A History Teacher Reacts | Sabaton - "Fields of Verdun"

hey YouTube mr. Terry back here once again for another history teacher reacts video today I'm going to be watching another music video from the band Sabaton I sorry if I still pronouncing that wrong but yeah we're gonna be checking this out today now this is the second video that I have watched from then the first one was Bismarck and kind of the only reason I was thinking about even reviewing a music video is first off it was it was heavily heavily recommended all over YouTube comments and discord and things like that but then I was told that these guys do a lot of songs with historical themes or about historical events or inspired by them so I thought alright I'll give it a shot so I did that with Bismarck and thought it was great so definitely thought of doing another video theirs then I found out that it's common that in with these music videos they also release like a history lesson video on the topic that they used for their song so I looked up lists of their videos and I saw this one the song is fields of Verdun so I'm assuming it's about the Battle of Verdun in World War one and then I saw that they did have like a like an additional like history video or something like that too to go along with it so I thought today we would check out the music video and then go ahead and check out their little history video and see what all that's about so I love the idea of it that's pretty cool of you know having this and then you know if somebody doesn't necessarily know the content or the context of what's going on with the video that can also get you know a little history lesson there so I thought we'd check out both of those for this time right here okay before we get started though if you do like the original video and their content make sure you go to the link that I'll have in the description that will link you to the original page so you can give them a like and subscribe make sure you give the you know real content creators there the support and that they deserve so that will be in the descriptions encourage you to do that if you like this alright I think we'll go ahead and get started again this is fields of Verdun let's rock their english suits probably French they'd be going nuts in those trenches [Applause] [Music] gamble and now let's go right into the rib [Applause] [Music] last video there's a really impressed with the quality production enabled captions so you can maybe see some of the lyrics [Applause] [Music] through the batter Brooke got overdone might have been the longest battle will go on and a positive thing [Music] that [Music] [Applause] you get a little too soon mieze Pop's Benton party to rot [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Oh shine away from the door they're using the wrong [Music] see it looks like they're going you know right to trench warfare which is a key element of what people usually think about when they talk about how World War one was fought right remember World War one included a bunch of new technologies that basically created the stalemate you know trench warfare is something that has gone on forever in the history of military war it's been useful before right it's about protecting yourselves and then eventually making some kind of charge right now up until World War one again that was very effective now one of the couple big changes that changed warfare were a couple of engines one of the maybe most important ones was the machine gun right before World War one the automatic weapons were not really a thing yet and World War one was one of the the first you know things that really brought that in and as you can tell that is gonna make a big impact on trench warfare because you know with when you have two sides that have machine guns charges are very very risky and will likely cause you know a ton of casualties so you know you have these machine gun nests that are just pointed at each other and you know you're just gonna get bunker down and the song is kind of talking about that how they're you know lining up one by one and they're falling and you know you're like trapped and all that and that's very true of what trench warfare was like don't know a lot of madness over there [Music] yeah then eventually we would charge the other person's trench then you got this like hand-to-hand stuff knives close up [Music] so how many actual days when we're done and how they exactly actually exact date [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so yeah battle Verdun lasted three hundred and three days longest active battle in history oh I didn't know it went actually it compares to yeah that other Wars as far as length goes there's one of the bloodiest battles of the great war with over 700,000 casualties you know that's one of the crazy things about world war one when you study the war one thing you don't find especially here in the Western Front where this is is a lot of movement right so you'll have like these incredible amount of casualties but very little ground sometimes ever made you know I mean and that's again what makes this war so different than other words I mean it really doesn't even compare to world war two it always saw a lot more movement World War one was just again like a stalemate with just years of people just dying and dying and dying eventually by the millions and yeah can't can't imagine you know something this long and deadly happening you know yeah crazy huh the battle became a strong symbol for French resistance along with the words one does not pass right yeah being able to hold their ground the French you know we're holding their ground and had to do that as they were trying to protect their homeland so yeah I mean you can't allow them to pass you allow them to pass right then your country Falls you don't have anywhere to fall back into cuz you're already on the brink they shall not pass okay okay yeah I mean kind of sums up trench warfare and that kind of stuff and kind of I guess the emotion of it and the violence of it they definitely you know want it to bring the side of just the gory details of trench warfare which is just unbelievable I mean you know it's it's just it's it was chaotic