London, 1917.
Before returning to the front in Flanders, an Australian soldier writes to his wife:
“My love, my only love. I feel so dejected tonight.
I'm so sad that you didn't send me the photograph.
My only love. You know how things are. We are here to perform our duty.
And if I am killed, you must thank God he has let me accomplish mine."
APOCALYPSE World War I
The war is born out of the fury of men that traps them in fear.
It plunges them into hell.
They rage for it to end, they long for deliverance.
5/5 DELIVERANCE
Autumn, 1917. The world is at war.
The United States has joined Great Britain, France, Belgium, Russia, Japan and Italy.
Italy is battling the Austrians to conquer the cities of Trento and Trieste.
In the Alps, the Italian troops faced terrible hardships.
Most are peasants, though a few work at the Fiat factory.
They are under the draconian command of officers, led by General Luigi Cadorna.
The military hierarchy is merciless.
750 soldiers are shot by firing squad as an example, a dark record.
Since every day the same Italian soldiers accomplish incredible feats,
such as carrying cannons up 10,000 foot (3000m) mountains.
Cannons that are meant to dislodge the Austrian enemy.
Even in the Alps, the established defensive tactics of this war persist,
barbed wire and trenches, except that here the men are encased in ice.
With their bayonets, they carve altars for their heroic chaplain
and for God, their protector and only hope.
After repeated Italian offensives, the outnumbered Austrians hold their positions
but request support from the Kaiser’s army.
October 24, 1917. German reinforcements arrive.
Among them is Lieutenant and future Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, he is 26.
He and his men infiltrate the Italian lines.
He says, “The deeper we penetrate enemy positions,
the less they expect it, and the easier the battle.”
Rommel takes huge numbers of prisoners.
It's the beginning of the end for the Italian front.
German and Austrian troops pour down from the mountains
and take the city of Caporetto.
In less than 10 days, they advance 60 miles(100km).
Early November, 1917.
The Germans and Austrians push forward amidst the debris of the Italian Army.
275,000 Italian soldiers surrender.
Many shout: “Our enemy is Cadorna, not the Austrians.”
General Cadorna says: “My army has gone on strike.”
He is stripped of his command.
The carnage of Caporetto was evoked by Ernest Hemingway
in his novel “A Farewell to Arms”.
At 19 he was a volunteer in an Italian ambulance unit.
Hemingway writes: “I was always embarrassed by the words -
sacred, glorious and sacrifice.
The sacrifices here were like the stockyards at Chicago,
if nothing was done with the meat, except to bury it.
There were many words that you could not stand to hear.
Abstract words, such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow, were obscene.”
The spirit of revolt, fanned by the defeat of Caporetto,
leads to an emergency conference of Allied leaders,
who worry that Italy might withdraw from the war.
On November 15th, 1917, they decide to send reinforcements,
who are welcomed as saviors.
100,000 French and British troops are assigned to stop
the German and Austrian advance toward Venice.
France also sends an Air Squadron.
The French aviators enjoy the perks of this posting.
The Allies stop the Austrians, and take many prisoners.
These soldiers, encompassing all the various peoples
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, are fed up.
There are rumblings of mutiny, of independence.
Their Emperor Karl I meets with the Kaiser Wilhelm II.
They travel to the front to appraise the situation.
The Emperor is increasingly worried that the revolt will spread.
He continues to favor peace and wants to negotiate, but not the Kaiser.
He still dreams of a victory that can save them.
The Kaiser says: “After the war, we will conclude a major treaty with France
and then with all of Europe.
That done, I will lead the real war against England.”
The Kaiser and his generals believe they must achieve victory,
before the Americans are fully operational.
The first step is to get Russia out of the war,
so German armies can be redeployed from the eastern to the Western Front.
With this in mind, General Ludendorff, still in charge in Germany,
facilitates the return of Russia's leading political agitator to St.Petersburg.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin,
author of writings that advocate a communist takeover.
Lenin has been living in exile in Switzerland.
He is 47.
