The First World War (2003) s01e03 Episode Script
Part 3
NARRATOR: From the start of the First World War, Germany seized on Britain's greatest weakness: a vast empire, hard to defend, fatal to lose.
The gamble was that Britain might risk everything to protect it even victory on the Western Front.
War for Europe meant war for the world.
It was Germany's idea to take the war beyond Europe, but it wasn't a bid for expansion, let alone world domination.
The aim was to take the pressure off her armies in Europe by attacking the British Empire, hoping to divert Britain's troops, ships and resources to defend distant colonies.
Britain also had no thought of a bigger empire.
She just didn't want to lose the one she had.
So while Germany wanted to open the war up around the globe, Britain was desperate to close it down.
Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, realised the Empire was Britain's Achilles heel, and warned against letting Germany use it to distract Britain from her war effort.
Forces must not be diverted to minor operations to the prejudice of the concentration in the main theatre and the safety of the trade routes 15 years before, Germany had proclaimed herself an empire-builder.
The Kaiser had taken his country into the 20th century as a German admiral creating a global German Navy.
Weltpolitik was the big idea; a policy of overseas imperialism the brainchild of his Foreign Secretary Bernhard von Bulow.
The days when the Germans left the earth to one neighbour the sea to another and kept only the heavens for themselves are over We don't want to put anyone in the shade but we too demand our place in the sun Germany had come late to the game of empires, but by 1900, she had Togoland, Cameroon, German South West Africa, now Namibia, and German East Africa, now Tanzania.
Her flag flew over patches in the Pacific: New Guinea, Samoa and Micronesia.
She had a vital toehold in China at Tsingtao, where she re-coaled her ships, and brewed beer.
Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz saw this as just the start.
We are now standing only at the beginning of a new division of the globe Germany alarmed the world with her imperial tub-thumping.
She eyed up Puerto Rico and considered pouncing on the Panama Canal the minute it was completed.
But the boldest of all the Kaiser's schemes was Operational Plan lll.
The East Coast is the heart of the United States and this is where she is most vulnerable New York will panic at the prospect of bombardment By hitting her here we can force America to negotiate Germany's secret plans from 1903: to attack the Eastern seaboard with 60 ships and 100,000 men, to shell Manhattan and capture Boston.
The outlandish scheme was driven by the Kaiser's resentment of America's growing power in the Pacific.
He believed in a militarist state, and increasingly hated what the West stood for.
Service to mammon greed self indulgence land-grabbing lying treachery and not last murder The Kaiser thought capitalism was vulnerable, that a strong enough attack on its international systems of trade, credit and insurance, could bring the edifice tumbling down.
Operational Plan lll was dropped, but not the hostility towards capitalist empires.
By 1912, Germany had traded in Weltpolitik for a more realistic policy.
Now her military machine prepared for a European, not a global war, and the Army got the budget increase, not the Navy.
The first day of war found Germany's High Seas Fleet trapped by the mighty British Navy in the North Sea.
And all the German Navy had to threaten the entire British Empire, was a scattered force of 17 cruisers, linked by a wireless network to Berlin .
(Radio signals) There was the KÃnigsberg off East Africa, the GÃben and the Breslau in the Mediterranean, the Dresden and Karlsruhe in the West Indies, the Leipzig off the west coast of America.
But the greatest concentration of cruisers, was Admiral Graf von Spee's powerful East Asiatic Squadron, based at Tsingtao in China.
Tsingtao gave Germany a huge area of operations, across the South China Sea and into the Pacific.
Seizing it would cut the squadron's lifeline.
Britain saw the urgency but lacked the resources.
So, two days into the war, she turned to her ally Japan.
Japan was a growing power.
Britain's call for naval help suited her ambitions perfectly.
Together, Britain and Japan would capture Tsingtao vital German base, and the Kaiser's pride and joy.
It would shame me more to surrender Tsingtao to the Japanese than Berlin to the Russians On 2 September 1914, 60,000 Japanese troops landed up the coast, violating China's neutrality.
They met up with 2,000 British, and closed in on the German garrison of 4,500.
It's unbearable All we can do is sit and wait for this bunch of monkeys to arrive Every day they get a bit closer No-one expects to get home in one piece No hope of reinforcements The noose around our necks is getting tighter and tighter (Artillery fire) For a solid week, the Japanese battered Tsingtao.
On 7 November, they entered the town in triumph.
Some Germans sneered at the token British force for getting the Japanese to do their dirty work.
The brave British! They played no part in the capture of Tsingtao but they joined in the victory parade As they went by we Germans were ordered to turn our backs on them The English complained to the Japanese commander but he simply said ''Well we can't repeat the whole procession just because of that'' The capture of Tsingtao gave Japan a launch pad to pursue her empire building.
Within weeks, she demanded territory and trading rights from China.
Japan also seized all German possessions north of the equator.
Australia and New Zealand were quick to steal those to the south.
Much to America's frustration, Britain had empowered Japan in the Pacific, key stage in a process that would lead, a quarter of a century later, to Pearl Harbor.
Germany's loss of Tsingtao, far from neutralising Spee's squadron, ensured its destructive power would be felt around the globe.
The best German cruiser commanders, like Spee, were fearless mavericks whom the war turned into heroes.
Superb sailors with the instincts of pirates.
The Kaiser had given them full authority to make their own decisions in wartime.
The heavy responsibility of the officer in command will be increased by the isolated position of his ship but he must never show one moment of weakness Above all the officer must bear in mind that his chief duty is to damage the enemy as severely as possible Spee now split his squadron.
The light cruiser Emden, under Captain Karl von Muller, made for the Bay of Bengal.
Spee, in the Scharnhorst, led his other ships across the Pacific.
I am quite homeless I cannot reach Germany I must plough the seas of the world doing as much mischief as I can At the Admiralty in London, Winston Churchill fretted about where Spee would show up next.
The vastness of the Pacific and its multitude of islands offered him their shelter and once he had vanihed who should say where he would reappear? He was a cut flower in a vase fair to see yet bound to die But so long as he lived all our enterprises lay under the shadow of a serious potential danger Spee had a constant worry.
Cruisers needed coal every eight or nine days or they'd be dead in the water.
He made for neutral Chile where he had coal waiting for him.
On 1 November 1914, he ran into a British fleet off Coronel.
The battle which followed inspired a post-war feature film.
