All language subtitles for 1964-The Great War(BBC)-EP05-This Business may last a Long Time-E

The pendulum of war had come to rest.

The armies halted.

Around the campfires, men were too weary
to talk much, but they could wonder.

Which way would they march tomorrow?

For 15 days, the Allies had been in
constant retreat.

For 15 days, the great weight
of the German armies had

pressed steadily down towards
Paris and the heart of France.

By September 5th, they were less than 20
miles from the capital.

Would Paris fall?

Hope waned, and time was running out.

Yet one man preserved his hope and made
his will prevail.

At the headquarters of the
Allied armies, General Joffe

perceived that a significant
change had taken place.

The situation was impressive.

Our front formed the arc of a vast circle
enveloping the enemy.

Thus, our 5th Army was now in a position
to make a frontal attack against the enemy

columns crossing the Marne, while the
British army and the mobile troops of the

Paris garrison were well
placed to attack in flank the

German forces which had
diverged from the direction of Paris.

This was the moment of decision, the
moment that Joffe had been waiting for.

Now hundreds of thousands of tired,
despondent men must be halted,

turned about, and thrown against the
enemy.

From Verdun to the Marne, Joffe ordered
his right wing to hold firm.

The German 2nd Army was marching
southward, at some distance from the 1st.

The French 6th Army would strike in from
the west.

As von Cluck turned to meet
this threat, the French 5th Army

and the BEF could march
upon the gap in the German line.

One thing was essential.

The BEF must march.

Once again, Joffe
visited Sir John French to

explain his plan and
plead for British aid.

And finally, clasping his two hands in
front himself, he turned to Sir John

French and said, Monsieur le Maréchal,
c'est la France qui vous supplie.

Field Marshal, it is France which is
begging you.

It was so moving, that Sir John French,
who was awfully British, very unemote of

himself, was so moved, that he chuckled
with the French language once more.

He couldn't get anything out.

And turning to somebody, he said,
Tell him that anything that men can do,

our men will do.

We will attack tomorrow.

The word began to
filter down the line that

we were on the move
in the reverse direction.

At first, we found it difficult to
believe.

But sure enough, we soon
found ourselves recrossing

the mount and we were
on the advance again.

The revulsion of feeling is impossible to
describe.

We have, from being tired, worn out,
demoralised creatures, we became what we

intended to be trained soldiers with the
enemy in view, and off we went.

The happiest day of my
life, we marched towards

the rising sun, wrote
a British officer.

It was September the 6th, 1914.

General Geoff issued an order of the day
to his armies.

The moment has passed for looking to the
rear.

All our efforts must be directed to
attacking and driving back the enemy.

Groups who can advance no further must at
any price hold on to the ground they have

conquered and die on the spot rather than
give way.

Under the circumstances which face us,
no act of weakness can be tolerated.

Slowly, the pendulum started its
counter-swing.

The Germans resisted strongly.

North of Paris, General
Monnery's army was

heavily counter-attacked
and in danger of defeat.

General Galliani, military
governor of Paris, rushed

forward reinforcements in
taxi cabs, the taxis of the Marne.

The men they carried just sufficed to
prevent a collapse.

But the centre was the vital area.

Here, the French 5th Army and the BEF
thrust forward into the widening gap

between the armies of von Kluck and von
Bülow.

Reluctantly at first, but each day,
more certainly, the Germans gave way.

On September the 11th, Joffe
telegraphed to the Minister of

War, The Battle of the Marne
is an incontestable victory for us.

And now, as the Allies reaped
the rewards of victory, new

hope surged up in men who
had faced the abjectness of defeat.

Could the Germans be
hustled back to the frontier, out

of the rich provinces of
France which they had overrun?

Could the Allies stage
a swift and shattering

pursuit, back to the Rhine
in three weeks, perhaps?

Optimism spread its wings.

General Sir Henry Wilson compared notes
with an officer of Joffe's staff.

Miettelow asked me when I thought we
should cross into Germany.

And I replied that unless
we made some serious

blunder, we ought to be
at Elsenborn in four weeks.

He thought three weeks.

Vitesse, vitesse, urged General Foch.

En avance, soldats, pour la France,
cried General Franchet d'Espere.

But General Haig, commanding the British
First Corps, remarked, I thought our

movements very slow today in view of the
fact that the enemy is on the run.

The movements were too slow.

Broken bridges, tiredness, over-caution,
brave fighting by German rearguards,

all combined to slow the Allied advance.

On September the 13th, Haig's corps
reached the river Aisne and pushed up

along the wooded spurs of the Chemin des
Dames ridge.

The ladies rode, running along the heights
beside the river from Soissons.

