World War I - 1914 - Let's Talk History

welcome everyone to the very first in what will be a series of videos talking about the great war world war one we're gonna be using epic history tv's fantastic series on world war one i've only seen bits and pieces of it but everything i've seen of theirs from any topic they've done has been fantastic so i fully expect this world war one series to be just as good as everything else they do so it looks like each one of their videos covers one year of the great war so we will be doing the same thing working our way through all of this i am now just two weeks away from my flight to paris and we are going to be visiting many of the battlefields of the great war and as we talk about the topics that i will be addressing uh in my series i'll mention that so you have a good picture of exactly what to expect and the plan is uh that once i return from france i'll be there the first week of february i'm gonna do two videos per week every sunday and every wednesday you are going to be getting content from the battlefields of france i've been working hours every day to put together all of my narration all of my research all of my plans so that when i get there i can maximize my time my hope is to bring you at least 30 videos worth of content from places like bellow wood chateau dearie the psalm verdun the place where the red baron crashed the place where alvin york earned his medal of honor the place where the rock of the marne division earned that name the place where the french said they shall not pass the place where some of the largest mines the largest explosions of all in all of human history went off uh the place uh where the lost battalion was lost we're gonna look at all of those places so i'm excited to bring that to you and with that in mind i thought it would be good for us to learn more about the great war so we're going to work our way through this today as always the original content is in a link in the description below so check that out if you would if you want to support me doing things like this trip in the future the best way to do that is the support through patreon the link is in the description there are perks that are available to you you will get to see the content from france as it happens i'm going to be posting videos every night when i get back to my hotel raw footage from the sites that i go to you will see it sometimes weeks in advance before everybody else on the channel gets to see it and every dollar that i raise from patreon goes directly to trips like that and i'm hoping this is going to be the first of several really big ones that i take so that i can take you along and we can learn history together from the places where it happened let's go ahead and dive into epic history tv world war 1 1914 1914 the great powers of europe are divided into two rival alliances the triple ant france britain and russia united by fear and suspicion of germany europe's new strongest power and the triple alliance germany which fears encirclement by its rivals austro-hungary clinging on to a fragile empire and italy seeking gains at french expense so all of that absolutely true and it's it's much more complicated than just a straight two alliances because there are layers to this um you know germany's the big brother so to speak i mean they are the power in europe they're the ones upon which all of this hinges the whole reason france and russia allied themselves is because they are the two on either side of germany which after the franco-prussian war in 1870 and 71 has united to form the german empire you know these are a series of independent states that have come together because of their common heritage to form this german empire mostly dominated by prussia they've defeated france and the franco-prussian war taken some territory this alsace-lorraine territory has been disputed for centuries and so france and russia developed this alliance because of that austro-hungary is also kind of nominally a germanic power though that's mostly austria up here it's a dual monarchy uh the the leader of one is the leader of the other but then there are also all these other smaller groups and so it's very very fragile as they said italy's really just kind of opportunistic they're just going to go with whoever's going to help them get what italy wants britain is not necessarily as strong a partner in this french and russian alliance as we'll talk about soon the spark comes on the 28th of june in the city of sarajevo archduke franz ferdinand heir to the austro-hungarian throne is assassinated by a 19-year-old slav nationalist named gavrilo princip austro-hungary accuses its balkan rival serbia of having aided the assassin and so at this point um so otto von bismarck who uh had basically been probably as responsible as anyone for forming the german empire in the first place uh had died by this point he's been gone for almost two decades uh but he was the one who said pretty much on his deathbed that within 20 years uh europe was going to be plunged into war and it was going to happen because of the balkans and he was absolutely right there are two wars that are fought uh in the years leading up to world war one uh in the balkans uh the ottoman empire by this point uh has been around for 500 years and they're kind of in their steep declining days by this point they lose uh wars in the balkans lose territory uh and yeah uh if it hadn't been this it probably would have been something else is kind of generally how people agree about this that something else might have sparked a war in europe if it hadn't been uh this but what's sad about this is that there was probably nobody in the austro-hungarian monarchy who was more pro-serbia than franz ferdinand