1 00:00:02,920 --> 00:00:08,740 now countries with no reason to join the war but promises of plunder came in for 2 00:00:08,740 --> 00:00:14,340 some the gains would come and cheaply for most it would be a valueless meat 3 00:00:14,340 --> 00:00:20,000 grinder the nations that came in later came in 4 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:26,080 chiefly for what they could get out of it japan italy bulgaria whatever 5 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:32,880 The German overseas empire was the first casualty of the war. The Japanese came 6 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:35,740 in and picked up their Asian possessions. 7 00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:39,060 The British picked up their African possessions. 8 00:00:39,440 --> 00:00:42,980 So the German empire abroad ceased to exist in 1950. 9 00:00:44,900 --> 00:00:49,020 Italy had come in for a grab bag of promises of a handful of small 10 00:00:49,020 --> 00:00:51,900 territories in the Adriatic and the Aegean seas. 11 00:00:55,120 --> 00:00:57,300 The cost would be calamitous. 12 00:00:57,850 --> 00:01:02,910 as Italy's armies hurled themselves throughout the war into broken 13 00:01:02,910 --> 00:01:05,670 offensives against well-defended mountain crags. 14 00:01:10,470 --> 00:01:13,550 The Balkans chose sides frenetically. 15 00:01:14,030 --> 00:01:18,670 The Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Montenegrins, and later the Romanians 16 00:01:18,670 --> 00:01:19,670 joined the Allies. 17 00:01:20,070 --> 00:01:22,970 Bulgaria went with the Turks and Central Powers. 18 00:01:23,290 --> 00:01:26,030 Portugal and Brazil contributed corpses. 19 00:01:28,140 --> 00:01:32,960 Britain and France's attempt to aid Serbia from the south by landing at the 20 00:01:32,960 --> 00:01:38,620 Greek port of Salonika stalemated 600,000 men so utterly that laughing 21 00:01:38,620 --> 00:01:44,000 Germans called it the Allies' largest concentration camp. With the armies at a 22 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:47,280 standstill, the navies had come forward to widen the misery. 23 00:01:47,680 --> 00:01:52,740 The Royal Navy expanded the sea blockade of any militarily useful shipments to 24 00:01:52,740 --> 00:01:56,080 Germany to include grain, flour, and other foodstuffs. 25 00:01:57,360 --> 00:02:02,320 This blockade was so effective in cutting off maritime supplies to Germany 26 00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:06,560 and to the other Central European nations that Germany was soon reduced to 27 00:02:06,560 --> 00:02:08,080 a near starvation level. 28 00:02:17,580 --> 00:02:22,880 The furious Germans casting about for a weapon of retaliation seized upon their 29 00:02:22,880 --> 00:02:24,260 growing submarine fleet. 30 00:02:24,940 --> 00:02:29,320 Germany threatened to sink any ship in the British Isles' combat zone without 31 00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:30,320 warning. 32 00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:36,400 Shortly, all neutral shipping was being blockaded out of both countries. 33 00:02:36,660 --> 00:02:38,640 Ships went down briskly. 34 00:02:40,880 --> 00:02:46,160 Britain was actually more vulnerable at sea than the Germans were. Britain 35 00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:51,540 imported 64% of her foodstuffs when the war started, Germany only 25%. 36 00:02:53,160 --> 00:03:00,020 The British blockade forced the use of the submarine as a commerce raider. But 37 00:03:00,020 --> 00:03:01,480 it was a new kind of weapon. 38 00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:08,500 Its character, its weakness, its relative vulnerability on the surface 39 00:03:08,500 --> 00:03:13,920 required that it attack without warning if resistance was offered. 40 00:03:15,240 --> 00:03:20,440 a peaceful prosperous united states with a heavy german immigrant population had 41 00:03:20,440 --> 00:03:26,380 grumped about unsportsmanlike conduct neutrality and the loss of markets but 42 00:03:26,380 --> 00:03:31,580 followed the aloof lead of president wilson a plague on all of troublesome 43 00:03:31,580 --> 00:03:32,580 europe 44 00:03:39,120 --> 00:03:43,740 When the Cunard liner Lusitania sailed from New York in the face of printed 45 00:03:43,740 --> 00:03:48,620 warnings from Germany, with a passenger register that included a heavy list of 46 00:03:48,620 --> 00:03:53,360 American celebrities, the outcome of the Great War swung fatally. 47 00:03:55,420 --> 00:04:00,660 On a clear May 1st, in sight of the coast of Ireland, Walter Schweiger, 48 00:04:00,780 --> 00:04:06,260 commanding the German submarine U-20, prepared to sink his country along with 49 00:04:06,260 --> 00:04:07,260 a speeding liner. 50 00:04:07,870 --> 00:04:12,590 Schwager's torpedoes slammed into the Lusitania and she went down in 18 51 00:04:12,590 --> 00:04:19,390 minutes. 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, drowned. 52 00:04:27,190 --> 00:04:32,530 After that, there was never a doubt that the United States would fight this war. 53 00:04:34,280 --> 00:04:38,120 The righteous rage of the United States would never be assuaged. 54 00:04:38,600 --> 00:04:44,340 Germany sprayed gasoline on rising flames by refusing to apologize or pay 55 00:04:44,340 --> 00:04:48,780 compensation and lionized Schweiger in its national press. 56 00:04:49,700 --> 00:04:54,500 President Wilson's attempt at a calming statement that there is such a thing as 57 00:04:54,500 --> 00:04:57,340 a man being too proud to fight backfired. 58 00:04:57,660 --> 00:05:01,400 He was scorned as craven for wanting to protect his people. 59 00:05:01,820 --> 00:05:05,280 from the ever newer horrors that had been appearing on the Western Front. 60 00:05:06,920 --> 00:05:11,800 In front of Ypres, with a soft breeze blowing toward the French lines on a day 61 00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:16,500 of golden sunshine, colonial troops described two greenish-yellow clouds 62 00:05:16,500 --> 00:05:21,460 drifting toward them over five miles of front as mists seen over water meadows 63 00:05:21,460 --> 00:05:22,780 on a frosty night. 64 00:05:24,320 --> 00:05:28,340 In 15 minutes, 5,000 men met slow death. 65 00:05:28,920 --> 00:05:33,820 10,000 were maimed and utter panic took hold as the heavier-than-air chlorine 66 00:05:33,820 --> 00:05:35,620 gas dropped into the trenches. 67 00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:45,340 Even the Germans were astonished at the devastation and not prepared to exploit 68 00:05:45,340 --> 00:05:48,140 the 4.5-mile gap opened in the line. 69 00:05:48,580 --> 00:05:53,360 With the surprise of the terror weapon lost, poison gas became just one more 70 00:05:53,360 --> 00:05:54,360 deadly artifact. 71 00:05:54,970 --> 00:06:00,290 with gas barrages, fired by artillery and released by gas cylinders, a new 72 00:06:00,290 --> 00:06:01,290 constant. 73 00:06:02,490 --> 00:06:07,330 Phosgene and mustard gases joined chlorine in the death brigade, and whole 74 00:06:07,330 --> 00:06:11,570 companies of soldiers, blinded and asphyxiating pitifully with ruined 75 00:06:11,570 --> 00:06:13,530 lungs, were soon commonplace. 