Senate Member
Posts: 6,144 
October 12th, 2007, 01:10 PM
The Great War was a war of many "firsts" - it was the first war to use aircraft, the first war to use tanks and the first war to use aircraft carriers, the latter two both being used by the British first. It was also the first of two giant wars that devastated Europe.
At the time, Britain was, of course, still the world's dominant power as it had been for the past 150 years, ruling over a quarter of the world's land and a quarter of its people. Its navy ruled the seas and its giant Empire, the largest the world has ever seen, didn't reach its largest ever extent until 1922. George V - the current Queen's grandfather - was on the throne.
The Great War was also a war in which great empires clashed, with the British Empire and its ally the Russian Empire fighting the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
The War allowed the United States to take over from Britain as the greatest power on Earth.....
Fought on the bloody French battlefields nearly 100 years ago, how the Great War still impacts on us today
By CORRELLI BARNETT
12th October 2007
Daily Mail
Sunday, the Lord's Day and a day of rest. It was a world of firm beliefs: father at the head of the family; the monarch at the head of the nation; God in his Heaven.
"Sunday, after church, was a day of quiet pleasures; a walk in the country or the park; perhaps a cycle ride; perhaps a boat, drifting lazily down a river."
These are the opening words of The Great War, a monumental 26-part documentary, which even today is the definitive history of the conflict the world now knows as 'the war to end all wars'.
Harrowing: First World War soldiers trudge their way through mud at Ypres
With spoken commentary married to wonderfully evocative archive film, the first programme of the series portrays the lost European world of 1914 on the eve of being engulfed by the first true world war.
We see the progress of industry and invention, social privilege contrasted with abject poverty, the outward appearance of social order and discipline contrasted with simmering discontents beneath, and, most dangerous of all, the rising tension between the two rival armed alliances into which Europe was divided.
We watch the aged Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef, a bewhiskered father-figure among young dancers in peasant costume, like a scene from an opera; Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany resplendent in field-marshal's uniform swaggering among his generals in brass helmets a-flutter with ostrich plumes; the Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, with his wife and beautiful daughters in procession with Orthodox priests amid his subservient people.
And we see King George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland, her Empire, and Emperor of India, enthroned at a Royal Durbar in Delhi, receiving the obeisance of countless rajahs.
British soldiers in a trench hold up the cover of the Evening Times newspaper appearing to show that their regiment has been honoured by King George V
Of all those splendid monarchies of 1914, only one, the British, would still be in existence when the guns ceased firing in 1918.
No wonder, then, that the memory of the Great War of 1914-18 haunts us still, even though next year will mark 90 years since it ended.
Today, in new novels and television dramas, the soldiers are still bidding farewell to their families in villages and back streets, shouldering their packs and going off to the front.
The Great War has now become part of the national curriculum.
The battlefields and war cemeteries in France and Belgium are thronged with visiting schoolchildren, often searching the gravestones or the vast memorials at Thiepval and the Menin Gate in Ypres for the name of a forebear who fell in battle.
And it is right that we should freshly remember the Great War in this way, because the colossal
social and political changes it wrought still shape the world we live in today.
In 1914 the continent of Europe was dominated by three great imperial monarchies - the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II; Austria-Hungary under the aged Emperor Franz Josef; and the Russian Empire under Czar Nicholas II.
But the Great War swept these empires away in a storm of defeat and revolution, and replaced them with the independent nation-states which make up the map of Europe we see today.
In the case of Russia, a Communist revolution led by Lenin produced the Soviet Union - a legacy of the war which was to cast a shadow over the world until its final collapse in 1990.
Even the English-speaking dominions of the British Empire - such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand - acquired a new sense of their own nationhood during the war.
No longer would they unquestioningly accept leadership from London.
And Indian politicians began to work towards the day when a free and independent India would replace British imperial rule.
So it was that the Great War sowed the seeds of the dissolution of the British Empire.
Trench warfare: Soldiers go over the top into the perilous no man's land
Yet the Great War holds deeper meanings for us.
