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Great video SoGal ... majority of the soldiers (especially when the Pals regiment's were formed) were still teenagers /early 20's ... You'll eventually find out that even horses were requisitioned from all over th UK (for officers and for moving supplies & weapons) and even brought over from the U.S. by cargo ship ... hope the book comes in handy ☺
"Overlooked," in this case means that the Germans held the high ground, and had an excellent view of what the British were doing. A spade - seriously ? - is a gardening-tool used to dig holes, a shovel with a hard, sharp blade. The complex network of bunkers, dugouts and parapets came later. The massive casualties were indeed caused by old tactics against new weapons. The soldier on the poster is Lord Kitchener, victor of the Boer War. The small, but highly professional British Army was inadequate for a modern war, so volunteers were hastily trained to fill in the gaps. Conscription came later.
In the USA spade started being used as a racial slur in the interwar period. Americans eventually stopped using it to refer to the digging implement due to the cultural context.
@@auburnfire Gotcha ! I was assuming she hadn't heard the word, but I didn't know if there was an alternative (two peoples divided by a common language - Wilde).
I think that Indy is using the phrase "over looked" instead of the verb "overlooked". It probably would have been clearer to use the order "looked over" or the verb "observed" instead.
@@auburnfire Ah, the complexities of the English language between the UK and USA. But yeah, basically a Spade has a pointed edge for cutting into soil, Shovels are flat edged.
Spades are very similar to shovels except spades are for digging down whereas shovels are for digging into stuff. You dig graves with spades, you move piles of dirt with shovels.
Spades also have sharpened edges so they can more easily penetrate the ground. This, combined with their short handle, also made trench spades useful melee weapons when the enemy was in your trench.
@@geraldimhof2875 Trenches are actually a bad example as they expand both vertically and horizontally. Once you dig out enough vertically, a shovel may be more beneficial to expand the trench horizontally (depending on the type of material you are digging out). A grave almost always goes vertically and there is little horizontal digging once you have a hole slightly wider and longer than a coffin.
The idea behind "trench warfare" was not to stay in the trenches. They were only meant as a defensive position that you could hold, use to break enemy attacks and start your own attacks from. With a few exceptions, the dominant strategic idea on both sides was the "breakthrough". Overrun the enemy lines, surround them, cut off their lines to the back... and thus defeat them and win the war. The problem was: they just didn't have the means to do that. Nothing really worked. Frontal infantry assaults, massive artillery barrages... even the first early tanks. The defensive advantage that a well-constructed system of trenches offered was just too formidable.
@@k.v.7681 That would be one of the alternatives. We will get to see it soon enough. Verdun. It's war, and there are enough examples of extraordinary acts of cruelty in war. But Verdun still holds the prime spot on my "most cynical idea ever" list.
The creeping barrages and armoured vehicles would change the nature of war back to one of movement. Basically the beginning of organized combined arms warfare, where the support companies are just as important as the main soldiers, as seen in WW2. It rendered the stationary defense less effective when you cannot directly shoot down people due to armor and they have covering fire. Machine gun nests and trenches becomes penetrable when the armoured vehicle (tank) can just drive through them and provide cover for foot soldiers after and artillery barrage has hit the enemy position.
@@TrashskillsRS Well... yes. They nature of war would change back to a more mobile one. Armoured vehicles and air power were the most important factors here. But not now, not in this war. Early tanks weren't effective enough, and they suffered from the same problems that the rest of the military machinery had: communication and coordination mostly. They would become powerful tools... but they were not there yet. And they weren't powerful yet to overcome the advantages of defense... especially as with their appearance, countermeasures to them were also developed. The war wasn't won on the strategy of breakthrough... not the early attempts or the later technologically more advanced ones. It was won, even if not intentionally, on the Verdun strategy... when at last one side collapsed due to sheer mental and material exhaustion.
The soldier in the poster is Lord Kitchener. Out of 16,000 villages in the UK only 32 were "thankful villages" where no war deaths were reported amongst the men of the village.
And for context, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, PC was the Secretary of State for War for Britain at the time.
@@charaka1030 more specifically, cannot serve at the time of recording. Most casualties are injured and a large number of them recover and take up their roles again. This is why France had a 71% casualty rate but still maintained a large and successful army
Casualties were that high for several reasons. The most important being as you said the mismatch between old warfare tactics and new technologies with unprecedented killing power. But you also need to take into account the massive scale of this war. Unlike previous wars, entire nations mobilized everything they had: there came the total war concept. One dimension of this was that armies fielded not a few tens or hundreds of thousand soldiers, but millions. More soldiers times more deadly weapons per soldier = more casualty (of course casualties include not only dead but also injured, missing, etc.).
It was like 8000+ each day on average until then that got mowed down by machine guns. The way to push was to overwhelm the others and make them retreat, while you are being fired upon. About 1000 per day on average that got killed by artillery fire. Just for comparisons, it was only sometime during Operation Barbarossa in WW2 that the death toll reached 1 million soldiers, some. 2 years into the conflict. However afterwards from November 1941 - May 1945 the numbers are just off the charts and would end in more than 10 times the dead of WW1.
A spade looks like a shovel, same kind of handle and at first glance blade, however it's a cutting and material shifting tool that by thrust of arm or by downward leg pressure allows for deep penetrative cuts into earth to be made.Basically on flat ground you make a first cut, pull out the spade , thrust again at an ninety degree angle at one end of the cut, repeat ,then put the spade back into one of the cuts, apply upward pressure and a large amount of earth should then be lifted . It's not much use in dry/hard earth but great for conditions such as you get in western Europe.(That took longer than expected, but once you start).
Yes and no, a spade has( I don't know what the terminological term for what I'm going to try and explain is), on either side of the shaft a reinforced metal ledge to take the pressure of a leg would thrust downwards
@@abigailcramer6514 Importantly, a spade is supposed to be sharp, while a shovel usually isn't, and the spade often has a shorter handle (a longer handle would give more leverage, but the practical realities of the intended use mean that a longer handle increase the chances of it breaking more than it actually helps do the job)
The face on the British recruiting poster is that of Lord Kitchener, who you will have heard Jones in Dad's Army going on about. At the time of the poster he was Secretary of State for War. He died on 5th June 1916 when HMS Hampshire, the RN Cruiser on which he was travelling to Russia for talks, sank after hitting a mine. And yes, the USA copied their poster from this one.