76 00:06:13,890 --> 00:06:18,350 The smothering gas mask became as dreaded as the maiming. 77 00:06:19,050 --> 00:06:23,550 The battles, along with the villages and terrain features that named them, went 78 00:06:23,550 --> 00:06:29,900 on. But Artois, Aubert Ridge, Second Ypres, Vimy Ridge, Champagne, 79 00:06:30,080 --> 00:06:36,200 Luce, gained nothing but the growing list of torn men now nourishing the 80 00:06:36,200 --> 00:06:37,200 bright poppies. 81 00:06:41,100 --> 00:06:46,520 Geoffrey sniffed Gilets Grignotes. I am nibbling them. As Kitchener and French 82 00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:51,160 faded, With the prospect of quick victory, General Sir Douglas Haig, scion 83 00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:55,380 to a whisky fortune and a man who had failed his Camberley staff college 84 00:06:55,380 --> 00:06:58,860 exams, became head of the British Expeditionary Force. 85 00:07:02,100 --> 00:07:06,000 On the home front, England confronted a war that did not end. 86 00:07:06,600 --> 00:07:10,140 Posters exhorted volunteers to replace the massacred professionals. 87 00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:16,020 The Munitions Act put the whole industrial structure on a war footing. 88 00:07:16,430 --> 00:07:17,810 Strikes were forbidden. 89 00:07:18,190 --> 00:07:21,190 Munitions workers were frozen into their jobs. 90 00:07:23,390 --> 00:07:26,810 And women were invited to leave the kitchen for the plant. 91 00:07:27,790 --> 00:07:33,130 It was deemed morally responsible for a woman to rent her own flat, 92 00:07:33,390 --> 00:07:38,690 to wear new fashions, to smoke in public, etc. 93 00:07:39,650 --> 00:07:46,000 The war had won the European woman a new fashioned kind of independence. 94 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:52,560 They deserved, they felt, a reward come the end of the war. 95 00:07:52,860 --> 00:07:55,120 The reward was suffrage. 96 00:07:55,660 --> 00:07:57,920 Death arrived at home, too. 97 00:07:59,480 --> 00:08:06,180 From 1915 through 1917, immense German airships called Zeppelins, after their 98 00:08:06,180 --> 00:08:08,140 designer, were raiding England. 99 00:08:08,640 --> 00:08:13,300 The Germans were bombing cities at far distance from the front. 100 00:08:13,850 --> 00:08:18,290 In those days, we tend to forget this, the Germans were very enthusiastic about 101 00:08:18,290 --> 00:08:19,290 bombing cities. 102 00:08:19,830 --> 00:08:24,350 The rapid development of anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes softened the 103 00:08:24,350 --> 00:08:28,590 threat, and for the first time in history called attention to a new breed 104 00:08:28,590 --> 00:08:31,110 of hero, one who lived in the clouds. 105 00:08:34,169 --> 00:08:38,450 Barely ten years after the Wright brothers first flew, knights of the air 106 00:08:38,450 --> 00:08:40,429 were dueling miles above the earth. 107 00:08:41,450 --> 00:08:46,050 Pistols and bricks had been replaced as weapons by synchronized machine guns and 108 00:08:46,050 --> 00:08:47,050 finned bombs. 109 00:08:47,570 --> 00:08:49,890 A whole vocabulary was invented. 110 00:08:50,190 --> 00:08:56,550 Dogfight, air raid, strafing, spad, Newport, Fokker, spin, loop, aerodrome, 111 00:08:56,670 --> 00:08:58,950 and most importantly, ace. 112 00:09:01,750 --> 00:09:06,130 While the artilleryman who killed a thousand men a day on the Western Front 113 00:09:06,130 --> 00:09:07,130 was ignored, 114 00:09:07,470 --> 00:09:11,630 Air kills by the dashing pilots were counted in daily headlines. 115 00:09:12,250 --> 00:09:19,010 Von Richthofen, Bishop, Fonk, Boelcke were national gods. 116 00:09:20,050 --> 00:09:25,590 Max Immelmann and Raoul Loughberry gave their names to classic air maneuvers and 117 00:09:25,590 --> 00:09:26,630 became immortal. 118 00:09:27,310 --> 00:09:32,170 Unfortunately, becoming immortal often involved a wingless three-mile fall to 119 00:09:32,170 --> 00:09:34,390 earth while being caressed by flames. 120 00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:40,540 Infantrymen who swept up the remains sometimes felt lucky, though not for 121 00:09:40,540 --> 00:09:41,540 long. 122 00:09:50,400 --> 00:09:55,040 The murderous standoff that the Great War had now become went to sea. 123 00:09:55,440 --> 00:10:00,900 A mutually sought showdown between Britain's vast Grand Fleet and Germany's 124 00:10:00,900 --> 00:10:04,000 huge High Seas Fleet took place on May 30. 125 00:10:05,290 --> 00:10:09,810 Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's split force blundered into the German fleet under 126 00:10:09,810 --> 00:10:15,230 Admiral Reinhard Scheer off the Jutland Peninsula, and something like a knife 127 00:10:15,230 --> 00:10:17,510 fight with 14-inch guns began. 128 00:10:18,330 --> 00:10:21,390 German gunnery and armor gave better than it got. 129 00:10:21,650 --> 00:10:28,350 A massive 117,000 tons of English warships went down, compared to the 61 130 00:10:28,350 --> 00:10:30,390 ,000 tons of German losses. 131 00:10:30,750 --> 00:10:33,490 It decided nothing and everything. 132 00:10:34,760 --> 00:10:37,160 Jutland was a tie. 133 00:10:37,560 --> 00:10:43,140 If anything, the Germans came out a little bit on top. They sunk more ships. 134 00:10:43,480 --> 00:10:50,220 On the other hand, the German Grand Fleet was chased back to their bases 135 00:10:50,220 --> 00:10:56,900 and they never emerged again. From that point on, the blockade of 136 00:10:56,900 --> 00:10:59,180 Germany was not challenged. 137 00:11:02,250 --> 00:11:06,730 Back on the trembling earth, Austria finally crushed Serbia with German help, 138 00:11:06,870 --> 00:11:09,830 and the Russian armies were driven off in front of Prussia. 139 00:11:10,130 --> 00:11:12,290 But decision did not appear. 140 00:11:13,450 --> 00:11:18,750 The public regard for the heroic Lord Kitchener had fallen so low at the time 141 00:11:18,750 --> 00:11:23,570 of his death in a submarine attack that the House of Commons was considering a 142 00:11:23,570 --> 00:11:25,250 motion to reduce his salary. 143 00:11:26,130 --> 00:11:31,210 Into his place as war minister stepped explosive, powerful David Lloyd George. 144 00:11:31,870 --> 00:11:38,110 english leadership was back but english war strategy remained insanely the same 145 00:11:38,110 --> 00:11:44,870 douglas haig was about to commit a military blunder so great that its 146 00:11:44,870 --> 00:11:49,170 cost and horror would haunt the soul of england for the rest of the twentieth 147 00:11:49,170 --> 00:11:50,170 century 148 00:11:52,010 --> 00:11:56,930 Haig launched an enormous offensive along an 18-mile front against the 149 00:11:56,930 --> 00:12:01,130 impregnably fortified chalk hills overlooking the Allied trenches along 150 00:12:01,130 --> 00:12:06,150 the Somme. He looked on with stubborn confidence as German machine guns and 151 00:12:06,150 --> 00:12:11,110 artillery methodically hollowed out the best of a whole generation of English 152 00:12:11,110 --> 00:12:12,110 manhood. 153 00:12:12,550 --> 00:12:16,530 They lost 60,000 troops in one single day. 154 00:12:17,960 --> 00:12:21,820 That attack had implications that went far beyond the battlefield. 