It marked the birth of our own age of mass participation,
abruptly hastening the march of social equality.
It liberated women from political and domestic thraldom.
It thrust forward technological change - especially in aviation.
It ushered the United States to the centre of the world stage for the first time.
In the history of this titanic struggle, therefore, lies the essential key to an understanding of the world we live in today.
That is what makes The Great War, being given away free on DVD in the Daily Mail over the next three weeks, such compelling viewing for every family.
But why start the series with 'a summer Sunday'?
Because it was on Sunday, June 28, 1914, that Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the heir to the Austrian throne) and his wife Sophie were making a state visit to Sarajevo in the then Austrian province of Bosnia when they were shot dead by a Serbian terrorist.
A very young British soldier carrying a bucket in the trench. The age limit to join the British Army during the Great War was 18, but many younger boys, even those as young as 14, pretended they were 18 so they could fight for King and Country
In the final words of this first programme: 'The peace of Europe died with them.'
That bleak statement launched Europe on its long march - through the mobilisation of millions of men, the huge opening campaigns that were supposed to win the war before Christmas, the grim realisation that this was going to be a prolonged total war, the stalemate on the Western Front, the bloody trench battles of attrition, and the climactic allied successes of 1918.
When I was approached by the BBC to be a writer on the series, I was a young historian who had just published my book The Sword Bearers, about World War I.
On television in those days there were no gimmicks like today, when 'celebrity' presenters deliver lectures to camera while prancing about on the site of some past event.
And the wealth of film footage would have made it unnecessary anyway.
Garnered from archives all over the world - although the bulk of it came from the Imperial War Museum in London - there were gems on every reel.
An unexpected find was astonishing footage of German soldiers' daily life in the trenches, discovered in the Communist East German archives in Berlin, showing the men going about their daily lives, eating their rations and on one occasion even dancing in the open air.
After film arrived at Ealing Studios in huge containers, every foot of it had to be looked at by archive researchers in order to select the best material for each programme.
Remember that all this footage had been shot by cameramen standing in the open and operating heavy, hand-cranked box cameras set on tripods, often in the most appalling conditions.
What gives this archive film its immediacy of impact is that every movement and gesture is wonderfully lifelike instead of jerky as in much other archive material of the time.
And here I have to confess, even in those days the BBC was doing a bit of 'cheating'.
For this smooth, lifelike action film was achieved by 'stretching' the film by inserting extra frames, so rendering its speed the same as in today's television film-projectors.
The second key ingredient lay in the scripts - all written by the finest historians of their age - which provided the essential narrative thread that links together the whole story.
They place the terrible experiences of men in battle - whether in the trenches, in the air or at sea - in the grand-strategic framework of the titanic struggle.
The scripts explain how and why each year's campaigns were planned by the opposing sides - and how and why some plans succeeded and others appallingly failed, such as the Allies' botched enterprise on the rocky slopes of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the Germans' spring 1918 offensive, which intended to win the war at a blow but led to their own defeat.
They probe the minds of individual political and military leaders grappling with the dilemmas of a conflict on a hitherto unimagined scale.
This British soldier is putting up barbed wire on the perimeter of his trench
And the historians also bring home to the viewer the realities of mass industrialised war - the first fighter planes, the mighty Dreadnoughts, and the weapon that would change the face of so much conflict over the next century - the tank.
The third vital ingredient in making the series lay in the deeply moving personal testimony of the veteran eye-witnesses.
An appeal in the Radio Times resulted in sackfuls of reminiscences, diaries, photos, and memorabilia.
It fell to a young woman researcher, Julia Cave, to interview the veterans on film - at a rate of 16 a day.
Julia's patience and tact served to prize open memories locked tight for 50 years.
In the interviews, the veterans relive their wartime experiences on film, even to the point of breaking down and shedding tears.
They speak from the heart about the sheer terror they felt once they'd gone 'over the top' into the storm of enemy fire - and about such macabre experiences as coming upon a trench filled with the skeletons and grinning skulls of Germans long dead.
