And he did embody it to an amazing extent.

He embodied its old-fashioned militarism.

He embodied its undirected
ambition towards a dominance

in the future of a kind which
nobody could quite define.

He embodied the insecurity, the
uncertainties, the neurosis, which so

dominated German society and which was
seen by everybody as making Germany such

an unpredictable and
dangerous partner in

the manipulation of
the international system.

To other nations in Europe, Germany's
intentions seem menacing and uncertain.

Yet the Kaiser had inherited a nation that
had grown accustomed to peace.

Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck's astute diplomacy

had kept Germany
out of wars since 1871.

Bismarck had no foreign ambitions.

He'd used treaties and alliances to keep
on civil terms with the other great powers.

Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary.

But above all, to avoid war with Russia.

But Wilhelm had no respect for Bismarck's
delicate balance of power.

The Kaiser felt that he represented the
new Germany.

Quite where Germany was going to go,
he didn't know.

But at full speed, I heard.

Wilhelm sent Bismarck into retirement and
abandoned the treaties.

Military expansion replaced diplomacy.

His announcement that Germany would build
a new navy had turned a potential ally,

Great Britain, into a potential enemy.

And now, in 1912, a massive
expansion of his army, making it

the most powerful in Europe,
challenged Russia and France.

Germany had only one reliable ally.

The fragile empire of Austria-Hungary,
ruled by the ageing emperor, Franz Josef.

Germany felt increasingly surrounded.

And as insecure as its ruler.

International war was only one of the
powers the century promised.

Other developments pointed to an entirely
different future.

A revolution in technology was sweeping
the Western world.

Electricity turned night into day.

Motor cars changed the speed of travel.

Aircraft defied gravity.

To the monarchs, rulers and elites of
Europe, the technological explosion

heralded a new era they did not
understand.

Yet the lives of ordinary people were
being altered profoundly.

A fundamental change was taking place in
their expectations, their work,

their world.

It is in many respects that the
moment when a vision of immense

and unlimited possibilities
became available to anybody.

And of course, what that meant is not
necessarily hope.

It could also mean intense frustration.

Because with the vision that possibilities
are there, comes the question,

why not me?

Why not farmers?

Why not factory employees?

Why not women?

These two elements of imbalance of power,
of inequality, between those who have and

those who have not, between those who are
running the show and those who feel that

they ought to be running
the show, produce this

amazing sense of an
approaching storm in 1914.

What storm it will be, nobody knew.

But it was going to come.

The dynamics of change
were racing ahead of the

political order that
supposedly controlled them.

In Britain, bitter conflicts raged over
social injustice.

And high in the headlines were the clashes
over women's right to vote.

There was a view that women shouldn't have
the vote for all sorts of reasons.

One of them being that a woman's brain was
smaller than a man's brain.

Therefore, she couldn't
possibly make this

political choice when
it came to an election.

That it just was not
within her kind of

intellectual capacity to
make that kind of a choice.

It sounds ludicrous to us,
but this was something that

even the most intelligent
people believed very firmly.

The suffragettes spearheaded the drive to
win British women the vote.

When peaceful protests
did not succeed, they turned

to violence with a campaign
of arson and bombing.

They chose as targets those symbols of
male authority, church and property.

On Derby Day in 1913, the campaign claimed
its first life.

A lone suffragette, Emily
Wilding Davison, walked

onto the race track to
block the king's horse.

The British government began a campaign to
silence the suffragettes.

Men who committed
acts of civil disobedience

were given special status
as political prisoners.

But the suffragettes were treated as
common criminals.

Seven months before the outbreak
of war, the leading suffragette,

Sylvia Pankhurst, was sent to
prison for breaking a window.

I was torn with a passion
of self-contempt that I

had endured the torturing
indignity for so long.

My voice, high-pitched and strange,
cried out that it was a scandal that four

of us should be serving five months in all
for one little three-pound window.

That the government had had their pound of
flesh.

And far, far more.

