The Great War (1964) s01e03 Episode Script

1 The lazy sinews of the nations tautened.
The armies were on the move.
Peace exploded into cheers and music.
In August 1914, Europe marched to war with rejoicing.
Tense wires of apprehension snapped.
To those in every nation whose lives had been drab, who had endured discontents, who were restless, disgusted, filled with envy or with high ideals, a cause was now offered, and a duty.
Enthusiasm was reborn.
In valleys green and still Where lovers wander maying They hear from over the hill A music playing.
Behind the drum and fife Past hawthornwood and hollow Through earth and out of life The soldiers follow.
And down the distance they With dying note and swelling Walk the resounding way To the still dwelling.
It was Austria's quarrel but it was Germany's war.
Germany struck first, westward.
At 5am on August 4th, German cavalry crossed the Belgian frontier, their hoofbeats on the cobblestones the signal of catastrophe.
In Berlin, the Kaiser addressed the members of the Reichstag: I have no knowledge any longer of party or creed.
I know only Germans and, in token thereof, I ask all of you to give me your hands.
When the Imperial Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, asked for the unprecedented war credit of £265 million, the Reichstag voted it unanimously.
Bethmann-Hollweg stated Germany's position in the clearest terms: Necessity knows no law.
Anyone who, like ourselves, is struggling for a supreme aim, must think only of how he can hack his way through.
Through international agreements, through the very concept of neutrality, through Belgium.
The invasion of Belgium was demanded by the Schlieffen Plan, the masterplan by which Germany hoped to win the war.
To avoid the French fortress system, the Germans would cross Belgium, pass through Brussels, swing down into France brushing the Channel coast, pass round west of Paris and attack the French armies from behind.
The whole thing was expected to be over in 40 days.
One thing was vital to this plan, and that was speed.
The point of first impact was Liege, blocking the crossings of the River Meuse and all routes to Brussels and the west.
This strongly-defended area had to be seized to open the way for the waiting masses of the German field army, seized quickly and at whatever cost.
Or, alternatively, defended at whatever cost.
General Leman, commanding the garrison of Liege, had been instructed to do just that.
The Belgian army was weak, ill-prepared, conscious that it could not face the power of Germany in the open field, but brave and willing to fight behind the defences which existed or which could be hastily constructed.
They were facing the most powerful military machine in the world.
The army was the embodiment of Germany's soul.
All the hopes and all the pride of this young, expanding, thriving empire found expression in it.
Every young man was liable to serve, and most of them were overjoyed to do so.
When the army marched, all Germany marched too.
In peacetime, it numbered nearly a million conscripts.
Behind them stood over four million trained reserves and a final potential of almost ten million.
The backbone, as everywhere, was the infantry - 78 divisions, drawn from the swelling cities, the famous old towns, the wide and various countryside of the German Empire.
They were mostly peasants, sturdy, patient, brave, dependable and their hard core was 110,000 superbly trained non-commissioned officers.
The cavalry numbered over 100,000.
They were the Kaiser's favourites, Cuirassiers, Dragoons, Uhlans, with flat-topped helmets and fluttering lances.
The Crown Prince's regiment was the Death's Head Hussars.
But it was the German artillery which would shock the world and do the damage.
The field guns were not impressive but behind them were ranged over 3,000 weapons of heavier calibre - 150mm, 210mm, 305s, products of the firm of Krupps.
It was a crushing weight of heavy guns, well supplied with shells, waiting to tear a continent apart.
And yet, for a while, all this might was checked.
Liege proved a tough nut.
The first German assaults were repulsed with heavy losses.
They tried a night attack to avoid the Belgian machine guns.
Slipping through the outer ring of forts, an almost unknown German staff officer, General Ludendorff, made his way to the citadel in the centre of the town itself.
I arrived.
No German soldier was to be seen and the citadel was still in the hands of the enemy.
I banged on the gates, which were locked.
They were opened from the inside.
The few hundred Belgians who were there surrendered at my summons.
CHEERING There was jubilation in Germany.
The Kaiser kissed von Moltke "rapturously".
But the excitement was premature.
General Leman was not in the citadel, but in one of the forts and, under his firm direction, these continued to resist.
The way to Brussels was still blocked.
In the following days, the short pause while Germany's battering train assembled, the nations discerned the countenance of war.