Letting generals do what they wanted was an integral part of the Prussian and later German military. It is known as the mission-oriented command system. (It was later copied by the Israelis and helped them win the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973.) It enables local commanders to quickly respond to changing circumstances without having to waste time waiting for instructions (a very important point in a time when most messages where still past by couriers on horses or motorcycles rather than by radio). It also breeds officers that are capable of taking initiative, rather than blindly following a set of orders that might already be out-dated. However, it could also lead to problems as demonstrated here when the man in command no longer knew where his front-line troops were or what they were doing.
20:09 "Overlooked" in this context means that the Germans had the height advantage over the British. They could see and fire down on the entire British force. The British had to aim upwards against the Germans and probably could only see a fraction of the enemy. Don't feel bad about missing that. It is an odd turn of phrase for Indy and I also had to pause the video to puzzle through what was being talked about.
Helpfully, there's a related noun: "an overlook", a high point from which you can look over the surrounding area, and such a position is described as 'overlooking' near-by things below it. To 'overlook' something, in the usual sense, is actually derived from this: you're so far away that it's easy to miss (and, for that matter, sometimes very difficult to see, let alone notice) small, potentially important, details.
@@laurencefraser Yes, I am aware. The existence of a word does not prevent it from being included in an odd turn of phrase. In all of the scripts and videos he has produced, Indy is usually very eloquent. This is one of the few occasions where his choice of wording is a little jarring. No big deal. Even the best of us make small mistakes now and then. To err is human.
Overlook is one of those words that has two meanings - "to ignore" like you thought, or "to view from above" which is what was meant in the commentary.
The poster is Lord Kitchener and I think the message says "Your Country Needs You" A spade is like a shovel but is used for digging where a shovel is for clearing loose earth and gravel from a flat surface.
16:15 I don't find it hard to have sympathy for Moltke, he always said that it's better to lose a short war than to win a long one. And his resignation was him asking the kaiser to be allowed to offer a ceasefire with the allies, the Kaiser told him to get back into battle or resign, at which point Moltke resigned. This is the one man who saw what world war 1 was turning into and did his best to stop it. It's too bad that he resigned really since it opened up the spot for lesser men like Falkenhayne and ambitious men like Hindenburg and Ludendorf.
The Spade or Entrenchment Tool is a short handled shovel, with a small blade that can be folded back to the handle making it short enough to be strapped to a soldier's backpack. Still used to this day.
It is a spade not a shovel though. They are different things. A spade is for digging and has a flatter blade than a shovel which is more rounded and for moving loose earth/coal etc. Digging a hole with a shovel would be a pain and take twice as long.
@@Davey-Boyd In the US and in many countries in Europe there is no difference between a spade and a shovel, both are the same, with a long, 5ft - 6ft handle and a shield shaped curved pointed blade which can be used for both digging and shovelling. The UK builders shovel is an alien tool.
@@tonys1636 I found out the difference the hard way on my first day of my first ever job on a building site when I was 16 (I'm 57). The old Irish foreman laughed his head off watching me fail to dig some foundations out with a shovel. He then passed me a spade and said 'try that'. Lesson learnt!
This series by Indi and his team , is Outstanding. I have seen every episode since 2014 in real time 100 years after each weekly happenings. There are many side stories on different armies,battles and commanders. The current WW2 series is better produced and very detailed. Any minor inaccuracy by the team is quickly pounced on by the knowledgeable viewing audience and then corrected by Indi the next week. There is also so much more information given in the comments section. Both World War series are second to none. The upcoming daily casualty figures from the big battles will make your head spin , with sometimes 50 thou to 60,000 from both sides being recorded.
Just to give people an idea of where France's head was at the start of the Great War in terms of "modern warfare".... their guys on horses (the cuirassiers) were still riding into battle wearing breastplates (that were not at all bulletproof against rifles, never mind artillery shells).... And to answer your question about why casualties were so high, in part yes - it was a mismatch between old tactics against new technology (i.e. artillery, machine guns). Not helped by the attitude of the commanders (and political leaders) at the time, many of whom were from the upper class and often having never served in the frontlines themselves, treating the regular troops (who would have been from the lower class) as somewhat expendable. *_Side note, to further highlight the futility of trench warfare:_* Even if you do attack and manage to capture an enemy trench, it doesn't really help you because all the defences would be pointing in the wrong direction and you would be sitting ducks to the enemy who want their trench back.
Not only a miss-match between technology and tactics, but also between technology and technology: Offensive technology had completely outstripped defensive technology when it came to the equipment used by the individual soldier and small unit. Slightly counter-intuitively, that meant that said soldiers and units were Very good at defending but terrible at attacking. When defending, they could hide in trenches, bunkers, and other fortifications, and take full advantage of their weapons. When attacking they had little or nothing in the way of meaningful methods of surviving the defender's weaponry other than being fast, taking advantage of what little geography there was, and hoping for the best, until they could get into basically Melee range so as to bypass the effects of the defensive emplacements... A situation similar to the Pike and Shot era, only the enemy was further away, could fire faster, and could aim more accurately.
I am wondering whether you are going to react to some of the special episodes done by the Great war, like countries in WW1 (eg. Sweden, Poland, South Africa), Famous people in WW1 (eg. Hitler, Red Baren, Conrad von Hötzendorf) and others (eg. Trench warfare, communications in WW1, Animals of WW1)
The first thing the Germans did when they acquired their colony in Tsingtao (Ching-dow) was build a brewery. It's still going strong. I don't know about the US, but you can get Tsingtao beer in Canada. It's quite nice!
The pals regiments are the reason we have war memorials in every city, town and village in the uk. The losses of the men decimated local communities, many took decades to recover.
A shovel usually has a 3 to 4 foot handle. A spade is smaller, has sharp edges to dig in and a 1 foot handle. Spades were used to dig 'foxholes' in order to hunker down, but were also used in hand to hand combat...
I binge-watched "The Great War" When I was out of work. The series was an amazing piece of work to put together. Indy's doing the Second World War in the same format.