They were just two hours too late.

A German army corps, released by the fall
of Mauburge, marched 40 miles in 24 hours,

with a quarter of its infantry
falling out on the way, and

arrived in the nick of time
to block the British advance.

The Germans dug in hastily along the
Chemin des Dames ridge.

The British were unable to dislodge them
and dug in also.

The French did the same in their turn.

The beginnings of trench warfare were now
seen.

On September the 16th, Joff told his army
commanders, It seems as if the enemy is

once more going to accept battle in
prepared positions north of the Aisne.

In consequence, it is no longer a question
of pursuit, but of methodical attack.

Every attack was halted.

The Germans counter-attacked to throw the
Allies into the Aisne.

They also failed.

Losses mounted on both sides.

At the end of the month, General Haig
said, In front of this corps, and for many

miles on either side,
affairs have reached a

deadlock, and no decision
seems possible in this area.

Joff had already reached this conclusion.

So had the German high command.

Simultaneously, Allies and Germans moved
against each other's flanks.

So the war, which had burned its way
southward so swiftly, rolled back

northward like a forest fire under a
changing wind.

The flames fared upon new countrysides,
Picardie, Artois, Flanders.

This was the race to the sea.

All through these days of frustration on
the Aisne, by railway, on horseback,

on foot, thousands by bicycle.

The soldiers of both sides were on the
move.

Populations which had hoped to be spared
were driven before the storm.

And in the north, the thunder of great
guns was heard again.

On September the 28th,
the Germans began a

violent bombardment of
the outer forts of Antwerp.

The king of the Belgians,
with his army and his

government, had taken
refuge in this great port.

Antwerp was heavily
defended by rings of powerful

forts, with some 150,000
Belgian soldiers inside them.

On October the 1st, the
London Times said, We do not

think that there is any need
to worry about Antwerp.

But the next day, the
British government heard that

the Belgian army was
proposing to abandon the city.

The news, says Sir Winston Churchill, seemed
not only terrible, but incomprehensible.

Churchill himself sped across the sea.

He promised the Belgians Allied support
and persuaded them to wait.

Naval armoured cars came up the coast from
Ostend, and troops of the newly formed 7th

Division, using any sort of transport they
could find.

Then at Antwerp itself, Royal Marines of
the Naval Division landed.

They went into the line at once and were
soon under bombardment.

Some shrapnel, a few high explosives,
and then high in the sky, a train-like

rumble and whistle, ending with an
explosion in the city of Antwerp,

smoke and flames.

An old hand said, Them's out, Sir
Schell's.

The bastards must be 12 miles away.

At intervals all day,
these train-like shells

came over and burst
in the city of Antwerp.

Late in the afternoon, the oil tanks by
the dockside were hit.

We sat, watched, waited, felt hopeless and
useless.

For three days, the unequal struggle went
on.

But the Allies had nothing
to match the heavy German

howitzers which had already
battered down Liège and Namur.

On October the 7th, the inevitable end was
in sight.

The Belgian government
left for Ostend, and the

field army began its
withdrawal down the coast.

With them, once more, went the pitiful
refugees, escaping as best they could,

by any route they could,
from the German invaders,

whose cruel reputation
had gone before them.

The future of Belgium was all in shadows
now.

On October the 9th, the Germans entered
Antwerp.

Now the flames of war
licked down the coast to

join the great blaze of
battle from the south.

The Belgian army fell
back to Dixmude, where it

joined a magnificent
detachment of French marines.

And division by division, the British
expeditionary force, transported from the

Aisne, was coming into action,
near the old Flemish market town of Ypres.

Their arrival filled the
last remaining gap in

a line of battle from
the sea to Switzerland.

It was the final act of the war of
movement.

At Ypres, the last great
encounter battle of the Western

Front opened with glittering
promise for both sides.

General Foch was now in charge of all the
Allied forces in the north.

He was quite clear about what he had to
do.

The question was, would we have the time
and did we possess the means of effecting

a breakthrough before the
enemy could complete defensive

measures against which we
would be more or less impotent?

This was the effort we were about to make.

It was an attempt to exploit the last
vestige of our victory on the Marne.

The Germans now had a new commander.

Von Moltke had failed
and now Erich von

Falkenhayn had replaced
him as chief of staff.

He too was clear about his task.

The Allied threat to the German right wing
must be eliminated.

If this at least was not done,
then the drastic action against England

and her sea traffic with submarines,
aeroplanes, and airships, which was being

prepared as a reply to England's war of
starvation, was impossible.

It was also questionable
whether the occupied territory

in northern France and
western Belgium could be held.