was and if they would have just waited two years he would have been the emperor because franz joseph dies in 1916. he's been on the throne since 1848 his brother max million was killed trying to take over mexico at one point but yeah he's been on the throne for most of his life and he dies in 1916 franz ferdinand would have been the emperor and he would have been a very pro-serbia very pro-bosnia uh emperor for austria-hungary sends an ultimatum demanding humiliating concessions serbia rejects the ultimatum they reject the ultimatum there were there were basically 10 things and serbia accepts like nine and a half of them and uh emperor kaiser wilhelm ii of germany basically looks at what serbia is willing to do and says well this takes away all argument for there being a war uh he couldn't see any rational reason why austria-hungary would go to war when serbia was willing to bend over backwards as much as they were but they weren't willing to quite accept all 10 and austria-hungary knew they wouldn't accept all 10. and austro-hungary declares war within hours austrian forces are shelling belgrade the russian tsar nicholas ii feels honor-bound to defend serbia a fellow slav nation and orders the russian army to mobilize immobilization on the surface you look at that and you think to yourself okay well they're mobilizing what's the big deal you have to understand that mobilization basically equals war at this time all of these countries subscribe to something you've heard me mention it before if you've been around the channel they subscribe to something called the cult of the offensive which means that attacking is the only way to win uh you must attack the attacker will always have the advantage and in the end will always win and if you are being attacked counter-attack and so the whole point of that is that whoever gets there first is going to win and so that meant you couldn't wait around to see what the other guy did and that in the end is what leads to war because you have all these telegrams going back and forth between uh nikki and willie uh these two cousins who are the emperors of russia and germany kaiser wilhelm's also the eldest grandson of queen victoria of the united kingdom king george v is his first cousin they're both grandchildren in the same family as is i believe their cousin who is the zarina of russia but so they're trying to stop this but the military leadership in those countries are like no we germany's like we can't wait for russia to mobilize because if they mobilize first we're gonna lose call to the offensive we have to do it and so it just becomes like this avalanche that can't be stopped and then they just go headlong into war german emperor wilhelm ii has promised his support to austro-hungary he and his generals see conflict with russia as inevitable and the sooner the better as russian strength grows year on year yeah russian mobilization is used to justify german mobilization followed by a declaration of war on russia in germany basically because austria-hungary's not a very powerful nation on their own they're certainly not going to be able to stand up to russia they they had a large military but it was not a well-equipped well-funded military not anything like germany or even russia or france for that matter so they need germany and germany basically writes them a blank check and says all right whatever you do will back you which is a huge mistake in the end germany knows war with russia means war with russia's ally france it has developed the schlieffen plan to meet this threat of a war on two fronts first its armies will advance rapidly through neutral belgium to encircle and destroy french armies near paris and win a quick victory then its forces can move east to deal with russia whose huge army will take much longer to mobilize so we just did a series of videos talking about the schlieffen plan a couple of weeks ago so i won't go too much more into detail on that you can check those out but the schlieffen plan was not a bad plan it was honestly about the best plan that germany could come up with considering what they were going to be facing they couldn't fight a protracted two-front war they knew that the problem with the schlieffen plan was twofold number one it was his inflexibility it was basically here's the plan you have to stick to this plan it didn't really allow or at least the leadership of germany uh schlieffen's dead by this point and so this has been passed on to the new leadership in germany leadership in germany didn't really allow for well what if it doesn't go the way we planned what if russia and france don't do what we expect them to and that's basically what happens because russia mobilizes way faster than they expect honestly if russia had not mobilized as fast as they did the schlieffen plan probably works because right when they were just about to break through and maybe have a chance to hit paris they have to shift uh shift divisions east to deal with a much sooner threat from russia than they were expecting germany declares war on france six million men are now marching to war across europe [Music] italy however remains neutral the terms of the triple alliance don't bind it to join an offensive war yeah so if austria-hungary or germany had been attacked italy's treaty bound to go to war with whoever attacks them but they're not bound when those two are the aggressors a similar thing happened in world war ii a lot of people ask the question well if if britain for example is in this treat has this treaty with poland uh to defend them uh when germany declares war meaning that britain had to enter the war against germany how come britain didn't have to go to war with russia when russia invades poland from the other