The Germans cunningly decide to finance both Lenin's party and his journey,
because the communists, who deposed the Tsar in February of 1917,
are still fighting the war.
This unnatural Alliance is not because Ludendorff supports Lenin's plan
to ban private property, but because Lenin claims,
that he will take Russia out of the war.
Ludendorff says: “Lenin will overthrow the Russian patriots
and then I will strangle him. Him and all his friends.”
In a Russia, crushed by war, a Russia of misery,
famine, and with an army in chaos.
Lenin says: “Peace, bread, land and freedom are necessary for the masses.”
Lenin accuses Kerensky’s Provisional Government
of prolonging the imperialist butchery.
On November 7th, 1917, October 25th, in the Russian calendar,
Lenin executes, what will come to be known as the October Revolution.
The sudden brutal arrest of the Provisional Government
and the establishment of a bloody and implacable dictatorship.
Lenin had written a decade earlier, during the 1905 revolution:
“Terror is an instrument of social hygiene.”
Among the early victims of this policy are the entire imperial family.
The great Russian Empire is the first to fall as a result of the war.
December 15, 1917.
German and Russian soldiers emerge from their trenches,
cross the barbed wire and fraternize.
The new communist regime in Moscow has just signed an armistice
and undertakes negotiations to end the war.
Lenin says: “We must come to a compromise with the imperialist bandits.”
In Brest-Litovsk, at a train station, 65 miles(105km) from Warsaw,
peace talks begin on December 22th, 1917.
The Germans mockingly welcome the communists, who harbor no illusions
about the territorial concessions, they will be forced to make.
In Lenin's view, territory has to be forfeited in order to gain time.
Time to allow the revolution to consolidate,
as civil war is brewing with the Russian armies
that remain faithful to imperial rule.
The communists must gain time, they hope
that the revolution will spread around the world.
For three months, they negotiate with their enemies from Germany, Austria,
Turkey, and Bulgaria, all of whom want their share of the pie.
With Germany threatening to resume the war against Russia, Lenin sends Leon Trotsky,
one of his closest comrades, to capitulate on every point.
The peace treaty is signed on March 3rd, 1918.
Russia loses almost 400,000 square miles(1 million km²) of its territory,
and a quarter of its population from the Balkans to Poland,
which regains its independence, and Ukraine,
which promptly enters the war against the Bolsheviks.
Ludendorff has succeeded, he can transfer much of his army to the Western Front.
For Wilhelm, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff it's a whole new game.
In March 1918, a battered and starving Germany
begins massing 2 million troops on the Western Front.
The German troops now outnumber the enemy.
The German High Command realizes its dream of 1914,
uniting his forces to overpower the French and British,
with a series of offensives along the entire front.
Ludendorff repeats, “We must strike before the Americans
can throw their forces into the scale.”
He decides on March 21st, 1918, to try a new tactic.
After a short period of shelling, to prepare the attack, his shock troops,
following the example of the young Rommel in Caporetto, infiltrates the enemy lines.
The War of movement resumes.
For the first time since the trench warfare began,
the Allied front is breached.
And just three days later, the Germans are 75 miles(120km) from Paris.
March 23, 1918.
Palm Sunday in L'Étang-la-Ville near Paris,
the Ferrari family continues to make charming home movies.
Their natural optimism shining through. René reassures Jacqueline,
he doesn't believe, the Germans will advance any further.
In this war, everyone is an expert.
Still, for the last six months, Parisians have lived in fear of German airplanes,
the twin engine Gothas.
These planes are the world's first strategic bombers. They replace the Zeppelins
that have terrorized London and Paris.
Despite air raid sirens and shelters,
200 Parisians are killed by bombs from German airplanes.
The army has proposed the construction of a fake Paris,
15 miles(20km) from the capital, a decoy, to trick enemy bombers.
The use of decoys has grown in scope, phony cannons, phony railroad tracks,
phony trees, even the hiring of abstract painters to camouflage military hardware.
A new industry is born, the production of camouflage netting.
It employs a large number of female workers.
