History Teacher Reacts to the Battle of Verdun with Lego!

hey youtube i'm mr terry high school history teacher welcome back to another history teacher reacts video all right you can see i'm prepared for war because the video that i was suggested looks like a historical reenactment and i've never seen this before but apparently there's a channel that makes stop motion battles from history and the one that i'm going to be checking out here is the battle of verdun so this is gonna be acted out in legos and that is cool i love legos i actually the live stream a while ago where i was building the taj mahal and the idea of creating like battlefield seems like something you would have done as a kid and now people are making actual videos of it all right anyways the original video link is down below i see it has a ton of views it's very popular so i want to see what i've been missing out on this all right i'm prepared for war and i don't want to make light of war but hey you got to be prepared right all right let's do this [Music] [Music] let's go eastern france 1916. yep oh this is cool so far the editing and the sound is already really impressive can you buy these sets is there like a world war one era set with the germans in french i like the dramatic music here so i can see they're not trying to like make it kid-like and in that but like it looks like they're actually doing kind of like a serious tone to it which is kind of kind of cool and that way and doing a good job of it look right here you've got like the cool focusing in the background the cinematography this is incredible by the way if you don't know much about the battle of redundant battle verdun was uh the longest and most deadly battles of world war one and it was critical in this with this invasion of um of germany and de france that the french hold on ever done verdun was a very important city both strategically and historically and it was one of those battles that gets talked about world war one where just countless amounts of people die but very little is actually gained and the whole price of a mile idea which is you know how how many lives are you willing to give up for literally meters of land and here 1916 so it's about the first still the first third of the war for the most part but approaching midway point of the moor and uh that was one of the big questions that people had to answer in this all right let's continue so far this is pretty cool the explosions they got like the camera shake i wonder how they did the explosions which other stuff is very easy a lot easier to do tanks but is this set like this is something you can buy some troops coming in the french just would not let this go famous saying you should there they shall not pass comes from this dude's rolling up oh man that guy's hurt that they they haven't like they look injured in their face artillery shells um this this battle was known for its incredible amount of artillery where they would just blast non-stop all the time with little often with little actual accuracy but it just made it devastating all the shells that was a big part of what this was known for was the artillery shell maybe the biggest artillery shelling in history one of them for sure all right back to the germans all right the scariest part of the war is you can sit there and feel safe in your trench but at some point in this in this in these battles you had to get out of your trench which was hard to do because you got long distance rifles you've got snipers you've got machine guns most important importantly um that were just weighting you down that's why the area between these trenches was called no man's land you don't go there you found the shelling and the rain and stuff that would happen here in france um this was very it made it even extra difficult to be able to traverse no man's land and that's why tanks started to come into use although tanks really struggled in world war one and these type of battle conditions as well because um the mud difficult they were slow moving there we go this was the most effective thing was against these rushes were machine guns you could just unload this is an era before bombing so uh or aerial bombing planes are mostly used for reconnaissance and the only way to approach was and to take a position is literally to charge it that's why so many people are going to die in these battles with little ground to make because it's hard you got new tactics or sorry old tactics with new technologies just it was a crossroads of military technology history that made this so good [Music] and props to the creators here the little the stop motion is fantastic the lighting and the sound i'm really i think the thing i'm most impressed with right now is the sound sound editing is fantastic when the stop motion of course is incredible you come for that though these other little elements are really what's being impressive oh no all right flip the barbed wire the barbed wire was another thing you had to get through get through the trenches which made it very difficult as well one of the things that tanks were designed to be effective against was barbed wire masses anytime stuck in a trench man sitting in your own coffin eventually yeah if you're lucky enough you're getting to the enemy trench you can think of these battles like taking a big ladder it's like a big ladder the battlefield's a ladder and you take a rung because there's so many different lines there and you take one and you have to retreat and you eventually retake it in a lot of cases over a few hundred yards hand-to-hand combat towards bayonets i hope to see your clothes if you're spayed effects too this is like again like what you imagined when you were a kid wasn't it hopefully without some of the carnage we're all pretty mature immature about the stuff when we were kids right but like what you were imagining when you were young put the life french dude's going op here who is this guy oh he's going down who's going german guy french guy keep um what is okay you miss a chiller shell blows them both though oh that was right what happened though what a cool setup though the little battlefield there oh good we got some real talk um i'll read it out here the battle over done was the longest and one of the bloodiest battles of world war one right it was fought between the germans and the french around the city of redone in eastern france the city of verdun was both strategically and culturally significant to the french yes very true as well the german high command knew that it would be a crushing blow to the french morale if they were captured on february 21st 1916 the attack began the germans opened fire with hundreds of artillery guns to bombard the enemy line they then attacked with huge waves of infantry which easily overran the destroyed french position so you can see in this in this initial attempt the germans are the ones really applying the pressure here but again this is where the french have to decide uh if this is willing to be lost or not so all right continue the story within a few days they captured fort adul one of france's largest fortresses the 20-year-old fort was no match for this new type of warfare and was quickly destroyed by the germans massive guns eventually the french were able to reinforce their positions halting the german advance both sides constantly pounded each other with massive artillery barrages which made infantry attacks extremely costly this also turned the surrounding landscape to mud which further impeded infantry advances very true yeah and no man's land was very hard to get through just uh because of the conditions for the next few months the two armies would attack and counter attack each other without uh without either side gaining the upper hand on july 1st 1916 the british began the song offensive in order to focus on this new threat the germans led to revert troops and supplies away from redundant leaving the french shortly thereafter the germans called off their attacks ever done the french began counter-attacking by december 18th over nine months since the battle began they had retaken most of the ground they had lost some of the worst fighting conditions during world war one were seen in this battle leading to the deaths of around three hundred thousand men with many more being wounded or captured the battle verdon showed the strength and determination of the french and revealed to the world the chaos and the destructiveness of the modern war uh jordan well done awesome oh they have more videos let me know if you think i should uh check out more of their videos all right let me give you my final thoughts just from a cinema like a cinematography perspective that was so cool um to build those sets again i don't even know if those sets i didn't know those uh sets existed only cool things i've seen with lego is that they're building like historically themed things um like right here i built this taj mahal if you heard me at the beginning i did a live stream of it actually and that was so cool and i want to get into more of those but that was really cool but that was um neat to see again the stop motion of course is is is so cool but i was telling you how i really liked the sound editing that was really great you had the camera shake and all that um and that was awesome just from that perspective i did like that they they didn't make it like it like an immature kitty thing it was like okay yeah it's a lego and legos are ma lego made for you know kids generally but like but like giving it like respect if that's the right way to say that and them doing the the run down after was really cool um to learn about again how devastating this battle was um in reality so i like i like their approach to that that was really cool so this was j jd brick productions and that was really cool to check that out so um anyway i think this just from like a teacher perspective um if the this could i could see this becoming something really useful um for young people to get into uh like young people getting into history because yeah yeah when we had lego we would you know a lot of us would play out stuff but like someone coming in just to see the stop motion and to see the lego like made like you know made made into film like that but then sticking around for the historical content that's where i think this could be a really cool thing and maybe get some people into and young you know younger kids obviously into into history and anytime we can do that that's great i i see people do that like with minecraft which is very much like a digital version right where people can do that and it gets them into history or something like epic rap battles of history right you get in for the music or the the the rap battles and then you stick around for the history you know this could be one of those things then me as an educator i appreciate that all right the original video again is down below make sure you're supporting them and again thanks for sticking around and with that we'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 18,198

Keywords: react, history, lego, verdun, world war 1, stop motion

Id: ri8HfvHN_Go

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 14 2022