side well the uk's treaty with poland only applied to an attack by germany it didn't apply to an attack by russia and so they weren't treaty bounds to defend poland against russia only against germany sometimes there's those little quirks like that in those treaties the united states also declares its neutrality president wilson and the american public have no desire to get entangled in europe's war britain is france's ally but at first it's not clear if it will join the war against germany but when german troops invade belgium whose neutrality britain has guaranteed an ultimatum is sent from london to berlin so there's actually two ultimatums the first one comes from germany to the king of belgium and it basically says listen we have no interest in fighting with your country we don't want to take any territory we don't want to molest your people at all we just want to pass our armies through because it's the sleeping plan we don't want to go through this heavily fortified like verdun and some of these other cities there are these massive fortifications that have been built there which is really interesting when you consider the cult of the offensive idea you know if the whole notion is attacking is always better and the french subscribe to this even well into world war one if that's the case why build all these great defenses but it works because those defenses deter germany from attacking across that border and they go through belgium they just want to pass through belgium and they want to get there and honestly and we've talked about this if belgium at the king of belgium says go ahead germany wins world war one it really is that simple because the germans pass through into france they probably get to paris within six weeks which is what their plan is britain at least initially is not going to enter the war and it's probably over before they even would but belgium does say no and they put up a fight and one of the keys for the for the germans is the rail hub at liege in belgium which is a heavily fortified city for the belgians their plan the schlieffen plan calls for liege to be taken in two days takes them over two weeks that slows everything down uh it buys time for the british to send an expeditionary force and they'll be in combat with the germans by the end of august at mons in belgium and in other places and it slows everything down especially for the rails they can't get supplies to their armies as quickly as they need to and it throws the whole plan off and honestly that turns the tide of the war demanding they withdraw so then yeah britain doesn't automatically say war you know they they send an ultimatum to germany they said germany all right listen we don't want to go to war with you but if you don't pull your troops out of belgium right now we have no choice it's ignored and britain declares war [Music] a british expeditionary force lands in france while the german invasion is held up for crucial days by belgian resistance at the fortress city of liege so think about what i said here the war begins first week august the plan is to be through liege in two days it takes him two weeks well what's that two weeks get you to the bef landing it's so belgium they they they collapse they lose but they slow the germans down enough for the british to get into place german troops commit several massacres against belgium that's huge too the atrocities are inflated by allied propaganda ally propaganda showing germans with the spikes on their helmets and they're the ones that are doing that their submarines are sinking ships as the war goes on and they're killing civilians because they were angry over you know the resistance that's happening all of this comes along and spins germany as the bad guys in the war and helped turn public opinion in neutral countries against germany france unaware of germany's great encircling attack launches plan 17 an offensive into german territory caught of the offensive but in the battle of the frontiers they're driven back with enormous losses on both sides and think about in hindsight how ridiculous that seems the whole reason germany doesn't attack here is because of the fortification so what do the french do they leave their fortifications and they attack but that was the thought process the british expeditionary force clashes with the german army at mons but the british are heavily outnumbered and soon joined the french in retreat the allies make their stand at the river marm 40 miles outside paris their desperate counter-attack saves the city and drives the germans back and what's amazing about this is the parallels we talk all the time history doesn't necessarily repeat itself but it rhymes the the two times that the germans get the closest or it seems like they've got the best chance to break through and take paris both times they're stopped in the fall at the marn september 1914 again in the late fall or in the late summer and early fall of 1918 when they once again fight at the mark both sides suffer a quarter of a million casualties the race to the sea begins as both sides try to outflank each other to the north so think about this it's easy for these numbers to just escape you but remember this is one front this is the western front there's the eastern front where germany and austria-hungary are fighting the russians there's a fight going on down in serbia that's very bloody and very violent there will be fights that open up in the middle east things that happen down in the balkans even further down uh things that happen in africa i mean fighting is everywhere but just here on the western front just the battle of the frontiers just the marn we're already talking about a million casualties in the first two months and we're just