The British commander was Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, under orders from London.
It appears that Gneienau and Scharnhorst are working across to South America Be prepared to meet them in company Cradock had one ship that could outgun Spee's fleet, but she was slow and had been left behind.
Now Cradock raced towards enemy ships better armed than his.
He had ignored his own rule of thumb.
A naval officer should never let his boat go faster than his brain I immediately ordered Scharnhorst and Gneienau to go full steam ahead and within 15 minutes I was racing against heavy seas at 20 knots and came to lie parallel with him Cradock's ships were no match for Spee's.
Good Hope and Monmouth were obviously in distress Monmouth yawed off to starboard burning furiously There was a terribl explosion on Good Hope between her main mast and her after funnel The gust of flames reached a height of over 200 feet lighting up a cloud of debris that was flung still higher in the air 1,600 British sailors were lost.
It was Britain's worst naval defeat for 250 years.
The global war was going Germany's way.
It is only when you get to see and realise what India is that she is the strength and the greatness of England it is only then that you feel that every nerve a man may strain every energy he may put forward cannot be devoted to a noble purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves Britain's empire and trading network was the single biggest resource she brought to the war.
And India was at the heart of it.
The cords were never tighter.
All the more reason for Germany to want them cut.
These slender lines on the map were now the focus of intense study, in the British and German admiralties, in the chart rooms of warships.
Fingers traced the vital shipping lanes: through the Suez Canal, around South Africa's Cape.
Minds pondered how to protect them, how to sever them.
And one of the sharpest minds was on the bridge of the German cruiser Emden.
A month after she left Admiral Spee's squadron, Captain Karl von Muller steered her into the Bay of Bengal.
In 1932, the Germans made a feature film about his odyssey.
He had an indescribable power over the entire crew He never gave orders he just expressed a wish From the moment he took command of the ship he never left the bridge again This is where he stood slept sat studied the maps This is where he wanted to be stand or fall The Emden sometimes rigged a dummy funnel to look like a British cruiser.
A large steamer appeared dead ahead and thinking we were an English man-of-war was so overjoyed at our presence that she hoisted a huge Britih flag I'd like to have seen the look on her captain's face when we hoisted our flag and invited him most graciously to tarry with us awhile Captain Muller became famous for taking all crew and passengers safely onto the Emden before sinking their ship.
We always allowed them time to collect and take with them their personal possessions They usually devoted most of this time to making certain that their precious supply of whisky was not wasted on the fishes Muller regularly released his grateful captives.
Such was the Emden's impact that the British Admiralty later drew up this chart to track her movements.
Muller even had the audacity to steam into the Indian port of Madras, as a crew member recorded in his diary.
22 September 1914 9:30pm The Emden sneaks closer then fires 125 shots Some hit boats in the harbour Huge columns of fire rise above the oil tanks The coastal defences open fire but they all fall short 23 September We are now 100 miles away We can still see the fires at Madras In the City of London, freight rates and shipping insurance rocketed.
At one point, the entire British trade fleet in the Bay of Bengal was kept in harbour rather than fall prey to dashing Captain Muller.
Germany's rogue cruisers were starting to harm Britain's war effort.
Three transports are delayed in Calcutta through fear of Emden This involves delaying transport of artillery and cavalry The Cabinet took a strong view The extirpation of these pests is a most important subject While the Emden ran the British ragged at one end of the Indian Ocean, 25 Royal Navy warships hunted the cruiser KÃnigsberg at the other, off the coast of Germany's East African colony.
She had raided Zanzibar and sunk a British light cruiser from her secret hideout in the Rufiji Delta.
The frustrated British decided to strangle all her possible bases, starting with the port of Tanga.
On 2 November 1914, the British steamed into this bay.
In the global war, imperial powers got others to do their fighting.
Most of the British troops were Indian.
Their arrival was closely watched by Thomas Plantan, a 16-year-old African fighting for the Germans.
The approaching Britih ships had all their lights blazing and seemed to be making no attempt to conceal their presence We were in position with machine guns waiting in ambush for them and many of them were killed when they started to come ashore A lot of them were killed before they even got out of the water (Machine-gun fire) Thomas Plantan was one of 2,500 men under German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.
The British thought taking Tanga would be a pushover, but they reckoned without Lettow.
He was a professional Prussian soldier, hard as nails, charismatic.
Von Lettow was a remarkable soldier but stubborn and single-minded to a degree I have fortunately never experienced before His most remarkable quality was the reckless energy with which he pursued his goal This was often covered up by his persuasive charm which he could switch on if he wanted to.
On the ship to Africa, von Lettow had met Karen Blixen, who would later write Out Of Africa.
He clearly turned the charm on for her.
A German officer von Lettow who belongs to a very old Mechlenburger family has been such a friend to me You should hear how they talk about him out here as the greatest genius of the age Despite losing men during the landing, the British now threatened Tanga.
Governor Schnee ordered Lettow to evacuate the town rather than see it destroyed, but Lettow had come to Africa to fight.
It was crucial to prevent the enemy from gaining a foothold in Tanga thus giving him a base from which to advance north I coulnd't let the Governor's order to spare Tanga take precedence over this priority Lettow recced the British positions himself, on his bicycle.
He also called in reinforcements.
Three companies of German troops came by rail to Tanga.
Here, on 4 November 1914, they met the British Indian soldiers - raw and poorly trained.
British intelligence officer Richard Meinertzhagen watched the ensuing rout.
Half the 13th Rajputs turned at once broke into a rabble and bolted I could not believe my eyes They were all jabbering like terrified monkeys and were clearly not for it at any price Everyone in the dense forest friend and foe was mixed up together shouting in all sorts of languages The enemy ran off in wild disorder and our machine guns mowed down whole companies to the last man (Machine-gun fire) Von Lettow was based here, at the German hospital.
After two days of heavy fighting, the British sent Richard Meinertzhagen to negotiate a surrender.
The Germans were kindness itself and gave me a most excellent breakfast which I sorely needed We dicussed the fight freely as though it had been a football match It seemed so odd that I should be having a meal today with people whom I was trying to kill yesterday It seemed so wrong and made me wonder whether this really was war or whether we'd all made a ghastly mitake The German officers were all hard-looking keen and fit They treated this war as some new form of sport The British failed to take Tanga and suffered 700 casualties.
