All language subtitles for The.First.World.War.S01E10.DVDRip.MVGROUP.en

(Cannon fire)

NARRATOR: By summer 1918,
the war had been going for four terrible years,

and the end seemed nowhere in sight.

Unlss we can look ahead and plan for 1919

we shall be in the same melancholy position
next year as we are this

Do the means
of beating the German armies in 1919 exit?

Have we the willpower?

Since spring 1918,
the Allies on the Western Front

had been battered by German offensives.

But in August, the Allies secretly assembled
a strike force in northern France.

100,000 men
of the Australian and Canadian Corps

were backed by 400 tanks,

1,900 planes,

2,000 guns,

three cavalry divisions.

General Sir Henry Rawlinson ,
British commander at the Somme in 1916,

had learned from the past.

He embraced new ideas.

The close combination of men and machinery,
the importance of achievable goals.

My only difficulty will be to get enough diviions
and to keep the thing secret

Rawlinson aimed his assault at a weak 12-mile
sector of the German line, east of Amiens.

He had the French in support to the south.

General Erich Ludendorff,
joint commander in chief of the German Army,

neither knew of an attack, nor feared one.

We should wih for nothing better
than to see the enemy launch an offensive

100 000 infantry
are standing grimly silently

All feel to make sure
their bayonets are firmly locked

The section officer counts the last seconds

The speed was terrific

Within a few moments of the Huns
running from our tanks and infantry

our guns were coming up
into new forward positions

It was glorious to be in the rush of an advance

The Allied attack sent the Germans reeling.

By nightfall, Rawlinson's Fourth Army
had advanced eight miles.

They killed and seriously wounded
9,000 Germans, and captured 18,000 more.

Ludendorff declared 8 August,
''the Black Day of the German Army''.

General Paul von Hindenburg steadied him,

but both knew the Battle of Amiens
was the beginning of the end.

Mighty as Germany looked on the map,

her armies on the Western Front
were near the end of their tether,

exhausted, hungry, fed up.

Their generals had given them
neither clear aims nor adequate supplies.

The Germans had lost
nearly a million men since March.

Ludendorff blamed the home front
for spreading defeatism.

I was told of behaviour which I openly confess

I should not have thought possible
in the German Army

Whole bodies of our men
had surrendered to single soliers

Germany's problems went beyond poor morale.

She had lost a string of vital battles.

The battle of the factories and technology.

Germany had built just 20 tanks.

The Allies, over 4,000.

She'd lost the battle of manpower.

A quarter of a million Americans
were pouring into France every month.

She'd lost the battle of command.

The Allies worked together under the leadership
of Marshal Ferdinand Foch.

But Ludendorff's generals despaired
of his lack of strategic plan,

and some feared for his mental health.

Great crisis this morning very nerve-wracking

Ludendorff is a bundle of nerves
It's never his fault

He looks everywhere for scapegoats

After Amiens, Foch orchestrated a series
of attacks up and down the German lines.

First French, then British, now American .

The Germans fell back under the rain of blows.

While the Allies were pulling together,
the Central Powers were tearing apart.

In Austria-Hungary,
a third of a million soldiers had deserted.

The people at home were starving.

The multi-ethnic empire was splintering.

Its Poles, Czechs, and Bosnians saw defeat
as their chance to pursue independence.

In mid-September, the Austrian Emperor Karl

told the Kaiser
he wanted to negotiate with the Allies.

The Kaiser begged him not to.

I cannot refrain from expressing to you
my astonihment and sorrow

that you could even think of doing this

You must know
how destructive this course of action is

But Karl had already sent
his proposal for talks to the Allies,

and they just threw it back in his face.

Another great empire allied to Germany
was dying.

The 600-year-old Ottoman Empire
was a spent force.

Britain was driving the Turks
out of Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria.

They were now fighting for their lives,
not for Germany.

Then the third link in Germany's alliance chain
started to give way.

Germany needed Bulgaria
to hold the Balkan Front.

But by September 1918,
a huge Allied force had gathered in Macedonia.

If the Bulgarians folded, the Allies' way
would be clear to Austria-Hungary.