getting started a series of clashes leads to the first battle of where the allies desperately cling on and prevent a german breakthrough there are more heavy losses on both sides the two armies then dig in along the entire 350 mile front seeking shelter from deadly machine gun fire and artillery shells in a lot of wars when there haven't been opportunities to test them on a large scale and on a small scale there had been there was the russo-japanese war which a lot of people say is the real kind of preview of world war one because there are a lot of similarities the technology is very similar because it's about 10 years earlier but this is the first time on a large scale that some of these new weapons like really heavy artillery these these rail guns uh these machine guns on an industrial scale millions of artillery shells rapid deployment of large numbers of troops and so now the tactics are starting to adjust to the technology after a couple of months of massive casualty fighting on a very movable front they've settled in nobody wants to take any big chances because of the artillery because of the uh the machine guns and now you've got air power starting to become a factor in all of this and so now you get into what everybody thinks of as world war 1 this whole trench warfare concept trench warfare has begun british warships win the first naval battle of the war at heligoland byte sinking three german cruisers britain has the most powerful navy in the world 29 modern battleships to germany's 19. and germany has one of the most powerful navies in the world they've been in kind of this naval arms race with the british for some time now which in hindsight was a big mistake it was a waste of resources it probably ramped up the tension way more than it needed to be and in the end germany doesn't even really use it all that much they they fight one big battle at jutland but then basically keep all their capital ships parked for the rest of the war and then after the war they have to give most of them up uh it really becomes about submarines for them they now impose a naval blockade on germany and this is the single most important factor in my mind in the entire war this is in the end to me what will decide things is this naval blockade because by 1918 germany's in a position where they could probably still win the war militarily but their home front and even their military is on its last legs because of supplies ending contraband goods including food from reaching it by sea the aim is to bring germany's economy to its knees and force it to surrender but a week later the british cruiser hms pathfinder becomes the first victim in history of a lethal new weapon the submarine-launched torpedo first of many german submarines or u-boats have a surface range of 9 000 miles and can attack undetected from beneath the waves they herald a deadly new challenge to britain's command of the seas and think about this there's no sonar yet all of that technology that we know of today doesn't exist these u-boats were lethal and really hard to stop at least at first once the allies knew what they were dealing with now they can start developing technologies to deal with it but they don't have them yet on the eastern front russian armies invade east prussia but they blunder into disaster at the battle of tannenberg where general von hindenburg and his chief of staff erich ludendorff mastermind a brilliant german victory taking 90 000 prisoners and destroying an entire russian army and one of their great strategies that they will use time and time again is encirclement the idea of getting behind the enemy and cutting him off and that's why you'll see in a lot of these battles huge numbers of prisoners are taken because both sides get really good at times at using encirclement especially on the eastern front the russians contribute to their own defeat by transmitting uncoded wireless messages a second massive german victory at massourian lakes forces the russians into retreat in just six weeks the russian army suffers nearly a third of a million casualties meanwhile austro-hungary's invasion of serbia suffers a humiliating reverse at the battle of tser so this this whole war started over austria-hungary versus serbia this mighty empire or at least it's supposed to be has a heck of a time against this little country austria-hungary's offensive against russia also ends in disaster and retreat with the loss of more than three hundred thousand men the fortress town of chemical is cut off and besieged by the russians the germans are forced to come to the rescue launching a diversionary attack towards warsaw it leads to weeks of brutal winter fighting around the polish city of wush but there is no clear winner meanwhile the turkish ottoman empire has joined the central powers declaring war on its old enemy russia turkish warships bombard the russian ports of odessa and sevastopol while in the caucasus russian troops across the turkish frontier beyond europe the war rages on the world's oceans and in far-flung european colonies german troops cross into british east africa yeah so remember that most of africa at this point german french you've got the belgians the british you know so these become proxy locations for combat small numbers of troops to be sure but there is combat going on modern kenya and occupy tavita while allied forces seize the german colony of togo land modern togo but british forces invading german cameroon are defeated at garrowa and while a 3 000 strong force attacking german south west africa modern namibia is captured at san fontaine a month later british landings at tanga end in chaos and defeat at the hands of a much smaller german force led by colonel von letoff volbeck cut off from