Lettow lost just 65.
Germany hailed him as a hero.
A German David is fighting alone against the Britih Goliath in Africa If we cannot fight by his side at last we must make sure that he is well supplied with shot for his sling But the British blockade of Germany prevented reinforcements reaching Lettow.
Further east, across the Indian Ocean, Muller was still causing havoc.
He'd sunk two warships and captured 23 merchant ships.
On 9 November 1914, the Emden anchored at the Cocos Islands to destroy the British wireless station.
But the radio operator spotted the Emden's bogus fourth funnel, and put out a call for help.
The Australian cruiser Sydney picked up the message and ended the Emden's maverick career.
Captain Muller was taken prisoner.
He and the other survivors were well looked after.
Dear loved ones I'm well and healthy The Britih were very friendly They took loads of photos of us and asked for our addresses to send us the snaps Yours Walter Now Admiral Graf von Spee's luck also ran out.
Britain took the risk of detaching two of her latest battle cruisers from the crucial North Sea blockade of Germany to deal with him.
On 8 December 1914, German commander Hans Pochhammer sighted their huge masts as they re-coaled in Port Stanley on the Falkland lslands.
He realised the Germans were out-gunned and out-paced.
We choked a little at the neck our throats contracted and stiffened for that meant a life-and-death grapple or rather a fight ending in honourable death The German fleet tried to get away, but the British battle cruisers were too fast.
At 1:25pm, Spee turned to face them.
But the British were careful to stay out of range of his guns, firing their own from 16,000 yards.
Lieutenant Harry Bennett on HMS Canopus watched what happened and painted these watercolours.
At 4:17pm, the Scharnhorst went down with Admiral von Spee and all hands.
At 6:02pm, the Gneisenau sank with most of its crew, including Spee's younger son Heinrich.
His other son Otto was on the doomed Nurnberg.
The sight was one of fearful awe She turned over and sank with a graceful gliding motion as would a tumbler pressed over in a bowl of water Those who went down in her were game to the end For we saw a party of her men standing on the quarterdeck waving the German ensign as she sank and so they went down into their watery grave The Battle of the Falklands heralded the end of Germany's cruiser campaign.
Her global war would increasingly have to be fought on land.
Again, her commanders would stretch slim resources to lead the British Empire a dance.
The Suez Canal presented a rare opportunity for Germany to harass the British Empire a crucial British sea lane vulnerable to attack by land forces.
But Germany couldn't spare any men from the Western Front, so Berlin turned to Ottoman Turkey, her ally since November 1914.
The Turkish 4th Army was stationed in Palestine, just 150 miles from the Suez Canal.
The Turks agreed to help capture Suez, assigning these 19,000 troops.
They saw it as the first stage in their own re-conquest of Egypt and Libya.
We marched at night and only by moonlight My heart was filld with a deep melancholy mingled with great hope of success at the sound of the song The Red Flag Flies Over Cairo to the accompaniment of which the advancing battalions forged ahead over the endlss waste of desert feebly illuminated by the pale gleam of the waxing moon The Turks had to transport howitzers, floating pontoons, food and water across the Sinai Desert and didn't lose a single man.
In the early hours of 3 February 1915, they reached the Suez Canal.
The German colonel who had planned the operation now watched it go horribly wrong.
A sentry noticed our attack and fired The shots created panic The English then blasted the banks with machine-gun fire (Machine-gun fire) The Turks found the Canal defended by nine British warships and 30,000 Indian troops, dug in to defensive positions.
The Ottoman troops suffered 1,200 casualties.
The survivors retreated across the desert.
The attack had failed, but Africa was now a battleground in Germany's global war.
She had three bases of operations: the Cameroons, German East Africa, where Lettow was still at large, and German South West Africa, with its ports and wireless stations.
Luckily for Britain , she had a colony right next door.
Unluckily, it was the one whose loyalty she could least rely on.
The Union of South Africa was racially diverse: Blacks, Boers and British settlers.
Just 15 years before, Britain had fought a long, bloody war against the Boers.
Many still had little love for Britain.
Their loyalty could not be counted on.
As one commander told South Africa's prime minister, Louis Botha: My men are ready Whom do we fight the English or the Germans? But South Africa was ideally situated to launch an attack on German South West Africa.
British Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt took the gamble.
If your ministers desire and feel themselves able to seize such part of German South West Africa as will give them the command of the wirelss stations there we should feel this was a great and urgent Imperial service South Africa's government readily agreed, because it had mini-imperial ambitions of its own.
It wanted to seize German South West for itself.
On 14 September 1914, South African forces crossed the Orange River into German South West.
But the Germans were one jump ahead, as the South Africans found out when they paused at the watering hole of Sandfontein.
(Machine-gun fire) (Artillery fire) The South Africans were beaten.
But there was worse to come Part of South Africa now rose up in armed rebellion.
Commanding the forces in the Northern Cape was Manie Maritz.
Fearless and uncompromising, Maritz had fought a vicious guerrilla campaign against Britain in the Boer War.
His sympathies lay entirely with Germany.
I received a telegram ordering me to take a large commando into German South West Africa I was determined not to fight on behalf of the Britih Empire and my officers and troops were in full accord with me In October 1914, Manie Maritz crossed the Orange River to German territory at Schuit Drift to enlist German support.
Two days later, Maritz addressed his troops under this tree.
Now men we don't want to be ruled by the Jews and the financiers of England General Beyers General De Wet and myself have decided to form an independent South African Republic and have entered into an agreement with the Governor of German South West Africa They will provide us with arms and ammunition guns On this step depends the freedom of the masses of the country Britain's request for help had brought her dominion to the brink of civil war.
In London, the Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt feared the break-up of the Union of South Africa.
He secretly ordered 30,000 Australian soldiers diverted to the Cape to smother the rebellion.
Safety of the Union is first and paramount consideration We attach no importance to German South West Africa in comparion The Australians weren't needed.
In the winter of 1914, the loyal South Africans defeated the Boer rebels.
This is rare film of 50 of them being led to trial in Cape Town .
But they never caught Manie Maritz.
By July 1915, South Africa cornered the Germans, forced their surrender and annexed their colony.
And Britain had more work for South Africa north this time, to deal once and for all with von Lettow.
London turned to South Africa's Defence Minister to lead the campaign, Jannie Smuts.