The project for a phony city of Paris advances. It's no joke.
On March 29th, 1918, no planes are spotted in the skies over the capital.
But Parisians discovered the church of Saint-Gervais in ruins.
It was destroyed by an artillery shell that left 91 people dead and 68 wounded.
A shell, but how is that possible?
Parisians panic and send their children out of the city.
The Germans are 75 miles(120km) from Paris
and even the biggest guns have a range of no more than 20 miles(30km).
This cannon is indeed 75 miles(120km) away.
It's the Kaiser’s secret weapon, a monster made of three cannon barrels,
welded end to end, and named The "Pariser Kanone".
Parisians take to calling it “the Big Bertha”, after Bertha Krupp,
of the famous arms manufacturing company.
To the north, Canadians and Australian troops help evacuate civilians.
The situation is so dire that the British, French,
and Belgians decide to unite their forces under a single command.
Marshall Pétain is widely admired.
But the head of the French government, Georges Clemenceau, 76,
called the “Tiger”, considers Pétain too cautious.
Pétain has declared: “I'm waiting for the tanks and the Americans.”
The political and military leaders of the Allied coalition agree on April 14th, 1918,
on a supreme commander of their armies, General Ferdinand Foch, 66, who declares:
“Victory is a thing of the will.”
His second in command, general Weygand sticks out his tongue at the photographer.
He will be the unfortunate leader of the French army in World War Two.
Foch visits American headquarters east of Paris,
to ask General Pershing to engage all his forces in the war.
Pershing refuses, the meeting is stormy, despite the smiles for the camera.
Pershing says, his troops won't be operational before 1919.
Exasperated, Foch asked if he intends to sit it out,
until the French and British have been defeated.
Pershing does not want to sacrifice his men in trench warfare.
He is preparing for another kind of combat, open warfare,
a war of movement over vast areas and in the sky.
General Billy Mitchell is getting ready to bomb Germany.
Suddenly, fighter pilots are on every front page.
Stories of their aircraft and exploits, reassure those at home,
and earn the much admiration.
Former automobile racer and Pershing's personal chauffeur,
Eddie Rickenbacker, becomes an ace with 26 victories.
He says: “Courage is doing what you are afraid to do.”
He survives the terrible dogfights in the sky.
But the most famous French airman, George Guynemer, is shot down.
Other flying aces make history, such as France’s René Fonck with 75 victories.
And Canada's Billy Bishop with 72.
Their most feared adversary is the German ace Manfred von Richthofen,
who racks up 80 victories.
He is one of the rare pilots to comment on the real meaning of air combat victories.
Von Richthofen says: “The murder of a man is still a murder, even in wartime.”
His noble Prussian blood, and the color of his airplane
earned him the nickname “The Red Baron”.
He flies a three wing fighter, the famous Fokker triplane,
remarkable for its maneuverability and speed.
Von Richthofen develops a new tactic with the other pilots of his squadron.
He describes it: “With my bright red plane, I serve as bait.
I fly very low. My pilots lie and wait above,
ready to dive on any enemy plane that goes for me.”
April 21th, 1918, Richthofen, 26, prepares for takeoff.
He loads the two machine guns which are synchronized to fire through the propeller.
Flying above the British lines, pursued by an enemy pilot, he descends too low.
He is shot in the heart by an Australian anti-aircraft gun.
The victory over the German Ace is also claimed by the pilot,
who was in pursuit, the Canadian Roy Brown,
seen here posing with Richthofen’s two machine guns to prove it.
Six British pilots carry the German Ace
to his final resting place in the New Zealand section of the graveyard.
The Maori’s warrior rituals are meant to help his soul on its journey.
In this month of April 1918, the loss of the Red Baron hits Germans hard.
The German advance becomes bogged down, because logistics cannot keep up.
Supplies do not arrive. The men are hungry.
Officers complain that their men stopped fighting to forage for any food
that may be left in their sectors, such as in the Chemin des Dames,
which the Germans themselves had ravaged the previous year.
From time to time, a lucky few may find a scrawny, old sheep.
