HAND: This is all thats left of a human being.

When this war

started, he may have had no idea his government was
involved in a triple alliance or a triple entente with other
great powers. He may not have been old enough to vote, or,
his society may not have had voting. He may have lived in
one of the autocracies involved. Or perhaps, he lived in one
of the overseas colonies of one of these powers, with little
influence over his own fate. At some point, he got drawn into
this thing. Most likely he was conscripted; but perhaps he
was one of the idealistic ones who volunteered. You see,
wars up until this point in history had typically been very
limited affairs. Small, professional armies clashed in fixed
battles fought with gentlemans rules. After defeat on the
battlefield there would be some type of treaty and things
would return to normalcy again fairly quickly. So, people in
the countries involved in 1914 were often excited. This was
an adventure. Their prestige was being measured against
long-time rivals. In a few months, many thought theyd be
the new superpower on the world stage. They could not have
been more wrong. Four years of total war later, Europe would
be in ruins, her economies and populations decimated. An
entire generation of young men were lost; many dying in
mud just like this.
MAP: The great powers of Europe had weaved a complicated
web of alliances to protect themselves from themselves.
They wanted to ensure that no individual power, sensing a
moment of opportunity, would attack another power. What
they could not imagine was how this could catalyze a much
wider and deadlier conflict, a true world war.
JACKET: How did this happen? Well, it was complicated; and it
was simple. The trends and forces leading up to the conflict
were complicated. But ultimately, this boils down to
something really simple. If the guy wearing this jacket
doesnt get shot in the street, maybe this war never
happens, regardless of all the forces that are brewing.
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was killed
alongside his wife very similarly to how JFK would be killed

50 years later. He was shot in the neck, his wife in the gut.
They both died before reaching hospital. Hes reported to
have begged his wife not to die. Please dont die my sweet,
live for the children. As he was dying, his breathing
haggard, he was asked if the pain was terrible. His last words
were, It is nothing, it is nothing. The irony here, is that this
guy was in favor of granting more power to minorities within
Austro-Hungary. He was especially concerned about the
treatment of Slavs, as he knew Russia would be willing to go
to war on their behalf. This guy was one of the peaceniks
within his government. All the different ethnic groups living
under the crown would have been much better off if this guy
had lived. The group that assassinated him was called The
Black Hand. They were a Serbian-backed Slavic
ultranationalist group that wanted all Slavic peoples
united under one flag. They didnt want more representation
under the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, they wanted their own
emperor. So they shot Franz Ferdinand, and the rest, as they
say, is history.
EXPECTATIONS: People had absolutely no conception of the
horror that was to come. 17 million people dead; almost half
of whom would be civilians. That is something that was
beyond the imagination of people at the time. This war
would involve every man, woman and child. If you werent
fighting you were making bullets, or canning food, or raising
horses for war duty. If you were living in Europe, you were
tied directly to this conflict. It was total war.
TRENCH FOOT+TRENCH: But what was the combat actually
like? This is trench foot. It is literally, necrosis in action; the
rotting of your flesh as though you were dead, while you are
still alive. It comes about due to cold, wet conditions and
poor hygiene. (Switch slide) These men who were living in
the trenches had the specter of death hanging over them
every night. Every night, many of them wondered if 24 hours
later, they might be dead. Every day, they had to live in
muddy, freezing, disgusting trenches. Their reward for
serving their country was not only living with the paralyzing

anxiety of being around death all the time, but literally

watching the process already occurring on their feet! And if
you thought the trench was bad, this is the alternative:
NO MANS LAND: This is not an empty space. There were at
times MILLIONS of land mines that had been laid,
unexploded ordnance thats been dropped to attempt to
explode those mines, barbed wire in fragments thats been
exploded and turned into thousands of little sharp pieces,
shell holes 20 feet deep with 10 feet of mud and water in
them. And that mud is poisonous from chlorine gas thats
settled in pools of fetid water. If you fell in, it was worse than
quicksand and your buddies would shoot you in the head to
free you from your misery. Men who were not so lucky could
be heard into the night waling in agony as they died slowly
and alone, calling out for their mothers and cursing the fates
for putting them there. Every night, engineers would have to
go out after the shelling and lay new mines and barbed wire.
Snipers would rejoice at a full moon and practice their
accuracy. Some would hold their fire out of pity for the poor
bastard on the other end of his scope. In truth, if you were
shot in the head and died instantly, that was a merciful way
to die in this hellscape. This is what men were asked to cross
during an attack. Even if you dont believe in god or an
afterlife or the supernatural, I can promise you hell exists.
Its right here. (Switch slide.)
NO MANS LAND (CONTD): The Western front, which was
the main theater of this war was largely static through the
four years of the entire war. Give a mile take a mile, this
misery was even worse than it seemed because the men
knew that it was meaningless. They werent suffering for a
great cause, or for a successful campaign that would end the
war. They were holding the line, and nothing more. So, how
do you win a war like that?
HOW DO YOU WIN? This is chlorine gas. The first time it was
used, German soldiers waited for favorable winds and simply
opened canisters and let the poison fog slowly advance

