All language subtitles for The.First.World.War.S01E03.DVDRip.MVGROUP.en

NARRATOR:
From the start of the First World War,

Germany seized on Britain's greatest weakness:

a vast empire, hard to defend, fatal to lose.

The gamble was that Britain might risk
everything to protect it

even victory on the Western Front.

War for Europe meant war for the world.

It was Germany's idea
to take the war beyond Europe,

but it wasn't a bid for expansion,
let alone world domination.

The aim was to take the pressure off her armies
in Europe by attacking the British Empire,

hoping to divert Britain's troops, ships
and resources to defend distant colonies.

Britain also had no thought of a bigger empire.

She just didn't want to lose the one she had.

So while Germany wanted to open the war up
around the globe,

Britain was desperate to close it down.

Maurice Hankey,
Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence,

realised the Empire was Britain's Achilles heel,

and warned against letting Germany use
it to distract Britain from her war effort.

Forces must not be diverted to minor operations

to the prejudice of the concentration in the main
theatre and the safety of the trade routes

15 years before, Germany had proclaimed
herself an empire-builder.

The Kaiser had taken his country
into the 20th century

as a German admiral
creating a global German Navy.

Weltpolitik was the big idea;
a policy of overseas imperialism

the brainchild of his Foreign Secretary
Bernhard von Bulow.

The days when the Germans
left the earth to one neighbour

the sea to another and kept only the heavens
for themselves are over

We don't want to put anyone in the shade

but we too demand our place in the sun

Germany had come late to the game of empires,

but by 1900, she had Togoland, Cameroon,
German South West Africa, now Namibia,

and German East Africa, now Tanzania.

Her flag flew over patches in the Pacific:

New Guinea, Samoa and Micronesia.

She had a vital toehold in China at Tsingtao,

where she re-coaled her ships,
and brewed beer.

Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz saw this
as just the start.

We are now standing only at the beginning
of a new division of the globe

Germany alarmed the world
with her imperial tub-thumping.

She eyed up Puerto Rico

and considered pouncing on the Panama Canal
the minute it was completed.

But the boldest of all the Kaiser's schemes
was Operational Plan lll.

The East Coast is the heart of the United States
and this is where she is most vulnerable

New York will panic
at the prospect of bombardment

By hitting her here
we can force America to negotiate

Germany's secret plans from 1903:

to attack the Eastern seaboard
with 60 ships and 100,000 men,

to shell Manhattan and capture Boston.

The outlandish scheme was driven
by the Kaiser's resentment

of America's growing power in the Pacific.

He believed in a militarist state,
and increasingly hated what the West stood for.

Service to mammon greed self indulgence

land-grabbing lying treachery
and not last murder

The Kaiser thought capitalism was vulnerable,

that a strong enough attack on its international
systems of trade, credit and insurance,

could bring the edifice tumbling down.

Operational Plan lll was dropped,
but not the hostility towards capitalist empires.

By 1912, Germany had traded in Weltpolitik
for a more realistic policy.

Now her military machine prepared
for a European, not a global war,

and the Army got the budget increase,
not the Navy.

The first day of war found
Germany's High Seas Fleet trapped

by the mighty British Navy in the North Sea.

And all the German Navy had
to threaten the entire British Empire,

was a scattered force of 17 cruisers,
linked by a wireless network to Berlin .

(Radio signals)

There was the K�nigsberg off East Africa,

the G�ben and the Breslau
in the Mediterranean,

the Dresden and Karlsruhe in the West Indies,

the Leipzig off the west coast of America.

But the greatest concentration of cruisers,

was Admiral Graf von Spee's powerful East
Asiatic Squadron, based at Tsingtao in China.

Tsingtao gave Germany
a huge area of operations,

across the South China Sea and into the Pacific.

Seizing it would cut the squadron's lifeline.

Britain saw the urgency
but lacked the resources.

So, two days into the war,
she turned to her ally Japan.

