0:00:55 > 0:00:59Tonight are going to talk about the Great War for Civilisation.
0:00:59 > 0:01:00That's what my grandfather
0:01:00 > 0:01:05John Ferguson's Victory Medal called the First World War.
0:01:05 > 0:01:09He earned it as a teenager in the Ypres Salient,
0:01:09 > 0:01:12serving as a Private in the Seaforth Highlanders.
0:01:12 > 0:01:14John Ferguson was one of the lucky ones who came back
0:01:14 > 0:01:16more or less in one piece.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19One in four Scottish soldiers didn't return.
0:01:19 > 0:01:23The First World War was Britain's deadliest war.
0:01:23 > 0:01:26It killed two and a half times more servicemen
0:01:26 > 0:01:28than the Second World War.
0:01:28 > 0:01:30And I suppose it was trying to understand this
0:01:30 > 0:01:35national catastrophe that first got me interested in history.
0:01:35 > 0:01:38After a hundred years of research and debate,
0:01:38 > 0:01:40there are still those who lay the blame for the war
0:01:40 > 0:01:43on dastardly German plans for world domination
0:01:43 > 0:01:47and lament the end of a golden era of peace and prosperity.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50But I'm going to show you that the British government
0:01:50 > 0:01:54bore a heavy share of the responsibility for turning an act
0:01:54 > 0:01:57of state-sponsored terrorism in the Balkans
0:01:57 > 0:02:00into a global bloodbath.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03I also want to persuade you that, considering the horrendous
0:02:03 > 0:02:06consequences of the First World War,
0:02:06 > 0:02:08Britain's decision for war was a disaster
0:02:08 > 0:02:13not just for this country, but also for the entire world.
0:02:13 > 0:02:14Now, to debate the causes,
0:02:14 > 0:02:17course and consequences of the First World War,
0:02:17 > 0:02:19I'm joined by a distinguished panel of experts
0:02:19 > 0:02:23and an audience that includes students of the war.
0:02:23 > 0:02:25First, I'm going to make my case
0:02:25 > 0:02:28that the war was a horrendous mistake,
0:02:28 > 0:02:30and then we're going to have what I can guarantee
0:02:30 > 0:02:32will be a very lively debate.
0:02:32 > 0:02:36Now, to understand the full disastrous significance
0:02:36 > 0:02:38of the First World War,
0:02:38 > 0:02:41you need to appreciate that before 1914
0:02:41 > 0:02:44the world had been moving in quite a good direction.
0:02:44 > 0:02:47That only becomes clear, however,
0:02:47 > 0:02:50when you put the war in a long-term perspective.
0:02:53 > 0:02:57At the beginning of human history, life was unspeakably violent.
0:02:58 > 0:03:03An astonishing one in six skulls exhumed in Scandinavia
0:03:03 > 0:03:08from the late Stone Age had nasty head injuries like this.
0:03:11 > 0:03:14As the 17th-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes
0:03:14 > 0:03:18famously remarked, "Life before civilisation was solitary,
0:03:18 > 0:03:22"poor, nasty, brutish and short."
0:03:22 > 0:03:25So much of human history is the history of violence.
0:03:31 > 0:03:35Even the most ancient civilisations were astonishingly bloodthirsty.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46In medieval Europe as in ancient Rome, torture was routine.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49Criminals were hanged or at least mutilated,
0:03:49 > 0:03:52and heretics, religious dissidents,
0:03:52 > 0:03:55were burnt at the stake or broken on a wheel.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05War was frequent, at times even incessant.
0:04:05 > 0:04:09The Crusaders killed up to a million Muslims and Jews.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13The Spanish Inquisition claimed another 350,000 lives.
0:04:13 > 0:04:16The English fought the French for a hundred years,
0:04:16 > 0:04:20when they weren't fighting the Scots, the Irish and one another.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24Even the 17th century, the era of the scientific revolution,
0:04:24 > 0:04:26saw the Thirty Years' War,
0:04:26 > 0:04:28which killed at least three million people.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35Yet the long-run tendency was for violence to diminish.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39There was the most amazing decline in the European murder rate
0:04:39 > 0:04:42beginning around the 14th or 15th centuries,
0:04:42 > 0:04:44as the multiple feudal territories
0:04:44 > 0:04:48were consolidated into just a few kingdoms.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51Then, in the 18th-century, men grew still less violent,
0:04:51 > 0:04:55the Enlightenment teaching them to empathise with one another,
0:04:55 > 0:04:57to imagine themselves as the victims of violence.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02True, men were murdering one another less, but they were still engaging
0:05:02 > 0:05:06in the most organised form of violence, namely war.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09Britain was at war for all but 12 years of the 18th century.
0:05:09 > 0:05:12The American War of Independence, for example,
0:05:12 > 0:05:14or the French Revolutionary wars.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20Nevertheless, the Duke of Wellington's decisive victory
0:05:20 > 0:05:22over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo
0:05:22 > 0:05:25appeared to usher in a new era.
0:05:25 > 0:05:26Aside from the Crimean War,
0:05:26 > 0:05:29Britain fought no European war for a century.
0:05:32 > 0:05:34Of course, there were plenty of colonial conflicts
0:05:34 > 0:05:38and wars of unification, not to mention the American Civil War.
0:05:38 > 0:05:40Still, by the late 19th-century,
0:05:40 > 0:05:45contemporaries felt the trend was away from conflict towards commerce.
0:05:45 > 0:05:48Inventions like Marconi's wireless were integrating the world economy
0:05:48 > 0:05:50as never before.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55And this first age of globalisation seemed to imply a new era of peace
0:05:55 > 0:05:58based on economic self-interest.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09Liberals like Norman Angell argue that war was now inconceivable,
0:06:09 > 0:06:11because even the victors stood to lose more
0:06:11 > 0:06:13than they could possibly gain.
0:06:13 > 0:06:18It was a view later satirised by the playwright JB Priestley
0:06:18 > 0:06:21in An Inspector Calls.
0:06:21 > 0:06:25War? Fiddlesticks! The Germans don't want war. Nobody wants war.
0:06:25 > 0:06:26There's too much at stake these days.
0:06:27 > 0:06:30And just in case the audience missed the irony,
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Priestley has the same character say, "The Titanic?
0:06:34 > 0:06:36"Unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable."
0:06:40 > 0:06:43In 1914, it was peace that hit an iceberg.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51Hopes that war had become a great illusion
0:06:51 > 0:06:54were shattered by four and a quarter years of global war.
0:06:56 > 0:07:01A staggering 65 million people from around 20 different countries
0:07:01 > 0:07:03were mobilised to fight.
0:07:07 > 0:07:09There were around ten million military deaths
0:07:09 > 0:07:13and about the same number of premature civilian fatalities.
0:07:17 > 0:07:19The technologies that had made possible
0:07:19 > 0:07:23the Industrial Revolution and the first age of globalisation...
0:07:24 > 0:07:28..were now harnessed to the work of destruction,
0:07:28 > 0:07:31of industrialised slaughter.
0:07:35 > 0:07:39This wasn't war as the European powers had known it in the past.
0:07:41 > 0:07:44It was far more destructive than any previous conflict.
0:07:48 > 0:07:51Armies were bigger, weapons more powerful.
0:07:56 > 0:08:00This war, to say nothing of the even larger conflict
0:08:00 > 0:08:02that contemporaries began to anticipate
0:08:02 > 0:08:06the moment they started talking about a First World War, shattered
0:08:06 > 0:08:11the hope that the human race was getting steadily more peace-loving.
0:08:15 > 0:08:19The First World War killed more than 10% of all men
0:08:19 > 0:08:23aged between 15 and 49 in at least seven countries...
0:08:25 > 0:08:27..including my own, Scotland.
0:08:33 > 0:08:37Moreover, the war ended with a lethal influenza pandemic,
0:08:37 > 0:08:41which spread as massive armies moved across oceans and continents.
0:08:41 > 0:08:45The flu alone killed an estimated 40 million people.
0:08:48 > 0:08:51Between 1914 and 1918,
0:08:51 > 0:08:56it seemed as if the civilising process had come to an abrupt halt.
0:09:00 > 0:09:02And even gone into reverse.
0:09:03 > 0:09:05But how?
0:09:05 > 0:09:06And why?
0:09:09 > 0:09:12So, what caused this huge historical U-turn
0:09:12 > 0:09:15that we call the First World War?
0:09:15 > 0:09:20We know, or we think we know, where and when it began.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40On June 28th - everyone, I think, knows this -
0:09:40 > 0:09:41the Archduke Franz Ferdinand
0:09:41 > 0:09:44visited the town of Sarajevo in Bosnia.
0:09:44 > 0:09:45Bosnia is...
0:09:45 > 0:09:50That was my hero, the great AJP Taylor, lecturing about
0:09:50 > 0:09:54the causes of the First World War here on the BBC nearly 40 years ago.
0:09:54 > 0:09:58That lecture is a wonderful example of the way my profession works.
0:09:58 > 0:10:02Not long after any big crisis happens, the historians
0:10:02 > 0:10:06arrive on the scene ready to piece together retrospectively
0:10:06 > 0:10:09the chain of causation that led to disaster,
0:10:09 > 0:10:11tracing the origins of the First World War
0:10:11 > 0:10:12back from the assassination
0:10:12 > 0:10:14of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne
0:10:14 > 0:10:16to the Austrian annexation of Bosnia
0:10:16 > 0:10:21and then back even further to whatever it was that caused that.
0:10:21 > 0:10:25Actually, most people were completely blindsided by the war
0:10:25 > 0:10:26when it broke out.
0:10:26 > 0:10:28Probably the best informed people in the world,
0:10:28 > 0:10:31who were the bankers of the City of London,
0:10:31 > 0:10:33were paying much more attention
0:10:33 > 0:10:36to the danger of a civil war in Ireland.
0:10:36 > 0:10:39So how could a single assassination
0:10:39 > 0:10:42have such world-shaking consequences?
0:10:42 > 0:10:44After all, assassinations were pretty regular occurrences
0:10:44 > 0:10:46in those days.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49Why did the great powers of Europe line up in the way that they did
0:10:49 > 0:10:52with Britain, France and Russia on one side
0:10:52 > 0:10:56and Germany, Austria and Turkey on the other?
0:10:56 > 0:11:00Because of alliances to which they'd all committed themselves?
0:11:00 > 0:11:03Because of the logic of their generals' war plans?
0:11:03 > 0:11:09Because of militarism, imperialism, nationalism or some other "ism"?
0:11:09 > 0:11:11Or was it just that one of the great powers,
0:11:11 > 0:11:15the German Reich, seized the pretext provided by yet another
0:11:15 > 0:11:20Balkan crisis to launch a war of conquest?
0:11:20 > 0:11:21In recent years,
0:11:21 > 0:11:26the younger generation of German historians have come more and more
0:11:26 > 0:11:32to the belief that the Imperial German government
0:11:32 > 0:11:36was actually a driving force for war
0:11:36 > 0:11:39and that the war of...
0:11:39 > 0:11:43which broke out in August 1914, far from being a war of accident,
0:11:43 > 0:11:46was a war of design
0:11:46 > 0:11:49as one of them said "long prepared for".
0:11:50 > 0:11:52Well, the German historians,
0:11:52 > 0:11:56led by Fritz Fischer argued that there was indeed a German bid for
0:11:56 > 0:11:59continental if not world domination
0:11:59 > 0:12:02dating back to 1912 if not earlier.
0:12:02 > 0:12:05Elsewhere, Taylor argued that an arms race,
0:12:05 > 0:12:08and, in particular, the war plans of the great powers,
0:12:08 > 0:12:11created a kind of unstoppable war by timetable.
0:12:11 > 0:12:16But, once again, it was the German plan, the Schlieffen Plan,
0:12:16 > 0:12:18that bore the brunt of the blame.
0:12:18 > 0:12:22And yet there really is no iron law of history stating that all
0:12:22 > 0:12:25arms races must end in war.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28After all, the Cold War nuclear arms race didn't.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32And what about the three "isms" - imperialism, militarism
0:12:32 > 0:12:33and nationalism?
0:12:33 > 0:12:37A pretty important part of the case against Germany is the idea
0:12:37 > 0:12:39that these "isms"
0:12:39 > 0:12:43were somehow more widespread in Germany than elsewhere.
0:12:43 > 0:12:44But were they?