Lack of food, water contaminated by decomposing bodies, buried
and thrown up again by the shelling, the staggering proliferation of vermin,
the movement of massive numbers of men.
All these factors create ideal conditions for the worst epidemics
since the Black Death in the 14th century. The Spanish flu,
so named because it was first reported in Spain by an uncensored press,
hits North America, Africa, Asia and all of Europe,
leaving 30 million dead around the world.
On the front, the disease afflicts all the belligerents.
200,000 British, 400,000 French and 500,000 German soldiers
are put out of action by the Spanish flu.
Ludendorff, short of men, empties military hospitals and orders soldiers
who are sick or convalescing, back to the front.
And Wilhelm II hands out medals, the Iron Cross,
after the initial successes in this campaign, but he is visibly worried.
His men have still not broken the enemy lines once and for all,
and will soon find themselves under heavy fire.
In the Meuse at Saint-Mihiel, in what has been a quiet sector,
a German unit surprises an American position.
On April 23rd, 1918,
the Americans lose 650 men, General Pershing is furious.
He orders a counter attack, in which a future president of the United States,
artillery Captain Harry Truman, distinguishes himself.
The Americans take the German trenches.
They prove their ability to fight in this hell.
They film their first prisoners.
Pershing has kept his soldiers from being amalgamated
into the combined allied regiments,
but he can't keep them out of hand to hand combat to defend their positions,
as here, at Bois Belleau near l'Aisne, on June 26th, 1918.
The Marines have stopped the German advance, but at a terrible cost.
The US Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, witnessed the fighting.
He writes to Wilson: “The Marines fought
according to American methods in successive waves,
passing over the bodies of their dead comrades, and plunging ahead
until they too should be torn to bits.
In all the history of the Marine Corps, there is no such battle as that one,
fighting day and night without sleep, often without water,
and for days without hot rations.
They lost three quarters of their companies.”
July 15th, 1918, the Germans received the order to resume their advance.
The High Command says: “It's the “Friedensturm”, the offensive for peace.”
But does anyone believe it?
The shock troops know, they will now be facing the Americans too.
Soldiers, not exhausted from four years of war,
and who have every military resource at their disposal.
General Ludendorff knows that he no longer has numerical superiority.
It's all or nothing.
He launches his last divisions, 600,000 men,
on either side of Reims toward Paris.
The Second Battle of the Marne has begun.
The Germans advance through the same wheat fields as in August 1914.
Suddenly, ahead of them, French troops.
“To the slaughterhouse” is a book by the soldier Jean Giono, who writes:
“They had watched as all the men left.
It was a thick summer night smelling of corn and horse sweat.
This war was to be the war to end all wars. The last war ever.
It was the war to kill off war, but it killed only men, pointlessly,
all wars are pointless.”
Marshall Foch mounts a powerful allied counter offensive,
comprising a million men and 500 tanks.
The British Mark IVs, the French Renault FTs, also used by the Americans,
under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Patton.
A prelude to the combined tank warplane tactics of the next war.
This wounded soldier could easily be the main character of the novel
“Johnny got his gun”. A young American soldier,
he loses all his limbs, his sight, his speech, but not his consciousness.
August 8th, 1918.
Allied tanks overrun the enemy, so close to Paris.
The German Army, lacking tanks and reserve troops, completely collapses.
They lose 150,000 men, including 40,000 taken prisoner.
Ludendorff dubs it: “The black day of the German army.”
His offensive for peace has failed, but he has no choice,
except to try to delay for as long as possible the Allied advance
toward the German border.
The great empires teeter,
Austria-Hungary braces for an onslaught of the army of the Orient,
troops from France, Great Britain, Italy, Serbia and Greece
set out from Salonica to reconquer the Balkans.
The Ottoman Empire is also under threat, with the British advancing on Damascus.
With support from Arab tribes,
the British complete their conquest of Turkish ruled Palestine.
On September 30th, 1918, warriors from Arabia enter Damascus,
led by Emir Faisal, the son of Hussein, Prince of Mecca.