Japan was a growing power. Britain's call
for naval help suited her ambitions perfectly.

Together,
Britain and Japan would capture Tsingtao

vital German base,
and the Kaiser's pride and joy.

It would shame me more to surrender Tsingtao
to the Japanese than Berlin to the Russians

On 2 September 1914,
60,000 Japanese troops landed up the coast,

violating China's neutrality.

They met up with 2,000 British,

and closed in on the German garrison
of 4,500.

It's unbearable All we can do is sit and wait
for this bunch of monkeys to arrive

Every day they get a bit closer

No-one expects to get home in one piece

No hope of reinforcements

The noose around our necks
is getting tighter and tighter

(Artillery fire)

For a solid week,
the Japanese battered Tsingtao.

On 7 November,
they entered the town in triumph.

Some Germans sneered
at the token British force

for getting the Japanese to do their dirty work.

The brave British!

They played no part in the capture of Tsingtao
but they joined in the victory parade

As they went by we Germans were ordered
to turn our backs on them

The English complained to the Japanese
commander but he simply said

''Well we can't repeat the whole procession
just because of that''

The capture of Tsingtao gave Japan
a launch pad to pursue her empire building.

Within weeks, she demanded territory
and trading rights from China.

Japan also seized all German possessions
north of the equator.

Australia and New Zealand
were quick to steal those to the south.

Much to America's frustration,
Britain had empowered Japan in the Pacific,

key stage in a process that would lead,
a quarter of a century later, to Pearl Harbor.

Germany's loss of Tsingtao,
far from neutralising Spee's squadron,

ensured its destructive power
would be felt around the globe.

The best German cruiser commanders,
like Spee, were fearless mavericks

whom the war turned into heroes.

Superb sailors with the instincts of pirates.

The Kaiser had given them full authority
to make their own decisions in wartime.

The heavy responsibility
of the officer in command

will be increased by the isolated position
of his ship

but he must never show
one moment of weakness

Above all the officer must bear in mind

that his chief duty is to damage the enemy
as severely as possible

Spee now split his squadron.

The light cruiser Emden, under Captain
Karl von Muller, made for the Bay of Bengal.

Spee, in the Scharnhorst,
led his other ships across the Pacific.

I am quite homeless I cannot reach Germany

I must plough the seas of the world
doing as much mischief as I can

At the Admiralty in London, Winston Churchill
fretted about where Spee would show up next.

The vastness of the Pacific and its multitude
of islands offered him their shelter

and once he had vanihed who should say
where he would reappear?

He was a cut flower in a vase
fair to see yet bound to die

But so long as he lived all our enterprises lay
under the shadow of a serious potential danger

Spee had a constant worry.

Cruisers needed coal every eight or nine days
or they'd be dead in the water.

He made for neutral Chile
where he had coal waiting for him.

On 1 November 1914,
he ran into a British fleet off Coronel.

The battle which followed inspired
a post-war feature film.

The British commander was
Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock,

under orders from London.

It appears that Gneienau and Scharnhorst
are working across to South America

Be prepared to meet them in company

Cradock had one ship
that could outgun Spee's fleet,

but she was slow and had been left behind.

Now Cradock raced towards enemy ships
better armed than his.

He had ignored his own rule of thumb.

A naval officer should never let his boat
go faster than his brain

I immediately ordered Scharnhorst
and Gneienau to go full steam ahead

and within 15 minutes
I was racing against heavy seas at 20 knots

and came to lie parallel with him

Cradock's ships were no match for Spee's.

Good Hope and Monmouth
were obviously in distress

Monmouth yawed off to starboard
burning furiously

There was a terribl explosion on Good Hope
between her main mast and her after funnel

The gust of flames reached a height
of over 200 feet

lighting up a cloud of debris
that was flung still higher in the air

1,600 British sailors were lost.

It was Britain's worst naval defeat for 250 years.

The global war was going Germany's way.