Hi, the man in the Your Country Needs You poster is Lord Kitchener, then Secretary of State for War. The poster was developed by Alfred Leete. Field Marshall Lord Kitchener had fought in the Sudan in the 1890s and South Africa at the turn of the century. He was an experienced soldier but not in anything like WW1. I hope we hear more of him as this goes forward more.
The man in the "Your Country Needs You" poster is Herbert Kitchener and he was a British field marshal and also the war secretary during WW1. Also he was born in County Kerry, Ireland.
There is some merit to thinking of the two world wars as one conflict, but it is only true of the European Theatre. Japan was an ally in WWI as was Italy but Italy in effect changed sides because promises made to her were not kept While Japan switched sides so it could invade China.
Japan first becomes involved in Manchuria during WW1 when it lands to besiege Tsingtao.The switching sides came as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty which annulled the Anglo-Japanese alliance
Yah but during the 30 years war the same was true. Like Sweden and France weren't active at all during the 1st part of it. In fact, I believe France was more leaning towards the Austrian side at the start due to religious reasons. Then by the second half, Denmark is out, Sweden is all in, France is all in against Austria etc.
@@davidwright7193 and even then, Japan only actually got involved in the fighting in the rest of WW2 rather than staying in China and leaving everyone else alone due to American diplomatic intervention in the Chinese situation crippling their trade (by way of embargoes and blockades) to the point where the only way they could Get (among other things) much needed oil was invading what would later become Indonesia and taking it. They attacked Pearl Harbor on the basis that the USA would declare war on them the moment they attacked the dutch Anyway, and the American navy (well, pacific fleet) would be MUCH harder to deal with in that situation than if they could catch it in port...
@@laurencefraser Well the USA was no fool lol. Japanese military doctrine in the 20s and 30s was what they perceived as an inevitable showdown with the U.S.A. That is a major reason Japan industrialized Manchuria to such an extent, rather than keep all industries in Japan like any other colonial power. it was meant to be far away enough from any possible U.S bombers from the Philippines. In a way that part of their plan worked, the US bombed Japan, not so much Manchuria.
23:38: Since many centuries the military used trenches for siege warfare. So, yes, they were very elaborated by the time of WW I. Later an answer to such a warfare were tanks.
27:48 The "soldier" in the poster is His Excellency, Field Marshall, The Right Honourable, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, Knight of the Order of the Garter, Knight of the Order of St Patrick, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, Member of the Order of Merit, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire. Oh yes, and Secretary of State for War in 1914. Nearly forgot. Was he a man? Or a cypher? Nobody knows. More letters than an alphabet. More balls than a snooker hall. More blood on his hands than a million surgeons. More medals on his coat than actual coat.
There is a statue dedicated to the Chorley pals at the entrance to the flat iron car park near the town hall in Chorley. I was quite surprised to see that book pop up on little old Chorley
A spade is a bit like a shovel. A shovel is generally used to move lose stuff like snow, gravel, sand, loose earth and is curved up at the sides to keep the stuff on the blade. A spade is a flatter bladed tool for digging down into firm earth or clay. Infantry spades (entrenching tools) are often made in the traditional spade shape with a bit of a point on the blade so they cut into the ground better. This is where the 'spade' shape on playing cards came from.
25:45 That and that few of these officers have actually seen war. Oh and there has been a population boom since the last European war, the number of men fighting now is so much greater that the officers have lost all sense of scope.
Spades and shovels are more or less interchangeable over here. In the military nowadays they are called entrenchin tools. So dispute over. The soldier on the poster was Lord Kitchener. He was a field Marshall who had been given the task of recruiting a new army. Initially it was calling for volunteers, later conscription was introduced. Corporal Jones in Dad's Army often mentions him, as Kitchener led an expedition into the Sudan to teach the locals a lesson after the killing of General Gordon in Khartoum. Jones was supposedly in the Sudan. Kitchener drowned in 1916 when the cruiser he was travelling on was torpedoed and sunk.
I think the objective ended up being to get across no-mans land after bombardment and capture the other side's trenches. After the German retreat from Paris it's unclear to me whether they actually went to to the top of the ridge. He suggests that at first but later says they had many in front of the ridge.
The ridge was in occupied territory, the Germans held positions in front of the ridge which meant that their artillery was positioned atop and just behind the ridge, overlooking the entire battlefield, giving them observational and therefore fire superiority over the enemy lines, and their own in the event of the enemy breaking into their trench lines.
The spade is named after the playing card suit, which is a similar shape. It is also the more commonly used term for a shovel in Europe, although they are technically different digging tools.
Spades are not named after the suit, their name comes directly from the Old English word "spadu" which means "digging tool". The playing card suit name comes from the Italian "spada" meaning "sword", which is what the spade suit's shape actually derives from.
Your comments about trench warfare are largely spot on. This was a different kind of war to what they had been accustomed to. The old generals were not understanding that the rules had changed. Enfilade machine gun nests along the trench lines. Enfilade means that the nests were angled at 45 degrees so that anyone moving forward was bound to get hit. These 100 metre gaps between opposing trenches were covered in barbed wire and mines. Every time the generals ordered the assault it resulted in mass casualties. Soldiers got cut down by machine guns, blown up by mines and sometimes hit by artillery shells. Millions of hapless men destroyed for a few square feet of land. Typhoid and dysentery were rife amongst the soldiers. Many died from infected wounds. The only cover the men had were shell craters. It was industrialised carnage. Then invention of the tank was actually a blessing because it brought an end to trench warfare, though the new tanks in the Great War were not very effective.
