Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Governments in the First World War feared one thing

almost as much as military defeat - revolution.

By 1917, with victory on the battlefield still elusive and morale weakening,

both sides hoped to bring the enemy down from within.

Strikes and unrest were sparks to be fanned into revolution, transforming the war.

Film from 1917 of one of Germany's wildest dreams coming true...

..Russian troops stop fighting on the Eastern Front.

It was funny to see our Ivans greeting the Germans

The Germans gave our lads wine and cigars and they gave the Germans bread

It turned out that one of the Germans had a camera

He told us to stand in a line and took a picture

Later the photographer asked our lads to come and collect the photos

Governments worried how to contain war weariness,

prevent discontent growing mutinous, stop mutiny becoming revolution.

And governments realised that turning this problem on its head

offered a startling opportunity.

What if unrest could be harnessed,

reined in hard in your own country, but spurred on in the enemy's?

In Cairo and Dublin , Petrograd and Zurich,

the Allies and Germans set agents working, to exploit unrest and forment revolution.

The glittering prize was to turn a whole people against its masters

taking it out of the war completely.

In Russia the Germans pulled it off,

backing the Bolsheviks to hijack a spontaneous revolution.

Russia, in 1917, was war weary

Huge losses, poor leadership and corruption , plus the nightmare logistics of a 900-mile front,

left her army running on empty.

I don't know whether Russia's dream of destroying Germany will ever come true

Probably not

We have nothing to fight with - no rifles, no mortars, no explosives, no boots, no overcoats

Nothing

But, incredibly, Russia's army held the line.

It was the home front that cracked first.

Petrograd - now St Petersburg

Russia's capital and industrial powerhouse, seethed with discontent.

Its factories were swollen with workers, with little to eat and cramped housing.

A demonstration on 8 March 1917, began peacefully.

It was a glorious sunny frosty day and all the people were in an excellent mood

They were singing the Marseillaie and asking for bread

But the Tsar ordered the protests crushed.

On Znamenskaya Square, in the heart of Petrograd, the killing began.

Sergeant Sergei Kirpichnikov was there.

The ensign ordered the buglar to play three signal

Then he commanded "Rifles ready aim fire!"

(Gunfire)

Everybody scattered

One man was down a woman fell

Over 50 civilians were shot dead.

The massacre forced Petrograd's soldiers to choose.

Whom to defend - the people or the Tsar?

Back in barracks, Sergei Kirpichnikov spoke to his comrades.

It would be better to die with honour

than obey any further orders to shoot into the crowds

Our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and brides are begging for bread

Are we going to kill them?

They shot their duty officer dead and poured onto the streets,

joining other mutineers and workers.

British journalist, Arthur Ransome, cabled his office in London.

About two hundred persons killed - stop

Local police chief lying dead - stop

Revolution definitely begun

The troops gathered support at barracks and factories.

They seized the city centre, set up barricades,

occupied railway stations and the telephone exchange.

Britain's military attach�, Sir Alfred Knox, was in the artillery administration

when the building came under attack.

(Angry shouting)

ALFRED KNOX: Outside came a great diorderly mass of soldiery

All were armed and many had red flags fastened to their bayonets

Soon we heard the windows and door on the ground floor being broken in

and the sound of shots

Most of the officers were leaving the department by a back door

In a matter of days the Tsar's regime was spinning into freefall.

The revolution has begun What happiness!

The cursed autocracy is finally destroyed

The soliers have gone onto the streets

The officers are hiding

It's all so unexpected

And everything's going at a gallop We've all gone mad with joy

Soldiers ordered into the city to restore control, simply joined the mutiny.

The Tsar was forced to abdicate

and a provisional government formed at the Tauride Palace.

Russia's new rulers had their hands full running a war while riding a revolution.

Germany looked to exploit the turmoil in Russia.

And Russia's allies, Britain and France, crossed their fingers.

They too had experienced worker discontent.

March 1916 - Londoners gather at Tower Hill to protest against conscription.

There was also opposition in Scotland,

inspired by the fiery speeches of trade union leader Willie Gallacher.

Thousands of our fellows have sacrificed their lives

fighting against the very Prussianim they now propose to foit upon us here

Workers of the Clyde you must prepare for action

When this loathsome enemy of freedom raises its head

you must strike and strike to kill

(Crowd chants)

Workers marched down Whitehall for better wages and lower prices.