It is only when you get to see
and realise what India is

that she is the strength
and the greatness of England

it is only then that you feel
that every nerve a man may strain

every energy he may put forward
cannot be devoted to a noble purpose

than keeping tight the cords
that hold India to ourselves

Britain's empire and trading network was the
single biggest resource she brought to the war.

And India was at the heart of it.

The cords were never tighter.

All the more reason
for Germany to want them cut.

These slender lines on the map were now
the focus of intense study,

in the British and German admiralties,
in the chart rooms of warships.

Fingers traced the vital shipping lanes:

through the Suez Canal,

around South Africa's Cape.

Minds pondered how to protect them,
how to sever them.

And one of the sharpest minds was on
the bridge of the German cruiser Emden.

A month after she left Admiral Spee's squadron,

Captain Karl von Muller steered her
into the Bay of Bengal.

In 1932, the Germans made a feature film
about his odyssey.

He had an indescribable power
over the entire crew

He never gave orders he just expressed a wish

From the moment he took command of the ship
he never left the bridge again

This is where he stood slept
sat studied the maps

This is where he wanted to be stand or fall

The Emden sometimes rigged a dummy funnel
to look like a British cruiser.

A large steamer appeared dead ahead
and thinking we were an English man-of-war

was so overjoyed at our presence
that she hoisted a huge Britih flag

I'd like to have seen
the look on her captain's face

when we hoisted our flag and invited him
most graciously to tarry with us awhile

Captain Muller became famous for taking all
crew and passengers safely onto the Emden

before sinking their ship.

We always allowed them time to collect
and take with them their personal possessions

They usually devoted most of this time
to making certain

that their precious supply of whisky
was not wasted on the fishes

Muller regularly released his grateful captives.

Such was the Emden's impact

that the British Admiralty later drew up this chart
to track her movements.

Muller even had the audacity to steam
into the Indian port of Madras,

as a crew member recorded in his diary.

22 September 1914

9:30pm

The Emden sneaks closer then fires 125 shots

Some hit boats in the harbour

Huge columns of fire rise above the oil tanks

The coastal defences open fire
but they all fall short

23 September

We are now 100 miles away

We can still see the fires at Madras

In the City of London, freight rates
and shipping insurance rocketed.

At one point, the entire British trade fleet
in the Bay of Bengal was kept in harbour

rather than fall prey to dashing Captain Muller.

Germany's rogue cruisers
were starting to harm Britain's war effort.

Three transports are delayed in Calcutta
through fear of Emden

This involves delaying transport of artillery
and cavalry

The Cabinet took a strong view

The extirpation of these pests
is a most important subject

While the Emden ran the British ragged
at one end of the Indian Ocean,

25 Royal Navy warships hunted
the cruiser K�nigsberg at the other,

off the coast of Germany's East African colony.

She had raided Zanzibar
and sunk a British light cruiser

from her secret hideout in the Rufiji Delta.

The frustrated British decided to strangle all her
possible bases, starting with the port of Tanga.

On 2 November 1914,
the British steamed into this bay.

In the global war,
imperial powers got others to do their fighting.

Most of the British troops were Indian.

Their arrival was closely watched
by Thomas Plantan,

a 16-year-old African fighting for the Germans.

The approaching Britih ships
had all their lights blazing

and seemed to be making no attempt
to conceal their presence

We were in position with machine guns
waiting in ambush for them

and many of them were killed
when they started to come ashore

A lot of them were killed
before they even got out of the water

(Machine-gun fire)

Thomas Plantan was one of 2,500 men under
German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

The British thought taking Tanga would be
a pushover, but they reckoned without Lettow.

He was a professional Prussian soldier,
hard as nails, charismatic.

Von Lettow was a remarkable soldier

but stubborn and single-minded to a degree
I have fortunately never experienced before

His most remarkable quality was the reckless
energy with which he pursued his goal

This was often covered up
by his persuasive charm

which he could switch on if he wanted to.