A spade is still part of every soldiers kit. It is a small shovel/entrenching tool, used to dig a single or multiple man trench, prior to the entrenching spade a soldier would use their bayonet or bare hands to dig in. In previous Wars the trench and redoubt construction was left to the Engineering Corps, however both sides had not expected the style of warfare to have changed so quickly in such a short space of time. The reason the British were in such bad shape was that the Germans held the high ground and could see everything they were doing, leaving them in very open and exposed positions, which made them easy targets for rifles, machine guns and artillery. The Generals were still in the mindset of almost the Napoleonic or American Civil Wars, and had not calculated the damage a machine gun firing 800 rounds per minute or shrapnel artillery shells could do to men in the caught in the open. Lord Kitchener's ugly backstabbing face on a poster. Yes you nicked it of us, your welcome :). The first intricate trench system was used by that British smart arse Major General Arthur Wellesley (later Lord Wellington) outside Lisbon, the Lines of Torres Vedras. By October 1810, the first of three lines were ready. Containing 126 works (small forts) had been completed and were manned by 29,750 men with 247 heavy guns. Marshal Masséna smashed his 65,000 strong Army against the defences, and because of the the scorched earth policy as well, he lost 25,000 men dead, no more French Army of Portugal. P.S. The first hand grenades were actually used by China, but they were to see a much more effective role in the west when Wellington used them in large numbers to break up the French Columns in Portugal and Spain. All they were back then was a hollow Iron ball filled with gunpowder, you lit the fuse and threw it, all the time hoping they had made the fuse correctly. It was the Industrial Revolution that helped the British made weapons be more reliable owing to the more uniformed abilities machines tend to have over humans. Sadly this proved horrific in 1914.
Hello SoGal and Roger. He needs that dough boy helmet now. 26:00 yes. As a kid I was taught to dig with an ex-military trenching tool as it was better at the job than a spade (US word shovel I am surprised to find from this). I watched a film where the German infantry used them in close quarter trench fighting and I heard it said that in WW1 they killed more people than bayonets, used like tomahawks or battle axes. I later used a similar tool in Spain to dig holes for a lemon and an orange tree, only to forget my bearings in the heat and fall down the first hole, which must have happened to men in battle too. 32:40 I have kept saying this, but WW2 tactics were developed in WW1 trial and error by the British Empire troops and generals, first having to build mass armies they were unused to, then the new world adaptability of the Commonwealth generals and troops helped with new thinking and British industry being transformed to a war footing to build new weapons. US historians tend to focus on troops used en masse and US numbers reinforcing the French in large scale offensives. I will have to wait until 1918 and watch through a lot of those errors to see what this series says, but some of the UK losses were inevitable as the army had to get used to modern war before it could start to beat the German army that as was said took many years to get this good, once the small UK professional army was in essence totally depleted by attrition.
To your answer your question about casualties: Yes. Infantry tactics were mostly primitive in 1914. As the war developed new tactics of infiltration, fire and movement, squad support weapons and such like, would develop - most of which are still used today - but in 1914 such tactics were seldom used, even when known, since they required special training to learn them.
Not sure if i told you before but my dad was in WW1 as a sergeant .I am 73 and my dad was just over 50 when i was born in 1948. I have a small piece of paper with his number and regiment the Lancashire Fusiliers .I was six when dad died so he told me nothing about the war and only a little to my older brother.I did learn that dad was gassed ,which likely contributed to the lung cancer which killed him eventually, plus the heavy smoking . I believe it quite rare for someone today saying their father was in WW1 and not their Grandfather.
Your question about spades cought me totally off guard. Growing up helping parents in the garden i assumed everyone would know what a spade is. Normal garden spades are like a small shovel who's head isn't angled off much, and the handle is shorter and has a transversaly mounted endgrip: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spade.jpg Military field spades like the central powers had are around half a meter in length over all, have no transversaly endgrip, and a smaller head. But usually sharpened edges, so they can be used as melee weapons. (I did conscript time in austria 99'-00' and our field spades, apart from having a folding mechanism for the spadehead, looked almost like the M1910 Version of Austria-Hungary. So we still used the same design the Wehrmacht used during WW2. And i remember the words of our NCO well: In close quaters fighting, the spade is the best choice of all the things you are issued. It has prooven it's usefullness in two world wars!) Austro-Hungarian field spade of WW1: www.google.com/search?q=austro+hungarian+ww1+spade&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwizk6mIqITzAhUKzKQKHQBEBPAQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=austro+hungarian+ww1+spade&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1DRzANY8uMDYNjqA2gAcAB4AIABmgGIAYkEkgEDMC40mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=WaZDYfOCG4qYkwWAiJGADw&bih=876&biw=1759
A spade is a pointed shovel, it's what the suit in a deck of cards is based on. You stab the ground, and lever it back to dig and lift earth. A shovel on the other hand, is only meant for moving loose piles of dirt.
A spade is indeed a sharp small shovel designed to be easily carried around by troops. They were also affective in melee and were used by troops when raiding enemy trenches.
The Pals were recruited with the promise that they would serve with their mates. It was done on the (correct) assumption that soldiers would both be more willing to enlist, and fight harder if they were doing so alongside their friends. No fault there. Unfortunately, it also meant that if one unit was in the first attack on an objective, all the men killed would come from the same area, and die together, too. This may not have been bad for them, but it had its effect on civilian morale. Where I live there was a road called “the bravest street in the world”. One hundred and sixty one men from one small road, Chapel Street, Altrincham, joined up in World War One, and twenty nine were killed.
About the Hindenburg airship. It was a civilian passenger airship. Airships work by the gas in their balloons being lighter than the air around them, and the two lightest gasses are hydrogen (molecules made of two hydrogen atoms) and helium (a single, chemically non-reactive, helium atom). The problem with using helium, besides that it's rare, is that it will leak through almost anything. Hydrogen, on the other hand, can be easily made by electrolysis of water, so it's significantly cheaper. The problem with hydrogen is that it is very flammable, and the Hindenburg was destroyed when it was visiting the US in the 1937 and the hydrogen in its gas envelope caught fire with 35 lives lost. Since then, airships have used helium, because the safety has been judged worth the additional cost.
My wife's grandmother was engaged to a lad from the Accrington Pals regiment..He never came back. Neither did most of his pals. A town (like many others) stripped of their young men..
You might like to investigate the story of Captain Wilfred Salter Owen who was killed 5 days before the Great War's end in Ormes, Northern France. He is now recognised as the greatest 'war poet' in the English language, greatly influenced by Shakespeare and Keats. A very brave man (as many were) he had a war long communication in letters with his mother and describes a gas attack in the famous poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est', meaning, 'it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country', Owen referred to this idea as 'the age old lie', a controversial view at the time.