0:12:48 > 0:12:50MILITARY BAND MUSIC
0:12:50 > 0:12:54All Quiet On The Western Front is the most famous anti-war book
0:12:54 > 0:12:55and film of all time.
0:12:55 > 0:12:59It won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1931.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03The elderly teacher Professor Kantorek
0:13:03 > 0:13:06personifies prewar nationalism and militarism.
0:13:08 > 0:13:10It's Kantorek's jingoistic ranting
0:13:10 > 0:13:14that inspires his pupils to flock to enlist.
0:13:14 > 0:13:19But now, our country calls! The Fatherland needs leaders!
0:13:19 > 0:13:24Personal ambition must be thrown aside in the one great sacrifice
0:13:24 > 0:13:26for our country.
0:13:27 > 0:13:30- I'll go.- I want to go!- Count on me!
0:13:30 > 0:13:32CHEERING
0:13:32 > 0:13:37But just how representative was Kantorek of German public opinion?
0:13:41 > 0:13:45This is still our perception of Germany in the years
0:13:45 > 0:13:47leading up to the war...
0:13:49 > 0:13:53..an ultra-militarist society hellbent on conflict.
0:13:59 > 0:14:02But contrary to public belief,
0:14:02 > 0:14:06Germany wasn't the most militarised nation in Europe in 1914.
0:14:07 > 0:14:08France was.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13In fact, the very term "militarism" is French in origin.
0:14:13 > 0:14:17France spent a higher proportion of its gross domestic product
0:14:17 > 0:14:21on defence than Germany, and imposed peacetime military service
0:14:21 > 0:14:24on a higher proportion of its young men.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31In fact, it was Germany that had the strongest
0:14:31 > 0:14:33antimilitarism in Europe.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37In 1912, the Social Democrats became the largest party
0:14:37 > 0:14:41in the German parliament on an anti-war ticket.
0:14:48 > 0:14:51Indeed, in a whole range of ways,
0:14:51 > 0:14:55Germany in 1914 was among the most progressive countries in the world.
0:14:55 > 0:14:57This is Berlin's boulevard.
0:14:57 > 0:15:00You will find everything here - palaces, a university, opera,
0:15:00 > 0:15:05royal guard, arsenal, museums, a government house.
0:15:07 > 0:15:10Germany had the biggest and most innovative economy in Europe.
0:15:14 > 0:15:16And, unlike in Britain, in Germany,
0:15:16 > 0:15:20every adult male had the right to vote.
0:15:22 > 0:15:25Enthusiasm for war was far from unique to Germany.
0:15:25 > 0:15:29In Britain, we have in our mind's eye images of wildly celebrating
0:15:29 > 0:15:32crowds in the streets and young men flocking to the colours.
0:15:32 > 0:15:34That was certainly what my grandfather did
0:15:34 > 0:15:37at the age of just 16.
0:15:37 > 0:15:43But just how widespread was such popular enthusiasm for war in 1914?
0:15:43 > 0:15:44In truth, for most people,
0:15:44 > 0:15:50the prospect of war was cause not for jubilation, but for trepidation.
0:15:58 > 0:15:59As war broke out,
0:15:59 > 0:16:02the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey,
0:16:02 > 0:16:06stood at a window in the Foreign Office watching the lamps
0:16:06 > 0:16:08being lit as dusk approached,
0:16:08 > 0:16:12and famously remarked, "The lamps are going out all over Europe.
0:16:15 > 0:16:17"We shall not see them lit again in our time."
0:16:21 > 0:16:24Less well known, however, is the pessimism of the Germans.
0:16:26 > 0:16:30Nine years before the war, the chief of the Great General Staff,
0:16:30 > 0:16:35Helmuth von Moltke, had already warned the Kaiser that the war would
0:16:35 > 0:16:38turn into a long and tedious struggle with a country that will
0:16:38 > 0:16:43not give up before the strength of its entire people has been broken.
0:16:45 > 0:16:49The archival evidence actually makes it clear that the Germans
0:16:49 > 0:16:53were not bidding for world power, rather their main motivation
0:16:53 > 0:16:57for going to war was a sense of weakness, particularly with regard
0:16:57 > 0:17:02to the rapidly growing economic and military strength of Russia.
0:17:02 > 0:17:04And that's the most striking feature of the crisis to me -
0:17:04 > 0:17:08almost every one of the major powers acted
0:17:08 > 0:17:12out of a sense of weakness rather than strength.
0:17:14 > 0:17:18Most of the dramatic phenomena that we historians study,
0:17:18 > 0:17:22not only wars, but also revolutions and other big crises,
0:17:22 > 0:17:27are not the climaxes of protracted, deterministic storylines.
0:17:27 > 0:17:31Instead, they represent the often sudden breakdowns
0:17:31 > 0:17:33of complex systems.
0:17:40 > 0:17:43To see what I mean, take a look at these paintings,
0:17:43 > 0:17:44which are my favourites
0:17:44 > 0:17:47in the New York Historical Society's collection.
0:17:52 > 0:17:54They are called The Course Of Empire...
0:17:56 > 0:18:01..and were painted by the American artist Thomas Cole
0:18:01 > 0:18:04between 1833 and 1836.
0:18:10 > 0:18:12The world is transformed
0:18:12 > 0:18:16from the lush wilderness of the savage state...
0:18:18 > 0:18:21..to the agrarian idyll of the pastoral state.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33To the opulent citizen consumers of the Consummation Of Empire...
0:18:41 > 0:18:47..until, in destruction, the survivors flee the invading hordes.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting -
0:18:52 > 0:18:54Desolation.
0:18:56 > 0:18:58There's not a living soul to be seen.
0:19:00 > 0:19:04For centuries, historians thought about the past in these terms,
0:19:04 > 0:19:08as a series of gradual, cyclical ups and downs.
0:19:08 > 0:19:12As one empire waxed, another waned.
0:19:12 > 0:19:15But such historical cycles are much easier to see
0:19:15 > 0:19:18through the rear-view mirror.
0:19:18 > 0:19:20At the time, they are less visible.
0:19:20 > 0:19:25So let's ask ourselves, what if collapse comes suddenly,
0:19:25 > 0:19:27like a thief in the night?
0:19:30 > 0:19:32What if that's what happened to the international system
0:19:32 > 0:19:35in the summer of 1914?
0:19:38 > 0:19:42The world in 1914 was dominated by the great European empires,
0:19:42 > 0:19:46which controlled close to half its land surface and population
0:19:46 > 0:19:48and an even larger share of its economy.
0:19:49 > 0:19:53At their hearts were big industrial and commercial capital cities,
0:19:53 > 0:19:57like London, Paris,
0:19:57 > 0:20:00Berlin, Vienna
0:20:00 > 0:20:02and St Petersburg.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07Yet, thanks to new communication technologies,
0:20:07 > 0:20:12these cities were able to rule over vast areas as not only orders
0:20:12 > 0:20:16but also capital, people and ideas were relayed around the world.
0:20:19 > 0:20:23By 1914, this international imperial order was a truly complex system
0:20:23 > 0:20:28characterised by very high levels of interdependence.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35The problem is, that at a certain crucial moment...
0:20:37 > 0:20:40..even a small shock to such a system...
0:20:43 > 0:20:47..can produce huge, often unanticipated changes.
0:20:53 > 0:20:58The weak points of this complex system were where the empires met.
0:20:58 > 0:21:01These were the nodes where a relatively small perturbation
0:21:01 > 0:21:04could spread a shock right the way round the world.
0:21:04 > 0:21:08in 1914, there were two nodal points that mattered.
0:21:08 > 0:21:10The first was the Balkans.
0:21:11 > 0:21:14But the retreat of the Ottoman Empire had created
0:21:14 > 0:21:18opportunities for Austria, Hungary and Russia to exert their influence
0:21:18 > 0:21:22over the weak nation states of Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.
0:21:22 > 0:21:27The other nodal point was Belgium - the artificial, half-French,
0:21:27 > 0:21:31half-Dutch buffer state set up after the Napoleonic wars
0:21:31 > 0:21:35to impose some barrier on France's northward expansion.
0:21:35 > 0:21:39The important thing about Belgium was that its neutrality in a war
0:21:39 > 0:21:44was guaranteed by a treaty signed by all the great powers in 1839.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48So, the assassination in Sarajevo was the butterfly
0:21:48 > 0:21:51that flaps its wings in the Amazonian rainforest
0:21:51 > 0:21:53and causes a hurricane on the other side of the world.
0:22:00 > 0:22:02From the point of view of the Austrians,
0:22:02 > 0:22:05this was an act of state-sponsored terrorism.
0:22:05 > 0:22:08They clearly had to do much more than just ask Serbs
0:22:08 > 0:22:10to cooperate in a murder enquiry.
0:22:10 > 0:22:13From the Russian point of view, ten years after
0:22:13 > 0:22:17humiliation by the Japanese, this was a chance to man up,
0:22:17 > 0:22:19so they stood shoulder to shoulder
0:22:19 > 0:22:22with their Slavic brothers in Belgrade.
0:22:22 > 0:22:25The Germans did not really care that much about the Balkans,
0:22:25 > 0:22:29but they saw here an opportunity to check
0:22:29 > 0:22:31Russia's massive arms build-up,
0:22:31 > 0:22:33which by 1914 wasn't yet complete.
0:22:35 > 0:22:40A German war with Russia implied a German war with France.
0:22:40 > 0:22:41Why?
0:22:41 > 0:22:45Because, A, there was an alliance between the French and the Russians
0:22:45 > 0:22:48and, B, there was a German war plan, the Schlieffen Plan,
0:22:48 > 0:22:51that required the Germans to knock out the French
0:22:51 > 0:22:55in order to stand a chance of beating the Russians.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58What's more, that German plan also implied the violation
0:22:58 > 0:23:01of Belgian neutrality. Why?
0:23:01 > 0:23:03Because the German generals calculated that they could
0:23:03 > 0:23:06only knock out France if they sent a part of their force
0:23:06 > 0:23:08to the north and west of Paris...
0:23:10 > 0:23:13..rather than across the heavily fortified Franco-German border.
0:23:14 > 0:23:18All of this was more or less a predictable consequence,
0:23:18 > 0:23:22a chain reaction, from the catalyst in Sarajevo.
0:23:22 > 0:23:24Indeed, maybe be surprising thing
0:23:24 > 0:23:26was that the war hadn't happened before.
0:23:29 > 0:23:31There was just one unknown quantity
0:23:31 > 0:23:35and that was the biggest empire of them all - Britain.
0:23:37 > 0:23:40What made the First World War a world war,
0:23:40 > 0:23:46and a four-year one at that, was the British decision to intervene,
0:23:46 > 0:23:49ostensibly to uphold the neutrality of Belgium.
0:23:49 > 0:23:53In reality, to avert a German defeat of France.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56And contrary to what you may have been taught at school,
0:23:56 > 0:24:00this British intervention was far from inevitable.
0:24:04 > 0:24:07August 1914.
0:24:07 > 0:24:09In Whitehall, ministers weigh
0:24:09 > 0:24:12the pros and cons of intervention in the war.
0:24:13 > 0:24:18The 2nd of August 1914 was a rather stuffy, thundery Sunday
0:24:18 > 0:24:21and all the members of the Cabinet would much rather have been
0:24:21 > 0:24:23down in the country.
0:24:23 > 0:24:27The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, was a keen fly fisherman.
0:24:27 > 0:24:29He would rather have been casting for trout.
0:24:29 > 0:24:33The Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, would have preferred to be
0:24:33 > 0:24:36sipping gin with his mistress, Venetia Stanley.
0:24:36 > 0:24:41Both men knew that Grey had privately committed Britain
0:24:41 > 0:24:44to support France in the event of a continental war,
0:24:44 > 0:24:46but there was no formal alliance.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50They had not been able to commit the Cabinet or Parliament to the policy.
0:24:50 > 0:24:53The only person in the room who was truly happy
0:24:53 > 0:24:56was the First Lord of the Admiralty,
0:24:56 > 0:25:00but then Winston Churchill openly admitted to loving war.
0:25:00 > 0:25:03The anti-war element in the Cabinet looked to the radical
0:25:03 > 0:25:07Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Welsh wizard, David Lloyd George.
0:25:07 > 0:25:12They were convinced that he would speak up against
0:25:12 > 0:25:15British involvement in the unfolding continental war.
0:25:16 > 0:25:20Britain's decision for war in 1914 was the result not of
0:25:20 > 0:25:22grand strategy, but of low politics.