The outcome of this collective endeavour is an enthralling filmic history of the conflict which cost ten million lives, and which shaped our lives right up to today.
The centre of gravity of the series lies in the Western Front and its 400 miles of opposing trench systems.
This is where the main strength of the formidable German Army was posted - on French and Belgian soil.
The Great War was fought at a time when the Royal Navy truly struck fear into the enemy. One of its most fearsome ships was the mighty HMS Dreadnought, which was the first battleship in the world completed with an "all big gun" main armament.
Only by defeating that army and forcing it into retreat could France in the trenches, discovered in the Communist East German archives in Berlin, showing the men going about their daily lives, eating their rations and on one occasion even dancing in the open air.
In the background a British soldier is firing at the enemy
And the historians also bring home to the viewer the realities of mass industrialised war - the first fighter planes, the mighty Dreadnoughts, and the weapon that would change the face of so much conflict over the next century - the tank.
The third vital ingredient in making the series lay in the deeply moving personal testimony of the veteran eye-witnesses.
An appeal in the Radio Times resulted in sackfuls of reminiscences, diaries, photos, and memorabilia.
It fell to a young woman researcher, Julia Cave, to interview and Britain triumph over the militaristic German Empire.
To accomplish the task took four terrible years of stalemate and slaughter, and a final victorious advance in which the British armies under Haig played the largest part.
Second in strategic importance only to the Western Front were the tremendous campaigns that swung to and fro like a pendulum on the vast Eastern Front, where Czarist Russia fought Germany and Austria, and in 1917 succumbed to defeat and revolution.
This catastrophe ushered in the era of Communist dictatorship in Russia that was to last for seven decades - a truly world-shaking event.
Yet the series does not neglect the war at sea or other theatres on land, such as the Balkans, scene of a savage struggle between Serbia and Austria, or the Italian front where Austria and Italy fought prolonged attrition battles.
And in eerie echoes of today, other programmes describe the British invasion of Turkish Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and the slow march to Baghdad; and the victory won over the Turks in Palestine and Syria by General Allenby.
The series ends with the joyous victory celebrations in the streets of allied capitals on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, and with a final statement to camera from an eyewitness who had been there on the frontline in Flanders when the guns at last ceased to fire:
"No more Verey lights going up with their greenish wavering flare. No flash of howitzers on the horizon.
"No downward droning of shells. No machine-guns. No patrols going out. Silence."
------------------------
• Correlli Barnett is the author of The Great War, the book of the television series, published by BBC World Books, price £12.99.
dailymail.co.uk
The Great War was a war of many "firsts" - it was the first war to use aircraft, the first war to use tanks and the first war to use aircraft carriers, the latter two both being used by the British first. It was also the first of two giant wars that devastated Europe.
At the time, Britain was, of course, still the world's dominant power as it had been for the past 150 years, ruling over a quarter of the world's land and a quarter of its people. Its navy ruled the seas and its giant Empire, the largest the world has ever seen, didn't reach its largest ever extent until 1922. George V - the current Queen's grandfather - was on the throne.
The Great War was also a war in which great empires clashed, with the British Empire and its ally the Russian Empire fighting the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
The War allowed the United States to take over from Britain as the greatest power on Earth.....
Fought on the bloody French battlefields nearly 100 years ago, how the Great War still impacts on us today
By CORRELLI BARNETT
12th October 2007
Daily Mail
Quote:
We watch the aged Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef, a bewhiskered father-figure among young dancers in peasant costume, like a scene from an opera; Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany resplendent in field-marshal's uniform swaggering among his generals in brass helmets a-flutter with ostrich plumes; the Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, with his wife and beautiful daughters in procession with Orthodox priests amid his subservient people.
And we see King George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland, her Empire, and Emperor of India, enthroned at a Royal Durbar in Delhi, receiving the obeisance of countless rajahs.
Of all those splendid monarchies of 1914, only one, the British, would still be in existence when the guns ceased firing in 1918.