War on the African lake Victoria: The largest ship on Lake Victoria in Africa was built in Germany, but screws are used instead of rivets. Then the ship was dismantled again into its individual parts and brought to the east coast of Africa by ship. Then the individual parts were taken by Africans on foot hundreds of kilometers to Lake Victoria, where the ship was puzzled together in an improvised shipyard. Speaking of which: in WW1 the ship was cannonized and war was fought. The ship was sunk 3 times, but always in flat places. Then you just cut out an inner wall somewhere and sealed the ship again and made it float again. Then the war on Lake Victoria could continue. Unfortunately, the Germans then lost the ship to the English, so they no longer had a "fleet" on the lake and had to give up. The ship is still sailing on the lake today, nobody has brought an equally large one there.
There’s a ohrase some Brits use - perhaps a bit self importantly: “I call a spade a bloody shovel”. The pointing man was Lord Kitchener. I am learning a lot from these videos.
@@martincook9795 Yeah interesting. Clearly the phrase is out there, but I've never heard it before :) Both seem to come from the same figurative expression, but for me the spade a shovel doesn't make the same sense of meaning of "telling it like it is". A bit like "I don't beat around the bush" also means similar. Interesting anyways. Same with learning in another comment that it (Spade) was sometime used as a slur/racist term. That kinda overtook the real meaning of spade and killed it off US wise as the actual object. Which explains why SoGal didn't correlate the name spade the same as we/I would as being just another garden tool for digging. Just that a shovel is more for digging and shovel for loose material.
@@karenblackadder1183 Yeah thanks. I get it. I've just never heard it before or perhaps have, but not noticed the difference before. I'm from Manchester too so I would have thought I'd of heard it before. Anyways, always good to learn a new thing. Cheers :)
A note about the professional British army at the time. When the Germans first came into contact with the British Army, they reported high numbers of machine guns. The British were so highly trained they were shooting at a rate that seemed impossible to the Germans.
the cost in lives of the battles is very high firstly because of the amount of firepower new technologies had brought. 1 machinegun could fire as many rounds as 200 soldiers and artillery now used explosive shells (as opposed to metal cannonballs in the napoleonic wars) that could kill anyone in radius of 50 to a 100 meters (150 - 300 feets) who wasn't in cover. You pair that with armies that were many, many times larger than ever before and that still used mass infantry charges and you get these casualties numbers. Hence the advantage of trenches: soldiers were somewhat protected from artillery, couldn't be shot at and yet would still be able to shoot at the enemy when he attacked. But the goal of trench warfare is ultimately to beak through the enemies trench system, not just stay there. Another thing you have to consider is that a casualty is not necessarily a dead soldier. A soldier wounded enough to be out of action (for example a lost leg) can still be counted as a casualty.
A note on the footage: You see a ron of post 1916 footage with a vastly different uniform on all sides. While you can't see the different "horizon blue" of the French uniforms or the tiny details on the German and British ones you *do* see the steel helmets. Those where not there in the '14 campaign with the French and the Austrians wearing Kepis, the British and the Russians Peaked Caps and the Germans the Pickelhaube, a leather helmet that offered no protection or ofthen the plain field cap, a brimmless peakes cap. Of course non of these protect against airbust shells, not relevant for an open field battle brcause you get shredded by artillery from any angle... but in a *trench* danger only comes from the top. It's also part of the dehumanization, look at a soldier in '14, hes, well, a soldier, a human, now look at a French soldiee from Verdun or late war German stormtroopers... they are vagueley insectoid un-human monstrosities, no eyes visible, no faces, just marks, no head, just steel wielding short guns and brutal clubs with wire wrapped around them... they are hellish creatures in a hellscape... Best eegards Raoul G. Kunz
There is an Anti-War/Musical about WW1, it`s called (Oh! What a Lovely War, 1969) which has an interesting way of portraying the terrible events. Both Diplomatically, on the Home Front & in the warfare. It is almost 2 1/2 hrs long though, so your time constraints might prevent you. But, I think, it would be worth your attention, it also includes the songs of the front. As well as the the frontline Soldiers gallows humour.
As Edmund Blackadder said in Blackadder goes Forth, “The British Empire covers a quarter of the globe whereas the German Empire consists of one sausage factory in Tanganyika” [E. Africa now Tanzania] 😂
Hey you missed the German colony and Beer factory at Tsingtau, rapidly conquered by the Japanese and then taken over by the Chinese. the owners change but everybody keeps the Tsingtau brewery open.
New artillery and machine guns used effectively turned warfare into a numbers game with enough machine guns you could make place's effectively impossible to attack without taking horrendous losses .
After the carnage that had unfolded in the opening weeks of the war, digging in was the only possible option. Both sides were exhausted from being on the march for weeks on end, and with the shortage of munitions on the Entente side - neither side could have possibly effected a breakthrough, and if they had they would have lacked the energy and resources to exploit it - that will be shown over the last few months of 1914, and early 1915. Even for the regular soldier, digging in was the best option. If they had not done so they would have been cut to pieces by artillery and machine gun fire - mainly artillery to which they could make no response. In some cases the Entene soldiers and Germans would be digging opposite each other at the same time without either side shooting at each other, to try and shelter from the artillery fire.
'combat' haha no my friend it just a short version of a shovel. that's why children's beach equipment is called a 'shovel and spade' in shops etc. you can buy them from B&Q its just a tool of garden equipment.
you shoulda been around in the 70's: Vietnam, Lebanon. Cultural Revolution. I remember watchin the First Gulf War, live on TV, and wondering at the images at the time in 91. It bears remembering that in the Yugoslavian war, the capital Sarajevo, had been host to the Olympics only a few short years before. I have lived through more conflict than I can name, and i've been payin attention. There has never been a time in world history where somewhere in the world someone is not in armed conflict.
6:16 I'm often struck by just how prescient some of the leaders were at the end of the war. They realised that there was much left unresolved by the Treaty of Versailles. Consider the following: "This war, like the next war, is a war to end war." --David Lloyd George, British PM, 1916-22 "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years." --Ferdinand Foch, French general There are others but I can't quite remember them. 15:33 "There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.... Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates." --Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929 20:10 I think he means they were overlooked by, but weren't directly in the line of fire of, the German Army. The original "trenches" they dug for themselves were little more than foxholes they could use to keep their heads down. 21:44 That's where we get the term "shell shock", ie. PTSD. The psychological toll that constant shelling, day and night, took on the soldiers was horrific. 22:09 aka an entrenching tool in this context. It's a kind of shovel with a shortened handle and a flattened, usually squared-off or pointed blade.
