The Scars Of The Great War In Western Europe | The Long Shadow (1/3) | Timeline

my father was there...April 1916 Egypt..Aug.1916 battle of Romani. joined New Zealand Machine gun Co.Flers Courcelette Sept 1916..1st Tanks used..Passchendaele..before that Messines to shift Germans from the overlooking high ground..gassed at Messines..hosp. etc. spent the last years of the war in the QM store still with NZ Machine gun co. army of occupation. home to NZ embarked July 1919. disembarked Aug.1919.Never talked about his experiences until not long before he died in 1968.

Winners wiew

Anglosaxon wiew

Empathetic to suffering yet spoken by the most condescending and patronizing sounding man ever.

A remarkable generation - the peace ballot. Glad to be born in Britain.

Rene Descartes knew the shortcomings of humans.

When I watch Western documentaries about World War 1, especially from an allied nation like Britain and this gentleman here, I always wonder what he thinks of Britans empire and its own bid for domination. The natzies are evil, and World War 1 was a terrible crime against humanity, but I don't see where the allies can take a moral high ground in that conflict (ww1).

A very good documentary. The author makes the point that The Arts shaped each generation’s reflection of the War. Drama and the art of the playwright seems to be at the forefront of each reflection. Is there an unedited version of the War Poet’s works? This is what should be really taught.

THEY ALWAYS GLORIFY DYING FOR YOUR COUNTRY.
And so the politicians go on sacrificing young people.
WHEN WILL WE LEARN.

NE France arguably has not recovered to this day.

My Grandfather was a WWI veteran; he was a sapper. I often wonder what it must have been like to have lived through the highs and lows during those times. He was awarded The British War Medal as well as The Victory Medal. He lived until 1977. I often wonder if he wore those medals with a sense of pride or whether he wore them with a degree of bitterness or survivor's guilt each Remembrance Day thereafter. Rest in Peace Grandpa.
Velox Versutus Vigilans

It seems like Anthony Eden, not part of the British Empire’s establishment, is being made to take the hit for a much more sinister game that desired to keep empire going

Late to get into the First World War. So unfortunate that those poor soldiers died for something they had nothing to do with. Thousands and hundreds of thousands. All real men, woman, happy with someone and people that loved them. Wasn't cause of something they did, but someone who was a leader, didnt like their leader, making promises not they keep, your fellow countrymen are dying and they are drinking aged wine. Lot of them didnt come home. Those that did will have nightmares thr rest of their life. Others are roaming without srms, legs, crippled, the leaders always send their countryman to die. Should never happen again after the last war. But history proved quite a few time, meddling into other countries business is gonna turn out bad. Yet its going on right now, somewhere on this planet. Let the leaders step up. Ugh, i get so upset so many died and you hear it over and over but it never sinks in.

Hope everyone is at peace and with those they love. Let's hope we never have to kill for our leaders.

C'mon You tube. Such a great documentary and yet the close captioning is terribly off.

He says 1914 the close captioning shows 1940. Um, pretty significant error there.

He says battle of the Somme and it shows song. that's troll level funny but wow.

It's been up for five years and that's the best close captioning? Throw another three ads in but don't bother to fix the viewers experience.

Let go of the dead. Don't think so. WWI is history? Not. It was the accelerator of all what happened later. It caused a massive corruption of our Judeo-Christian based civilization. People lost respect for morality and life, for the values of life. We see it today everywhere.

The British make the best history documentaries.

World War One is the pivot between the old world I do not recognise, of top-hats, strange moustaches and carriages, and the world I live in, of cars, TVs and fashion.

I love David Reynolds narrative. He keeps me on the edge of my seat. I can't get enough of his videos. I couldn't help but note that in the close up of the poppies, that they are genuine opium poppies.

Like almost every war, WW1 was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight . Where the rich and elite who sit in their ivory towers, play a macabre game of chess in which each game piece is awash in human blood & sacrifice .

The old lie................Dulce et Decorum Est.............

It's a really good doc. The only thing that's leaves me wanting more is he doesn't let you know his own view on it. Its more about, this is how people looked on it in the 1920s, here's an important play from the 1930s, here's how WWII lead to a changing view of WWI, here's the contrast between British and German attitudes in the 1920s. Its not till the final 5 minutes he starts to give his own view by rejecting the anti-war poetry and plays as the main lense we should view history through.

WWII was simply the result of political extremists sweeping to power while democratic countries tried to appease them. For the Chinese WWII did not begin in 1939, they'd been fighting agaisnt Japanese invasion for years before. I don't think we should see WWI as being responsible for WWII.