At this stage, many found it pleasing.
The German Crown Prince wrote: The electric spark of the mobilisation decree fired a train of indescribable enthusiasm from Memel to the tiniest hamlet in the southern German mountains.
At that time, the vast majority of the German people regarded the military solution to the increasing political tension as the end of a nightmare.
A French officer was leaving Paris with his regiment for Verdun: A great nation's heart was beating tumultuously as in days long past.
Crowds were gathered at every station.
Behind every barrier and at every window along our road, cries of "Vive la France!" and "Vive l'armee!" could be heard everywhere while people waved handkerchiefs and hats.
The women were throwing kisses and heaped flowers on our convoy.
The young men were shouting, "Au revoir!" "A bientot!" At one grade crossing, a young woman lifted her baby towards us, shouting, "He, too, like you, will go someday and do his duty.
" It must have been like this in 1792.
The soul of France had again attained the height of her greatest period in history.
Saturday, August 1st, was a quiet day for the officer-in-charge at London's chief recruiting office, Great Scotland Yard.
Precisely eight recruits presented themselves to him.
Then came Sunday and August Bank Holiday.
When he returned to his office on August 4th, the crowd awaiting him was so dense that it took him 20 minutes, and the help of 20 policemen to get through to his desk.
And from that moment he worked continuously through the day, attesting men.
When Lord Kitchener's appeal went out for the "First Hundred Thousand", Your King And Country Need YOU, the flow increased all over Britian.
One hundred men an hour, three thousand a day, six thousand over the war's first weekend joined the army.
So many came now, they had to be turned away.
The whole country and the great Dominions of the British Empire with it were swept by the emotion which Rupert Brooke precisely put into words: Now God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour And caught our youth And wakened us from sleeping With hand made sure, clear eye And sharpened power To turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary.
Neither religion nor socialism nor the most pure pacifism was immune from the surge of this worldwide outburst of passion.
Among the cheering London crowds on August 4th was the philosopher Bertrand Russell: I had fondly imagined that wars were forced upon a reluctant population by despotic and Machiavellian governments.
But now I was tortured by patriotism.
I desired the defeat of Germany as much as any retired colonel.
Love of England is very nearly the strongest emotion I possess and, in appearing to set it aside at such a moment, I was making a very difficult renunciation.
The Liberal Manchester Guardian, an important platform for pacifist opinion, said in its editorial on August 5th: England declared war on Germany at 11 o'clock last night.
All controversy is therefore at an end.
Our front is united.
Now there is nothing for Englishmen to do but to stand together and help by every means in their power to the attainment of our common objective - an early and decisive victory over Germany.
It was quickly obvious to thoughtful men that nations in this mood would not easily give up the struggle.
Obstinate Liege was already becoming a symbol.
General Leman was the war's first hero.
The phrase "gallant little Belgium" was born, adding fuel to the emotionalism of the moment.
Behind Liege, the image of a brave king and a resolute people rallying against aggression was firmly planted.
The world applauded a small David who did not fear Goliath.
Yet it was Goliath who won this fight.
The great guns and mortars were brought up against Liege, the Krupp 420s, the Skoda 305s borrowed from Austria.
The Belgian forts were pounded into rubble.
Steel plates were smashed and buckled.
Human flesh was turned to bloody pulp.
General Leman was buried under the wreckage and dug out to find himself a prisoner.
His German captors allowed him to keep his sword.
The war was young enough for such gestures, and the Germans could afford them for, with the fall of Liege, there was nothing to prevent their masses from pouring into Belgium towards Brussels and down the River Meuse.
The Belgian army could not hope to stop them.
It would be up to Belgium's allies.
MUSIC: "La Marseillaise" They too were on the move.
Carefully in step with Germany, the French army mobilised, called in its reservists, issued them with boots and live ammunition, drafted them to divisions, army corps and armies, and massed them behind the frontier.
On foot and by train, horses and men moved to their ordained positions.
A regulation was turning into a catchphrase: Quarante hommes, huit chevaux.
40 men or 8 horses.
Neither men nor horses found it comfortable.
France also had a plan.
Plan 17.
It was as simple as von Schlieffen's but scarcely so promising.
