All language subtitles for BBC.The.First.World.War.05of10.Shackled.to.a.Corpse.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.Forum_[eng]

GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

The Eastern Front was the conflict
at the heart of the First World War.

A struggle which devastated the
lives of Eastern Europe's peoples,

as old scores were settled,
new hatreds forged.

A harbinger of the Second World War.

There has never been such
a war as this,

waged with such bestial fury.

This was a racial war,
between Teuton and Slav,

between the Germans and
Austro-Hungarians on one side,

and Russia and her Slav ally,
Serbia, on the other.

Caught between the clashing
giants were Poles,

Ukrainians, Lithuanians,
Croatians, Jews.

Without statehood or voice,
with no means of defence.

It was also a war of alliances
stretched to breaking point.

Germany, hands full
on the Western Front,

looked to Austria-Hungary to bear
the brunt of a Russian attack.

But Austria-Hungary's empire
was crumbling and weak.

Theirs was a partnership with
different agendas, many enemies.

Germany's eastern flank
bordered directly onto Russia,

down what is now Poland.

To Austria-Hungary's south lay
her dreaded enemy, Serbia.

Around them, a ring of neutrals,
as yet undecided which side to join.

Russian troops are blessed
before leaving for the war.

One officer presented his men
with a historic opportunity.

Hey, brothers,
our eternal enemy, Germany,

is trying to enslave Russia,
our country,

which has long suffocated
under Germany's dead weight.

The time has come to
end their Teutonic rule.

Not everyone saw the conflict
in such epic terms.

Russian conscript Vasily Mishnin

left to fight the Germans
filled with dread.

A shiver ran through my whole body.

The third whistle.

Everybody breaks down.

I kiss my Nurya for the last time,
and all my family kiss me.

Nurya shouts,
"Why are you crying, the Vasyusha?

"You said you weren't going to cry."

The challenge to this war

on the backward side
of Europe was logistics.

There were vast distances to cover,
from the Urals to the Alps,

with desperate problems
of communications and supply.

On 17th August 1914,
the Russian 1st Army

seized the initiative
and invaded Germany.

This would be a mobile war, and some
units went in hard from the start.

Russian cavalry officer
Vladimir Littauer

had already crossed the border,
scouting ahead.

We started while it was still dark.

Around seven o'clock in the morning,

our squadron reached the objective
for the day - a large German farm.

The scene on the German side
of the border was frightening.

For miles, farms,
haystacks and barns were burning.

Like every army under the sun,
we looted and destroyed,

and later hated to admit it.

The scope for atrocity was greatest
where places suddenly changed hands.

Where soldiers lived off the land.

Where you weren't sure
who the enemy was.

EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE

Littauer's regiment was fired on

at the village of Santopen
in East Prussia.

The Russians blamed locals
for directing the attack

from the church tower.

Groten completely lost his temper
and shouted,

"They are all spies, shoot them!

MACHINE GUN FIRE

In a moment, they were all dead.

Horror stories spread,

as 12-year-old German Piete Kuhr
recorded in her diary.

Whole columns of East Prussian
refugees came through our town.

Many are crying.

There are mothers with tiny children.

They say Russians tie German women
who stay behind to trees,

set up wooden crosses
in front of them,

and nail their
little children to them.

When the kiddies have died
before their mothers' eyes,

the Russians mutilate the women
and kill them.

The German Army fell back 100 miles.

Two men took over Germany's
defence in the east.

General Paul von Hindenburg,
brought out of retirement,

and General Erich Ludendorff,

poached from the offensive
in the west.

They would, in time, become
more powerful than the Kaiser.

The Germans planned to hit the
Russian 2nd Army in these woods,

near the East Prussian town
of Tannenberg

where, 500 years before,

a Polish army had defeated
a force of Teutons.

The stakes were high, Germany
fighting to defend her native soil.

Julius Boldt's regiment was whisked
from Western to Eastern Front.

After a 60 hour train ride,

a quick march for nearly four hours
straight to the battlefield.