Smuts too had fought in the Boer War, but was now passionately pro-British.
More a statesman than a soldier, Smuts made an indifferent general of conventional forces.
And he was up against Lettow.
British officer Richard Meinertzhagen was now Smuts's intelligence officer.
Smuts is quite determined to avoid a stand-up fight He told me he could not afford to go back to South Africa with the nickname Butcher Smuts If von Lettow is clever and Smuts not clever enough there is going to be trouble Lettow was clever Here at his headquarters at Moshi railway station, he thought through the idea of depriving Britain of manpower in Europe, by opening up the war in Africa.
The question was could we with our small forces prevent considerable numbers of the enemy from intervening in Europe or inflict substantial damage on their armaments and troops? I strongly believed that we could By August 1916, Lettow had become expert at his cat-and-mouse game.
Von Lettow is slippery and is not going to be caught by manoeuvre He knows the country better than we do I think we are in for an expensive hide-and-seek and von Lettow will still be cuckooing somewhere in tropical Africa when the cease-fire goes Smuts has cost Britain many hundreds of lives and many millions of pounds Lettow ran his force of up to 15,000 soldiers, mostly Black, on scrounging and improvisation.
No supplies from Germany reached him after March 1916, but he made a little go a long way, as Ludwig Deppe, one of his medical officers, noted.
When there was no ammunition Lettow would try to produce his own cartridges If the men asked the commander for weapons or clothes they were told ''Take it from the enemy'' Lettow made war at cost-price You'd have been justified in displaying this war at a country fair with a for-sale sign ''Cheapest war in the world'' Jannie Smuts had five times Lettow's force and resources to match.
But the further he went into German East Africa, the more stretched his supply lines.
And he reckoned without the killer tsetse fly.
The life expectancy for his 50,000 horses was just four weeks.
Torrential rain, mud, dust and boiling heat further slowed his progress.
Intelligence was sketchy, maps inadequate.
Telephone cable often had to be raised to eight metres to avoid damage by giraffes.
This is like warfare of bygone days We come along where no road had ever been where probably White man had never trod before The river is in flood and we can't get across On the other side the German patrol are watching us but the crocodile hold the peace between us very successfully Lettow played with Smuts, refusing to fight, slipping away, luring him deeper into Africa.
As they went, they spread the war's grief and destruction, dragging in more and more of the people of Africa.
This war was being carried on the backs of Black Africans.
For the Lettow campaign alone, the British recruited over a million Black porters.
One in five died, from malnutrition and disease death rates comparable with those on the Western Front.
They endured their ordeal quietly They only had duties and hardly any rights They tumbled into the splashing mud with their heavy loads and were then ruthlessly forced to move on and catch up ''Oh the Lindi Road was dusty And the Lindi Road was long But the chap what did the hardest graft who could not do but wrong Was the Kavirondo porter with his Kavirondo song It was 'Come here porter'! And Omera didn't grumble he simply did his bit'' What Smuts saves on the battlfield he loses in hospital for it is Africa and the climate we are really fighting not the Germans Out of 20,000 South Africans, over half were invalided home by the beginning of 1917.
They were replaced by Black troops from Nigeria and Ghana.
Recruitment of Blacks soared in East Africa as well.
Over the course of the war, the King's African Rifles rose from 3,000 men to 35,000.
Fololiyani Longwe spoke for many Black soldiers.
Think of yourself buried in a hole with only your head and hands outside holding a gun death smelling all over the place Listen to the sound of exploding bombs and machine guns smoke all over and the vegetation burnt and of course deforested Watch your relatives getting killed crying finally dead These things we did experienced and saw Lettow survived undefeated to the very end, marching triumphantly through Berlin in 1919.
The British never caught him, even though they turned it into an African war and set an army on his tail.
But Britain and France had such reserves of manpower in their colonies that from 1914, they shipped them to Europe.
Remarkable French colour photographs of the world that came to serve on the Western Front.
French General Charles Mangin had calculated that France could raise up to 300,000 from her empire for Europe.
No-one believed him.
But, in fact, they mobilised double that number.
MANGIN : Black troops have precisely those qualities which are demanded in the long struggles of modern war endurance tenacity the instinct for combat the absence of nervousness and an incomparable power of shock Not only do they enjoy danger a life of adventure but they are also essentially dicisplinable People started hiding and running away from the camp There were all kinds of illnesses even psychological illness People didn't know where they were going or even why they were fighting There were rumours that we would never come back that we are going to be sold as slaves India provided Britain with 1 3/4 million men in the war.
They had been thrown into some of the toughest fighting from the start.
One Indian wrote to a friend: The war is a calamity on three worlds and has caused me to cross the seas and live here The cold is so great that it cannot be described We have not seen the sun for four months Thus we are sacrificed I have neither slep by night nor ease by day There can never have been such a war before nor will there ever be again Some men like Jason Jingo, used to the habitual racism of colonial rule, returned home with greater self-esteem.
We had liked or time in France It was our first experience of living in a society without a colour bar We were different from the other people at home Our behaviour as we showed the South Africans was something more than they'd expected from a native We had copied the manners and customs of the Europeans and not only copied, we lived them But it wasn't the same Africa Jason Jingo and the other survivors came back to after the war.
The empires which once carved it up had now turned parts of it into a wasteland, as German medic Ludwig Deppe realised.
Behind us we leave destroyed fields and for the immediate future starvation We are no longer the agents of civiliation Our path is marked by death plundering and deserted villages It would be years before African nationalism took off, but a few had begun the journey.
In 1914, John Chilembwe challenged the basis of the war and Africa's place in it.
And his words would haunt colonial officials for years to come.
Let the rich mean bankers, titled men storekeepers, farmers and landlords go to war and get shot Instead the poor Africans who have nothing to own in this present world who in death leave only a long line of widows and orphans in utter want and dire distress are invited to die for a cause which is not theirs Germany had fought a remarkable global war.
But it cost her her cruisers, her wireless network, and all her colonies.
Yet Germany had forced Britain and France to call on their empires and lean on their allies.
In the process, these flexed their muscles and formed empires of their own.
The First World War saw the last scramble for Africa.
And the ideas the Kaiser had so hated land-grabbing, avarice and capitalism had in fact been spread wider.
For the moment, imperialism looked more successful than it had ever been.