That this torture had been going on year
after year.

Woman after woman had been broken and
destroyed.

And all because a handful of men stood
against us.

Like a solid wall in their sullen,
cruel obstinacy.

And would not give way.

Some for the sake of their jobs.

Some for the sake of their pride.

As those without a say raised their
voices, a new age took shape.

An age of protest and defiance.

The new banner of socialism was one
revolutionary cause, with a growing following.

Socialism tried to address basic concerns.

Wages.

Exploitation.

Terrible living conditions.

Its leader in France was Jean Jaurès.

A socialist who dominated the
revolutionary movement.

A third of France voted socialist in 1914.

And nearly a million had joined trade
unions.

A visiting journalist from Vienna was
struck by Jaurès' unusual figure.

I first noticed his large back,
built like a street porter's.

His neck like a bull's.

Short, stocky.

And I felt immediately in him the strength
of the peasant.

Unshakeable.

Jaurès saw Europe's arms race as a threat
to social justice.

He believed that whilst socialists should
defend their homelands, growing arsenals

served only the ruling classes and their
hold on military power.

He believed that.

What will the future be like?

When the billions, now thrown away in
preparation for war, are spent on useful

things to increase the well-being of
people, on the construction of decent

houses for workers, on improving
transportation, on reclaiming the land.

The fever of imperialism has become a
sickness.

It is the disease of a
badly run society, which

does not know how to
use its energies at home.

He knew how to take action, real action.

First of all, he had parliament.

Second, Jaurès was
trying to set up international

arbitration in case
there were a war.

Third, and that was Jaurès's strongest
card, call an international workers' strike.

A general strike in all the countries that
might go to war.

In 1912, Jean Jaurès organised an emergency
socialist congress in Switzerland.

War appeared to be near.

Local feuds in the Balkans,
between Slavs and Austrians,

threatened to escalate
into a full-scale conflict.

500 delegates from 23 nations filled the
hall of Baal's great cathedral.

Jaurès climbed the pulpit,
determined to inspire the

delegates to return to their
homes with a message of peace.

I think of the words
which Schiller inscribed

at the head of his
beautiful Song of the Bell.

I summon the living, I mourn the dead,
I break the thunderbolts.

Then Jaurès leaned forward, and appealed
to the sea of upturned faces.

I summon the living, to resist the monster
which would ravage the land.

I mourn the countless
dead, now buried in the

east, whose rotting
stench fills us with remorse.

I will break the thunderbolts of war,
now hurtling across the sky.

Then Jaurès paused, and in a final
theatrical coup, the strains of

Beethoven's ninth symphony filled the
cathedral.

Let us leave this hall, committed to the
salvation of peace and civilization.

The Baal Congress
asserted that workers would

not fight in a meaningless
Balkan quarrel.

In Berlin, a quarter of a million people
marched against war.

As governments backed away
from war, Jaurès became convinced

that Europe was on the
brink of a new age of peace.

But within two years, he would be proven
wrong.

The forces of change were undermining
societies that had endured for centuries.

In Russia, Tsar Nicholas
II's Romanov dynasty

symbolized a world that
appeared impervious to threat.

But now Russia, too, was on the brink of a
new age.

Communications, I think, opened people's
eyes no end to what the possibilities are,

and to what is wrong with present
circumstances.

And then it was perfectly true to say that
large numbers of peasants living in the

far-flung bits of Russia would think very
warmly of little father Tsar who will

protect us from the nobility and from his
own bureaucrats.

But as telegraphs grow, and as newspapers
grow, and as the peasants begin to read,

and as the socialist
revolutionaries get around

the villages, these ideas
get very much weaker.

Peasants could now travel to the capital
and see their Tsar at first hand.

The writer Maxim Gorky
recorded one peasant's

experience upon
meeting Nicholas in 1902.

This is what happened to me when I met the
Tsar.

Imagine to yourself that you believed in
some inaccessible person, thought that in

that person were united all the finest
qualities, all the strength, the wisdom,

and holiness of Russia.

