GERMANY
1917. Europe is at war and Germany, like everywhere else,
women are filling in for the men.
The men are dead, or at the front or too old
In a Berlin subway station, a few lucky soldiers able to get away on leave,
find widows, and fiancé’s still smiling for the camera.
Back home, one of the soldiers demonstrates the use of his gas mask.
He has brought a magnificent gift, a treasure, a banana.
It's a rare treat in this impoverished country.
So many are starving as a result of the British naval blockade.
Germany is descending into apocalypse.
APOCALYPSE World War I
In this excerpt from a German propaganda film,
the ogre of tuberculosis stalks Germany's children.
Food rations are lowered to a 1000 calories a day.
Over the course of the war, 400,000 German civilians will die of malnutrition.
Victor Klemperer, later a celebrated intellectual, survives this ordeal.
He writes: "I never used to be obsessed with food.
Now I go to bed and wake up famished, weary, my imagination exhausted.
And again, I think, if only I had more potatoes."
The Kaiser, Wilhelm II, continues to enjoy lavish meals.
He and his entourage could hardly be too concerned about the fate of civilians
when by 1917 one million German soldiers have already been killed
on the various fronts.
Report by Dr Sukao from Frankfurt:
Frau X, 45, married 11 years,
two children aged ten and four, a healthy, orderly and hardworking woman
always in good spirits.
Four weeks ago, her husband was killed in battle.
She turned on the gas, unable to bear the pain.
In the trenches, after three years of war,
the men are desperate to see it end and filled with rage.
4/5 RAGE
In 1917, the Germans are on the defensive in the West.
They are determined to hold their conquered territory in northern France and Belgium.
In the east, Germany occupies 310,000 square miles(800,000km²) of the Russian Empire.
Russia, February 1917.
Tsar Nicholas II is still in the field, commanding the army.
In the capital, the czarina governs in his stead.
The Russian people hate her, convinced she is a German spy.
The evil monk Rasputin is dead, assassinated because of his influence over the czarina.
In this climate of madness, and heightened religious fervor,
the Tsar must face a tragedy, the death toll.
A 1,5 million Russian soldiers are dead, close to five million have been wounded.
A factory for artificial limbs in Kiev
is meant to reassure the country's many amputees.
Instead, it's symbolizes a crippled regime.
The war has amputated Russia's wealth and vitality, it's lifeblood.
The Russian army begins to mutiny.
Many soldiers abandon their posts to join their wives,
who on February 23rd, 1917, in St.Petersburg, demonstrate against the war,
famine, and the loss of their husbands.
They are joined by students and workers.
It is the start of the Russian Revolution.
In the Russian capital, the Army Garrison,
responsible for maintaining civilian order, sides with the rebels.
The banners proclaim "The people and the army united", "Peace",
"Long live the Republic", and "Down with the old regime".
On March 15th, 1917 Nicholas II abdicates.
He is captured here on film for the last time
with his four daughters, the grand duchesses
and his only son and heir, tsarevich Aleksei,
a hemophiliac, too fragile to reign.
Nicholas is looking for another successor.
But unrest has reached such a pitch that the Soviet,
the revolutionary Council in the capital, demands an end to the Romanov dynasty,
which has plunged Russia into the war.
The provisional, moderate government, dominated by the Minister of Justice,
the socialist Alexander Kerensky, considers allowing the deposed czar
to go into exile.
Nicholas, under house arrest, requests political asylum
from his dear cousin George V, King of England.
While awaiting the answer, the Tsar writes in his diary:
“Today I sorted through my books and belongings.
Choosing, what I will take to England”.
The family's departure is delayed because the children have come down with measles.
Much to their amusement the czarina has their heads shaved
but precious time has been lost.
In England, King George does not want to endanger his own popularity,
or his throne.
Fear of revolutionary contagion haunts the British government.
It formally advises against providing refuge to the Tsar and his family.
George V abandons his dear cousin, who so closely resembles him.