Around 17 million working days were lost to strikes in Britain between 1915 and 1918.

There were strikes by miners in South Wales,

engineers in Coventry, Sheffield and Manchester,

and shipbuilders on Teesside, Tyneside and the Clyde.

The army kept 200,000 troops in Britain to guard against invasion and civilian uprising.

But David Lloyd George, as Minister of Munitions and then Prime Minister,

preferred to give in to strikers, rather than crush them.

Father of the state pension and national insurance schemes,

Lloyd George commanded working-class support.

He used concession, not confrontation, to maintain industrial output.

Negotiators with the unions were given strict instructions.

WAR CABINET AGENT: If a strike appears to be inevitable

all the concessions asked for should be granted

But while Britain kept a lid on unrest, France could not.

Throughout the First World War, Paris lived under the shadow of German invasion.

(Train whistle blows)

But after three winters of fighting,

France's stability was being undermined by a wave of stoppages and protests.

Many of the dissenters were women,

who couldn't be intimidated by the threat of military service.

WOMAN : Everybody is complaining in Paris

People are on strike over the price rises and the lack of fuel

Can 't you just hear the rising strains of revolution?

WOMAN : These troubles are justified

because while the people work themselves to death to scrape a living

the bosses and big industrialists are growing fat in record time

And all we can do is grin and bear it

These ideas did reach the front, but what pushed the French Army towards mutiny in 1917

was a history of poorly planned and ill-conducted battles.

The final straw was a doomed attack

devised by its own commander in chief, General Robert Georges Nivelle.

The offensive alone can give victory

The defensive gives only defeat and shame

On 16 April 1917, Nivelle ordered over a million Frenchmen

to attack a heavily defended German-held ridge known as the Chemin des Dames.

After storming this ridge,

Nivelle expected his armies to smash through seven miles of German defences.

(Explosions)

We were faced by a forest of wire

Machine guns appeared everywhere

There were traps of every description

The ground was impassable

(Prolonged gunfire)

40,000 Frenchmen were killed in the first days, but Nivelle ordered the assault to continue.

Casualties reached 150,000 by 5 May.

Then the men snapped.

I am one of the most persitent in spreading propaganda

I know that I am risking my hide but by this means I might save it

My darling say with me ''Down with the war that separates us

and long live the revolution that in bringing peace will reunite us''

I love you and I don't want to die

The village of Coeuvres, 20 miles south of the Chemin des Dames.

The mayor watched what happened

when the 370th Infantry Regiment was ordered to the front.

The soliers spilled out into the whole village

screaming with rage firing rifles and singing the International

Towards morning they formed columns and made their way to the woods

By June 1917, half the French Army was affected.

Men refused to return to the trenches.

We seemed absolutely powerless

From every section of the front news arrived of regiments refusing to man the trenches

The slightest German attack

would have been enough to tumble down our house of cards and bring the enemy to Paris

But the Germans had no inkling of the French mutiny.

It was a massive intelligence failure.

Four days after their mutiny,

the troops from Coeuvres gave themselves up at a nearby village.

They emerged from the wood in perfect order

in columns of four all flawlessly groomed and polished

The French soldiers' actions were more like a strike than a mutiny.

They won important concessions

better leave arrangements, more rest, improved medical conditions.

All we wanted was to call the government's attention to us

make it see that we are men and not beasts for the slaughterhouse

(Shouting)

Nivelle was sacked

His replacement, General Philippe P�tain, reversed French strategy,

making defence the order of the day.

The men were given patriotic instruction and reminded why they were fighting.

But P�tain also knew that discipline had to be restored.

The tactic was to execute a few but force thousands to watch.

Photographs taken secretly at a French military execution.

A man is tied to a post.

The order is given to fire.

(Gunfire)

Soldiers are paraded past the body.

Louis Flourac was one of the 49 death sentences carried out.

He was shot here in Chacrise by his comrades, some of whom hated what they were doing.

I see the dead every single day in the trenches

But this is different

I'm a man who has shot his friends

Italy's soldiers were also growing war-weary.

But, unlike its French counterpart,

the Italian High Command saw punishment as the only way to maintain morale.