And all of a sudden, at
the bidding of fate, you

are placed eye to eye with
that person, and you see.

With sorrow and fear you see that he is
not what you supposed.

The glitter around him and the splendour
are all there, but it is all a sham.

Thus I saw in front of me, not the Tsar of
my imagination, not the sovereign of my

dreams, not even a big man, just a little
fellow, and on very ordinary legs.

From the east of Europe to the west,
a social revolution was underway.

In Germany, workers were experiencing the
fastest changes of all.

In just 30 years, Berlin had
been transformed from a backwater

of 700,000 to a mechanised
metropolis of over 2 million.

Many middle-class
Germans shared their Kaiser's

belief in the supremacy
of German culture.

For them, it was necessary to secure Germany
the continental domination it deserved.

And in that sense, the Kaiser
is in some ways representative

of that generation which
comes of age in the 1890s.

Bismarck regarded colonies as a
distraction.

Well, for younger people, this was all a
little bit fuddy-duddy, and if the Kaiser

was going to give them colonies,
they liked the sound of that.

German workers were the most militant and
best organised anywhere.

Workers' power here was more than a vague
ideal.

It had found real expression
in the million-strong Socialist

Party that now appeared
ready to challenge the state.

The old order dreamed of imperial glory.

Their challengers demanded equality.

This created an extraordinarily explosive
mixture where the most powerful nation in

the world, Germany, had the most powerful
revolutionary movement in the world,

the German Social Democratic Party.

And it's a function of the pace of change
and the pace of urbanisation that you both

had this amazing militarisation and growth
of military power and proletarianisation,

growth of working-class power.

And they were both evident together.

The Kaiser would have demonstrations for
his birthday, the Social Democratic Party

would have demonstrations for the 1st of
May, and they were about the same size.

It was not at all surprising that anybody
who lived in Germany would find this the

most dynamic, the most robust, and
the most terrifying nation in the world.

The wealthy Germans who controlled the
country saw socialism as a sinister force.

Socialism threatened
their prosperity and might

prevent Germany from
becoming a world power.

Socialists argued for progress through
peace.

The ruling elite disagreed.

One of the trendy ideas of the pre-1914
world is social Darwinism.

You take the ideas of Darwin about natural
selection and you apply them to human

society and you come to the conclusion
that the only way that human society can

advance and progress is by being subjected
periodically to the ultimate test of war.

War weeds out the weeds and replaces,
or rather, leaves behind only the fittest.

One man who sensed the
increasing tensions in pre-war

Germany was a 28-year-old
painter, Ludwig Meitner.

Amid fears of war and
revolution, Meitner lived and

worked in a Berliner attic,
painting at night by gaslight.

From his brush came disturbing visions of
an approaching apocalypse.

It was a time unlike any other in the
brooding metropolis of Berlin.

I was poor, but not unhappy.

I had made a home for
myself in a cheap studio with an

iron bedstead and a number
of boxes that served as tables.

Food was a minor matter, but canvas seemed
the most valuable thing there was.

I was in love with it, and I
was not ashamed to kiss it with

trembling lips before painting
those ominous landscapes.

I did not paint from life, but what my
imagination bid me to paint.

I felt like a hound
racing along in a wild

chase, mile after
mile, to find his master.

A finished oil painting filled with
apocalyptic ruin.

I feared those visions.

Other artists, musicians and
writers across Europe shared

Meitner's sense that a
great cataclysm was at hand.

There's a fever and there's a feeling
everything had to come to an end.

I mean, Duchamp said, you know,
we need the great enema in Europe.

And if it's going to be war, then if we
need war, we need war.

But we need a great enema.

But they actually sing it in social terms.

Meitner, he was like everybody else,
he was reading Zarathustra at that point.

And there is a famous text in Zarathustra
where Nietzsche produces the idea that the

cities literally, they are the melting pot
of the modern humanity and they literally

have to almost explode for this revolution
to happen.