0:25:22 > 0:25:24What kept Lloyd George silent
0:25:24 > 0:25:26and ensured that the rest of the Cabinet
0:25:26 > 0:25:29lined up behind Grey, Asquith and Churchill
0:25:29 > 0:25:32was the realisation that if they didn't, the hawks would resign,
0:25:32 > 0:25:36the government would fall and the Tories would be in.
0:25:36 > 0:25:39And the Tories were even more enthusiastic than Churchill
0:25:39 > 0:25:42for a war against Germany.
0:25:42 > 0:25:45If only those poor opponents of war sat round the Cabinet table
0:25:45 > 0:25:49that day had been able to glimpse just a little of what
0:25:49 > 0:25:52lay in store for them, might they have acted differently?
0:25:54 > 0:25:57Well, we can't know for certain what might have happened
0:25:57 > 0:26:00if Britain had delayed intervening.
0:26:00 > 0:26:02Maybe the Germans would still have failed
0:26:02 > 0:26:04to break the French will to fight on.
0:26:04 > 0:26:08But I think the absence of a British expeditionary force
0:26:08 > 0:26:10would have been decisive.
0:26:10 > 0:26:14As in 1870, and as would happen again in 1940
0:26:14 > 0:26:17even with British support, the French would have faltered.
0:26:17 > 0:26:21After all, the opening six months of the war
0:26:21 > 0:26:25saw half a million Frenchmen permanently incapacitated -
0:26:25 > 0:26:27a shattering level of casualties.
0:26:27 > 0:26:31Without escalating British support, the war would have ended with
0:26:31 > 0:26:34a German victory in 1916 if not earlier.
0:26:35 > 0:26:37But then what?
0:26:37 > 0:26:40Well, the traditional answer to that question is that Britain
0:26:40 > 0:26:45would have suffered a disastrous loss of prestige and power.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48Not only would have Perfidious Albion have left
0:26:48 > 0:26:51the Belgians in the lurch, now a superpower Germany
0:26:51 > 0:26:54would be able to build naval bases on the Channel coast.
0:26:54 > 0:26:58And yet there is absolutely no evidence from the period
0:26:58 > 0:27:01before the British intervention that the Germans intended to
0:27:01 > 0:27:04establish a long-term presence in Belgium.
0:27:04 > 0:27:08Left to their own devices might they not have focused on defeating
0:27:08 > 0:27:12Russia, which was in fact their main objective?
0:27:12 > 0:27:15Now, remember not to confuse the two world wars here.
0:27:15 > 0:27:17For example, Eastern Europe's Jews would have been much
0:27:17 > 0:27:21better off under the Kaiser than under the Tsar.
0:27:22 > 0:27:25And if the Kaiser's Germany had used victory on the European continent
0:27:25 > 0:27:30to annex Belgium, would that really have posed a fatal threat to
0:27:30 > 0:27:34the mighty British Empire covering, as it did, a quarter of the world?
0:27:34 > 0:27:38Ruling not only the waves but also the international capital market.
0:27:38 > 0:27:41Britain would still have had the option to intervene
0:27:41 > 0:27:43when ready to do so.
0:27:43 > 0:27:47Could we not have bided our time to see how the continental contest
0:27:47 > 0:27:51turned out and to build up our land forces,
0:27:51 > 0:27:55rather than throwing barely trained recruits at the German lines?
0:27:55 > 0:27:59When I reflect on all the young men whose lives
0:27:59 > 0:28:04were lost between 1914 and 1918, to say nothing of the horrendous cost
0:28:04 > 0:28:07of the war, I can't help feeling that the British Cabinet made
0:28:07 > 0:28:12the biggest error in modern history on that sweltering summer Sunday.
0:28:12 > 0:28:17For British intervention in 1914 didn't just change the course
0:28:17 > 0:28:22and outcome of the war, it also changed the way the war was fought.
0:28:33 > 0:28:37British intervention turned a continental war into a world war...
0:28:40 > 0:28:42..which the European nations
0:28:42 > 0:28:44could wage only by mobilising
0:28:44 > 0:28:45all their resources,
0:28:45 > 0:28:46including manpower
0:28:46 > 0:28:51and materials from their empires outside Europe.
0:28:51 > 0:28:55The result was bloodshed on an unprecedented scale.
0:28:56 > 0:29:00But what is often forgotten is that your chance of being killed
0:29:00 > 0:29:02depended a great deal on where you came from.
0:29:07 > 0:29:10In absolute numbers, the French, the Germans, the Russians
0:29:10 > 0:29:13and the Austro Hungarians lost by far the most men in the war.
0:29:13 > 0:29:16But if you put the figures in percentage terms,
0:29:16 > 0:29:18a very different picture emerges.
0:29:18 > 0:29:20Take the case of Britain and Ireland.
0:29:20 > 0:29:25Something like 6% of men aged between 15 and 49
0:29:25 > 0:29:27lost their lives during the war,
0:29:27 > 0:29:30but that was by no means the highest percentage.
0:29:30 > 0:29:34In the case of France and Germany, the figure was above 12%.
0:29:34 > 0:29:36The same, by the way, goes for Scotland.
0:29:36 > 0:29:38But for Romania it was 13%
0:29:38 > 0:29:42and for the Ottoman Empire, 15%.
0:29:42 > 0:29:45And yet by far the largest casualties in relative terms
0:29:45 > 0:29:47were suffered by Serbia,
0:29:47 > 0:29:51where around 23% of military age men lost their lives.
0:29:51 > 0:29:54The contrast couldn't be more extreme
0:29:54 > 0:29:55between Serbia on the one side
0:29:55 > 0:29:58and the United States at the other end,
0:29:58 > 0:30:03where just 0.4% of military age men were killed.
0:30:03 > 0:30:06This was a world war all right, but where you came from
0:30:06 > 0:30:09significantly influenced your chances of surviving it.
0:30:11 > 0:30:14British intervention also ensured a step change in the way
0:30:14 > 0:30:16the war was conducted.
0:30:16 > 0:30:19It wasn't the tank, much less mustard gas,
0:30:19 > 0:30:22that inflicted most of the war's casualties.
0:30:22 > 0:30:25The technological innovations of this war were in fact
0:30:25 > 0:30:28far fewer than those of the Second World War.
0:30:28 > 0:30:31Beyond the rail heads, horses still hold the supplies.
0:30:31 > 0:30:36Men still fix bayonets. The real change was in this.
0:30:44 > 0:30:46SHELL WHINES
0:30:52 > 0:30:55RAPID ARTILLERY FIRE
0:31:15 > 0:31:20"Hark! Thud, thud, thud,
0:31:20 > 0:31:22"Quite soft...
0:31:22 > 0:31:23"They never cease...
0:31:23 > 0:31:26ARTILLERY FIRE
0:31:26 > 0:31:29"Those whispering guns O Christ, I want to go out
0:31:29 > 0:31:32"And screech at them to stop
0:31:32 > 0:31:36"I'm going crazy; I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns!"
0:31:36 > 0:31:37HUGE EXPLOSION
0:31:44 > 0:31:47Well, that was the poet Siegfried Sassoon's electrifying
0:31:47 > 0:31:51Repressions Of War Experience, written while he was convalescing
0:31:51 > 0:31:56in Kent, where the guns of the Western Front were still audible.
0:31:56 > 0:31:58And you've just experienced the sight
0:31:58 > 0:32:02and sound of 20 seconds of artillery shell fire.
0:32:02 > 0:32:06On 21st February 1916, before the Battle of Verdun,
0:32:06 > 0:32:11the Germans fired 100,000 shells from 1,400 guns
0:32:11 > 0:32:14every hour for ten hours along an eight-mile front.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18The Germans called it Trommelfeuer - drum fire.
0:32:19 > 0:32:22The overwhelming majority of casualties in the First World War
0:32:22 > 0:32:27were caused by such storms of steel and explosives. Never before
0:32:27 > 0:32:31in all of military history had so much firepower been unleashed.
0:32:31 > 0:32:34And this was because of the way Britain's intervention
0:32:34 > 0:32:36had turned what might have been a relatively short
0:32:36 > 0:32:41and mobile war into a protracted war of attrition.
0:32:56 > 0:32:59At the beginning of the war, in August 1914,
0:32:59 > 0:33:03French infantry, conspicuous in their traditional blue coats
0:33:03 > 0:33:09and red trousers, advance through the Ardennes Forest.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13Who could have designed a better target for the German machine gunners?
0:33:13 > 0:33:15RAPID GUNFIRE
0:33:22 > 0:33:27In just one day, 27,000 Frenchmen died.
0:33:29 > 0:33:33But with the British Expeditionary Force helping to halt
0:33:33 > 0:33:37the German advance at the Battle of Marne, in September 1914,
0:33:37 > 0:33:40the war soon mutated from this...
0:33:42 > 0:33:43..into this.
0:33:48 > 0:33:53What distinguished the Western Front from the other theatres of war
0:33:53 > 0:33:56was the scale of the trenches and fortifications set up
0:33:56 > 0:34:00to protect troops from lethal hails of machine-gun bullets and shells.
0:34:04 > 0:34:08The repeated efforts by both sides to launch frontal attacks
0:34:08 > 0:34:10seem like madness to us today.
0:34:13 > 0:34:17Perhaps that's why so much of the literature inspired by the war
0:34:17 > 0:34:20has focused on the psychological traumas it caused.
0:34:25 > 0:34:27Most famously, shell shock,
0:34:27 > 0:34:30the mental damage inflicted by artillery bombardments.
0:34:34 > 0:34:38Yet the truly remarkable thing about the First World War is that
0:34:38 > 0:34:42despite the terrible conditions, only a tiny minority of men
0:34:42 > 0:34:46suffered mental breakdowns or, for that matter, deserted.
0:34:47 > 0:34:51The reality is that most men coped with the hardship and the danger.
0:34:54 > 0:34:55Why was that?
0:34:55 > 0:35:00Well, it seems that the threat of being shot at dawn wasn't crucial.
0:35:02 > 0:35:06Because they were so static, the armies of the Western Front
0:35:06 > 0:35:09could build the infrastructure to give the front line soldiers
0:35:09 > 0:35:11the things they needed to make war bearable...
0:35:13 > 0:35:19..regular leave, tolerably dry accommodation, alcohol, tobacco,
0:35:19 > 0:35:23hot food, entertainment and even sex,
0:35:23 > 0:35:27thanks to the French system of maisons tolerees.
0:35:29 > 0:35:33Yet that is a necessary but not sufficient explanation for why
0:35:33 > 0:35:36the First World War just kept on going.
0:35:37 > 0:35:43Another reason was the growth of mutual animosity, even hatred.
0:35:44 > 0:35:48Men who lost comrades to enemy snipers or shells
0:35:48 > 0:35:50were seldom forgiving.
0:35:51 > 0:35:53"We just looks on you as vomit,"
0:35:53 > 0:35:56one Tommy told a cowering group of German prisoners.
0:35:57 > 0:36:01And this may be the key to understanding why
0:36:01 > 0:36:02the First World War broke the trend
0:36:02 > 0:36:05of declining violence in the Western world.
0:36:05 > 0:36:10This new kind of industrialised warfare seemed to strip away
0:36:10 > 0:36:14much of the hard-won civilisation of the previous centuries...
0:36:15 > 0:36:17..and to expose the fundamentally violent nature
0:36:17 > 0:36:20of the male of the species.
0:36:31 > 0:36:34BELL TOLLS
0:36:34 > 0:36:38Most of us regard ourselves as upstanding members of society,
0:36:38 > 0:36:42who don't harbour violent thoughts towards our fellow citizens.
0:36:44 > 0:36:47So the findings of Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker
0:36:47 > 0:36:49may surprise you.
0:36:50 > 0:36:52The vast majority of us
0:36:52 > 0:36:56are never going to commit an act of violence in our entire lifetimes.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00However, a large number of us harbour fantasies of committing violence.
0:37:00 > 0:37:05And if we just do surveys of even university students,
0:37:05 > 0:37:08and ask them, "Have you ever fantasised about killing someone
0:37:08 > 0:37:12"that you don't like?" a majority of them will confess that they have.
0:37:14 > 0:37:18And often people will play out in their minds
0:37:18 > 0:37:23how they will cut or shoot or strangle or torture,
0:37:23 > 0:37:28in theatrical detail, their former tormentor or enemy.
