0:00:04 > 0:00:09From the theatre of war to the theatre of memory.
0:00:09 > 0:00:13Along the old frontline but also in every parish back home
0:00:13 > 0:00:18are the now familiar monuments to the dead of 1914-18.
0:00:23 > 0:00:27Every year, we observe solemn and moving rituals.
0:00:27 > 0:00:33At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.
0:00:33 > 0:00:37But for those of us now who didn't live through the Great War,
0:00:37 > 0:00:39what are we remembering?
0:00:39 > 0:00:42BAGPIPES PLAY FLOWERS OF THE FOREST
0:00:42 > 0:00:46A terrible sacrifice and for what?
0:00:46 > 0:00:50In Britain the usual answer is, "for nothing".
0:00:50 > 0:00:55We tend to think of the Great War as pointless slaughter,
0:00:55 > 0:00:57mud and blood,
0:00:57 > 0:01:01the carnage illuminated only by poignant war poetry.
0:01:03 > 0:01:08But I think that mentally we have become stuck in the trenches.
0:01:08 > 0:01:13Our view of 1914-18 is now a caricature.
0:01:17 > 0:01:22In this series, I want to get out of the trenches
0:01:22 > 0:01:25and look afresh at the meaning of the conflict,
0:01:25 > 0:01:28its impact on the survivors,
0:01:28 > 0:01:30the living, not the dead.
0:01:32 > 0:01:35There's a strange paradox about the Great War.
0:01:35 > 0:01:40For us now it's a static, futile and inconclusive conflict.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44I want to explore how this deadlocked war
0:01:44 > 0:01:46unleashed huge dynamic forces
0:01:46 > 0:01:51that have pummelled and shaped the whole century since 1914.
0:01:52 > 0:01:57Within this bigger picture lies another fascinating puzzle -
0:01:57 > 0:02:00why Britain in the '20s and '30s coped far better
0:02:00 > 0:02:04than the rest of Europe with the legacies of the war,
0:02:04 > 0:02:08especially the tumultuous forces of democracy and nationalism.
0:02:12 > 0:02:16The first of these great legacies is perhaps the most important -
0:02:16 > 0:02:20our national memory of the Great War,
0:02:20 > 0:02:22the story we tell ourselves about it.
0:02:23 > 0:02:29This isn't something fixed in stone, it's shifted repeatedly over time.
0:02:29 > 0:02:34And different countries remember the Great War in different ways.
0:02:34 > 0:02:38Above all, the contrast between the memory of 1914-18 in Britain
0:02:38 > 0:02:43as against Germany would really matter in the years that followed.
0:02:43 > 0:02:48This film is about how the Great War has cast shadows
0:02:48 > 0:02:52over the whole century since 1914
0:02:52 > 0:02:58and how, equally important, the events of that turbulent century
0:02:58 > 0:03:02have cast shadows over the way we remember the Great War.
0:03:17 > 0:03:19EXPLOSIONS
0:03:37 > 0:03:41In 1918, the Tommies started to return from France.
0:03:41 > 0:03:44Yet most British people had little sense
0:03:44 > 0:03:47of what soldiers had been through in body and mind.
0:03:47 > 0:03:49From the start,
0:03:49 > 0:03:53it was hard to come to terms with the enormity of the Great War.
0:03:57 > 0:03:59In the quiet moments of the night
0:03:59 > 0:04:02when the wind blew in the right direction,
0:04:02 > 0:04:05it's said you could hear the low rumble of the guns
0:04:05 > 0:04:08on the Western Front here in Britain.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11But even if people might be able to hear the war,
0:04:11 > 0:04:15they couldn't see it and they struggled to imagine it.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20That, I think, is a deep paradox about the Great War.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23It was the biggest conflict in British history,
0:04:23 > 0:04:26720,000 dead
0:04:26 > 0:04:29a million and a half wounded
0:04:29 > 0:04:34and yet the reality of warfare remained distant and obscure.
0:04:36 > 0:04:42So the British entombed the unknown horrors in grand monuments
0:04:42 > 0:04:47graced with fine words like "honour" and "sacrifice".
0:04:47 > 0:04:51Memory was cloaked in remembrance.
0:04:57 > 0:04:59In July 1919,
0:04:59 > 0:05:03veterans marched through London in a victory parade.
0:05:03 > 0:05:07To allow them to salute the memory of their dead comrades,
0:05:07 > 0:05:11the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned to build
0:05:11 > 0:05:12an appropriate monument.
0:05:15 > 0:05:19Tellingly, what he came up with was not a traditional victory arch
0:05:19 > 0:05:21but a tomb,
0:05:21 > 0:05:23in fact an empty tomb.
0:05:25 > 0:05:29This cenotaph was meant to be a temporary structure,
0:05:29 > 0:05:32put together from wood and plaster.
0:05:32 > 0:05:34But it struck an immediate chord with the public.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37The press was full of letters demanding that the cenotaph
0:05:37 > 0:05:39be made permanent.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45On Armistice Day, November 1920,
0:05:45 > 0:05:48a stone Cenotaph was unveiled.
0:05:49 > 0:05:54One and a quarter million people filed past in the first week.
0:05:54 > 0:05:57The memorial stood 10ft deep in flowers.
0:06:03 > 0:06:06Today, it's all very familiar
0:06:06 > 0:06:10but, in 1920, what might have been going through the minds of
0:06:10 > 0:06:15the bereaved as they faced the Cenotaph for the first time?
0:06:15 > 0:06:19Some may well have gained comfort from the three words on the side -
0:06:19 > 0:06:22The Glorious Dead.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26Those who didn't probably kept their feelings to themselves.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30For a nation numbed by grief and uncertainty about the war,
0:06:30 > 0:06:32the appeal of the Cenotaph lies,
0:06:32 > 0:06:36I think, in its simple yet abstract character.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42Lutyens' design was, in effect, an empty space
0:06:42 > 0:06:47onto which people could project their own memories and emotions.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56While the Cenotaph allowed people to remember the war in their own way,
0:06:56 > 0:06:59the state took control of the dead.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05Politicians refused to bring soldiers' bodies back.
0:07:05 > 0:07:06The cost would be prohibitive
0:07:06 > 0:07:10and anyway, many men had literally been blown to bits.
0:07:13 > 0:07:18Instead the bodies were carefully collected along the Western Front,
0:07:18 > 0:07:25buried with reverence and canopied with striking architecture.
0:07:25 > 0:07:29The interwoven arches Lutyens designed at Thiepval
0:07:29 > 0:07:31were not to trumpet victory
0:07:31 > 0:07:36but to bear 72,000 names of the Missing of the Somme.
0:07:39 > 0:07:41The new Menin Gate at Ypres
0:07:41 > 0:07:45was inscribed with a further 55,000 names.