The Bulgarians were dug into these trenches,
their morale cracking.

Crown Prince Boris was almost attacked
by his own soldiers when he visited the front.

We are naked, barefoot and hungry

An empty knapsack does not guard a frontier

The First World War had begun in the Balkans,
with Serbia as the tinderbox.

Now, as part of the Allied force,
she was in at the kill.

And for the Serbs it was personal.

In 1915, the Bulgarians
had helped kick them out of their homeland.

Here was the Serbs' chance for revenge.

The heavy artillry made the Bulgarians
crawl deep into their shelters

All the excitement made my hair stand on end

My blood was up

(Explosions)

The Allies smashed through the Bulgarian lines,
and rolled north.

On 28 September, Bulgaria sued for peace.

When he heard this, Ludendorff suffered a fit,
collapsing to the floor, foaming at the mouth.

The very next day, he learned
the Allies had breached the Hindenburg line

along the St Quentin canal, Germany's last fixed
line of defence on the Western Front.

Two days later, on 1 October,

Ludendorff summoned his senior staff
to his headquarters in Spa.

Among them, Colonel Albrecht von Thaer.

Ludendorff stood up

His face was pale and full of deep worry

He said it was his duty to tell us
that our military condition was terribly serious

LUDENDORFF: Bulgaria has already been lost

Austria and Turkey
are both at the end of their strength

Any day now
our Western Front could be breached

Therefore the Supreme Army Command

demands that a proposal for bringing
about peace be made without delay

Ludendorff's stark decision to ask for an
armistice, or cease-fire, was a terrible shock.

Generals quietly sobbed.

When Ludendorff left the room,
Thaer followed him.

I grabbed his right arm with both hands
and said ''Your Excellency can it be true?

Is that the last word? Am I awake or dreaming?''

I was compltely beside myself

He remained calm and gentle and said to me
with a deeply sorrowful smile

''Unfortunately that is how it is
and I see no other way out''

To the German people in October 1918,

the prospect of an armistice
seemed heaven-sent.

A great sigh of relief
escapes from the lips of the tormented nation

''This means peace''
you can hear at every corner of the streets

and ''peace'' smiles in the eyes
of every little shop girl the baker's or grocer's

Germany's soldiers had kept her politicians
in the dark about the string of military disasters.

So the news that they wanted an armistice
came as a bolt from the blue.

The deputies were absolutely broken

Ebert turned white as a sheet
and didn't utter a single word

Stresemann looked
as if he'd had an accident

Secretary Walow is believed
to have left the room saying

''The only thing left to do
is to shoot oneself in the head''

But peace talks were still a way off.

First, the terms of the cease-fire
would have to be settled.

Germany approached
US President Woodrow Wilson,

asking him to broker the Armistice
with the Allies.

They chose him, because he'd already
proposed a peace plan, the Fourteen Points.

French Prime Minister Clemenceau
was unimpressed.

Fourteen points?

The good Lord has only ten

Wilson's points were an idealistic package
of liberal principles,

including rights to national self-determination,
and a League of Nations to watch over it all.

Germany believed Wilson
would secure a fair deal for them on this basis.

We are ready to be just to the German people

to deal fairly with the German power
as with all others

To propose anything but justice to Germany

would be to renounce and dishonour
our own cause

But Wilson also insisted Germany
had to admit defeat, and democratise.

And Britain and France didn't want to talk about
a new world order until the war was over.

While the politicians argued,
the fighting raged on.

Germany's U-boats continued
to sink Allied ships in the Atlantic.

And as her armies retreated across France,
they looted and laid waste.

14-year-old Yves Congar had kept a diary

throughout the German occupation
of his home town of Sedan.

He longed for freedom, but dreaded the price
the French would have to pay for it.

So here it is

The great moment we've spent
the last four years waiting hoping begging for

And yet it brings with it the horror of bombing

Gas fire perhaps death

We may never see our friends again

Many might be killd the entire town destroyed

Our one great hope is an armitice

The First World War did not go quietly.

The final months were more lethal
than the trench war of past years had been.

