France, 1918. For four years cameramen from around the world,
risk with their lives to film these images.
Sometimes they re-created scenes afterwards, in order to preserve them in our memory.
We have enhanced their images with color and sound.
November 11, 1918, 11 in the morning;
suddenly silence, the armistice has been signed.
Bugles and church bells sounds cease-fire.
Moments before, Private George Lawrence Price, a Canadian, is killed.
He is the wars last fallen soldier.
APOCALYPSE
World War I
From 1914 to 1918, nearly 80 million people were plunged into the war.
10 million soldiers died; mowed down by bullets, blown to pieces by bombs,
incinerated, starved, devoured by rats and lice,
and killed by the epidemics that thrive on misery.
20 million more were wounded.
What lunacy took hold of the Austrians, Serbs,
Russians, Germans, the French, with their colonies,
the British with their empire,
the Italians, the Japanese, the Turks, and the Americans?
The survivors can count themselves lucky.
But they have lost their youth
or their face
or their sanity.
How did the world unleash this fury?
1914, who are the men of this period,
so carefree yet so close to war?
Many of them are peasants, attached to their land,
their traditions, and the religions.
They feel safe. It’s been almost half a century
since the last large European conflict.
The well-to-do enjoyed a fine summer of 1914.
René Ferrari, 34, from a line of Italian immigrants,
who made their fortune in heating, is one of the first home-movie enthusiasts.
He believes the film will preserve the image of his happiness,
not realizing how fragile it is.
René is married to Jacqueline. They have three children,
Pierre, Claude, and Alain,
and a faithful maid Alphonsine.
They live a short distance from the railroad.
Trains are so modern and practical, they go everywhere now.
Soon they will transport armies.
The train takes them to the French Alps
where they go ice climbing with only a cane and the dress shoes,
and a sense of balance.
Vienna, 1914.
The great writer Stefan Zweig recalls the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire:
“New theaters, libraries, and museums were springing up everywhere.
There was progress everywhere”.
“What could interrupt this rapid ascent; dampen the élan,
which constantly drew new force from his own soaring?”
"A wondrous carefree spirit brings the world over".
"Never has Europe been stronger, richer, more beautiful,
or more confident of an even better future".
It is still “la Belle époque” of the early 1900s but not for all.
Workers, putting twice the hours as those of today, yet earn half as much.
Women earn a mere half of the slave wages.
In theory, children under 12 do not work in mines.
In France, Jean Jaures is the great leader of the working class.
He is worried.
He knows that among Europe's elite, many captains of industry speak openly of war
that will end the movement for workers’ demands.
Jaures writes: “Your violent and chaotic society, even when it pretends to seek peace,
carries within it war, just as rain clouds carry the storm”.
“The arms race is very good for business,
the great European powers prepare for war,
for endless military service trains men for war”.
“War and death hover over the planet”.
For centuries the rival empires have been divvying up the world with their swords.
Britain's conquest reaches’ as far as Australia, and Canada;
Frances from Indochina to Africa.
Germany also has colonies but wants a larger slice of the pie.
Prior to 1871, Prussia was a divided state.
By crushing France and annexing the French provinces d'Alsace and Lorraine,
it has become the German Empire.
The Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, 55, surrounds himself with his military leaders.
He orders the building of a Navy that will surpass England’s fleet.
He wants to give Germany its place in the Sun.
June 15, 1914.
Wilhelm II celebrates the 25th anniversary of his reign.
He loves to parade but can mount his horse only from a stool because of his handicap.
An accident of birth left them with a withered left arm that he usually poses a tapas sword.
After years of failed treatments, he has developed an unstable character
and is prone to violent outbursts of anger.
He is married to his cousin Augusta Victoria.
They have the same grandmother, the British sovereign Queen Victoria.
She characterized Wilhelm as a hotheaded, conceited, and wrongheaded young man.
Wilhelm has a conflicted relationship with his English Royal family,
so powerful and dominating.
One day, while hunting, he hurts himself and screams revealingly:
“This damned English blood”.
For Wilhelm II the United Kingdom has been a threat,
ever since it formed the triple alliance with France and Russia.
As a result, Germany feels surrounded and thus vulnerable.
Its only true ally is the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
an amalgam of smaller nations, which is been rained over for 60 years
by Franz Joseph I, 84.
His long life is been punctuated by tragedy; the suicide of his son,
and the assassination of his wife, Empress Elizabeth,
CC, as she was known, as the sweetheart of his youth.
He is now an old Emperor, many of whose subjects demanded independence,
he rules a tinderbox, but Franz Joseph and his arrogant officers,
and politicians oppose reform of any kind.