because you never know when you know someone could die you're never even though you're in a trench you're never truly protected and they talk about in the early part of the video all the artillery shells right and a lot of times it was just for so many people just waiting for that artillery shell to land in your trench and then you're you're blown up right and that's and the amount of times that happened was was incredible and having to to see that right with the soldiers that you especially over the months and years come to grow so close with it's just you drop one by one until you know you're gone or they're gone so yeah the you know trench warfare people also say changed how we think about war right the history of war had been one of these glorious cavalry charges and stuff like that was success in movement and you know how they have that famous saying World War one or back then alright it was gonna be the war to end all wars we know that's not true but one thing I've heard and I think I agree with is World War one was the war to change all wars war will never be seen the same because what glory is there right in sitting in a trench waiting to get blown up after years and years with no seeming success throughout the process right so I do I think I definitely I think that phrase that you know that war when that will be the war to change all wars has some true to it for sure okay so let's go ahead and jump over to their little history video that they did about Verdun I'm interested to see what they got what do they talk about and that sort of thing and I think you can tell if these guys are really into history and what hopefully maybe their purposes in doing these things are they trying to highlight you know these these events to make sure they don't get forgotten in history let's go ahead and check out or check that out here okay all right here we go the Battle of Verdun was the longest battle of the first world war lasting over 300 days and yet the opposing German army was unable to break through that symbol of French national pride and our song fields over done from our he's a singer album the Great War yeah about that battle and the French slogan of course all their Swedish halmahera [Music] I'm in DINO of this idea though and I'm you walking from Sabbath on and this is Sarah he's gonna tell you a little bit about the song as an album but I'm gonna give you a little Verdun history lesson in late 1915 German army chief of staff Erich von Falkenhayn was looking up and down the map of the Western Front it had been more than a year since the stalemate and trench warfare had begun there this is during the First World War the homefront was already suffering under the naval blockade and he feared a war of attrition that the German Empire could only lose he needed to go on the offensive right - Falcon Hyman yeah this war of attrition is not working right it's not working because even if your war attrition is basically read you just try to eliminate the enemy right you try to just as many casualties as possible but with that and both sides are having so many casualties and no success is happening so you could see from the German perspective they need to try to go on an offensive you got to make up ground here otherwise you're just slowly bleeding out so that's setting the stage here for the Battle of Verdun alright let's see what they got could only lose he needed to go on the offensive - Falcon Heim the weakest point of the Western Front was the British sector and attacking at Artois could he believed lead to a decisive breakthrough that would collapse the whole Western Front but he learned the hard way that without eliminating or at least tying down the French beforehand the defense would be too strong so to deliver the blow in the north he would attack at a place for the south that would draw in as many French forces as possible it must be a place the enemy could not afford to lose for strategic or propagandistic sources and would thus fight until wiped out such a place was Verdun Verdun was not Falcon hinds first choice since it was a heavily fortified area but it was also a commanding location by capturing the heights east of the river Meuse and loading them with artillery the Germans could constantly threaten the city and the local defenses forcing the French to continuously attack German defenses and French would be tied down and if they lost badly the British would be forced to intervene in the best case would hastily execute an offensive at the Somme suffer heavy casualties as well and open themselves up for a decisive German counter-attack Falcon huh so it sounds like the Germans here are really hoping for a series of things to happen right that the French will come drawn out and then the British will then come to their aid and move some of their positions thus allowing the Germans to take the British positions sounds like they're there yeah they're really it's a little bit risky here there's a series of dominoes it looks like that have to fall here for this to work he's as well and open themselves up for a decisive German counter-attack Falcon Hein concluded that if Verdun was successful there would be peace before the summer of 1916 is pretty ambitious the key to the attack was heavy artillery total destruction then attacked battalions and pioneers storming the hills in a wedge toward the mighty fortress of do I long taking the remnants of the other fortresses that were surely destroyed by the heavy bombardment preparations were made over the winter massing artillery pieces of all calibers and dogs with the fails the attack was planned for February war once the weather cleared on the 21st of February the bad weather finally cleared and German aircraft and observation balloons hit the skies at 7:12 a.m. came the order to attack the largest concentration of guns in history to this point while opened up in a violent concert described by witnesses as the symphony of the devil even in the war symphony of the devil like the you have the largest what does it say concentration of basically weaponry that's about to fire here the guns are like the musical instruments right the symphony of the devil it's a pretty brilliant name Vash