All language subtitles for 1996-The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century-EP2-Stalemate

As soldiers across
Europe left for war, the

correspondent Philip Gibbs
reported home to London.

In those first days of the war,
I saw many scenes of farewell.

Hundreds of women were in the crowd,
waving handkerchiefs.

The sting of parting was forgotten,
in the enthusiasm and pride which rose up

to those who were on their way to fight
and to uphold.

Their old traditions.

I could see no tears then, but my own.

I was seized with an emotion that made me
shudder.

For beyond the pageantry of the cavalcade,
I saw the fields of war.

I smelt the stench of blood, for I had
been in the muck and misery of war before.

And had seen the convoys of wounded
crawling down the rutty roads.

With men who had been strong and fine,
now made hideous by pain.

In Germany, as the army
mobilized, a young student named

Walter Limmer was one of
those eager to serve his country.

August the third, 1914.

At last, I have got my orders.

Dear mother, please try to keep constantly
before your mind what I have realized.

If at this time we think
of ourselves and those

who belong to us, we
shall be petty and weak.

We must have a broad outlook and think of
our nation, our fatherland, of God.

All over Europe, soldiers
were mobilizing for war, saying

goodbye to their families
and rushing to the front.

Our march to the station was a gripping
and uplifting experience.

It seemed as if one
lived through as much in

that hour as ordinarily
in months and years.

This hour is one such as seldom strikes in
the life of a nation.

Germany's strategy, the Schlieffenplan,
required precision timing.

In the east, the Russian army would be
held at bay.

In the west, the German army would avoid
France's line of forts by sweeping west

through neutral Belgium and then turning
in a huge arc south into France.

The French army would be trapped between
Paris and its own frontier.

The war on the western front would be over
in six weeks.

Then the German army would turn to Russia.

The Kaiser summed up the plan in one
phrase.

Paris for lunch, dinner in St. Petersburg.

My

dear ones, be proud that you live in such
a time and in such a nation.

And that you too have
the privilege of sending

several of those you love
into this glorious struggle.

It is a joy to go to the front with such
comrades.

We are bound to be victorious.

We are bound to be victorious.

On the morning of
August the 4th, 1914, the

German cavalry crossed
the border into Belgium.

Waiting for them was the small and poorly
equipped Belgian force.

What the Belgians faced
was the world's mightiest

army, one over ten
times the size of their own.

Belgium's main hope
lay in the ring of forts

that protected the
gateway city of Liege.

But the German army had planned for the
forts.

They unveiled a secret weapon,
the world's largest howitzer, Big Bertha.

Concrete and steel forts,
once thought impregnable,

were blown apart by Big
Bertha's one-ton shells.

A Belgian commander described the
aftermath.

The fort is now in ruins.

We are in complete
darkness and scarcely able to

breathe on account of the
poisonous and noxious gases.

A truce-bearer demanded the surrender of
the fort.

We prefer dying to surrendering.

The German army flooded across the Belgian
plains.

They expected no more resistance.

But to their surprise, Belgian snipers
started shooting.

Warfare in Belgium soon
became a hideous experience,

because civilians
took part in the fight.

The German soldier, Fritz
Nagel, saw the fear of those around

him turn into acts of reprisal
against innocent victims.

Unless they shot first, nobody knew where
the enemy was.

Whenever they had the chance, they shot
down German soldiers.

There was little defense against that sort
of warfare.

Because the streets were full of
civilians.

And so were the houses.

It was nerve-wracking in the extreme.

And resulted in savage and merciless
slaughter.

But the slightest provocation.

As we marched towards Louvain,
frightened civilians lined the streets,

hands held high as a sign of surrender.

Those frightened men, women and children
were a terrible sight.

By now, every German soldier was
frightened too.

You get the orders from
above to be as harsh as possible

in order to stifle this
from the very first moment.

And that triggers off then
with a wave of rather violent

actions and atrocities
against the civilian population.

Ten civilians, the Belgians were told,
would die for every German soldier killed.

Hundreds of men, women and children were
lined up and shot.

Word of the atrocities spread quickly.

As the number of stories grew,
each new version became more appalling.

Wild claims were taken as fact.

Soon, images of a monstrous German Hun
began appearing.

And found their way into newspapers.

The British war
correspondents in Belgium have

seen little murdered
children with roasted feet.

This was done by German troops.

Men with children of their own at home.