Wat caused so many casualties is both the confrontation of war doctrine vs new tech and the insane numbers of soldiers involved that surpassed what was done until then by a factor of 4 at least... When you cumulate those two things, you can only get catastrophic results. The advert is different in US, the UK one states that "Our country needs you", the Uncle Sam one state "I want YOU!" which it quite different. To understand the WHY of the Trench warfare, to continue the viewer's analogy to video games, the armies, baffled by their losses early on behaved like noobs in a online video game, they camped, trying to catch their breaths. Something that won't really happen in WW2 because those new toys that were tanks and aircrafts were well understood even if constantly evolving to a greater standard. Trench is the result of shell shock basically and it also worsen the shellshock too.
12:19: The drawing shows Emperor Wilhelm I. (+ 1888), the older Fieldmarshall Helmut von Moltke (+ 1891), the uncle of the Fieldmarshall von Moltke from 1914, and Otto von Bismarck (+ 1898). All of them were dead for a long time in 1914. The older Moltke was the Prussian Fieldmarshall, who defeated Denmark in 1864, Austria and her southern german allies in 1866 and France in 1870/71. When Wilhelm II. fired him as Chancellor, Bismarck warned him, that there will be a great war destroying the old powers. He predicted it nearly to the day. By the way: Will you comment a video about Bismarck?
Big part of problem at this stage is battles normally you break the enemy so they run, then you send Cavalry to run down the enemy now out of formation. The problem is rifles can kill Cavalry fast now thanks to bolt action vs musket reload times, making the Cavalry unable to accomplish this properly. So instead of fast units running down fleeing infantry, you get infantry on foot chasing infantry also on foot. Which makes it really hard to run down the enemy and 'defeat them' before over extending your supply lines and becoming vulnerable to counter attack.
If you study the siege of Vickburg and Petersburg in the American Civil War you will se the power of the spade in that war - which normally was quite a war of movement.
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Great video SoGal ... majority of the soldiers (especially when the Pals regiment's were formed) were still teenagers /early 20's ... You'll eventually find out that even horses were requisitioned from all over th UK (for officers and for moving supplies & weapons) and even brought over from the U.S. by cargo ship ... hope the book comes in handy ☺
"Overlooked," in this case means that the Germans held the high ground, and had an excellent view of what the British were doing. A spade - seriously ? - is a gardening-tool used to dig holes, a shovel with a hard, sharp blade.
The complex network of bunkers, dugouts and parapets came later. The massive casualties were indeed caused by old tactics against new weapons.
The soldier on the poster is Lord Kitchener, victor of the Boer War. The small, but highly professional British Army was inadequate for a modern war, so volunteers were hastily trained to fill in the gaps. Conscription came later.
The usual distinction I hear between shovel and spade is that shovels move the spoil that the spade creates.
In the USA spade started being used as a racial slur in the interwar period. Americans eventually stopped using it to refer to the digging implement due to the cultural context.
@@auburnfire Gotcha ! I was assuming she hadn't heard the word, but I didn't know if there was an alternative (two peoples divided by a common language - Wilde).
I think that Indy is using the phrase "over looked" instead of the verb "overlooked". It probably would have been clearer to use the order "looked over" or the verb "observed" instead.
@@auburnfire Ah, the complexities of the English language between the UK and USA.
But yeah, basically a Spade has a pointed edge for cutting into soil, Shovels are flat edged.
Spades are very similar to shovels except spades are for digging down whereas shovels are for digging into stuff. You dig graves with spades, you move piles of dirt with shovels.
America may have different words for these tools in the UK there are regional variations in the shape of different tools
@@ianprince1698 even in a pack of cards a spade is depicted as looking very much like a digging tool rather than a shovel.
Spades also have sharpened edges so they can more easily penetrate the ground. This, combined with their short handle, also made trench spades useful melee weapons when the enemy was in your trench.
I think you meant to say trenches instead of graves, but I see the analogy
@@geraldimhof2875 Trenches are actually a bad example as they expand both vertically and horizontally. Once you dig out enough vertically, a shovel may be more beneficial to expand the trench horizontally (depending on the type of material you are digging out).
A grave almost always goes vertically and there is little horizontal digging once you have a hole slightly wider and longer than a coffin.
The idea behind "trench warfare" was not to stay in the trenches. They were only meant as a defensive position that you could hold, use to break enemy attacks and start your own attacks from. With a few exceptions, the dominant strategic idea on both sides was the "breakthrough". Overrun the enemy lines, surround them, cut off their lines to the back... and thus defeat them and win the war.
The problem was: they just didn't have the means to do that. Nothing really worked. Frontal infantry assaults, massive artillery barrages... even the first early tanks. The defensive advantage that a well-constructed system of trenches offered was just too formidable.
I try to describe it as playing UNO, but with mostly reverse cards, and waiting to see who runs out of options first.
@@k.v.7681 That would be one of the alternatives. We will get to see it soon enough. Verdun.
It's war, and there are enough examples of extraordinary acts of cruelty in war. But Verdun still holds the prime spot on my "most cynical idea ever" list.
The creeping barrages and armoured vehicles would change the nature of war back to one of movement. Basically the beginning of organized combined arms warfare, where the support companies are just as important as the main soldiers, as seen in WW2.
It rendered the stationary defense less effective when you cannot directly shoot down people due to armor and they have covering fire. Machine gun nests and trenches becomes penetrable when the armoured vehicle (tank) can just drive through them and provide cover for foot soldiers after and artillery barrage has hit the enemy position.
@@TrashskillsRS Well... yes. They nature of war would change back to a more mobile one. Armoured vehicles and air power were the most important factors here.
But not now, not in this war. Early tanks weren't effective enough, and they suffered from the same problems that the rest of the military machinery had: communication and coordination mostly. They would become powerful tools... but they were not there yet. And they weren't powerful yet to overcome the advantages of defense... especially as with their appearance, countermeasures to them were also developed.
The war wasn't won on the strategy of breakthrough... not the early attempts or the later technologically more advanced ones. It was won, even if not intentionally, on the Verdun strategy... when at last one side collapsed due to sheer mental and material exhaustion.