near the Swiss border could be heard the thunder of the German guns in an intensity never seen before the barrage destroyed whole forest blow realizing meters high into the air and raining stones and earth on the poor souls on the ground some soldiers were simply obliterated torn apart by the force of the guns others were buried alive deep in their trenches or bunkers then the German combat troops emerge from the SAPS with grenades wire cutters and flamethrowers with the advantage of surprise they stormed the first French lines through ice rain and snow the soldiers fought as rifle shots and grenades burst in their midst trench after trench the Germans gained a foothold despite fierce resistance from well camouflaged French machine guns and block houses thing is for French army chief of staff Joseph McClure so much here Verdun wasn't that important at least militarily if the Germans could not be held on the east bank of the Meuse the French would retreat and build new positions on the Western right this was what Falcon Heene feared but Aristide Briand made it yeah I mean what they're talking about yeah it does it seem like the positioning the starting positioning is even necessarily that good because the French are already across the river and then all they would do is go behind it thus making it again that that would be hard for the Germans because then you'd have to try to cross the river while the French have defended themselves on the other side so yeah I'm wondering at this moment why why why do this then this was what Falcon Heene feared but our Steve Briand made it perfectly clear that losing Verdun was not acceptable not only with the psychological effect be disastrous for the French public it would undermine trust in the current government more important with the French than the Germans almost so would Jeff for it so giving up Verdun was out of the question this is exactly what Falkenhayn had hoped for however okay though the Germans had been under like first weeks over invested in high-need calculated and the French had brought in reserves and Philippe Pathan to lead the men the most important Heights were still far away and under French control and taking the fortress of duel was the key to those heights unlike the big fortresses in Belgium that had quickly fall into modern heavy artillery at the beginning of the war the French of you a stronger special concrete for do I long that just would not break could go and appreciate how cool this skull thing is right here what is that that's crazy well their stuffs cool too but what is that nobody know let me know and the fortress soon seemed like an island in an ocean of fire and shrapnel small platoons of German soldiers that crept towards the fortress in early March found that it was actually mostly empty and the strongest fortress of Europe was thus taken by a German officer with a pistol and a lot of guts what do I want is for many the symbol of the Battle of Verdun the Germans celebrated its fall but doing long was a trap for the men inside every direct artillery a little better and the men cowered in darkness for days living in their own waste sharing their food with rats and Liza well the stench of the dead and the screams of the wounded haunted the long corridors that yeah people talk about how there's the stench of war right somebody that's been in a very bloody conflict might tell you about yeah the the stench of war where it's all of these different elements combined you know which is it's a mix there's like the Gunpowder and then of course the rotting flesh and the organic like decomposition and all these different elements that was awful now of course these these you know tragic conditions made disease rampant right rats are all over the place getting in these germs feasting on all the you know basically the dead flesh it's also why world want health oh sure and spread the the influenza right which the outbreak in this time was what possibly maybe the biggest epidemic disease epidemic since the plague probably killing me millions across the world but yeah the conditions actually in the trenches just horrifying but you know this was actually still better than soldiers outside the fortress walls had to endure in the meat grinder that was Verdun the French just had one supply road out of range of German artillery only trucker military purposes were allowed to use that road and soon over 3,000 trucks a day were bringing the men ammunition and supplies up the road if one broke down it was simply pushed off the road which became known as the bois sacre the holy Road the German offensive destined to drastically lose speed who's that your whole area of Verdun had become a maze of trenches and shell holes where death was always near but you can even add literally hint this is only an area of 30 square kilometers and the death toll grew to the hundreds of thousands then you're talking what they say 700,000 people died had Verdun over 30 square kilometers Wow these square kilometers and the death toll grew to the hundreds of thousands the name Verdun became synonymous with the mechanized death of the First World War but it really bound the French together Pathan had ordered a new rotation system where no soldier was supposed to stay longer than 10 days in the front lines before being rotated out this meant most soldiers in the French army had gone through four dumb I I get I get why you would do that to help the psychology right of the the soldiers I wonder though if that made intelligence of the area difficult because if you're there for ten days by the time you're leaving you're getting an idea of the enemy and what this is like and then you have a new people come in and they have to figure that out I wonder if there's a pro and con element to having that troop rotation especially a troop rotation that's fairly short by April the lack of progress was turning the whole idea of the Battle of Verdun into a farce the more reserves Falkenhayn committed to the operation the fewer he had ready for the real attack against the British so Falcon Huynh had to choose stop the offensive and defend the gains that were made or keep going with the offensive but with all available forces