OVERSIMPLIFIED WORLD WAR 1 - Historian Reaction

hey everybody well welcome back i am so grateful for all the support that my very first reaction video received uh so i thought i'd do another one and i'm like a lot of people a huge fan of the oversimplified videos uh oversimplified is exactly what it sounds like it is a summary of events and one of the things i think oversimplified does really well is they summarize the events they do it in an entertaining way but they also show you how different events that they cover are connected to each other so for example if you watch the video about the french revolution you see how it ties directly into the napoleonic wars you see how world war one ties directly into world war ii which ties into the cold war so i think they do a good job of showing those things so i'm going to watch over simplifieds world war one part one today and mostly i think a lot of my comments as i react to this are mainly going to be centered around just filling in some of the gaps and adding additional information because it is oversimplified it is just meant to be a summary so they kind of gloss over some things that i i would like to kind of add a little more detail to but i love the videos so let's dive in the world of 1914 a time of modern technology culture and fashion truly the height of civilization let's have a war everyone knew a big war was coming france wanted some stuff back that germany had taken from it germany wanted to take more of everyone's stuff and they were building a big sexy navy that was making the british uncomfortable these two empires thought they were really cool but lots of different people who lived there didn't think it was so cool and some of them had even been declaring yeah so let's pause right there because the ottoman empire has existed for hundreds of years at this point and it was dramatically on the decline there had actually been several wars that had taken place between the ottomans and some of these smaller uh powers in the balkans and the ottomans hadn't done well in those wars that's why you see for example albania 1912 bulgaria in 1908 because the ottomans had been led by a series of progressively worse rulers and they'd gone downhill dramatically so even to call them an empire by this point makes them sound stronger than they really were pendants with help from russia everyone was talking about each other behind each other's backs throwing the fact that military technology had come a long way since the last major war and suddenly everyone was pretty eager to beat each other up in this area of austria-hungary lived some serbs and bosnians who hated living in austria-hungary so the austro-hungarian archduke franz ferdinand goes there for a nice drive in an open-top car with his car's route published in advance and that went just about as well as you'd expect so let's talk about this for exa for a minute here franz ferdinand takes his wife sophie uh on this trip and one of the things that people don't understand about franz ferdinand franz ferdinand's the nephew of the emperor franz joseph and is the heir to the throne but if he and sophie had ever had children uh get to adulthood they never would have become uh to the throne themselves and here's why uh sophie was kind of considered beneath uh franz ferdinand she was from kind of a different social standing and um so marrying her basically meant that franz joseph had required franz ferdinand to give up any rights to the throne that their future children might have uh so sophie in the austro-hungarian empire was kind of looked down on and definitely in the family and so going on this trip it was one of the few times that sophie and franz ferdinand could be seen side by side and that she could kind of have the same standing as him so this was a trip they were really looking forward to and unfortunately both of them lost their lives some assassins were waiting for him along the way and threw bombs at his car but they missed and blew up some officers behind him instead so the archduke goes into hiding leaves sarajevo and the whole war never happens if only except no the archduke doesn't leave but instead goes back out in the open top car to visit the injured officers in hospital the driver takes a wrong turn and by sheer coincidence gets stuck beside one of the failed assassins who shoots him austria-hungary is understandably pissed about all this and they think the serbian government had something to do with him they probably didn't have so they go to their ally germany and say hey germany we're going to declare war in serbia and germany is all for that so austria-hungary send a big list of impossible demands to serbia and when serbia refuses they declare war now serbia did not just flat out refuse these demands in fact they were willing to accept most of the demands the other unfortunate thing about all this is that franz joseph the emperor of austria died two years later he died in 1916 he'd been on the throne for like 60 years and um if they had just waited for franz ferdinand to come to the throne and replace franz joseph things actually would have gotten a lot better because franz ferdinand was probably the most pro-serbian person in the austria-hungarian government uh and when he had come to the throne he probably would have been a real friend to serbia so that didn't work out well for them austria-hungary and germany are friends and serbia is protected by