His empire is referred to as the joyful Apocalypse.
The waltzing and festivities continue unabated as at the marriage of the Zita,
lovely Princess to Karl, to Emperor’s grandnephew.
But it is his nephew; Franz Ferdinand,
he was the heir, presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne.
Franz Ferdinand is married to the Countess Sophie Chotek,
an aristocrat but not of royal blood.
Franz Joseph does not approve, nor does he approve of the reformist ideas of his heir.
June 28, 1914, the infernal war machine is set in motion.
It’s Sunday and Kaiser Franz Joseph travels to his country estate to hunt.
There he learns that the heir to the throne,
his nephew Franz Ferdinand and his wife have been assassinated in Sarajevo.
Showing no trace of emotion, the Kaiser coldly announces:
“A higher power has reestablished the order which I alas cannot preserve”.
Sarajevo, the name echoes like a scream across history.
It is in Sarajevo that the world's destiny changes forever.
In Bosnia which Austria-Hungary has annexed recently.
But Serbia had opposed this move, it wants to expand
by uniting the Slavic peoples of the Balkans.
June 28, 1914, Sarajevo.
Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Crown,
together with his wife, has just escaped the first assassination attempt.
They stop at City Hall to protest vehemently.
These are the last images of the couple.
When they leave the building a little later, they are shot dead with a pistol.
The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, is a 19-year-old Bosnian nationalist.
It was the Serbians who provided his pistol.
This assassination in Sarajevo will have unimaginable consequences
though it first it is covered as a minor news story.
Along the Thames, the future Queen of the mystery novel,
Agatha Christie, then 24, notes:
“When in far-off Serbia an Archduke was assassinated,
it seems such a faraway incident".
"In those countries people always being assassinated”.
The British paid scant attention to the black hole of Europe,
known as The "Balkan powder keg".
In 1912, two Balkan wars had left 200,000 dead.
By 1914, in Great Britain, those distant tragedies have been forgotten.
The English monarch George V, 49,
is also the King of Ireland and the Emperor of India.
His realm is huge but his powers limited.
His foremost preoccupation is Ireland, struggled for independence.
On June 28, 1914, he writes: “The assassination in Sarajevo
is one more shock for the old Emperor of Austria”.
George V has no sense of what is about to explode.
Any more than the president of France who has come to London
on an official visit to reaffirm “The Entente cordiale”,
the new friendship which after centuries of a deadly rivalry
now links Great Britain and France.
Poincaré, 54, may be a moderate but he comes from the Lorraine region,
that Germany annexed and that all France now dreams of re-conquering.
July 3, 1914, with the funerals of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek,
the countdown to war begins.
Austria's generals have long sought of the excuse to subjugate Serbia.
They cannot prove the country's responsibility for the Sarajevo assassinations
but they managed to convince their Emperor.
The Austrian Chief of Staff declares: “We must rid ourselves of the Serbs,
for they are forever biting the heel of the Empire, like snakes”.
But such a stance overlooks Russia; protector of the Slavs.
St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire,
is the seat of Czar Nicholas II, 47,
who was rained over his 170 million subjects for 30 years.
He celebrates the Tri-Centennial of the Russian Dynasty
amid the pomp of the Orthodox Church.
Parading alongside him Czarina Alexandra and their son, czarevich Alexey.
And close behind their four daughters, the Grand Duchesses Olga,
Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.
In 1905 Russia lost the war against Japan and experienced its first revolution.
Since then the country's economy has improved,
despite the burden of high military expenditures.
In early July 1914, amid Europe's looming misfortunes,
the Czar takes a cruise on the Baltic Sea aboard his yacht.
Despite these images of carefree gaiety, the Czar feels a deep sense of insecurity.
Peace is under threat and so is his dynasty.
His heir, the sole son, the 10-year-old czarevich Alexey is a hemophiliac.
His blood does not clot; the slightest injury may be fatal.
To ward off the yield fortune that is plunged her into depression,
his mother, the czarina, seeks help from a faith healing monk Rasputin,
whose influence is on the rise.
Rasputin may help the czarevich but he also metals in the affairs of the Czar.
Czarevich Alexey on whom is parents' doubt, as to convince them
by throwing another tantrum, to allow him to go for a row
but he is not allowed to swim.
The faithful seaman Derevenko, so strong and reassuring,
has protected the czarevich as he took his first steps.
He is constantly on guard but like so many sick children the czarevich is unruly.
Will he ever be allowed to play?
Believe and get the chance to grow up.
His hereditary illness comes from his English maternal great-grandmother Queen Victoria,
who carried the fatal gene.