I had my baptism of fire.

Oddly enough,
it left me completely cold.

In a flash I thought of home,
gave one glance to heaven,

and then straight
into the line of fire.

When the injured scream,
your heart clams up.

There's almost nothing
left of this hospitable town.

What's left of the buildings is
either still burning or in ruins.

Charred corpses lie in the streets.

Tannenberg stopped the Russians
in their tracks

and made up for the lack
of German victory in the west.

Hindenburg and Ludendorff were seen
as saviours of the nation,

as schoolgirl Piete wrote.

Paul von Hindenburg
is mighty big and strong.

He has a square head with a moustache
and many wrinkles on his face.

The people here in the east
worship him.

Germany needed heroes.

The battle entered
pan-German mythology -

payback for the Russian invasion,

final revenge
for that ancient defeat.

This massive monument
was completed in 1927,

a rallying symbol
for Germany's ambitious right.

A few years later,

Hindenburg showed Adolf Hitler the
site of Germany's historic triumph.

Today, the monument lies in ruins,

blown up by the Russians
after the Second World War,

last blow in the saga of
Slav-Teuton clashes at Tannenberg.

Poland, January 1915.

The Russians were firmly dug in.

The Germans were now on the
offensive, trying to dislodge them.

The village of Bolimow
in the front line.

The Germans turned to technology

to give them the edge
over the Russians.

Bolimow would be the test bed
for an experimental weapon.

Francis Smolinski, a civilian,
raised the alarm.

I got up, went outside,

and then I saw this something
which looked like smoke.

I ran back home,
shouting, "Fire! Fire!"

Behind the Russian lines,
General Basil Gourko

got snippets of information
that didn't add up.

Hundreds mysteriously killed,

trenches full of corpses
that might not be dead.

Bodies in a state of collapse
with little sign of life

were lying in the wood.

What was the reason
for this unusual occurrence?

Had some of those already buried
in a state of coma

and not dead at all?

From this church tower,

German observers watched the first
major use of chemical warfare ever.

The Germans fired 18,000 tear gas
shells onto the Russians.

The conventional wisdom is that
the wind was blowing the wrong way

and it was too cold
for the gas to work.

The Russians withstood the attack.

But there were victims,
as General Gourko heard,

and Francis Smolinski saw.

They were carried, crowded onto
wagons, some lying on top of others.

Those who could, walked.

Their faces were pale blue.

They had foam at their mouths.

Three months later,
Ypres on the Western Front,

wrongly earned
the morbid distinction

of being the site
for the first gas attack.

Bolimow went unreported,
never investigated.

Meanwhile, Germany's main ally,
Austria-Hungary,

was fighting for survival.

The Russians had invaded

and were now besieging
the fortress city of Przemysl.

If it fell,
so might Hungary herself.

The Russians sat outside for six
months, lobbing shells, waiting.

Inside, 300 Austro-Hungarians a day
were dying of starvation.

Przemysl was a microcosm of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself,

a crucible of ethnic frictions.

Orders of the day had
to be issued in 15 languages.

Austrian patriots cheek by jowl
with Russian sympathisers.

Questions of
race, questions of loyalty,

fears of the enemy within.

There was execution after execution.

The Austrians are hanging people
by the dozen now.

Innocent ones, too.

March, 1915.

Nikolai Myaskovsky
was one of the Russians

preparing for the final assault.

EXPLOSIONS

Instead of the total shoot-out
we expected

there were only a few shots
of shrapnel,

and then we reached
the fort quite easily.

The Austro-Hungarian garrison
had fallen apart.

Przemysl surrendered to the Russians
without a fight.

The first Russian train
crosses the river San.

British Observer Bernard Pares

quickly realised how divided
the Austro-Hungarians were.

The troops,
instead of being all Hungarians,

were of various nationalities.

The conditions of defence
led to brawls,

and in the end open disobedience
of orders.

Austro-Hungarian prisoners
were paraded through Moscow.

A German official said,
referring to Austria-Hungary,

that his country was now
"shackled to a corpse".