russia who's friends with france so they'll declare war on each other montenegro joins in too france and britain also have a kind of alliance so when france says hey britain you got my back maybe britain is like maybe yeah so uh i didn't know he was gonna say that by the way but um so let's talk about this because there's more to it than just this there's also these crazy uh family relationships going on uh almost every monarch in europe is a grandchild or great-grandchild or some relation to queen victoria who had just been on the throne uh you know 13 years earlier so you have uh the kaiser in germany kaiser wilhelm ii who is actually queen victoria's eldest grandson so he and king george v of the uk are first cousins uh you've got family relationships between king george v and uh czar nicholas ii of russia in fact those two uh were i think first or second cousins but they were like twins i mean they literally looked just like each other czar nicholas's wife was related um you know so there was relationships and not only familial but also friendship relationships between a lot of these monarchs and there was a lot that was going on behind the scenes and i wish he had talked a little bit more about this right here uh leading up to when war happened there's a lot of diplomatic frantic negotiations going on trying to stave off war you've got telegrams going back and forth between kaiser wilhelm and germany and czar nicholas and russia trying to avoid war uh but unfortunately uh as he mentioned earlier there was so much of a desire to try out the armies and to go to war that these strong influential militaries uh in countries especially in germany and russia were were hell-bent on going to war and by the time they started to mobilize it was almost like it was inevitable and it was too late and it was like this juggernaut that had been started and couldn't be stopped even if you wanted to it's so unfortunate to read about what was going on in july of 1914 because there's so many opportunities they had to put a stop to this but it just almost felt like some people didn't want the the problem to be solved without war and then they decided to stay out of it which is great for germany because germany has a plan the schlieffen plan is so big and clumsy that it will take them a while to get ready for war so with this guy in charge germany will send all its troops into france at lightning speed while russia's getting ready defeat france then move all the troops to russia yeah defeat russia and then we all speak german and eat fefer potass every day just one problem france has loads of forts and defenses along its german border and germany can't waste any time fighting them so germany decides to go around them through belgium here comes england belgium is neutral but germany wants to march 750 000 troops through it that's going to bring the uk they're hoping belgium will just kind of sit down and shut up but they don't they fight back and they're pretty good too so they slow the germans down what's worse is that britain shows up and they're pretty pissed that germany's invading neutral countries so now britain declares war in germany so germany push on through belgium and commit some atrocities along the way they also wear spikes and sometimes skulls on their uniform so if you're trying to not look like the bad guys good job the allies have a propaganda extravaganza and this starts having an influence around the world notably in america the u.s president woodrow wilson sees himself as a bit of a jesus figure and spends most of the war trying to hate that guy one of my least favorite presidents woodrow wilson living in the united states and when the war first broke out they were like yay germany but now that they're committing atrocities in belgium they're less enthusiastic let's play spot the french soldier did you see him easy right he's wearing a bright blue uniform with red trousers and do you know who else spotted him easily too the germans yeah so when the french were slowly marching in columns through the countryside the germans easily tore them to shreds with their giant guns all the nations involved in this war went in with an old school war mentality and all of them had there was also something going on here called the cult of the offensive which was this belief that um you were better to take offensives and and kind of attack rather than retreat in other words what i'm saying is that they felt that the advantages in attacking were so great that it was better to if you were being attacked and you were being overwhelmed it was actually better to counter attack than it was to retreat or try to defend so it was this idea that attacking was really the only proper strategy to employ on the battlefield which was ridiculous but that's kind of how things started update the uniforms and tactics a lot during the great war because this war was going to be like nothing anyone had ever seen before russia is ready for war and way earlier than expected but here comes tannenberg can you get on top of that oh yeah sure we've got no not really so germany has to send some troops back to the east to defend against the russians the chief of staff of the austro-hungarian army is this guy and although he is handsome he turns out not to be the best military strategist austria-hungary constantly ignores germany's advice and then he's running back to germany whenever they get in trouble austria-hungary