The prize, concluded Falkenhayn,
was worth the stake.

For both sides, the stake at Ypres
consisted of everything they had.

The sustained intensity of this battle was
something new.

Crisis after crisis flared along the line.

In the north, the Belgians were
hard-pressed, defending the last few

square miles of their native soil from the
invader.

They took a terrible decision to open the
sluice gates of the river Isère and let in

the sea over land which had been reclaimed
by the labour of centuries.

A French officer watched the result.

Little by little, the soil became spongy
and the ditches began to fill.

On the 29th, we could see the water rise
but it was only on the 31st that we had

the impression of an entirely different
landscape.

Over this new landscape, veiled by a
steady mist, settled a death-like silence.

The Germans too were willing to mortgage
their future.

They flung into the battle
divisions of young student

volunteers, wildly enthusiastic
but only half-trained.

They were moaned down by the fire of the
British regulars.

The Germans called their fate the
slaughter of the innocents.

Veteran units also suffered heavy losses.

We ran approximately 100 yards when we
came under a machine gun fire which was so

terrific that the losses
were so staggering that

we got orders to lie
down and to seek shelter.

Nobody dared to lift the
set because the very moment

the machine gunners saw
any movement, they let fly.

and then the British artillery opened up
and the corpses and the heads and the arms

and the legs flew about and we were cut to
pieces.

The British expeditionary force
pounded by the German guns

was also cut to pieces and
these men were irreplaceable.

They were Britain's only trained troops.

By the time the battle was over the old
British army was gone past recall.

Its losses in this battle totaled nearly
60,000.

Already before it ended the consequences
were seen.

The territorials made their appearance.

The London Scottish were the first
territorial infantry to enter the fight.

They lost 60% of their numbers in their
first battle.

Beside them on October the 29th arrived
the first units of the Indian Corps.

The citizen army and the empire were
already having to replace the regulars.

Regulars, territorials, Indians,
French, Belgians.

The French outnumbered all the rest.

Together they beat off all the German
attacks.

Their own attacks failed also.

Captain Rudolf Binding of the German
Dragoons wrote in a letter, The war has

got stuck into a gigantic siege on both
sides.

The whole front is one endless fortified
trench.

Neither side has the force to make a
decisive push.

On November the 2nd he was even gloomier.

Everyone is getting ready for a winter
campaign.

As far as I can judge there is no
possibility of an early finish.

The thought grew upon him with all its
cheerless implications.

November the 8th... We are still
stuck here for perfectly good reasons.

One might as well say for perfectly bad
reasons.

By the middle of November his mind was
made up.

This business may last for a long time.

The impossible was now a fact.

A battle line which stretched across a
continent.

There were no flanks to turn only the
curves and convolutions of the rough

trenches in which the million strong
armies crouched and waited.

Nothing like it had ever been seen before.

All the plans had gone awry.

All the careful preparation of Germany all
the brave improvisation of the Allies all

the heroism of the soldiers had produced
stalemate.

Stalemate was universal.

In Serbia where the war began the same
incredible spectacle was seen.

On August the 12th the Austrians entered
Serbia on what they took to be a short

punitive campaign which would swiftly bring
down this upstart Slav kingdom to the dust.

To the world's astonishment the Austrian
invasion was at once repelled.

The Serbs fought with passionate fury
against their overwhelming neighbours.

But all the weight of numbers was on
Austria's side.

And after an interval the Austrians
returned in strength and with more caution.

this time it seemed that they must win.

On December the 2nd they entered Belgrade
for the second time.

Easy enough Belgrade was right on the
border.

But once again the Serbs made a remarkable
rally.

By the 15th the Austrians
were out of Belgrade

again and Serbia was
cleared of the invaders.

The campaign had been brutal and bloody.

the Austrians lost 227,000 men more than
half the numbers of their invading forces.

This was a war of Austria's making but
Austria was out of luck.

The great bulk of the Austrian armies
marched to meet the Russians marched with

enthusiasm believing in the strength of
their German allies.

Less than 50% of these men were Austrians
and Hungarians.

The rest mostly Slavs had little desire to
fight for the Habsburg Empire.

many of these soldiers knew no more German
than the 80 basic army words of command.

Yet the German victory of Tannenberg in
August lent the Austrians hope.

Their commander-in-chief, Field Marshal
Conrad von Hertzendorf, had visions of a

Tannenberg of his own against the Russian
southern group of armies.

On September the 6th, the
main bodies of the Russians

and Austrians met around
the town of Lemberg.

There was bitter fighting.

On September the 11th, the day on which
Joffe renounced his victory on the Marne,

Conrad had accepted defeat.