On the ship to Africa, von Lettow had met Karen
Blixen, who would later write Out Of Africa.

He clearly turned the charm on for her.

A German officer von Lettow who belongs
to a very old Mechlenburger family

has been such a friend to me

You should hear
how they talk about him out here

as the greatest genius of the age

Despite losing men during the landing,
the British now threatened Tanga.

Governor Schnee ordered Lettow to evacuate
the town rather than see it destroyed,

but Lettow had come to Africa to fight.

It was crucial to prevent the enemy
from gaining a foothold in Tanga

thus giving him a base
from which to advance north

I coulnd't let the Governor's order to spare
Tanga take precedence over this priority

Lettow recced the British positions himself,
on his bicycle.

He also called in reinforcements.

Three companies of German troops
came by rail to Tanga.

Here, on 4 November 1914, they met the British
Indian soldiers - raw and poorly trained.

British intelligence officer Richard
Meinertzhagen watched the ensuing rout.

Half the 13th Rajputs turned at once
broke into a rabble and bolted

I could not believe my eyes

They were all jabbering like terrified monkeys
and were clearly not for it at any price

Everyone in the dense forest
friend and foe was mixed up together

shouting in all sorts of languages

The enemy ran off in wild disorder

and our machine guns mowed down
whole companies to the last man

(Machine-gun fire)

Von Lettow was based here,
at the German hospital.

After two days of heavy fighting,

the British sent Richard Meinertzhagen
to negotiate a surrender.

The Germans were kindness itself

and gave me a most excellent breakfast
which I sorely needed

We dicussed the fight freely
as though it had been a football match

It seemed so odd
that I should be having a meal today

with people whom I was trying to kill yesterday

It seemed so wrong

and made me wonder
whether this really was war

or whether we'd all made a ghastly mitake

The German officers were all hard-looking
keen and fit

They treated this war
as some new form of sport

The British failed to take Tanga
and suffered 700 casualties.

Lettow lost just 65.

Germany hailed him as a hero.

A German David is fighting alone
against the Britih Goliath in Africa

If we cannot fight by his side

at last we must make sure
that he is well supplied with shot for his sling

But the British blockade of Germany prevented
reinforcements reaching Lettow.

Further east, across the Indian Ocean,
Muller was still causing havoc.

He'd sunk two warships
and captured 23 merchant ships.

On 9 November 1914,

the Emden anchored at the Cocos Islands
to destroy the British wireless station.

But the radio operator spotted the Emden's
bogus fourth funnel, and put out a call for help.

The Australian cruiser Sydney
picked up the message

and ended the Emden's maverick career.

Captain Muller was taken prisoner.

He and the other survivors
were well looked after.

Dear loved ones I'm well and healthy

The Britih were very friendly

They took loads of photos of us and asked
for our addresses to send us the snaps

Yours Walter

Now Admiral Graf von Spee's luck also ran out.

Britain took the risk of detaching
two of her latest battle cruisers

from the crucial North Sea blockade of Germany
to deal with him.

On 8 December 1914, German commander
Hans Pochhammer sighted their huge masts

as they re-coaled in Port Stanley
on the Falkland lslands.

He realised the Germans were out-gunned
and out-paced.

We choked a little at the neck
our throats contracted and stiffened

for that meant a life-and-death grapple
or rather a fight ending in honourable death

The German fleet tried to get away,
but the British battle cruisers were too fast.

At 1:25pm, Spee turned to face them.

But the British were careful to stay out of range
of his guns, firing their own from 16,000 yards.

Lieutenant Harry Bennett on HMS Canopus
watched what happened

and painted these watercolours.

At 4:17pm, the Scharnhorst went down
with Admiral von Spee and all hands.

At 6:02pm, the Gneisenau sank with most of its
crew, including Spee's younger son Heinrich.

His other son Otto was
on the doomed Nurnberg.