In the next episode of the First World War: the call goes out for jihad, holy war, in the Middle East, the nightmare of Gallipoli and the agony of the Armenian people.
The gamble was that Britain might risk everything to protect it even victory on the Western Front.
War for Europe meant war for the world.
It was Germany's idea to take the war beyond Europe, but it wasn't a bid for expansion, let alone world domination.
The aim was to take the pressure off her armies in Europe by attacking the British Empire, hoping to divert Britain's troops, ships and resources to defend distant colonies.
Britain also had no thought of a bigger empire.
She just didn't want to lose the one she had.
So while Germany wanted to open the war up around the globe, Britain was desperate to close it down.
Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, realised the Empire was Britain's Achilles heel, and warned against letting Germany use it to distract Britain from her war effort.
Forces must not be diverted to minor operations to the prejudice of the concentration in the main theatre and the safety of the trade routes 15 years before, Germany had proclaimed herself an empire-builder.
The Kaiser had taken his country into the 20th century as a German admiral creating a global German Navy.
Weltpolitik was the big idea; a policy of overseas imperialism the brainchild of his Foreign Secretary Bernhard von Bulow.
The days when the Germans left the earth to one neighbour the sea to another and kept only the heavens for themselves are over We don't want to put anyone in the shade but we too demand our place in the sun Germany had come late to the game of empires, but by 1900, she had Togoland, Cameroon, German South West Africa, now Namibia, and German East Africa, now Tanzania.
Her flag flew over patches in the Pacific: New Guinea, Samoa and Micronesia.
She had a vital toehold in China at Tsingtao, where she re-coaled her ships, and brewed beer.
Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz saw this as just the start.
We are now standing only at the beginning of a new division of the globe Germany alarmed the world with her imperial tub-thumping.
She eyed up Puerto Rico and considered pouncing on the Panama Canal the minute it was completed.
But the boldest of all the Kaiser's schemes was Operational Plan lll.
The East Coast is the heart of the United States and this is where she is most vulnerable New York will panic at the prospect of bombardment By hitting her here we can force America to negotiate Germany's secret plans from 1903: to attack the Eastern seaboard with 60 ships and 100,000 men, to shell Manhattan and capture Boston.
The outlandish scheme was driven by the Kaiser's resentment of America's growing power in the Pacific.
He believed in a militarist state, and increasingly hated what the West stood for.
Service to mammon greed self indulgence land-grabbing lying treachery and not last murder The Kaiser thought capitalism was vulnerable, that a strong enough attack on its international systems of trade, credit and insurance, could bring the edifice tumbling down.
Operational Plan lll was dropped, but not the hostility towards capitalist empires.
By 1912, Germany had traded in Weltpolitik for a more realistic policy.
Now her military machine prepared for a European, not a global war, and the Army got the budget increase, not the Navy.
The first day of war found Germany's High Seas Fleet trapped by the mighty British Navy in the North Sea.
And all the German Navy had to threaten the entire British Empire, was a scattered force of 17 cruisers, linked by a wireless network to Berlin .
(Radio signals) There was the KÃnigsberg off East Africa, the GÃben and the Breslau in the Mediterranean, the Dresden and Karlsruhe in the West Indies, the Leipzig off the west coast of America.
But the greatest concentration of cruisers, was Admiral Graf von Spee's powerful East Asiatic Squadron, based at Tsingtao in China.
Tsingtao gave Germany a huge area of operations, across the South China Sea and into the Pacific.
Seizing it would cut the squadron's lifeline.
Britain saw the urgency but lacked the resources.
So, two days into the war, she turned to her ally Japan.
Japan was a growing power.
Britain's call for naval help suited her ambitions perfectly.
Together, Britain and Japan would capture Tsingtao vital German base, and the Kaiser's pride and joy.
It would shame me more to surrender Tsingtao to the Japanese than Berlin to the Russians On 2 September 1914, 60,000 Japanese troops landed up the coast, violating China's neutrality.
They met up with 2,000 British, and closed in on the German garrison of 4,500.
It's unbearable All we can do is sit and wait for this bunch of monkeys to arrive Every day they get a bit closer No-one expects to get home in one piece No hope of reinforcements The noose around our necks is getting tighter and tighter (Artillery fire) For a solid week, the Japanese battered Tsingtao.
On 7 November, they entered the town in triumph.
Some Germans sneered at the token British force for getting the Japanese to do their dirty work.
The brave British! They played no part in the capture of Tsingtao but they joined in the victory parade As they went by we Germans were ordered to turn our backs on them The English complained to the Japanese commander but he simply said ''Well we can't repeat the whole procession just because of that'' The capture of Tsingtao gave Japan a launch pad to pursue her empire building.
Within weeks, she demanded territory and trading rights from China.
Japan also seized all German possessions north of the equator.
Australia and New Zealand were quick to steal those to the south.
Much to America's frustration, Britain had empowered Japan in the Pacific, key stage in a process that would lead, a quarter of a century later, to Pearl Harbor.
Germany's loss of Tsingtao, far from neutralising Spee's squadron, ensured its destructive power would be felt around the globe.
The best German cruiser commanders, like Spee, were fearless mavericks whom the war turned into heroes.
Superb sailors with the instincts of pirates.
The Kaiser had given them full authority to make their own decisions in wartime.
The heavy responsibility of the officer in command will be increased by the isolated position of his ship but he must never show one moment of weakness Above all the officer must bear in mind that his chief duty is to damage the enemy as severely as possible Spee now split his squadron.
The light cruiser Emden, under Captain Karl von Muller, made for the Bay of Bengal.
Spee, in the Scharnhorst, led his other ships across the Pacific.
I am quite homeless I cannot reach Germany I must plough the seas of the world doing as much mischief as I can At the Admiralty in London, Winston Churchill fretted about where Spee would show up next.
The vastness of the Pacific and its multitude of islands offered him their shelter and once he had vanihed who should say where he would reappear? He was a cut flower in a vase fair to see yet bound to die But so long as he lived all our enterprises lay under the shadow of a serious potential danger Spee had a constant worry.
Cruisers needed coal every eight or nine days or they'd be dead in the water.
He made for neutral Chile where he had coal waiting for him.
On 1 November 1914, he ran into a British fleet off Coronel.
The battle which followed inspired a post-war feature film.
The British commander was Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, under orders from London.