even gets its ass kicked by tiny true serbia's biggest problem wasn't the austro-hungarian army it was actually illness and sickness of course that was true for a lot of the armies back on the western front the germans continue advancing and we got close paris at this point anyone would be forgiven for thinking the germans were going to get that quick victory after all but then things start to go wrong the french commander-in-chief knew something done and he ordered his armies to stop retreating in the resulting battle a gap opened up in the german lines if a gap opens up the enemy can use it to flank you from the side and behind so the german armies have to retreat the allies launch a counter-attack so the germans dig into defensive positions the allies do the same then both sides move north and there's the rest of the war along the way when they reach the sea they're in a stalemate with trench systems running the whole way from the coast to switzerland the beginning of trench warfare on the western front here's how trench warfare works two opposing lines of trenches with no man's land in between one side would pummel the other with hundreds of thousands of artillery shells sometimes for days at a time this had a huge psychological effect on the soldiers leaving many shell-shocked then the attacking troops would leave their trenches and rush across no man's land a muddy wet mass of shell craters and barbed wire now sometimes they would use something called a creeping barrage which is basically where you would um you would have artillery fired at you know different ranges and so you could move in your army behind the barrage as it got closer and closer to the lines and then eventually withdraw just in time withdraw your fire just in time for your men to attack the defending trench would unleash machine gun fire on the attackers inflicting thousands of casualties the attackers would send wave after wave until either they gave up or the opposing trench was finally overrun there would be months of fighting and the deaths of thousands in order to gain a few meters or kilometers of land living in the trenches was hard work too corpses mud that could swallow you whole pools of poisonous water rats disease the smell it's insane that millions of soldiers put up with these conditions and commanders ordered them to do so for years that's true all right let's take a look at part two all right back at it with both sides stuck in a hard stalemate they knew this war wasn't going to be about taking territory but about simply wearing each other down the allies had plenty of men to expend from its overseas dominions and the british also started a naval blockade so germany couldn't import stuff like food neither side really wanted a long grueling war though so they both thought of ways to break the deadlock on the western front idea number yes new frontiers oh when the war first broke out australia was quick to take german new guinea the allies also quickly jumped on germany's colonies in africa and particularly in german east africa locals were enlisted as soldiers and carriers by both sides leading to a tragic loss of life for the native africans some new combatants entered the war as well the allies knew friends were italy and japan japan was busy building interesting when you think about world war ii happy to take away german islands and colonies in east asia italy actually had an alliance with germany and austria hungary before the war but after some tense relations and then the allies promising to give them some of austria-hungary's stuff they switched sides yep italy opened up a front in the mountains here but like everyone else they were stuck in stalemate for most of the war the central power's new friend was a struggling empire in the middle east not much of a friend at all the ottoman were divided on whether to actually join the war or not since they had been exhausted by the recent balkan wars some of the politicians who did want to join went off on their own and fired some shells at russia and then came back and said whoops looks like we're at war now the ottoman entry into the war was of particular concern to the british since the middle east was full of oil and britain wanted all of that oil first the ottomans tried to attack russia in the caucasus mountains but they weren't prepared for the cold and many of them froze to death then they crossed the mountains who would have thought the suez canal from the british but that failed too then the allies tried to take the dardanelles at gallipoli in a long and hard trench warfare campaign but that also failed and that was the brainchild of a young man who was in charge of the navy at the time uh winston churchill and that did not end well for him or for them and actually after what happened at gallipoli uh with churchill churchill actually resigned from his position in government he was still a member of parliament but he resigned as first lord of the admiralty and actually enlisted in the army he wanted to be appointed a governor general in africa but that was rejected so he joins the army and i think he ends up lieutenant colonel in charge of like royal fusiliers so he actually goes to the front let's go ahead and continue the ottomans blamed their initial losses on the ethnic armenians and ottoman territory this was bad assaulting armenian genocide led to the deaths of one and a half million people then the germans sent spies