False Memory: what we 'know' about WW1 

In the town adjoining the one I grew up in the 1960s lived an elderly lady who would dress daily in Edwardian/Georgian clothing all original and considering the age of the garments in very good condition. She even had a contemporary shooting stick which she would use at the bus stop. Later in life I learned her fiancé had gone to fight with the East Surrey's and was reported missing KIA. She apparently never gave up hope of his return and stayed stuck in a timewarp and had been living and dressing the same since the great war , I never saw her again after about 1969. It's strange that I often think about her still to this day and wished I had had the courage to speak to her. As kids we found her a bit scary.

A fascinating lecture. The very lazy over simplistic stereotypes used in so many TV and film productions has certainly played a major role in cementing this distorted image of the war. I thought he would mention the real howler in peaky Blinders where one of the main characters discusses the horrors he faced while fighting at...VERDUN!!!!

Summary statement: "The overall result is to reveal a society at war very remote indeed from our own (in its attitudes and structure) on to which we cannot map our own assumptions or even enter into it imaginatively without the greatest difficulty. However hard we may try, whatever we think we remember of WW1, we know it's not what really happened. And recognizing that is at least the first step in the right direction" - Prof Stephen Badsey

i had the pleasure to know a gentleman that fought in ww1 .

arguably one of the best lectures i have ever found on youtube. thanks so much for sharing!

Another British scholar who knows everything about the war but still hasn't learnt to pronounce the German "von"

A powerful challenge to our assumptions of what we know

Too bad the revisionist historians didn't realize that Blackadder was a comedy, spoof, satire...

Le Cateau may have been a tactical defeat for the British, but there are very good arguments to show that it was an operational victory. It enabled the BEF to break clean from the pursuing Germans. Any young Army officer about to undertake his PQS1 examination in the 1980s would tell you that they dreaded the Appreciation being a withdrawal in contact; it is the most difficult of military operations.

Those women who handed out white feathers at the time because they were offended would be the gobby feminist Woke Brigade of today.

Recommend both the 1964 BBC the Great War 26 series and the movie Oh what a lovely War It’s good to hear the historians present different interpretations of history. Remember “what could have happened, did”

Much earlier than now I experience the dark realisation that the Great War took the lives, both directly and indirectly and a consequence of this terrible conflict that was to reshape the world and brought to an end the lives of our five Great Uncles. A heck of a sacrifice made by one family, willingly made, but a sacrifice made anyway.

Excellent speech. His knowledge is broad, he's not trapped by fashion, and he's quite willing to admit that there are questions historian may nver be able to answer. --Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace (his WWI articles in the Illustrated London News)

Preaching to the converted maybe and unlikely to be on TV this is a worthy use of your time to hear and gain better perspectives. Next up read Charleys War...

Cannot recommend "The Deluge" by Adam Tooze enough. Absolutely astoundingly original look into the political and economic setting of the war and its epilogue, with honestly refreshingly little attention paid to the tactical minutae of the conflict.

This is highly interesting! I'm studiying "Empirische Kulturwissenschaft" (empirical cultural studies) at the University of Hamburg, Germany and interested in the german memorizing of the WWI after the War and in special in the period after 2018. In Germany the remembrance is lont 'overwhelmed' by the WWII and his crimes done by the germans. - Thought that the remembrance in GB is done much stronger and common I'm surprised by the popular 'mistakes' (beside or done by, through the media). I was morely convienced that the knowledge is more factuelled in the common mindset? Thanks a lot for the upload!

@19:55 "... England had destroyed a trading rival..." well, there you go, like most problems in the world, all caused by the British monarchy/aristocracy/new-mercantile class... I repeat, every problem extant today, is the fault of the Brits (and the Americans being a deliberate off-shoot of the British, are equally culpable).

I wish this guy who review every war in the last 100 years I feel like he'd be eye opening to a lot of people

I think this topic is almost more relevant towards the second world war than the first. We can easily see how folks make emotional or political arguments and quite successfully obscure historic facts. The first world war is commonly seen as pointless, and many people simply do not care about the politics involved. Compare this to the second world war. Almost nobody would ever say that it was pointless. Every single person you talk to has a hot-blooded political and social opinion about it. Therefore, it follows that obfuscation of facts and general 'cherry picking' would be more common. Indeed, it is. Now don't get me wrong, having the general public understand the first world war accurately IS important. It could prevent another similar, somewhat pointless crisis. But, I'd say having the public understand the second world war is FAR more important. The social ideas and political theories from that era still exist. The violent, exclusive people still think they're right because of nearly a century of false-narratives and lies of omission. What you people do here, dispelling myths and misconceptions, is very useful for world war one history. It's genuinely important for world war two history. If you guys lay the groundwork well, society at large might never repeat our mistakes ever again. I know counter-factuals are impossible to prove.. but if you guys somehow manage to get everyone 'on the same page' about either world war, you might save millions of lives.