Russians bury the German dead
after yet another battle.

While great armies tore
at one another's throats

on the Eastern Front,

a circle of small nations watched,
like vultures.

Waiting to see which side to join.

Forget liberal ideals
and high principles.

The question was,
who would offer them the most?

And who would win this war?

These smaller nations -
Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania -

also had scores to settle,
lands they wanted back.

The price of any alliance
would be high.

Marie, Queen of Romania,
at her post-war coronation.

British-born
as Princess of Edinburgh,

Marie had effectively led Romania

as Britain's loyal ally
in the First World War.

She kneels before her husband,
King Ferdinand.

But behind closed doors
Marie called the shots.

She was instrumental
in brokering the critical deal.

Marie had written to
the Russian Tsar - cousin Nicky -

and to the British King -
cousin George -

putting Romania's entry in the
First World War out to tender.

Being neutral,
I get news from all sides.

Each tries to persuade us
that defeat for them is impossible.

Promises and threats
being dangled over our heads.

The Romanian government,
prodded by Marie,

fixed the price for entry
on the Allied side -

Transylvania,
the Banat, and Bukovina.

She added for George V's benefit...

These geographical explanations
must be Chinese to you,

but the places can be found on a map.

Her Prussian-born husband,
Ferdinand,

rather fancied joining Germany,

but by August 1916 the Allies
agreed Romania's terms in full.

In Rome, Italy's leaders
had already cashed in.

Instead of joining
the Central Powers,

in line with pre-war treaties,
Italy initially declared neutrality.

But in October 1914
Prime Minister Salandra

said Italy must act
for her own national good.

He called this policy
"Sacro Egoismo" -

sacred self-interest.

In practice, it meant joining
the side of the highest bidder.

Few Italians wanted to fight.

But the Allies offered a chunk
of Austria-Hungary,

part of the Dalmatian coast,
and threw in a few islands.

So, without consulting parliament,
Salandra accepted,

landing his people with one of the
harshest fronts in the entire war.

Italy's border with Austria-Hungary

zigzagged for 375 miles
into Europe's highest peaks.

The Austro-Hungarians
had the advantage,

holding the high ground
along the entire front.

It was brutal terrain.

Italian Alpine troops
inch up to the front line.

An officer beats out a rhythm

for men hauling a field gun
up the slope.

In May, 1915,

Italian troops seized the mountain
village of Cortina d'Ampezzo.

In front of them,
the vast Lagazuoi mountain.

By sunrise, the Italians
had climbed its sheer rock face

to a narrow ledge.

They were now fighting
a vertical war.

Above them, the Austro-Hungarians
had fewer men,

but showed a tenacity
they lacked elsewhere.

Austrian Colonel Viktor Schemfil

watched his men
attack the Italians below.

They threw several
hand grenades on the ridge,

which was about
100 metres below them.

Judging by the screams of the wounded

and from the fact that
the machine gun

hasn't fired a single shot all day,
we must have been successful.

But the Italians clung on,
two miles above sea level.

Each side burrowed
into the mountains

and spent the next two years
trying to dislodge the other.

15 men slept in this cave
carved out of the rock.

Both sides worked 24-hour shifts,
digging tunnels,

trying to reach the enemy's position
and blast the mountain under them.

EXPLOSION

Some went mad listening
for the sound of enemy drills.

My nerves are shot to pieces.
I've got to calm down.

I've now been in the front line
four months,

amid constant fear and torment.

Avalanches became
another hazard of war.

Sometimes triggered by shellfire.

Austrian Eugenio Mich
was caught in one

that wiped out nine
barrack huts, killing 272.

I stayed squashed under
the debris of the beds.

For the first quarter of an hour

I could feel 50 or so men
moving around me,

and then, one by one,
they fell silent and died.

Italy's frontier
with Austria-Hungary

levelled out along
the Isonzo river.

Italy's first attack failed,
with heavy loss of life,

but General Luigi Cadorna

bloody-mindedly ordered another,
and another.