His casualties were enormous and included
over a hundred thousand prisoners.

The Austrians began a withdrawal which
carried them back back over two hundred miles.

A lasting blow had been struck at Austrian
morale.

German staff officers cruelly summed it up
in the saying we are fettered to a corpse.

The Germans had reason for bitterness.

This Austrian disaster had
gravely affected their own plans

and prospects which had
been so bright after Tannenberg.

Now, as the Russians advanced to the
Carpathian mountains, the Germans had to

turn from their own offensives to meet the
threat.

Their attack on Warsaw came to nothing.

In East Prussia, the Russians were even
able to mount a new invasion.

At the root of all problems in this vast
fighting area was communication.

General Ludendorff wrote, We had great
trouble in getting the railway lines,

which we had ourselves previously completely
destroyed, into working order again.

We worked now with might and main to
restore them.

But considerable time elapsed before the
railway communications were really in order.

The Russian winter arrived, halting all
the armies in their tracks.

Germans, Austrians, Austrians,
Russians.

They burrowed holes for shelter, struggled
to keep warm and waited for better times.

Ludendorff said, The 1914
campaign had not brought a decision

and I could not see how one
was to be reached in 1915.

In the East as in the West, it was
stalemate.

This too was going to be a long business.

As the weeks slid into months and the
months drew towards the ending of the

year, shocked nations recognized that this
war would not be over by Christmas.

In France, tight censorship
concealed the full

truth of what had happened
since the 3rd of August.

But in hundreds of thousands
of homes, nothing could

conceal the loss of a
husband, a brother, or a son.

995,000 Frenchmen were killed,
wounded, or missing in 1914.

Russia's losses had been even greater than
the French.

And with them, disturbing signs of
internal rottenness had appeared.

The Russian soldiers had displayed
unbelievable devotion, patience, and tenacity.

Too often, their courage was brought to
nothing by blunders, corruption,

and heartbreaking shortages.

Yet, at the end of the year, the Tsar's
illusions lingered on.

My dear army, I've
already given such proofs

of valour that victory
can't fail us now.

We must dictate the peace,
and I am determined to

continue the war until the
central powers are destroyed.

no congress or mediation from me.

Britain and Germany settled to their
business with implacable wrath.

The novelist H.G.

Wells voiced their ardour.

Nobody wants to be a non-competent in a
war of this sort.

The desire to serve, to join in the fight,
possessed the British people in odd ways.

A Times reporter wrote in his diary.

People seem to be enveloped
in a mysterious darkness,

haunted by goblins in the
form of desperate German spies.

The wildest stories are being circulated of
outrages committed by Germans in our midst.

Fear of spies and fear of invasion
produced hysteria, which turned venomously

against Germans and
Austrians living in Britain,

or against their
suspected sympathizers.

The first casualty was Lord
Haldane, the man who had

created the Expeditionary
Force and the Territorial Army.

Haldane was accused in the newspapers of
being secretly pro-German.

It was even said that this lifelong
bachelor had a German wife.

He recalled, I was threatened
with assault in the street,

and I was on occasions in
some danger of being shot at.

This violence turned in other directions
also.

In the east end of London, German shops
were attacked and looted.

Driven by popular pressure, the government
unwillingly rounded up aliens in Britain.

The historian F.S.

Oliver recorded, One of my
friends has given away her

Dachshunds, lest they should
lead her to be suspected of spying.

In October, the agitation reached its
climax with a campaign against the first

sea lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg,
who, with Winston Churchill, had been

responsible for the concentration of the
Grand Fleet before war even broke out.

The journal John Bull wrote, Blood is said
to be thicker than water, and we doubt

whether all the water in the North Sea
could obliterate the blood ties between

the Battenbergs and the Hohenzollerns
when it comes to a question

of a life-and-death struggle
between Germany and ourselves.

On October 30th, Prince Louis resigned.

But all these preoccupations
were very remote

from the urgent needs of
the Expeditionary Force.

On August 7th, the Prime
Minister requested Parliament

to sanction an increase of
the army by 500,000 men.

The response was immediate and impressive.

War had been declared, and the following
Sunday I went with a friend of mine into

Shepherd's Bush Empire to see the picture
show there, and at the end of the show

they showed the fleet sailing
the high seas and played

Britain's Never Shall Be
Slaves and Hearts of Oak.

And you know one feels
that little shiver run up

their back and you know
you've got to do something.

I was just turned 17 at the time,
and on the Monday I went up to Whitehall.

New Old Scotland Yard and had enlisted.

By September the 5th, the
Prime Minister announced that

between 250,000 and 300,000
men had joined Kitchener's army.