155 00:12:22,180 --> 00:12:27,700 The British, Australians, and Canadians would never forgive the British tactics 156 00:12:27,700 --> 00:12:32,120 and techniques that were used on the Western Front in 1916. 157 00:12:32,420 --> 00:12:34,760 That undercut the British Empire. 158 00:12:44,330 --> 00:12:49,330 the graduates of what they call public and we would call private schools, who 159 00:12:49,330 --> 00:12:53,290 are the lieutenants and the captains, are killed first. 160 00:12:56,730 --> 00:13:03,730 And what happens, therefore, is that you have, if you will, an inversion of 161 00:13:03,730 --> 00:13:10,200 the social pyramid, that the next generation of doctors Lawyers, 162 00:13:10,300 --> 00:13:16,520 civil servants, engineers, political leaders are the people who get killed 163 00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:17,520 first. 164 00:13:18,540 --> 00:13:24,820 The warrior poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote, I gaze down into the dark green 165 00:13:24,820 --> 00:13:29,500 glooms of the weedy little river, but my thoughts are powerless against 166 00:13:29,500 --> 00:13:31,100 unhappiness so huge. 167 00:13:33,560 --> 00:13:36,920 Gains were pallid. The murder went on. 168 00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:43,220 Haig drove his slaughterhouse until November, when there was simply nobody 169 00:13:43,220 --> 00:13:44,300 left to feed it. 170 00:13:45,360 --> 00:13:52,320 By the end of the dismal year of 1916, 607,000 English soldiers had fallen. 171 00:13:53,880 --> 00:13:58,820 With the professional army long gone and the corps of the volunteer army thrown 172 00:13:58,820 --> 00:14:04,340 away on the Somme, the conscription that had begun in 1915 had to feed the death 173 00:14:04,340 --> 00:14:05,340 machine. 174 00:14:06,570 --> 00:14:12,770 Married men fell with the bachelors. Whole communities were enlisting in PALS 175 00:14:12,770 --> 00:14:18,290 regiments, perhaps most notably the Liverpool PALS. These men would all go 176 00:14:18,290 --> 00:14:24,170 into training together, be organized into regiments and brigades together so 177 00:14:24,170 --> 00:14:29,190 that whole communities and local districts were going into battle as one. 178 00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:36,220 This was disastrous in the 1916 and 1917 offensives when whole communities were 179 00:14:36,220 --> 00:14:37,220 wiped out. 180 00:14:39,940 --> 00:14:44,500 It was the vilified Winston Churchill who was a leading impetus for a new 181 00:14:44,500 --> 00:14:46,240 weapon to break the stalemate. 182 00:14:46,820 --> 00:14:51,580 He supported Colonel Ernest Swinton's plea to develop a motorized armored 183 00:14:51,580 --> 00:14:56,880 vehicle. The top-secret weapons were shipped undercover and marked as water 184 00:14:56,880 --> 00:14:59,020 carriers, which quickly became... 185 00:14:59,240 --> 00:15:05,720 tanks one doubting general insisted on the higher value of the horse no damn 186 00:15:05,720 --> 00:15:10,520 design changes but tanks would be heard from with increasing vehemence 187 00:15:10,520 --> 00:15:17,040 especially in light of what was about to happen at verdun falkenhayn in one of 188 00:15:17,040 --> 00:15:23,800 those great cynical western front moments decided to attack 189 00:15:23,800 --> 00:15:27,960 verdun not to gain territory 190 00:15:28,860 --> 00:15:29,900 but to kill people. 191 00:15:30,980 --> 00:15:37,180 You don't tell people this because you cannot tell your own troops that they're 192 00:15:37,180 --> 00:15:43,960 being sent into battle not to win this or crush that or break something else. 193 00:15:44,340 --> 00:15:49,140 They're being sent into battle simply with the intention of killing more of 194 00:15:49,140 --> 00:15:51,380 the other guys than you're losing yourself. 195 00:15:56,250 --> 00:16:01,010 The nominal target was the system of forts that had Fort Douaumont as a hub. 196 00:16:01,330 --> 00:16:06,370 The attack against it was called Operation Gericht, meaning place of 197 00:16:06,370 --> 00:16:07,370 execution. 198 00:16:29,740 --> 00:16:33,460 Shells fell at the rate of 100,000 rounds per hour. 199 00:16:34,520 --> 00:16:39,360 Scarecrow Frenchmen blackened uniforms in tatters rose up from the charnel 200 00:16:39,360 --> 00:16:40,360 house to defend. 201 00:16:40,820 --> 00:16:42,540 French trenches collapsed. 202 00:16:43,220 --> 00:16:44,280 Pillboxes shattered. 203 00:16:46,660 --> 00:16:48,000 Douamont fell. 204 00:16:48,580 --> 00:16:54,140 Calm, decisive General Henri-Philippe Pétain began a climb into history when 205 00:16:54,140 --> 00:16:56,660 he was ordered in as the savior of Verdun. 206 00:16:58,190 --> 00:17:02,910 He ended an order of the day with the enduring words, they shall not pass. 207 00:17:03,470 --> 00:17:05,730 Nobody did on either side. 208 00:17:14,530 --> 00:17:19,589 It was after almost six months of slaughter that exhaustion and empty 209 00:17:19,589 --> 00:17:22,849 ammunition dumps brought the Battle of Verdun to a halt. 210 00:17:23,630 --> 00:17:26,250 France had lost 500,000 men. 211 00:17:26,750 --> 00:17:28,970 Germany had lost 400,000. 212 00:17:29,830 --> 00:17:35,330 Falkenhayn had been somewhat right in his estimate of outcome, except that he 213 00:17:35,330 --> 00:17:37,510 was not one step closer to victory. 214 00:17:37,910 --> 00:17:41,810 As his men died in mud, others died in sand. 215 00:17:43,390 --> 00:17:47,390 World War I was the first war where oil made a great deal of difference, and 216 00:17:47,390 --> 00:17:49,030 that was located in the Middle East. 217 00:17:49,310 --> 00:17:54,210 The British wanted to expand their colonial empire to take control of some 218 00:17:54,210 --> 00:17:55,210 of that oil. 219 00:17:55,480 --> 00:18:00,300 So huge numbers of troops were put into Egypt and then into Mesopotamia. 220 00:18:03,500 --> 00:18:08,740 The British Middle Eastern campaign would go from defeat in Mesopotamia to 221 00:18:08,740 --> 00:18:13,320 signal success in front of Palestine under General Sir Edmund Allenby. 222 00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:18,780 Colonel T.E. Lawrence would fan the flames of Arab revolt against the Turks 223 00:18:18,780 --> 00:18:21,540 and enter mythology as Lawrence of Arabia. 224 00:18:23,440 --> 00:18:29,440 Between Lawrence's slashing ambushes and Allenby's deft handling of a 400,000-man 225 00:18:29,440 --> 00:18:34,580 army, the Turks would be smashed throughout the war, from Aqaba to 226 00:18:34,580 --> 00:18:37,960 Tafila, from Gaza to Beersheba and Jerusalem. 227 00:18:39,020 --> 00:18:41,140 In Europe, the caste changed. 228 00:18:41,600 --> 00:18:46,440 Von Falkenhayn was replaced as commander of the German army with the hero tandem 229 00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:48,760 of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. 230 00:18:50,380 --> 00:18:55,100 Prime Minister Asquith, devastated by loss of his son in battle, was replaced 231 00:18:55,100 --> 00:18:57,100 by the fiery David Lloyd George. 232 00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:03,760 As the French kicked Joffre upstairs, General Robert Nivelle, a hero of 233 00:19:03,760 --> 00:19:07,120 Verdun, stepped in as commander-in-chief of the Western Front. 234 00:19:07,720 --> 00:19:12,800 For all his role in the Somme tragedy, Haig was made a field marshal. 