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Begun in July of 1916, the devastating Battle of the Somme was a turning point in warfare, demarking the modern combat arena in horrific carnage. Unseasoned and poorly trained British soldiers vastly overestimated the tenacity of German forces. Despite a solid week of bombardment where over a million artillery shells rained down upon German fortifications, they stood ready for the British advance. More British soldiers died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme than any other day in the history of British warfare. As the battle slogged on, troops effectively fought within an open graveyard, as there was no time to bury the multitude of the dead. As attrition wound down the 141-day conflict, almost 420,000 British soldiers lay dead, along with 200,000 French, and nearly half-a-million Germans, and all for a questionable purpose.
He was a soldier's soldier, decorated for bravery by the British government and respected by the men in his battalion. But war had taken its toll on Siegfried Sassoon, and he felt a deep resentment against his country's military campaign. Sassoon returned from the trenches of hell in World War I to fight another battle in the halls of government back home. His resentment took the form of poetry: searing indictments that ran counter to popular opinion. This is the story of how one man's poetry and his protest against World War I shined a light of truth on the subject of war forever framed that conflict in the memory of his country.
Writer Robert Graves took many unpredictable turns on his fascinating journey through life. Though Graves would describe himself first and foremost as a poet, he was a man of enormous literary talent who wrote more than 150 books. He was eccentric, brilliant, and visionary and his vivid imagination was fueled by a volatile mixture of emotional highs and catastrophic lows. His most memorable works emerged when the world around him was falling apart. At the peak of his writing career, Graves attempted to unravel the mystery of his creative process. That effort took him on a journey across time and culture through which he envisioned a mythical female muse that he called the White Goddess.
In France's darkest hours of World War II, a lone French voice emanated from BBC radio in an attempt to rally free French forces to resist the power of invading Germany. Recognizing his value as an ally, Winston Churchill acknowledged de Gaulle as the French leader despite the fact that a national government still existed in France. As he was forced to the sidelines of Allied Command decisions, de Gaulle led military campaigns defending France's colonies, building his reputation. Despite this, he was excluded from Normandy operations. He nonetheless accompanied US forces with great theatricality as they arrived in Paris, and was soon elected head of the French government. Years after his retirement, the French people turned to de Gaulle for guidance during the Algerian crisis, but his mythic position as the face of France would end during the social upheaval of the 1960s.
They called Verdun the Meat Grinder. The Furnace. Hell. When the fighting died down, almost a year after it began, French and German armies were back where they started -- minus close to one million men. The Battle of Verdun came to symbolize the senseless slaughter of the First World War, but for the French, who won the war at enormous cost, it left a deeper and more personal mark. The soul of France was ripped out in the muddy trenches of Verdun.
In 1916, 60-year old General Henri Philippe Pétain, who'd been passed by for promotion most of his life, took charge of a horrific World War I battle that would mark France for generations. The Battle of Verdun, called the Meatgrinder, was the first in modern history where one army's goal was just to kill maximum numbers of the enemy. Amidst this death and destruction, Pétain came to life. Thirty years later, Pétain would go on trial, accused of treason at age 89. He had saved France once, on a First World War battlefield. But when his countrymen turned to him to save them again, as head of government during World War II, he failed spectacularly.
A palpable tension held its grip on Paris in 1917. It was the third disastrous year of World War I. France was losing badly -- and looking for someone to blame. In mid-February, word spread through the city that one of the most famous women in Europe had been arrested and accused of spying for Germany -- France's enemy in the war. Her name was Mata Hari.
Over the course of the 20th century, the secretive government agencies and the spies who ran them would complete the transformation of espionage from an amateur activity to a full-time profession. Nations have come to rely on spies for protection from terrorists, other spies, and attacks by enemies. Secrecy keeps their activities out of sight until a rogue agent is caught using espionage for treasonous or greedy ends, or when their efforts to protect us fail. But as spy-tools grow more and more sophisticated, one thing is certain: espionage is here to stay.
The war in East Africa was far different from the hell of the Western Front. The stories that emerged there had a human dimension, where individuals could actually put their imprint on this war. One of the most memorable and notable legends to emerge was German Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who led his German troops in a game of cat and mouse against the British over hundreds of miles of harsh African terrain, a game von Lettow had nearly always won.
Frederick Selous was a hunter, explorer, and celebrated author. Most of all, he was the envy of thrill-seekers everywhere, who coveted his life of mystery and danger. So large a figure was he that no less than Theodore Roosevelt considered him a hero. But when Selous first set foot in Africa decades earlier, he was a lost teenager with a big dream of finding adventure on the African continent. He had no idea what lay ahead.
As the only man to sign both the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I and the Paris Peace Treaty that brought an end to World War II, Jan Christiaan Smuts was a voice for democracy and freedom. He also helped draft the charter of the United Nations. But back in his native South Africa, Smuts' policies were anything but forward-thinking. This man gifted with insight and charisma did not use these talents to push for a more inclusive racial vision, which could have saved the country decades of trauma and strife.
In 1953, Albert Schweitzer won the Nobel Prize for peace, and magazines and newspaper articles were calling him "the greatest man in the world." He was one of the most unlikely candidates for such accolades -- having spent the majority of his life working as a doctor, tending to the poor in a remote corner of Africa. In addition to being a doctor, Schweitzer was a concert organist and a respected theologian, but it was for uncovering a simple philosophy that he won the Nobel Prize. He called his way of thinking and living "Reverence for Life."