Or with little brothers
and sisters of the same

age as the innocents
they torture before killing.

The things done to Belgian
girls and women are so

unspeakably dreadful that
details cannot be printed.

Many of the stories that rapidly became
well known through the press formed the

basis of a very substantial,
probably the first

substantial propaganda
campaign in history.

And it gave the Allies an extraordinary
weapon.

Because what it suggested was that the
Germans committed atrocities, not because

they were soldiers, not
because they were occupiers

of Belgium, but because
they were Germans.

There was something genetic about their
viciousness.

And this was made into the imagery of the
Hun.

The Belgians had held up the German army
for only a few days.

But the real cost to
Germany was the image of the

violation of a small
nation fighting for survival.

The symbol, the symbol
of poor little Belgium,

would haunt the
Germans for years to come.

Of all the major powers in Europe,
Britain alone relied upon a volunteer army.

The Secretary of State for
War, Lord Kitchener, believed

Britain's small, regular
army would not be sufficient.

The war, he predicted, would take at least
three years.

The British army would require millions of
recruits.

From town walls to church pulpits, men were
urged to take up arms for their country.

The Yorkshire Post reported how even a
football match turned into a recruiting drive.

Stirring scenes were witnessed
on the Leeds City Football

Club's ground last evening
at the end of the match.

The Lord Mayor addressed a crowd of about
4,000 spectators.

There was a spirited rush across the field
and rousing cheers.

Up the steps, sturdy young
fellows came to receive

an armlet of ribbon
with the national colours.

And to win, perchance with their comrades,
an imperishable glory on the battlefield.

When the rush subsided, it was found that
the number of volunteers was 149.

The Lady Mayoress called for a further 51.

Another dash was made.

Another round of prolonged cheering.

And, to the chorus of it's a long way to
Tipperary, the quota was quickly filled.

From the football field, the recruits
marched to the town hall to enlist.

Volunteers are to have good health,
good teeth, and be aged between 19 and 30.

Join up with your pals, soon became the
recruiting slogan.

The pals movement in Britain took off like
a rocket.

It became a matter of civic pride and
community pride to raise local battalions

of pals who would fight together,
enlist together, serve together,

train together, etc.

And so, after the end of September 1914,
Kitchener had his expanded army.

CHOIR SINGS ANOTHER LITTLE BING ANOTHER
LITTLE BING ANOTHER LITTLE BING ANOTHER

LITTLE BING ANOTHER LITTLE BING Well,
I said, I've joined now.

I can't do any more.

Well, she said, you can either have me or
the pals.

I said, well, it's got to be the pals.

They asked me my height and I told them.

They hummed in hard about it.

I'm five foot six and worried stiff,
so I filled my shoes with papers.

Anyway, I says, well,
there's my pals joining,

six of us all joining,
all footballers.

So they says, oh, go on, let them go in.

So I was one of the midges.

CHOIR SINGS ANOTHER LITTLE BING ANOTHER
LITTLE BING ANOTHER LITTLE BING

The thunderbolt fell with its signal of
war, and in a few days, Paris was changed,

as though by some wizard's spell.

A hush fell upon Montmartre, and the
musicians in its orchestras packed up

their instruments and scurried with scared
faces to Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest.

The Seine was very quiet beneath its
bridges.

The women were hiding in their
rooms, asking God how they were

going to live now that their
lovers had gone away to fight.

Journalist Philip Gibbs was in France when
war broke out.

Forbidden to travel with the army,
he reported from Paris.

There was no wild outbreak of jingo fever.

No demonstrations of bloodlust against
Germany, in Paris, or any town of France.

The call to arms came without any loud
clamour of bugles or orations.

The quietness of Paris was astounding.

This was not the first time France had
gone to war against Germany.

In 1871, a victorious
Germany had claimed two of her

richest provinces, Alsace
and Lorraine, as spoils of war.

Now, a new generation was being called
upon to defend France's honour.

The continuous stream flows out towards
death.

Soldiers pass, singing and shouting to
Berlin.

Others go by in silence, fierce-looking
and determined.

On this scene of
desolation, the sun shone

gloriously, indifferent to
the troubles of this earth.

Madame Camille Drummond,
of the French aristocracy, was

one of those mothers who
watched her son go off to war.

Now that the quiet of evening is falling,
I'm thinking more than ever of you,

my darling child.

Where are you?

What are you doing?

This morning, I went into the drawing
room, and my eyes fell on your violin.