Eleven battles in all,
at a cost of 300,000 lives.

They never reached their main
objective, the Port of Trieste.

Giuseppe Cordano served in the
Julian Alps in a trench system

just 15 metres below
the Austrian positions.

Between the two trenches
it's a cataclysm.

The dead are scattered everywhere
half buried,

haversacks, rifles, rags of clothing
and human body parts.

A couple of grenades fall
in the middle of the dyke

where some soldiers are sheltering,

and everything is thrown up
in the air.

Rocks fly and fall
with furious destruction.

Laments and screams for help
can be heard everywhere,

but how can one move?

How can one help them?

I'm astride the crest,
and I carry on, metre by metre,

ducking my head under shrapnel fire.

Ten metres in front of me Zani
from Vicenza is hit in the head,

screams and falls down
the precipice.

I watch his body tumbling down.

He was a good lad.

I keep going,

for ever asking myself
when my time will come.

In the winter of 1914,
Germany's high command

told the Kaiser they'd decided
to launch the major offensive

of 1915 against the Russians.

The Generals ruled out
total victory,

but a decisive blow might force
the Russians to sue for peace.

Germany moved eight divisions
from the Western Front

to the Eastern to try to break
through the Russians at Gorlitse

in the foothills of
the Carpathian mountains.

Now German fought
alongside Austrian.

Austrian Mathias Migschitz
sensed the change of mood.

It sounds wonderful to hear
German troops speaking.

Everyone is sure of victory,
conscious of their might.

You hear no melancholy talk,
no bleak forecasts.

Florence Farmborough, a British
nurse with the Russian Red Cross,

travelled with her camera
along the Eastern Front.

Her nursing team
went by horse cart to Gorlitse.

They had no idea a third
of a million Germans and Austrians

were massing to attack the town.

We have already chosen our hospital.

It is a well-built house,
with several nice, airy rooms.

We are surrounded
by the copy Carpathians.

I love watching them at night,

when the mountains lie
mysteriously quiet and passive.

Then the wounded started to arrive.

They came in their hundreds
from all directions,

some able to walk, others crawling,

dragging themselves along the ground.

As the Germans got near, Florence's
team was ordered to evacuate.

And the wounded?

They shouted to us
when they saw us leaving,

called out to us
in piteous language to stop.

We had to wrench our skirts
from their clinging hands.

Caught by surprise and low
on shells, the Russians retreated.

Infantryman Myaskovsky wrote
to his friend,

the composer Sergei Prokofiev.

My dearest Serezhenka,

We are in a state
of unstoppable, panicked retreat.

Our troops are melting away
like snow.

Only 600-700 survived

out of a 3,000-strong regiment
in one day alone.

The Russian army fled, but not
towards the negotiating table.

They scorched the earth.

Vasily Mishnin retreated through
the village of Dombrovo.

The locals received us well,
but in the evening,

when the Cossacks arrived and began
to drive them out with cruelty,

then there were tears and grief
and cursing of the war.

The Russians were looking
for scapegoats,

and the Jews of Eastern Europe
fitted the bill.

They didn't look Russian,
and their language, Yiddish,

sounded suspiciously like German.

In 1914, there were 4 million Jews
in the Russian Empire.

Battered by pogroms
and denied rights

allowed the Tsar's other minorities,

Jews were forced to live
in specified areas,

known as the Pale of Settlement.

And, even though 650,000 Jews
served in the army,

many Russian officers and men saw
Jews as dirty, half human creatures.

1st April, 1915.

The Russkies make fun of the Jews,

saying they can munch
their matzos for now,

but when Passover's finished
they'll sort them out.

Send them to Siberia.

Helena Yablonska lived at
number 20 Franciszek Street

in the heart of old Przemysl.

A third of the town's
population were Jews.

They'd been safe enough there
under the Austro-Hungarians,

but now Helena watched
the Russians root them out

within days of taking over.

Tuesday, 30th of March.

Jews are treated with no mercy.