A summer Sunday, 1914: All across Europe the bells were pealing, calling men and women to church. We watch the aged Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef, a bewhiskered father-figure among young dancers in peasant costume, like a scene from an opera; Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany resplendent in field-marshal's uniform swaggering among his generals in brass helmets a-flutter with ostrich plumes; the Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, with his wife and beautiful daughters in procession with Orthodox priests amid his subservient people.
And we see King George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland, her Empire, and Emperor of India, enthroned at a Royal Durbar in Delhi, receiving the obeisance of countless rajahs.
Of all those splendid monarchies of 1914, only one, the British, would still be in existence when the guns ceased firing in 1918.
Sunday, the Lord's Day and a day of rest. It was a world of firm beliefs: father at the head of the family; the monarch at the head of the nation; God in his Heaven.
"Sunday, after church, was a day of quiet pleasures; a walk in the country or the park; perhaps a cycle ride; perhaps a boat, drifting lazily down a river."
These are the opening words of The Great War, a monumental 26-part documentary, which even today is the definitive history of the conflict the world now knows as 'the war to end all wars'.
Harrowing: First World War soldiers trudge their way through mud at Ypres
With spoken commentary married to wonderfully evocative archive film, the first programme of the series portrays the lost European world of 1914 on the eve of being engulfed by the first true world war.
We see the progress of industry and invention, social privilege contrasted with abject poverty, the outward appearance of social order and discipline contrasted with simmering discontents beneath, and, most dangerous of all, the rising tension between the two rival armed alliances into which Europe was divided.
We watch the aged Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef, a bewhiskered father-figure among young dancers in peasant costume, like a scene from an opera; Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany resplendent in field-marshal's uniform swaggering among his generals in brass helmets a-flutter with ostrich plumes; the Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, with his wife and beautiful daughters in procession with Orthodox priests amid his subservient people.
And we see King George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland, her Empire, and Emperor of India, enthroned at a Royal Durbar in Delhi, receiving the obeisance of countless rajahs.
British soldiers in a trench hold up the cover of the Evening Times newspaper appearing to show that their regiment has been honoured by King George V
Of all those splendid monarchies of 1914, only one, the British, would still be in existence when the guns ceased firing in 1918.
No wonder, then, that the memory of the Great War of 1914-18 haunts us still, even though next year will mark 90 years since it ended.
Today, in new novels and television dramas, the soldiers are still bidding farewell to their families in villages and back streets, shouldering their packs and going off to the front.
The Great War has now become part of the national curriculum.
The battlefields and war cemeteries in France and Belgium are thronged with visiting schoolchildren, often searching the gravestones or the vast memorials at Thiepval and the Menin Gate in Ypres for the name of a forebear who fell in battle.
And it is right that we should freshly remember the Great War in this way, because the colossal
social and political changes it wrought still shape the world we live in today.
In 1914 the continent of Europe was dominated by three great imperial monarchies - the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II; Austria-Hungary under the aged Emperor Franz Josef; and the Russian Empire under Czar Nicholas II.
But the Great War swept these empires away in a storm of defeat and revolution, and replaced them with the independent nation-states which make up the map of Europe we see today.
In the case of Russia, a Communist revolution led by Lenin produced the Soviet Union - a legacy of the war which was to cast a shadow over the world until its final collapse in 1990.
Even the English-speaking dominions of the British Empire - such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand - acquired a new sense of their own nationhood during the war.
No longer would they unquestioningly accept leadership from London.
And Indian politicians began to work towards the day when a free and independent India would replace British imperial rule.
So it was that the Great War sowed the seeds of the dissolution of the British Empire.
Trench warfare: Soldiers go over the top into the perilous no man's land
Yet the Great War holds deeper meanings for us.
It marked the birth of our own age of mass participation,
abruptly hastening the march of social equality.
It liberated women from political and domestic thraldom.
It thrust forward technological change - especially in aviation.
It ushered the United States to the centre of the world stage for the first time.