0:07:47 > 0:07:51And these were just two of nearly a thousand more cemeteries
0:07:51 > 0:07:53and memorials.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58The project was the brainchild of Fabian Ware,
0:07:58 > 0:08:02who at 45 in 1914 was too old to fight.
0:08:02 > 0:08:05Volunteering instead as an ambulance driver,
0:08:05 > 0:08:09Ware was appalled by the random carnage.
0:08:09 > 0:08:12He became determined that each soldier,
0:08:12 > 0:08:14whether a general or a private,
0:08:14 > 0:08:17should have his own named grave,
0:08:17 > 0:08:20very different from the mass graves into which the soldiers
0:08:20 > 0:08:23were dumped a century earlier after the battle of Waterloo.
0:08:25 > 0:08:28Helping Ware to design the gravestones
0:08:28 > 0:08:31was another man too old to fight.
0:08:31 > 0:08:36The poet Rudyard Kipling had especially guilty memories.
0:08:36 > 0:08:39He pressed his only son, Jack, to join the army.
0:08:39 > 0:08:42Jack was last seen stumbling in agony
0:08:42 > 0:08:47across the battlefield of Loos with half his face blown off.
0:08:47 > 0:08:49His body was not found.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55For those like Jack who were forever missing,
0:08:55 > 0:08:59Kipling coined the phrase, "Known Unto God".
0:09:02 > 0:09:07Today, the project of state-imposed remembrance, spearheaded by Lutyens,
0:09:07 > 0:09:10Ware and Kipling, seems extraordinary and impressive.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16But, at the time, this was enormously controversial.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20Parents wanted to mourn their sons at home
0:09:20 > 0:09:22in their own country churchyards.
0:09:22 > 0:09:29The standardised headstone was denounced as a Prussian imposition.
0:09:29 > 0:09:32One mother complained that the tombstones looked like,
0:09:32 > 0:09:35"So many milestones."
0:09:35 > 0:09:39But the project was pushed through by old men in London
0:09:39 > 0:09:42who had sent the boys to war
0:09:42 > 0:09:46and were now contorted by grief
0:09:46 > 0:09:48and probably guilt.
0:09:48 > 0:09:53This was the survivors saying, on a grand scale...
0:09:53 > 0:09:55"Sorry".
0:10:06 > 0:10:10The Cenotaph, the cemeteries, the annual two minute silence
0:10:10 > 0:10:15and the tradition of wearing poppies as a quiet demonstration of grief,
0:10:15 > 0:10:19these were the ways that Britain tried to cope in the 1920s
0:10:19 > 0:10:22with the trauma of the Great War.
0:10:22 > 0:10:25The British had buried the dead with honour.
0:10:25 > 0:10:31They had created rituals to remember but also to sanitise the war
0:10:31 > 0:10:34and it seemed that life could get going again.
0:10:39 > 0:10:42For a new generation who had come of age after the war,
0:10:42 > 0:10:47the '20s were a time of new music and new fashions.
0:10:47 > 0:10:49They had been too young to fight
0:10:49 > 0:10:52and were quite happy to forget the Great War,
0:10:52 > 0:10:54to consign it to history.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59But the past has a way of biting back.
0:11:02 > 0:11:051928 was the tenth anniversary of the end of the war.
0:11:06 > 0:11:08The media, then and now,
0:11:08 > 0:11:13love anniversaries as a source of cheap and easy stories
0:11:13 > 0:11:16but these often generate deeper discussion
0:11:16 > 0:11:18about the meaning of the past.
0:11:19 > 0:11:221928 was just such a trigger.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27Private grief began to enter public debate.
0:11:34 > 0:11:37A succession of new books and memoirs
0:11:37 > 0:11:40took the wraps off the soldiers' experience in the trenches
0:11:40 > 0:11:44and gave voice to their enduring pain.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50But, more than anything, it was a play that brought home to the
0:11:50 > 0:11:54British people something of the hellish reality of the Great War.
0:11:57 > 0:12:01The author was R C Sherriff who'd served as an officer
0:12:01 > 0:12:04on the Western Front and then, it seemed, returned to normal life
0:12:04 > 0:12:09as a shy insurance clerk living with his parents in suburban Surrey.
0:12:11 > 0:12:13Yet, like many veterans,
0:12:13 > 0:12:17Sheriff struggled to cope with his war experiences
0:12:17 > 0:12:20and, ten years on, they came to the surface as theatre.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25Journey's End was set in a gloomy dug-out
0:12:25 > 0:12:28with soldiers sitting around, talking, bickering
0:12:28 > 0:12:33and using drink to numb their emotions and keep them going.
0:12:40 > 0:12:44War imagined against a stone memorial was one thing,
0:12:44 > 0:12:48the dead brought to life on stage was very different.
0:12:48 > 0:12:50And Sherriff was terrified about how
0:12:50 > 0:12:53his play would be received by the audience.
0:12:58 > 0:13:01The performance ended in what Sherriff called
0:13:01 > 0:13:04an "eerie and unreal" silence.
0:13:07 > 0:13:13The cast took their bow, while a thousand faces just stared back.
0:13:13 > 0:13:15No clapping. No reaction. Nothing.
0:13:16 > 0:13:20The curtain descended again as if on a tomb.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24And then the cheers erupted.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27IMAGINARY APPLAUSE
0:13:27 > 0:13:32It was the start of a West End run that lasted 18 months.
0:13:32 > 0:13:34The reviews were glowing,
0:13:34 > 0:13:38praising above all the realism of the play.
0:13:38 > 0:13:40But others saw a deeper meaning,
0:13:40 > 0:13:44interpreting Journey's End as a stark warning for the future
0:13:44 > 0:13:45about the horror of war.
0:13:47 > 0:13:50The author J B Priestley, wrote of the play,
0:13:50 > 0:13:53"It is the strongest plea for peace I know."
0:13:57 > 0:14:03Today that reaction to Journey's End as a plea for peace
0:14:03 > 0:14:06may seem to us rather pathetic, even tragic.
0:14:06 > 0:14:09Because we know with hindsight that,
0:14:09 > 0:14:14in 1939, the world was plunged into another great war.
0:14:15 > 0:14:21For us the 1920s and 1930s are the interwar years.
0:14:22 > 0:14:26But we have to remember that for the people who lived through them,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28they were the post-war years,
0:14:28 > 0:14:33when the future still seemed open and even hopeful.
0:14:39 > 0:14:42The great hope was never again,
0:14:42 > 0:14:46that 1914-18 would be, in the cliche of the time,
0:14:46 > 0:14:50the war to end all war.
0:14:50 > 0:14:55Britain's pay off for the Great War had to be the Great Peace.
0:15:08 > 0:15:12In the 1920s, this yearning for peace was focused on
0:15:12 > 0:15:16a new international body, the League of Nations,
0:15:16 > 0:15:18based in neutral Geneva.