At her death, Queen Victoria's descendants occupied many of Europe's thrones.
The Europe of kings and emperors is one big family.
The British sovereign, George V, and Czar Nicholas II are cousins
and could be taken for twins.
The German Kaiser is also their cousin and the czarevitch's’ Godfather.
Peace should rein in the family.
But in each country, strong nationalist factions see war as the opportunity
to finish off a dangerous rival.
And the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne,
is for Wilhelm II the most serious threat of all;
an attack on the divine right of Kings.
Wilhelm II had often hunted with Franz Ferdinand.
The Archduke was part of his world and for the Kaiser, a naive and even impulsive man;
the assassination is nothing short of sacrilege.
Wilhelm II, his generals, and the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg,
all agree; Germany must not waver, but must seize the opportunity
of the assassination in Sarajevo, to demonstrate Germany's will.
Together they decide to support their ally Austria in its plan to invade Serbia.
The threat of war doesn't keep Wilhelm II from leaving on July 6, 1914,
for a summer cruise on his yacht, an 8,000 ton, 130-yard long Leviathan.
Wilhelm is confident that the conflict will not spread.
He says: “It will be all over in a week".
"The Czar won't enter the war, because Russia is unprepared
and its ally, France, has no heavy artillery”.
July 20, 1914.
The president of the French Republic, Raymond Poincaré, arrives in Russia.
Poincaré, a secular Republican, has no qualms about supporting an absolute monarch
and profoundly religious man, like Nicholas II.
The visit has been planned long ago. For the crisis, the timing is perfect.
Poincaré wants to assess the solidity of the alliance and the readiness of Russia's Army.
The French president issues a cautious statement:
“The current crisis must remain limited to Serbia”.
But as France's leaders prepare to return to Paris,
the government cancels all leave for military personnel
and calls all generals back from holiday.
While the wealthy enjoy their Seaside vacations and ignore concerns about Sarajevo,
the continent continues its inexorable descent into the war.
The Austrians prepare.
July 23, 1914.
The government in Vienna send’s Belgrade an ultimatum with a provision
that its Imperial police be allowed to investigate on Serbian territory.
The Belgrade answers back: “Serbia is not a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire”.
Austria's ultimatum to Serbia means war for the entire world.
The president of the United States, the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, 58,
is an intellectual and a pacifist. He wants to preserve America's neutrality.
He says: “I want to keep the United States out of the European war”.
In Canada, fear of war is headline news.
Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minister,
fears an escalation of unforeseeable dimensions.
He says: “We are on the brink of the apocalypse”.
Its ultimatum having been rejected. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.
July 28, 1914, the Austrian artilleries "Skoda" cannons
enter into action against the Belgrade.
Then Russia, given its alliance with Serbia,
sends his troops to the Austro-Hungarian border.
July 30, 1914, Wilhelm II cut short his cruise.
The Kaiser comes ashore with his dachshund who proceeds to them everywhere.
Given his alliance with Austria, he issues an ultimatum to his cousin Nicholas II,
ordering him to withdraw his troops from the Austrian border.
Nicholas on the contrary mobilizes.
He writes to his cousin and allies George V of England:
“I do not know what may happen; Austria has gone off upon a reckless war
which can easily end in a general conflagration”.
Wilhelm II, not having received a response to his ultimatum, hesitates.
He speaks of "saving the peace", but around him,
military leaders and industrialists urge them to declare war,
blaming Russia for expanding the conflict.
August 1, 1914, Germany mobilizes and declares war on Russia.
Young German recruits examine the contents of their infantry kits,
which included the indispensable extra pairs of socks.
Barely out of boyhood, they have issued razor-sharp bayonets,
and the symbol of the German army - the odd spiked helmet,
meant to deflect saber blows.
Most are eager to defend our threaten homeland.
As the future writer Ernst Jünger notes:
“We had come from classrooms and factory workbenches
and a few brief weeks of training had bonded us into one large and enthusiastic group”.
In St. Petersburg, Russians, now at war,
sing the Imperial anthem that begins: “God protect the Czar”.
The French ambassador is present; he writes:
“The Czar is overcome with emotion, his people have invested them with a divine mission,
he is the absolute master of their bodies and souls”.
The czarina, appears of German descent, she is worried;
her brother will no doubt be fighting in the enemy's ranks.
Rasputin cables Nicholas II: “With war will come the end of Russia
and yourselves and you will lose to the last man”.
The moment of parting is nigh,
You look into my eyes with alarm,
And I sense your dear breath.
In a final carefree moment, for reasons await the arrival of the Tour de France.