0:37:32 > 0:37:35So what happens when these demons are taken to war?
0:37:37 > 0:37:42In modern wars, what often happens is that the nation state gets defined
0:37:42 > 0:37:45psychologically as the in group or the out group.
0:37:45 > 0:37:48And we can project distrust, fear, prejudice
0:37:48 > 0:37:52against the enemy coalition.
0:37:56 > 0:38:00It's easy to demonise the other side if the other side
0:38:00 > 0:38:04commits a harm against you or your allies, then it's natural to
0:38:04 > 0:38:08think that they are less than human, they are evil, and that sets the
0:38:08 > 0:38:13stage for a willingness to retaliate and a belief that it's just.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21Then if, suddenly, the opportunity presents itself
0:38:21 > 0:38:24where they outnumber a member of the enemy,
0:38:24 > 0:38:29then savagery just... can burst forth.
0:38:35 > 0:38:37The founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud
0:38:37 > 0:38:40called it the "death instinct".
0:38:41 > 0:38:45What Freud is saying is that under particular kinds of cultural
0:38:45 > 0:38:49and social conditions, quite suddenly, the mask slips,
0:38:49 > 0:38:52and what is revealed is the most primitive forms of cruelty,
0:38:52 > 0:38:57aggression and hatred, which Freud is saying
0:38:57 > 0:39:01is part of what we are and we pay a great cost by not recognising it.
0:39:05 > 0:39:08Literally, one week people could be neighbours,
0:39:08 > 0:39:14going to the shops together and, virtually the following day,
0:39:14 > 0:39:19because of a sudden imposition of an ethnic divide,
0:39:19 > 0:39:24they become other and they become the hated enemy to be annihilated.
0:39:31 > 0:39:34So the First World War was a turning point not only in the history
0:39:34 > 0:39:38of war, but also in the history of the human condition.
0:39:38 > 0:39:42It seemed to shatter the illusion of human progress onward
0:39:42 > 0:39:46and upward and to confirm the most pessimistic views of our nature.
0:39:47 > 0:39:50Ask yourself a simple question -
0:39:50 > 0:39:54why, if the war was so appalling, did it keep going for so long?
0:39:55 > 0:39:58The answer is that men got very good indeed
0:39:58 > 0:39:59at killing one another.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05And yet, even as the death toll rose to dwarf all previous
0:40:05 > 0:40:10European wars, the weaker side stubbornly refused to give up.
0:40:10 > 0:40:14Once Britain had intervened, the so-called Entente powers,
0:40:14 > 0:40:16mainly Britain, France and Russia,
0:40:16 > 0:40:20had overwhelming superiority and financial resources
0:40:20 > 0:40:25and numbers of men relative to the Central Powers, Germany and Austria,
0:40:25 > 0:40:30plus Turkey, which had come in on the German side in November 1914.
0:40:30 > 0:40:31In terms of population,
0:40:31 > 0:40:34the ratio of advantage was more than five to one.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37In terms of economic output, nearly four to one.
0:40:37 > 0:40:43The Entente powers spent two and a half times as much on the war
0:40:43 > 0:40:48and yet it dragged on for four and a quarter years. Why was that?
0:40:48 > 0:40:50One answer, as we've seen,
0:40:50 > 0:40:53is that industrialised slaughter was just much more tolerable
0:40:53 > 0:40:57than anyone before the war could possibly have imagined.
0:40:57 > 0:41:00But a better answer is that the Germans were able to
0:41:00 > 0:41:04compensate for their demographic and economic disadvantages
0:41:04 > 0:41:07by being better killers.
0:41:11 > 0:41:13If you judge military success
0:41:13 > 0:41:17by the philosopher Bertrand Russell's yardstick,
0:41:17 > 0:41:20maximum slaughter at minimum expense...
0:41:30 > 0:41:33..then Germany won the First World War.
0:41:37 > 0:41:40As you can see, in literally every month of the war,
0:41:40 > 0:41:43from August 1914 through until the summer of 1918,
0:41:43 > 0:41:46the Germans consistently killed or captured
0:41:46 > 0:41:50more British and French soldiers than they lost themselves.
0:41:50 > 0:41:54And the margin of superiority was even greater on the Eastern Front.
0:41:54 > 0:41:59To put it absolutely brutally, the Germans were more efficient.
0:41:59 > 0:42:02They killed 35% more than they lost,
0:42:02 > 0:42:04they captured 30% more than they lost,
0:42:04 > 0:42:07and, what's more, they did it more cheaply.
0:42:07 > 0:42:09Here is a grotesque statistic.
0:42:09 > 0:42:15It cost the Germans roughly £2,300 to kill an Allied soldier.
0:42:15 > 0:42:20It cost the British £7,500 to kill a single German.
0:42:22 > 0:42:25So why were British soldiers less efficient killers?
0:42:25 > 0:42:28Well, the obvious answer is that for most of the war
0:42:28 > 0:42:31they and the French had to take the offensive to dislodge
0:42:31 > 0:42:34the Germans from their heavily fortified positions in Belgium
0:42:34 > 0:42:36and northern France.
0:42:36 > 0:42:38But the Germans were also the leaders
0:42:38 > 0:42:40when it came to tactical innovation.
0:42:40 > 0:42:44It was they who pioneered the lethal creeping artillery barrage
0:42:44 > 0:42:47and the system of defence in depth.
0:42:47 > 0:42:51For these reasons, despite their economic disadvantages,
0:42:51 > 0:42:55the Central Powers had a serious chance of winning the war.
0:42:55 > 0:42:59By late 1917, a savvy investor might even have been tempted
0:42:59 > 0:43:03to bet on a German victory, or at the very least on a stalemate
0:43:03 > 0:43:06and a negotiated settlement.
0:43:06 > 0:43:09By the spring of 1918, a German victory looked even more likely.
0:43:09 > 0:43:12After imposing a punitive treaty on Russia's
0:43:12 > 0:43:14new Bolshevik government,
0:43:14 > 0:43:18the Germans moved more than half a million soldiers
0:43:18 > 0:43:21to the Western Front for a massive offensive.
0:43:21 > 0:43:24For a time, the German Army carried all before it, capturing and
0:43:24 > 0:43:28killing dazed British soldiers and driving deep into enemy territory.
0:43:28 > 0:43:32After years of stalemate, victory seemed to be within their reach...
0:43:33 > 0:43:35..but no.
0:43:43 > 0:43:47Just a few months later, in August 1918,
0:43:47 > 0:43:50the German army suffered what its commander admitted was
0:43:50 > 0:43:54"its greatest defeat since the beginning of the war".
0:43:58 > 0:44:00On October 4th...
0:44:01 > 0:44:04..Germany was forced to request an armistice.
0:44:07 > 0:44:13Many Germans reacted to their defeat with incredulity and anger.
0:44:13 > 0:44:17Among them was this man, Adolf Hitler.
0:44:17 > 0:44:19He's the one on the left who isn't smiling.
0:44:21 > 0:44:23Hitler, a messenger in the Bavarian Army,
0:44:23 > 0:44:26was lying in a hospital bed recovering from a gas attack
0:44:26 > 0:44:29when the news of the German surrender came through.
0:44:34 > 0:44:36For Hitler,
0:44:36 > 0:44:39the only way to explain this extraordinary reversal
0:44:39 > 0:44:43of military fortunes was that the proud German soldier,
0:44:43 > 0:44:45undefeated in the field,
0:44:45 > 0:44:49had been stabbed in the back by Jews and socialists at home.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54Let's see why he was wrong.
0:44:54 > 0:44:58One obvious answer to the question of why the Germans lost is
0:44:58 > 0:45:02that 1917 the United States joined the side of the Entente powers.
0:45:02 > 0:45:07And yet it's a mistake, I think, to imagine that the US decided the war.
0:45:07 > 0:45:11In reality, it was the British Army that won the First World War,
0:45:11 > 0:45:15and it did so by finally beating the Germans at their own game,
0:45:15 > 0:45:21lethally combining infantry, artillery, armour and air power.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26As you can see, from July 1917 until June 1918
0:45:26 > 0:45:29there were hardly any German surrenders.
0:45:29 > 0:45:33But then, beginning in July 1918, there was an explosive
0:45:33 > 0:45:37tenfold increase in the number of Germans laying down their arms.
0:45:37 > 0:45:40Now, the key to this collapse of German morale was the role
0:45:40 > 0:45:44their officers played. This wasn't a breakdown of discipline.
0:45:44 > 0:45:48Often the German men laid down their arms at the order of their officers.
0:45:51 > 0:45:53So this was how the war ended,
0:45:53 > 0:45:55not with Hitler's mythical stab in the back
0:45:55 > 0:45:58but with a sickening recognition by what was left
0:45:58 > 0:46:02of the German officer class that the war simply couldn't be won.
0:46:02 > 0:46:04It turned out that the key to victory
0:46:04 > 0:46:08was not maximum slaughter at minimum expense.
0:46:08 > 0:46:11The key was to persuade one side to start surrendering.
0:46:11 > 0:46:13To win the First World War,
0:46:13 > 0:46:16the victors had paid a staggering price in blood and treasure,
0:46:16 > 0:46:19indeed a much higher price in absolute terms
0:46:19 > 0:46:21than was paid by Germany and her allies.
0:46:21 > 0:46:24We're left with just one question.
0:46:24 > 0:46:26Was it worth it?
0:46:34 > 0:46:38Imagine a country which has lost 22% of its territory...
0:46:40 > 0:46:45..incurred debts equivalent to 135% of GDP,
0:46:45 > 0:46:47a fifth of it owed to foreign powers...
0:46:50 > 0:46:53..where inflation and then unemployment have risen to
0:46:53 > 0:46:56levels not seen for more than a century...
0:47:00 > 0:47:03..and which is in the grip of an unprecedented wave of strikes.
0:47:11 > 0:47:15Imagine a country in which the poverty of returning soldiers
0:47:15 > 0:47:18and their families contrasts grotesquely...
0:47:20 > 0:47:24..with the conspicuous consumption of a hedonistic and decadent elite.
0:47:26 > 0:47:28This was not only Germany in 1918.
0:47:29 > 0:47:31It was Britain too.
0:47:33 > 0:47:37For winners and losers alike ended the war exhausted -
0:47:37 > 0:47:41bereaved by their losses, weighed down by debt,
0:47:41 > 0:47:44demoralised by four years of deprivation.
0:47:48 > 0:47:50And for what exactly?
0:47:53 > 0:47:56At the beginning of this programme, I said that the First World War
0:47:56 > 0:47:59was the great turning point of modern history.
0:47:59 > 0:48:02Well, now I hope you see why.
0:48:02 > 0:48:04Not all its consequences were negative, to be sure.
0:48:04 > 0:48:06Autocrats fell from power
0:48:06 > 0:48:11and for a time it seemed that democracy would be the victor.
0:48:11 > 0:48:15Between 1914 and 1919 in more than 20 countries,
0:48:15 > 0:48:18and six American states, women got the right to vote.
0:48:19 > 0:48:23Nevertheless, the war ended the illusion of a world steadily
0:48:23 > 0:48:26growing more peaceable and civilised.
0:48:26 > 0:48:30It transformed war in its scale and its nature.
0:48:30 > 0:48:35Itself born of a terrorist act, it brought forth chemical weapons.
0:48:35 > 0:48:38It vastly increased the power of the state
0:48:38 > 0:48:41in both economic and political life.
0:48:43 > 0:48:48And it also altered our very understanding of the human mind,
0:48:48 > 0:48:51laying bare its deepest and darkest destructive impulses.
0:48:52 > 0:48:54At a peace conference held in Paris,
0:48:54 > 0:48:58the winning empires tried to impose a new order on the losers with
0:48:58 > 0:49:03a series of treaties, most famously the one signed at Versailles.
0:49:03 > 0:49:06As was traditional, the victors took away land,
0:49:06 > 0:49:11reallocated colonies and imposed indemnities, known as reparations.
0:49:11 > 0:49:15But to imagine that the Germans could simply be kept weak
0:49:15 > 0:49:19by making them pay reparations was to dream.
0:49:25 > 0:49:28The war had been sold to the American public
0:49:28 > 0:49:32as the war to end all wars and yet in the subsequent decades
0:49:32 > 0:49:34the violence was more or less unceasing.
0:49:34 > 0:49:36In the ruins of the Russian Empire,
0:49:36 > 0:49:40a civil war raged that claimed millions of lives.