The sight was one of fearful awe

She turned over and sank
with a graceful gliding motion

as would a tumbler pressed over
in a bowl of water

Those who went down in her
were game to the end

For we saw a party of her men
standing on the quarterdeck

waving the German ensign as she sank

and so they went down into their watery grave

The Battle of the Falklands heralded
the end of Germany's cruiser campaign.

Her global war would increasingly
have to be fought on land.

Again, her commanders would stretch slim
resources to lead the British Empire a dance.

The Suez Canal presented a rare opportunity
for Germany to harass the British Empire

a crucial British sea lane
vulnerable to attack by land forces.

But Germany couldn't spare any men
from the Western Front,

so Berlin turned to Ottoman Turkey,
her ally since November 1914.

The Turkish 4th Army was stationed in
Palestine, just 150 miles from the Suez Canal.

The Turks agreed to help capture Suez,
assigning these 19,000 troops.

They saw it as the first stage in their own
re-conquest of Egypt and Libya.

We marched at night and only by moonlight

My heart was filld with a deep melancholy
mingled with great hope of success

at the sound of the song
The Red Flag Flies Over Cairo

to the accompaniment of which
the advancing battalions forged ahead

over the endlss waste of desert

feebly illuminated by the pale gleam
of the waxing moon

The Turks had to transport howitzers,
floating pontoons,

food and water across the Sinai Desert
and didn't lose a single man.

In the early hours of 3 February 1915,
they reached the Suez Canal.

The German colonel who had planned
the operation now watched it go horribly wrong.

A sentry noticed our attack and fired

The shots created panic

The English then blasted the banks
with machine-gun fire

(Machine-gun fire)

The Turks found the Canal defended
by nine British warships

and 30,000 Indian troops,
dug in to defensive positions.

The Ottoman troops suffered 1,200 casualties.

The survivors retreated across the desert.

The attack had failed, but Africa was now
a battleground in Germany's global war.

She had three bases of operations:

the Cameroons, German East Africa,
where Lettow was still at large,

and German South West Africa,
with its ports and wireless stations.

Luckily for Britain ,
she had a colony right next door.

Unluckily, it was the one whose loyalty
she could least rely on.

The Union of South Africa was racially diverse:

Blacks, Boers and British settlers.

Just 15 years before, Britain had fought a long,
bloody war against the Boers.

Many still had little love for Britain.
Their loyalty could not be counted on.

As one commander told South Africa's
prime minister, Louis Botha:

My men are ready Whom do we fight
the English or the Germans?

But South Africa was ideally situated to launch
an attack on German South West Africa.

British Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt
took the gamble.

If your ministers desire and feel themselves able
to seize such part of German South West Africa

as will give them the command
of the wirelss stations there

we should feel this was a great and urgent
Imperial service

South Africa's government readily agreed,

because it had mini-imperial ambitions
of its own.

It wanted to seize German South West for itself.

On 14 September 1914,

South African forces crossed the Orange River
into German South West.

But the Germans were one jump ahead,

as the South Africans found out when they
paused at the watering hole of Sandfontein.

(Machine-gun fire)

(Artillery fire)

The South Africans were beaten.

But there was worse to come

Part of South Africa now rose up
in armed rebellion.

Commanding the forces in the Northern Cape
was Manie Maritz.

Fearless and uncompromising,

Maritz had fought a vicious guerrilla campaign
against Britain in the Boer War.

His sympathies lay entirely with Germany.

I received a telegram ordering me
to take a large commando

into German South West Africa

I was determined not to fight
on behalf of the Britih Empire

and my officers and troops were
in full accord with me

In October 1914, Manie Maritz crossed the
Orange River to German territory at Schuit Drift

to enlist German support.

Two days later, Maritz addressed his troops
under this tree.

Now men we don't want to be ruled
by the Jews and the financiers of England

General Beyers General De Wet
and myself have decided

to form an independent South African Republic

and have entered into an agreement with
the Governor of German South West Africa

They will provide us
with arms and ammunition guns

On this step depends the freedom
of the masses of the country

Britain's request for help had brought her
dominion to the brink of civil war.

