Our part in the First World War was tragically necessary. ibid.
This country was among the guarantors of Belgium’s neutrality. ibid.
They were seizing and killing civilian hostages. ibid.
Those who had fought felt that they had been sold a false bill of goods. ibid.
If their enemies had prevailed, Europe would have paid an even terrible forfeit. ibid.
On becoming prime minister in 1940 Winston Churchill said that all his life had been preparation for a moment of destiny. But no chapter had prepared him more than the First World War … humiliation and disgrace. Churchill’s First World War, BBC 2013
The First Lord of the Admiralty … he believed he had a special gift for war. ibid.
‘Churchill was an ego-maniac.’ ibid. scholar
Churchill was in acute danger for he was the Blenheim rat. The renegade and class traitor who had deserted the Tories to join the ruling Liberals in 1904. ibid.
Obsessed with the Dardanelles ... 53,000 dead ... He was sacked. ibid.
‘He is a hound of the lowest sense of political honour, a fool of the lowest judgment and contemptible.’ ibid. Margo Asquith of Churchill
31st May 1915: A new kind of terror campaign. For the first time in history innocent civilians were being bombed in their own homes. Attack of the Zeppelins, Channel 4 2013
An enormous airship called the Zeppelin. For two longs years these gas-filled monsters poured down death with impunity. While the British struggled to find a way to stop them. ibid.
Containing the gas is still a problem. ibid.
The beginning of modern warfare. ibid.
10 million dead. 23 million wounded. That’s half the 70 million mobilized. 1914-1918: The Noise and the Fury, Un Film de Jean-Francois Delassus
Right after the war there was this false vision created of how it had been; it all got re-written. ibid.
To enlist is above all to get out of the hole you’re stuck in and wear a uniform. ibid.
We eat the mud, we sleep in the slime, and we’re coated in clay. ibid.
Another daily event is the handing out of medals; I’ve got two of the things. ibid.
The War to End all Wars lends a nobility to the sacrifice of our lives. ibid.
It was a time when legends ruled the skies. One legend time and memory has not eroded – the tale of the notorious Red Baron. In 1918 Manfred von Richthofen, the peerless German ace, was shot down by a single bullet. But who fired the fatal shot? Unsolved History s1e9: The Death of the Red Baron, Discovery 2002
Manfred Baron von Richthofen – the Red Baron. An expert flyer and a superb marksman, the twenty-five-year-old German aristocrat commanded a crack air squadron in the Imperial Air Service. From 1916 onwards the squadron known as Richthofen’s Flying Circus terrorised air foes in the skies over northern France. Many tried to shoot the Baron down, and many died trying. In January of 1917 Richthofen had grown so confident of his ability that he painted his plane bright red as a taunt to his enemies. ibid.
By April 1918 the Red Baron had single-handedly downed eighty enemy aircraft. ibid.
Of all the candidates, the only one left is Snowy Evans. ibid.
In 1916 Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president of the United States on a pledge to keep America out of Europe’s devastating war. The United States was totally unprepared for warfare. When American troops finally did get involved they suffered terrible casualties. Declassified: Secrets of World War I
Austria, Germany and Turkey sided against Russia, France, Italy and Great Britain. The war soon became a stalemate on the Western Front. With thousands of British, French and German soldiers dying in the mud and misery of the trenches. ibid.
Britain wanted America to join the war on its side. It established a secret operation to manipulate American news coverage of the war. ibid.
But secretly Wilson was pro-British. His mother was English. He had visited England. He harboured deep suspicions of the German government. ibid.
Northern France. The Somme. 1916. Here at one of the most infamous battles of all time over a million men fought against the most powerful army in the world. And more than 100,000 lost their lives. Dan Snow’s Battle of the Somme, Discovery 2014
100 years ago this hospital was full of young men who’d been wounded in the battlefields of the First World War. But the people here weren’t just suffering from physical wounds, many of them were terribly mentally scared by the trauma of battle. By the end of the First World War something like a quarter of a million British servicemen were suffering from the effects of a mysterious illness. Dan Snow, WWI’s Secret Shame: Shell Shock, BBC 2018
No-one could find a cure. And in the 100 years since the First World War it has resurfaced in every major conflict. ibid.
World War I triggered an avalanche of psychiatric casualties. ibid.
We still haven’t eliminated the scourge of war. In fact, the last 100 years have seen war waged on a greater scale than at any other time in human history. Peter & Dan Snow, 20th Century Battlefields s1e1: 1918 Western Front, BBC 2007
The most destructive war the world had yet seen. Fighting involved tens of millions of troops from all round the world. ibid.
There was one battle more than any other that harnessed the power of these new weapons to turn the tide of the war: it was fought here in north-east France on the Western front in 1918: it was the Battle of Amiens. ibid.
6,500 guns and 3,500 trench mortars fired virtually simultaneously along a 46-mile front … A concoction of lethal gasses that held in the air for hours … A massive dent in the British front line. ibid.
On May 31st 1916 the British and German fleets clashed in what would be the biggest and bloodiest naval battle of the First World War, and in fact in the whole of navy history – the Battle of Jutland. This was the era of the Dreadnought … The was one battle that didn’t go to plan. Dan Snow, Battle of Jutland: The Navy’s Bloodiest Day, BBC 2015
Britain had lost more than 60,000 men. ibid.
The British had 151 ships; the Germans 99. And Britain expected an easy victory .. the Royal Navy came off worse. ibid.
‘The greater number of injuries were caused by burns.’ ibid.
There were only 18 survivors of the Queen Mary. ibid.
By dawn we were surrounded, and the Germans finally took us all prisoner and we were happy because we had saved our lives. Farewell Italy! Farewell family! I am now in the hands of the Germans. Giuseppe Giurati, Italian soldier
We have almost nothing to worry about. We often play cards, and sometimes we have to drop them and pick up our rifles. But it’s usually a false alarm. So we go back to our seats and our cards, our minds completely on the game. Verdun trench soldier, memoirs
When a shell bursts a few metres away there is a terrible jolt. And then an indescribable chaos of smoke, of earth, of stones, of branches, and too often alas of limbs, flesh, a reign of blood. Sergeant Paul Dubrulle
We are lost! They have thrown us into the furnace, without rations, almost without ammunition. We were the last resources; they have sacrificed us ... Our sacrifice will be in vain. Sergeant Paul Dubrulle, Verdun 1916
One can look for miles and see no human beings. But in the miles of country lurk it seems thousands of men. Harold Macmillan, letter to mother
According to the English we are in league with the Devil. Eduard Engel, German civilian diary entry
Notice! Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY. The New York Times 1st May 1915
A German victory is necessary and possible. It is the only means of reaching a peace which is appropriate to its sacrifices. We must eradicate all doubt in a German victory. Major Walter Nicolai, propagandist