across the battlefield. It moved fast, but not so fast you

couldnt have run away from it. But so many allied soldiers
were simply transfixed. They didnt know what it was! It was
this fast moving, slightly green cloud. Many thought it was a
ghost, some essence of their fallen brothers. They stared at
it until it was upon them. And then they took a fateful
breath
Chlorine gas asphyxiates you. It burns your throat and
makes you cough so spasmodically that you cannot breathe.
Mustard gas was developed later and was even worse. It was
of dubious military utility as the effects set in slowly over the
course of days. At this point, it was simply about lowering
enemy morale. Mustard gas burns your skin, eyes, mouth
and throat. It has an odd pineapple and pepper smell that
you get used to very quickly. You might think the gas has
dissipated, but it hasnt. Unawares, you are being burned
alive. 48 hours after heavy exposure, your entire body will be
a blister until you hemorrhage and die, or worse, develop an
infection and suffer in excruciating agony for weeks until you
expire. It was an all-new level of human suffering and
depravity.
LUSITANIA: After 2.5 years of stalemate in the trenches and
millions dead, the Germans knew the score. Austria-Hungary
was militarily useless. They could barely be counted on to
hold ground, let alone go on the offensive. Turkey was in a
similar boat. If they were going to win this thing, the
Germans needed to change the status quo. Because this had
become a war of attrition, a numbers game. (Boxing
reference, Tyson+Mayweather, puncher vs. attrition)
Germanys population was nowhere near the combined
masses of Britain-Russia-France-Italy combined. If things
stayed as they were, they would surely lose. They needed to
starve Britain, hold off France and crush Russia in one fell
stroke. And they almost pulled it off. But not for the first time
in history, a countrys generals would decide to attack the
United States and underestimate the response of this
growing industrial giant. This ship is called the Lusitania and

when Americans learned of her sinking, public opinion would

shift in favor of war.
UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE: I want you to imagine
that NASA has announced a secret program. Theyve built a
starship. But its a military vessel. And its capable of
interstellar warfare. Thats how space-age submarines
seemed to people at the time. Electricity was still limited in
cities and rare in the countryside. These are people whose
grandparents could remember a time without trains or
telegraphs or iron ships. It would be like trying to explain to
your great-grandmother in 1930, what an iphone was. She
wouldnt believe you! Technology had advanced at an insane
pace. And now, there were vessels that could travel
underwater, with people inside! And they could attack
without detection. They were silent killers. And they were
terrifying. Up until this point, the Germans had been
targeting military vessels, warships and ammunition
transports, with their submarines, and meeting some
success. But they werent sinking them faster than Britain
could build them. So they changed their strategy. They
started attacking commercial vessels and ships that carried
food. They started sinking passenger liners like the Lusitania.
This was about starvation and intimidation. And very quickly
the situation in Britain became dire. The crown was going to
go bankrupt and starve within weeks.
THE FORTRESS: So part 1 of the German strategy is
unrestricted submarine warfare. Part 2 is just playing
defense on the Western Front. Theyve learned from the last
3 years of futility. You cant attack miles of trenches with
emplaced machine guns with overlapping fields of fire and
artillery that already knows the paths through which your
infantry must advance. Its impossible. So instead, they
started strategically abandoning territory so that the allies
were tempted to fill the vacuum. Only when they do, they
run into booby traps, into camouflaged concrete bunkers,
into artillery fire thats been pre-measured. Its hopeless.
And these defenses run 10-20 miles deep. So even if theres

a breakthrough, the enemy infantry will be so tired that

theyll have to stop. And by then, the Germans have time to
reinforce their weak spots. This is all a delaying action for
the 3rd part of the German strategy; pushing Russia to
collapse.
RUSSIA: Russia had been ruled by the Romanov Dynasty
for 300 years. The Tsar was an absolute monarch and the
peasantry were little more than slaves. To add to their
economic misery, they were dying by the millions in the
trenches. As you might imagine, the government was very
unpopular with the masses. The communist revolution would
start in March* 1917 and by December, Russia was out of the
war.
Storm Troopers: You have to think, if youre a German
General, our plan is working! Submarines were sinking
800,000 TONS of shipping every month. Russia had
collapsed and they could now concentrate on the Western
Front. The Germans planned a grand, final offensive in
France. Rather than copy previous strategies, which involved
as much as a week-long artillery bombardment involving
tens of millions of shells, and then a broad advance with
millions of men, the Germans counted on infiltration and
surprise. This is a storm trooper wielding a flame thrower.
You have a concrete bunker to clear? Easy, well burn them
out. The level of horror in this war just kept rising. Just when
you thought it couldnt get any worse. These Sturmtruppen
snuck through weak points in the lines and caused havoc
behind. As the French and British began to retreat or turn
around to deal with the Stormtroopers, the general offensive
began. They were able to move 40 miles in a few days, the
fastest progress since the beginning of the war. They were
an hours drive from Paris. Some German soldiers claimed to
be able to see the Eiffel Tower. But this was before
mechanization. Supply lines got extended, and the
offensive fizzled out. This leads us to maybe the most tragic
part of the whole war, the peace; or at least the terms of
peace