In the history of this titanic struggle, therefore, lies the essential key to an understanding of the world we live in today.
That is what makes The Great War, being given away free on DVD in the Daily Mail over the next three weeks, such compelling viewing for every family.
But why start the series with 'a summer Sunday'?
Because it was on Sunday, June 28, 1914, that Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the heir to the Austrian throne) and his wife Sophie were making a state visit to Sarajevo in the then Austrian province of Bosnia when they were shot dead by a Serbian terrorist.
A very young British soldier carrying a bucket in the trench. The age limit to join the British Army during the Great War was 18, but many younger boys, even those as young as 14, pretended they were 18 so they could fight for King and Country
In the final words of this first programme: 'The peace of Europe died with them.'
That bleak statement launched Europe on its long march - through the mobilisation of millions of men, the huge opening campaigns that were supposed to win the war before Christmas, the grim realisation that this was going to be a prolonged total war, the stalemate on the Western Front, the bloody trench battles of attrition, and the climactic allied successes of 1918.
When I was approached by the BBC to be a writer on the series, I was a young historian who had just published my book The Sword Bearers, about World War I.
On television in those days there were no gimmicks like today, when 'celebrity' presenters deliver lectures to camera while prancing about on the site of some past event.
And the wealth of film footage would have made it unnecessary anyway.
Garnered from archives all over the world - although the bulk of it came from the Imperial War Museum in London - there were gems on every reel.
An unexpected find was astonishing footage of German soldiers' daily life in the trenches, discovered in the Communist East German archives in Berlin, showing the men going about their daily lives, eating their rations and on one occasion even dancing in the open air.
After film arrived at Ealing Studios in huge containers, every foot of it had to be looked at by archive researchers in order to select the best material for each programme.
Remember that all this footage had been shot by cameramen standing in the open and operating heavy, hand-cranked box cameras set on tripods, often in the most appalling conditions.
What gives this archive film its immediacy of impact is that every movement and gesture is wonderfully lifelike instead of jerky as in much other archive material of the time.
And here I have to confess, even in those days the BBC was doing a bit of 'cheating'.
For this smooth, lifelike action film was achieved by 'stretching' the film by inserting extra frames, so rendering its speed the same as in today's television film-projectors.
The second key ingredient lay in the scripts - all written by the finest historians of their age - which provided the essential narrative thread that links together the whole story.
They place the terrible experiences of men in battle - whether in the trenches, in the air or at sea - in the grand-strategic framework of the titanic struggle.
The scripts explain how and why each year's campaigns were planned by the opposing sides - and how and why some plans succeeded and others appallingly failed, such as the Allies' botched enterprise on the rocky slopes of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the Germans' spring 1918 offensive, which intended to win the war at a blow but led to their own defeat.
They probe the minds of individual political and military leaders grappling with the dilemmas of a conflict on a hitherto unimagined scale.
This British soldier is putting up barbed wire on the perimeter of his trench
And the historians also bring home to the viewer the realities of mass industrialised war - the first fighter planes, the mighty Dreadnoughts, and the weapon that would change the face of so much conflict over the next century - the tank.
The third vital ingredient in making the series lay in the deeply moving personal testimony of the veteran eye-witnesses.
An appeal in the Radio Times resulted in sackfuls of reminiscences, diaries, photos, and memorabilia.
It fell to a young woman researcher, Julia Cave, to interview the veterans on film - at a rate of 16 a day.
Julia's patience and tact served to prize open memories locked tight for 50 years.
In the interviews, the veterans relive their wartime experiences on film, even to the point of breaking down and shedding tears.
They speak from the heart about the sheer terror they felt once they'd gone 'over the top' into the storm of enemy fire - and about such macabre experiences as coming upon a trench filled with the skeletons and grinning skulls of Germans long dead.
The outcome of this collective endeavour is an enthralling filmic history of the conflict which cost ten million lives, and which shaped our lives right up to today.
The centre of gravity of the series lies in the Western Front and its 400 miles of opposing trench systems.