The great empires begin to fall.
In Russia, will the revolution put an end to the war?
No, because Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government,
needs the help of his British and French allies.
He too fans the flames of patriotism.
Kerensky plans an offensive.
He counts on a victory to unite the Russian people
around his Democratic and Republican regime.
Germany's ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire is also teetering.
Its peoples are starving because of the blockade.
At the end of the previous year, Vienna had buried its Emperor Franz Joseph,
who died at the age of 86, after reigning for over half a century.
He lived long enough to witness the disaster he helped unleash,
after the assassination in Sarajevo in 1914.
His generals had pushed the Emperor into war.
Now half their army is gone. What can put an end to the butchery?
In his book “The world of yesterday”, Stefan Zweig captures the prevailing pessimism.
He writes: “The steps of the temple of peace are awash in blood”.
It's a heavy legacy for the new Emperor, Karl I.
At 29, Karl is keenly aware of the fragility of his empire after its defeats,
and the demands for independence by his peoples, like the Czechs,
Slovaks, and Yugoslavs.
Karl has served at the front, he hates war.
He opposes the tactic of futile assaults with their terrible costs in human life.
He and his young wife Zita are devoted Catholics.
What he wants above all, is to make peace.
He fears the revolutionary flame, spreading from Russia.
He says: “The waves of revolutionary unrest will sweep everything away.
If we, monarchs, do not make peace, the people will make it over our heads”.
In March 1917, he sends a secret peace proposal to Paris
that interests France and England.
But Karl refuses to grant concessions to Italy, and negotiations fail.
In Germany, when Kaiser Wilhelm II is informed of the separate peace plan,
he threatens to invade his ally Austria.
The Kaiser makes his own proposal to end the hostilities.
He suggests that the belligerents accept the status quo.
Germany will keep the territory it has conquered - Belgium, Northern France
and of course Alsace-Lorraine.
France categorically rejects Germany's peace proposal.
This only hardens the position of the German military,
headed by Field Marshal von Hindenburg.
And from this point on, in full command,
the true master of Germany, General Ludendorff.
In Berlin, Ludendorff is worried about strikes and social unrest
that echo the events in Russia.
The munitions factories have been kept running for the last three years
by exhausted women and soldiers no longer able to serve at the front.
The famous Burgfrieden, the sacred union between socialists and government authorities
that have made the war possible, begins to break down.
Key German socialist leaders abandon the party
to found the Spartacus revolutionary movement,
which calls for an immediate end to the war.
Ludendorff sees but one solution, a German victory as quickly as possible.
Bring England to its knees with what he calls "Unrestricted submarine warfare".
This decision will change the course of history.
100 German submarines are ordered to attack any and all commercial vessels,
including neutral ships, contrary to international laws of the sea.
The German Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg fears American reaction.
He says: “Germany is lost.”
The Untersee-boat or U-boats receive the order to fire their torpedoes
at any ship supplying England, including American ones.
The German admirals calculate
that if their submarines sink 500,000 tons of ships a month,
England will capitulate in six months, whereas if the Americans enter the war,
they will not be ready for a year.
The First Battle of the Atlantic begins.
These submarine commanders are the new heroes of Germany.
Among them is this descendant of French emigrees, now a model Prussian
Lothar von Arnauld de la Periére.
His submarine, U-35, stars in a propaganda film, glorifying his accomplishments.
He proudly takes the famous Lloyd's Register of ships,
published by the British insurance company,
and listing every commercial vessel in the world and crosses out his latest kill.
Lothar von Arnauld de la Periére will sink 200 ships,
over 500,000 tons, a record.
He writes, “I would have preferred to fight the enemy in real naval battles,
rather than destroy unarmed vessels.
But we made sure that the crews were in lifeboats.
We pointed them toward the closest port and sank their ship with our cannon.”
In reality, however, the German submariners, scene here celebrating a victory,
rarely worry about the fate of their shipwrecked enemies.