235 00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:19,520 In the East, Russia's General Alexei Brusilov gathered all equipped for a 236 00:19:19,520 --> 00:19:23,380 grim mauling of the Austrian defenses over a 200-mile front. 237 00:19:24,500 --> 00:19:30,880 The Brusilov Offensive was one of the great battles of 1916, and 238 00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:37,540 though the Russian losses were dreadful, they gained 239 00:19:37,540 --> 00:19:42,840 back a huge amount of territory that they had lost the year before. 240 00:19:43,630 --> 00:19:48,710 but it was the last great gasp of the russian army as it reeled and died of 241 00:19:48,710 --> 00:19:54,510 exhaustion of men and supplies but suffering without progress had begun to 242 00:19:54,510 --> 00:19:59,950 rot russia from within and that would have consequences much beyond arms 243 00:19:59,950 --> 00:20:06,470 as nineteen seventeen 244 00:20:06,470 --> 00:20:11,950 opened czar nicholas was afield with his dissolving armies as his empire went 245 00:20:11,950 --> 00:20:12,950 unruled 246 00:20:14,670 --> 00:20:19,250 Heavy rioting began in Petrograd, and police machine guns killed hundreds. 247 00:20:21,230 --> 00:20:23,770 Soon the storm spread to other cities. 248 00:20:23,990 --> 00:20:27,190 What shall I do, the desperate Tsar asked advisors. 249 00:20:27,910 --> 00:20:30,550 You must abdicate, was the answer. 250 00:20:30,910 --> 00:20:36,030 He did, and the Romanov dynasty died on March 16, 1917. 251 00:20:40,789 --> 00:20:44,970 To destabilize its enemy, Germany smuggled into Russia the arch 252 00:20:44,970 --> 00:20:48,610 -revolutionary Nikolai Lenin from his exile in Zurich. 253 00:20:49,990 --> 00:20:54,590 From that moment, Lenin worked his way furiously toward ousting all other 254 00:20:54,590 --> 00:20:58,770 attempts at leadership, and Russia began a long slide out of the war. 255 00:20:59,590 --> 00:21:04,050 But whatever the Germans were gaining in Russia, they had been throwing away in 256 00:21:04,050 --> 00:21:09,580 the United States with their sabotage, submarine warfare, and general ham 257 00:21:09,580 --> 00:21:10,580 -handedness. 258 00:21:13,180 --> 00:21:14,940 Germany's talent was in uniform. 259 00:21:15,220 --> 00:21:17,340 It certainly wasn't in their foreign office. 260 00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:23,180 Their foreign minister, Alfred Zimmerman, sent a telegram to Mexico 261 00:21:23,180 --> 00:21:28,480 offering an alliance and the possibility of retrieving Arizona, New Mexico, and 262 00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:34,380 Texas. He sent that telegram over an American-owned undersea cable. It was 263 00:21:34,380 --> 00:21:36,460 obviously intercepted. 264 00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:39,240 and the Americans learned what he was going to do. 265 00:21:39,580 --> 00:21:45,500 And then when it was published in the papers, he doubled his ignorance by 266 00:21:45,500 --> 00:21:47,820 admitting that that was his own telegram. 267 00:21:48,640 --> 00:21:53,780 After the Zimmerman telegram episode, war between the United States and 268 00:21:53,780 --> 00:21:55,280 Germany is inevitable. 269 00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:03,650 Woodrow Wilson, who was elected to his second term in 1916, on the slogan that 270 00:22:03,650 --> 00:22:08,130 he kept us out of war was not a pacifist, as many are inclined to 271 00:22:08,130 --> 00:22:10,730 believe. He was, in fact, an interventionist. 272 00:22:11,910 --> 00:22:16,490 He must lead the American people into this war that he did not want but was 273 00:22:16,490 --> 00:22:17,550 now inevitable. 274 00:22:18,050 --> 00:22:22,570 He brings his message to Congress on the 2nd of April, pointing out to the 275 00:22:22,570 --> 00:22:26,130 members of Congress that the Americans have no quarrel with the German people, 276 00:22:26,250 --> 00:22:29,830 but America must make the world safe for democracy. 277 00:22:31,760 --> 00:22:37,160 The anti-war forces in America crumbled and cries of kill the Kaiser and on to 278 00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:38,220 Berlin rang out. 279 00:22:39,420 --> 00:22:42,100 Wilson signed the Declaration of War. 280 00:22:45,280 --> 00:22:49,900 The United States Army that began to prepare itself for war in Europe was as 281 00:22:49,900 --> 00:22:54,400 hollow, depleted, and unprepared as any great nation's army had ever been. 282 00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:59,960 It stood at 200,000 men and without a semblance of modern equipment. 283 00:23:00,830 --> 00:23:03,630 It would take a dominating leader to shape it up. 284 00:23:03,870 --> 00:23:05,870 They had him in a new commander. 285 00:23:08,550 --> 00:23:11,870 John Pershing was a cavalry officer, West Point graduate. 286 00:23:12,490 --> 00:23:16,730 He had fought in the last of the Indian Wars. He had done well in the Spanish 287 00:23:16,730 --> 00:23:17,730 -American War. 288 00:23:17,750 --> 00:23:22,430 He had commanded the 10th Cavalry, the Black Buffalo Soldiers. That's where he 289 00:23:22,430 --> 00:23:23,930 got the nickname Black Jack. 290 00:23:24,170 --> 00:23:26,650 He had done well in the Philippines in the insurrection. 291 00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:31,760 President Roosevelt jumped him from the rank of captain to brigadier general. 292 00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:39,520 Pershing is more important as a symbol, as the man who 293 00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:41,440 seemed to be holding it all together. 294 00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:48,560 Not one American soldier would be lost in the immense transfer of American 295 00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:50,280 troops to Europe in 1917. 296 00:23:53,550 --> 00:23:57,710 Rear Admiral William Sims had met with the British and within weeks had his 297 00:23:57,710 --> 00:24:00,830 destroyers on line to help protect the huge convoys. 298 00:24:03,310 --> 00:24:06,430 The bled-dry French and British were delighted. 299 00:24:06,630 --> 00:24:07,970 They wanted every man. 300 00:24:09,450 --> 00:24:14,510 Lafayette, we are here, barked Colonel Charles E. Stanton on July 4, 1917, 301 00:24:14,910 --> 00:24:19,590 after the Americans had arrived in France to a rapturous French reception. 302 00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:24,740 The citizens could not know that Pershing's big, rough army had been 303 00:24:24,740 --> 00:24:27,360 taught to march but was still learning to fight. 304 00:24:27,620 --> 00:24:30,140 They were months away from use on the front. 305 00:24:30,980 --> 00:24:35,540 Pershing was determined to maintain the integrity of the American army, but he 306 00:24:35,540 --> 00:24:40,100 was enough of a realist to know that he had to detach American units to British 307 00:24:40,100 --> 00:24:42,620 command and French command in times of emergency. 308 00:24:44,490 --> 00:24:49,470 In the meantime, maddeningly true to the mistakes of his predecessors, General 309 00:24:49,470 --> 00:24:55,130 Robert Nivelle mounted another offensive to win the war, founded on all the old 310 00:24:55,130 --> 00:24:56,130 impossibilities. 