0:15:19 > 0:15:22One of its key architects and champions in Britain
0:15:22 > 0:15:27was another guilt-ridden man who'd been too old to fight.
0:15:27 > 0:15:32Robert Cecil was the son of Tory Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury.
0:15:32 > 0:15:35He grew up here at Hatfield House,
0:15:35 > 0:15:38part of a family that had served the British state
0:15:38 > 0:15:41since the days of the first Queen Elizabeth.
0:15:44 > 0:15:48Cecil was a man of the Establishment.
0:15:48 > 0:15:51But he was also an instinctive reformer
0:15:51 > 0:15:54with a deep Christian conscience,
0:15:54 > 0:15:58who loved to campaign for unlikely causes.
0:15:58 > 0:16:00He championed votes for women
0:16:00 > 0:16:05but was equally passionate about the dangers of the motor car.
0:16:05 > 0:16:08As President of the Pedestrians' Association,
0:16:08 > 0:16:11he helped bring in the driving licence
0:16:11 > 0:16:14and the 30mph speed limit in towns.
0:16:15 > 0:16:19But what Cecil really wanted to put the brakes on was war.
0:16:21 > 0:16:28Unfortunately moderation doesn't receive the same publicity
0:16:28 > 0:16:30as extreme utterances.
0:16:31 > 0:16:34And for that and other reasons,
0:16:34 > 0:16:37it is very, very difficult by mere speech
0:16:37 > 0:16:42to counteract the harm that is done by violent utterance.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53Cecil was haunted by memories of the Great War.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56In 1914, he'd worked for the Red Cross in France
0:16:56 > 0:16:58helping the wounded.
0:16:58 > 0:17:01Like Ware, he was appalled by the destruction
0:17:01 > 0:17:06but, after 1918, his eyes were not on the dead and the past
0:17:06 > 0:17:09but on the living and the future.
0:17:09 > 0:17:13"If there is a quarrel between two individuals,
0:17:13 > 0:17:15"they do not fight it out,
0:17:15 > 0:17:19"unless they are barbarians or schoolboys."
0:17:20 > 0:17:26Cecil was an idealist with a highly moral view of international affairs.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30For him the League of Nations was the "essential machinery",
0:17:30 > 0:17:34as he put it, to prevent states from going to war.
0:17:37 > 0:17:41In other words - stopping another 1914
0:17:41 > 0:17:43and that meant no more secret deals
0:17:43 > 0:17:47between an international mafia of aristocratic diplomats.
0:17:47 > 0:17:52Instead democratic decisions open to public gaze.
0:17:52 > 0:17:55And if rogue states didn't settle disputes through talking,
0:17:55 > 0:17:59then sanctions or even force could be used against an aggressor.
0:18:03 > 0:18:05And the League soon made a difference.
0:18:05 > 0:18:11In 1914, the Great War had exploded out of a little Balkan crisis.
0:18:11 > 0:18:16In 1923, there was another dangerous flare-up in the Balkans,
0:18:16 > 0:18:19between Italy and Greece.
0:18:19 > 0:18:22In retaliation for the murder of some Italian soldiers,
0:18:22 > 0:18:25Italy's new dictator, Benito Mussolini,
0:18:25 > 0:18:28occupied the island of Corfu.
0:18:30 > 0:18:33The League intervened, imposed a fine on Greece
0:18:33 > 0:18:36and persuaded Mussolini to withdraw his troops.
0:18:39 > 0:18:43For the British, Corfu was a positive sign
0:18:43 > 0:18:46that the League could stop 1914 happening again.
0:18:53 > 0:18:58But in Germany, a very different way of remembering and understanding
0:18:58 > 0:19:00the Great War was taking hold.
0:19:02 > 0:19:06For Germany, what mattered was not preventing another 1914
0:19:06 > 0:19:11but another 1918, the year of humiliating defeat.
0:19:13 > 0:19:16That autumn German soldiers were still fighting in France
0:19:16 > 0:19:19when the government fell apart and the capital Berlin
0:19:19 > 0:19:23became a political battleground between right and left.
0:19:26 > 0:19:30So much so that the constitution for the new German republic
0:19:30 > 0:19:34was hammered out 200 miles away in Weimar.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40Weimar was a sleepy provincial town
0:19:40 > 0:19:43but also the historic heart of German culture...
0:19:45 > 0:19:49..home to Bach, Schiller and Goethe.
0:19:49 > 0:19:52XYLOPHONE PLAYS TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR BY JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
0:19:54 > 0:19:58The creation of the Republic here in Weimar was a calculated attempt
0:19:58 > 0:20:01to root the new democratic Germany
0:20:01 > 0:20:05in all that was best in the country's past.
0:20:05 > 0:20:09But it was also a panic measure forced on Germany's politicians
0:20:09 > 0:20:11by the street violence gripping Berlin.
0:20:13 > 0:20:17The Weimar Republic would never escape the bitter controversy
0:20:17 > 0:20:19in which it was born.
0:20:24 > 0:20:26In July 1926,
0:20:26 > 0:20:30an obscure right wing party held its annual rally in Weimar
0:20:30 > 0:20:34and its leader delivered his keynote speech, equally deliberately,
0:20:34 > 0:20:37in the National Theatre.
0:20:37 > 0:20:41He was taking command of Germany's past for a very different purpose.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47The party leader had fought on the Western Front
0:20:47 > 0:20:52and his version of Germany's war echoed that of many fellow veterans.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56The German army had not been defeated in 1918.
0:20:56 > 0:21:00It was still fighting heroically on foreign soil,
0:21:00 > 0:21:05only to be stabbed in the back by the Reds and pacifists at home.
0:21:05 > 0:21:09The Weimar Republic had then sold out by accepting
0:21:09 > 0:21:13the vindictive peace terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
0:21:13 > 0:21:16A point that he rammed home
0:21:16 > 0:21:19on the very spot where the Republic had been founded.
0:21:24 > 0:21:28This was very different political theatre from Journey's End.
0:21:29 > 0:21:33Hitler's speech celebrated Germany's centuries-long struggle
0:21:33 > 0:21:35to become a great power.
0:21:35 > 0:21:39Then he turned in fury to the Great War.
0:21:40 > 0:21:44"The whole world was against us
0:21:44 > 0:21:51"on the battlefields of France, Belgium, Russia, the Ukraine,
0:21:51 > 0:21:54"in the south and on the high seas.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56"And now,
0:21:56 > 0:22:04"now we are a ridiculously small splinter of a country,
0:22:05 > 0:22:10"like Poland, Serbia, Croatia.
0:22:11 > 0:22:13"No!"
0:22:19 > 0:22:24Hitler lusted to make Germany a world empire once more.