@@Groffili The 100 day offensive was only possible due to tanks.
The soldier in the poster is Lord Kitchener. Out of 16,000 villages in the UK only 32 were "thankful villages" where no war deaths were reported amongst the men of the village.
There were only 2 in England and they were known as the blessed villages
And for context, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, PC was the Secretary of State for War for Britain at the time.
@@nathansellars3757 No; there were 32 in England and Wales (17 of which also suffered no losses in WW2).
By the autumn of 1915, it was possible to walk from the Swiss border almost all the way to the North Sea and only leave the trenches to cross rivers.
Remember - casualty does not mean dead it means out of combat. Of course a lot of those are dead, but also injured, sick, captured, desered, etc.
Basically it means Number of people that cannot serve in the war anymore
*Agree, except casualty doesn't mean captured - surrendered soldiers are never counted as "casualties."
@@charaka1030 more specifically, cannot serve at the time of recording. Most casualties are injured and a large number of them recover and take up their roles again. This is why France had a 71% casualty rate but still maintained a large and successful army
Casualties were that high for several reasons. The most important being as you said the mismatch between old warfare tactics and new technologies with unprecedented killing power. But you also need to take into account the massive scale of this war. Unlike previous wars, entire nations mobilized everything they had: there came the total war concept. One dimension of this was that armies fielded not a few tens or hundreds of thousand soldiers, but millions. More soldiers times more deadly weapons per soldier = more casualty (of course casualties include not only dead but also injured, missing, etc.).
It was like 8000+ each day on average until then that got mowed down by machine guns. The way to push was to overwhelm the others and make them retreat, while you are being fired upon. About 1000 per day on average that got killed by artillery fire.
Just for comparisons, it was only sometime during Operation Barbarossa in WW2 that the death toll reached 1 million soldiers, some. 2 years into the conflict. However afterwards from November 1941 - May 1945 the numbers are just off the charts and would end in more than 10 times the dead of WW1.
A spade looks like a shovel, same kind of handle and at first glance blade, however it's a cutting and material shifting tool that by thrust of arm or by downward leg pressure allows for deep penetrative cuts into earth to be made.Basically on flat ground you make a first cut, pull out the spade , thrust again at an ninety degree angle at one end of the cut, repeat ,then put the spade back into one of the cuts, apply upward pressure and a large amount of earth should then be lifted . It's not much use in dry/hard earth but great for conditions such as you get in western Europe.(That took longer than expected, but once you start).
This, basically it's a small shovel with a flatter blade/head vs a shovels craved one.
Yes and no, a spade has( I don't know what the terminological term for what I'm going to try and explain is), on either side of the shaft a reinforced metal ledge to take the pressure of a leg would thrust downwards
@@abigailcramer6514 Importantly, a spade is supposed to be sharp, while a shovel usually isn't, and the spade often has a shorter handle (a longer handle would give more leverage, but the practical realities of the intended use mean that a longer handle increase the chances of it breaking more than it actually helps do the job)
A spade is for digging a shovel for shifting already dug soil 🤷😂
Shovels are also a great weapon as well.
The face on the British recruiting poster is that of Lord Kitchener, who you will have heard Jones in Dad's Army going on about. At the time of the poster he was Secretary of State for War. He died on 5th June 1916 when HMS Hampshire, the RN Cruiser on which he was travelling to Russia for talks, sank after hitting a mine. And yes, the USA copied their poster from this one.
Letting generals do what they wanted was an integral part of the Prussian and later German military. It is known as the mission-oriented command system. (It was later copied by the Israelis and helped them win the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973.) It enables local commanders to quickly respond to changing circumstances without having to waste time waiting for instructions (a very important point in a time when most messages where still past by couriers on horses or motorcycles rather than by radio). It also breeds officers that are capable of taking initiative, rather than blindly following a set of orders that might already be out-dated.
However, it could also lead to problems as demonstrated here when the man in command no longer knew where his front-line troops were or what they were doing.
20:09 "Overlooked" in this context means that the Germans had the height advantage over the British. They could see and fire down on the entire British force. The British had to aim upwards against the Germans and probably could only see a fraction of the enemy.
Don't feel bad about missing that. It is an odd turn of phrase for Indy and I also had to pause the video to puzzle through what was being talked about.
Helpfully, there's a related noun: "an overlook", a high point from which you can look over the surrounding area, and such a position is described as 'overlooking' near-by things below it.
To 'overlook' something, in the usual sense, is actually derived from this: you're so far away that it's easy to miss (and, for that matter, sometimes very difficult to see, let alone notice) small, potentially important, details.
@@laurencefraser Yes, I am aware. The existence of a word does not prevent it from being included in an odd turn of phrase.
In all of the scripts and videos he has produced, Indy is usually very eloquent. This is one of the few occasions where his choice of wording is a little jarring.
No big deal. Even the best of us make small mistakes now and then. To err is human.
Overlook is one of those words that has two meanings - "to ignore" like you thought, or "to view from above" which is what was meant in the commentary.
Oh man, watching this brings back memories.
You can't imagine how much I learned to internally scream whenever I hear the name "von Hötzendorf"!
Why, is he mispronouncing it badly?
@@andrewcharles459 oh you'll learn sweet summer child
@@TheDJGrandPa Whatever. I thought it was a simple question. I'm almost sixty, by the way.
No, its just his amazing incompetence during the entire war
@@ThePuma1707 Well that's no secret.
The poster is Lord Kitchener and I think the message says "Your Country Needs You"
A spade is like a shovel but is used for digging where a shovel is for clearing loose earth and gravel from a flat surface.
11:58 Its more that the Germans could see all the British movements and fire down on the British
Yep, misunderstanding of the word “overlooked”
24:00 It's not the first instance of trench warfare in human history. The Austrians and Turks used trenches in the battle of Vienna centuries earlier.
16:15 I don't find it hard to have sympathy for Moltke, he always said that it's better to lose a short war than to win a long one. And his resignation was him asking the kaiser to be allowed to offer a ceasefire with the allies, the Kaiser told him to get back into battle or resign, at which point Moltke resigned. This is the one man who saw what world war 1 was turning into and did his best to stop it.