This is where the main strength of the formidable German Army was posted - on French and Belgian soil.
The Great War was fought at a time when the Royal Navy truly struck fear into the enemy. One of its most fearsome ships was the mighty HMS Dreadnought, which was the first battleship in the world completed with an "all big gun" main armament.
Only by defeating that army and forcing it into retreat could France in the trenches, discovered in the Communist East German archives in Berlin, showing the men going about their daily lives, eating their rations and on one occasion even dancing in the open air.
In the background a British soldier is firing at the enemy
And the historians also bring home to the viewer the realities of mass industrialised war - the first fighter planes, the mighty Dreadnoughts, and the weapon that would change the face of so much conflict over the next century - the tank.
The third vital ingredient in making the series lay in the deeply moving personal testimony of the veteran eye-witnesses.
An appeal in the Radio Times resulted in sackfuls of reminiscences, diaries, photos, and memorabilia.
It fell to a young woman researcher, Julia Cave, to interview and Britain triumph over the militaristic German Empire.
To accomplish the task took four terrible years of stalemate and slaughter, and a final victorious advance in which the British armies under Haig played the largest part.
Second in strategic importance only to the Western Front were the tremendous campaigns that swung to and fro like a pendulum on the vast Eastern Front, where Czarist Russia fought Germany and Austria, and in 1917 succumbed to defeat and revolution.
This catastrophe ushered in the era of Communist dictatorship in Russia that was to last for seven decades - a truly world-shaking event.
Yet the series does not neglect the war at sea or other theatres on land, such as the Balkans, scene of a savage struggle between Serbia and Austria, or the Italian front where Austria and Italy fought prolonged attrition battles.
And in eerie echoes of today, other programmes describe the British invasion of Turkish Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and the slow march to Baghdad; and the victory won over the Turks in Palestine and Syria by General Allenby.
The series ends with the joyous victory celebrations in the streets of allied capitals on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, and with a final statement to camera from an eyewitness who had been there on the frontline in Flanders when the guns at last ceased to fire:
"No more Verey lights going up with their greenish wavering flare. No flash of howitzers on the horizon.
"No downward droning of shells. No machine-guns. No patrols going out. Silence."
------------------------
• Correlli Barnett is the author of The Great War, the book of the television series, published by BBC World Books, price £12.99.
dailymail.co.uk
jimmoyer
Posts: 5,040
Location: Winchester Virginia
Location: Winchester Virginia
October 12th, 2007, 02:22 PM
The Versailles Peace Treaty and subsequent aggreements in the 20s following THE GREAT WAR,
led to the redrawing of most of the world's country boundaries.
Africa, Indochina, The MiddleEast. Eastern Europe. French and German boundaries of Alsac Lorraine.
Kuwait and Iraq were some of the arbitrary countries created out of the 500 year old moribund
Ottoman Empire. Other Arab states still don't see Kuwait as legit, but rather as fake arbitrary
boundaries.
The Armenians came asking for a country.
Ho Chi Minh in Paris asked for a country.
The Kurds asked for a country.
Czechoslovakia was a WWI creation, now split into Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Yugoslavia was a WW1 creation, now split since the 1990s in order of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hergezovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Kosovo district of Serbia.
The Versailles Peace Treaty and subsequent aggreements in the 20s following THE GREAT WAR,
led to the redrawing of most of the world's country boundaries.
Africa, Indochina, The MiddleEast. Eastern Europe. French and German boundaries of Alsac Lorraine.
Kuwait and Iraq were some of the arbitrary countries created out of the 500 year old moribund
Ottoman Empire. Other Arab states still don't see Kuwait as legit, but rather as fake arbitrary
boundaries.
The Armenians came asking for a country.
Ho Chi Minh in Paris asked for a country.
The Kurds asked for a country.
Czechoslovakia was a WWI creation, now split into Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Yugoslavia was a WW1 creation, now split since the 1990s in order of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hergezovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Kosovo district of Serbia.