Crews aboard merchant ships have no chance against the U-boats,
lurking below the surface.
And the 1700 French soldiers, aboard the transport ship Galya
had no chance against Arnauld de la Periére, who sank their ship without mercy.
The unrestricted submarine war confirms the German Chancellor's worst fears.
On March 19th, 1917, three American merchant ships are sunk in the Atlantic.
This event allows US President Woodrow Wilson to act.
He needs an excuse to bring America into the war,
Wilson can no longer remain a pacifist.
For him, France is the birthplace of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
If France is threatened, so is the democracy.
He declares: “America is privileged to spend her blood for the principles
that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.”
But it is not only on principle that he wishes to help the French and British.
The two countries owe the United States $2 billion.
This debt will never be repaid if Germany wins the war
with its unrestricted submarine warfare.
But America has profited from its neutrality.
After a long economic crisis, US manufacturing is flourishing
thanks to the export to Europe of canned goods, cotton
or on explosives for the war industry.
America has become powerful, and Wilson wants it to play a leading role in the world
that will emerge from the war.
However, in 1916, while campaigning for reelection,
Wilson had promised the 6 million voters of German origin
that America would remain neutral.
The press is solidly isolationist and opposed to any US military intervention.
How can Wilson turn public opinion in favor of the war?
In the wake of the torpedo attacks, another crisis erupts,
providing ammunition for his stance.
The previous year, the US cavalry had intervened in Mexico,
following acts of sabotage along the border.
Wilson suspects that Mexico was being financed by Germany
to create unrest in the US.
The British Secret Service intercepts a German telegram
that promises Mexico nothing less than the states of Texas and Arizona,
if Germany wins the war.
This telegram provides Wilson the pretext he needs to end American isolationism
and to convince Congress to vote for war on Germany on April 6, 1917.
The United States enters the war against Germany and its allies,
it joins ranks with the British Empire, which reaches from Canada to Australia,
France and its colonies, Russia, Italy, Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Portugal and Japan.
The conflict is now truly a World War.
On April 24th, France’s Marshal Joffre visits the United States, to promote the alliance.
His presence awakens in many Americans their passion for France.
In 1781, the Marquis de Lafayette had made a decisive contribution
to the American War of Independence.
"Lafayette, we are here" will soon become the battle cry of American troops.
In France, there's already a Lafayette’s Squadron, made up of volunteer pilots.
The French flag waves alongside the stars and stripes, the British Union Jack,
and banners proclaiming: “Hell is too good for the Hun”.
Despite the early enthusiasm, the impassioned speeches in defense of democracy,
the huge parades and impressive demonstrations of military mind,
America has practically no army.
Only 125,000 troops, including 15,000 of these Marines, its only real soldiers.
There is an urgent need for volunteers.
The Americans follow the lead of the British and issue of recruiting poster
featuring Uncle Sam saying, “I want you.”
US authorities expect 1 million men to volunteer
but six weeks in, only 80,000 of have signed up.
For Americans the war is far away.
They're still haunted by the butchery of the Civil War,
which ended just 50 years earlier.
The Selective Service Act is imposed.
At first, training of recruits is rudimentary.
There is nothing ready, except the dreaded drill sergeant.
Not enough uniforms, dummy wood rifles and dummy cannons too.
On the other hand, the recruits are often good street fighters,
a skill they've learned in a country whose evolution is marked by bloodshed.
Very soon these men will be plunged into real warfare.
But none of them will make it to Europe if German submarines
continue sinking allied vessels.
The decision is made to arm the ships
and to organize them in convoys, protected by escorts of destroyers.
Destroyers are small warships, built for speed and maneuverability,
with crews trained to spot the periscopes of lurking submarines.
Destroyers are armed with depth charges— canisters filled with explosives
that are dropped overboard, set to explode at a certain depth.
They can sink a submarine or force it to surface.