It appears that Gneienau and Scharnhorst are working across to South America Be prepared to meet them in company Cradock had one ship that could outgun Spee's fleet, but she was slow and had been left behind.
Now Cradock raced towards enemy ships better armed than his.
He had ignored his own rule of thumb.
A naval officer should never let his boat go faster than his brain I immediately ordered Scharnhorst and Gneienau to go full steam ahead and within 15 minutes I was racing against heavy seas at 20 knots and came to lie parallel with him Cradock's ships were no match for Spee's.
Good Hope and Monmouth were obviously in distress Monmouth yawed off to starboard burning furiously There was a terribl explosion on Good Hope between her main mast and her after funnel The gust of flames reached a height of over 200 feet lighting up a cloud of debris that was flung still higher in the air 1,600 British sailors were lost.
It was Britain's worst naval defeat for 250 years.
The global war was going Germany's way.
It is only when you get to see and realise what India is that she is the strength and the greatness of England it is only then that you feel that every nerve a man may strain every energy he may put forward cannot be devoted to a noble purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves Britain's empire and trading network was the single biggest resource she brought to the war.
And India was at the heart of it.
The cords were never tighter.
All the more reason for Germany to want them cut.
These slender lines on the map were now the focus of intense study, in the British and German admiralties, in the chart rooms of warships.
Fingers traced the vital shipping lanes: through the Suez Canal, around South Africa's Cape.
Minds pondered how to protect them, how to sever them.
And one of the sharpest minds was on the bridge of the German cruiser Emden.
A month after she left Admiral Spee's squadron, Captain Karl von Muller steered her into the Bay of Bengal.
In 1932, the Germans made a feature film about his odyssey.
He had an indescribable power over the entire crew He never gave orders he just expressed a wish From the moment he took command of the ship he never left the bridge again This is where he stood slept sat studied the maps This is where he wanted to be stand or fall The Emden sometimes rigged a dummy funnel to look like a British cruiser.
A large steamer appeared dead ahead and thinking we were an English man-of-war was so overjoyed at our presence that she hoisted a huge Britih flag I'd like to have seen the look on her captain's face when we hoisted our flag and invited him most graciously to tarry with us awhile Captain Muller became famous for taking all crew and passengers safely onto the Emden before sinking their ship.
We always allowed them time to collect and take with them their personal possessions They usually devoted most of this time to making certain that their precious supply of whisky was not wasted on the fishes Muller regularly released his grateful captives.
Such was the Emden's impact that the British Admiralty later drew up this chart to track her movements.
Muller even had the audacity to steam into the Indian port of Madras, as a crew member recorded in his diary.
22 September 1914 9:30pm The Emden sneaks closer then fires 125 shots Some hit boats in the harbour Huge columns of fire rise above the oil tanks The coastal defences open fire but they all fall short 23 September We are now 100 miles away We can still see the fires at Madras In the City of London, freight rates and shipping insurance rocketed.
At one point, the entire British trade fleet in the Bay of Bengal was kept in harbour rather than fall prey to dashing Captain Muller.
Germany's rogue cruisers were starting to harm Britain's war effort.
Three transports are delayed in Calcutta through fear of Emden This involves delaying transport of artillery and cavalry The Cabinet took a strong view The extirpation of these pests is a most important subject While the Emden ran the British ragged at one end of the Indian Ocean, 25 Royal Navy warships hunted the cruiser KÃnigsberg at the other, off the coast of Germany's East African colony.
She had raided Zanzibar and sunk a British light cruiser from her secret hideout in the Rufiji Delta.
The frustrated British decided to strangle all her possible bases, starting with the port of Tanga.
On 2 November 1914, the British steamed into this bay.
In the global war, imperial powers got others to do their fighting.
Most of the British troops were Indian.
Their arrival was closely watched by Thomas Plantan, a 16-year-old African fighting for the Germans.
The approaching Britih ships had all their lights blazing and seemed to be making no attempt to conceal their presence We were in position with machine guns waiting in ambush for them and many of them were killed when they started to come ashore A lot of them were killed before they even got out of the water (Machine-gun fire) Thomas Plantan was one of 2,500 men under German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.
The British thought taking Tanga would be a pushover, but they reckoned without Lettow.
He was a professional Prussian soldier, hard as nails, charismatic.
Von Lettow was a remarkable soldier but stubborn and single-minded to a degree I have fortunately never experienced before His most remarkable quality was the reckless energy with which he pursued his goal This was often covered up by his persuasive charm which he could switch on if he wanted to.
On the ship to Africa, von Lettow had met Karen Blixen, who would later write Out Of Africa.
He clearly turned the charm on for her.
A German officer von Lettow who belongs to a very old Mechlenburger family has been such a friend to me You should hear how they talk about him out here as the greatest genius of the age Despite losing men during the landing, the British now threatened Tanga.
Governor Schnee ordered Lettow to evacuate the town rather than see it destroyed, but Lettow had come to Africa to fight.
It was crucial to prevent the enemy from gaining a foothold in Tanga thus giving him a base from which to advance north I coulnd't let the Governor's order to spare Tanga take precedence over this priority Lettow recced the British positions himself, on his bicycle.
He also called in reinforcements.
Three companies of German troops came by rail to Tanga.
Here, on 4 November 1914, they met the British Indian soldiers - raw and poorly trained.
British intelligence officer Richard Meinertzhagen watched the ensuing rout.
Half the 13th Rajputs turned at once broke into a rabble and bolted I could not believe my eyes They were all jabbering like terrified monkeys and were clearly not for it at any price Everyone in the dense forest friend and foe was mixed up together shouting in all sorts of languages The enemy ran off in wild disorder and our machine guns mowed down whole companies to the last man (Machine-gun fire) Von Lettow was based here, at the German hospital.
After two days of heavy fighting, the British sent Richard Meinertzhagen to negotiate a surrender.
The Germans were kindness itself and gave me a most excellent breakfast which I sorely needed We dicussed the fight freely as though it had been a football match It seemed so odd that I should be having a meal today with people whom I was trying to kill yesterday It seemed so wrong and made me wonder whether this really was war or whether we'd all made a ghastly mitake The German officers were all hard-looking keen and fit They treated this war as some new form of sport The British failed to take Tanga and suffered 700 casualties.
Lettow lost just 65.
Germany hailed him as a hero.