Meitner had painted Germany's future.

His country was about to explode.

Not into social revolution, but into war.

In 1914, tensions were again running high
in the troubled region of the Balkans.

Tensions that would cast the fate of the
world.

The Austrian Empire was a patchwork of
nationalities.

Among them were Serbs.

Some wanted to break away and join the
independent and growing kingdom of Serbia.

Gavrilo Princip was one of them.

A member of the secret
Serbian society, the Black

Hand, he aimed to force
Austria from Slav lands.

On June 28th 1914, the heir to the
Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

paid an official visit to the city of
Sarajevo with his wife.

At 11 o'clock, a wrong
turn by the Archduke's driver

brought him face to
face with Gavrilo Princip.

The murder of the heir to
the Austrian throne was the

ultimate insult to Austria's
ruler, Emperor Franz Josef.

Austria issued an ultimatum designed to
humiliate Serbia.

One of its demands,
acceptance of an Austrian inquiry

into Serbia's responsibility
for the assassination.

The rejection of this
one demand was the

excuse Austria had been
looking for to invade.

The Austrians issued their ultimatum to
the Serbs on the assumption that the Serbs

would reject it and the
Austrians would then

be able to declare war
on them and crush them.

However, they realised that if they did
that, there was a strong danger that

Russia would come in on the side of the
Serbs.

So, therefore, before issuing their
ultimatum at all, the Austrians cleared

their rear, as it were,
by going to Berlin and

getting from Berlin what
was called a blank cheque.

Yes, go ahead and we will back you as far
as you want to go.

Now, the Germans issued that blank cheque
because they felt they could not afford to

see their only ally in Europe humiliated
and destroyed.

By giving Austria her
blank cheque, Germany had

brought into play the
established alliance system.

One pair of great powers,
Austria-Hungary and Germany, were

allied against another pair of
great powers, Russia and France.

War between Austria and Serbia would mean
war between Austria and Russia.

That would mean war between Russia and
Germany.

And that would mean war between Germany
and France.

The stage was set.

As the prospect of international war grew
closer, the French leader, Jean Jaurès,

found he was unable to unite socialists
behind peace.

He climbed aboard a train for Paris and,
exhausted, fell asleep.

Sitting in the compartment across from
Jaurès were two friends.

They both found themselves staring into
his face as he slept.

All those fortunate enough to
know Jaurès personally had always

been inspired by his good
humour and inexhaustible vitality.

But now it seemed to us he was deeply sad,
full of grief, brought on by his clear

vision of the horrible catastrophe about
to overtake mankind.

As we looked at his
wonderful face, we were each

suddenly overcome with
a feeling that he was dead.

I froze with fright.

How often I had thought to myself,
what would we do if we lost him?

Events were moving too fast for Jaurès,
for diplomats, and even heads of state.

On the deadline, the day Austria had set
for war, the Tsar cabled his cousin,

the Kaiser.

July the 28th.

To the Kaiser.

In this most serious moment, I appeal to
you to help me.

I beg you, in the name
of our old friendship, to do

what you can to stop your
allies from going too far.

Nicky.

To the Tsar.

With regard to the hearty
and tender friendship

which binds both of us
from long ago with firm ties.

I am exerting my utmost influence to arrive
at a satisfactory understanding with you.

Your very sincere and devoted friend and
cousin, Willy.

The Kaiser basically wants to avoid the
general war.

It then becomes clear that the Kaiser,
far from being the supreme power in

Germany, doesn't matter at all,
because effectively the chief of the

general staff says, I am terribly sorry
sire, but the war is going to happen anyway.

On July the 29th, 1914, Austria attacked
Serbia.

As Germany had anticipated,
Russian military commanders

demanded action when Serbia,
their ally, came under attack.

The next day, the Tsar's staff told him
there was no longer an option.

Russia must mobilise.

Think what an awful responsibility you are
advising me to take.

Think of the thousands and thousands of
men who will be sent to their deaths.