into afghanistan to try to convince the arab tribes there to rise up in jihad against the british and attack india but that plan failed partly because the spies got bored brewed their own alcohol and got drunk which is a bad thing to do in afghanistan all these new frontiers hadn't done much to change the war aware that the allies had more men and supplies than them the germans knew they had to do something to break the stalemate submarines there was a big conference that set out the rules of modern warfare no chemical weapons no killing civilians basically don't be jerks the germans held a meeting and decided to be jerks zeppelin air raids commenced over british cities they also started attacking the allied trenches with chlorine gas and they used submarines to sink civilian ships one such civilian ship was the lusitania which had 159 americans on board when it was in weapons further swaying u.s opinion against the germans not to be completely unfair to the germans the allies also engaged in chemical warfare soon after and they had been hiding anti-submarine weapons on their civilians there you go that that's the thing people forget lusitania was not simply carrying a bunch of civilians um but we don't talk about that too often the germans justify their attacks meanwhile austria-hungary still hadn't dealt with serbia so the central powers enlisted some help bulgaria wished it was bigger and was still bitter about losing the second vulcan war the central powers promised to make all of bulgaria's wildest dreams come true if they helped so they signed on and together they knocked out serbia the serbian troops were treated through albania which was neutral but had some ties to austria-hungary so austria-hungary entered albania in a friendly invasion to chase down the serbians many of whom escaped by sea it's 1916 and a lot is happening as if they didn't have enough enemies already germany added one more to the list portugal had been getting a bit chummy with the allies behind the scenes and germany didn't like that one bit around the same time the only sea battle of the war happened had a new powerful class of battleships called dreadnought but they were so expensive to build that neither side wanted to risk losing them in a battle so they kept them in port except for one time when they had a big fight and a bunch of them got damaged so they didn't try that again the uk started conscripting men to the army so they had plenty of reserves which is just as well because the western front was about to get brutal the longest and one of the bloodiest battles of the war started when the germans launched an attack around the french city of verdun the french defended it desperately leading to hundreds of thousands of casualties under pressure the french called on its allies to do something to draw the german's attention away so the british started their own long and brutal fight the battle of the somme with 60 000 british casualties on just the first day it was also here that the british first used one crazy brand new piece of sci-fi technology the russians had been getting pushed back now something about tanks uh i don't remember the exact number but the allies had i think thousands of tanks and i don't know that the germans ever really built any which was interesting because in world war ii the tanks would play such a huge role uh in the german blitzkrieg war it was mostly the allies who used tanks during the war further and further into their own territory but in response to the french call for help they began a huge offensive and did really well until they ran out of supplies and got stuck seeing how well the russians have been doing romania decided now would be a great time to jump in and win the war and then they got pounded the greeks were fighting amongst themselves about whether to join the war or not the king liked the central powers while the prime minister wanted to join the allies after a brief national schism during which the country split into two the king finally abdicated and the country reunited with allied help they began a new offensive and the british royal families actually descended uh here's something kind of cool about the british royal family the uh the mail line is actually descended from i think the house of oldenburg which is uh kind of uh danish and but also so is the greek royal family prince philip the queen's husband is i think a grandson of the king of greece but the royal family also their house name had been saxa coburg and gota which was german so they changed it to windsor during their first world war because they didn't want to sound so german territory from the north the british had also made a landing in mesopotamia to protect persia's oil fields and they'd also sent a small army up the tigris river to try to take baghdad but the army got sieged in the town of kut along the way and eventually surrendered a new offensive was launched from the south with lawrence of arabia the offensive was aided by one famous british officer better known as lawrence of arabia who hopefully the arab tribes in a revolt that wreaked havoc on the ottoman supply lines by the time 1917 rolled around everyone was exhausted there were mutinies in the french army the german populace was starving and the war had drained all of russia's supplies there is no clear winner and it was still anyone's war the only question now was who was going to break first and the answer was