Whatever the circumstances, it is the Commander-in-Chief's intention to advance, all forces united, to the attack of the German armies.
"Whatever the circumstances" the French army would advance.
"Whatever the circumstances" in full strength.
"Whatever the circumstances" through the lost provinces of Lorraine and Alzace towards the Rhein.
There were few who doubted, for the army was France's pride - a firm rock amid the shifting sands of Republican government.
The French infantry were still dressed in the red trousers and the red kepis of 50 years before.
Like the Germans, most of them were peasants, strong and hardy, more enduring than anyone supposed and possessing a quality of Gallic fury which was heightened by their mission - to attack.
Amid the historic costumes of old France, there was a whiff of Africa.
Zouaves and Turcos from Algeria and Morocco, and the famous Foreign Legion.
The cavalry contained Cuirassiers and Dragoons whose dress had scarcely changed since Waterloo, and gay Chasseurs.
All of them were trained and eager to charge with lance and sabre, whatever the circumstances.
With uniforms drawn from history, and ideas drawn from fiction, the French army was completely up-to-date in one respect.
It had the finest field gun in the world, the 75mm, the soixante-quinze, flexible, mobile, able to fire 25 rounds a minute.
Above all, plentiful.
With these plans and with these armaments, Europe's two leading powers collided.
Which would stand the test? While Germany waited for the fall of Liege to open the way for her masses in the north, the French struck in the south, into the green mountains of Alzace.
And France, in her turn, could make a premature jubilee.
Frontier posts were torn down.
Mulhausen once again became Mulhouse.
The Germans counter-attacked and were soon in Mulhausen again.
The French retreated in such a haste that we actually had to run after them.
At first we found heaps of French army blankets which the soldiers had thrown away.
Then we found French greatcoats.
Then we found French knapsacks.
Then we found French bayonets with ammunition pouches full of cartridges.
And finally, in barns hidden, or sitting just on the roadside, the exhausted French soldiers.
So, each side's plan suffered an early jolt.
Each side's pride was shaken.
Each side concealed the fact.
And both populations entered a zone of silence and half-truths in which they would linger for years.
War was all a mystery, laced with speculations, boasts and fears.
What people read in the newspapers only added to the confusion: "Women Against Uhlans.
" "Germans Repulsed By Boiling Water.
" "French Frontier Successes.
" "Enemy's Guns Taken.
" And this was the headline over a short but confident communique from the French Ministry of War.
And from the same souce came army despatches: During the whole of yesterday, August 17th, we made ceaseless progress in Upper Alsace.
The enemy retreated in this neighbourhood in disorder, leaving everywhere his wounded and war material.
Behind this veil of high-sounding phrases, the truth was that the High Commands of both sides had entered a zone of uncertainty, of misty groping.
The test soon became a test of nerves and Germany was at a disadvantage for the man in charge of her vast armies was a man of unsteady nerve.
General von Moltke was a cultured, conscientious, reasonable man but he was also a sick man and an uncertain one.
Now, as the French army made a second advance in Alsace and began an all-out offensive in Lorraine, von Moltke's indecisions grew upon him.
The ambitions of other generals were a complicating factor.
Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, facing the French advance, wanted to counter-attack.
Moltke agreed without demur.
It was his first step towards the abandonment of the Schlieffen Plan.
No such indecision yet possessed the French.
Four years younger than Moltke's 66, the French Commander, General Joseph Jacques Cesaire Joffre, was not in any case a man liable to indecisions.
"It would have been difficult," wrote Sir Winston Churchill, "to find any figure more unlike the British idea of a Frenchman "than this bull-headed, broad-shouldered, slow-thinking, phlegmatic, "bucolic personage.
" There were few questions in the French army during those early August days.
The prophets of the offensive had laid down the doctrine: For the attack, only two things are necessary - to know where the enemy is, and to decide what to do.
What the enemy intends to do is of no importance.
With this assurance, the French spilled out over the fields and hillsides of Lorraine bold, brilliant targets in the sunlight.
At first, all went well.
On August 18th, the day after the last fort at Liege had surrendered, General de Castelnau, commanding the French spearhead, the Second Army, announced to his troops: The enemy is retiring on our front.
He must be pursued with the utmost vigour and rapidity.
I expect corps commanders to instil into their troops the necessary dash.