311 00:24:58,150 --> 00:25:04,410 Although his attack around Arras could not advance, losing 187,000 men in 10 312 00:25:04,410 --> 00:25:08,570 days, it would have one grand result, mutiny. 313 00:25:09,810 --> 00:25:11,770 The army said, we've had it. 314 00:25:12,730 --> 00:25:17,770 and they just refused to fight. Men streamed back to towns in the rear, 315 00:25:18,050 --> 00:25:22,010 tried to commandeer trains to go to Paris. 316 00:25:22,250 --> 00:25:28,010 They were barely stopped, and eventually ringleaders were rounded up. 317 00:25:29,690 --> 00:25:34,730 A handful of drumhead executions went some distance into repairing the army, 318 00:25:34,910 --> 00:25:39,550 but nothing went so far as getting rid of Nivelle and bringing in General 319 00:25:39,550 --> 00:25:42,400 Pétain. to balance leadership with compassion. 320 00:25:42,700 --> 00:25:45,820 He nursed the demoralized army back to health. 321 00:25:46,260 --> 00:25:49,780 But it was tired and nowhere near replacing its losses. 322 00:25:50,140 --> 00:25:53,940 It needed bodies, strong, fresh American bodies. 323 00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,980 Georges Clemenceau, the new French Prime Minister, wanted things to hurry up and 324 00:26:00,980 --> 00:26:01,980 said so loudly. 325 00:26:03,420 --> 00:26:07,400 Concurrently, Field Marshal Haig, attempting to seize the submarine ports 326 00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:12,590 and divert the Germans from the French sector, was writing tens of thousands of 327 00:26:12,590 --> 00:26:15,190 new names on the cenotaphs of British villagers. 328 00:26:15,650 --> 00:26:21,550 He chose Flanders for his latest dream of penetration, notably in front of 329 00:26:21,550 --> 00:26:26,470 Ypres for a third battle in a sorry bogland before ravaged villages. 330 00:26:26,910 --> 00:26:32,170 One, a magnet for mud and death called Passchendaele, would be remembered with 331 00:26:32,170 --> 00:26:33,350 shudders for generations. 332 00:26:34,010 --> 00:26:37,170 There was nothing like the mud of the Great War. 333 00:26:38,120 --> 00:26:39,980 It was a liquid sea. 334 00:26:40,300 --> 00:26:42,700 The horses drowned in mud. 335 00:26:44,980 --> 00:26:50,600 The wounded slipped beneath wood and died not of their wounds, but actually 336 00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:51,740 being drowned as well. 337 00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:53,940 You couldn't supply troops. 338 00:26:54,160 --> 00:27:00,900 You couldn't move. It put a mental state into a soldier that was automatic 339 00:27:00,900 --> 00:27:01,900 depression. 340 00:27:02,820 --> 00:27:05,900 However, there was a glimmer of hope at Cambrai. 341 00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:12,020 where an attack led by 324 tanks, speeding at one and a half miles per 342 00:27:12,020 --> 00:27:17,240 hour, gained more ground in six hours than had been taken around Passchendaele 343 00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:18,240 in four months. 344 00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:25,060 In Italy, the Germans went to the aid of their hapless Austrian ally and smashed 345 00:27:25,060 --> 00:27:26,300 their foes for them. 346 00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:32,000 In the fall of 1917, they drove into the Italian army in the Battle of Caporetto 347 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:33,900 and broke it in 20 days. 348 00:27:47,210 --> 00:27:53,070 Of the 305,000 men Italy lost, 275,000 surrendered. 349 00:27:55,390 --> 00:28:00,050 The Italians would need all their fortitude to recover as a fighting unit. 350 00:28:02,230 --> 00:28:07,350 Much more important, Russia was about to leave the alliance, taking along its 351 00:28:07,350 --> 00:28:09,150 millions of rebelling soldiers. 352 00:28:18,190 --> 00:28:23,530 As 1917 waned, Lenin's Bolshevik revolutionaries struggled to throw over 353 00:28:23,530 --> 00:28:28,530 the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky and replace it with a Bolshevik 354 00:28:28,530 --> 00:28:31,770 dictatorship to take Russia to a separate peace. 355 00:28:33,730 --> 00:28:38,970 And when Petrograd regiments stopped recognizing his rule, Kerensky left the 356 00:28:38,970 --> 00:28:42,070 city on November 7th and Lenin was in command. 357 00:28:42,550 --> 00:28:44,770 Cries to end the war went up. 358 00:28:46,220 --> 00:28:50,840 The Bolsheviks made a separate peace at Brest-Liflotz with the Germans. 359 00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,580 This enabled the Germans to move a great number of men from the Eastern Front to 360 00:28:56,580 --> 00:28:57,580 the Western Front. 361 00:28:58,740 --> 00:29:02,960 Ludendorff saw that 1918 was going to be make or break for Germany. 362 00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:05,760 Huge numbers of Americans were coming in. 363 00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:11,240 So he had to destroy the Allied armies that were on the lines in early 1918 364 00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:13,400 before the Americans came. 365 00:29:17,399 --> 00:29:22,860 Ludendorff designed an entire new tactical doctrine for the German army in 366 00:29:22,860 --> 00:29:25,200 the winter of 1917-1918. 367 00:29:25,580 --> 00:29:31,920 Infantry was composed into small packets, 12-15 people apiece, 368 00:29:31,940 --> 00:29:36,440 armed with or built around machine guns or flamethrowers. 369 00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:42,200 The key was to infiltrate and then bypass, to go for the rear and keep 370 00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:44,920 going. The attack began in the fog. 371 00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:47,580 on March 21st. 372 00:29:49,220 --> 00:29:53,720 There was an enormous artillery preparation, short, very violent. 373 00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:57,480 Gas and high-explosive rounds next. 374 00:29:57,900 --> 00:30:03,040 When the German infiltration units hit the British front lines, the British 375 00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:04,040 simply crumbled. 376 00:30:06,660 --> 00:30:11,560 There were eight British battalions of 6,000 troops there. Only 50 survived. 377 00:30:13,130 --> 00:30:17,670 Their front disintegrated into isolated islands with the German tide flowing 378 00:30:17,670 --> 00:30:18,670 around them. 379 00:30:19,230 --> 00:30:22,250 Dugouts collapsed and ammunition dumps exploded. 380 00:30:23,670 --> 00:30:27,370 The Germans in what they called Operation Michael had their 381 00:30:27,370 --> 00:30:28,370 breakthrough. 382 00:30:29,270 --> 00:30:34,450 The communications hub of Amiens was the immediate target to split the French 383 00:30:34,450 --> 00:30:35,450 from the British. 384 00:30:35,790 --> 00:30:39,130 Then it would be on to Paris and the English Channel. 385 00:30:39,870 --> 00:30:41,610 Ludendorff smelled victory. 