Yes. It's restored footage from WW1. It was originally black and white and silent. They even brought in professional lip readers to figure out what the people in the footage were saying. It's an amazing documentary, you should really watch it. It was made by Peter Jackson.
Typical British Soldier attitude.. treating Prisoners of war with humanity and respect, despite them being the enemy. Proud I was British Army myself , 2000-2005.
My great grandfathers brother served for one of the Scottish regiments. Not sure yet which one. They told me he was killed by mustard gas.. hope to find out more about him
this is amazing but is it sort of staged for the camera? i thought i heard they would re- do things so they could be filmed? not being critical or anything i hope jus trying to work it out...
Many great people fell between 14 and 18 and between 39 and 45 and respect should always be given to all of our fallen soldiers. A person who was “out there” will not return as the person he “went out there” as. I read some in the comments who laugh - the worst war is the one against the dumbing down of people. Here in my homeland, in my fatherland, as an old soldier, I have to watch my homeland die. I have an indescribable hatred for our occupiers, the Americans, because we are still under American occupation, otherwise we would act completely differently. Our Brigadier General Gerd Schultze Rhonhof wrote the book "The War that Had Many Fathers". Everyone should read this.
There was no finer example of a gentleman than the German soldier. And I say that as a proud Anglo-Saxon who loves the English-speaking peoples more than any other. They had a sense of class, character, and decency in BOTH world wars that went unmatched. Some of European Christendom’s best stock were swept away in that war to make room for the same demographic that continues to stoke hatred and tension amongst the masses.
Brother wars must stop. Once again we've been put to warring with each other (Rus and Ukraine) by "external forces" outside of our own race, the white people.
Part 2: German soldiers thoughts on British soldiers “after I was captured, I saw this tommy on a stretcher. He looked no older than 18….a kid like me. I felt for him. So I helped carry his stretcher. He was a nice boy…..but for some reason he stole my watch. “
when you think about it, all these men bore huge emotional and physical scars (those who made it to the end) all of them had seen their friends die. How do you celebrate? nobody came out unscathed.
In the words of my grandfather who fought from '15 throughout; "I don't give a fig for France or Europe Germans can have it. But we're here now, and can't let them shove us about" he was RFA. Lost finger, part of an ear, the concussion of a shell hitting nearby (which killed 4 of his mates in one go) blew his eye out of its socket (still attached). After the war he worked at the local gas works and had to fib a bit to get in. "Don't mention the war"..not fawlty towers but what they had to endure in the first show. Signs in shop windows 'servicemen need not apply'. Still he smoked like a chimney, drank like a sailor and lived to a ripe old age, seeing me grow a bit before he went and even taught me a bit about gardening which he loved. "Sweet memories of you I'll always keep, God saw you were tired and sent you to sleep". Harold 'Harry' Morgan, an absolute madlad and a best friend to all.
I was about 15 years of age, and I was talking to my grandfather about ww1. I said, " I wish I had been there with them boys". He said, " no you don't". And we didn't say anything else.
My Thomas OC’s, Dylan & Dexter, Claude, and Axel, felt the same too when the war ended. The only thing my OC’s ask themselves now is: “Was it all worth it? Millions died, and it ends so quietly.”
This is proof that the idea that Germans are "evil" was just pushed after ww2. The real evil was the Soviets. The innocent German peope deserve reperations from Russia and there needs to be trials like Nuremberg over Germans being held in gulags until 1956. If you actually look into it the Russians Committed every crime that the Nazis did and more. They have never paid for their mass rape and destruction of Eastern europe and for their enforced communism.
I agree with you in general, but the Germans were portrayed as "evil" in WW1, too. The British spread a lot of propaganda about how the Germans impaled babies and children on bayonets in Belgium in 1914. Obviously untrue, but that didn't matter. There was the story of 'The Crucified Soldier' too, where a Canadian soldier was allegedly crucified by the Germans. There was lots of stuff like that at the time. The Germans did it too. The Germans claimed that the little hole in the magazine cut-off of the SMLE was used to turn regular bullets into "dum-dum" (hollow point) bullets, which are banned by the Geneva Conventions. That's just the nature of government in war. The enemy needs to be "evil". Everything the enemy side does is evil, everything your side does is righteous. The "look, i drew you as the virgin soyjack and drew myself as the chad" has been going on for literal millenia. WW2 is something else entirely though. Never before has a nation been so thoroughly raked over the coals as Germany was after WW2. Even today, Germans are still taught to feel guilty and ashamed about WW2. I wonder if the French were still expected to feel guilty about Napoleon, even 80 years after he was defeated? Of course they weren't. That only applies to 'le evil moustache man'. Hitler the real historical figure and Hitler the pop culture figure are two completely different things. You can say pretty much whatever you want about Hitler and so long as it's sufficiently evil, people will believe you because people are stupid. Hitler and Satan have literally become synonymous in Western culture. Like, Hitler is basically some comically evil psycho in most peoples minds. Did you know that Hitler and the NSDAP were the first country in the world to introduce animal welfare laws? That's true, but people will refuse to believe it because "Hitler and the Nazis were evil and couldn't possibly have ever done anything good. Hitler was evil simply for the sake of being evil." The reality is that Hitler and the NSDAP cared a great deal about animals, nature and the environment, but people's brains cannot even fathom the idea that maybe Hitler and the Nazis weren't actually evil supervillains. It's not their fault though. They can't help it. They've been absolutely hammered with propaganda the likes of which the world has never seen. I can't think of even a single historical figure who is as hated and feared as Hitler, despite the fact that in the grand scheme of things, Hitler really wasn't that bad. Even within just the 20th century there are people who were worse than Hitler, like Stalin who killed 20 million people and Mao Zedong who killed 80 million people, yet people still consider Hitler to be the most evil person to ever exist. Bizarre. Nobody reaches the conclusion that "Hitler is the most evil person to ever exist" all by themselves - it's taught. People have that thought hammered into them from the first day of school. Germans have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of. Thank God the AfD is gaining traction. Hopefully things will turn around in Germany - and hopefully the rest of Europe too. I'd like to see Germans being proud of their country and history, not ashamed of it.