Men now had to leave the safety of trenches
and cross open ground,

with little place to hide
from sweeping machine-gun and shellfire.

British casualties in autumn 1918
were higher than those exactly a year before,

during the terrible battle of Passchendaele
the epitome of trench slaughter.

(Distant explosions)

And the closer to peace,
the harder it was to bear the losses.

It was a slaughterhouse
just a mass of mangled flesh and blood

Bob's head was hanging off

You coulnd't tell which was Harris
and which was Kempton

What was left of them was in pieces

We knew the enemy was beaten

After three years in France and the end so near
Bob killed

Harris who'd left a young bride killed

Jimmy Fooks whose time was nearly up killed

Kempton who also was due for leave killed

General Haig had seemed careless with his
men's lives at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

Now he argued for stopping the war
without a total defeat of the Germans.

The Britih alone might bring the enemy
to his knees

but why expend more Britih lives and for what?

French General Charles Mangin insisted
this would only store up trouble for the future.

No no no!

We must go right into the heart of Germany

The Germans will not admit they were beaten

It is a fatal error and France will pay for it

But with winter setting in, any invasion of
Germany would have to wait till spring 1919.

By then, the Germans might
have renewed their strength.

Marshal Foch believed France would
get what she wanted by negotiation.

No need to battle on to Berlin.

So the Allies set out to achieve on paper
what their armies had not done in the field

obtain Germany's unconditional surrender.

Foch chose to meet the Germans in
Compi�gne, 45 miles northeast of Paris,

in a secluded forest through
which a railway line conveniently ran.

In his train on 8 November,
Foch handed the armistice conditions

to politician Matthias Erzberger,
leader of the German delegation.

Erzberger was visibly shaken by the terms
Germany would have to accept

just to obtain a cease-fire.

Germany would have to evacuate
Belgium and France,

surrender her fleet, and pay compensation.

The Allies would continue their blockade,
disarm the Germans

and occupy the left bank of the Rhine.

Germany was being forced to capitulate.

Meanwhile, the country Erzberger represented
was falling apart, its cities swept by revolution.

(Shouting)

The German people,
exhausted by war and hunger,

wanted democracy in, and the Kaiser out.

(Cheering)

But it was the German Army
which forced the Kaiser to abdicate.

He asked his generals
to turn the Army against the people.

But the generals refused.

The Army will return home
in good order under its general

but not under the command of Your Majesty

It no longer stands behind Your Majesty

The Prussian dynasty of Frederick the Great
was over.

The next day, the Kaiser
slipped into exile in Holland.

He would live long enough to hear
that Germany had beaten France in 1940.

He never accepted that in 1918
his army had been defeated.

For 30 years the Army was my pride

Now after four and a half brilliant years of war
with unprecedented victories

it was brought down by a stab in the back
from the dagger of the revolutionaries

at the very moment
when peace was within reach

Most Germans rejoiced at the news
that the Kaiser had gone.

I felt as if a heavy weight
had suddenly been lifted from my heart

This definitely means
the armitice will be signed

Back in the forest at Compi�gne,

Erzberger now found himself
representing the German Republic.

At 5am on 11 November,
he signed the Armistice.

Hostilities temporarily cease 11:00 today
when all offensive action will cease

Present outpost line to be maintained

and no troops to pass east of it other than road
et cetera reconnaisance and working parties

No conversation with enemy to be allowed

(Silence)

MAN The most remarkable feature
was the uncanny silence

The war was over

MAN Peace and safety was a new thing

It could not be grasped in a moment

MAN A dreadful blow!