A German David is fighting alone against the Britih Goliath in Africa If we cannot fight by his side at last we must make sure that he is well supplied with shot for his sling But the British blockade of Germany prevented reinforcements reaching Lettow.
Further east, across the Indian Ocean, Muller was still causing havoc.
He'd sunk two warships and captured 23 merchant ships.
On 9 November 1914, the Emden anchored at the Cocos Islands to destroy the British wireless station.
But the radio operator spotted the Emden's bogus fourth funnel, and put out a call for help.
The Australian cruiser Sydney picked up the message and ended the Emden's maverick career.
Captain Muller was taken prisoner.
He and the other survivors were well looked after.
Dear loved ones I'm well and healthy The Britih were very friendly They took loads of photos of us and asked for our addresses to send us the snaps Yours Walter Now Admiral Graf von Spee's luck also ran out.
Britain took the risk of detaching two of her latest battle cruisers from the crucial North Sea blockade of Germany to deal with him.
On 8 December 1914, German commander Hans Pochhammer sighted their huge masts as they re-coaled in Port Stanley on the Falkland lslands.
He realised the Germans were out-gunned and out-paced.
We choked a little at the neck our throats contracted and stiffened for that meant a life-and-death grapple or rather a fight ending in honourable death The German fleet tried to get away, but the British battle cruisers were too fast.
At 1:25pm, Spee turned to face them.
But the British were careful to stay out of range of his guns, firing their own from 16,000 yards.
Lieutenant Harry Bennett on HMS Canopus watched what happened and painted these watercolours.
At 4:17pm, the Scharnhorst went down with Admiral von Spee and all hands.
At 6:02pm, the Gneisenau sank with most of its crew, including Spee's younger son Heinrich.
His other son Otto was on the doomed Nurnberg.
The sight was one of fearful awe She turned over and sank with a graceful gliding motion as would a tumbler pressed over in a bowl of water Those who went down in her were game to the end For we saw a party of her men standing on the quarterdeck waving the German ensign as she sank and so they went down into their watery grave The Battle of the Falklands heralded the end of Germany's cruiser campaign.
Her global war would increasingly have to be fought on land.
Again, her commanders would stretch slim resources to lead the British Empire a dance.
The Suez Canal presented a rare opportunity for Germany to harass the British Empire a crucial British sea lane vulnerable to attack by land forces.
But Germany couldn't spare any men from the Western Front, so Berlin turned to Ottoman Turkey, her ally since November 1914.
The Turkish 4th Army was stationed in Palestine, just 150 miles from the Suez Canal.
The Turks agreed to help capture Suez, assigning these 19,000 troops.
They saw it as the first stage in their own re-conquest of Egypt and Libya.
We marched at night and only by moonlight My heart was filld with a deep melancholy mingled with great hope of success at the sound of the song The Red Flag Flies Over Cairo to the accompaniment of which the advancing battalions forged ahead over the endlss waste of desert feebly illuminated by the pale gleam of the waxing moon The Turks had to transport howitzers, floating pontoons, food and water across the Sinai Desert and didn't lose a single man.
In the early hours of 3 February 1915, they reached the Suez Canal.
The German colonel who had planned the operation now watched it go horribly wrong.
A sentry noticed our attack and fired The shots created panic The English then blasted the banks with machine-gun fire (Machine-gun fire) The Turks found the Canal defended by nine British warships and 30,000 Indian troops, dug in to defensive positions.
The Ottoman troops suffered 1,200 casualties.
The survivors retreated across the desert.
The attack had failed, but Africa was now a battleground in Germany's global war.
She had three bases of operations: the Cameroons, German East Africa, where Lettow was still at large, and German South West Africa, with its ports and wireless stations.
Luckily for Britain , she had a colony right next door.
Unluckily, it was the one whose loyalty she could least rely on.
The Union of South Africa was racially diverse: Blacks, Boers and British settlers.
Just 15 years before, Britain had fought a long, bloody war against the Boers.
Many still had little love for Britain.
Their loyalty could not be counted on.
As one commander told South Africa's prime minister, Louis Botha: My men are ready Whom do we fight the English or the Germans? But South Africa was ideally situated to launch an attack on German South West Africa.
British Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt took the gamble.
If your ministers desire and feel themselves able to seize such part of German South West Africa as will give them the command of the wirelss stations there we should feel this was a great and urgent Imperial service South Africa's government readily agreed, because it had mini-imperial ambitions of its own.
It wanted to seize German South West for itself.
On 14 September 1914, South African forces crossed the Orange River into German South West.
But the Germans were one jump ahead, as the South Africans found out when they paused at the watering hole of Sandfontein.
(Machine-gun fire) (Artillery fire) The South Africans were beaten.
But there was worse to come Part of South Africa now rose up in armed rebellion.
Commanding the forces in the Northern Cape was Manie Maritz.
Fearless and uncompromising, Maritz had fought a vicious guerrilla campaign against Britain in the Boer War.
His sympathies lay entirely with Germany.
I received a telegram ordering me to take a large commando into German South West Africa I was determined not to fight on behalf of the Britih Empire and my officers and troops were in full accord with me In October 1914, Manie Maritz crossed the Orange River to German territory at Schuit Drift to enlist German support.
Two days later, Maritz addressed his troops under this tree.
Now men we don't want to be ruled by the Jews and the financiers of England General Beyers General De Wet and myself have decided to form an independent South African Republic and have entered into an agreement with the Governor of German South West Africa They will provide us with arms and ammunition guns On this step depends the freedom of the masses of the country Britain's request for help had brought her dominion to the brink of civil war.
In London, the Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt feared the break-up of the Union of South Africa.
He secretly ordered 30,000 Australian soldiers diverted to the Cape to smother the rebellion.
Safety of the Union is first and paramount consideration We attach no importance to German South West Africa in comparion The Australians weren't needed.
In the winter of 1914, the loyal South Africans defeated the Boer rebels.
This is rare film of 50 of them being led to trial in Cape Town .
But they never caught Manie Maritz.
By July 1915, South Africa cornered the Germans, forced their surrender and annexed their colony.
And Britain had more work for South Africa north this time, to deal once and for all with von Lettow.
London turned to South Africa's Defence Minister to lead the campaign, Jannie Smuts.
Smuts too had fought in the Boer War, but was now passionately pro-British.
More a statesman than a soldier, Smuts made an indifferent general of conventional forces.