Chief of Staff, General Cadorna, was merciless.

Every soldier must be convinced of the fact

that his superior has the sacred duty to shoot all cowards and recalcitrants immediately

Cadorna's iron grip led to massive discontent.

For months it simmered below the surface, until the Battle of Caporetto in October 1917.

The Italian Army was hit here, in the Isonzo river valley,

by a massive Austro-Hungarian/German attack.

(Bomb whines)

(Explosions)

Resistance in armies took many forms.

The Italians didn't openly refuse to fight,

they just began surrendering to the enemy en masse.

By dawn we were surrounded

and the Germans finally took us all prioner

and we were happy because we had saved our lives

Farewell Italy

Farewell family

I am now in the hands of the Germans

A young lieutenant in the German Alpenkorps, Erwin Rommel,

took over 1,000 Italians prisoner without firing a single shot.

The soliers threw away their weapons and hurried to me

In an instant I was surrounded and hoisted onto Italian shoulers

"E viva Germania!" sounded from 1 000 throats

An Italian officer who hesitated to surrender was shot down by his own troops

For the Italians on Mrzli Peak the war was over

They shouted with joy

I am writing this at 11 o'clock at night

most comfortably ensconced in the Italian officers' mess

There is a huge stock of delicious wines

which we are getting through in record time

so I hope there is no question of a counterattack

We've captured machine guns heavy artillery and personal weapons

These are of the highest order but show little sign of actual use

MALE CHOIR: Ta-pum

Dietro il ponte un cimitero...

Some 300,000 ltalian soldiers surrendered in the winter of 1917.

As many again retreated down these mountain tracks with fleeing civilians.

They stroll past with their hands in their pockets

When questioned they all say that they've pulled out because they were told to

Who told them? No-one knows The next man along

Cimitero di noi soldati

Forse

Un giorno ti vengo a trovar

What a terrible and heart-wrenching sight it was

The poor women with their little ones bundled up

walking towards Italy to save their lives

Ta-ta

Italy's High Command sacked General Cadorna

and regained control by easing discipline

and making concessions to the soldiers as the French had done.

But the price of unrest was high. The fighting strength of the Italian Army had been halved.

And while governments wrestled with unrest at home, they were also stirring up trouble abroad.

Britain had been plotting to destabilise the Ottoman Empire since the war began.

Ottoman Turkey was Germany's ally in the Middle East.

Her empire stretched across Arabia into the Hejaz,

a vast desert area which included the holy cities of Medina and Mecca.

Their loss would seriously undermine the Turks' standing in the Muslim world and boost Britain's.

The British turned to the Arabs of the Hejaz,

holding out the carrot of independence if they rose up against their Turkish masters.

If the Arab nation assist England in this war that has been forced upon us by Turkey

England will guarantee that no internal intervention will take place in Arabia

and we will give Arabs every assitance against foreign aggression

The idea of Britain backing Arabian independence worried the India Office.

A strong Arab state might be more dangerous to Chritendom than a strong Ottoman state

Lord Kitchener's policy of destroying one Islamic state merely for the purpose of creating another

has always seemed to me disastrous

The India Office needn't have worried.

Kitchener was playing a cynical game,

never intending to hand real power to the Arabs of the Hejaz.

But the British showered the Emir of Mecca, Sharif Hussein, with gold

and dropped hints that if all went well,

he might realise his dream of becoming leader of the Arabs.

On 5 June 1916, the Arab revolt began.

Mecca quickly fell to the rebels, but the main Turkish garrison at Medina held its ground.

The Turkish commander, Fahri Pasha, refused to surrender.

Until my soliers are buried under the rubble of Medina

in a crimson shroud of blood and fire

the red flag of the Ottomans shall never be removed from the castle turrets of Medina

The uprising commanded no popular support.

But the British did have a man on the spot:

TE Lawrence, a charismatic 28-year-old officer attached to Sharif Hussein's forces in the Hejaz.

Lawrence spoke Arabic. He saw where the Arabs' strengths lay.

I think one company of Turks properly entrenched in open country

would defeat the Sharif's armies

Their real sphere is guerrilla warfare

They would dynamite a railway plunder a caravan steal camel better than anyone

(Train whistle blows)

The Turks were most vulnerable along their stretched lines of communication.

