World War I

the sector of 1914. A time of cutting-edge generation, tradition, and fashion.

in reality the peak of civilization.

let's have a battle.

all people knew a big battle turned into coming.

France desired a few stuff lower back that Germany had taken from it,

Germany desired to take extra of absolutely everyone'S stuff,

and they are building a large sexy army that turned into making the British uncomfortable.

these two empires idea they're genuinely cool.

but masses of different those who stay there did not think it turned into so cool.

And a number of them had even been asserting independence,

with help from Russia.

everybody turned into speaking about each other behind each other's backs.

Throw in the truth that navy era had come an extended way for the reason that ultimate important warfare,

and all of sudden anybody became quite keen to overcome every other up.

in this place of Austria-Hungary lived a few Serbs and Bosnians who hated living in Austria-Hungary.

So the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand is going there for a nice drive in an open-top automobile,

together with his car's route posted earlier.

And that went pretty much as well as you'll count on.

some assassins were looking ahead to him along the way and threw bombs at his car,

however they overlooked and blew up some officials in the back of him, alternatively.

So, the Archduke goes into hiding, leaves Sarajevo and entire war by no means happens.

except no. The Archduke would not go away,

however as an alternative goes lower back out in the open top car, to go to the injured officers in hospital.

the motive force takes a wrong turn and via sheer accident receives stuck besides one of the failed assassins.

Who shoots him.

Austria-Hungary is understandably pissed approximately all this,

and that they assume the Serbian government had something to do with it (which they may have).

in order that they visit their best friend Germany and say:

"hi there Germany, we are gonna declare conflict on Serbia!",

and Germany is enthusiastic about that.

So Austria-Hungary sends a big list of not possible needs to Serbia

and when Serbia refuses, they claim warfare.

Austria-Hungary and Germany are pals and Serbia is protected by Russia,

who is buddies with France, so all of them declare struggle on each other.

Montenegro joins in, too.

France and Britain actually have a form of alliance.

So, while France says: "howdy, Britain you bought my returned?", Britain is like:

"perhaps...?",

and then they decide to stay out of it.

that's awesome for Germany because Germany has a plan:

They realize that Russia is so large and clumsy that it'll take all of them to get ready for warfare.

So with this man in fee Germany will ship all its troops into France at Lightning pace while Russia is getting geared up.

Defeat France then circulate all the troops to Russia and defeat Russia. Then all of us communicate German and eat Pfefferpotthast each day.

simply one trouble:

France has hundreds of forts and defences along its German border.

And Germany can't waste any time combating them so Germany comes to a decision to go round them.

via Belgium.

Belgium is neutral however Germany desires to march 750 thousand troops via it to get round France's defenses.

they may be hoping Belgium will just type of sit down down and close up.

however they don't. They combat returned, and they may be quite exact, too, so they sluggish the Germans down.

what is worse is that Britain suggests up. And they are pretty pissed that Germany is invading neutral countries.

So now Britain announces warfare on Germany.

So Germany push on thru Belgium and devote some atrocities along the manner. in addition they wear spikes and from time to time skulls on the uniform.

So, in case you're trying to not look like the awful guys:

exact job.

The allies have a propaganda extravaganda and this begins having an influence round the world, drastically in america.

the us President Woodrow Wilson sees himself as a chunk of a Jesus figure

and spends maximum of the warfare looking to get all of us to simply hug it out.

but there may be also a massive populace of ethnic Germans living in the u.s.a. and when the battle first broke out

they had been like: "Yay, Germany!!" however now that they're committing atrocities in Belgium

they may be less enthusiastic.

permit's play: Spot the French soldier!

Did you notice him? easy proper? he is carrying a vibrant blue uniform with red trousers

and do you recognize who else spotted him easily, too?

The Germans.

So, while the French had been slowly marching in columns to the nation-state

the Germans easily tore them to shreds with their giant weapons.

all the countries concerned in this conflict went in with an old-faculty struggle mentality.

And all of them had to update the uniforms and approaches loads in the course of the first-rate struggle.

due to the fact this conflict turned into going to be like not anything absolutely everyone had ever visible earlier than.

Russia is ready for battle and way earlier than anticipated.

"hi there, Austria-Hungary, can you get on top of that?"

"Oh? Yeah, sure! we've got were given this."

nope.

So, Germany has to ship some troops returned to the east to defend towards the Russians.

The leader of body of workers of the Austro-Hungarian army is that this man. And although he's good-looking,

He turns out now not to be the high-quality navy strategist.

Austria-Hungary continuously ignores Germany's recommendation,

...after which comes going for walks back to Germany every time they get in trouble.

Austria-Hungary even gets its ass kicked by means of tiny Serbia who repels all their invasion tries at the begin of the war.

it is better news for Germany in the North, though, wherein they nearly

completely wipe out the Russians 2d army.

again on the western the front, the Germans

hold advancing and are in sight of Paris.

At this point everyone could be forgiven for questioning the Germans were going to get that quick victory in the end.

however then things start to pass incorrect. The French commander-in-chief knew some thing had to be carried out.

And he ordered his armies to prevent chickening out.

inside the resulting war, an opening spread out inside the German strains.

If a gap opens up, the enemy can use it to flank you from the aspect and at the back of.

So the German armies should retreat.

The Allies release a counter-attack, so the Germans dig into protecting positions. The Allies do the identical.

Then each aspects move north trying to outflank each other alongside the way. when they reach the sea,

they're in a stalemate with trench systems running the whole manner from the coast to Switzerland.

the start of trench-battle at the Western front.

right here's, how trench battle works:

two opposing strains of trenches and not using a-man's land in between.

One side could pummel the other with loads of thousands of artillery shells, now and again for days at a time.

This had a massive psychological impact on the infantrymen leaving many shell-stunned.

Then, the attacking troops would go away their trenches and rush throughout no-guy's land,

A muddy moist mess of shell craters and barbed twine.

The defending trench might unleash system-gun fire at the attackers inflicting lots of casualties.

The attackers might ship wave after wave until both they gave up or the opposing trench became finally overrun.

There would be months of preventing and the deaths of lots in an effort to advantage some meters or kilometers of land.

residing inside the trenches become tough paintings, too. Corpses, dust that would swallow you whole,

swimming pools of toxic water, rats,

sickness, the smell...

it is insane that hundreds of thousands of squaddies put up with these conditions and commanders ordered them to accomplish that for years.