I was just beginning to enjoy it

No more slaughter no more maiming
no more mud and blood

No more shovelling bits of men's bodies
and dumping them into sandbags

No more writing those dreadfully difficult letters
to the next of kin of the dead

A strange and unreal thought
was running through my mind

I had a future

It was the eleventh hour
of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

(Cheering and whistling)

A great cheer arose all along the line

We could hear the men
1000 yards in front raising holy hell

The French behind our position were dancing
shouting and waving bottles of wine

We were stupefied to see crowds of Boche
running over to us between the minefields

with their hands up and yelling like mad

They were crazy for cigarettes and chocolate

We had some burned rice that our boys
woulnd't eat and they fell on it like wolves

Our soliers were choked with emotion

I thought about my family
about all the women of France

Except those who are alone and who cry

One great wave of joy swept round the world
and found its way to every nook and cranny

No-one was more delighted than our African
soliers who cheered themselves hoarse

Everybody came out

Disabled old men, old women in slippers

and housewives leaving lunch on the stove

I wept with joy

5 000 Indian soliers lit their torches

The hilltops burst into fire
with scores of bonfires

I found myself arm in arm
with soliers I had never seen before

I forgot where we went toured the streets
and sang and sang

The significance of what it means
was overwhelming - peace

(Cheering)

People whose lives were shaped by the war
went home.

People the world did not yet know.

Ernest Hemingway, Bertolt Brecht, Harold
Macmillan, Vera Brittain, Charles de Gaulle,

Josef Tito, Benito Mussolini, David Ben-Gurion,
Mustafa Kemal.

And one of the most insignificant of them all...
for now.

Adolf Hitler.

The German armies in France and Belgium
headed home.

How we had looked forward to this moment

We used to picture it
as the most splendid event of our lives

And here we are now humbled
our soul torn and bleeding

But we can be proud of our performance

Never before has a nation a single army had
the whole world against it and stood its ground

We protected our homeland

They never got into Germany

In mid-December 1918,
the first German troops arrived in Berlin.

The people welcomed them
as an army with no cause to feel ashamed.

The men wore green laurel wreaths
over their steel helmets

The machine guns
were garlanded with green branches

Many a soldier had a child or a sweetheart
on his flower-wreathed horse

A feeling of confidence of fresh hope in the
future seems to have returned with the troops

Germany's new Republican Chancellor
Friedrich Ebert

reinforced the dangerous illusion
that they had not been beaten in this war.

I salute you who return unvanquished
from the field of battle

The Allies were in no doubt
who had beaten whom.

Allied troops moved into Germany
and began their watch on the Rhine.

The German fleet was surrendered to Britain.

And the Allies assembled in Paris
to dictate the terms of the peace.

(Hooter)

US President Woodrow Wilson crossed
the Atlantic to put his idealism to the test.

We have used the great words
"right" and "justice"

and now we are to prove
whether or not we understand those words

and how they are to be applied

But the world had not stood still between the
end of the war and the start of the peace talks.

(Cheering)

On 22 November 1918, the Belgian
King Albert came home in triumph to Brussels.

Occupied lands had been won back.

The French repossessed Alsace-Lorraine.

What a moving welcome!

The people were so happy and smiling

Some were pale and cried
while they greeted us

They all speak absolutely pure French

They really are French all those locals

We were treated like victors, like saviors

These scenes confirmed that France and
Belgium had been liberated from an evil grip,

that this was a victory for the Allies.

And in Eastern Europe,
new nations arose out of shattered empires.

They didn't wait for the Peace Conference
to bring them self-determination.

They tore down all signs of foreign rule,
and put up new frontiers.

Poland carved a vast territory
out of Germany and Russia.

Czechoslovakia took land
from Austria and Hungary.

And Serbia realised the aim she had started the
war over, by founding her own Slav superstate.

The Peace Talks would recognise
these new nations. They did not create them.

27 countries met in Paris to divide the spoils
and define the peace.

The losers were not invited.

We are going into these negotiations
with our mouths full of fine phrases

and our brains seething with dark thoughts

The big decisions
were made by the Council of Four:

Prime Ministers Orlando of Italy,

Lloyd George of Britain,

Clemenceau of France
and US President Wilson.

All liberals, but with very different agendas
and forceful personalities.

Arguments between Lloyd George and myself
were so violent

Wilson had to interpose between us
with outstretched arms saying pleasantly

''I have never come across
two such unreasonable men''

Clemenceau wanted Germany restrained
for the sake of French security.

Orlando wanted more territory for Italy.

Lloyd George looked beyond Europe
to safeguard the British Empire.

