129: World War I Before the US (Military Tech, Trenches, Global Armies, Ypres, Verdun & the Somme)

History That Doesn't Suck

Prof. Greg Jackson

History, Education

4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row.”

This is the story of the first two and a half years of the Great War, particularly, of the Western Front. These are the years leading to the United States’ entry.

After saving two German warships, the Ottoman Empire joins the Great War as a Central Power. Meanwhile, the work of death is moving forward on a scale unlike any other seen. Improved, or altogether new, weapons—rapid firing repeating rifles, machine guns, gas, flamethrowers, armed airplanes, and tanks—terrify and slaughter trench-dwelling soldiers. Bodies are soon counted by the millions. We’ll get a sample of this as we visit three particularly deadly areas of the Western Front: Ypres, Verdun, and the Somme.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	History that doesn't suck is a bi-weekly podcast, Delirino Legit, seriously researched hard-hitting
0:04.0	survey of American history through entertaining stories.
0:06.5	If you'd like to support HTTDS or enjoy bonus content, please consider giving it Patreon.com
0:11.3	forward slash History that doesn't suck.
0:13.2	It's early in the pre-don morning, August 4, 1914.
0:26.2	Only one day since Germany declared war on France.
0:29.1	And Germany's SMS-Gurben is steaming westward through the Mediterranean.
0:33.6	She's an impressive vessel.
0:35.5	The Gurben only launched two years ago.
0:37.9	Well after that revolutionary year of 1906, when Britain's big guns only battleship, the
0:42.7	HMS Dreadnacht, so drastically up to the anti-enabled warfare that the world's natives now
0:47.8	speak of battleships as pre-Dreadnacht or Dreadnacht.
0:51.8	The Gurben isn't a battleship, but she does belong to a new breed that merges Dreadnacht
0:56.4	guns with first-class cruiser speed.
0:59.0	The battle cruiser.
1:00.6	And as the morning dawns, the commander of the state of the art 23,000 tonn German warship,
1:06.5	the 50-something dark-haired rear admiral of French immigrant descent, Wilhelm Sushon,
1:11.9	is pleased to see his objective in the distance.
1:14.8	Philippeville, French Algeria.
1:20.7	Approaching the city, Wilhelm has the Gurben slowed down.
1:24.6	He's situated on the craggy coast of France's long-held and most prized of colonial territories,
1:30.0	Algeria.
	...

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