0:22:24 > 0:22:28It was a far cry from, "Never again."
0:22:28 > 0:22:30More like, "Bring it on!"
0:22:36 > 0:22:40Nazi members held rallies in Weimar and other German cities,
0:22:40 > 0:22:44many of them war veterans turned paramilitaries.
0:22:46 > 0:22:51This was a total contrast with the veterans of the British Legion,
0:22:51 > 0:22:53armed only with poppies.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02In 1926, Hitler was a fringe politician
0:23:02 > 0:23:04but his spin on the memory of the war
0:23:04 > 0:23:07struck a chord with many ordinary Germans.
0:23:07 > 0:23:10In the devastating economic depression of the early '30s,
0:23:10 > 0:23:14Hitler was able to convince millions of his countrymen
0:23:14 > 0:23:18that the Weimar Republic was as bankrupt as Germany's economy.
0:23:22 > 0:23:28In 1933, Hitler manoeuvred his way to become Chancellor of Germany,
0:23:28 > 0:23:33then stalked out of the League of Nations and started to rearm.
0:23:33 > 0:23:36Britain, in turn, also began rearmament.
0:23:40 > 0:23:45The escalating arms race was alarmingly like Europe before 1914.
0:23:46 > 0:23:51But this arms race would provoke an extraordinary response
0:23:51 > 0:23:54from ordinary people back in Britain.
0:23:55 > 0:23:58And it all started with Essex man...
0:24:08 > 0:24:12..or more precisely one Essex man,
0:24:12 > 0:24:14Charles Boorman.
0:24:14 > 0:24:18He was editor of the Ilford Recorder on the edge of London.
0:24:18 > 0:24:22MUSIC: I've Got A Pocketful Of Dreams by Bing Crosby
0:24:29 > 0:24:33Boorman wanted the League to put pressure on Hitler
0:24:33 > 0:24:37and so he launched what started as a little local campaign,
0:24:37 > 0:24:39a questionnaire for the people of Ilford
0:24:39 > 0:24:42which was taken door-to-door by volunteers
0:24:42 > 0:24:45from the League of Nations Union.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50Today, the League of Nations Union is largely forgotten
0:24:50 > 0:24:54but in the 1930s it was a hugely powerful pressure group.
0:24:54 > 0:24:58Inspired by the belief that peace would be the most sincere way
0:24:58 > 0:25:00to remember the dead of the Great War,
0:25:00 > 0:25:04it had extraordinary reach into the British population.
0:25:05 > 0:25:10By 1931, the LNU had over 400,000 members
0:25:10 > 0:25:13in 3,000 branches across the country,
0:25:13 > 0:25:16with links to Rotary groups, trade unions,
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Boy Scout troops and Women's Institutes.
0:25:21 > 0:25:23When there's a quarrel between two people,
0:25:23 > 0:25:25the police are called in to settle it.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28Why can't the League of Nations be strong enough
0:25:28 > 0:25:31to settle disputes between two nations?
0:25:31 > 0:25:35I'd fight tomorrow if I thought a war would end war
0:25:35 > 0:25:39but that's what they told my father in 1914 and we're no better off now.
0:25:39 > 0:25:44So let's be sensible and work together for peace by reason.
0:25:47 > 0:25:52In Ilford, 26,000 people responded to Charles Boorman's appeal.
0:25:56 > 0:26:01Boorman arranged a special meeting here in Ilford Town Hall
0:26:01 > 0:26:07in February 1934 to present the results to the press and the public.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10Robert Cecil was invited as guest of honour.
0:26:10 > 0:26:17Deeply impressed, he decided to try out the idea nationwide.
0:26:17 > 0:26:22And so the LNU launched what became popularly known as the Peace Ballot.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30Half a million LNU supporters volunteered to knock on doors
0:26:30 > 0:26:33and deliver and collect the forms.
0:26:33 > 0:26:36The questions weren't easy.
0:26:36 > 0:26:41For example, number four about whether the manufacture of arms
0:26:41 > 0:26:45for private profit should be banned by international agreement.
0:26:45 > 0:26:50Some door knockers spent hours discussing the issues with people,
0:26:50 > 0:26:53often in their own homes.
0:26:53 > 0:26:58One man in Sussex answered yes to all six questions,
0:26:58 > 0:27:01his wife entered six no's.
0:27:06 > 0:27:10Completed questionnaires flooded in from cities, towns and villages.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15And the results were announced at a rally in London's Albert Hall
0:27:15 > 0:27:18in June 1935.
0:27:22 > 0:27:27The hall was packed and the atmosphere triumphant.
0:27:27 > 0:27:31Cecil would have been happy with five million responses
0:27:31 > 0:27:34but the eventual total was 11.6 million,
0:27:34 > 0:27:39more than a third of the British population over the age of 18.
0:27:39 > 0:27:42A truly extraordinary figure.
0:27:43 > 0:27:47The Peace Ballot showed a clear nationwide pattern.
0:27:47 > 0:27:49Over nine out of ten respondents
0:27:49 > 0:27:53supported Britain's continued membership of the League of Nations
0:27:53 > 0:27:58and backed international agreements to reduce armaments.
0:27:58 > 0:27:59Even more remarkable,
0:27:59 > 0:28:03given our stereotype now of the appeasing 1930s,
0:28:03 > 0:28:0860%, a clear majority, were willing to support military sanctions
0:28:08 > 0:28:11against aggressor states.
0:28:11 > 0:28:16Military sanctions meant running the risk of starting another war.
0:28:16 > 0:28:22A sobering gamble for a generation living in the shadow of 1914-18.
0:28:22 > 0:28:25But what's striking, even moving,
0:28:25 > 0:28:29is that nearly two thirds of those who signed the Peace Ballot
0:28:29 > 0:28:34said they were willing to risk war in the hope of keeping the peace.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43The Peace Ballot was uniquely British.
0:28:43 > 0:28:47And, in a way that would also have been inconceivable in Berlin
0:28:47 > 0:28:52or Moscow, it penetrated deep into London's corridors of power.
0:28:55 > 0:28:59The pressing problem for the British Foreign Office in 1935
0:28:59 > 0:29:01was once again Mussolini.
0:29:02 > 0:29:08Fascist Italy had invaded the East African state of Abyssinia
0:29:08 > 0:29:11and this provoked an outcry in Britain.
0:29:11 > 0:29:14Here was a crunch test for the League of Nations
0:29:14 > 0:29:16and its supporters.
0:29:20 > 0:29:23In public, the government took a firm pro-League line,
0:29:23 > 0:29:27supporting limited economic sanctions against Italy.
0:29:28 > 0:29:33Otherwise, Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare told the Cabinet,
0:29:33 > 0:29:38there would be "a wave of public opinion against the government."
