Caught that this afternoon. Jackson did a remarkable job in both restoring footage and presenting a documentary that makes you think.
Go see it if you can, you won't be sorry.
My grandfather was wounded in a poison gas attack on 11/10/1918. The day before the war ended. Both sides knew the armistice was going into effect the next day, yet they still were jockeying for position. Some crazy sick number of people died after everything had already been negotiated. Absolutely criminal.
I’m not as old as that would imply. My family had crazy long gaps between generations.
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I have the divisional history book. They wrote so matter-of-factly about it. Insanity.
Even though it was horrible and very unnecessary.
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Saw it 4 weeks ago, in large part because we were under the impression that it was only in theatres for a few days,
Very glad we watched on big screen.
Told my son that I grew up watching WW II footage, but nothing on WW I.
Brutal conditions in trench warfare. Shocking that no one thought “out of the box” until the Americans arrived.
Jackson’s technological wizardry to resurrect the footage is remarkable.
Our own weren’t so hot either at the start. Stand up frontal charges for the most part. The only real good tactical development was the rolling barrage invented by the Brits.
Concentrating on quick barrages and shock troops. But too late.
Overall, it was the dumbest war in human history. They’re all dumb, to some degree...but there was no reason for WWI, and it was fought remarkably stupidly.
A good mini-stat, which exemplifies this asinine war: there was one final assault on the morning of 11/11/18, when everyone knew the war would be over at 11 am. The whistles blew (literally) at 11...but not before 10,000 new, utterly pointless casualties had been added to the millions of utterly pointless ones that had gone before.
The WWI Germans were foolish and they caused a lot of suffering, but they were not Hitler. They were not the WWII Germans; they were the Franco-Prussian War Germans. A win by the Germans wouldn't have been that big of a deal for the world, and wouldn't have created a situation ripe for someone like Hitler to take over. What do you think?
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By the time we got in many of the casualties had already occurred, and Europe was a seething revolutionary and materially destroyed mess. We also at least were the catalyst that finished the stupidity.
Now if the the Brits sit it out in 1914 and Germany defeats France and Russia which it almost certainly does in a limited war, things are way different in the post war world. This is a subject of endless debate among historians.
shipping. They weren’t Hitler but they were autocratic pricks. They gave us little choice after re declaring unrestricted submarine warfare against us and trying to get Mexico to fight us ala the Zimmerman telegram. They gambled, underestimated us and lost.
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