German losses rise and the convoy system enables more supplies
to reach England and France.
In the spring of 1917, France has been at war for three years.
A disastrous offensive in the north, near the village of Craonne,
on the plateau known as the Chemin des Dames, has precipitated a crisis,
simmering the French army.
French troops do not understand why their commanders have learned nothing
from the suicidal assaults.
General Pétain is now commander in chief.
He is known to take the wellbeing of his troops to heart, unlike the other generals.
The French army Film Unit exploits Pétain’s popularity.
Pétain is portrayed as a benevolent father figure in a scene
aimed at quelling unrest among the troops.
He drinks their rough wine, and after tasting their soup orders
that it be improved and he hands out cigarettes.
His solemn expression meant to convey what a great and determined leader he is.
The military tribunals have put 3500 mutineers on trial.
1380 have been sentenced to long prison terms, 600 have been condemned to death,
57 has been executed, as these rare clandestine images show.
In the spring of 1917, in a letter confiscated by army mail censors
a French soldier writes, “If women knew how bad it is,
they would rise up together to end the war, they would shout:
"We demand our husbands down with war.”
Another intercepted letter from a soldier in the 36th Infantry Regiment.
“I protested like the others. I'm too weary of war.
My dear sweet wife, take pity on my weakness.
Forgive me, but I've had enough of war.”
Corporal Louis Barthes prefers to confide in his notebook:
“As I write, the Russian Revolution is breaking out.
These Slavic soldiers, subject to iron discipline
who marched into the massacre like passive slaves have broken their chains.
But sympathizers beware. One subversive word
and it's a court martial. No letter goes unopened.”
10 billion letters are exchanged during the war.
For many soldiers, these letters from home, give them the will to live.
The men know that their letters may be read by government censors.
Private Maurice Drans, 26, of the 262nd Infantry Regiment, writes to Georgette:
“I think only of writing you, of loving you, of holding you,
and feeling your kisses, renewed by the happiness that is you.”
June 1917, thousands of soldiers go on leave on orders from Pétain
as if he had agreed to one of the demands of the mutineers.
In fact, he is only applying the law, ignored until then,
that grants troops seven days rest every four months.
Thousands of men can suddenly go home, like private Gaston Lavis.
Already in his 40s, he fought at the Battle of Verdun.
Back home in Paris, he is bitter: “No one cares about us.
We are being sacrificed, the poor bastards at the front.
We feel forgotten, unwanted, out of place, as if we don't belong.”
The war enriches the profiteers, away from the front, the good life goes on.
So many soldiers have gone without sex for so long.
With their miserable pay, the only comfort they can afford is a prostitute,
who may have to service 50 clients that day.
The French army Film Unit turns its cameras on these soldiers in the north,
where an offensive is being prepared.
They are shown on the North Sea coast outside Dunkirk,
frolicking like children at a summer camp.
In June, the sea is freezing cold and these images, meant to reassure the troops,
don't convince their wives.
In the cities, women go on strike against exploitation, poverty and loneliness.
And the men must return to their trenches, their foxholes, their despair.
Many slipped into an altered mental state,
including one of the greatest French poet's Guillaume Apollinaire,
an artillery officer who was seriously wounded.
He writes: “The cannons, like phalluses, impregnate the loving Earth.
In this time of bestial instincts, war is just like making love.”
The wave of mutinies dissolves in resignation, helplessness
and lack of coordination with other strikes and protests in factories back home.
But the French army has no strength left for further offensives.
The arrival of the first American troops brings a ray of hope.
Having crossed the Atlantic, despite the threat of German U-boats,
the commander of the American Expeditionary Force is first to disembark.
General John Pershing, 57, is fresh from his great success
leading the Mexican military expedition.
He lands at Boulogne on June 13th, 1917.
The French admire his fine military bearing and dashing appearance.
Parisians welcome him with hope, born out of anguish.
His first act is to pay his respects with marshal Joffre at the tomb of Lafayette.