0:29:40 > 0:29:43We're all out for peace.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47We're all out for carrying out our obligations under the League.
0:29:49 > 0:29:52But behind closed doors at the Foreign Office,
0:29:52 > 0:29:55the talk was very different.
0:29:55 > 0:29:58Samuel Hoare was a canny politician,
0:29:58 > 0:30:01irreverently known as Slippery Sam.
0:30:01 > 0:30:05In reality he was pretty sceptical about the League
0:30:05 > 0:30:09and thought Cecil and the LNU were utopian.
0:30:09 > 0:30:14The war now looming, unlike 1914-18, would be truly global,
0:30:14 > 0:30:18with Japan an ally of Germany and Italy.
0:30:18 > 0:30:23So Hoare reverted to old-style power politics.
0:30:23 > 0:30:25Bypassing the League,
0:30:25 > 0:30:30he and his French counterpart Pierre Laval tried to buy off Mussolini.
0:30:31 > 0:30:35When the British and French deal making was exposed,
0:30:35 > 0:30:37public uproar forced Hoare to resign.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43The Cabinet sacrificed him to preserve its public image
0:30:43 > 0:30:45as devoted supporters of the League.
0:30:47 > 0:30:48Unlike Hoare,
0:30:48 > 0:30:53the new man at the Foreign Office came from the war generation
0:30:53 > 0:30:55and had made his political reputation
0:30:55 > 0:30:58as a champion of the League.
0:30:58 > 0:31:01Anthony Eden was dashing and handsome
0:31:01 > 0:31:04and had won the Military Cross in 1918.
0:31:05 > 0:31:08He also had a bizarre shared memory of the war
0:31:08 > 0:31:12with the most notorious veteran on the German side.
0:31:17 > 0:31:22Eden held talks with Hitler in Berlin in 1936.
0:31:22 > 0:31:24Chatting later at dinner,
0:31:24 > 0:31:27they discovered they'd been only 500 yards apart
0:31:27 > 0:31:30in the trenches in March 1918.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34Setting politics and nationalism aside,
0:31:34 > 0:31:38they nattered like old veterans, exchanging war stories
0:31:38 > 0:31:42and drawing maps of the front on the back of menu cards.
0:31:43 > 0:31:47After the dinner, the French ambassador took Eden aside.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52"I understand you were opposite Hitler.
0:31:54 > 0:31:56"And you missed?!"
0:32:00 > 0:32:03Eden always opposed doing deals with Mussolini
0:32:03 > 0:32:08and continued to take a pro-League line.
0:32:08 > 0:32:11But now public support for a strongly moral foreign policy
0:32:11 > 0:32:16was starting to ebb. Because, after 1936,
0:32:16 > 0:32:19people could begin to discern the face of a future war.
0:32:31 > 0:32:36The civil war in Spain showed the frightening power of aerial bombing.
0:32:36 > 0:32:42The popular science fiction writer H G Wells imagined the war to come,
0:32:42 > 0:32:46endured not in the trenches by soldiers like the last one,
0:32:46 > 0:32:49but in towns and cities by women and children.
0:32:49 > 0:32:52TANNOY: An air raid is approaching Everytown.
0:32:52 > 0:32:54An air raid is approaching Everytown.
0:32:54 > 0:32:56Gas masks are being distributed.
0:32:56 > 0:32:58See that they fit tightly behind the ears.
0:32:58 > 0:33:00Get to cover. Get undercover at once.
0:33:00 > 0:33:02The enemy are not in any great force
0:33:02 > 0:33:05and our anti-aircraft gunners will speedily dispose of them.
0:33:05 > 0:33:09The cost of war seemed much higher than in 1914.
0:33:09 > 0:33:14Tough sanctions against an aggressor might provoke apocalypse now.
0:33:22 > 0:33:26The British peace movement, the largest in Europe in the mid-1930s
0:33:26 > 0:33:28began to splinter in two.
0:33:28 > 0:33:31On one hand were supporters of the League
0:33:31 > 0:33:36willing to risk war to ensure peace with justice.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40On the other were those who believed modern war was so terrible
0:33:40 > 0:33:44that they wanted peace at any price.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50This shifting public mood was the background
0:33:50 > 0:33:54to the government's policy of appeasing Germany.
0:33:54 > 0:33:57The 1930s came to their notorious climax
0:33:57 > 0:34:02in a desperate one-man crusade to prevent a second Great War.
0:34:03 > 0:34:08By the time Neville Chamberlain took over as Prime Minister in 1937,
0:34:08 > 0:34:11the hopes for peace were narrowing.
0:34:13 > 0:34:17Chamberlain was another old man with a burden of guilt
0:34:17 > 0:34:22about the Great War hanging upon his shoulders.
0:34:22 > 0:34:25Like Robert Cecil, he'd been too old to fight
0:34:25 > 0:34:28and was gutted by the death in action of his younger cousin
0:34:28 > 0:34:31and closest friend, Norman.
0:34:31 > 0:34:35Now, like millions of British people,
0:34:35 > 0:34:40he was horrified by the terrible war that was looming.
0:34:41 > 0:34:47And, like Sam Hoare, he was ready to cut a deal to try to stop it.
0:34:51 > 0:34:55In September 1938, Chamberlain took to the air
0:34:55 > 0:34:58to avert the threat from the air,
0:34:58 > 0:35:01making a face-to-face deal with Hitler at Munich.
0:35:06 > 0:35:09Chamberlain's gamble delayed a new Great War
0:35:09 > 0:35:11but only for a year.
0:35:14 > 0:35:17CHAMBERLAIN: This country is at war with Germany.
0:35:20 > 0:35:25We have done all that any country could do to establish peace.
0:35:25 > 0:35:31The situation in which no word given by Germany's ruler could be trusted
0:35:31 > 0:35:36and no people or county could feel itself safe has become intolerable.
0:35:38 > 0:35:41And now that we have resolved to finish it,
0:35:41 > 0:35:45I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage...
0:35:51 > 0:35:53The declaration of war in 1939
0:35:53 > 0:35:57dashed the hopes of the 11.6 million people
0:35:57 > 0:35:59who'd signed the Peace Ballot.
0:35:59 > 0:36:03Back here in Ilford, the man who'd pioneered the ballot,
0:36:03 > 0:36:06Charles Boorman, resigned as editor of the Ilford Recorder
0:36:06 > 0:36:10on the day that war broke out and signed up.
0:36:11 > 0:36:16That Essex man was going to war again
0:36:16 > 0:36:21seemed like an utterly damning comment on the meaning of 1914-18.
0:36:28 > 0:36:31AIR RAID SIREN SOUNDS
0:36:45 > 0:36:48EXPLOSIONS
0:36:48 > 0:36:53For Britain the new war was in every way totally different from the last.