Lawrence and the Arabs became experts in railway sabotage

LAWRENCE: The last stunt was the hold -up of a train

The whole job took ten minutes and they lost 70 killed

My loot was a superfine red Baluch prayer rug

I hope this sounds the fun it is

It's the most amateurish Buffalo Billy sort of performance

A German on the train saw the attack differently.

The Bedouin mob came bursting into the carriage to kill and plunder

I could feel the blood pouring down my body but I was left alone

The thieves' minds were drawn towards looting having killed 40 men women and children

and taken the rest captive

TE Lawrence adopted the cause of Arab nationalism.

I hope that the Turkish flag may disappear from Arabia

It is so good to have helped in making a new nation

and I hate the Turks so much that to see their own people turning on them is very gratifying

Lawrence now dressed as an Arab. He asked his mother for help with his costume.

If that silk headcloth with the silver ducks on it

last used I believe as a tablcloth still exits will wou send it out to me?

Such things are hard to get here now

Capturing Turkish-held Jerusalem was a key British objective in 1917.

Seizing the port of Akaba would strengthen the Arabs' case for a role in the campaign .

Lawrence realised that all Akaba's guns pointed out to sea.

The town was defenceless from the rear.

That meant a 600-mile ride across the Hejaz at the height of summer.

LAWRENCE: Mud flats are purgatory

Sun reflects from them like mirror flame yellow cutting into our eyes

Seven weeks later, the Arab force reappeared outside Akaba,

catching the Turks totally off guard.

(Gunfire)

The town fell just four days later.

The Middle East was stunned.

General Allenby, commanding British forces in the region,

now wrote the Arab revolt into his Jerusalem campaign,

reinforcing it with armoured cars, air support, artillery and colonial troops.

On 11 December 1917,

Allenby entered Jerusalem on foot with his officers, including Lawrence.

The Arabs would find they had won not self-rule, but new masters.

Lawrence had known all along that the Arabs of the Hejaz

were merely the tools of British subversion, as he admitted long after.

The Arabs saw in me a free agent of the Britih Government

and demanded from me an endorsement of its written promies

So I had to join the conspiracy and assured the men of their reward

I was continually and bitterly ashamed

Had I been an honest advior of the Arabs I would have advied them to go home

and not risk their lives fighting for such stuff

While Britain was sponsoring subversion against Germany's ally Turkey,

she had her own weak spot, right on her doorstep

Ireland.

Britain had promised Ireland Home Rule, but the First World War shelved all that.

200,000 Irishmen - Catholics and Protestants, would fight for Britain.

About 30,000 of them would die.

But the Irish Republican Brotherhood, forerunners of the IRA,

believed England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity.

P�draic Pearse saw the war as a chance for Ireland to free herself from British rule.

The European war has brought about a crisis which may contain

as yet hidden within it

the moment for which generations have been waiting

It remains to be seen whether if that moment reveal itself

we shall have the sight to see and the courage to do

Germany, for many republicans, had always been a good place to plot revolution.

Erskine Childers was famous in Britain, the country he now sought to undermine.

His bestselling novel, The Riddle Of The Sands,

had warned Britain of the dangers she faced from the German Navy.

By July 1914, his sympathies had switched.

He put to sea in his yacht, the Asgard, to run guns.

He photographed the operation.

Leaving Hamburg under tow.

Sailing back to Ireland.

His wife and a friend with two of the 900 rifles they had collected from Germany.

And the scene after Childers docked outside Dublin.

Crowds cheer as the guns are driven away by car.

(Gunshot)

(Gunshot)

Two years later the German guns were put to use

when 1,600 Irish revolutionaries rose up in Dublin.

Easter Monday 1916

Sinn F�iners occupy railway stations the GPO and other places

They have blocked the streets nearing Stephen's Green

and are shooting at anyone they see in khaki

We used to think we were clear of the war here in Ireland

but we've certainly got it close enough now

(Prolonged gunfire)

The moment for which P�draic Pearse had been waiting had come.

He read out the historic proclamation of the Irish Republic

a document which acknowledges the support of ''gallant allies in Europe''.

Who were these gallant allies and what had they done?