386 00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:48,940 Operation Michael was a huge success on the first day. In 24 hours, the Germans 387 00:30:48,940 --> 00:30:55,200 gained more ground than the French and British had gained in 140 388 00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:56,960 days two years before. 389 00:30:58,020 --> 00:31:01,000 Then their offensive ran out of gas. 390 00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:05,620 They reached the old battlefields of the Somme, which were literally a desert. 391 00:31:05,860 --> 00:31:10,640 And there was no water. There were few real tracks through it. 392 00:31:11,790 --> 00:31:16,310 When they got to the other side, their troops started to loot. 393 00:31:16,510 --> 00:31:21,530 They found the kind of food supplies that they hadn't seen in four years, and 394 00:31:21,530 --> 00:31:24,570 the attack ground to a halt. 395 00:31:26,210 --> 00:31:28,890 The Allies needed an overall commander. 396 00:31:29,470 --> 00:31:32,570 General Ferdinand Foch gave his qualifications. 397 00:31:33,350 --> 00:31:35,330 I would fight without a break. 398 00:31:35,530 --> 00:31:39,490 I would fight in front of Amiens. I would fight in Amiens. I would fight 399 00:31:39,490 --> 00:31:40,490 behind Amiens. 400 00:31:40,810 --> 00:31:43,990 I would fight all the time. I would never surrender. 401 00:31:44,510 --> 00:31:45,970 He was chosen. 402 00:31:51,750 --> 00:31:57,770 Operation Michael had overrun 1,250 square miles of countryside and captured 403 00:31:57,770 --> 00:31:59,110 90,000 prisoners. 404 00:32:01,590 --> 00:32:05,170 Ludendorff regrouped his exhausted forces to go farther. 405 00:32:14,830 --> 00:32:20,630 In these battles, 838,000 soldiers would be killed, wounded, missing, or 406 00:32:20,630 --> 00:32:23,870 captured. Nobody could afford such losses. 407 00:32:25,430 --> 00:32:31,410 But the Germans could not replace theirs, and the Yanks, at last, were 408 00:32:31,410 --> 00:32:32,410 coming. 409 00:32:33,070 --> 00:32:35,090 Indeed, they were there. 410 00:32:36,270 --> 00:32:41,950 The first American offensive action at a small village named Contigny showed the 411 00:32:41,950 --> 00:32:46,210 American people that the American fighting man was now in the fight and 412 00:32:46,210 --> 00:32:51,890 could discharge himself very well, and it also showed the German high command, 413 00:32:52,150 --> 00:32:55,350 that the American fighting man was someone to be contended with. 414 00:33:01,370 --> 00:33:06,530 The emergency that brought the Americans into their first big-scale action came 415 00:33:06,530 --> 00:33:11,600 when a whirlwind German attack drove a strong salient into the French and 416 00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:14,300 British lines behind Chemin des Dames Ridge. 417 00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:28,300 Pershing released the United States 2nd Division with its Marine Brigade under 418 00:33:28,300 --> 00:33:33,060 General James G. Harbord to the beleaguered area on Foch's frantic 419 00:33:33,060 --> 00:33:36,440 request. It was May 30th, Memorial Day. 420 00:33:38,060 --> 00:33:42,480 Coming up to Chateau Thierry, past retreating Frenchmen yelling, La guerre 421 00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:46,940 est finie, the Americans found themselves caught against a riverbank 422 00:33:46,940 --> 00:33:51,700 and beating back a determined enemy with point-blank use of machine guns and 423 00:33:51,700 --> 00:33:52,700 artillery. 424 00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:58,900 Again Paris was threatened, and again the French government packed to leave, 425 00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:01,100 refugees streaming out before them. 426 00:34:01,580 --> 00:34:05,520 Pershing cabled, The possibility of losing Paris has become apparent. 427 00:34:07,950 --> 00:34:12,650 On June 1st, the American 3rd Brigade and the Marine Brigade started up the 428 00:34:12,650 --> 00:34:15,429 Paris-Metz Road to relieve the embattled French. 429 00:34:17,429 --> 00:34:22,310 The Germans, wheeling from Chateau Thierry, moved astride that road and 430 00:34:22,310 --> 00:34:25,070 drove into Belleau Wood, a dense hunting preserve. 431 00:34:25,850 --> 00:34:31,010 General Harbour told his Marines, We dig no trenches to fall back on. The Marines 432 00:34:31,010 --> 00:34:32,429 will hold where they stand. 433 00:34:36,620 --> 00:34:40,900 There would be three weeks of very vicious fighting, a hard-fought battle. 434 00:34:41,100 --> 00:34:44,500 At the end of the three weeks, the Marines could say, Belleau Wood, 435 00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:45,860 entirely Marine. 436 00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:53,639 It was a small victory, but it was one that caught the American public's 437 00:34:53,639 --> 00:34:54,639 imagination. 438 00:34:55,500 --> 00:35:01,580 It was splashed over the front pages of all of America's newspapers, Marines 439 00:35:01,580 --> 00:35:03,180 Save Paris at Belleau Wood. 440 00:35:04,010 --> 00:35:08,550 This bothered the army then, and in some quarters, it still bothers them. 441 00:35:10,350 --> 00:35:14,030 Enthusiasm was wild in America. The people on the home front endured 442 00:35:14,030 --> 00:35:16,430 meatless, gasless, and lightless days. 443 00:35:16,750 --> 00:35:20,130 They were told, lick war stamps and lick the Kaiser. 444 00:35:20,410 --> 00:35:25,490 Movie stars staged monster Liberty Loan rallies, and a quarter of the adult 445 00:35:25,490 --> 00:35:27,030 population signed on. 446 00:35:29,450 --> 00:35:34,070 ludendorff still held powerful cards but cabled ominously of the american 447 00:35:34,070 --> 00:35:40,090 fighters personnel must be called excellent spirit of troops is high moral 448 00:35:40,090 --> 00:35:44,310 effect of our fire does not materially check advance of infantry 449 00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:01,280 Americans were widespread in the forces that now opposed a series of desperate 450 00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:03,080 hammer blows from Ludendorff. 451 00:36:03,420 --> 00:36:07,040 He termed these his Friedensturm, or peace offensive. 452 00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:12,580 A very large penetration had occurred between the Aisne and the Marne rivers, 453 00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:17,120 thrust like a dagger pointed at Paris and the communications of Paris. 454 00:36:17,500 --> 00:36:20,220 It needed to be dealt with and pinched off. 455 00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:25,100 The Americans devised a plan to do this and restore the line. 456 00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:32,400 in july of 1918 and had engaged more than 300 000 americans 457 00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:39,380 and sustained casualties of 67 000 during the campaign the restoration of 458 00:36:39,380 --> 00:36:42,860 the line sent the germans back on their heels one more time 459 00:36:42,860 --> 00:36:49,680 the stage was set for the formation of the 460 00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:50,680 first american army 461 00:36:51,340 --> 00:36:55,300 John Pershing's dream of an American army fighting in France under its own 462 00:36:55,300 --> 00:36:57,020 commanders was about to come true. 463 00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:04,560 August the 8th, 1918, was the turning point for Hindenburg and Ludendorff. On 464 00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:10,740 that day, Australians and Canadians attacked under Haig's command 465 00:37:10,740 --> 00:37:16,480 using 450 tanks and achieved immense success against the Germans. The Germans 466 00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:18,880 started surrendering, surrendering in droves. 