Faisal is 33 years old, he owes his victory to his bravery,
and also to his mysterious advisor, Thomas Edward Lawrence,
a British intelligence agent.
His mission was to foment an Arab revolt against the Turks
by providing them with money, weapons, and promises.
Lawrence is 30, he speaks Arabic, he has adopted local garb,
to be less conspicuous among the Bedouins.
He later writes: “The British Army uniform was abominable when camel riding
or when sitting about on the ground. Arab clothing was cleaner and more decent.”
He loves the desert with a passion, and has become a guerrilla leader.
In his book, “The Seven Pillars of wisdom”, he writes:
“The Arab respected force a little,
he respected craft more, and often had it in enviable degree,
but most of all he respected blunt sincerity of utterance.”
But the British go back on their commitment by divvying up with the French,
the Ottoman Empire, that they had promised to Faisal.
Syria and Lebanon go to the French and the English create a new country, Iraq.
As consolation, they install Faisal on the throne of this oil rich nation.
Faisal cannot forgive the man, known from hereon as Lawrence of Arabia,
for going back on his promise, to return to him the vast realm of his distant ancestors,
who, in the 8th century, had conquered a good part of the world
in the name of Islam.
Equally galling to the Arabs, when the British conquered Jerusalem,
they showed support for the Jewish population of Palestine.
The British government has made promises to them too.
The First World War is not over.
France, early October 1918, the eastern North of the country lie in ruins.
Foch’s powerful counter offensives advanced along the entire front.
The Americans attack in the Argonne region, the French in the Meuse,
in Champagne, and in Picardy.
The British armies, along with the Australian cavalry,
advance toward Cambrai, the Belgians and Canadians march on Mons.
Many Germans surrender. When their final effort to hold the line fails,
their leaders still try to convince them that defeat is impossible.
But many are too young for battle or too old.
Most feel only relief.
There's no need for battlefield propaganda now.
Camera crews go back to Germany to film the revolution.
Sailors are mutinying, workers councils control the major cities.
Ludendorff feels his power slipping.
In private, he speaks of armistice, but in public he defends the Army's record.
On October 25th, 1918 Ludendorff issues a proclamation:
“For us, as soldiers, capitulation is unacceptable.
We must resist with all our might.”
This is the beginning of the legend, known as
“The stab in the back”. For both, Ludendorff and Hitler,
the army had not been defeated by the enemy, but by the politicians.
A new government, under the socialists, strips Ludendorff of his command.
He flees to Sweden.
On October 29th, 1918, Wilhelm II travels to Spa in Belgium
to his general headquarters to make sure the army is behind them.
But the regime in Berlin has changed and now demands his abdication.
No one, least of all Wilson, wants to negotiate with the man,
seen as one of the main instigators of the war.
On November 9th, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates
and seeks refuge in the Netherlands.
It's the end for the great empires and their monarchs.
The Golden Imperial carriage of Austria is sold off.
The Viennese no longer swoon at the sight of the beautiful princess Zita.
They are too weak from hunger,
as is the Austro-Hungarian army,
defeated by the Italians at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.
The massive Austro-Hungarian Empire sinks, as does its greatest battleship,
the 20,000 ton Szent Istvan, torpedoed by the Italians.
Emperor Karl goes into exile with Zita.
November 11th, 1918.
Marshall Fosch’s special train enters the station of Compiegne, north of Paris.
In this carriage, hidden from the cameras,
the envoys of the provisional German government sign the armistice.
Germany accepts defeat and requests an end to hostilities.
On the front, the ceasefire is set for 11am.
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
It has lasted four years. 75 million men were mobilized.
10 million soldiers were killed. 7000 Portuguese,
13,000 Belgians, 90,000 Bulgarians, 120,000 Americans,
130,000 Serbians, 200,000 Romanians, 350,000 Turks,
450,000 Italians, 900,000 troops from the British Empire,
from Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa,
1,200,000 troops from Austro-Hungary.