I burst into tears and ran from the room.

Like many in France, Madame Drummond was
not ready for another war.

The French commander disagreed.

Joseph-Jacques César Joffre was a champion
of the offensive.

Speed and bravery were of the essence.

Heavy artillery an impediment.

The bayonet, he told his soldiers,
was the supreme weapon for victory.

The infantry bearing their bayonets,
their rifles with bayonets, are really

intended to terrify the enemy by the sight
of cold steel.

It is believed that an attacking force
will look so ferocious and will behave so

ferociously that an
enemy will quail before the

sheer valour and the bravery
of this oncoming force.

In the dawn and pallid
sunlight of the morning,

they came across the
bridges with glinting rifles.

And the blue coats and red trousers of the
infantry made them look in the distance

like tin soldiers from a children's play
box.

I closed my eyes to shut out the glare and
glitter of this kaleidoscope.

What does it all mean, this surging tide
of armed men?

What would it mean in a day or two, when
another tide of men had swept up against it?

Geoffrey was determined
to strike out against

Germany and win back
France's lost provinces.

Underestimating the strength of the German
invasion of Belgium, the French followed

their plan to move east towards Alsace and
Lorraine.

One of these French
soldiers was Paul Lantier,

who was about to enter
battle for the first time.

I felt a choking sensation grip my throat.

The hour had come for me to sacrifice my
life.

My bleeding body would lie stretched out
on the field.

I seemed to see it.

It was the end.

It had not been long in coming,
for I am only twenty-one.

Against heavy artillery and machine guns,
Lantier's courage counted for little.

His regiment lined up in a nineteenth-century
formation and advanced in full view.

Shells continued to fly over us.

The enemy was advancing.

Entire companies of infantry fell back.

We had lost the battle.

The nineteenth-century
tradition of the army

was of the self-sacrifice
for the nation.

And the beginning of the twentieth century
was still in this mentality.

These bright colors, especially the red of
the trousers, of the caps too,

was a sign of this heroic ethic of the
war.

It was absolutely, it was a sign of
cowardice to fight the enemy in green

colors, which couldn't be seen by the
enemy itself.

You had to fight openly.

In four days, over forty-thousand French
soldiers were killed.

Twenty-seven thousand of them on a single
day.

August the twenty-second, 1914.

The bloodiest day in French military
history.

Soon, the French army was in retreat.

A deep sense of shame
oppressed us as we filed through

these villages, which we
were powerless to protect.

We were abandoning them to the fury of the
enemy.

As the French army fell back, Joffre
notified his government.

In twelve days, the Germans would be at
the walls of Paris.

Would the city be ready, he asked,
to withstand a siege?

Everyone who could fled from the advancing
Germans.

Railways and roads were flooded with
refugees.

Madame Drummond watched them stream past
her window.

One can imagine nothing
more dismal than the

stream of fugitives
along the roads of France.

We saw them, passing by our houses,
coming from goodness knows where,

piled up on carts, with their animals, their
bedding, and all their household goods.

They had come through Paris, their horses
almost dropping with exhaustion,

to seek a refuge in some friendly place.

But where that would be, they knew not.

For the moment, their
only idea was to go a

long way away, to the
far ends of the earth.

As the German army approached Paris,
Camille Drummond chose to flee too.

She escaped by train for the French coast.

Trains full of soldiers,
and even of wounded,

were caught up like
us on parallel lines.

All this confusion brought home to one the
panic, the terror of the herd of human

beings, who, in order
to escape from the

enemy, were rushing
headlong into the unknown.

Another train had also drawn
up, and in the moonlight,

the two trains looked like
long funeral processions.

I was crying, my face in my hands.

All of a sudden, the most exquisite song
rose in the tragic night.

The voice came from the other train.

It was a man's voice, and he sang the
serenade from La Demnation de Faust.

This song lifted my spirits from gloom,
and my soul from despair.

In the moonlight, in the midst of all this
human misery and distress, it was sublime.

As refugees fled from
war, the regular British

Expeditionary Force began
crossing the English Channel.

Among them was a 20-year-old Irishman,
John Lucy.

Long before the war, he
and his brother had joined the

army to escape the boredom
of life on an Irish farm.

We were tired of fathers, of advice from
relations, of bottled coffee essence,

of school, and of newspaper offices.

The cattle, fowl,
eggs, butter, bacon, and

the talk of politics
filled us with loathing.