germany let off volbeck goes on to wage a highly successful guerrilla war against the allies so if you ever see pictures like this uh the iron cross and the poor le merit are these are like two of the highest honors the poorly married is probably as close as you can get to a medal of honor for the germans iron cross probably more like a distinguished service cross um i could be getting those parallels wrong but i mean that's kind of the hierarchy and then there are different levels of iron cross that you can be given but if you see this guy wearing one of those around his neck you can be sure that he's earned that for something that he's done significant tying down huge numbers of troops in asia japan honors its treaty with britain and declares war on germany japanese forces go on to seize the german naval base at singtao the german colonies of samoa and new guinea surrender to troops from new zealand and australia but in the pacific off the coast of chile german admiral von spaey's powerful east asia squadron sinks two british cruisers at the battle of coronel both ships are lost with all hands five weeks and this would have been a big deal uh certainly for propaganda purposes look at this the german navy wins a great victory over the the mighty british royal navy of course it doesn't work out so well for vonash bay soon after that but i'm sure they'll talk about that later he runs into a british naval task force at the falkland islands four of the five german cruisers are sunk vonshpey goes down with his flagship meanwhile in the middle east british troops seize control of the ottoman port of basra securing access to the vital persian oil that fuels the british fleet [Music] that winter austrian troops finally capture belgrade but the serbs then counter-attack and drive them back once more the fighting in serbia has already cost around 200 000 casualties on each side and a lot like the fact that the germans really couldn't get bogged down with the belgians on their way to taking paris uh austria-hungary the central powers as a whole cannot afford for austria-hungary to have to take this long to deal with serbia they needed to deal with serbia quickly and then get those troops onto the eastern front uh and you know they're bogged down here for months and months and they're losing hundreds of thousands of men men that are desperately needed on the russian front which means germany has to deal with them even more which is fewer troops that they can put on the western front they're just you know constant shifting priorities [Music] in the north sea german warships mount a hit-and-run raid against english coastal towns shelling hartlepool whitby and scarborough and killing more than a hundred civilians on the western front the french launched their first major offensive against the german lines but the first battle of champagne leads to small gains at a cost of 90 000 casualties while in the caucasus an ottoman offensive through the mountains in mid-winter ends in disaster at sarikamish turkish casualties total 60 000 many frozen to death on the western front that first christmas is marked in some sectors by a short truce and games of football in no man's land and and we've talked about the christmas truce a month or so ago when it was the that time of year we know this happened it was not ordered in fact it was ordered against by both sides high command because they understood the there was a lot of problems with you with humanizing the enemy right you know if you know if you know the guy across the trench from you isn't all that different from you has a wife and kids back home uh you know is just fighting for his country like you are it's a whole lot harder to shoot and kill him later it's hard enough to shoot and kill the enemy anyway in fact i've talked about this too but if you're new to the channel they've done studies uh and by and large most men in combat do not at least at this time do not aim their weapon at the enemy a very small percentage actually do you know it's just not within our nature to want to kill our fellow human being even in war i mean it's one thing if the guy's right in front of you about to kill you but when you're just shooting across no man's land at someone uh it's very difficult to do and so it's that much harder to do when you've just played a football match with those guys and you had a good time and you celebrated christmas together and you sang carols together and so in the future they will do things like plan all day artillery barrages on christmas day to prevent their guys from doing any more of these impromptu christmas truces the killing zone between the trenches [Music] all right well that's the end of 1914 this thing is just getting started there's much much more to be covered we'll come back tomorrow with 1915 we'll work our way right through to the end of the war let me know your thoughts let's learn history together that's what this is all about we use these incredible resources by channels like epic history tv to do that please support their channel check out some of their content it's fantastic and well worth your time if you love history at all like i do i am proud to subscribe to them uh and support them on patreon as well and i encourage you to do the same see you tomorrow with part two thanks for watching you

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 95,197

Keywords: great war, world war i (military conflict), world war one, world war i, archduke franz ferdinand, world war i video, 1914 to 1918, history channel, first world war, trench warfare, wwi video, kaiser wilhelm, the great war, military history, july crisis

Id: YA49bmepfEk

Length: 34min 9sec (2049 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022