0:49:40 > 0:49:42Meanwhile, in what was left of the Ottoman Empire,
0:49:42 > 0:49:46what had begun with the genocide of the Armenians continued with
0:49:46 > 0:49:49the ethnic cleansing of the Orthodox Greeks.
0:49:49 > 0:49:53In the Far East, in the Middle East, war raged on,
0:49:53 > 0:49:56long after the guns of the Western front had fallen silent.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05Part of the reason the violence continued was that the war created
0:50:05 > 0:50:09opportunities for abnormally violent individuals to come to power.
0:50:09 > 0:50:11Without four years of slaughter,
0:50:11 > 0:50:14it's very hard to believe that a psychopath like Stalin
0:50:14 > 0:50:17could ever have come to rule over Mother Russia.
0:50:20 > 0:50:24But for the First World War, Hitler might have ended his days
0:50:24 > 0:50:27as an obscure postcard painter in Munich.
0:50:27 > 0:50:31It took the war to create the two inhuman ideologies,
0:50:31 > 0:50:35Soviet socialism in one country and German National Socialism.
0:50:40 > 0:50:44It's always illuminating to think about what we historians call
0:50:44 > 0:50:47the counterfactuals, the what-ifs of history.
0:50:47 > 0:50:53What if the British Cabinet had decided not to intervene in 1914 and
0:50:53 > 0:50:57to leave the French and the Russians to fight the Germans on their own?
0:50:57 > 0:51:01Would there have been even one world war, never mind two?
0:51:01 > 0:51:03And what would Europe look like today
0:51:03 > 0:51:09if the Germans had indeed won that limited continental war?
0:51:09 > 0:51:13Well, perhaps the answer is just a little bit like this.
0:51:16 > 0:51:19A Europe dominated by the German economy.
0:51:21 > 0:51:23What's more, the German Chancellor's proposal
0:51:23 > 0:51:27for a European customs union, which was one of Germany's stated aims
0:51:27 > 0:51:30after the war had begun, was to a remarkable extent
0:51:30 > 0:51:35an anticipation of our own European Union - except, of course,
0:51:35 > 0:51:40that our EU is the product of peaceful integration, not war,
0:51:40 > 0:51:44and Angela Merkel is a lot less scary than Kaiser Wilhelm II.
0:51:47 > 0:51:51Well, Britain's decision to enter the war of 1914 wasn't merely
0:51:51 > 0:51:54tragic for the hundreds of thousands of British men
0:51:54 > 0:51:58who lost their lives, I believe it was a catastrophic error,
0:51:58 > 0:52:01without which the era of totalitarianism
0:52:01 > 0:52:03couldn't have come about.
0:52:03 > 0:52:07This isn't to denigrate the sacrifice of the men and boys
0:52:07 > 0:52:11who laid down their lives for their countries, it's merely
0:52:11 > 0:52:15to suggest that we need to learn the right lessons from history.
0:52:16 > 0:52:20My grandfather was told he'd fought for civilisation -
0:52:20 > 0:52:25that's actually what it says here on his victory medal.
0:52:25 > 0:52:26Really?
0:52:26 > 0:52:30Perhaps a more honest inscription would have been
0:52:30 > 0:52:33that my grandad fought for the balance of power,
0:52:33 > 0:52:37to prevent Germany from dominating the European continent.
0:52:37 > 0:52:43Was that ever going to be stopped by brute force of arms?
0:52:43 > 0:52:47Well, I've now said my piece. It's time to hear some other views,
0:52:47 > 0:52:50and we're extremely lucky to have with us tonight
0:52:50 > 0:52:54some of this country's leading experts on the First World War.
0:52:54 > 0:52:58Gary Sheffield, I'd like to go to you first if I may.
0:52:58 > 0:53:03Was Britain right to intervene in August 1914,
0:53:03 > 0:53:08given how limited its land forces at that point were?
0:53:08 > 0:53:11I think Britain really had no alternative
0:53:11 > 0:53:13but to go into the war in 1914.
0:53:13 > 0:53:16Because I must say I fundamentally disagree with your view
0:53:16 > 0:53:22of the essentially benign nature of a German... if a German victory had occurred.
0:53:22 > 0:53:26I think Britain went into war in 1914 for pretty well the same reason
0:53:26 > 0:53:30that it had fought a series of aggressive states in Europe
0:53:30 > 0:53:33going back at least to the time of Elizabeth,
0:53:33 > 0:53:36including wars against Louis XIV of France, Napoleon,
0:53:36 > 0:53:39and of course later against Hitler,
0:53:39 > 0:53:44and pretty well for the same reason that Britain joined NATO in 1949,
0:53:44 > 0:53:48to stop one continental power gaining hegemony over Europe.
0:53:48 > 0:53:50- I...- I can buy that,
0:53:50 > 0:53:54but if you think of just one of those parallels you just drew,
0:53:54 > 0:53:56the one with Napoleon,
0:53:56 > 0:54:00Britain didn't immediately send large land forces to the continent
0:54:00 > 0:54:04in the case of revolutionary France and Napoleonic France.
0:54:04 > 0:54:08We waited, and we didn't actually deploy a large army until 1809,
0:54:08 > 0:54:13relying up until that point on financial and also on naval power.
0:54:13 > 0:54:19Can I go now to Hew Strachan, if you'll forgive me - we'll come back to you, of course.
0:54:19 > 0:54:24Hew, do you agree with Gary's point that Britain had no alternative?
0:54:24 > 0:54:28Would it really have been a catastrophe to have let the Germans
0:54:28 > 0:54:32win a limited continental war sometime after 1914?
0:54:32 > 0:54:35Why have you decided to call it a "limited" continental war?
0:54:35 > 0:54:38Well, tell me why it would have been unlimited.
0:54:38 > 0:54:43Well, it seems to me a war between major powers within Europe is inherently unlimited.
0:54:43 > 0:54:46The ambition for a limited war is Austria-Hungary's ambition
0:54:46 > 0:54:48for a limited war in the Balkans.
0:54:48 > 0:54:50But the fact that the war has widened by the time,
0:54:50 > 0:54:53or the incipient war has widened by the time Britain enters it,
0:54:53 > 0:54:56does change the complexion radically.
0:54:56 > 0:55:01And I think you've got to also take on board Britain's imperial position.
0:55:01 > 0:55:05You present Britain as widening the war because it's an empire.
0:55:05 > 0:55:07I would argue very forcefully
0:55:07 > 0:55:11that Britain is trying to limit the war because it's an empire.
0:55:11 > 0:55:14Germany wishes to widen this war beyond Europe.
0:55:14 > 0:55:18The Kaiser makes that very clear himself at the end of July 1914,
0:55:18 > 0:55:23saying that at least if there is to be war then Britain must lose India.
0:55:23 > 0:55:26And it's then Britain's responsibility
0:55:26 > 0:55:28to try and narrow it, try and contain it.
0:55:28 > 0:55:32Britain wants it to be a European war, not a world war.
0:55:32 > 0:55:34Let me go to David Reynolds now.
0:55:34 > 0:55:37David, you've thought a lot about these international
0:55:37 > 0:55:39historical questions.
0:55:39 > 0:55:43Was there an alternative strategy that Britain could have pursued
0:55:43 > 0:55:47that would have had a better outcome than the one that we saw?
0:55:47 > 0:55:50Well, the question of course is posed with hindsight, as you've said.
0:55:50 > 0:55:52It's the hindsight of knowing that death toll
0:55:52 > 0:55:55and the fact that a war went on for four years.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59In terms of the decision that the Cabinet finally made,
0:55:59 > 0:56:01it seems to me that it did make sense
0:56:01 > 0:56:04in terms of the traditions of British foreign policy.
0:56:04 > 0:56:07I agree with you that there are various traditions here,
0:56:07 > 0:56:10this is a power that is dealing with the continent,
0:56:10 > 0:56:12dealing with a global sense and so on,
0:56:12 > 0:56:17but I do think that the issue for the Cabinet which held it together
0:56:17 > 0:56:23was not simply the question of, are we going to let the Tories in or not?
0:56:23 > 0:56:27You mentioned Lloyd George in your presentation.
0:56:27 > 0:56:31Lloyd George agonises over the question of whether to come into the war.
0:56:31 > 0:56:33In September he finally comes out publicly
0:56:33 > 0:56:38and says why he felt it was right that the British should fight.
0:56:38 > 0:56:40Obviously the kind of speeches made in September
0:56:40 > 0:56:43have an element of propaganda about them,
0:56:43 > 0:56:47but they reflected Lloyd George's strong personal opinions, and he said
0:56:47 > 0:56:51we are now fighting against what he called "the road hog of Europe".
0:56:51 > 0:56:53The Prussian Junker is the road hog of Europe.
0:56:53 > 0:56:55He's driving, as Lloyd George put it,
0:56:55 > 0:56:59little 5' 5" nations off the road, like Serbia, Belgium and so on.
0:56:59 > 0:57:02Lloyd George had been a Welsh nationalist in the 1880s,
0:57:02 > 0:57:07he stood up for the Boers against the British in 19...in 1899,
0:57:07 > 0:57:10but now he felt that the British were essentially right
0:57:10 > 0:57:15on the issue of power politics but also on the issue of morality.
0:57:15 > 0:57:19David Stevenson, thinking about the imperial standpoint,
0:57:19 > 0:57:23did Britain have any alternative strategy in 1914
0:57:23 > 0:57:26than to take what amounted to a huge risk,
0:57:26 > 0:57:30to intervene in a land war for which it was in no way prepared?
0:57:30 > 0:57:32From the vantage point of 1918
0:57:32 > 0:57:35it surely hadn't been very good for the British Empire.
0:57:35 > 0:57:38You're not making a moral or an ethical point.
0:57:38 > 0:57:40Of course one can look at these one million dead,
0:57:40 > 0:57:43the pictures that you've shown us, and one can say,
0:57:43 > 0:57:45"How on earth could that have been justified,
0:57:45 > 0:57:49"what could possibly have been sufficient to explain
0:57:49 > 0:57:53"or to justify that level of sacrifice and suffering?"
0:57:53 > 0:57:55But I don't think that's your starting point.
0:57:55 > 0:57:59Your starting point is a political point, that this was a mistake,
0:57:59 > 0:58:01this was an error.
0:58:01 > 0:58:05That, in other words, that choices existed and the bad choice was made.
0:58:05 > 0:58:08But what you miss here, I think,
0:58:08 > 0:58:10is the...what is the fundamental problem
0:58:10 > 0:58:14is your comparison of a possible scenario of Europe
0:58:14 > 0:58:18settled on the basis of a German conquest and victory in 1915,
0:58:18 > 0:58:21as against the settlement that actually emerged in 1918.
0:58:21 > 0:58:25I think you're much too benign in your interpretation of what
0:58:25 > 0:58:28a Europe under German domination in '15, '16 would have looked like.
0:58:28 > 0:58:30Your question, I think, has to be
0:58:30 > 0:58:34whether a Europe based on German military power, domination,
0:58:34 > 0:58:37vassal states, which is they language used in German terminology
0:58:37 > 0:58:38and planning documents,
0:58:38 > 0:58:42is that really like the European Union that we have today?
0:58:42 > 0:58:45However much you may disagree or dislike certain features of it,
0:58:45 > 0:58:48I don't think it is. I don't think it was a stable basis.
0:58:48 > 0:58:51David, I noticed as you were talking Heather Jones nodding
0:58:51 > 0:58:55when you said that a German victory would not have had such
0:58:55 > 0:58:58benign consequences, and that seems a really crucial point.
0:58:58 > 0:59:01We're trying to imagine here a world that didn't happen,
0:59:01 > 0:59:04a world in which Britain doesn't intervene.
0:59:04 > 0:59:09Heather Jones, what do you think a German victory would have looked like,
0:59:09 > 0:59:14especially one that had come much earlier than the ultimate end of the war in 1918?
0:59:14 > 0:59:17What we're looking at is really a very ruthless occupation of Belgium.
0:59:17 > 0:59:20The invasion itself has been very ruthless,
0:59:20 > 0:59:22we have 6,400 Belgian and French civilians,
0:59:22 > 0:59:25women and children, quite young children,
0:59:25 > 0:59:28shot by the invading German troops,
0:59:28 > 0:59:32and the actual occupation which follows is also extremely ruthless.