The race begins on the same day, as the assassination in Sarajevo,
as the cycling champions cover 3,400 miles in one month,
finishing just before the war scuttles the tour for the next four years.
The winner is the Belgian great Philippe Thys of the Peugeot team.
August 1, 1914, Les Halles, the legendary food market,
the heart and soul of the French capital, wakes up in morning.
They murdered Jaures! They murdered Jaures!
Not far from here, Jean Jaures has just been assassinated
by an ultranationalist supporter of the war.
Pacifism’s leading spokesman, Jaures,
had tried to convince German workers to refuse to fight.
He had predicted: “At a time when we are threatened with murder and butchery,
there is but one hope of saving the peace,
and that is for the proletarians to join ranks”.
“Workers of France, England, Germany, Italy, Russia,
let us implore these millions of men to unite, to dispel this horrible nightmare”.
August 2, 1914, the order for general mobilization is posted across all of France.
On holiday in Brittany, Louis Maufrais, a medical student,
describes the moment:
“It is a fine late summer afternoon”. “I hear the tiny bell of the cathedral,
ringing insistently. Everyone stops. We have understood.
The women weep, the men frozen, look at the cathedral spire, dazed and speechless”.
“Its war”.
“In the distance, we can hear the bells of Vivier,
Mont-Dol, Carfantin, and Baguer-Morvan. It is heart-wrenching”.
On August 3, 1914, Paris learns that Germany has declared war on France
because France is an ally of Russia.
That same day Jaures is buried, in with him all hope for peace.
In France, Germany, and Russia workers rallied, to defend their homelands.
In France Poincaré baptizes this triumph of the nationalist forces, "Union sacrée".
3 million Frenchmen are mobilized, following 5 million Russians,
4 million Germans, and 2 million Austrians.
“About all these men called up”, Stefan Zweig writes,
“In 1914 what did they know of war, after nearly half a century of peace?”
“It had become heroic and romantic legend;
people saw it through the perspective of the schoolbooks and the paintings in museums”.
“Brilliant cavalry attacks and glittering uniforms,
a resounding march of victory with nary a victim, a wild, manly adventure,
a wonderful and exciting experience”.
“That is why they shouted and sang in the trains, carrying them to the slaughter”.
If they are not happy, they prefer not to show it.
In Toulouse, a young farmer Henri Desperrieres writes:
“Any sign of sadness was banished; we swaggered before our fellow countrymen”.
From the French colonial empire, those then known as the natives,
and the Foreign Legion, embark in Algiers or Dakar.
On boats, almost as crowded as the slave-ships of the past, resigned,
dancing for the camera, they sailed toward a world of the unknown.
In the villa outside Paris, the Ferrari family comes face-to-face with the reality of war.
The men have been mobilized, as have all Frenchmen between the ages of 20 to 48,
but in her rose garden, Jacqueline is confident that René will soon be back.
That before the roses have withered, the war will be over.
These farmers, off to defend their country, expect to return before the harvest is over.
August 3, 1914, the Germans attack.
They count on a rapid victory in a brief war.
Their plan, known as the Schlieffen Plan, after the German general who devised it,
consists of crossing Luxembourg and Belgium, before the Russians attacked from the east
and forced the Germans to fight on two fronts.
Belgian neutrality had been instituted after the defeat of Napoleon
to create a buffer between Britain, France, and Germany.
Its violation now provokes an immediate reaction from London.
England declares war on Germany.
August 4, 1914,
in London on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, King George V says:
“It is a terrible catastrophe, but it is not our fault, please God it may soon be over”.
The German high command calculates that the British
won't have time to reach the continent;
the Belgian campaign will be over very quickly.
But the Belgian stands firm.
Albert I, their valiant king, tells to his people:
“A country that defends itself cannot perish”.
The Belgians have armored trains and strong defenses protecting their cities.
For the Germans, it is an unpleasant surprise.
They fall several days behind on their battle plan.
To crush the fortresses, they must bring in their huge crop cannons
that fire one ton shells.
So the Belgians destroy their train tracks
by crashing their own locomotives into each other,
forcing the Germans to lose time on lengthy repairs.
While the Germans marked time in Belgium and the Russians prepare their offensive,
the Austro-Hungarian's, who expected to punish the Serbs in a week,
are stopped in their tracks.
The Serbs proved to be fearsome combatants.
After two weeks, the Austrian death toll has already reached 25,000,
and the Serbs celebrate their victory, for now.
All this gives the British Empire time to mobilize.
The world's largest Navy goes into action.
At its head, a young cabinet minister named Winston Churchill.
Great Britain does not have an obligatory military service and needs volunteers.