Full-tilt into Prince Rupprecht's advancing army crashed the French and learned in this first great encounter of the war some terrible truths.
What the enemy intended to do WAS important after all.
At long range the German heavy guns, and at short range the machine guns devoured the gaudy lines of Frenchmen.
"The sense of the tragic futility of it will never quite fade," wrote Sir Edward Spears.
And added that many of these gallant officers thought it chic to die in white gloves.
Nobody could tell exactly what the French losses were, but they were enormous.
"The French Second Army," said Joffre, "came back under conditions which almost resembled a rout.
" The march of the great German right wing was now unfolding.
As the Belgian army retired towards the port of Antwerp, General von Kluck's First Army entered Brussels with all the panoply they could summon, streaming through the city hour after hour - a deliberate display of power to overawe the population.
On Thursday 20th August, the Germans entered Brussels.
It was a marvellous sunny day but, still, I keep the vision of grey, grey all over the town.
They arrived in long, long streams, long, grey streams.
It was a sinister, greenish-grey.
Even the helmets had a grey cover.
They went along in the main street of Brussels with their war equipment, with all their war material, heavy guns, their officers on horseback.
And their music - that music of drum and fife.
And always the same little tune.
At the same time as this demonstration, the German Second Army, which had taken Liege, arrived in front of the fortress of Namur.
The great guns were heard again.
Two things became clear to the French High Command.
The Germans were evidently strong in Belgium, and the frontier fighting proved that they were strong in Lorraine.
Strong on the right, strong on the left.
What of the centre? Surely they could not be strong everywhere? Hopefully, the French struck again in a region where everything favoured concealment, ambush and surprise - the Ardennes.
Once more, the French swept forward.
Once more, their blind rush was abruptly checked.
Machine guns and high-angle artillery fire, to which they had no reply, tore through their ranks.
We were shot down like rabbits.
For them, it was a real target because we had red trousers and they were down in the hole themselves.
Then we had to retreat, of course.
We'd lie down for a certain while, trying to make some holes and after that, when we could do nothing, we had to retreat back.
Once more, the French armies tumbled back in dire disorder.
The dream was wearing thin, reality asserting itself - the reality of the Schlieffen Plan unfolding stage by stage with awful deliberation.
The reality of the great strength of Germany.
Amid the fear and hatred which surrounded the advancing German armies, other truths were also being revealed.
We entered the village, a company of approximately 200 men.
And we were just taking off our knapsacks, and queuing up for the soup kitchen who wanted to give us some food, when a terrific firing started - from all sides we were fired at.
The cook and his mate were killed.
Quite a number of our soldiers were wounded and killed, too.
We stormed into the houses where the firing came from but all we could find were some innocent-looking peasants in blue blouses.
But, when we searched the houses, we found infantry rifles still hot from firing.
Whose rifles were they? Did they belong to the soldiers or to the peasants themselves? No time to find out in hot blood.
Time only for harsh, immediate reprisals - shooting and burning.
Terror soon became a deliberate instrument of war.
A line of smoking ruins lay behind the German advance.
A tide of frightened, desperate people ebbed before it.
The Germans convinced themselves that they were victims of systematic guerilla warfare.
General Ludendorff wrote: For my part, I had taken the field with chivalrous and humane conceptions of warfare.
This guerilla war was bound to disgust any soldier.
My soldierly spirit suffered bitter disillusion.
The bitterness increased.
The rage boiled over.
At Dinant, General von Hausen's Saxons shot over 600 men, women and children, among them a child three weeks old.
A staff officer questioned how this deed would look in history.
Von Hausen said, "We shall write the history ourselves.
" More of it was written at Louvain on August 25th.
On that day began the sack of this ancient Belgian university town.
Louvain Library had been founded in 1426.
Among its 230,000 volumes were 750 medieval manuscripts and over 1,000 of the earliest printed books.
All were reduced to ashes.
A German officer, watching it happen, told an American correspondent: We shall wipe it out.
Not one stone will stand upon another, not one, I tell you! We will teach them to respect Germany.
For generations, people will come here to see what we have done.
The sense of outrage grew on both sides of the line.
Over the neat, brick towns and the clean, white farms of Belgium, the war flowed westward.
