MEN OF THE CENOTAPH: 7/8: Nick Lloyd, The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Western-Front-History-Great-1914-1918/dp/B09NS2DT8X
A panoramic history of the savage combat on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 that came to define modern warfare.
The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dirt. This iconic setting was the most critical arena of the Great War, a 400-mile combat zone stretching from Belgium to Switzerland where more than three million Allied and German soldiers struggled during four years of almost continuous combat. It has persisted in our collective memory as a tragic waste of human life and a symbol of the horrors of industrialized warfare.
1918 ZEPPELIN
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:04.0 | CBS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Nick Lloyd, the author Nick Lloyd of the new book The Western Front. |
| 0:10.0 | Nick is a reader in military and imperial history at King's College. |
| 0:15.0 | And no matter where you read military history, Verdon and some will come up. |
| 0:21.6 | Verdon is the Germans on the offensive. |
| 0:24.7 | Some is the British and the French on offensive. |
| 0:28.1 | What I learned from Nick's presentation is they're twinned. |
| 0:32.4 | First Verdon. It launches in early |
| 0:36.3 | 1916. It's a fortress, a series of fortresses, way out to the right, |
| 0:41.7 | very far from Paris. |
| 0:44.0 | Why, Nick, why did they launch? |
| 0:47.0 | Why did Falconheim launch on Verdun? |
| 0:50.0 | What did he imagine he would accomplish? |
| 0:52.0 | And in accomplishing it |
| 0:54.2 | how would it end the war his vision |
| 0:58.5 | yeah i mean you get nineteen sixteen there's that terrible terrible year we |
| 1:01.9 | these two battles as you mentioned. |
| 1:03.4 | And this year is almost the image of the Western Front that we have. |
| 1:07.0 | When we think at the Western Front, it's usually 1916 or 1917. |
| 1:10.4 | Verdun and the Sommer those two horrific battles that, you know, have come to epitomize that horror. |
| 1:16.0 | Verdon is interesting because it's a reject, you know, |
| 1:20.0 | Falgenheim has spent 1915 essentially winning the war in the East and conquering Serbia, |
... |
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