WW1: Not So Quiet On The Western Front!

Picture a soldier with a trench dagger tucked into his belt and a satchel full of grenades on his shoulder, carrying a spiked club in one hand and a revolver in the other: a man ready for a deadly encounter in the dark. The weapons of trench raiding are among the most unsettling objects left behind by the First World War, and today, we explore how these weapons were used and why the less fearsome equipment could be just as important.

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What happens when an army built for a short war finds itself fighting in a long one? In 1915, the British Army found out, and learned the answer the hard way. Short of guns, short of shells, and up against defences that no one had previously seen, the Army would experience a year of courage without glory.

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In this episode, a continuation of our Germany at War series, we take a deep dive into the fighting on the Western Front throughout the crucial year of 1915. From poison gas and pillboxes to elastic defence, we explore the tactics, technology, and brutal realities of the war and much more in this week’s episode.

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Charles de Gaulle was wounded and captured at Verdun in March 1916, but this marked the beginning of a new phase of his First World War. Over the next two and a half years, he would dedicate himself to escaping captivity and rejoining the fight. This is the story of how the future president of France became one of the most notorious escape artists of the First World War.

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It is difficult to imagine Charles de Gaulle as a young man before the képi, the presidency, and his famous silhouette. But in August 1914, he was a 23-year-old lieutenant about to be wounded and tested in the inferno of combat. Ultimately captured in the brutal fighting at Verdun, he would do all in his power to escape from captivity in Germany.

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1917 British patrols walked into Serre without firing a shot. The Germans had gone - withdrawn back to the Hindenburg Line, abandoning ground over which some one million men had been killed and wounded. Four months after the Battle of the Somme officially ended, the British were left masters of the field - but it was a field of shell holes, ruins and unburied corpses. Were they the victors? In this episode, we ask: Who really won the Battle of the Somme?

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On 13th of November 1916 the British Army attacked at Beaumont Hamel, Serre and Beaucourt - the ground of the first morning of the Somme. Four and a half months after the catastrophe of the first of July, the last battle of the campaign was fought across the same fields, still littered with the fallen from weeks earlier. What happened at the Battle of the Ancre - the final major battle of the Somme campaign - and why does it remain controversial?

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Today in popular memory the Battle of the Somme is often seen as titanic struggle fought between Britain and her vast Empire an the military might of the German War Machine. But, what’s far too often overlooked, and the subject of today’s episode is the contribution of the French Army who fought tenaciously from the very first to the very last shots of the battle.

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Credits:

- Host: Dan Hill

- Production: Linus Klaßen

- Editing: Sander van Kammen

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By late September 1916, the British Army stood ready to attempt something it had failed to do on the war's bloodiest day: capture Thiepval. Once a village, now a fortified maze of underground cellars and interlinking tunnels, the position had repelled the 36th Ulster Division on 1 July and become a symbol of German resistance ever since. Two and a half months on, a very different British Army launched its assault at 12:35pm in broad daylight, now backed by concentrated artillery, dedicated counter-battery fire, and lessons paid for in blood. Was this the moment the British Army finally proved it had learned to fight the Somme, or would Thiepval's fall come at too high a cost to feel like victory at all?

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In this episode we continue our exploration of the 1916 Battle of the Somme with a focus on a key crucial stage famed for the global debut of a new weapon - the tank - But the battle of Flers-Courcelette was not just the tanks, debut - tens of thousands of infantry played their part in what would become one of the greatest assaults of the battle.

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