467 00:37:21,540 --> 00:37:26,960 When Ludendorff rushed in reinforcements, they arrived in the rear 468 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,500 areas and they were met with jeers and not cheers. 469 00:37:30,860 --> 00:37:36,020 The German troops there saying that the reinforcements were simply prolonging 470 00:37:36,020 --> 00:37:37,020 the war. 471 00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:42,520 Pershing got his first chance to show what an American army could do in 472 00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,160 September at Sammy Hill, a bulge in the line. 473 00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:58,200 He pitched off at Samahill salient in classic fashion, hitting the shoulders 474 00:37:58,200 --> 00:37:59,200 from both sides. 475 00:38:04,060 --> 00:38:09,040 Some folks say that the Germans were already withdrawing from Samahill. Well, 476 00:38:09,060 --> 00:38:12,280 perhaps they were, but they were withdrawing because they knew the 477 00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:13,280 Americans were coming. 478 00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:19,360 Foch had demanded American troops be blended into his forces. 479 00:38:19,850 --> 00:38:24,350 For a huge critical Meuse-Argonne offensive coming hard after the Samy Yel 480 00:38:24,350 --> 00:38:29,290 operation, and Pershing had refused him. Do you wish to give battle? Foch had 481 00:38:29,290 --> 00:38:34,450 taunted. Pershing had snapped back, certainly, but as an American army. When 482 00:38:34,450 --> 00:38:39,870 Foch said, I insist, Pershing replied, You may insist all you please, but I 483 00:38:39,870 --> 00:38:41,510 decline absolutely to agree. 484 00:38:44,030 --> 00:38:48,490 On September 26th, the Americans were fighting in the Meuse-Argonne. 485 00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,260 as a unit under their own commander. 486 00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:58,960 Meuse-Argonne was the first seriously contested American offensive and it 487 00:38:58,960 --> 00:38:59,960 floundered. 488 00:39:00,780 --> 00:39:05,600 Pershing had ordered an attack on line and that meant that any serious 489 00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:10,240 resistance received in one sector would stop the entire line. 490 00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:14,580 The Americans were fast learners, however. 491 00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:18,000 A person changes instructions to his commanders. 492 00:39:18,220 --> 00:39:20,320 They would no longer have to attack on line. 493 00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:22,720 He gave initiative to battlefield commanders. 494 00:39:24,260 --> 00:39:28,860 He was running out of troops, so he stripped down the rifle companies from a 495 00:39:28,860 --> 00:39:31,320 strength of 250 to 175. 496 00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:37,220 Also, he started stripping out troops from divisions in the rear. 497 00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,360 And then he fired commanders. He fired several division commanders and one of 498 00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:42,360 his two corps commanders. 499 00:39:42,620 --> 00:39:46,840 So when the attack resumed in mid-October, the Americans had it right 500 00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:47,980 and they started moving. 501 00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:54,340 On the American front, the Germans had established four successive defense 502 00:39:54,340 --> 00:39:56,400 belts up to 20 miles deep. 503 00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:01,260 On one flank, the Germans held dominating heights looking down the 504 00:40:01,260 --> 00:40:02,260 Americans' throats. 505 00:40:02,860 --> 00:40:07,040 It was the greatest concentration of defenses that American troops would meet 506 00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:08,300 in two world wars. 507 00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:12,440 Foch's attitude was, you asked for it, you got it. 508 00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:17,920 But the Americans drilled forward with growing unstoppable confidence and 509 00:40:17,920 --> 00:40:18,920 power. 510 00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:26,800 In the words of the once skeptical General Ludendorff, when asked who won 511 00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:30,380 the war, was heard to say, the American infantry. 512 00:40:31,150 --> 00:40:35,650 The Germans and their allies were suddenly cracking everywhere, from the 513 00:40:35,650 --> 00:40:38,210 Western Front to Greece to the Middle East. 514 00:40:39,630 --> 00:40:44,050 The new replacements that are coming in from German urban areas and the 515 00:40:44,050 --> 00:40:49,690 siphoning off of the very best German soldiers as storm troop soldiers has 516 00:40:49,690 --> 00:40:54,650 resulted in a qualitative lessening of the fighting quality of the German army. 517 00:40:58,070 --> 00:41:03,210 Ludendorff, the Iron Man, now suffered complete nervous collapse, alternately 518 00:41:03,210 --> 00:41:08,150 weeping and raging at his staff, his Kaiser, and his people for the war's 519 00:41:08,150 --> 00:41:09,150 failure. 520 00:41:11,730 --> 00:41:16,010 Socialists wearing red armbands surged through Germany's streets, mugging 521 00:41:16,010 --> 00:41:18,970 German officers and tearing off their epaulets and decoration. 522 00:41:19,770 --> 00:41:24,330 The fleet mutinied against Admiral Scheer's order, putting it to sea for a 523 00:41:24,330 --> 00:41:25,330 last battle. 524 00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:29,620 murdered officers, and sailed back to port with red flags flying. 525 00:41:31,540 --> 00:41:36,680 On October 4th, armistice negotiation offers were sent secretly to America's 526 00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:41,000 president, with the feeling that the liberal idealistic Wilson, who had 527 00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:46,140 written a rather gentle 14 points of basis for world peace, would be the 528 00:41:46,140 --> 00:41:50,400 spokesman they wanted against the ferocious French, British, and Italian 529 00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:51,400 belligerents. 530 00:41:53,660 --> 00:41:59,900 Wilson was seeking to put himself in the position of Arbiter Mundi, Empire of the 531 00:41:59,900 --> 00:42:04,260 World, able to, if necessary, dictate the peace settlement. 532 00:42:05,300 --> 00:42:09,480 He had in mind dictating, if necessary, to the Allies as well. 533 00:42:10,780 --> 00:42:13,240 The Hindenburg Line was broken. 