3000 miles from home an American army is fighting for you...
On June 23rd, 1917, the mayor of Saint-Nazaire posts these notices:
“In a few hours, American troops will land in Saint-Nazaire.
We owe them the friendliest of welcomes.
Let us cheer our allies as they pass. Let us wave flags in their honor.
The Great American republic and our own are fighting for the same ideal of civilization,
justice and honor.
Long live the United States of America, long live France.”
Soon, there will be a million US soldiers.
At first, the Americans were the campaign hat,
but soon switched to the more effective British helmet.
But even so, the boys are instantly recognizable.
They're cool with friendly smiles.
The French dubbed them “Sammys”, as in Uncle Sam.
For their part, the Americans called the French “froggies”,
because they're known for eating frog's legs.
Corporal Charly Bell, 20, from Boston, Massachusetts, writes:
“These people drink wine as if it was water.”
Too young to drink at home, the Americans quickly developed a taste for wine.
Another soldier writes to the New York Tribune:
“We have come to fight for France and in exchange
we are pounced upon by a greedy people that sees us only as dollar signs.”
But in general, the US troops are popular everywhere they go.
A Paris newspaper publishes a letter to the editor:
“I am the happiest of Parisian shop girls,
and soon I will be the happiest of all women,
when I am pronounced Mrs. Robinson.”
The French, as well as the British, want to force Pershing
to integrate American soldiers in French units.
Pershing refuses, he insists on American army.
He says: “No one ever puts new wine in old goat skins.”
As a concession to his allies, he assigns to the amalgamated units,
Black American soldiers.
The African American soldiers are stunned by the welcome,
they receive from the French troops.
Back home, these grandchildren of slaves
still live under the oppression of segregation.
Their French Commander, General Gouabé, says:
“We will never forget the heroism of our African American brothers in arms.”
The way French generals prove their commitment to equality,
is by sending all troops of every color to their deaths.
But in the American army, African American soldiers
are usually relegated to non-combat duties.
They bring to the old world the new world's music.
Jazz takes the continent by storm.
Here, in a French military hospital, the celebrated Harlem jazz musician
James Reese Europe entertains the wounded with his famous Memphis blues.
The American's training is considered substandard by British
and French instructors, who are brought in to raise their combat skills.
It will take time to turn the Americans into real soldiers.
They're also desperately short of equipment.
America still cannot meet the needs of its troops.
It has to buy from France 2500 cannons, 11 million artillery shells,
50,000 machine guns, 200 million bullets, 4500 airplanes
and above all, 235 Renault FT-s.
This revolutionary new tank, the first armored vehicle with a rotating turret,
is crucial to the war of movement that Pershing wants to wage.
To finance the staggering purchase, the United States launches a massive bond issue.
The little tramp, played by Charlie Chaplin, then the world's most famous movie star,
exhorts audiences to buy "Liberty Bonds".
The French too are now accustomed to constant requests to buy the war bonds,
as are citizens of all nations, fighting to bring the Kaiser to his knees.
Moviegoers are frequently targeted.
In this famous scene, a decade before the talkies,
a soldier addresses the audience directly, while behind the screen,
a real actor speaks his lines.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have but one word to say to you, subscribe.”
The war cost 50 times more than foreseen in 1914.
Industrialists like Renault, Ford, Krupp and Citroen grow wealthy.
Located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, Citroen’s factories
turnout 26 million shells.
In the infernal den of the cavernous workshops, underpaid women,
put in 11 hours a day, including Sundays.
On July 1st, 1917, England's King George V arrives on the continent.
It's his 400th visit to the front.
On the dunes, lining the North Sea, the Belgian army pays tribute to him.
The Belgian monarch, Albert I, heroically hangs on to what is left of his country.
Albert is king George's cousin.
Both are of German origin, descendants of the House of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,
but King George has decided to change his name.
Henceforth, the British royal family will be called the House of Windsor.