In London, the Colonial Secretary
Lewis Harcourt

feared the break-up of the Union of South Africa.

He secretly ordered 30,000 Australian soldiers
diverted to the Cape to smother the rebellion.

Safety of the Union is first
and paramount consideration

We attach no importance
to German South West Africa in comparion

The Australians weren't needed.

In the winter of 1914, the loyal South Africans
defeated the Boer rebels.

This is rare film of 50 of them
being led to trial in Cape Town .

But they never caught Manie Maritz.

By July 1915,
South Africa cornered the Germans,

forced their surrender and annexed their colony.

And Britain had more work for South Africa

north this time,
to deal once and for all with von Lettow.

London turned to South Africa's Defence
Minister to lead the campaign, Jannie Smuts.

Smuts too had fought in the Boer War,
but was now passionately pro-British.

More a statesman than a soldier, Smuts made
an indifferent general of conventional forces.

And he was up against Lettow.

British officer Richard Meinertzhagen was
now Smuts's intelligence officer.

Smuts is quite determined
to avoid a stand-up fight

He told me he could not afford
to go back to South Africa

with the nickname Butcher Smuts

If von Lettow is clever and Smuts not clever
enough there is going to be trouble

Lettow was clever

Here at his headquarters
at Moshi railway station,

he thought through the idea
of depriving Britain of manpower in Europe,

by opening up the war in Africa.

The question was could we
with our small forces

prevent considerable numbers of the enemy
from intervening in Europe

or inflict substantial damage
on their armaments and troops?

I strongly believed that we could

By August 1916, Lettow had become expert
at his cat-and-mouse game.

Von Lettow is slippery
and is not going to be caught by manoeuvre

He knows the country better than we do

I think we are in for an expensive
hide-and-seek

and von Lettow will still be cuckooing

somewhere in tropical Africa
when the cease-fire goes

Smuts has cost Britain many hundreds of lives
and many millions of pounds

Lettow ran his force of up to 15,000 soldiers,
mostly Black, on scrounging and improvisation.

No supplies from Germany reached him
after March 1916,

but he made a little go a long way, as Ludwig
Deppe, one of his medical officers, noted.

When there was no ammunition
Lettow would try to produce his own cartridges

If the men asked the commander for weapons or
clothes they were told ''Take it from the enemy''

Lettow made war at cost-price

You'd have been justified in displaying this war
at a country fair with a for-sale sign

''Cheapest war in the world''

Jannie Smuts had five times Lettow's force
and resources to match.

But the further he went into German East Africa,
the more stretched his supply lines.

And he reckoned without the killer tsetse fly.

The life expectancy
for his 50,000 horses was just four weeks.

Torrential rain, mud, dust and boiling heat
further slowed his progress.

Intelligence was sketchy, maps inadequate.

Telephone cable often had to be raised
to eight metres to avoid damage by giraffes.

This is like warfare of bygone days

We come along where no road had ever been

where probably White man
had never trod before

The river is in flood and we can't get across

On the other side
the German patrol are watching us

but the crocodile hold the peace between us
very successfully

Lettow played with Smuts, refusing to fight,
slipping away, luring him deeper into Africa.

As they went,
they spread the war's grief and destruction,

dragging in more and more
of the people of Africa.

This war was being carried
on the backs of Black Africans.

For the Lettow campaign alone,
the British recruited over a million Black porters.

One in five died, from malnutrition and disease

death rates comparable with those
on the Western Front.

They endured their ordeal quietly

They only had duties and hardly any rights

They tumbled into the splashing mud
with their heavy loads

and were then ruthlessly forced
to move on and catch up

''Oh the Lindi Road was dusty

And the Lindi Road was long

But the chap what did the hardest graft
who could not do but wrong

Was the Kavirondo porter
with his Kavirondo song

It was 'Come here porter'!