Germany had long seen subversion in Ireland as a way of destabilising Britain.

In August 1914, Sir Roger Casement,

an Irish republican and one-time darling of the British establishment,

gave the Germans the opportunity they were looking for.

He wrote to the Kaiser with an offer.

We draw Your Majesty's attention to the part that Ireland necessarily

if not openly must play in this conflict

Ireland must be freed from Britih control

Thousands of Irishmen are prepared to do their part to aid the German cause

for they recognise that it is their own

Casement sailed for Berlin in disguise and in the winter of 1914 he met Arthur Zimmermann,

a future Foreign Minister, and the man in charge of Germany's subversive operations.

Zimmermann was impressed by Casement

and began to wonder if a small German landing on Irish soil

might cause the British massive problems.

His diplomats in America raised funds from the Irish community in New York.

It is proposed to undertake an invasion

with 25 000 troops with 50 000 extra guns

Then undoubtedly the co-operation of all Irish in the Britih Army will follow

There is strong friction between Irish and English in northern France

Zimmermann's uprising was to be four-pronged:

the dispatch of German weapons to Irish rebels,

the landing of a German expeditionary force on the west coast,

German submarines to seize Dublin harbour,

and diversionary zeppelin bombing raids on London.

(Zeppelins rumble)

Germany's High Command got cold feet and refused to commit an invasion force.

But in April 1916, the zeppelin raids did take place,

a submarine was sent to the west coast...

..and an arms boat carrying 20,000 rifles, 10 machine guns

and a million rounds of ammunition

was dispatched for Ireland, under the command of Captain Karl Spindler.

Gradually rising out of the water was Inishtooskert Island our rendezvous

Within half an hour at the latest the pilot boat must make her appearance

But the Irish expected him two days later...

..so the Germans sat in the bay till caught by a British patrol.

Captain Spindler scuttled his boat rather than surrender the arms.

SPINDLER: The German naval ensign was run up bidding defiance to the Britih

Then there was a muffled explosion

(Explosion)

Beams and splinters flew up in the air

The Aud sank with a loud hissing noie

The uprising's hope of success sank with the German arms.

Many rebels now abandoned the project.

But a hard-core minority,

armed with the rifles Childers had brought in from Hamburg two years before,

decided to make a symbolic gesture of defiance.

(Gunfire)

On Easter Monday 1916, they seized key points in Dublin.

The British responded with machine guns and artillery fire,

and shipped in 10,000 men from the mainland.

Few Dubliners mourned the crushing of the rebellion.

Guinness brewer, Edward Phillips,

had his disused boilers converted into improvised armoured cars for the British.

Rang up military and offered motor lorries Gladly accepted

Sent out for drivers who lived close They all consented

Over 1,000 civilians were caught in the crossfire.

And as the British took the rebels into custody,

the people of Dublin pelted them with vegetables

and emptied chamber pots over their heads.

Many had sons and fathers fighting on the Western Front

and were outraged by the uprising's German connections.

But now the British made a terrible blunder,

throwing away their moral authority and transforming the Easter Rising

into the seminal event of Irish statehood.

AMANDA MILLEN : R�isin Dubh

They sentenced the leaders of the uprising to death, starting with Pearse.

He admitted to the court...

I asked for and accepted German aid in the shape of arms and an expeditionary force

My aim was to win Irish freedom

Over ten days, the men were brought into the execution yard at Kilmainham Jail and shot.

(Gunfire)

James Connolly was so wounded in the uprising that he had to be shot sitting down.

(Gunfire)

Dublin fell silent as Britain turned 16 men into martyrs.

(Gunfire)

People who had thrown rotten fruit at them, now saw them as heroes.

(Gunfire)

Britain turned the failed uprising into a national cause.

(Gunfire)

Zimmermann 's next challenge was in a different league.

(Ship's hooter)

Could Germany exploit Russia's revolution of March 1917

to lever Russia out of the First World War?

Almost all the ingredients were in place:

a major civilian uprising,

restless troops at the front, and a toothless leadership in the rear.

The Germans lacked just one piece of the jigsaw...a charismatic leader.

But they had someone in mind.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was leader of the Bolsheviks,

a small group of extreme Russian radicals.