1,400,000 soldiers from France and its colonies,
Senegal, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco.
1,700,000 Germans, 1,800,000 Russians,
20 million soldiers were wounded.
8 million civilians died.
There's not a family that doesn't count someone killed, amputated,
gassed, or orphaned. But around the world,
joy erupts as if to erase the horrendous numbers of the first mass killing in history.
Leaders shape the memory of the war, by commissioning countless monuments,
that depict their soldiers, marching towards sacrifice and glory.
They never depict the firing squads
and repression imposed to keep order in the ranks.
Despite the mass slaughter, these monuments almost always seek to convince us
that it is right to kill and to be killed for one's homeland.
On December 13th, 1918, in Paris, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau
and his entire government, await the arrival of an exceptional visitor.
The President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.
This is the first time in history that a president of the United States
leaves his country and crosses the Atlantic, but the situation is grave.
The armistice has been signed, the peace must be made.
Many questions remain open.
Countless conflicts arise, and now America has a place at the table.
Wilson's first official act is of course to inspect his troops.
He says to Pershing: “I'm not sure everyone is glad to see me.”
Wilson is aware that because of its role at the bargaining table,
America is now a dominant figure on the world stage.
Wilson champions what he calls “The right of nations to self-determination”.
This ideal opens the door to innumerable demands for nationhood
and the drawing of new borders.
His second act is one of compassion.
He travels to Reims, to witness the unimaginable damage to the cathedral.
Wilson surveys the extent of the disaster.
He says: “The whole world is sick to the heart,
at the sight of the beautiful cities and fields of France struck by catastrophe.”
Seven and a half million acres of land (3 million hectares) are no longer fit for agriculture.
It is forever polluted from chemical warfare, the millions of artillery shells,
and the countless corpses that will have to be collected and buried.
Refugees just want to go home.
They try, but hundreds of villages have been wiped from the map.
Never again, proclaim the pacifist movements.
The US president, the French and the British,
come up with the idea of an international body, designed to avoid war in the future.
They call it “The League of Nations”.
On June 28th, 1919, at the Palace of Versailles,
five years to the day after the assassination in Sarajevo,
delegates from all the nations that were at war with Germany sit down together.
After lengthy negotiations, they are ready to sign the peace treaty.
The famous Hall of Mirrors has been chosen for the signing.
It was here that Wilhelm I was crowned emperor of Germany,
after defeating France in 1871.
In this highly symbolic setting,
the German representatives must sign the Treaty of Versailles,
which is imposed by the victors.
Hitler will later call it the 'Diktat'.
The Allies divide up Germany's colonies among themselves
and impose harsh war reparations.
The treaty has many critics.
The renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes writes:
“If we take the view that Germany must be kept impoverished, and her children starved
and crippled, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp.”
But for Clemenceau, what matters above all, is the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France
with the rich coalfields of the Saar Valley.
Austro-Hungary ceases to exist, with some areas going to Italy,
and others becoming new countries between 1919 and 1922.
Germany is divided in two by the Polish corridor,
intended to give Poland access to the sea.
Russia is excluded from the treaty.
After a bloody civil war, it becomes the Soviet Union, the USSR.
Wilson sails back home, Americans are hostile to the treaty,
and Congress fails to ratify it.
The senator from Pennsylvania, Philander Knox, tells Wilson:
“Mr. President, I am convinced, after the most painstaking consideration
that I can give, that this treaty does not spell peace but war.
War more woeful and devastating, than the one we have but now closed.”
The United Kingdom is the only great empire to survive.
King George V, his prime minister Lloyd George,
and Marshall Foch embrace their roles as victors.
But there is division among them.
The priority for the British is to prevent the return of war,
whereas in the eyes of the French, Germany must be punished.
Pierre Ferrari, now 18, dressed in his father's uniform,
plays the part of a soldier.
He refuses to shake hands with his brother, who is playing a German.
A whole generation of German children will grow up humiliated
and dreaming of revenge.
TIMING & TRANSCRIPTION danel32 /eng. to.est@gmail.com/