Blow the lot.

As a matter of fact, we
were full of life and the

spirit of adventure, and
wanted to spread our wings.

We got adventure.

We enlisted.

At first, we could not follow the trend of
events on the continent.

Whom were we to fight?

French, Russians, Germans?

What did it matter?

The dose of that rapid fire of ours,
followed by an Irish being a charge,

would soon fix things.

On August the 22nd, John Lucy's unit
reached the Belgian town of Mars.

The very next day, they
faced a German force

that outnumbered
them nearly three to one.

The Germans attacked them in waves, advancing
shoulder to shoulder over open fields.

Our rapid fire was appalling, even to us,
and the worst marksmen could not miss.

And after the first shock of seeing men
slowly and helplessly falling down as they

were hit, gave us a great sense of power
and pleasure.

But within a few hours,
John Lucy was astonished to

hear that the British Army
was being ordered to retreat.

The soldiers at Mons thought
they'd done rather well in

terms of holding off the
oncoming masses for some time.

I think the fact that they still
then had to pull back added

to this sort of sense of A
frustration and B exhaustion.

But simply, the weight of the German
advance was too strong for such a small

force, particularly as it had only just
got to the front line, basically.

Every cell in our bodies craved rest.

Men slept while they marched, and they
dreamed as they walked.

They talked of their homes, of their wives
and mothers, of their simple ambitions,

of beer and cozy pubs, and they talked of
fantasies.

The brains of soldiers became clouded and
their feet moved automatically.

Like the retreating British, the advancing
German army was close to exhaustion.

Then, as the German armies advanced deeper
into France, gaps opened between them.

To close up, they moved not to the west as
planned, but to the east of the capital.

The Germans were just 25 miles from Paris.

This at last gave the French the chance to
strike at the exposed German flank.

To fail this time, would be to lose Paris
and the entire war.

Paul Lantier was surprised to see even
taxi cabs, heading for battle.

Inside the cabs, I caught a glimpse of
soldiers sleeping, their heads thrown back.

Wounded?

asked somebody.

No, came the answer from a passing car.

It's the 7th Division from Paris.

They're off to the front.

What followed was the Battle of the Marne.

It lasted six days and involved two
million men.

When it was over, the German advance had
been stopped.

Paris had been saved.

The Schlieffen Plan was in ruins.

A different kind of war began.

Facing modern weapons, soldiers
abandoned their 19th century

tactics of open warfare and
began digging into the earth.

Trenches spread for mile after mile.

Stalemate.

And this is the first
time that the British

are up against the
realities of trench warfare.

And they are absolutely baffled as to why
they have not been able to drive the

Germans back, have not been able to break
through.

This is for them a whole new phenomenon.

400,000 French soldiers had been killed
simply to reach stalemate.

German casualties were just as appalling.

The small British force had been all but
wiped out.

John Lucy had survived, but not his
brother.

I dreamed of him at night.

And once, he appeared to visit me,
laying a hand on each of my shoulders,

telling me he was all right.

I felt relieved after this curious dream.

I was too weary to appreciate my own luck.

My eyes weakened, wandered, and rested on
the half-hidden corpses of men and youths.

Proudly and sorrowfully, I looked at them.

The Macs, and the
Oars, and the hardy Ulster

boys joined together in
death on a foreign field.

My dead Johns.

While the German armies
were pushing into France,

German citizens were
fleeing from their homes.

They were escaping from a new threat.

The Russian army had mobilised more
quickly than expected.

They were invading Germany in support of
France.

Now Germany faced a two-front war.

The Russian army outnumbered the Germans
four to one.

But its troops were not the enormous
threat they appeared to be.

The Russian army is very much the twix and
between.

It's been expanding incredibly rapidly.

And that meant an awful strain on the
infrastructure with far too few officers

and especially far too
few NCOs for what still

to a large extent is
untrained peasantry.

Bravery was not enough to overcome these
problems.

Artillery shells were rationed.

Some soldiers went into battle without
even a rifle.

The Russian commanders,
Pavel Renningkamp and

Alexander Samsonov,
were not on speaking terms.

To bypass a 50-mile chain of lakes, the
Russian generals split their army in two.

It was a mistake.

The Germans moved their forces south,
where they outnumbered and surrounded

Samsonov's army at the Battle of
Tannenberg.