This poster of Field Marshal Kitchener, the hero of Khartoum, proclaims:
“Your country needs you”. A cry echoed by the country's recruiting officers.
The modest British Army of the hundred thousand men
expands into an expeditionary force of 1 million soldiers,
drawn from the Empire's huge reserves.
In Québec recruits kiss the Scriptures and say their prayers,
thinking about the long sea crossing that lies ahead.
These departures will become the inspiration
for the heart-rending novel “War Horse” by Michael Morpurgo.
It recounts the battlefield Odyssey of Joey, the farm horse.
Joey, who can speak, says; he was chosen
because he was judged “sound and about”, fit for anything - cavalry or artillery.
10 million horses from as far away as Australia and New Zealand,
will serve in the British Imperial forces, to suffer and die like the troops,
without ever suspecting what awaits them.
Many of the horses are not even „saddle broken".
Joey, the warhorse, declares confidently:
"The soldiers are buoyant with optimism,
as if they were embarking on some great military picnic”.
Joey and his cavalrymen quickly discover the reality of war.
The first casualties.
The first German prisoners.
And the Belgians, so courageous to the end.
The French also have a resolutely offensive plan, known as plan 17.
Takeback Alsace-Lorraine, march on Berlin,
their first objective - Mulhouse in Alsace.
August 7, 1914, the French take Mulhouse.
This triumphant parade is staged for the newsreels.
It features schoolchildren who carry the flowers
and patriotic outworns for people traditional Alsacean guard.
The French Army of August 1914.
The infantry is made up mostly of large battalions, as in the time of Napoleon,
with uniforms unsuited for modern warfare, with conspicuous red trousers, and no helmet.
They swelter under thick wool and great coats in the stifling August heat.
They must log a heavy haversack; in the famous Labelle rifle, weighing 11 pounds.
But the Labelle, like the German Mauser, and the British Lee–Enfield,
has a firepower never before seen.
These repeating rifles, with a range of over 1,200 feet, render archaic,
and criminal, the bayonet charges in closed ranks.
With these outdated tactics, taught in military academies, continues
and end up costing hundreds of thousands of human lives.
Three days after the filming of these scenes,
the French troops are driven out of Mulhouse by a counteroffensive.
The Germans then turn their machine guns on the local populace,
whom they accuse of “committing hostile acts towards the Kaiser's troops”.
In Belgium too, the Germans have launched their strategy of uprisals.
The Germans are afraid of the civilian marksmen.
Their atrocities escalate.
Anyone captured, who was believed to be a sniper, is shot.
As with the soldiers everywhere, alcohol assuages the horror
and helps spread tall tales, including the one about the German infantryman,
stabbed by the Belgian priest.
Fear of reprisals sends hundreds of thousands of civilians into flight.
Belgians, French, and British accuse the Hans, as they call their enemies,
of rape, of cutting off women's breasts, and children's hands.
August 20, 1914, general Von Moltke captures Brussels.
He explains: “Our advance in Belgium is certainly brutal,
but we are fighting for our lives, and all who get in the way,
must suffer the consequences”.
The Germans destroy historical monuments, lay waste to Louvain,
the city known as the Belgian Oxford, and burns its medieval University
and irreplaceable library.
After only three weeks of the war, all the adversaries
are in the grips of indescribable hatred.
In Belgium, a French cavalryman writes:
“I enter a house, climbed the stairs, and discover -
a German pig relieving himself in a drawer, full of delicate lace”.
“I shoot him, he dies in his own filth, everything is been ransacked,
the lowest instincts have awoken in these Germans, these music lovers”.
In the East, contrary to German plans,
the Russians have crossed the border and entered East Prussia.
And now it is the Germans who begin to flee what they call the Russian steamroller.
August 22, 1914.
Panic sets in, these German refugees also tells of destruction and pillaging.
People are afraid, uncertainty rains.
Kaiser Wilhelm II vacillates between despondency and martial enthusiasm.
His paranoia worsens, he insists: “England, France, and Russia
have agreed among themselves to wage a war of extermination against us”.
But the Germans are confident; they have just won two major victories
at Mons and Charleroi, capturing thousands of prisoners.
On August 22 alone 27,000 French soldiers were killed.
It is the single deadliest day in all the French military history.
Wilhelm II addresses his subjects, he says:
"We will defend ourselves to the last breath
of man and horse".
"And we shall emerge victorious from this battle,
even against a world of enemies".
"A united Germany has never been defeated!".
The German army marches on Paris.
Despite delays, the Schlieffen Plan is succeeding.
The French government has fled the capital.
The Germans are now only 30 miles from Paris,
victory is near.