Nicholas held out until 4 o'clock in the
afternoon.

Then he signed the order.

The hidden element in the war crisis of
1914 is the word honour.

Honour is something you defend.

Sometimes irrationally.

Sometimes even when it isn't at issue.

In fact, I would say,
in every case, it was in

no great power's interest
to go to war in 1914.

And yet they all did it.

One answer may be because their honour was
at stake.

Russian mobilisation was just what the
German general staff wanted.

Now Germany could
mobilise, under the pretense

that it was only
responding to a threat.

On the evening of July the 31st,
as France planned its response to the

crisis, Jean Jaurès and his colleagues
gathered at a café on the Rue Montmartre.

The group sat at a
table near the window,

listening to Jaurès'
thoughts on the coming war.

I gave my full attention
to him while he gave

his vision for mankind
and of things to be.

The expression on his face held enough for
a Rembrandt.

As Jaurès sat talking, a man stood on the
pavement staring at him.

He was Raoul Villain, a patriot who was
thrilled by the prospect of a war.

A war that he thought Jaurès would try to
stop.

As Villain watched, a
man from a nearby table

showed Jaurès a
photograph of his little girl.

At that moment, Villain leaned in through
the window.

Behind me, a revolver slid by,
held in a hand.

Then, a reddish flash, like the flame from
a cigar, stiff, brutal.

I did not see any blood, just a painful
shudder.

There was a silence.

Then I heard a heartbreaking cry.

Next came four words, yelled, screeched,
repeated over and over.

They have killed Jaurès!

They have killed Jaurès!

The assassination of Jaurès coincides with
the French mobilization the next day.

And with general mobilization,
how can you call a workers' strike?

The idea was a strike not of soldiers,
but of workers.

And now all the workers have become soldiers,
so how can you call them out on strike?

The international general strike was what
gave Jaurès his hope.

The one man who called for that option in
France was Jaurès.

Whether he could have achieved it in July
1914, the fact is, he didn't manage it.

He didn't do it.

The death of Jaurès draws a line.

Everyone thought of it as, Jaurès is dead,
so it's war.

That's what they all said.

On August the 4th,
the Germans made their

move against France,
invading through Belgium.

The Great War was born with the
mobilization of Britain.

There had been in England for the last ten
years a growing sense that sooner or later

we've got to have a showdown with the
Germans.

And so there was no great surprise when
this crisis arose.

But in addition to that, the really
clinching argument which brought the

country into the war totally united,
was Germany's invasion of Belgium,

which was not simply the invasion of a
neutral country.

It was a country whose neutrality the
British themselves had guaranteed.

So it was a matter not just of
international morality and international

law, but of Britain's honor being at
stake.

And all those things put together created
virtual unanimity in the country,

behind Britain, back in France.

Germany had accepted the risk of a major
war, and her rivals had responded in kind.

Better now than later, was the view of the
general staff.

War it was to be.

As news of the war hit
the capitals of Europe,

thousands of people
surged into the streets.

Counter-demonstrations evaporated,
lacking popular support.

It seemed to the artist
Ludwig Meitner that his

fellow Berliners had
suddenly become possessed.

And out of the depths
of the earth rose dreadful

fiends that settled
in everyone's brains.

And in their madness, they turned their
scourge into a joyous festival.

In each of the warring
nations, citizens were convinced

that their country was fighting
a just and defensive war.

Internal conflicts that had threatened to
divide society were set aside.

The great socialist movement found that
the world of 1914 put patriotism first.

The suffragettes decided
they would support their

fighting men and fight
for their own rights later.

Disaster lay ahead for the great
monarchies on the continent.

All their houses would fall.

Tsars.

Kaisers.

Emperors.

With less fanfare, millions of ordinary
lives would also be changed forever.

And the next episode of 1914 to 1918 is
here on BBC4 on Thursday evening at 20 to 8.

Next tonight, all aboard the last steam
train from Liverpool Street Station.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.