Wilson wanted his new world order,
with justice and democracy for all.

But first there was
the little matter of settling the war,

and that would force Wilson
to compromise his ideals.

The Big Four did not go into the talks
planning to pin guilt for the war on Germany.

But when they realised how much the war had
cost, they looked for someone to foot the bill.

France owed billions to Britain and America
for financing her war.

Britain couldn't afford to waive the debt
and America wouldn't.

So the Allies turned to Germany.

But she could only be made to pay up
if she accepted blame for the war.

So the Allies included a clause
pinning the guilt on Germany.

Germany accepts the responsibility
of Germany and her allies

for causing all the loss and damage

to which the Allied and associated governments
and their national have been subjected

as a consequence of the war
imposed upon them

by the aggression of Germany and her allies

On 7 May 1919, the German delegation
came to collect the treaty,

expecting to find an even-handed settlement
infused with Wilson's sense of fair play.

They were horrified by what they read.

440 articles beating Germany into submission.

The Germans protested so vehemently,

particularly against the requirement
to admit war guilt,

that Lloyd George worried
that the Allies had gone too far.

A member of his own delegation, the renowned
economist John Maynard Keynes,

was openly critical.

He felt that forcing Germany to pay reparations
could ruin Europe, politically and economically.

The policy of reducing Germany to servitude
for a generation

of degrading the lives of millions of human
beings should be abhorrent and detestable

But Clemenceau believed the terms were
fully justified and Wilson's line had toughened.

He had wanted to treat Germany fairly,

but as a liberal he was apalled,
by the way she'd waged war,

and as President of the United States,
he wanted America's loans repaid.

It is a good thing
that the terms should be so hard

so that Germany may know
what an unjust war means

If the Germans won't sign
then we must renew the war

Germany did sign, on 28 June 1919,
in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles,

five years to the day after the Sarajevo
assassination that had triggered the war.

The settlement was far from perfect.

The much-touted principle
that people should govern themselves

was not applied outside Europe
and imperialism was condoned.

But Wilson achieved his great goal, the creation
of the first global forum, the League of Nations.

In the event, the Allies wound up
with the worst of both worlds.

The Germans paid little in reparations,

and the League of Nations
proved powerless to force them.

And the Versailles terms left some Germans,
like future Nazi Rudolf Hess,

smouldering with resentment,
with disastrous consequences.

The only thing that keeps me going is the hope
for the day of revenge however far off it may be

I wonder whether it'll happen in my lifetime

Marshal Ferdinand Foch felt
the Allies hadn't been tough enough

and realised the world
would have to go to war again.

This is not peace

It is an armitice for 20 years

He got it wrong by just 65 days.

Men were killed in the war's final hours,
whose last letters did not reach home for weeks.

Men like Marius Saucaz,
who wrote to his father in Morocco.

Dear Dad

if I were to die in a future attack don't cry

There's no point

I would only be doing my duty and would die like
many others for a noble cause a great ideal

I am proud to be your son

and I want to tell you today
because who knows what the future holds

I love you more than I have ever shown you

Love and kisses Marius

Around ten million soldiers
were killed in the war,

prompting Lloyd George's sardonic comment.

When I look at the appalling casualty lists

I sometimes wish it had not been necessary
to win so many great victories

The tidy rows of crosses sanitise the deaths.

They often cover mass graves,

with a man represented only by the part of him
that could be found and identified.

Verdun in France has a huge vault, full of bones.

Some of the millions posted missing in the war,

the place and circumstance
of their death unknown.

No-one is certain how many civilians died,

women, children and elderly
caught in the mayhem of the Eastern Front:

in the flight of the Serb nation in 1915,

in the Armenian massacres,

in occupied France and Belgium.

Then, in 1918, influenza broke out,

eventually killing 20 million soldiers and civilians
around the world.

20 million men were wounded by the war,
of whom several million were badly mutilated.

The French called one category
the ''gueules cass�es'' - the ''broken faces''.

Some were given human masks
to hide their wounds.

New faces, new legs, new arms

New minds were more difficult.