The last of the French armies, General Lanrezac's Fifth Army, facing the swinging end of Schlieffen's flail, edged slowly to its left, constantly sensing the pressure of the German right.
As the Fifth Army approached Namur and Charleroi, lining up along the River Sambre, the fighting swelled to a roar all the way down the line into Alsace.
And now another element was coming into play - the British Expeditionary Force.
For once in British history, an army was taking the field with incredible efficiency.
At all the depot towns and barracks, there was tremendous activity.
60% of these men were reservists, summoned back to the colours by telegram, by public notice, even by town crier.
Uniforms and rifles were issued, kits were made up, transport was prepared.
New boots were fitted to feet which had lost the feel of hard army leather.
1,800 special trains carried the British Expeditionary Force to its ports of embarkation.
On one day alone, 80 trains ran into Southampton docks.
MUSIC: "It's A Long Way To Tipperary" SHIP'S HORN BLASTS An average of 50,000 tons of shipping per day, safe and unhindered under the protection of the Royal Navy, carried the Expeditionary Force to France.
Landings began in deep secrecy on August 7th.
The Commander-in-Chief of this army was Field Marshal Sir John French.
Peppery, emotional, a good cavalry tactician but not an intellectual soldier, French's task in those closing days of August was difficult enough to tax a genius.
Sir John French believed that he was about to take part in a vast Allied advance to the Rhein.
Of what had happened to the French or of what the Germans were doing, he knew nothing.
The first thing he had to do was to make contact with the French general on his right, General Lanrezac.
The news had just come in that the German armies.
were making for a place on the Meuse .
.
called Huy, "Hoo-ee", H-U-Y.
It's a very difficult word to pronounce in English.
And French started off gallantly in French, turning to Lanrezac and said, "What do you think Qu'est-ce que vous croyez que "les Allemands vont faire a "What do you think the Germans are going to do at" And then he stuck at H-U-Y.
He just couldn't pronounce Huy.
So, after a moment's hesitation, he said loudly, "Hoi!" "What are the Germans going to do at Hoi?" The Frenchman said, "What's he saying? What's he saying?" And then, very rudely, Lanrezac turned to somebody and said, "Tell the Field Marshal the Germans have come to the Meuse to fish.
" It was a bad beginning.
Worse was to follow.
Each day the RFC flew its reconnaissances.
Some discovered nothing.
But one, scouting over the battlefield of Waterloo, just south of Brussels, was more fortunate.
We found the whole area completely covered with hordes of field-grey uniforms and heavy stuff - transport, guns and what-have-you, coming towards us.
In fact, it looked as though the place was alive with the Germans.
The pilot landed and was rushed off to tell Sir John French what he had seen.
I showed him a map, all marked.
He said, "Have you been over that area?" I said, "Yes, sir!" I explained what I'd seen and they were enormously interested.
Then they began reading the figures that I'd estimated, whereupon I seemed to feel that their interest faded.
They seemed to look at each other and shrug their shoulders.
Then French said to me, "Yes, my boy.
This is terribly interesting "but tell me all about an aeroplane.
"What can you do in these machines? Aren't they dangerous? "Are they very cold? Can you see anything? "What do you do if your engine stops?" All that sort of stuff.
I couldn't bring him back to earth because, obviously, he wasn't interested.
I again tried and he he looked at me and he said, "Yes, this is very interesting, what you've got.
"But, you know, our information - which of course is correct - "proves that you really I don't think you could really have seen as much as you think.
"I quite understand you may imagine you have, but it's not the case.
" But the French on the right knew all about this and were falling back at the very moment when the British believed that they were advancing.
It was a bad moment for Lt Spears who liaised between the two armies.
I knew that the British army was absolutely relying on this advance to complete its own movement.
And the position of the British army was extremely dangerous because we believed that a couple of German army corps were moving, quite unopposed, round the flank of the BEF which was on the extreme left of the whole Allied line.
Well, I a young officer, had come to tell, on my own responsibility, come to tell Sir John French thathe couldn't rely on the French advance.
And, indeed, that if he continued advancing as he was planning to do, it was the destruction of the whole of the British army.
We were walking straight into the mouth of a trap, an enormous trap.
The dream of advancing through Belgium was at an end.
From here onwards, it would be all harsh reality.
The date was August 22nd.
The position which the army reached was the battlefield of Mons.