half measures were now onyx risking die stroll right he would keep up the offensive though as June arrives Falcon Hine officially did you know you know yeah I mean I guess you go with it even though again we're sitting here talking about lives and just talk about his numbers and there's that human element and this from the strategic point of view it's like this was meant to be an offensive what are you really gained by okay you gain a little bit of territory and hold on to it why to wait until the other side rebuilds and counter-attacks so it makes sense from a speech and I guess from a strategic point of view but again you're talking about numbers in battle that we have had never seen in human history and having to use those to make decisions that's tough Claire's bleeding dry as June arrives Falcon Hein officially declares bleeding dry as the main aim of the offensive but bad news now also arrives Russian general Aleksei Brusilov launches his offensive on the Eastern Front it is a spectacular success and Germany's Ally austria-hungary might be fronts are out of the war German reinforcements bound from Verdun must instead head east immediately and more bad news the French now have air superiority in the West thanks to the new new port 11 planes back to the the Russia thing you remember the the the plan all along was for the Germans it was at least hoping that they could deal with France before Russia could really mobilize and pose a serious threat and you're seeing here that no that's not the case so that Germany is now having to spread themselves on two fronts you know one of the what-ifs about world war one is if what if Germany did not have to fight two fronts would the outcome potentially be different there's probably a case for that right okay so there now I don't want to just gloss over the fact of the air war now and remember this is maybe the first ever war that actually used air technology now airplanes remember are very new I mean honestly the plane itself had been invented for like less than ten years the Wright brothers right in the first decade of the 1900 and you saw the thing was a little glider that would fly for a few seconds right look how far it's come but it's important to also note that in World War one don't don't try to equate the the strength of air warfare and World War one and World War two because World War one is very very different in fact most of the what the air forces were used for a lot was reconnaissance a lot of the planes weren't strong enough and big enough to be like bombers or anything like that so they're used for reconnaissance and eventually since both sides are gonna have planes you started to get the first dogfights or aerial battles and that's what those planes would be used for now of course a world war two it completely changes right with the bombers that they have but world lore one didn't quite have that so this is another one of the things that was introduced in world war one was the air war and it adapted a lot during the war and of course adapts a lot in the next thirty years between this moment and World War two but remember how young of a technology this is alright let's let them talk real quick about Eric's French now air superiority in the West thanks to the new Newport 11 planes and air-to-air lancia rockets time seems to be running out for a German victory at Verdun Falcon Heene launches what he hopes is the final attack towards fort vu and the heights around the village of fluey on the 7th of June for troph all's a victory for the Germans for sure but is this the turning point at Verdun not quite for fort souville still stands in the way of victory and this the Germans cannot take June marks the limit of their hearts that were done on June 23rd French General Robert Nivelle gives his famous order moon la la la Paz pasa his comrades which was later shortened to La Paz I won't pass they will not pass and indeed they do not the French hold out in June and on July the 1st the British relief attack begins at the song the pressure their forces German reserves away from Verdun to the north with the Russians still advancing in the East there are no options for falcon hein available he must dig in at Verdun as the three largest battles in history to this point all rage simultaneous but by August Pathan has a seven to one advantage in artillery and the German positions are pounded day and night and as if things aren't bad enough Romania joins the Allies a new front and hundreds of thousands of new enemies emerge overnight for the Germans falcon height has lost the confidence of his Kaiser and then loses his job Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff take over running the German army that of course does not mean that the battle is simply over but it is Frances turn to attack Pathan brings in 250 from our caliber railway guns at our sensors 900 kilo shells that's a rounded ton crap for railway guns 100 kilos [ __ ] that's around it look at that thing I don't even launch something like that okay he's saying something I wanted to hear this your caliber railway guns to fire 900 kilos shells that's around a ton each on 4 ton which finally you have to have rail guns on basically train you can't move something that has range retake the 4 train traveling November and their counter-attack is relentless what the Germans captured over months of fighting the French now retake in mere hours by the end of 1916 the front lines are nearly back where they were in February for a few kilometers of land hundreds of thousands of men have died [Music] the Battle of Verdun lasted three hundred and three days and nights mostly clear the total casualties run as high as 1 million men that was likely closer to 700,000 but still it was the longest of the First World War and for many of the war soldiers it was the epitome of brutal mechanised modern war many veterans would later remember Verdun by its smell the mixture of gas bodies that lay four months unburied and the mass graves that were churned up by artillery fire corpses it laid four months in the dead zones of no-man's land were mummified the faces frozen in their final expression before death the soldiers advancing into the forward