They cut the beard and sideburns
off the old rabbi from Bircza

then strapped him to a horse
and dragged him away.

They beat his wife.

Jews are not allowed
to own any shops.

Saturday, 17th April.

The Cossacks waited
until the Jews went off to pray,

then set upon them with whips.

Taking them from synagogues,
streets and doorsteps.

Many hundreds of Jews.

What'll they do with them?

Some of the older, weaker ones,
couldn't keep up and were whipped.

The round-up will go on
until they've caught the lot.

Such lamenting and despair.

Some hide in cellars,
but the Russians will find them.

No-one knows how many Jews
were killed in Eastern Europe

during the First World War.

600,000 were uprooted,
of whom 200,000 never returned home.

After their experiences
under the Russians,

many Jews looked to the Germans
for better treatment.

German officers entered
the main Jewish street of Mlawa,

north of Warsaw.

The Germans tried to win the support
of Jews in Eastern Europe

by promising them liberation
from the Russian yoke.

Meanwhile, the assimilated
Jews of Germany

showed their patriotism
by joining up.

Emma and Fritz Schlesinger see
their friend, Ludwig Bornstein,

off to the front - one of 100,000
Jews who fought for the Kaiser.

German-Jewish soldiers
mark Hanukkah,

the Festival of lights, in 1916.

12,000 were killed in the war.

Nearly 30,000 received decorations.

But, while Jews were tolerated
within the German army,

many soldiers despised them.

Ernst Nopper passed
columns of refugees,

forced out of their homes by
the Russians, and now returning.

I couldn't bear to watch as
a Polish family struggled on foot,

while the entire lazy Jewish
population travelled on carts.

I hold a Jew off and gave
his arse a good kicking,

before making the three Poles
with all their baggage

climb up onto the cart.

I let everyone know that
I would have all the Jews shot

if they didn't let the Poles
continue on their journey.

The breakthrough continued
through the summer.

This was the greatest victory of the
Central Powers in the war,

seizing present-day Poland,
Lithuania,

parts of Belarus and the Ukraine.

As the Germans advanced,
they entered a world half destroyed.

German troops convert
Russian railway lines

to the narrower German gauge.

Rebuilding the communication
system became a key task,

rich in symbolic meaning.

Germany aimed to recast Poland
as an independent state,

but under her wing.

Advancing troops saw themselves

as bringing civilising order
and discipline.

That which seemed for ever lost

was created anew by the German
battalions of Kultur

the German spirit blows
through the poor land

and new life rises up
out of the ruins.

But that's not how it worked out,
however keen the Germans were

to present a caring image
to their newsreel audiences.

American woman Laura de Turczynowicz
lived in the occupied town

of Suwalki,
near the Lithuanian border.

To her, the rebuilt
railways and roads

weren't bridges between cultures.

They were Germany's means
of whipping war booty back home.

Furniture was carted daily
to East Prussia.

The woods were cut down,
every agricultural implement taken,

every woman outraged.

All Poland was to be emptied
and carted away,

beaten into the bargain, and made
to pay such terrible contributions.

Faced with a chronic labour shortage

and with little love
for Slav or Russian,

the German Army began transporting
men to the west for forced labour.

The American Red Cross
distributes food aid

to starving Polish peasants.

Reluctance to feed
conquered populations,

the German Army became increasingly
obsessed with cataloguing them.

Everyone over ten
was to be documented,

and nearly 2 million
photo passes were pursued.

The Germans also began to view
the East as a place of disease

and started large-scale
disinfecting programs.

On 17th October 1915 the
German field medical commander

ordered all railway crossings
on the eastern border be sealed off.

Everyone crossing the frontier
had to be deloused

before setting foot on German soil.

Winter 1915.

The racial war of Teutonic
versus Slav neared its peak.

German and Austro-Hungarian forces
moved south to destroy Serbia.

This would win control
of the Balkans,

final revenge for the assassination
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

And they had a new ally -

Bulgaria, tempted by
Germany's military muscle

and certain this
was the winning side.