They had spent many hours over the past 14 years

plotting revolution in coffee houses and prison cells.

When at last it came, they were caught on the hop.

Stalin was in Siberia, Bukharin was in New York and Lenin was in Zurich.

''What torture it is for us,'' Lenin wrote, ''to be sitting here at such a time.''

He knew the Allies would never allow him passage.

The obvious route lay through Germany and Sweden.

But would Germany let him through?

German agents had long been watching Lenin.

They knew he wanted their enemy, Russia, out of the war.

Lenin's strong side is his organiational talent

He possesses the most brutal and relentless energy

Lenin's view i ''It doesn't matter who wins the war

The defeat of Russia is preferable victory worse''

Zimmermann counselled the Kaiser to approve Lenin's passage.

Since it is in our interests

that the influence of the radical wing of the Russian revolutionaries should prevail

it would seem to me advisable to allow transit

The Kaiser exploited Lenin as cynically as Lenin used the Kaiser,

each thinking he had the better of the bargain.

On 10 April 1917, Lenin, his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya,

and his former mistress Inessa Armand,

boarded the train for Germany with other Bolsheviks.

''The Kaiser's paying for the journey,'' jeered rival Russian socialists.

''You'll be hanged as German spies.''

Lenin stood listening and smiled

''Hiss as much as you like'' he said

''We Bolheviks will shuffle your cards and spoil your game''

To counter charges of working with the enemy, Lenin devised the fiction of a sealed train,

claiming total isolation from the outside world.

In fact, the group travelled in a regular carriage on a train that stopped frequently,

taking four days to cross Germany.

Though the train halted in Berlin,

there's no evidence that Lenin met any German representatives.

He knew the Germans were giving money to his Bolshevik party, but avoided direct contact.

Germany's greatest help to Lenin's cause was getting him back to Russia.

(Train whistle blows)

The night he arrived in Petrograd, Lenin addressed the crowd.

Some were hostile.

MAN : Ought to stick our bayonets into a fellow like that Must be a German

But Lenin was soon winning converts, as Countess Irina Skariatina saw.

Lenin is bald terribly ugly wears a crumpled old brown suit

speaks without any oratorical power

more like a college professor giving a lecture

yet what he says drives the people crazy

And what he said was - end the war.

And by doing so, give the people what they want

and what the Provisional Government had failed to deliver - peace, land and bread.

Zimmermann had agents in Petrograd monitoring Lenin's progress.

Lenin's entry into Russia successful

He is working exactly as we would wish

Just as the Germans hoped, Lenin's ideas spread to the front.

The regiments have turned into hordes of bastards

holding meetings led by the Bolheviks

Military life has come to a standstill

The soliers want peace no matter what the conditions are

They want to go home to work the land and enjoy the results of the revolution

On 18 June 1917, news of secret German funding of the Bolsheviks leaked.

Lenin fled the city, heavily disguised.

But the Bolsheviks countered claims that Lenin was a spy,

using printing presses bought with German money.

And they set about building worker support,

helping arm the most militant to create the Red Guard.

Lenin reappeared on the night of 6 November 1917,

leaving this safe house for the Bolshevik HQ.

he khew power had to be seized now

We must not wait

We may lose everything

The government is tottering we must deal it the death blow

To delay action is the same as death

Journalist John Reed was at the HQ.

In the hall I ran into some of the Bolhevik leaders

One showed me a revolver

''The game is on'' he said and his face was pale

Throughout that night the Bolsheviks secured key points across Petrograd

with hardly a shot fired.

The city awoke to a new world order.

I've just heard some stunning news

The Proviional Government has been overthrown

The telegraph wires are buzzing with decrees of the new Bolhevik government

All land is to be transferred to the people

The first thing the Bolsheviks did was to take Russia out of the war,

freeing the Germans from a crippling fight on two fronts.

Germany's gamble on Lenin had paid off.

The Bolheviks have brought about the crucial event of the century

they've dicharged millions of Russian soliers and freed the Germans' hands

A hot steam bath awaits the Allies

Revolution and subversion had released 44 German divisions for the Western Front.

Germany now had a chance to win the First World War.

ln the next episode of the First World War:

Germany launches a huge offensive on the Western Front, but her alliances start to crumble.

It would be a race between victory and collapse.