0:36:53 > 0:36:58This time Britain was heavily bombed and in danger of invasion.
0:36:59 > 0:37:01This was a war with heroes,
0:37:01 > 0:37:05like the fighter pilots who won the Battle of Britain
0:37:05 > 0:37:07and it had a heroic leader
0:37:07 > 0:37:13who wrote a clear and dramatic narrative of our finest hour in 1940
0:37:13 > 0:37:17that has become inseparable from Britain's identity.
0:37:17 > 0:37:22Looking back, 1914-18 seemed by contrast messy and inconclusive.
0:37:32 > 0:37:35This story of 1939-45
0:37:35 > 0:37:39was celebrated in dozens of post-war British movies,
0:37:39 > 0:37:43pitting square-jawed goodies played by stars such as Jack Hawkins
0:37:43 > 0:37:47and Richard Todd against the evil Nazis.
0:37:57 > 0:38:00And evil was no mere cliche.
0:38:06 > 0:38:09The Nazis had hit depths of depravity
0:38:09 > 0:38:12previously unimagined in civilised Europe.
0:38:15 > 0:38:19A few miles from the great shrine of German culture, Weimar,
0:38:19 > 0:38:21was Buchenwald.
0:38:30 > 0:38:32Inside its grounds,
0:38:32 > 0:38:35this stump is all that's left of a fabled oak tree
0:38:35 > 0:38:37under which the poet Goethe
0:38:37 > 0:38:40wrote some of the classics of German literature.
0:38:40 > 0:38:43How far had Germany fallen.
0:38:48 > 0:38:54The camps showed to the world the utter barbarity of Nazi rule.
0:38:54 > 0:38:58This second war, unlike 1914-18,
0:38:58 > 0:39:01seemed unquestionably a good war,
0:39:01 > 0:39:06truly a noble sacrifice to defeat an appalling evil.
0:39:14 > 0:39:19So 1914-18 shrank in significance in the national story
0:39:19 > 0:39:23and this was reflected in a change of name.
0:39:23 > 0:39:27For the British, it had always been known as the Great War.
0:39:27 > 0:39:32But in 1948, the British Government decided to drop the term "Great"
0:39:32 > 0:39:36and use the titles First World War and Second World War.
0:39:38 > 0:39:42You may think that all this was simply word games.
0:39:42 > 0:39:48But re-naming the Great War the First World War changed its meaning.
0:39:48 > 0:39:49Officially highlighting the sense
0:39:49 > 0:39:55that 1914-18 had been a failed attempt to end war,
0:39:55 > 0:40:00an ineffectual sacrifice that required a second round.
0:40:02 > 0:40:07In fact Winston Churchill and others now talked about
0:40:07 > 0:40:11a Thirty Years' War from 1914 to 1945
0:40:11 > 0:40:15into which the Great War was subsumed.
0:40:15 > 0:40:20Armistice Day, so sacred in the '30s was now abandoned in favour
0:40:20 > 0:40:24of Remembrance Sunday for the dead of both World Wars.
0:40:29 > 0:40:31You might have expected that, with time,
0:40:31 > 0:40:35the First World War would slide into ever fainter memory.
0:40:35 > 0:40:40But, in the 1960s, dramatic world events and a new generation
0:40:40 > 0:40:45once again combined to reinvent the war in public memory.
0:40:46 > 0:40:51The Great War had shaped the 1920s and '30s,
0:40:51 > 0:40:56but the 1960s shaped our view of the Great War.
0:41:09 > 0:41:12JOHN F KENNEDY: Good evening, my fellow citizens.
0:41:12 > 0:41:15This Government, as promised,
0:41:15 > 0:41:18has maintained the closest surveillance
0:41:18 > 0:41:22of the Soviet military build up on the island of Cuba.
0:41:22 > 0:41:27The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide
0:41:27 > 0:41:31a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
0:41:32 > 0:41:35The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962,
0:41:35 > 0:41:39when the world seemed on the brink of a third world war,
0:41:39 > 0:41:43brought home to people the horrors of the nuclear age.
0:41:43 > 0:41:44The First World War,
0:41:44 > 0:41:48caused in 1914 by similar miscalculations by leaders,
0:41:48 > 0:41:51had cost ten million dead.
0:41:51 > 0:41:54Another war, it seemed in the '60s,
0:41:54 > 0:41:57would be the war to end war
0:41:57 > 0:41:59and probably the world as well.
0:42:01 > 0:42:061964 was 50 years since the outbreak of the Great War.
0:42:06 > 0:42:12It was a chance for a new generation to discover 1914-18 afresh,
0:42:12 > 0:42:16but they came at it through the tinted lens of World War II
0:42:16 > 0:42:20and amid nightmare fantasies about world war three.
0:42:21 > 0:42:26This was a less deferential generation, ready to question,
0:42:26 > 0:42:31even mock, the attitudes of their predecessors.
0:42:31 > 0:42:34And also a more egalitarian society,
0:42:34 > 0:42:39interested in the experience of ordinary soldiers
0:42:39 > 0:42:42rather than the posturings of upper-class generals.
0:42:46 > 0:42:49Until the 1960s, the public had seen very little
0:42:49 > 0:42:52of the reality of the Great War.
0:42:52 > 0:42:55The most candid wartime footage was a silent propaganda film
0:42:55 > 0:42:57of the Battle of the Somme,
0:42:57 > 0:43:01shown in cinemas in August 1916.
0:43:01 > 0:43:02For audiences at the time,
0:43:02 > 0:43:06the most graphic image was of soldiers going over the top,
0:43:06 > 0:43:11particularly the wounded man slipping back into the trench.
0:43:11 > 0:43:16Yet this was almost certainly faked afterwards behind the lines.
0:43:22 > 0:43:27But now, in 1964, the British rediscovered the Great War
0:43:27 > 0:43:30by seeing it at home on the small screen.
0:43:31 > 0:43:34A TV blockbuster, The Great War,
0:43:34 > 0:43:38marking the 50th anniversary of the war's outbreak,
0:43:38 > 0:43:40brought a dead conflict to life.
0:43:56 > 0:44:00Millions of viewers saw for the first time what, to us now,
0:44:00 > 0:44:03has become cliched footage of the brutal experience
0:44:03 > 0:44:05of the Western Front.
0:44:05 > 0:44:09This, along with stark testimony from some of the veterans,
0:44:09 > 0:44:11made a huge impact.
0:44:11 > 0:44:16We were living like wild animals and in fact we became wild animals.
0:44:20 > 0:44:25The Great War series brought the obscenity of the trenches
0:44:25 > 0:44:28right into people's living rooms.
0:44:28 > 0:44:31This was shocking reality television,
0:44:31 > 0:44:33hugely influential at the time.