And he was up against Lettow.
British officer Richard Meinertzhagen was now Smuts's intelligence officer.
Smuts is quite determined to avoid a stand-up fight He told me he could not afford to go back to South Africa with the nickname Butcher Smuts If von Lettow is clever and Smuts not clever enough there is going to be trouble Lettow was clever Here at his headquarters at Moshi railway station, he thought through the idea of depriving Britain of manpower in Europe, by opening up the war in Africa.
The question was could we with our small forces prevent considerable numbers of the enemy from intervening in Europe or inflict substantial damage on their armaments and troops? I strongly believed that we could By August 1916, Lettow had become expert at his cat-and-mouse game.
Von Lettow is slippery and is not going to be caught by manoeuvre He knows the country better than we do I think we are in for an expensive hide-and-seek and von Lettow will still be cuckooing somewhere in tropical Africa when the cease-fire goes Smuts has cost Britain many hundreds of lives and many millions of pounds Lettow ran his force of up to 15,000 soldiers, mostly Black, on scrounging and improvisation.
No supplies from Germany reached him after March 1916, but he made a little go a long way, as Ludwig Deppe, one of his medical officers, noted.
When there was no ammunition Lettow would try to produce his own cartridges If the men asked the commander for weapons or clothes they were told ''Take it from the enemy'' Lettow made war at cost-price You'd have been justified in displaying this war at a country fair with a for-sale sign ''Cheapest war in the world'' Jannie Smuts had five times Lettow's force and resources to match.
But the further he went into German East Africa, the more stretched his supply lines.
And he reckoned without the killer tsetse fly.
The life expectancy for his 50,000 horses was just four weeks.
Torrential rain, mud, dust and boiling heat further slowed his progress.
Intelligence was sketchy, maps inadequate.
Telephone cable often had to be raised to eight metres to avoid damage by giraffes.
This is like warfare of bygone days We come along where no road had ever been where probably White man had never trod before The river is in flood and we can't get across On the other side the German patrol are watching us but the crocodile hold the peace between us very successfully Lettow played with Smuts, refusing to fight, slipping away, luring him deeper into Africa.
As they went, they spread the war's grief and destruction, dragging in more and more of the people of Africa.
This war was being carried on the backs of Black Africans.
For the Lettow campaign alone, the British recruited over a million Black porters.
One in five died, from malnutrition and disease death rates comparable with those on the Western Front.
They endured their ordeal quietly They only had duties and hardly any rights They tumbled into the splashing mud with their heavy loads and were then ruthlessly forced to move on and catch up ''Oh the Lindi Road was dusty And the Lindi Road was long But the chap what did the hardest graft who could not do but wrong Was the Kavirondo porter with his Kavirondo song It was 'Come here porter'! And Omera didn't grumble he simply did his bit'' What Smuts saves on the battlfield he loses in hospital for it is Africa and the climate we are really fighting not the Germans Out of 20,000 South Africans, over half were invalided home by the beginning of 1917.
They were replaced by Black troops from Nigeria and Ghana.
Recruitment of Blacks soared in East Africa as well.
Over the course of the war, the King's African Rifles rose from 3,000 men to 35,000.
Fololiyani Longwe spoke for many Black soldiers.
Think of yourself buried in a hole with only your head and hands outside holding a gun death smelling all over the place Listen to the sound of exploding bombs and machine guns smoke all over and the vegetation burnt and of course deforested Watch your relatives getting killed crying finally dead These things we did experienced and saw Lettow survived undefeated to the very end, marching triumphantly through Berlin in 1919.
The British never caught him, even though they turned it into an African war and set an army on his tail.
But Britain and France had such reserves of manpower in their colonies that from 1914, they shipped them to Europe.
Remarkable French colour photographs of the world that came to serve on the Western Front.
French General Charles Mangin had calculated that France could raise up to 300,000 from her empire for Europe.
No-one believed him.
But, in fact, they mobilised double that number.
MANGIN : Black troops have precisely those qualities which are demanded in the long struggles of modern war endurance tenacity the instinct for combat the absence of nervousness and an incomparable power of shock Not only do they enjoy danger a life of adventure but they are also essentially dicisplinable People started hiding and running away from the camp There were all kinds of illnesses even psychological illness People didn't know where they were going or even why they were fighting There were rumours that we would never come back that we are going to be sold as slaves India provided Britain with 1 3/4 million men in the war.
They had been thrown into some of the toughest fighting from the start.
One Indian wrote to a friend: The war is a calamity on three worlds and has caused me to cross the seas and live here The cold is so great that it cannot be described We have not seen the sun for four months Thus we are sacrificed I have neither slep by night nor ease by day There can never have been such a war before nor will there ever be again Some men like Jason Jingo, used to the habitual racism of colonial rule, returned home with greater self-esteem.
We had liked or time in France It was our first experience of living in a society without a colour bar We were different from the other people at home Our behaviour as we showed the South Africans was something more than they'd expected from a native We had copied the manners and customs of the Europeans and not only copied, we lived them But it wasn't the same Africa Jason Jingo and the other survivors came back to after the war.
The empires which once carved it up had now turned parts of it into a wasteland, as German medic Ludwig Deppe realised.
Behind us we leave destroyed fields and for the immediate future starvation We are no longer the agents of civiliation Our path is marked by death plundering and deserted villages It would be years before African nationalism took off, but a few had begun the journey.
In 1914, John Chilembwe challenged the basis of the war and Africa's place in it.
And his words would haunt colonial officials for years to come.
Let the rich mean bankers, titled men storekeepers, farmers and landlords go to war and get shot Instead the poor Africans who have nothing to own in this present world who in death leave only a long line of widows and orphans in utter want and dire distress are invited to die for a cause which is not theirs Germany had fought a remarkable global war.
But it cost her her cruisers, her wireless network, and all her colonies.
Yet Germany had forced Britain and France to call on their empires and lean on their allies.
In the process, these flexed their muscles and formed empires of their own.
The First World War saw the last scramble for Africa.
And the ideas the Kaiser had so hated land-grabbing, avarice and capitalism had in fact been spread wider.
For the moment, imperialism looked more successful than it had ever been.
In the next episode of the First World War: the call goes out for jihad, holy war, in the Middle East, the nightmare of Gallipoli and the agony of the Armenian people.