Lots of hype building for this.

WW1 has never gotten it's proper treatment. The video game didn't include France (which is an insult to the sacrifice of an entire French generation) and Dan Carlin's sprawling epic still misses many of the wars greatest stories and most complicated figures. At least it has respect though.

I hope this gives it the war the treatment it deserves. Not to brag, but I'll be at Verdun on 11/11 for the 100th anniversary of the armistice. I hope I get to see this before then.

So yeah, idk if anyone knows what the first post in this thread is talking about, but this documentary is WW1 footage that has been upgraded with today's technology. The guy leading the project is Peter Jackson. Yes, LOTR Peter Jackson.

Here's the first trailer:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EHYRfukHToc

Looks amazing.

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Thank you, Google.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

I totally agree about World War I getting short shrift. I think it's important to teach and study World War I as war at its most merciless and unnecessary.

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It's a pretty thrilling story too.

Unlike WW2, which had basically been decided (at the latest) in February 1943, there were a ton of tide changes in WW1. Right up in about April 1918 the Germans had a really good chance to get a favorable peace. The individual figures have way more depth to them and the drama of it is so much more engrossing, but that overarching good vs evil isn't there. The evil of World War 1 is just the war itself.

I don't think anyone will ever really understand how horrible things like the first day of the Somme were. It just can't be told or shown. I think of all the places to be throughout history the worst place is the day of some big offensive on the Western Front.

The stories I've read and videos I've watched about Verdun are just nightmare scenarios for any battle.

Not to downplay the last 15 years of trauma, but the PTSD you would get from shell shock had to be so much more debilitating to the human mind.

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With all the advancement in filmmaking you would think we'd have gotten a quintessential WW1 movie the last 20 years or so. It's probably cus studios can't find the "American" angle in any of the biggest WW1 engagements.

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A lot of them just shut down. The shelling fucked them up so bad they basically went into a permanent waking coma, they didn't really understand it at all then and thought it was the shockwaves by the exploding shells liquidating the brain from the inside. It's truly a lost generation for the UK (including Canada, Australia and NZ), France and Germany.

There's a reason the French were just not willing to do it again. The man who saved the French from defeat at Verdun was the guy in charge of the Vichy regime, just to show you that it wasn't some pushover chump.

There was a film about Paasschendaele, which was probably just the most horrifying allied offensive of the war, but it's pretty cartoony and stupid. Peter Jackson is a kiwi, probably the reason this is getting made.

This looks incredible.

https://youtu.be/vn6HrP_LTu8

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IWM is pretty great too. It's worth going to Britain just for Duxford and their incredible work catalouging. The Churchill tunnels and HMS Belfast are pretty cool too. Highly recommend

He is right that the faces are what truly pops out. I hope the Germans and Russians are featured a good bit. The field grey uniforms and steel helmets.

I don't have high hopes for a lot Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian footage (maybe the Caporetto campagin?), but they are among the combatants who have been a bit lost to history. WW1 footage never really looks real and meaningful but the glimpses I have seen of what Jackson has done just shatter that old notion.

The fall of the Ottoman Empire is something that doesn't get enough attention in history classes considering its ramifications, but the same can be said for all of WW1.

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I dont know if you've read The Guns of August. There is one chapter (Goeben...An Enemy Then Flying), which does not require much context to make sense, that details the saga of these two German cruisers the Goeben and Breslau. Essentially they snuck under the cover of the last moments of German neutrality with the British Empire and got loose in the Mediterranean causing all sorts of problems before being chased into Istanbul. They basically parked outside the Dardanelles demanding shelter from the entirety of the British and French fleet bearing down on them and the Turks, who had to that point been very neutral, eventually gave them safe harbor which essentially put them on the path of aligning with the Central Powers.

Such a great story but you think about the implications of what was a fairly remarkable (the story is unbelievably dramatic) but not what you'd consider a particularly meaningful naval action that has ultimately done more to shape our modern world than almost anything else. Its unbelievable to think how so much of the world is still basically living in the shadow of August 1914.

America is a much better poster when he can stay away from trolling.

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Reading is for fagg0ts

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Being at Verdun on 11/11/2018 is pretty incredible. Verdun was the final death oh the 19th Century.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

South-West Africa, the Germans' booby prize for finishing last in the Scramble for Africa, was a dress rehearsal for what was to come: ethnic demonization leading to eugenics, human experimentation, and systematic genocide. They brought colonial atrocities home.

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I believe the consensus winner in the Nastiest Colonizer category has to be Leopold II's Belgium and their delightful treatment of the Congo. Its a little ironic the role they would assume for the war was angelic doves whose innocence was so important to the British that they actually entered the war because they felt compelled to protect them from the Germans.

Before the Miracle at the Marne the Germans began making their "demands" for a peace known and while they were pretty keen on fucking the French out of their West African holdings (werent interested in Algeria, interestingly) and forcing them to stop teaching French to people in Alsace they were not as harsh on France as you'd have thought. They didnt even want any British colonies. I think they were willing to let Britain slide on the whole thing.

Belgium on the other hand pissed them off seriously. They were just going to flat-out conquer it. Nobody else was as squarely in their sights.

The Germans expected Belgium to let them pass through their territory without a fight. Then there was the entire Rape of Belgium that became international news. It was a national embarrassment, and something the Germans simply did not anticipate.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Didn't the Germans generally pull their punches on the British then because of their German royal family?

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They were all related. All of the royals, yet they could not stop the momentum. The Germans were not kind to their cousin Nicky in Russia, but by that point the Kaiser was not really calling the shots. Attitudes about what to take from the British would have changed by 1918.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

The French Third Republic had no royalty and they were the central figure on the Allied side.

Germany and Britain were on pretty good terms until the Kaiser became enamored with achieving naval parity with the British, which to the Germans credit they came close enough to accomplishing that the British soured entirely on the Germans. Britain has almost always endeavored to not get involved on the continent and Germany has typically not tried to cross paths with British mercantilism. Their broader goals were never really incompatible. There were elements of the British government who panicked about what German hegemony on the continent might mean for Britain, but it was not until the literal days before Britain joined the war that public opinion and government consensus (some of Asquith's cabinet did resign) swayed towards intervention.

Too bad. There is really no doubt that a quick victory by the Germans in 1914 would've been much better for the world.

Maybe, but who knows? What if the next war then occurs when there are multiple nuclear powers?

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Europe lost a lot more than just lives in that war.

I caught a screening in Richmond-upon-Thames last month. The visuals are incredible and some of it left me simply awestruck. To see the war in that way was like seeing it for the first time. The audio is wonderful too.

The narrative is shoddy though, especially if you know the war. And there's just zero attention paid to the French and very little footage of German troops.

It'll be coming to the states and I highly recommend it.

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.