Gee thanks Germany!!

Illford , that narrator was the only white person there ,lol

All this is stupidly naIve. The 'League of Nations' was in fact the proto Bankster World Government that we today are really quite close to. Britain's so called 'peace' drive was very easy from their position, with its massive Empire, all stolen together with brutal power, and what can be easier for the hegemon than protecting the status quo under the guise of peace mongering?
Germany had very, very real grievances. One really does not need to like Hitler's Imperialism to see that.

It's staggering that the world had enough men left to fight ww2....

The point of the Great War was so the civilized powers of the world could meet and agree to a cease fire at a specific time of day in a particular hour of a chosen day of a selected month with mathematical harmony.

The Great Powers then allowed to pose as the Great Victors.

While the second act arose in the framework they constructed.

Old men sent thoes boys to die in mud and trenches. Then they refused to take reponsibility for the carnage they caused by not returning them to the families. That would have caused the people to question the goverment and the monarchy leading to their down fall. All of this was done to save their skin! They knew what conditions they were fighting in. The old men were not sorry. Lions being led by donkeys.

Some idiot you tuber or influencer has 15million views and this only has 904k,
Sums todays world up

Why does everyone associate Nazism with right wingers? Doesn’t their own name prove that they weren’t? Isn’t socialism against being on the right wing? Is not their belief that individuals have rights to pick what they want without breaking the law but socialism is where the majority rules everyone?

Good old fake news kills millions

As always , Prof Reynolds presents a wealth of information that helps understand the political thinking of the time .
However , I think he skimmed trough the 1920's and 1930's way too fast .
Think it would have been useful to discuss the economic conditions in Europe after WW I and
how this created political instability.
History has forgotten there was a rise in communist parties in Italy , Germany , Britain and France in 1920's .
Then of course , in Italy and Germany there was a fascist reaction to communist parties.
.

Absolutely brilliant. What a fantastic historian the great Professor is. His delivery is refreshingly captivating. All the more so when compared to that of some of his more egotistical contemporaries.

Great documentary

HERE I SAW NOR HEARD ANY "SCARS" JUST BRITISH TEA & CRUMETS MONOLOG ,, SAME AS AUGUST 1914,,,,

A mainstream documentary whose topic historiography. BRILLIANT

There has been a great curiosity growing about The Great War for a decade or so here in America . It got glossed over in my High School days

Known unto god

In England, entire towns and surrounding lands were decimated of an entire generation of men from the practice of mustering local regiments for the war.

We always were/is like this. Humans. This is our nature. Evolution painted us in blood. And one day We'll end it all

Killing the parasitic elites would have saved all those innocent lives.
We are a expendable resource to be exploited in their eyes.
Do not remember the dead soldiers. Remember who caused their death instead.

In 1914, the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps annual camp was held at Tidworth Pennings, near Salisbury Plain. Lord Kitchener was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war kept him elsewhere, and Smith-Dorrien was sent instead. He surprised the two-or-three thousand cadets by declaring (in the words of Donald Christopher Smith, a Bermudian cadet who was present) "that war should be avoided at almost any cost, that war would solve nothing, that the whole of Europe and more besides would be reduced to ruin, and that the loss of life would be so large that whole populations would be decimated. In our ignorance I, and many of us, felt almost ashamed of a British General who uttered such depressing and unpatriotic sentiments, but during the next four years, those of us who survived the holocaust – probably not more than one-quarter of us – learned how right the General's prognosis was and how courageous he had been to utter it."[31]

To my mind England and the other nations here on the island lay under Flanders Fields and beyond
We should have stayed well away from that stupidity
It’s the run up to these events that need looking at and what is not said by those in power as much as what is said.

Remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction that never existed in Iraq

Even the Tragedy the Russian Ukraine conflict has an unsavoury backdrop that main stream observers and political elites don’t want to talk about.

If I come across as bitter I do not apologise as I still remember my 8th Army Veteran Grandfather telling me with the most haunted look on anyones face I’ve seen
That he didn’t know why he bothered fighting away for six years when looking at the country back in the 90s.

The Great War for Civilisation, I didn’t believe in it then and I believe in it less so now.

JRR Tolkien circa 1960s

But British war machine also used concentration camps. So I don’t know why this documentary says it’s unheard of in civilized Europe.

Some present ( and period ) Britons may think WW1 was pointless, but I doubt many French, Dutch and Belgians would share that sentiment.

A very biassed and opinionated account.

I think you could play more adverts. Every 90 seconds would be fabulous. Actually I will go further. This video is unwatchable due to the ads. Won’t be watching this channel again.