Two days later, the figure was corrected.

It was 439,000.

The patriotic fires burned high.

A letter to the Times cried
out... Reform Club, Pell-Mell.

Sir, yesterday afternoon, while Lord
Kitchener was telling of the bravery of

our wounded and dead, while he was asking
for men to take their places, every lawn

tennis court in the space
near me was crowded

by strapping young
Englishmen and girls.

Is there no way way of shaming these
laggards?

The English girl who will not know the
man, lover, brother, friend, that cannot

show an overwhelming reason
for not taking up arms, that

girl will do her duty and will
give good help to her country.

54 million posters were issued,
8 million personal letters were sent,

12,000 meetings were
held, 20,000 speeches

were delivered by
servicemen or ex-servicemen.

By the end of 1914, 1,186,337 men had
enlisted.

And this was not all.

Canada's position had been made clear long
before the war.

In 1910, her prime minister said,
When Britain is at war, Canada is at war.

There is no distinction.

Canadian government
offered a contingent of 25,000,

but over 40,000 men came
forward in less than a month.

Their chronicler, Lord
Beaverbrook, wrote,

No mere jackbooted
militarism inspired them.

They sought neither the
glory of conquest nor the

rape of freedom nor
the loot of sacked cities.

They came forward free men and
unconstrained with a simple resolve to lay

down their lives if need be in defence of
the empire.

Their empire too.

As with Canada, so with Australia.

On August the 3rd, the
Australian treasurer said, if

Britain goes to her
Armageddon, we will go with her.

Our fate and hers, for good or ill,
are as woven threads.

Australia offered her navy and a
contingent of 20,000.

New Zealand also offered
her navy and 8,000 men,

a higher proportion
than any other dominion.

South Africa joined in.

Men came from all the colonies.

The martial races of India gathered at the
summons of the drum.

The empire was at war.

This was something that Germany had not
catered for.

The Swedish explorer,
Sven Hedin, visiting Germany

in October, spoke for
her outraged feelings.

The two western powers of the
Entente bear the responsibility

for having caused the dance of
death to involve the whole globe.

Canadians come in their ships from
America, Turcos and Seneca-lise Negroes

from Africa, and poor
Hindus and Gurkhas, bronzed

by the sun of India, lie
freezing in the trenches.

And lastly, Australia and New Zealand are
sending their contingents.

And what is the purpose of such a
worldwide levy of warriors?

Why?

Germanic culture is to be uprooted from
the earth.

Victorious, yet
thwarted of total victory,

Germany set her teeth
and hardened her will.

At the end of October, the president of
the National Bank in Berlin told the

correspondent of the New York Sun,
It is a fight between England and Germany.

to the bitter end, to the last German,
if need be.

England has wanted it, so let it be.

We want no quarter from England.

We shall give none.

Now it is death, destruction, and annihilation
for one or other of the two nations.

Tell your American people that.

And say the words do not
come from a fanatic, but from a

quiet businessman who
knows the feelings of his people.

Tell America not to be misled by peace
talk.

There is not going to be any peace.

This will be a long war.

In an ugly mood, the nation settled down
to fight it out.

In the crude trenches, men dug for shelter
as deep as they dared.

They learned to suffer the companionship
of mud.

the manhood of Europe discovered a new way
of life, with death never far away.

They were surprised to find that Christmas
had overtaken them.

British soldiers listened
with wonder as the carol

Heilige Nacht arose
from the German trenches.

Here and there they saw Christmas trees go
up.

The next day it was
just the sort of day for

peace to be declared,
said one British officer.

Suddenly, without a word,
British and German soldiers got

out of their trenches and began
to walk towards each other.

The whole of no man's land, as far as we
could see, was grey and khaki.

There they were smoking and talking,
shaking hands, exchanging names and

addresses after the war to write to one
another.

The British soldiers showed the Germans
the handsome brass gift boxes which they'd

received from Princess Mary, each
containing tobacco and cigarettes.

The Germans had pipes
embossed with the head of the

crown prince, little willy
of the English cartoons.

When the Germans
started to bury some of their

frozen dead, the British
had another shock.

The inscriptions on the crosses.

They would put the Germans for Vaterland
und Freiheit.

For fatherland and freedom.

And I said to a German, excuse me,
but how can you be fighting for freedom?

You started the war and we are fighting
for freedom.

And he said, excuse me, English comrade,
camarade, but we are fighting for freedom,

for our country.

And I say you also put here rest in God,
an unbecanter, held.

Here rest in God, an unknown hero,
in God.

Oh yes, God is on our side, but I said
he's on our side.

Well, English comrade, do not let us
quarrel on Christmas day.