My view of the Great War was influenced by a very old newspaper I found in my grandma's trunk in the 1970s. It was some kind of war porn that showcased pictures of carnage, war wounded, etc. My grandpa had fought in the French Army as a Czech deserter, but died before my birth. Grandma refused to discuss anything about the war, or him. So my ideas of the Great War were very distorted until I started reading the various histories available. To say that mu education continues would be an understatement. Which is why I find YT channels like this so very valuable.

well, some soldiers did keep a diary, and some survived the war, I suppose. Not exactly the same as opinion polling dead soldiers, but good enough (though admittedly these are rare type of historical sources) Frenchman Louis Barthas kept a diary and survived rather miraculously WW1

Great lecture twfa, and when you read 'The great war of 189- by colomb you realise how far ahead this war had been planned, a banquet for thought. love to all.

Wonderful lecture.

As Sellar and Yeatmen taught us, history is not about what has happened, but what is memorable about it.

This is a brilliant man doing a superb job.

Excellent lecture!!!!

Why do some lectureres go to such great lengths to be offensive and off-putting right at the beginning of their lectures?

All countries plan for war, but their plans are defensive (mainly how they would defend their territory after the enemy nation invades, but in some cases the plans are for a pre-emptive couner attack).

Maybe I filled my britches maybe I ate a orange. Henry the DogX

Please do multiply the examples of errors, these need to be pointed out and called out over & over again and shamed.

Now that's how to give an entertaining talk!

I was taught by a man who fought in the trenches, he described how the kilt had one great advantage 'going over the top', men tended to empty their bowels. Having recently spent time in Ypres and paying my respects at the Menin Gate and the cemeteries and at Thiepval it is tragic that so many young men from around the world died fighting for such small pieces of ground. Many years ago I visited Verdun and to see the bones lying in the ossuary. I remember when Mitterrant and Kohl held hands at Verdun, this should be mandatory for political leaders.

Authenticity of films only matters as far as the creators imagine it.

Interesting and thoughtful overview.

A very good talk informative and thought-provoking. One thing I would be interested in knowing is why the speaker states that the portrayal of Von Moltke in the excellent series "37 days" is inaccurate - I'd always understood that von Moltke was pretty gung-ho about a war against France/Russia and was always the Kaiser's poodle when major decisions were to be made, and this seems, to me, how he is portrayed. Any ideas?

Would have been much more listenable had not our lecturer felt compelled to wear his weary omniscience so relentlessly on his sleeve.

Nice action.

ha sounds like he is describing brexit

A drama changes details to focus on the greater truths, that is how it is judged. On if it has succeeded in relating those greater truths. At 81 having spken to many vets of the first world war, including Robert Graves, and worked with the Vets of the Second alongside Uncles and Father, I can safely say the kind of horror that seeped from the First did not seep from the Second unless they'd been prisoners of the Japs. This so-called man is just another wretch of a Revisionist. Go. to Robet Graves 'Goodbye to All That.'. Robert suffered twenty years of walking nightmares after the First World War. Elsewhere this wretch talks about Robert and other 'exagerrating' the horrors of the First World War. It was sthe opposite, Robet and others toned dowen their experiences. This man is trying to excuse the muck ups of the past to, he thinks, excuse the muck ups of our present 'Leaders.' That's what all this is about.

Maybe they think Hitler is like Voldemort, he just keeps coming back in a different form every few years

A good speech, and I admire his skepticism, but many if not most of the things he's skeptical about were reported when they happened or shortly thereafter, and this by people who lived through them personally. And not one type or interest group or ideology, but all across the spectrum, ranging from Albert Jay Nock to Fritz Kreisler to George Orwell to Adolf Hitler. So it's a bit extraordinary to think that "false memories" could happen at the very moment of conception, while the events themselves are still going on, then be agreed upon for decades by all those who lived through them, and only refuted by people who weren't even born until half a century afterwards, and only have what's left of the published documentary record to go on. What if - and I know this is a radical thought, threatening to undermine the very bedrock values of our civilization - but what if it's actually the intellectuals who are wrong?

29:56 learn how to pronounce "combatants" properly, fella. You're not a bloody yank.

I love historical corrections of public errors. This was well done in new info and pressing points. i question the excusing of fRance from blame and putting down the complete blame of the austro empire. I question here the turning the great numbers of death on the front as compared to dngers in peaceful coal mines. The front was deadly and death dealing. Numbers matter. This is a error.. Why does 'brit' canadiansv etc come after native India? Ouch. Thanks. the war was evil and worthless. I would not of gone. it was a diminishment of value on human life, or revealing it, and all were too anxious to kill. The public was responsible likewise. They all killed and were killed based on rejection of christian beliefs.

I'm guessing the 'correctly sized' gentleman has his own gravitational field.

Rothschilds. There.

The fight for oil, submarines, the Spanish flu, poisoned gas, machine guns, aerial reconnaissance, the Berlin Baghdad railway, naval superiority, protection of the empire, vengeance, the stab in the back... if it wasn't that this 'historian' had chosen to ignore so many vital topics, that presentation could have been interesting.

Too hard to understand his speech defects. He speaks too fast as running a race. Don’t forget Britain would’ve been toast without American help. British royal line had a lot if German in it.

Seems the WFO is unaware that England was supported on the Western Front by Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians & belatedly, Americans. Perhaps my grandfather killed on 8 August 1917 as part of the AIF near Messines is just a "false memory" too