0:59:32 > 0:59:35Civilians are deported to work in German war industries
0:59:35 > 0:59:37against their will, civilians...women are deported
0:59:37 > 0:59:41from Lille to work in... on the German war effort.
0:59:41 > 0:59:44This kind of Europe that you're envisaging
0:59:44 > 0:59:47that the Kaiser's Germany would have created
0:59:47 > 0:59:50would have been something really quite oppressive,
0:59:50 > 0:59:52and in the east as well, in the Baltics,
0:59:52 > 0:59:55where we know that there's a very oppressive occupation as well.
0:59:55 > 0:59:58I mean, this is a Germany that goes to war where the parliament
0:59:58 > 1:00:00has no control over who is in government,
1:00:00 > 1:00:03the government is chosen by the Kaiser,
1:00:03 > 1:00:05where by 1916 we have a military dictatorship,
1:00:05 > 1:00:08headed by the generals, Ludendorff and Hindenburg.
1:00:08 > 1:00:10It's not a benign Germany.
1:00:10 > 1:00:13This was a very ruthless invasion from the start,
1:00:13 > 1:00:16it aimed at increasing German power, Germany wanted to become
1:00:16 > 1:00:20an empire, and it saw France and Britain as having achieved that.
1:00:20 > 1:00:24Just before we go to the audience, I can't resist getting a German perspective on this.
1:00:24 > 1:00:26John Jungclaussen, speak for Germany!
1:00:26 > 1:00:28HE CHUCKLES Let me, yes!
1:00:28 > 1:00:30Well, I think what we tend to underestimate
1:00:30 > 1:00:33in this discussion quite easily
1:00:33 > 1:00:37is the importance of the economic growth of Germany after 1871.
1:00:37 > 1:00:41Germany's nationalism, er, was not least bolstered
1:00:41 > 1:00:46by this extraordinary economic growth that the country experienced.
1:00:46 > 1:00:51The growth was such that it spurred a kind of nationalism on
1:00:51 > 1:00:55and let the Kaiser, er, ride ahead.
1:00:55 > 1:00:59But I think, had it been for a German victory early on,
1:00:59 > 1:01:04it would have been...return to a degree of economic sense, I think,
1:01:04 > 1:01:09a degree of what makes sense to grow the economy further,
1:01:09 > 1:01:13rather than to oppress smaller countries.
1:01:13 > 1:01:18Well, this is the moment that I'm going to turn from the experts -
1:01:18 > 1:01:22I'll be back - to the audience.
1:01:22 > 1:01:26In 1914, the people who made the argument that I'm making
1:01:26 > 1:01:28were the people of the left.
1:01:28 > 1:01:30This might not have struck you yet,
1:01:30 > 1:01:35but the only people who strongly argued for nonintervention
1:01:35 > 1:01:41in 1914 were the far left of the Labour Party, and that indeed
1:01:41 > 1:01:45is one of the puzzles of the debate that we have these days about 1914.
1:01:45 > 1:01:47Almost nobody seems to want to make
1:01:47 > 1:01:50that left-wing case for nonintervention.
1:01:50 > 1:01:52Is there anybody here who buys the idea
1:01:52 > 1:01:54that Britain should have stayed out,
1:01:54 > 1:01:59or are you all convinced by the majority of the panel
1:01:59 > 1:02:03that we did the right thing to intervene in 1914?
1:02:03 > 1:02:06There's a lady there, in the nice red jacket.
1:02:06 > 1:02:11Can I just say, I think the problem with your broad brush
1:02:11 > 1:02:16and drawing the relevance for today is you've actually done it
1:02:16 > 1:02:21with certain inaccuracies that our panel have pointed out.
1:02:21 > 1:02:24The first is the idea that if Britain hadn't gone in it would have
1:02:24 > 1:02:28been a small-scale conflict, and that's been answered.
1:02:28 > 1:02:32The second is this preposterous, and you call it playful,
1:02:32 > 1:02:38idea that if Germany had imposed its customs union
1:02:38 > 1:02:40it would have been like the EU.
1:02:40 > 1:02:45I mean, that I think is actually quite a damaging sort of argument
1:02:45 > 1:02:48and modern analogy to make.
1:02:48 > 1:02:53So, although I'm not against your counterfactual ideas
1:02:53 > 1:02:56and your popular interpretations, I think
1:02:56 > 1:02:59you must do it with a level of... of accuracy, dare I say.
1:02:59 > 1:03:02Well, of course there's a very big difference
1:03:02 > 1:03:04between speculation and fact,
1:03:04 > 1:03:07and we can none of us say factually what would have
1:03:07 > 1:03:10happened if Britain had not intervened.
1:03:10 > 1:03:14In that sense it's not about accuracy, it's about interpretation.
1:03:14 > 1:03:17And as for the parallel with the European Union,
1:03:17 > 1:03:21I said quite deliberately that that was playful but it's designed to make us think.
1:03:21 > 1:03:24After all, are you telling me that Germany doesn't dominate
1:03:24 > 1:03:28- the European Union?- No, but I think it's...- Tell that to some Greeks.
1:03:28 > 1:03:31I think it's actually rather irresponsible of you to be playful
1:03:31 > 1:03:36about, dare I say, a serious subject, you know, um...
1:03:36 > 1:03:38Why is it...? Why is it irresponsible
1:03:38 > 1:03:40to ask a question about
1:03:40 > 1:03:42whether it was worth the United Kingdom
1:03:42 > 1:03:43fighting for four and a half years,
1:03:43 > 1:03:46sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives,
1:03:46 > 1:03:49if the net result is not profoundly different from
1:03:49 > 1:03:51the one that we've ended up with?
1:03:51 > 1:03:53I mean, that fundamental question,
1:03:53 > 1:03:56was it worth fighting to resist German domination
1:03:56 > 1:03:59of the European continent, doesn't seem to me facetious at all.
1:03:59 > 1:04:02It seems to me highly relevant today.
1:04:12 > 1:04:15Let's think a little bit more about these issues
1:04:15 > 1:04:17of why the war lasts so long.
1:04:17 > 1:04:21After all, we're actually rather accustomed to wars ending
1:04:21 > 1:04:25via negotiation, and that doesn't happen in this case.
1:04:25 > 1:04:29This war ends because one side collapses.
1:04:29 > 1:04:34Are there any thoughts over here about the duration of the war?
1:04:34 > 1:04:37I'm particularly interested to hear from men in the age group
1:04:37 > 1:04:40that fought, which...I think you definitely are in that age group,
1:04:40 > 1:04:43you wouldn't have been able to dodge the draft.
1:04:43 > 1:04:48You made that point about soldiers having a lust for revenge,
1:04:48 > 1:04:52which kept them fighting possibly until the last man was standing.
1:04:52 > 1:04:53And then famously in 1914
1:04:53 > 1:04:57didn't the Germans and the British forces have a football match?
1:04:57 > 1:04:59- That is true. - And then exchange gifts.
1:04:59 > 1:05:03I was just wondering... where was the turning point?
1:05:03 > 1:05:05Like, where the war became serious
1:05:05 > 1:05:10and these soldiers actually wanted to fight until the end.
1:05:10 > 1:05:13This is a great question because it goes to one of the most
1:05:13 > 1:05:16famous episodes of the war,
1:05:16 > 1:05:19one which is sometimes dismissed as a myth,
1:05:19 > 1:05:24the idea of a Christmas truce between British and German soldiers,
1:05:24 > 1:05:26Christmas of 1914.
1:05:26 > 1:05:30It's actually true, it did happen. At this early stage in the war
1:05:30 > 1:05:34relations between the two armies were sufficiently good
1:05:34 > 1:05:37that they actually fraternised in no-man's-land, and although
1:05:37 > 1:05:40there were still some snipers taking pot shots -
1:05:40 > 1:05:44it was a pretty dangerous thing to go and celebrate Christmas in no-man's-land,
1:05:44 > 1:05:48I don't recommend it if you ever find yourself in that situation - it didn't happen again.
1:05:48 > 1:05:51And maybe this is a good opportunity just to switch back to
1:05:51 > 1:05:54one of the experts, Heather Jones,
1:05:54 > 1:05:58because Heather's done some important work
1:05:58 > 1:06:00on this precise question of why
1:06:00 > 1:06:05relations between the two sides at the front deteriorated.
1:06:05 > 1:06:08Is it right, as I've tried to argue,
1:06:08 > 1:06:12that they go from potential fraternisation to hatred,
1:06:12 > 1:06:15and is that one of the reasons that men keep fighting?
1:06:15 > 1:06:19- Heather Jones. - Well, I think there's many reasons why men keep fighting,
1:06:19 > 1:06:21one of which is small-group camaraderie,
1:06:21 > 1:06:24the simple fact of fighting for the man beside you.
1:06:24 > 1:06:27Another reason is a sense that actually there's
1:06:27 > 1:06:29a need for vengeance, as you said.
1:06:29 > 1:06:33I would agree with that point, that if one has been in battle and seen
1:06:33 > 1:06:37friends killed beside you it gives an impetus to continue fighting.
1:06:37 > 1:06:39The other thing is simply by 1916 it is a different war,
1:06:39 > 1:06:41a different type of battlefield.
1:06:41 > 1:06:45It's industrialised, many of the men are actually killed at long distance
1:06:45 > 1:06:48by artillery shells, they don't actually see those who kill them,
1:06:48 > 1:06:51so a lot of the killing is actually anonymous in the First World War.
1:06:51 > 1:06:54You don't actually have to have extreme enmity for your enemy
1:06:54 > 1:06:59to...to participate, you simply are in a trench being shelled from above.
1:06:59 > 1:07:00So there's a number of factors,
1:07:00 > 1:07:03and I would argue it's an interactive process between them.
1:07:03 > 1:07:05Gary Sheffield. Why do men keep fighting?
1:07:05 > 1:07:10I would like to add to that, I spent a lot of time going through contemporary letters and diaries,
1:07:10 > 1:07:12trying to understand what maintained
1:07:12 > 1:07:15British troops' morale and motivation,
1:07:15 > 1:07:17and the simple fact is a lot of them
1:07:17 > 1:07:20looked at the devastation in Belgium and France and were saying,
1:07:20 > 1:07:22"We're fighting so that does not happen at home."
1:07:24 > 1:07:29David Reynolds. Let me come back to you for a moment.
1:07:29 > 1:07:34When I try to imagine alternate endings to World War I,
1:07:34 > 1:07:38one of the questions in my mind is whether it reaches a point
1:07:38 > 1:07:41when negotiation, when diplomacy is no longer possible,
1:07:41 > 1:07:44because there's just too much damage been done,
1:07:44 > 1:07:46because the body count is just too high.
1:07:46 > 1:07:49Do you think that's true, and does that tell us something important
1:07:49 > 1:07:51about the nature of war and diplomacy?
1:07:51 > 1:07:54Can you reach the point where negotiation is no longer an option?
1:07:54 > 1:07:57I think you can, probably.
1:07:57 > 1:08:02For example, Lord Lansdowne, who had been a former Foreign Secretary,
1:08:02 > 1:08:07in 1916 first privately and then in public raises the question,
1:08:07 > 1:08:11is the body count, as we would now put it,
1:08:11 > 1:08:14worth carrying on this war for?
1:08:14 > 1:08:15Have we gone too far?
1:08:15 > 1:08:21Erm, and Lansdowne's question is pushed on one side because I think
1:08:21 > 1:08:28it's almost politically impossible to say, "OK, we'll now call it a draw.
1:08:28 > 1:08:31"We've had so many hundreds of thousands of people killed
1:08:31 > 1:08:33"but we'll call it a draw."
1:08:33 > 1:08:35So that there is a point at which
1:08:35 > 1:08:39I think diplomacy ceases to be an option.
1:08:49 > 1:08:51It's not clear how the war's going to end
1:08:51 > 1:08:54until really quite late in the day.
1:08:54 > 1:08:57The Germans still have, at least in their own minds,
1:08:57 > 1:09:00a realistic chance of winning.
1:09:00 > 1:09:02In the end the United States has to intervene
1:09:02 > 1:09:05and become a combatant power.
1:09:05 > 1:09:07Kathleen, why do you think it was impossible to end the war
1:09:07 > 1:09:12by negotiation once it was clear that neither side could win easily?
1:09:12 > 1:09:16Well, the thing is, what could America do to stop the war?
1:09:16 > 1:09:18The US isn't threatened.
1:09:18 > 1:09:21She only comes into the war not to save the world
1:09:21 > 1:09:23but because she's torpedoed into it.