The bait dangled before
Bulgarian leader Ferdinand

was the promise of
vast swathes of Serbia.

Born in Vienna, Ferdinand had few
sympathies for his Slav neighbours.

The purpose of my life
is the destruction of Serbia.

On 6th October 1915

a joint German Austro-Hungarian
force invaded Serbia,

taking the capital in just two days.

The Bulgarian Army then
entered from the south-east.

The Serbs' only way out
of their country was into Albania,

but that lay across
treacherous mountain ranges.

As their enemies claws
closed around them

the Serbian Army slipped away,

and the people fled with them.

Serbian photographer
Rista Marjanovic

documented his nation's exodus.

One of the refugees was
12-year-old Katarina Costic.

We spent the nights in the open
beside a fire,

which would scorch one side
of your body while the other froze.

One morning, a woman refugee woke up
and happily announced

that she'd had something soft
beneath her head that night.

To our horror, the soft thing
turned out to be a human corpse.

One soldier threw away his rifle

to carry an old woman
who had collapsed.

She gestured towards the sound
of the enemy closing in

and handed him back his weapon.

They halted here, on the
Field of Blackbirds, in Kosovo.

The Serb nation drew breath

while its leaders met
in the town of Prizren.

The choices were grim.

Battle it out, surrender,

or survive to fight another day.

Journalist Gordon Gordon-Smith
watched the debate

inside the town seminary.

The final councils
did not last long.

On November 24th the
supreme resolution was taken.

The King, army and Government
would refuse to treat with the enemy

and would leave for Albania.

Hundreds of thousands
of troops and civilians

set off into the mountains.

Their plan - to reach the
Mediterranean and sail to safety.

This epic retreat shaped modern
Serbian self perception,

taking its place
in national myth

alongside the 1389
defeat by the Turks

on the same Field of Blackbirds.

Still an open wind today.

A Serbian film,
directed by a veteran of the march,

reconstructed its agony.

The further we went,
the worse it got.

You didn't hear the usual -

men swearing,
officers yelling orders.

This huge funeral possession

of the state of Serbia
endured the pain in silence.

Who tramped behind me? Who in front?

Where was my company?

All too soon, we fell apart.

Now it was every man for himself.

We staggered up mountains then
clambered down,

avoiding quagmires from which
the hands reached out

of poor people who'd got stuck.

We stumbled, running out of
strength, but could not turn back.

We had to move on.

The survivors gathered
on the island of Corfu.

Exhaustion, starvation and disease
continued to take their toll.

Half the army, over 200,000 men,
had died on the march.

No-one knows how many civilians.

But Serbia's death rate was
the highest of the First World War.

There was no question
who was winning the titanic struggle

of Teuton versus Slav.

The Central Powers were now
the masters of the Eastern Front.

Columns of Russian prisoners
became a familiar sight.

The street was full of them,
thousands,

driven along like dogs, taunted,
beaten if they fell down,

kicked until they either
got up or lay still for ever.

Kaiser Wilhelm even suggested that
90,000 Russian prisoners

be driven on to a barren peninsula
along the Baltic shore

and starved to death.

The German and Austro-Hungarian
high commands meet in the Tyrol.

But behind the mutual
congratulation,

the partnership
is rotten to the core.

Practising his handshake,
Archduke Frederick,

the Austrian Commander in Chief,

waits to meet one of
the world's most powerful men -

the German Kaiser.

War has exposed their differences,
not bound them closer.

Germany thought the
Austro-Hungarian Empire a shambles.

She wondered whether to take
the whole lot into the German Reich.

Austria-Hungary found Germany
arrogant and domineering.

The Austrian Chief of Staff,
on the left,

called the Germans
"our secret enemies".

In time, the Austrians
would even send

secret peace feelers to the Allies.

But they could never
break away from Germany.

It was alliances on both sides
that would keep the war going.

In the next episode
of the First World War,

the horrors of Verdun and the Somme,

as both sides try to break
the deadlock on the Western Front.