No-one really knew what to do
with the victims of shell shock.

Soldiers with a range of disorders were filmed,
including 19-year-old Private Preston,

his memory blank,
responsive only to the word ''bombs''.

Over the decades which followed, the suffering
and the dying and the sense of futile waste,

central themes in the war's poetry,
came to dominate our perceptions.

Come back, come back,

You didn't want to die,

And all this war's a sham, a stinking lie,

And the glory that our fathers laud so well,

A crowd of corpses freed from pangs of hell.

But in its immediate aftermath,
when the memorials went up around the world,

the First World War was not seen
solely in terms of senseless slaughter.

Their designs and inscriptions
defined the war in positive terms.

For defence against aggression

For love of one's country

For glory

So much hardship so much heroism
and now such overwhelming glory

Anything after this
can be no more than an anticlimax

Germany, too,
celebrated victory where she could.

A gigantic monument was built in 1927
at Tannenberg,

to commemorate Germany's
triumph over the Russians in 1914.

It was inaugurated by Field Marshal Hindenburg.

The war may have been lost,
but the dead were proclaimed as heroes,

the struggle itself honoured.

Though the aim for which I fought
was not to be achieved

we learned once and for all to stand for a cause
and if necessary to fall as befitted men

Many Allied memorials spelt out
the values felt to be at stake during the war.

In the stained-glass window
in Canterbury University, New Zealand,

the Central Powers are depicted
as the dragon of Brutality & lgnorance.

The Allied troops
have Humanity and Justice on their side,

and are naturally victorious.

The years after the war were defined
by the search for significance in the loss.

National symbols,
like the Cenotaph and the Unknown Warrior,

helped answer the question in so many people's
minds, ''What did all the suffering mean?''

In 1920,
the body of an unidentified British soldier

was exhumed in France and transported home.

On 11 November,
the Unknown Warrior was brought to Whitehall.

He did not seem an Unknown Warrior

He was known to us all

He was one of our boys

To some women
he was their own boy who went mising

To many men wearing ribbons and badges
he was one of their comrades

It was the steel helmet the old ''tin hat''
lying there on the crimson of the flag

which revealed him instantly

Herbert Thompson
had lost his eyesight in the war.

He could not see the proceedings,
but he could feel them.

There was ineffable sadness and melancholy
yet a message of inspiration and hope

as if the spirit of the Unknown Solier
had whispered ''Courage brother hope on''

I felt with my comrades almost ashamed
that I had given so little

while he who was sleeping by us had given all

Vera Brittain had served in France
as a nurse during the war.

She lost her fianc�, two close friends,
her only brother.

She went back in 1921.

At Amiens we stood in the dimness
of the once-threatened cathedral

We looked up with reminicent melancholy

at the still-boarded stained-glass windows
smashed by German shells

realising with sudden surprie
that in my own mind

the anger and resentment had died long ago

leaving only an everlasting sorrow
and a passionate pity

The First World War had achieved its basic aim
of containing German and Austrian militarism.

At least for the moment.

It moved Europe from the age of empires,
to the era of nation states.

It gave Eastern European peoples
their independence.

It gave a sense of national identity
to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

It helped Russia become
the world's first communist state,

and launched America as a world power.

The ideas for which men fought
have proved lasting.

Democracy and liberalism,
religious faith and nationalism.

(Explosions)

But the First World War solved
few of the grievances over which it was fought.

We live with its unresolved consequences
in the Middle East, the Balkans, Ireland.

It wasn't the war to end all wars,
not just because it left dangerous loose ends,

but because it bequeathed the world
a terrible message.

That war can effect change.

That war can fulfil ambitions.

that war can work

The battlefields were tidied up,
or ploughed over or just abandoned.

But they held their grip on the soldiers who had
fought on them, on those who dared go back.

I saw again with a pang of anguish
the trenches damp and muddy

and was surpried
to have lived there for four years

So moving because of the endlss silence
the gloomy barren deserted look

Old churches pierced chipped ripped open

And barbed wire everywhere

Life resumes things remain the same

We are the only ones who have changed

(Somber Music)