1:09:23 > 1:09:25I myself don't think she would have joined the war
1:09:25 > 1:09:29if she hadn't been torpedoed into it, no matter what Wilson wanted.
1:09:29 > 1:09:35So, just to be clear, it's the Germans' sinking of American ships
1:09:35 > 1:09:38using their submarines that's decisive in bringing
1:09:38 > 1:09:42- the United States into the war? - Yes, I think so.
1:09:42 > 1:09:46I mean, Wilson won his election in 1916 by saying
1:09:46 > 1:09:49he was the man who kept us out of war, and so forth.
1:09:49 > 1:09:55But once the US is in the war, the US is the rising power.
1:09:55 > 1:09:59It hasn't been killing and being killed for the previous three years,
1:09:59 > 1:10:03it has a massive industrial, er, machine,
1:10:03 > 1:10:05thanks to all the goods it's been doing,
1:10:05 > 1:10:08it has the money - all the others are running out of money -
1:10:08 > 1:10:12and it has an endless supply of Idaho farm boys.
1:10:12 > 1:10:17It provides morale as well as manpower, money and armaments.
1:10:17 > 1:10:21And so therefore, when you're in that sort of position,
1:10:21 > 1:10:25Wilson says, "Now that they're financially in our hands they'll have to do what we want to do."
1:10:25 > 1:10:28I was going to go to Gary Sheffield at this point
1:10:28 > 1:10:30and say, what do you think the American role was,
1:10:30 > 1:10:33not only in terms of the diplomacy but perhaps more importantly
1:10:33 > 1:10:36in terms of the fighting in the final phase of the war?
1:10:36 > 1:10:37Was it decisive?
1:10:37 > 1:10:41On the United States' contribution to victory, I'd agree with Kathy.
1:10:41 > 1:10:45I think actually their morale impact is huge,
1:10:45 > 1:10:48both in boosting British and French morale
1:10:48 > 1:10:50and depressing that of the Germans,
1:10:50 > 1:10:53who suddenly realise there's a couple of million men coming into the field.
1:10:53 > 1:10:57That's too many, to quote a German soldier at the time.
1:10:57 > 1:11:00The war came to an end when the British Army,
1:11:00 > 1:11:02and you put the stress on the British Army,
1:11:02 > 1:11:05raised its effectiveness and was able to match the Germans
1:11:05 > 1:11:07and overmatch them at their own game.
1:11:07 > 1:11:11Now, I think what should be clear from the way the discussion is going
1:11:11 > 1:11:14is that you need to see that in the context of American intervention.
1:11:14 > 1:11:17And, in particular, what you need to bear in mind is,
1:11:17 > 1:11:20sure the British Army became more effective.
1:11:20 > 1:11:23Most of that effectiveness was already there by 1917.
1:11:23 > 1:11:26It was being matched by increases in German army effectiveness,
1:11:26 > 1:11:29so in effect, if you look at the Battle of Ypres,
1:11:29 > 1:11:32third Battle of Ypres in 1917, the British Army was probably
1:11:32 > 1:11:35doing more damage to itself than it was to the Germans.
1:11:35 > 1:11:38Complete change by August 1918, and what's happened in the middle,
1:11:38 > 1:11:41which you mentioned, is the Ludendorff offensives,
1:11:41 > 1:11:44in which the German Army essentially wears itself out,
1:11:44 > 1:11:46and the morale in the German Army is actually cracking
1:11:46 > 1:11:50well before August 1918 because of those offensives.
1:11:50 > 1:11:52But why were those offensives launched?
1:11:52 > 1:11:55Because of the German fear of American troops arriving en masse
1:11:55 > 1:11:59in the autumn of 1918, and therefore the Germans
1:11:59 > 1:12:02not just staying on the defensive but going onto the attack.
1:12:02 > 1:12:04That's where American intervention is crucial,
1:12:04 > 1:12:07plus the financial factors that have been mentioned,
1:12:07 > 1:12:08plus shipping, plus Navy.
1:12:08 > 1:12:10Without the American intervention,
1:12:10 > 1:12:14I think the best outcome one can see for the Allies is probably
1:12:14 > 1:12:17some kind of unfavourable draw in the autumn of 1918...'17.
1:12:17 > 1:12:21So the British Army plays a part in the August 1918,
1:12:21 > 1:12:24but only as part of a much larger coalition effort.
1:12:24 > 1:12:27Heather Jones, do you buy that argument that in fact
1:12:27 > 1:12:31it is the home front that's decisive, in the sense that
1:12:31 > 1:12:36the German home front is hungry, if not actually starving?
1:12:36 > 1:12:39How big a part did that play in the ultimate German collapse?
1:12:39 > 1:12:42Actually what's striking is how long the German home front holds out
1:12:42 > 1:12:44despite the blockade shortages in 1918.
1:12:44 > 1:12:47We know that there's hunger and there's real difficulties
1:12:47 > 1:12:49on the home front in the spring of 1918
1:12:49 > 1:12:54but with the hope of victory through the Ludendorff offensives they're prepared to hold out.
1:12:54 > 1:12:56It's only when the news comes in October,
1:12:56 > 1:12:59and it's a shock to the German population because of censorship,
1:12:59 > 1:13:02when they suddenly find out the extent to which
1:13:02 > 1:13:05their armies are being pushed back in France, that their morale crumbles.
1:13:05 > 1:13:08So the Army defeat comes first,
1:13:08 > 1:13:10and I'd really like to emphasise here the French.
1:13:10 > 1:13:15The initial rise in surrenders in 1918 by German soldiers is actually
1:13:15 > 1:13:18General Mangin's offensive at the end of July 1918 by the French.
1:13:18 > 1:13:20Amiens is the second strike.
1:13:20 > 1:13:23Going together they pummelled the German Army back.
1:13:23 > 1:13:26It's not the case simply of the British doing it alone.
1:13:26 > 1:13:29And I think that's very important, to really highlight that there.
1:13:29 > 1:13:30David Reynolds.
1:13:30 > 1:13:35There is a real debate in the autumn of 1918 about
1:13:35 > 1:13:39whether to go for an armistice with the Germans, to allow them
1:13:39 > 1:13:41to accept that
1:13:41 > 1:13:46or whether to push on, as Foch, for example, the French marshal,
1:13:46 > 1:13:49would want to do, push on into Germany,
1:13:49 > 1:13:52and that's a question where the issue is being weighed up
1:13:52 > 1:13:57against a clear-cut victory in which the Germans are seen to be
1:13:57 > 1:13:59defeated on their own soil
1:13:59 > 1:14:04against the extra tens of thousands of men
1:14:04 > 1:14:06that would die if we did that,
1:14:06 > 1:14:09erm, and how would we justify that at home?
1:14:09 > 1:14:13We know from military historians that they very much HAD lost
1:14:13 > 1:14:18and that that's exactly why they sought an armistice.
1:14:18 > 1:14:19Heather Jones.
1:14:19 > 1:14:22Ludendorff and Hindenburg realise the war is lost militarily
1:14:22 > 1:14:24so they turn to the civilian politicians
1:14:24 > 1:14:27from the more liberal parties in the Reichstag,
1:14:27 > 1:14:30who've wanted democratic reforms in the Kaiserreich
1:14:30 > 1:14:32for a long period of time, and who in fact supported the war
1:14:32 > 1:14:35only as a way of getting leverage to get those reforms,
1:14:35 > 1:14:37and they turn to the civilian politicians
1:14:37 > 1:14:40and say, "You take charge now, you will negotiate the peace with
1:14:40 > 1:14:43"the Americans," who Germany believe to be more favourable to them
1:14:43 > 1:14:44than the British and French -
1:14:44 > 1:14:48and therefore the civilians will carry the blame for suing for peace.
1:14:48 > 1:14:50And that's effectively what happens.
1:14:50 > 1:14:52It's masterminded really very cleverly
1:14:52 > 1:14:54by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
1:14:54 > 1:14:57David Stevenson wants to jump in at this point. David.
1:14:57 > 1:14:59The thing that makes all this possible
1:14:59 > 1:15:03is the German High Command's acceptance that military victory,
1:15:03 > 1:15:06either by offensive or defensive means, is now out of the question.
1:15:06 > 1:15:09And that brings us back to the other factors we were looking for,
1:15:09 > 1:15:12looking at earlier on in this discussion, about why
1:15:12 > 1:15:15the German Army is essentially crumbling in the summer of 1918.
1:15:15 > 1:15:18Which is partly for the reasons you outlined -
1:15:18 > 1:15:20British military achievement -
1:15:20 > 1:15:24but also American and French contributions to that are indispensable,
1:15:24 > 1:15:27which was partly why the war had to be ended in a compromise.
1:15:37 > 1:15:40This is maybe the right opportunity to shift our discussion
1:15:40 > 1:15:42to the consequences of the war.
1:15:42 > 1:15:46We think about the law of unintended consequences,
1:15:46 > 1:15:50which is probably the only law of history that I've ever recognised,
1:15:50 > 1:15:53it's extraordinary in the way that it operates here.
1:15:53 > 1:15:58Nobody in 1914 really sets out to blow up
1:15:58 > 1:16:02the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to blow up the Ottoman Empire.
1:16:02 > 1:16:05Nobody really sets out to drastically alter
1:16:05 > 1:16:08the nature of political systems all over Europe,
1:16:08 > 1:16:13including Germany and Russia, and yet that's the end station -
1:16:13 > 1:16:17a fundamental re-drawing of the European map.
1:16:17 > 1:16:22I wanted to go to Simon Winder, who's written a delightful book
1:16:22 > 1:16:26on the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1:16:26 > 1:16:27Did its collapse,
1:16:27 > 1:16:31its disintegration into different national component parts,
1:16:31 > 1:16:36represent a good outcome from the point of view, say,
1:16:36 > 1:16:40of the British, who had perhaps not intended that outcome?
1:16:40 > 1:16:43Well, I think it's one of the key catastrophes which really
1:16:43 > 1:16:45sows the Second World War.
1:16:45 > 1:16:48You can see the Second World War looming from this.
1:16:48 > 1:16:53That once you have the centre of Europe broken into small pieces,
1:16:53 > 1:16:57given, as you said earlier on, that these are not rational states,
1:16:57 > 1:17:00and you can just see this horrible rubble forming across Europe
1:17:00 > 1:17:03which really negates the whole nature of the victory
1:17:03 > 1:17:05of the First World War. The allies don't really win
1:17:05 > 1:17:08because they've simply created such a pressure cooker over these
1:17:08 > 1:17:11four years that the centre of Europe breaks into pieces.
1:17:11 > 1:17:15And those pieces effectively feed straight into Hitler's fantasies
1:17:15 > 1:17:18and they feed into Communist fantasies and a kind
1:17:18 > 1:17:22of horrible micro nationalism which is way outside Britain's control.
1:17:22 > 1:17:24This is a moment to go to the audience
1:17:24 > 1:17:28and see if there are any Leninists who want to agree with me
1:17:28 > 1:17:31that this is ultimately an imperialistic war,
1:17:31 > 1:17:36a war that's to be understood in terms of empires rather than,
1:17:36 > 1:17:38I don't know, the rights of plucky little Belgium?
1:17:38 > 1:17:42There's a young man there who wants to make a contribution. Yes, please.
1:17:42 > 1:17:45What I'd like to know is, just where would Britain be today
1:17:45 > 1:17:48had the war not happened, had it gone differently,
1:17:48 > 1:17:50had the Entente had a more sort of decisive victory?
1:17:50 > 1:17:53And would the Empire still exist today, or how long
1:17:53 > 1:17:56would it have taken after 1918 for the Empire to disintegrate?
1:17:56 > 1:18:01Well, any counterfactual question, we can only really guess.
1:18:01 > 1:18:05But it seems to me the right kind of question to ask,
1:18:05 > 1:18:09given that by intervening in 1914 in the way that it did,
1:18:09 > 1:18:12Britain ensured that it paid a very, very heavy cost,
1:18:12 > 1:18:16not only in terms of lives but financially, too.
1:18:16 > 1:18:19And my position would be that at the end of it all,
1:18:19 > 1:18:23by the time you get to the Armistice in November 1918,
1:18:23 > 1:18:27the British Empire may be bigger, it ends up being bigger on paper
1:18:27 > 1:18:30because it acquires territory from its defeated rivals,
1:18:30 > 1:18:33but it's much weaker because, if nothing else,
1:18:33 > 1:18:38it's lost an extraordinary number of skilled young men,
1:18:38 > 1:18:41and perhaps more importantly, it's saddled itself with
1:18:41 > 1:18:44an absolutely massive debt that makes it very difficult for Britain
1:18:44 > 1:18:48subsequently to deal with the return of the German challenge.