The Congo encompasses a million square miles of the richest land in Africa. Yet despite that wealth -- or perhaps because of it -- throughout their history the Congolese would nearly starve to death, economically and politically. Their vast riches would bring only suffering, corruption, and death.
As the 20th century approached, governments all over Europe were doing their best to win the deadly game of the arms race. But some of their subjects were beginning to fear that if the arms race led to a real war, there would be no victors. Modern weapons, argued the pacifists, had become too powerful, too destructive. If they were unleashed they might destroy Europe and roll back centuries of cultural, scientific and economic progress.
When World War I began, the rival armies charged into battle with frightening new weapons that seemed ready to change the very nature of war. One promising new piece of military hardware -- the airplane -- wasn't quite ready to hit its mark. That didn't stop a few passionate advocates from making big plans for airplanes, or from dreaming up ways to use them in war. By the end of the war these visionaries would transform the flimsy airplanes of 1914 into powerful and dependable weapons, and take war where it had rarely gone before: beyond the two dimensional realm of our planet's surface, into the third dimension of the air above.
Today, historians and aviation buffs still celebrate the Red Baron as the ideal fighter pilot. A daring knight of the sky who helped write the book on aerial combat during the world's first air war. For the man behind the myth, however, the real story is a tale of disillusionment; a blood red saga in which ancient ideals of chivalry, honor and duty came crashing down in the fires of modern war.
In a war that claimed millions of lives, most who served in the military fought because they had no choice. But the high flying men of the Lafayette Escadrille were different: they didn't have to be there. They were American adventurers who volunteered for World War One long before their country joined. They were lawyers, authors, heirs to banking and railroad fortunes, Ivy League graduates, friends of royalty, sons of privilege. All they wanted was a chance to fly. The young pilots came to the war with romantic ideas of adventure and heroism. They had no idea what they were in for.
On November 11, 1918, the Germans laid down their arms, finally ending World War I. In the surrender agreement, the Allies listed the numbers of cannons, machine guns and other weapons that Germany had to turn over. Yet of 1,700 airplanes demanded, only one type was so feared that it was mentioned by name: the D-7. The deadly machine was the masterwork of a 28 year-old Dutchman who had become Germany's most skilled -- and unconventional -- plane maker: Anthony Fokker.
Karl, the last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, was labeled a traitor and failure during his lifetime. His own people exiled him. Still, there has been recognition that perhaps Karl's short reign should be remembered less for his failures than for his unsuccessful yet sincere attempts to transform his empire and bring an end to World War I.
In 1991, the Soviet Union, one of the most powerful nations on Earth, collapsed. Born in socialist revolution almost three-quarters of a century earlier, its birth in 1917 sent shockwaves around the world. Right from the start, the Russian Revolution promised a better world of equality, dignity, and social justice. What happened to those promises?
To create the utopian world he envisioned, Lenin did what he thought he had to. His violent seizure of power -- and the harsh measures he took to hold onto it -- inspired generations of revolutionaries, and dictators. Brilliant and driven, Lenin wanted to change history. He did, but not in the way he expected.
Fearless, strong-willed and always a champion of the modern, Sergei Diaghilev discovered a talented group of artists and inspired them to reach new creative heights. Diaghilev wasn't a dancer, choreographer or composer, but he was the impresario, and the show couldn't go on without him. Together, they shaped ballet into a new art form, leaving an indelible mark on art for the 20th Century.
Beautiful and effortless, ballet is one of the world's most elegant art forms -- the human body as poetry in motion. Achieving and maintaining the artful illusion of ballet is all-important; but it's just that, an illusion meant to appear effortless. What kind of commitment does it take for dancers to master the unmistakable yet rigorous style of ballet? And where does that commitment lead young dancers in their pursuit of excellence?
Franz Kafka had made his living as an attorney in an insurance company, where he'd eked out an obscure and unexceptional life. But when the lawyer put pen to paper, the writer conjured a disturbing world where the absurd was commonplace and reality a nightmare. Since his death, Franz Kafka's work has become enormously influential. It remains unrivaled for its intensity, modernity and prescience.
The Ottoman Empire once spanned three continents, stretching from Budapest to Basra to Algiers. Founded around 1300, it created a rich, multi-ethnic world that was Islamic in faith and tolerant in practice. But by the early 20th century, the Empire was under attack from without and challenged from within. When World War broke out in 1914, the Ottomans had to choose sides. They cast their lot with Germany and Austria, and against Britain, France, and Russia. That decision would lead to the Empire's final destruction -- and the creation of the modern Middle East.
He was an action hero as well as an intellectual hero. T.E. Lawrence escaped a safe office job during World War I to become a guerilla war mastermind in desert combat, fighting alongside Arabs to throw off the rule of the Ottoman Empire. But despite British promises of Arab independence, the Middle East would end up being carved by European colonial treaties, and Lawrence faced the challenges of keeping his word to his trusted compatriots of the desert.
Join H.W. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas Austin, on an hour-long lecture on the wars and revolutions of the early 20th Century..