0:44:35 > 0:44:38But again it would be a piece of theatre about the war
0:44:38 > 0:44:41that set the tone for this new era,
0:44:41 > 0:44:45much as Journey's End had done 30 years earlier.
0:44:45 > 0:44:49MUSIC: Oh! It's A Lovely War by Courtland and Jeffries
0:44:49 > 0:44:52Oh, What A Lovely War! started life here in East London
0:44:52 > 0:44:56as a production of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop.
0:44:56 > 0:44:59Like the first night of Journey's End,
0:44:59 > 0:45:01the audience was overwhelmed,
0:45:01 > 0:45:03many were in tears.
0:45:08 > 0:45:11Oh, What a Lovely War! was a story of ordinary men
0:45:11 > 0:45:13squandered in hopeless offensives
0:45:13 > 0:45:17by aristocratic, boneheaded generals,
0:45:17 > 0:45:20convinced that victory was just around the corner.
0:45:20 > 0:45:24It was savaging the apparent futility of the Great War
0:45:24 > 0:45:28but also satirizing the class war within it.
0:45:30 > 0:45:37"At the moment my men are advancing across no man's land in full pack.
0:45:37 > 0:45:42"The men are forbidden on pain of court martial to take cover
0:45:42 > 0:45:46"in any shell hole or dugout.
0:45:46 > 0:45:51"The loss of say another 300,000 men
0:45:51 > 0:45:55"may lead to really great results."
0:45:58 > 0:46:03The soldiers were now not real people, as in Journey's End,
0:46:03 > 0:46:05they were simply victims.
0:46:06 > 0:46:09# Goodbye, goodbye
0:46:09 > 0:46:12# Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye... '#
0:46:12 > 0:46:16The show was such a hit that it soon moved to the West End
0:46:16 > 0:46:19and then achieved global impact as a feature film
0:46:19 > 0:46:22directed by Richard Attenborough
0:46:22 > 0:46:27with John Mills cast as a glacially insensitive Field-Marshal Haig.
0:46:27 > 0:46:30God is with us. Just one more battle.
0:46:30 > 0:46:33Sir, tell us what to do and by God, we'll do it!
0:46:38 > 0:46:41We're going to walk through the enemy lines.
0:46:42 > 0:46:47But Oh, What a Lovely War! drew on a mishmash of often partial sources,
0:46:47 > 0:46:51quoted out of context to skewer the generals.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55Books like The Donkeys,
0:46:55 > 0:47:00Alan Clark's indictment of the Battle of Loos in 1915.
0:47:00 > 0:47:04"To my generation," he wrote, "the First World War is as remote
0:47:04 > 0:47:12"as the Crimean, its causes and its personnel obscure and disreputable."
0:47:12 > 0:47:15I realised what hideous crimes
0:47:15 > 0:47:18had been committed by us on our own people,
0:47:18 > 0:47:21which is quite different from committing it on others,
0:47:21 > 0:47:24on your enemy, not really bothered about that especially.
0:47:24 > 0:47:27The Donkeys, Clark's catchy title,
0:47:27 > 0:47:31was supposedly a quotation from the German general Max Hoffmann
0:47:31 > 0:47:36describing British troops as, "Lions led by donkeys."
0:47:36 > 0:47:38Clark later admitted he'd made it up.
0:47:41 > 0:47:44Alan Clark was just a brash young writer on the make
0:47:44 > 0:47:49but his use of the phrase lions led by donkeys has hung round
0:47:49 > 0:47:53the necks of British commanders of the Great War ever since.
0:47:53 > 0:47:58It's a cheap sneer tossed off across a generational divide.
0:47:58 > 0:48:04Yet what's fascinating is how a fabricated tag line
0:48:04 > 0:48:10and a vaudeville satire reflecting '60s attitudes to class and country
0:48:10 > 0:48:13still frame our view of the Great War.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20The Great War had been pulled out of the shadow of World War II
0:48:20 > 0:48:25but only to be condemned as the total opposite of that second war.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28And the generals who ordered the Tommies to walk into
0:48:28 > 0:48:31the jaws of death were damned as criminals,
0:48:31 > 0:48:34NOT the Germans firing at them.
0:48:47 > 0:48:51While British memory of the Great War was shifting,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54German memory was also changing,
0:48:54 > 0:48:56but in an opposite direction.
0:48:57 > 0:49:00After 1945,
0:49:00 > 0:49:03Germans had to acknowledge the appalling crimes of the Nazis.
0:49:05 > 0:49:09But most Germans still believed that the Hitler era was just
0:49:09 > 0:49:14a terrible blip in the proud sweep of Prussian and German history.
0:49:14 > 0:49:18They continued to think of 1914-18 as a good war,
0:49:18 > 0:49:20fought in self-defence.
0:49:23 > 0:49:29But in 1961, an obscure leftist professor, Fritz Fischer,
0:49:29 > 0:49:32gained access to Imperial German archives
0:49:32 > 0:49:35that were now in communist East Germany.
0:49:37 > 0:49:40Fischer published a book arguing that in 1914,
0:49:40 > 0:49:43Germany had caused the war
0:49:43 > 0:49:47by launching an all-out grab for world power.
0:49:47 > 0:49:50Germany was not the victim, it was the aggressor,
0:49:50 > 0:49:54just as in 1939.
0:49:54 > 0:49:59I tried to show that 1914 Germany kept the aims
0:49:59 > 0:50:03she was pursuing since the last century.
0:50:03 > 0:50:06A position of Germany in Europe and the world
0:50:06 > 0:50:09on equal footing with the British Empire.
0:50:11 > 0:50:14What's important to understand about Fischer is that
0:50:14 > 0:50:20he was attacking head-on the comfortable West German story
0:50:20 > 0:50:24that the crimes of the Nazi era were the work of just a few evil men.
0:50:25 > 0:50:30Instead he argued that Hitler was the culmination
0:50:30 > 0:50:34of an aggressive militarism ingrained in German history
0:50:34 > 0:50:39right back to the days of Bismarck and Frederick the Great.
0:50:40 > 0:50:43Fischer's dramatic claims captured the imagination
0:50:43 > 0:50:46of a rebellious younger generation
0:50:46 > 0:50:50and sparked years of furious debate among politicians and the media.
0:50:53 > 0:50:57The irony is that just when Germans were being forced
0:50:57 > 0:51:01to think about 1914 as an immoral war
0:51:01 > 0:51:04caused by their own country's aggression,
0:51:04 > 0:51:10most British people came to see it as a war that had no clear clause,
0:51:10 > 0:51:12no moral justification
0:51:12 > 0:51:14and achieved nothing at all.
0:51:26 > 0:51:31This conviction about the Great War's futility was reinforced
0:51:31 > 0:51:34by a uniquely British obsession.
0:51:34 > 0:51:37One that seared the memory of the war into the imagination
0:51:37 > 0:51:41of an even younger generation.