534 00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:20,080 Turkey would quit the war on October 30th, Austria on November 3rd. 535 00:42:21,870 --> 00:42:27,250 The Kaiser now dismissed Ludendorff. The old German god of war donned a false 536 00:42:27,250 --> 00:42:30,030 beard and dark glasses and fled to Sweden. 537 00:42:30,310 --> 00:42:31,590 It was the finish. 538 00:42:32,990 --> 00:42:38,850 A German armistice commission met at 7 a.m. in a railway car on a siding in 539 00:42:38,850 --> 00:42:39,850 Kompienfars. 540 00:42:40,610 --> 00:42:45,330 And when a German asked for his proposals for an armistice, an icy 541 00:42:45,330 --> 00:42:49,170 Marshal Fosch growled, I have no proposals to make. 542 00:42:50,030 --> 00:42:52,210 The Allies were willing to keep fighting. 543 00:42:52,750 --> 00:42:57,310 The Germans gasped at the terms that ended their hopes of keeping anything 544 00:42:57,310 --> 00:42:58,310 for themselves. 545 00:42:58,610 --> 00:43:02,470 The Great War was to end at 11 a.m. on November 11. 546 00:43:04,310 --> 00:43:08,950 Retreating German armies wantonly destroyed towns, orchards, coal mines, 547 00:43:09,030 --> 00:43:10,030 and art treasures. 548 00:43:10,090 --> 00:43:12,770 The bitterness would soon be richly returned. 549 00:43:13,290 --> 00:43:18,390 by demands that economy-shattering German indemnities repay ravaged 550 00:43:18,390 --> 00:43:22,150 civilians $32 billion for damages of the war. 551 00:43:23,050 --> 00:43:28,790 The cream and gold imperial train rolled out in darkness and deposited the Kaiser 552 00:43:28,790 --> 00:43:30,190 across the Dutch frontier. 553 00:43:30,610 --> 00:43:34,330 He spent his years of asylum in numbing disregard. 554 00:43:37,030 --> 00:43:43,420 On November 11, remembered forever as Armistice Day, Hindenburg wept and the 555 00:43:43,420 --> 00:43:46,360 guns of the Great War fell into eerie silence. 556 00:43:46,980 --> 00:43:48,680 Birds were heard again. 557 00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:53,480 Troops wandered out of their animal lairs and blinked in the quiet sunlight. 558 00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:58,460 There was little drinking, survival being intoxication enough. 559 00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:06,120 The Allied home fronts exploded in hysterical joy as mixed consternation 560 00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:08,840 and relief swept a bewildered German public. 561 00:44:20,330 --> 00:44:24,790 A German corporal named Adolf Hitler, then huddled in a sentry box guarding 562 00:44:24,790 --> 00:44:30,110 Russian prisoners at Traunstein, would have the day's events burned into his 563 00:44:30,110 --> 00:44:31,110 seething brain. 564 00:44:33,630 --> 00:44:40,530 The peace settlement, group of settlements that is then made with 565 00:44:40,530 --> 00:44:45,730 Germany, with Austria, with Hungary, with Bulgaria, with Turkey, is a whole 566 00:44:45,730 --> 00:44:46,730 series of treaties. 567 00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:51,080 negotiated in and signed in Paris and its suburbs. 568 00:44:51,740 --> 00:44:55,820 And these treaties are often very heavily criticized. 569 00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:02,000 The terrible dissatisfaction of the Germans with it was essentially 570 00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:04,980 dissatisfaction over the fact that they hadn't won the war. 571 00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:12,020 That having lost the war, they were not going to get everything they had hoped, 572 00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:13,680 I must say. 573 00:45:14,170 --> 00:45:16,830 does not seem to me particularly surprising. 574 00:45:18,470 --> 00:45:23,170 When asked by a shocked German what history would say of this, the French 575 00:45:23,170 --> 00:45:27,610 Tiger Georges Clemenceau would say, it will not say that Belgium invaded 576 00:45:27,610 --> 00:45:28,610 Germany. 577 00:45:29,590 --> 00:45:35,030 In trying to sum up the war, there was no language that could really express 578 00:45:35,030 --> 00:45:36,110 what had happened. 579 00:45:49,100 --> 00:45:55,800 All of the widows, the orphans, the lost limbs, the millions of dead, it was mind 580 00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:57,940 -boggling and it was mind-numbing. 581 00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:01,500 There was no way to express what had happened. 582 00:46:04,540 --> 00:46:10,460 Dead or wounded, over 9 million Russian soldiers had fallen, along with better 583 00:46:10,460 --> 00:46:17,140 than 7 million Germans, 7 million from Austria-Hungary, 6 million from 584 00:46:17,140 --> 00:46:18,140 France. 585 00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:21,160 and 900,000 from the British Empire. 586 00:46:21,860 --> 00:46:26,720 More than 200,000 Americans fell in just seven months of battle. 587 00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,920 The Great War had killed 22 million. 588 00:46:34,820 --> 00:46:39,300 Soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force's four black regiments, who had 589 00:46:39,300 --> 00:46:43,120 piled up battle casualties in the Argonne, were told that they could 590 00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:47,590 either be discharged to stay with French girls they had married, or return home 591 00:46:47,590 --> 00:46:48,590 alone. 592 00:46:51,670 --> 00:46:56,530 Wilson returned home to begin a long fight with Congress in his desire to 593 00:46:56,530 --> 00:46:59,010 have the United States enter a League of Nations. 594 00:46:59,670 --> 00:47:04,630 He was bringing his case to the people on grueling tours when a stroke took him 595 00:47:04,630 --> 00:47:08,450 out of the last fight of the Great War, and a losing one. 596 00:47:08,890 --> 00:47:11,490 His League would die without America. 597 00:47:13,290 --> 00:47:17,770 The American Expeditionary Force and the other Allied armies came home to the 598 00:47:17,770 --> 00:47:22,270 greatest parades there had ever been, but the cost of the Great War was 599 00:47:22,270 --> 00:47:23,890 greater than could ever be shown. 600 00:47:25,370 --> 00:47:30,350 Gone with so many soldiers was a centuries-long age of hope in the 601 00:47:30,350 --> 00:47:34,450 possibilities of human intelligence, of kindness and greatness. 602 00:47:36,050 --> 00:47:41,790 The German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires, had ended their 603 00:47:41,790 --> 00:47:46,410 time at the center of Europe, and the British Empire had been fatally wounded. 604 00:47:47,310 --> 00:47:49,710 American innocence was in the past. 605 00:47:52,150 --> 00:47:57,550 What had been lost in art, treasure, health, genius, and joy could never be 606 00:47:57,550 --> 00:47:58,550 reckoned. 607 00:48:00,190 --> 00:48:04,950 Nor could the tears of those who waited forever for the return of the 22 million 608 00:48:04,950 --> 00:48:07,510 who slept under a shattered world. 609 00:48:13,710 --> 00:48:15,530 These wounds couldn't heal. 610 00:48:16,970 --> 00:48:21,490 And so in 21 years, the bleeding would begin again.