I mean sure the soviets comitted their fair share of war crimes but to say they did it is as bad as the Nazis who held millions in concentration camps and executed millions more is literally nazi propaganda because it's stuff goebbels trumpes up to get the final germans in the volkstrumm riled up. Also there were no soviets in WW1.
I cannot imagine the feeling when they came home and NO ONE cared or wanted to hear what they’d been doing all those years. No gratitude no recognition. Just disinterest and even contempt for the mutilated ones. And Germans, who lost, had it even much much worse, to see their country in disarray. 10 years of suffering, then Wall street crisis and then the corporal with moustache….
I read an article on J. B. Priestley about how he would attend an annual regimental reunion. One year, in The 1930's, fewer attended and he was asking, " Where's so-and-so and so-and-so?" Only to be told they didn't have a decent suit to attend in so wouldn't come. I also downloaded my wife's granddad's army record as he had served and was surprised to find photocopies of letters from him to his old regiment from 1922 saying he didn't want to be a nuisance but when could he expect his service medals? He, like millions of others, had more than earned them. Robin Witting England
Diffrent to my great granfathers experice . They took no prisoners nor did the other side ( stopped after they foud their pals mutilated and no rats or dogs did not do it far too clean and surgical for it to be them ) and one of them nearly ended their own lives when their trench was overun ) No freindly interactions between them apart from a tense meeting with a unit from Bavaria to exchange a few food stuffs . I suppose it depended on where you fought , when you fought and who you thought I guess .
A LOT. Cigarettes/loose tobacco were part of a soldiers ration pack. Aside from bully beef, bread and biscuits, British soldiers would also receive 2oz (56 grams) of a tobacco at least once per week, but probably even more often that. That's actually quite lot. I'm a pretty heavy smoker and it takes me around 5 - 7 days to smoke 50 grams of tobacco. So it's pretty safe to say that WW1 soldiers never went without tobacco, even if they were a heavy smoker (and they probably were). Charity drives to deliver gifts to British soldiers serving on the front were quite common, especially around Christmas. These gifts almost always contained tobacco, sweets, chocolates and maybe even alcohol (rum, whiskey, scotch). Probably the most famous one was Princess Mary's Christmas Fund, which included cigarettes, rolling tobacco and a Christmas card from Princess Mary all contained a nice, sturdy metal tin. Obviously the cigarettes and tobacco were very highly appreciated, but the metal tin itself also came to be highly appreciated because it proved useful for keeping things dry and safe (i.e. loose tobacco, cigarettes, matches, photographs, letters, etc) in the wet and dirty conditions of the trenches. Another famous one was the Rowntrees of York Christmas gift which contained chocolates and also came in a metal tin. Once again the metal tin continued to be used long after all the chocolates had already been eaten. British soldiers received almost 3 times more tobacco in their ration packs than the French, but French soldiers recieved something that British soldiers did not: wine. French soldiers received 250ml of wine starting in 1914, gradually increasing to 500ml in 1916 and finally increasing to 750ml in 1917. Basically, the British had an abundance of cigarettes and a lack of wine m while the French had an abundance of wine and a constant shortage of tobacco. So, both British and French soldiers would frequently trade with each other; tobacco in exchange for wine and vice versa. Sorry if you found that boring lmao, I just love talking about WW1. Oh, bonus fact: packs of cigarettes were also parts of US Military ration packs up until like the 1970s or 1980s. During WW1, WW2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, a US soldier would expect to find a pack of 20 cigarettes in his daily ration pack. Apparently, cigarettes were the weakness of the US Army/Marines in Vietnam because the NVA/Viet-Cong were able to track the movements of American soldiers/Marines just by following the trail of cigarettes butts they'd left behind them lmao.
I wonder what their view of the British was? Actually, I wonder is there a German version of this film? My grandfather was a POW in WWI, and he never even told his kids, nevermind described the experience.
The man talking about how the ordinary German soldiers were “a barber or a shop keeper or something, they were just like us” sums up how pointless the whole thing was. A very young man from a small rural German village sent to war to fight a very young man from a small rural British village.
imagine going through 4 years of hell, seing countless of your bretheren die, just to make the realization that the war is over....no more....thr nightmare had ended
It's weird I moved to a town where I didn't know anyone and struggled to make friends, until one day I met a German backpacker and we instantly became friends, he stayed at my house and everything. In the years that I lived in that small town that was the only friend I made!
As an amatuer historian with a particular interest in the Great War, I badly need to watch this documentary in its entirety. Just seeing the humanity of this clip is wonderful, especially for how brutal of a war this was. Also has anyone seen my pocket watch?😂
Never was there, in the history of warfare, a more senseless war than WWI. It started senselessly and ended as senselessly as it started, which is why the sons of those veterans of "The War To End All Wars" would be fighting one another just a couple of decades later. Utterly pointless which is the most tragic aspect of the whole damned thing.