0:51:41 > 0:51:46In the 1960s, Britain rediscovered the poetry of the Great War
0:51:46 > 0:51:50as publishers produced several new 50th anniversary anthologies.
0:51:52 > 0:51:57The soldier poets of the Great War have become our most trusted guides
0:51:57 > 0:52:00to the meaning of the conflict.
0:52:00 > 0:52:05These anthologies shaped how the war has been taught in schools
0:52:05 > 0:52:08and understood in public memory.
0:52:08 > 0:52:13But, in reality, they are carefully edited selections
0:52:13 > 0:52:16that preach a particular message about the war.
0:52:18 > 0:52:22Great poetry, bad history.
0:52:22 > 0:52:25Because the anthologies took a few soldier poets
0:52:25 > 0:52:27as the authentic voices of the war
0:52:27 > 0:52:33and portrayed them moving along a kind of poetic learning curve.
0:52:33 > 0:52:36From the innocent patriotism of Rupert Brooke
0:52:36 > 0:52:40to the angry satire of Siegfried Sassoon
0:52:40 > 0:52:43and ultimately the bleak pity of Wilfred Owen
0:52:43 > 0:52:47as the horrors of war are revealed at the Somme and Passchendaele.
0:52:52 > 0:52:55Owen was killed in the last week of the war,
0:52:55 > 0:52:58while peace terms were being discussed,
0:52:58 > 0:53:03so his death seems to sum up neatly the futility of the conflict.
0:53:05 > 0:53:08But the real story is more intriguing.
0:53:09 > 0:53:14Here in 1918, in the beautiful Physic Garden in Chelsea,
0:53:14 > 0:53:18Owen wrestled with whether to return to front line duty.
0:53:19 > 0:53:22For several hours on a hot summer afternoon,
0:53:22 > 0:53:25his friend Siegfried Sassoon tried to dissuade him.
0:53:25 > 0:53:27But Owen did go back.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33Today, Wilfred Owen is regarded as the archetypal war poet,
0:53:33 > 0:53:37meaning a soldier poet who was anti-war.
0:53:38 > 0:53:39But Owen's poetry,
0:53:39 > 0:53:43like his decision to go back to fight on the Western Front,
0:53:43 > 0:53:46reveals something more complex.
0:53:46 > 0:53:50Owen's poems convey the ecstasy of fighting
0:53:50 > 0:53:53as well as the horrors of dying.
0:53:58 > 0:54:00Owen was not a pacifist.
0:54:00 > 0:54:02In fact he won the Military Cross
0:54:02 > 0:54:05for mowing down Germans with a machine gun.
0:54:07 > 0:54:09But his younger brother Harold,
0:54:09 > 0:54:12self-appointed custodian of Wilfred's memory,
0:54:12 > 0:54:16tried to conceal this in the 1960s
0:54:16 > 0:54:20because being a killer did not fit the image of a poet
0:54:20 > 0:54:24renowned for evoking "the pity of war."
0:54:28 > 0:54:33Wilfred Owen's poem Exposure is now usually quoted to illustrate
0:54:33 > 0:54:37the misery of soldiers here on the front line.
0:54:37 > 0:54:42But in it, Owen also conjures up a peaceful England
0:54:42 > 0:54:45worth fighting for and dying for.
0:54:47 > 0:54:52"Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn..."
0:55:04 > 0:55:08Exposure suggests that even in the last months of the war,
0:55:08 > 0:55:12Owen still believed the struggle had meaning.
0:55:18 > 0:55:24But the Owen of 1918 was repackaged for the anti-war 1960s,
0:55:24 > 0:55:29helping set firm public memory of a war suffered by poetic soldiers
0:55:29 > 0:55:32and waged by stupid generals.
0:55:32 > 0:55:35So tragic that it was almost farcical.
0:55:40 > 0:55:41Fine body of men
0:55:41 > 0:55:43you've got out there, Blackadder.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46Yes, sir, shortly to become fine bodies of men.
0:55:46 > 0:55:49Ah, nonsense, you'll pull through. Ha-ha!
0:55:49 > 0:55:52I remember when we played the Old Harrovians back in '96.
0:55:52 > 0:55:54They said we'd never break through to their back line.
0:55:54 > 0:55:57But we ducked and we bobbed and we wove
0:55:57 > 0:55:59and we damned well won the game 15-4.
0:55:59 > 0:56:01Yes, sir, but the Harrow fullback
0:56:01 > 0:56:04wasn't armed with a heavy machine gun.
0:56:04 > 0:56:06- That's a good point. Make a note, Darling.- Sir.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09Recommendation for the Harrow governors...
0:56:12 > 0:56:14The story became even more poignant
0:56:14 > 0:56:17as we watched the last survivors passing away.
0:56:23 > 0:56:25To mark Remembrance Day 2009
0:56:25 > 0:56:28and the death of the last Tommy Harry Patch,
0:56:28 > 0:56:32the familiar phrases and sentiments were all in evidence,
0:56:32 > 0:56:35plus a poem by the new poet laureate Carol Anne Duffy,
0:56:35 > 0:56:41spinning off celebrated lines from Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est.
0:56:41 > 0:56:48"In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
0:56:48 > 0:56:55"He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning..."
0:56:57 > 0:56:58We will remember them.
0:56:58 > 0:57:00We remember.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07The solemn call to remember carries a huge burden of sadness and duty.
0:57:07 > 0:57:12But unlike the immovable pillars and headstones of the Western Front,
0:57:12 > 0:57:15public memory, as we've seen, has been moulded,
0:57:15 > 0:57:20even caricatured by what happened after the Great War.
0:57:20 > 0:57:22We have remembered the soldiers
0:57:22 > 0:57:26and tried to imagine the warfare they endured
0:57:26 > 0:57:28but that's got in the way of understanding
0:57:28 > 0:57:31the Great War's full character and impact.
0:57:34 > 0:57:37Of course we can't ignore the mud and the suffering
0:57:37 > 0:57:42but I believe that a hundred years on from 1914,
0:57:42 > 0:57:44it's time to let go of the dead.
0:57:46 > 0:57:50We can't just feel the Great War as a piece of poetry
0:57:50 > 0:57:51or a stark morality play.
0:57:51 > 0:57:54We need to understand it as history,
0:57:54 > 0:57:59history that cast long shadows over the years that followed.
0:58:06 > 0:58:10One of those shadows was the explosion of democracy.
0:58:10 > 0:58:12In the aftermath of war,
0:58:12 > 0:58:17three world leaders offered three competing visions of people power.
0:58:19 > 0:58:22Again the British experience was very different
0:58:22 > 0:58:25from that of our continental neighbours and, as we'll see,
0:58:25 > 0:58:30these differences still matter for Britain and the world.