1:18:48 > 1:18:51So my answer to that question is,
1:18:51 > 1:18:56in many ways, that by intervening in 1914,
1:18:56 > 1:19:01the British Empire ends up hurting itself more than it strengthens itself.
1:19:01 > 1:19:04Now, I'm absolutely sure there are members of the panel
1:19:04 > 1:19:06who will take a very different view.
1:19:06 > 1:19:11Maybe we should just think about it in terms of imperial interest.
1:19:11 > 1:19:14Gary Sheffield, is the British Empire strengthened or weakened
1:19:14 > 1:19:17by its intervention in 1914, do you think?
1:19:17 > 1:19:19Well, I agree with you.
1:19:19 > 1:19:22I think though it's bigger on paper, it is in the long term weakened.
1:19:22 > 1:19:25There's a debate in Australia and New Zealand at the moment about
1:19:25 > 1:19:29whether they were right to intervene in what's sometimes seen
1:19:29 > 1:19:31as somebody else's war.
1:19:31 > 1:19:33Trouble is, that is not how Australians and New Zealanders
1:19:33 > 1:19:36thought of themselves in 1914.
1:19:36 > 1:19:40There is a clear emotional link to the home country.
1:19:40 > 1:19:44But even on a really basic, strategic level,
1:19:44 > 1:19:48Australia's security was dependent on the Royal Navy.
1:19:48 > 1:19:52If Britain is defeated, if the Royal Navy's defeated,
1:19:52 > 1:19:54Australia is then vulnerable.
1:19:54 > 1:19:56I'm really glad you brought up Australia.
1:19:56 > 1:20:01I think to have this discussion and not mention it would've got us all into deep trouble.
1:20:01 > 1:20:04One of the films that has had an absolutely massive impact
1:20:04 > 1:20:08on public consciousness about the First World War has been Gallipoli.
1:20:08 > 1:20:11And you have to find yourself asking the question,
1:20:11 > 1:20:16why are there Australians in Gallipoli fighting the Turks?
1:20:16 > 1:20:19Sean McMeekin, you have an answer to that question.
1:20:19 > 1:20:23It's certainly not in the interests of the British Empire in any obvious way.
1:20:23 > 1:20:26No, it was to win Constantinople and the Straits for the Russians.
1:20:26 > 1:20:29It's quite simple if you actually look at the diplomatic documents.
1:20:29 > 1:20:31Obviously this wasn't explained to the men who were waiting
1:20:31 > 1:20:35ashore in the trenches and dying in great numbers and so on,
1:20:35 > 1:20:38but if you actually look at what was literally being negotiated
1:20:38 > 1:20:42in early March 1915, that's what the campaign was about.
1:20:42 > 1:20:46In diplomatic terms, it's obvious. It was to win Constantinople and the Straits for Russia.
1:20:46 > 1:20:49And, I must say, I hadn't realised until I read your book
1:20:49 > 1:20:52that Mel Gibson had been fighting for the Tsar!
1:20:52 > 1:20:56That came as a revelation to me.
1:20:56 > 1:20:59Now, there's a young man here with a light green shirt
1:20:59 > 1:21:01who's ready to intervene.
1:21:01 > 1:21:05Are there no lessons that we can learn for our contemporary foreign policy
1:21:05 > 1:21:10- from what happened in 1914?- I think there are lessons.- If there are lessons, what are they?
1:21:10 > 1:21:14I'm sure there are lessons. If you think of Christopher Clark's recent work on The Sleepwalkers,
1:21:14 > 1:21:16his message at a recent lecture on this matter was,
1:21:16 > 1:21:22this could happen again but in the sense that a situation can escalate where there is not
1:21:22 > 1:21:25absolute knowledge on the part of any actor involved,
1:21:25 > 1:21:28rather than your argument which, I think,
1:21:28 > 1:21:31if I interpret correctly, you're almost saying Britain has
1:21:31 > 1:21:36the power to change a situation either for a good or a bad.
1:21:36 > 1:21:40And I think you're making the terms and the possible outcomes
1:21:40 > 1:21:44- on either side too easy. - Well, in Chris Clark's book,
1:21:44 > 1:21:49he makes the argument that the great powers sleepwalk into the war.
1:21:49 > 1:21:53It's the consequence of bad decisions and miscalculation.
1:21:53 > 1:21:57In that I think he's quite close to my view in The Pity Of War,
1:21:57 > 1:22:00that it's a huge mistake and everybody's making it.
1:22:00 > 1:22:04But isn't there an important lesson for our time there?
1:22:04 > 1:22:10That you can end up making a very big war by mistake,
1:22:10 > 1:22:13and I think it's worth maybe in the concluding phase of this discussion
1:22:13 > 1:22:16just thinking about the wars we've seen in recent times,
1:22:16 > 1:22:19none of which has produced a world war, thank God,
1:22:19 > 1:22:22but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.
1:22:23 > 1:22:27Is there a sense in which we've learnt from the events of 1914
1:22:27 > 1:22:33enough not to make those same mistakes again?
1:22:33 > 1:22:37Or are you inclined to agree with the majority of the panel that
1:22:37 > 1:22:44in the same kinds of circumstances, Britain would be right to go to war?
1:22:44 > 1:22:47Kathy, what are the lessons for our time,
1:22:47 > 1:22:51and in terms of how foreign policy should be made
1:22:51 > 1:22:54and when military intervention is justified?
1:22:54 > 1:22:58Well, there are no great principles on that
1:22:58 > 1:23:02but I do think the real difference here between going to war then
1:23:02 > 1:23:05and now is that we would know a lot more.
1:23:05 > 1:23:09The benefit, shall we say, of the intelligence relationship
1:23:09 > 1:23:12and signals intelligence and so forth
1:23:12 > 1:23:16is that belligerents would know a lot more of what's going on.
1:23:16 > 1:23:20The real problem, 1914, one of many real problems,
1:23:20 > 1:23:23is that people didn't know what was happening.
1:23:23 > 1:23:27You knew in general terms but British Foreign Office didn't know
1:23:27 > 1:23:30what was happening in the German Chancellery, for example.
1:23:30 > 1:23:33- It was...- Well, one thing's for sure, the United States knows what's going on
1:23:33 > 1:23:36in all the chancelleries in the world, thanks to the NSA!
1:23:36 > 1:23:40I was merely going to contribute that very point, in fact!
1:23:40 > 1:23:43But the point still remains, I think, is that there would be less
1:23:43 > 1:23:47blindfolded stumbling into war now than there was then.
1:23:47 > 1:23:50David Reynolds, could we stumble into a great war today
1:23:50 > 1:23:53or have we enough intelligence to avoid it?
1:23:53 > 1:23:56No, I'm not sure that we have enough intelligence but I think it would be
1:23:56 > 1:24:00much harder to sustain a great war in the way that happened then.
1:24:00 > 1:24:04If you think of the conflicts we've been through recently,
1:24:04 > 1:24:06with embedded reporters,
1:24:06 > 1:24:10with soldiers themselves taking their own pictures of a war,
1:24:10 > 1:24:13the divorce between the home front
1:24:13 > 1:24:18and the war front is much less than it was then.
1:24:18 > 1:24:22So I think part of what is fascinating and still problematic
1:24:22 > 1:24:27about this war in a way that isn't true of '39-'45 is, you know,
1:24:27 > 1:24:31your title is The Pity Of War, Wilfred Owen's phrase,
1:24:31 > 1:24:33but it's the mystery of war, in a way.
1:24:33 > 1:24:35It's this question,
1:24:35 > 1:24:40how could those 37 days develop in the way they did?
1:24:40 > 1:24:44There's a whole range of structural issues that we as historians study
1:24:44 > 1:24:48but there's also these amazing areas of contingency.
1:24:48 > 1:24:49You've played with those.
1:24:49 > 1:24:52You've teased us, in a sense, with your counterfactuals.
1:24:52 > 1:24:57But the reason you can do it is because this is a war whose ending
1:24:57 > 1:24:59is still going to be debated for another century,
1:24:59 > 1:25:04whose beginning's going to be debated for another century, whose ending's going to be debated another century.
1:25:04 > 1:25:08And that, I think, brings out, again,
1:25:08 > 1:25:11this strange mixture of big systemic forces
1:25:11 > 1:25:16and then contingent decisions, and that's true of almost every conflict
1:25:16 > 1:25:20that we will get into small-scale in the next 100 years as well.
1:25:20 > 1:25:26Hew Strachan, if you think about the wars that have happened recently,
1:25:26 > 1:25:30it's been a striking feature that they haven't escalated,
1:25:30 > 1:25:34but we can imagine, can't we, situations in which they could have?
1:25:34 > 1:25:37Is there a danger that we could see something similar -
1:25:37 > 1:25:42it starts off small, like Serbia and Austria-Hungary, and then it becomes much larger?
1:25:42 > 1:25:44Could one see an analogy anywhere in the world
1:25:44 > 1:25:47in the last ten or so years where that might've happened?
1:25:47 > 1:25:50I think you can certainly argue the case for possible escalation.
1:25:50 > 1:25:53You've asked rhetorically several times,
1:25:53 > 1:25:58what is it that this war tells us and how does it appeal to us?
1:25:58 > 1:25:59And I would say, actually,
1:25:59 > 1:26:04almost in contradistinction to the gentleman who raised the point about the Second World War,
1:26:04 > 1:26:10that this war is more powerful for us precisely because of the ambiguity about its causation.
1:26:10 > 1:26:13Because that has a resonance for us today, too.
1:26:13 > 1:26:18When is it right to go to war, when is it wrong to go to war is something we still wrestle with.
1:26:18 > 1:26:23I mean, David Stevenson's absolutely central point about Britain being
1:26:23 > 1:26:26faced with two evils and which one is it going to go for,
1:26:26 > 1:26:28which is the lesser evil in the circumstance,
1:26:28 > 1:26:31is something that should have great power for us today
1:26:31 > 1:26:34because many of the situations which we find ourselves in
1:26:34 > 1:26:37are exactly that, and that is always the true moral dilemma.
1:26:37 > 1:26:40If there really were a simple answer not to go to war,
1:26:40 > 1:26:43then in most cases, of course, war would not happen.
1:26:43 > 1:26:48But we confront ourselves far more often with situations where we have to weigh up,
1:26:48 > 1:26:52particularly when we use humanitarian intervention, for example,
1:26:52 > 1:26:54as a case for a possible action.
1:26:54 > 1:26:57Well, maybe that's an appropriate note
1:26:57 > 1:27:01on which we draw this discussion to a conclusion.
1:27:01 > 1:27:06I hope people in China and Japan are listening to what you're saying,
1:27:06 > 1:27:10Hew, because if there's one place in the world I could imagine
1:27:10 > 1:27:13something escalating from a small conflict to a big one right now,
1:27:13 > 1:27:16it's probably in East Asia.
1:27:16 > 1:27:20Well, so much for the Great War for Civilisation.
1:27:20 > 1:27:22From my vantage point,
1:27:22 > 1:27:27I must confess the First World War still looks more like
1:27:27 > 1:27:30a disastrous civil war within Western civilisation.
1:27:30 > 1:27:33It not only killed more than ten million people,
1:27:33 > 1:27:35it also shattered the global economic order
1:27:35 > 1:27:39and made a mockery of the idea of human progress.
1:27:39 > 1:27:43History is trying to teach us something important here.
1:27:43 > 1:27:48It's trying to teach us that big wars can have such small causes
1:27:48 > 1:27:51that they go unnoticed until the wars begin,.
1:27:51 > 1:27:57that globalisation is a complex system has collapsed once before,
1:27:57 > 1:28:03that strategic choices are best made before rather than in a crisis,
1:28:03 > 1:28:07and that the costs of bad choices can be truly staggering.
1:28:09 > 1:28:13You can't learn from history just through pious commemoration.
1:28:13 > 1:28:17Maybe, just maybe, after 100 years of rationalisation,
1:28:17 > 1:28:19dare I say denial,
1:28:19 > 1:28:21it's time for us to make the admission
1:28:21 > 1:28:25that maybe the Great War was a great mistake.