And Omera didn't grumble
he simply did his bit''

What Smuts saves on the battlfield
he loses in hospital

for it is Africa and the climate
we are really fighting not the Germans

Out of 20,000 South Africans, over half
were invalided home by the beginning of 1917.

They were replaced by Black troops
from Nigeria and Ghana.

Recruitment of Blacks soared
in East Africa as well.

Over the course of the war, the King's
African Rifles rose from 3,000 men to 35,000.

Fololiyani Longwe spoke
for many Black soldiers.

Think of yourself buried in a hole
with only your head and hands outside

holding a gun death smelling all over the place

Listen to the sound of exploding bombs
and machine guns

smoke all over and the vegetation burnt
and of course deforested

Watch your relatives getting killed
crying finally dead

These things we did experienced and saw

Lettow survived undefeated to the very end,
marching triumphantly through Berlin in 1919.

The British never caught him,
even though they turned it into an African war

and set an army on his tail.

But Britain and France had such reserves
of manpower in their colonies

that from 1914, they shipped them to Europe.

Remarkable French colour photographs of the
world that came to serve on the Western Front.

French General Charles Mangin had calculated

that France could raise up to 300,000
from her empire for Europe.

No-one believed him.

But, in fact, they mobilised double that number.

MANGIN : Black troops
have precisely those qualities

which are demanded in the long struggles
of modern war

endurance tenacity the instinct for combat

the absence of nervousness
and an incomparable power of shock

Not only do they enjoy danger
a life of adventure

but they are also essentially dicisplinable

People started hiding
and running away from the camp

There were all kinds of illnesses
even psychological illness

People didn't know where they were going
or even why they were fighting

There were rumours that we would never come
back that we are going to be sold as slaves

India provided Britain
with 1 3/4 million men in the war.

They had been thrown into
some of the toughest fighting from the start.

One Indian wrote to a friend:

The war is a calamity on three worlds and has
caused me to cross the seas and live here

The cold is so great that it cannot be described

We have not seen the sun for four months

Thus we are sacrificed

I have neither slep by night nor ease by day

There can never have been such a war before
nor will there ever be again

Some men like Jason Jingo,
used to the habitual racism of colonial rule,

returned home with greater self-esteem.

We had liked or time in France

It was our first experience of living in a society
without a colour bar

We were different from the other people
at home

Our behaviour
as we showed the South Africans

was something more
than they'd expected from a native

We had copied the manners and customs of the
Europeans and not only copied, we lived them

But it wasn't the same Africa Jason Jingo and
the other survivors came back to after the war.

The empires which once carved it up
had now turned parts of it into a wasteland,

as German medic Ludwig Deppe realised.

Behind us we leave destroyed fields
and for the immediate future starvation

We are no longer the agents of civiliation

Our path is marked by death plundering
and deserted villages

It would be years before African nationalism
took off, but a few had begun the journey.

In 1914, John Chilembwe challenged
the basis of the war and Africa's place in it.

And his words would haunt colonial officials
for years to come.

Let the rich mean bankers, titled men

storekeepers, farmers and landlords
go to war and get shot

Instead the poor Africans
who have nothing to own in this present world

who in death leave only a long line of widows
and orphans in utter want and dire distress

are invited to die for a cause which is not theirs

Germany had fought a remarkable global war.

But it cost her her cruisers, her wireless network,
and all her colonies.

Yet Germany had forced Britain and France
to call on their empires and lean on their allies.

In the process, these flexed their muscles
and formed empires of their own.

The First World War
saw the last scramble for Africa.

And the ideas the Kaiser had so hated
land-grabbing, avarice and capitalism

had in fact been spread wider.

For the moment, imperialism looked more
successful than it had ever been.

In the next episode of the First World War:

the call goes out for jihad,
holy war, in the Middle East,

the nightmare of Gallipoli
and the agony of the Armenian people.