The defeat of the Russian army during the
East Prussian campaign, which in the West

is called the Battle of Tannenberg,
was first and foremost caused by the

incompetence of the Russian commanders who
led the campaign.

They made serious mistakes, which were
exploited by the German commanders,

Hindenberg and Ludendorff.

The German machine guns were deadly.

Mowing down rows of Russians
immediately as they raised

themselves in the potato
fields to fire or to advance.

Colonel Alfred Knox was a British officer
assigned to observe the Russian advance.

Instead, he witnessed the annihilation of
Samsonov's army.

Samsonov said
repeatedly that the disgrace

of such a defeat was
more than he could bear.

The Emperor trusted me.

How can I face him after such a disaster?

He went aside and his staff heard a shot.

They searched for his body without
success.

But all are convinced that he shot
himself.

The Battle of Tannenberg was Germany's
greatest victory of the war.

100,000 Russians were taken prisoner.

30,000 were killed.

As the weapons of war
became more deadly, soldiers

tried out other ways
of defending themselves.

chain-mail visors to protect eyes from
flying shrapnel.

Bulletproof body armour.

Mobile encasements for advancing across
no-man's land.

These ideas provided little protection.

The best soldiers could do was to continue
digging into the earth.

The first thing was, it smelled bad.

It smelled bad because there were open
latrines everywhere.

They weren't always used by the troops.

There were bodies rotting everywhere.

Both the Germans and the British were
troubled with rats.

The rats ate corpses.

Then they came in and snuggled next to you
while you were sleeping.

Sky study becomes one of your few
amusements.

You never see a dear
enemy and the only thing

you can see is the
sky up above, actually.

I have a little wet home in a trench,
where the rainstorms continually drench.

There's a dead cow close
by with her feet in towards

the sky, and she gives
off a terrible stench.

Underneath, in the place of a floor,
there's a massive wet mud and some straw.

But with shells dropping
there, there's no place

to compare with my little
wet home in the trench.

Simply to stay alive, soldiers on both
sides found ways to limit the killing.

The command made it clear that a certain
number of shells had to go over every day

in order to make life miserable for the
enemy.

But okay, you sent
them over at that time of

day when the enemy
would not be having dinner.

You wouldn't fire it at a position where
you were likely to hurt many of the enemy.

You actually hadn't done the enemy a lot
of damage, but then he hadn't done you a

lot of damage, and therefore you would
live to fight another day.

On Christmas Eve 1914, temperatures on the
Western Front dropped below freezing.

In some places, it began snowing,
obscuring the moonlight.

Then, right across the German lines,
lights began to appear.

The British braced themselves for an
attack.

But instead of rifle fire, the sound of
singing drifted across no man's land.

The Germans would be heard singing,
stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.

The British would respond with a British
Christmas carol.

In some places, food was lobbed over into
the opposing trenches.

One or two instances, the Germans erected
Christmas trees.

And there was a kind of mutual curiosity.

Certainly instances of soldiers applauding
each other's singing.

In one or two places, on Christmas Day
itself, the first curious, slightly

headstrong people, perhaps from both
sides, poked their head above the

trenches, and being made aware that
somebody over the other side wasn't going

to shoot it off, then clambered cautiously
out.

Captain Charles Stockwell was one of the
first to take part.

I ran out into the trench and found that
the Saxons were shouting, Don't shoot.

We don't want to fight today.

We will send you some beer.

A German officer appeared and walked out
into the middle of no man's land.

So I moved out to meet him amidst the
cheers of both sides.

We met and formally saluted.

He introduced himself as Count something
or other, and seemed a very decent fellow.

The Christmas truce was the last twitch of
the 19th century.

By that I mean it was
the last public moment

in which it was assumed
that people were nice.

It was the last gesture
that human beings are

getting better the longer
the human race goes on.

December the 26th.

At 8.30, I fired three shots in the air and
put up a flag with Merry Christmas on it.

The Germans put up a sheet with Thank You
on it.

And the German captain appeared on the
parapet.

We both bowed and saluted.

He fired two shots in the air.

And the war was on again.

1914 to 1918 continues here on BBC4 next
Tuesday.

And the BBC's 90 Years of Remembrance
website gives you the opportunity to share

your family members' personal stories on
the BBC Remembrance Wall.

Next tonight, we're off on another railway
walk with Julia Bradbury.

Thank you nor have six speakers on the
fence.

For the most orphans in the Tuesday
evening, conosco is from a parkta gang.