George V is worried. German U-boats are starving the English people
and killing countless victims, he must find a way out.
His solution is to seize the Kaiser’s submarine bases
in occupied Belgium, at Ostend and Bruges.
British military leaders prepare this offensive in Belgium.
Their commander is Field Marshal Haig nicknamed by his men,
"The butcher of the Somme".
Haig's army has also gone through crisis.
306 British soldiers from the trenches have been executed
for refusing to climb these ladders and go over the top to certain death.
A few weeks earlier, in April 1917, in an assault on the strategic Vimy Ridge,
10,600 Canadians were maimed or killed.
So greater the losses that even volunteer replacements are hard to come by.
In Canada, London's plan to impose conscription across the British Empire,
sparks riots in Quebec City, leaving four dead.
The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, 54,
opposes a new offensive and strategically difficult sector in Flanders,
where German defenses are stronger than anywhere along the front.
Lloyd George, a prudent centrist, is genuinely appalled
that 200,000 British Empire soldiers have already been sacrificed.
He wants to wait for the Americans to enter the action,
but he fails to convince his military leaders. Rigid and blinkered,
they are incapable of imagining other strategies.
They have planned the coming assault in minute detail,
using these models of the battlefield.
The objective is to break through the German lines
near the Belgian village of Passchendaele.
July 31st, 1917, the offensive begins.
It is a repetition of the same insane scenario, tried again and again
over the last three years.
This time, the British artillery unleashes a barrage of 4 million shells,
four times more than in the Battle of the Somme.
After 15 days of shelling, the tanks are sent in,
just as they were the year before along the Somme, but in far greater numbers.
100 Mark IV tanks, 30 ton monsters,
fitted with three machine guns or two cannons.
They flattened the barbed wire, opening the way for two British armies,
supported on their flank by French units, to launch an attack on the German positions.
Despite heavy enemy fire, the Allied advance is spectacular.
Until, suddenly, the allies are stopped in their tracks by weather,
unheard of in late July.
A freak rainstorm turns the bombed out terrain into a sea of mud,
as described by Captain Edwin Vaughan of the 1st Warwickshire Regiment:
“Moaning from all sides, the wounded crawl into the craters for protection.
The rain continues, the water rises in the holes,
unable to move the wounded drown.
An officer weeps next to me. My men are in shock.
I have to climb over bodies.
A hand rises and grasps on to me. Horrified,
I pulled out a living man from the pile of corpses.”
The tanks become mired in the mud and are easy prey for the German 77 mm field guns.
The Germans stripped the disabled tanks and salvage whatever they can.
Germany has run out of steel to manufacture tanks because of the Allied blockade.
September 1917, military leaders persist in their folly.
Week after week, Field Marshal Haig relaunches the attack.
The clay soil remains waterlogged, compounding the men's misery.
The telephone lines have been cut.
Only carrier pigeons can get through the hail of gunfire.
They deliver the dreadful news to Haig, who plays down the extent of the disaster
in reports to the government.
In Haig's plan, the town of Passchendaele
was to be captured in a few hours on the first day of the offensive.
It takes three months.
The town is finally occupied, after bloody street to street fighting by the Canadians.
Private Arthur Lapointe of the "vingt-deux" says:
“Passchendaele, it looks like a town struck by a terrible cataclysm.
These fields of death, we'll never see life again.”
217,194 British Empire soldiers
have died to advance five miles(8km).
German deaths number nearly 300,000.
British Prime Minister Lloyd George says:
“Passchendaele will forever rank among the biggest, bloodiest,
and most useless battles in history.”
The Canadian field surgeon John McCrae writes in Flanders Fields
one of the most moving poems ever penned about the war.
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row...
...We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived,
felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved,
and now we lie. In Flanders Fields.
And everyone else hangs on, hoping,
awaiting the day of deliverance.
TIMING & TRANSCRIPTION danel32 /eng.to.est@gmail.com/