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World History 6.3: The Course of War 27 Views


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Description:

Things got pretty intense on the Western Front during World War I. Let's just say it was not somewhere you'd want to be.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Did you remember to put your seatbelt in your backpack today because [Man wearing backpack crosses bridge]

00:06

it's a time for a crash course in the history of the Western Front

00:10

we'll keep our day job so in the summer of 1914 the German army whipped out its

00:15

Schlieffen plan and made for France like a bunch of rednecks booking it to [Tanks driving along the beach]

00:19

Walmart on a Saturday night while the Germans managed to reach Frances home

00:23

improvement section they didn't get far enough to take Paris armed with

00:27

brand-new drills the Germans proceeded to engage the French and the British in [Tanks racing on a beach]

00:31

a race to the sea and sadly no this was not a reality TV competition instead the

00:37

German and Franco-British armies kept trying to outflank each other with the

00:41

end result being that no one won anything

00:43

and there were trenches everywhere good thing the Amazing Race has a better [Man appears from a trench]

00:47

grand prize right then came the Battle of Verdun also

00:51

known as those 300 days in 1916 when the French and the Germans went back and

00:56

forth and back and forth and back and forth then there was the Battle of the [Explosions appear in a field]

01:00

Somme which didn't run on for as long as Verdun but did wind up killing more

01:04

than a million people and it saw the British and French go six miles into

01:09

German territory that's right 1 million casualties for 6 miles the

01:14

Germans proceeded to hunker down on the Hindenburg Line a defensive position [Tanks approaching Hindenburg line]

01:18

that they had to hold because well they were all out of soldiers they then had

01:22

to face off against the Allies in Belgium during the summer and fall of

01:25

1917 during the Battle of the 3rd Ypres most of the Allied leadership spent that

01:31

same battle wondering why they were forging ahead against the Germans and

01:34

losing guys left and right when the Americans were due to arrive oh... any day [Soldier running and explosion occurs]

01:39

now finally in October 1917 American soldiers began to fight in World War one

01:46

under the leadership of General Black Jack Pershing knowing that the arrival

01:50

of the American Expeditionary Force on European shores meant the end was near [US Army in formation]

01:54

the Germans fought to move forward along the Western Front during the spring of

01:59

1918 they had men in they had mojo but by April the Germans knew they were [Tanks moving towards Germany]

02:04

kaput World War one finally sputtered to a stop on November 11th 1918 after the

02:10

Allies had pushed along the entire Western Front in the meuse-argonne

02:14

offensive with the Germans in retreat and the Allies through the Hindenburg

02:18

Line both sides sat down and signed the armistice that ended the fighting [Army officials signing the armistice]

02:22

so to summarize the summary there was a lot of back-and-forth in blood and fire

02:27

until the Americans showed up and dropped the mic and then everyone went [US Army celebrating]

02:31

home oh and try not to think about the fact that thousands of soldiers were

02:35

hurt or killed because their generals wouldn't let them stop fighting in the

02:38

hours before the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month we shouldn't have

02:42

mentioned it let's go back to that sweet mic drop yeah there we go... [Soldier drops mic]

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