russia tired of not eating and mad that a crazy magic homeless guy was calling some of this crazy magic homeless guy now they do a whole oversimplified on the uh russian revolution and we'll probably have to react to that one at some point but uh rasputin man that that is a crazy story and i highly recommend that you check it out but uh if there was ever somebody who it's difficult to feel bad for it's nicholas ii in some ways because uh the russian royal family really just was about i mean you think about families where the country's burning down around them and they don't do anything about it i think a lot of louis xvi and marie antoinette and france but boy the romanovs were the same way nicholas just was completely ignorant of what was going on around him and either chose not to deal with it or didn't really know how to deal with it but i do also feel bad for them from the standpoint that he appealed to his cousins the british royal family for asylum and they could have gotten out of there and survived and not uh suffered the fate that they did but the the british royal family rejected that in petrograd complete with rights and strikes the riots turned into a full-scale revolution and a new government overthrew the tsar then a few months later the bolsheviks overthrew the new government and they pulled russia out of the war this was great news for germany who now only had to focus on the western front but there was still one problem the pesky united states of america was looking increasingly like it was going to join the war america had been selling supplies to the allies throughout the war and was getting super rich off the back of it meaning it was in fantastic shape and was dangerous to the germans so germany sent the telegram to mexico the zimmerman telegram crazy cool if you guys attacked america but the british intercepted the message showed it to the americans and that was the final straw american troops began shipping out to you again this is really oversimplified because he did refer a little while ago to unrestricted submarine warfare but it was really both of those things going on uh the unrestricted submarine warfare where there were americans dying and where american shipping was being sunk combined with this zimmerman telegram where the germans kind of decided to go through the mexicans and say hey you know we'll help you get some of your territory back if you want to invade you know the united states europe this was terrible news for germany and they knew their only hope now was to force france and the uk to surrender before the fresh american troops arrived it was now or never so they started one final attack they converged their troops and hit hard at the sam and pushed the allies back they hit a second time further north then again and again with each hit the germans were spending more and more resources while the allies were getting better and by this point too it's important to note that the kaiser in germany basically was out of power i mean he was still the na in name he was in command but really this was a military dictatorship at this point uh and ludendorff who is leading this offensive um i think he was the one who had just lost his stepson his adopted son uh had been killed and this really affected his psyche at this point in the war at repelling their attacks by the fifth punch the allies held the line and even pushed back with american troops now arriving in larger numbers the allies launched a counter-attack and that was it the central powers were being pushed back on all fronts bulgaria collapsed first followed by the ottoman empire then austria-hungary and finally on november 11th 1918 at 11 o'clock germany surrendered at the peace treaty germany was forced to reduce its military accept war guilt and pay the bill for the war after indescribable suffering and millions dead the world learned its lesson and never had such an awful word and keep in mind too that right at the end of the war this is when the spanish flu hits the flu pandemic and so you know we've just gone through this incredibly costly war and now this global pandemic that kills up to five percent of the population happens for about 20 years yeah and he makes an excellent point there without world war one there is no world war ii everything that led to world war ii was a direct result of the things that happened in world war one so that's uh really kind of all my thoughts about that one um i would love to hear your thoughts let me know what you think about oversimplified's video about the things i said about world war one in general let's have a conversation use the comment section below i'm not going to do these all the time but i wanted to do a couple just to kind of get started um but if you have suggestions or requests for other reaction videos you'd like me to do then let me know use the comment section below and we'll see you again soon thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 391,004

Keywords: oversimplified reaction, world war 1, oversimplified ww1, oversimplified reaction ww1, ww1 reaction, reaction video, historian reacts, historian ww1, history guy gaming, history teacher reacts, history teacher reacts oversimplified, world war one, oversimplified video, history reaction, reaction oversimplified, oversimplified, reaction, oversimplified ww1 reaction

Id: TpZxLw-u_DE

Length: 25min 28sec (1528 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020