The big decisions were made by the Council of Four. ibid.
The allies wound up with the worst of both worlds: Germany paid little in Reparations, and the League of Nations proved powerless to stop them. ibid.
Around ten million soldiers were killed in the war. ibid.
The years after the war were defined by the search for significance in the loss. ibid.
It wasn’t the war to end all wars ... War can effect change, that war can fulfil ambitions, that war can work. ibid.
The reality happened in colour – the slaughter, the innovation, the shock, the political upheavals, victory, defeat. World War I in Colour s1e1: Catastrophe, Channel 5 2003
World War I was war on a scale never known or imagined before. ibid.
Opposing Germany and Austria-Hungary was the so-called Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia. ibid.
On August 4th the German army marched into Belgium. ibid.
The Battle of the Frontiers: French soldiers marched head-on into German guns. ibid.
Some of the lines are only twenty-five yards apart, and are full of water and mud. ibid.
1915: for the soldiers on the Western Front new year brings stalemate. World War I in Colour s1e2: Slaughter in the Trenches
The slaughter on the Western Front had only just begun. ibid.
A revolutionary new theatre of war was created – the air. World War I in Colour s1e3: Blood in the Air
British airships grew ever more sophisticated. ibid.
The Germans carried out the first civilian bombing in January 1915 on the Norfolk coast. ibid.
In May 1915 Zeppelins bombed London: seven civilians were killed. ibid.
In 1914 German and British sailors believed their war was going to be a great confrontation between huge battleships. But only once was there a full clash of fleets. The rest of the naval war was very different from what had been expected – it was a war dominated by a new weapon, the submarine. It was a war of blockades and sinkings on a massive scale. World War I in Colour s1e4: Killers of the Sea
U-boats would fire on merchant shipping headed for allied ports without warning. ibid.
Over 1,200 people drowned in the Lusitania. ibid.
As in Germany, the British presented the Battle of Jutland as a great naval victory. ibid.
U-boats: They now had 110 at sea … The U-boats’ success led to food rationing in Britain. ibid.
Over four long brutal years World War I’s trench warfare on the western front ground on. But to the east a remarkably different war was fought: a war of movement, of dramatic gains and losses, of huge armies on the march, of terrain which required everything from camels to skis. World War I in Colour s1e5: Mayhem on the Eastern Front
The German army strutted through Warsaw. ibid.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers were decaying in German and Austrian prisoner of war camps. ibid.
Discontent was brewing all over Russia. ibid.
The Russian soldier had finally had enough. ibid.
2,300,000 Russians had died; a further 5,000,000 injured. ibid.
1917: The British welcomed their new allies like saviours. ibid.
For the allies 1918 is the costliest year of the war. World War I in Colour s1e6: Victory and Despair
A million fresh American soldiers had arrived on the battlefield. The allies could think of striking back. ibid.
The breaking of the Hindenburg Line was a huge psychological blow to the German army. ibid.
The German politicians left behind knew they had to submit to Allied terms. ibid.
World War I was supposed to be the war that would end all wars. ibid.
World War I was the first in which action could be seen as it happened … such as the world’s first tank against tank engagement. World War I in Colour s1e7: Tactics & Strategy
On the Western front millions of men lived a nightmare existence of squalor and constant danger from enemy bombardment. ibid.
The strategic bomber was now seen as one of the crucial factors in warfare. ibid.
Another crucial weapon which had a revolutionary affect on warfare was the submarine. ibid.
From German silence. Then the sound of the Apocalypse. Doom doom doom. The Big Clock, wrote chancellor David Lloyd George, echoes in our ears like the hammer of destiny. There was now no going back. Jeremy Paxman, Britain’s Great War: War Comes to Britain, BBC 2014
So Britain joined the bloodiest conflict the human race had ever known. Ten million soldiers killed. ibid.
The first truly modern war. A total war. Pitting the resources and resolve of entire populations against each other. ibid.
The Germans had an army of over two million soldiers. ibid.
One hundred thousand people demonstrated for peace. ibid.
Many feared a German invasion ... at any time. The south coast seemed especially at risk. ibid.
In the water were hundreds of bodies and the wreckage of a vast ocean liner. The Lusitania had left New York six days earlier loaded with British and American passengers. Jeremy Paxman, Britain's Great War II: War Machine
Were Britain’s ruling class up to the job of winning the war? ibid.
In January 1916 men aged between 19 and 40 were ordered to turn up at their local recruiting office. ibid.
Britain had become a machine for waging war. ibid.
The U-Boat was a new and terrifying way to wage war and it came close to defeating Britain. Jeremy Paxman, Britain’s Great War III: The Darkest Hour
This was the first time a British government had ever rationed food. And it worked. ibid.
By 1917 it was believed there were 60,000 prostitutes in London alone. ibid.
Official intrusion into almost every aspect of people’s lives. ibid.
In 1918 the people of Britain were weary from four years of war and grief deprivation. The news from the front was bleak. One of Britain’s allies – Russia – had already given up the fight. Jeremy Paxman, Britain’s Great War IV: At the Eleventh Hour
The final year of the War would take Britain to the brink of defeat. The British people needed hope. They needed inspiration. They needed Sherlock Holmes. There hadn’t been a Sherlock Holmes story in ten years. ibid.
A war which seemed to have no end ... Could there be something rotten at the heart of the British ruling class? ibid.
Strikes were suspended ... Extra shifts ... Recruiting offices saw a rush from men in protected jobs coming forward to enlist. ibid.
RAF: Most were dead within weeks. ibid.
‘Nearly all the men you might have married have been killed.’ ibid. advice to class of young women
The First World War was Britain's deadliest war. Professor Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, BBC 2014
This national catastrophe ... The British government bore a heavy share of the responsibility. ibid.
A disaster ... for the entire world. ibid.
This British intervention was far from inevitable. ibid.
The biggest error in modern history ... And for what exactly? ibid.
cf.
Its horror is not in doubt. But where I part company from what we might call the Blackadder take on history is to believe that it was all so futile, that it didn’t matter which side won. Max Hastings, The Necessary Way, BBC 2014
What if Germany had won? ... They were not for nothing. ibid.