trenches often had to stomp over the corpses and body parts of their dead comrades only the flies and rats your thrived at Verdun your fighting in the grave of your army like literally your fighting in their grave and it doesn't matter if you bury them because they get churned back up from just the movement of war and the artillery you know that you're fighting in yeah the grave right of your enemy and very likely you're you're literally you're fighting in your own grave your own future grave right because you're just there's no movement you just stay there stay in place in 1916 before Yoel came talks about the song I would like to spoil the moment with a side note it has been accepted history for a century that Falcon Hines intention was to bleed France dry at Verdun but this may not be the case Falcon 9 claimed that this was his plan from the get-go and he wrote about it in his 1915 Christmas memorandum to the Kaiser however the Kaiser never mentioned such a memorandum and there's no actual evidence that it ever existed Falcon Hine may well have made all of this up as an excuse after the fact to explain away his failure I did a whole episode about the Falcon hein controversy on the great war channel the link is in the description and now to call the check out to sabotage okay okay okay so new album bunch of new songs now how was it writing fields that were done specifically oh to be honest that was one of the harder ones yeah we didn't know where to start from which angle to cover it I mean we were stuck in a mountain of information but then we s third well yeah didn't make a song where all this info that we have now read takes us and that actually started to work out you know now this album the Great War all of the songs have to do with the First World War yes yes but Tommy where you have to follow a story oh yes it no way let's say so got a red thread you got a follower so good all events covered on the album yeah I've been doing the Great War yeah but they're not chronological order okay so it's a great war theme without being the great work concept yeah like like if Julio Iglesias and he doesn't album and you know all the songs are about love so that's a he's got a see he's got a theme on his slide true concept where we follow it from the beginning to them because of this particular part of that theme done you're gonna be doing a few things in Verdun this spring and summer yeah yes but you weren't supposed to say that because that's a secret you never heard that [ __ ] you never heard that you watered it out if you really want no never show that ever okay yes this is a lot Wow we're going live yeah hi mom for now here is a few seconds of some of this unreleased music from the song fields ever done from the album the Great War we love the execution [Music] man you got like that quality if I got with a war man that's it for today but we'll see you next time and every time on sabaton history [Music] [Applause] alright everyone that's it for today remember to subscribe to cyber some history but also the regular Sabbath on channel also check out world war 2 and time ghost if you want to see more videos like this there's a playlist cool stuff you want to see it and also there's a chance for you to get a special edition of our upcoming album The Great War if you go and join us on patreon so do that and do that now bye bye okay alright yeah I love that they added that that was a very very good recap of Verdun as far as this the second video here of teach any man I learned a ton about it from that though those those crazy especially the like the intentions of it and what the action yeah like yeah what weren't actual plans and hopeful outcomes and I had things like that of the battle I'd known it was you know it was the bloodiest battles and maybe the longest and all that but you got a lot of the strategy specifically I don't know there was much of this this other controversy too about about in the way because obviously it's a failure for the Germans in the long run a controversy though about what the intentions were going to be from the administrative point of view but yeah that was good um yeah well that was great I think they did an excellent job covering things and then with the video itself very well done I was I was very impressed and glad to go ahead and check this out so like the singer said at the end you know if you really liked what they were doing there make sure you go support those guys that is very important to do that so you give them support and hopefully they can make more content right they can make more content again I also thank you for joining me here today letting me go ahead and and sharing this with me to check out something like this was was very very cool yeah if you are into this idea of kind of history teacher checking out history videos and history stuff make sure to subscribe if you haven't if you would especially like to be part of the live premieres which is often what I do with these videos might be a good idea to enable the notification so you can see when those actually happen so you don't miss it so you can we can all watch it together and have a discussion you know as it goes on other ways you can interact with this channel if you have ideas or comments I encourage you to put them into the comment section if you have anything you'd like to add about the Battle of Verdun we can make that a great you know place to share information about that you can also join the discord that we currently have to join in other discussions and appreciate that again thank you for us for your support by liking subscribing if you would like to support the channel in another way you could also join the patreon that has recently been launched a link to that will also be in the description to go along with the original music video here as well as they link to the discord alright again thank you for joining me I hope to see you very soon and we'll see you then

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 297,913

Rating: 4.9483657 out of 5

Keywords: react, history, sabaton, music video, verdun, ww1, world war 1

Id: eRzpLS1qzE4

Length: 37min 4sec (2224 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 27 2019