It's too bad that he resigned really since it opened up the spot for lesser men like Falkenhayne and ambitious men like Hindenburg and Ludendorf.
The Spade or Entrenchment Tool is a short handled shovel, with a small blade that can be folded back to the handle making it short enough to be strapped to a soldier's backpack. Still used to this day.
It is a spade not a shovel though. They are different things. A spade is for digging and has a flatter blade than a shovel which is more rounded and for moving loose earth/coal etc. Digging a hole with a shovel would be a pain and take twice as long.
@@Davey-Boyd In the US and in many countries in Europe there is no difference between a spade and a shovel, both are the same, with a long, 5ft - 6ft handle and a shield shaped curved pointed blade which can be used for both digging and shovelling. The UK builders shovel is an alien tool.
@@tonys1636 I found out the difference the hard way on my first day of my first ever job on a building site when I was 16 (I'm 57). The old Irish foreman laughed his head off watching me fail to dig some foundations out with a shovel. He then passed me a spade and said 'try that'. Lesson learnt!
This series by Indi and his team , is Outstanding. I have seen every episode since 2014 in real time 100 years after each weekly happenings. There are many side stories on different armies,battles and commanders. The current WW2 series is better produced and very detailed. Any minor inaccuracy by the team is quickly pounced on by the knowledgeable viewing audience and then corrected by Indi the next week. There is also so much more information given in the comments section. Both World War series are second to none. The upcoming daily casualty figures from the big battles will make your head spin , with sometimes 50 thou to 60,000 from both sides being recorded.
Just to give people an idea of where France's head was at the start of the Great War in terms of "modern warfare".... their guys on horses (the cuirassiers) were still riding into battle wearing breastplates (that were not at all bulletproof against rifles, never mind artillery shells)....
And to answer your question about why casualties were so high, in part yes - it was a mismatch between old tactics against new technology (i.e. artillery, machine guns). Not helped by the attitude of the commanders (and political leaders) at the time, many of whom were from the upper class and often having never served in the frontlines themselves, treating the regular troops (who would have been from the lower class) as somewhat expendable.
*_Side note, to further highlight the futility of trench warfare:_* Even if you do attack and manage to capture an enemy trench, it doesn't really help you because all the defences would be pointing in the wrong direction and you would be sitting ducks to the enemy who want their trench back.
Not only a miss-match between technology and tactics, but also between technology and technology: Offensive technology had completely outstripped defensive technology when it came to the equipment used by the individual soldier and small unit. Slightly counter-intuitively, that meant that said soldiers and units were Very good at defending but terrible at attacking.
When defending, they could hide in trenches, bunkers, and other fortifications, and take full advantage of their weapons.
When attacking they had little or nothing in the way of meaningful methods of surviving the defender's weaponry other than being fast, taking advantage of what little geography there was, and hoping for the best, until they could get into basically Melee range so as to bypass the effects of the defensive emplacements... A situation similar to the Pike and Shot era, only the enemy was further away, could fire faster, and could aim more accurately.
I am wondering whether you are going to react to some of the special episodes done by the Great war, like countries in WW1 (eg. Sweden, Poland, South Africa), Famous people in WW1 (eg. Hitler, Red Baren, Conrad von Hötzendorf) and others (eg. Trench warfare, communications in WW1, Animals of WW1)
The first thing the Germans did when they acquired their colony in Tsingtao (Ching-dow) was build a brewery. It's still going strong. I don't know about the US, but you can get Tsingtao beer in Canada. It's quite nice!
Priorities
@@stevenwebb3634 Finns built saunas in the front lines of the WW2. Priorities.
It's refreshing to see an American in at the start, rather than 2 years late 😲
Nice ! We will stop making fun of them for that only when they stop making French surrender jokes !
In miltary terms 'Casualties' didnt just mean deaths it also meant anyone injured enough to be taken out of battle.
The pals regiments are the reason we have war memorials in every city, town and village in the uk. The losses of the men decimated local communities, many took decades to recover.
A spade is a small shovel. A soldier's spade is part of his personal equipment pack. It is sometimes referred to as an "entrenching tool".
A shovel usually has a 3 to 4 foot handle. A spade is smaller, has sharp edges to dig in and a 1 foot handle. Spades were used to dig 'foxholes' in order to hunker down, but were also used in hand to hand combat...
I binge-watched "The Great War" When I was out of work. The series was an amazing piece of work to put together. Indy's doing the Second World War in the same format.
Hi, the man in the Your Country Needs You poster is Lord Kitchener, then Secretary of State for War. The poster was developed by Alfred Leete. Field Marshall Lord Kitchener had fought in the Sudan in the 1890s and South Africa at the turn of the century. He was an experienced soldier but not in anything like WW1. I hope we hear more of him as this goes forward more.
The man in the "Your Country Needs You" poster is Herbert Kitchener and he was a British field marshal and also the war secretary during WW1.
Also he was born in County Kerry, Ireland.
30:52 Admit it SoGal, you enjoyed the blue touchpaper being lit on that Mortar. ;-)
Just noticed the captions, which are often funny. When he introduced his self it said "I'm Indian ideal". made me smile anyway! :D
There is some merit to thinking of the two world wars as one conflict, but it is only true of the European Theatre. Japan was an ally in WWI as was Italy but Italy in effect changed sides because promises made to her were not kept While Japan switched sides so it could invade China.
Japan first becomes involved in Manchuria during WW1 when it lands to besiege Tsingtao.The switching sides came as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty which annulled the Anglo-Japanese alliance
Yah but during the 30 years war the same was true. Like Sweden and France weren't active at all during the 1st part of it. In fact, I believe France was more leaning towards the Austrian side at the start due to religious reasons. Then by the second half, Denmark is out, Sweden is all in, France is all in against Austria etc.
@@davidwright7193 and even then, Japan only actually got involved in the fighting in the rest of WW2 rather than staying in China and leaving everyone else alone due to American diplomatic intervention in the Chinese situation crippling their trade (by way of embargoes and blockades) to the point where the only way they could Get (among other things) much needed oil was invading what would later become Indonesia and taking it. They attacked Pearl Harbor on the basis that the USA would declare war on them the moment they attacked the dutch Anyway, and the American navy (well, pacific fleet) would be MUCH harder to deal with in that situation than if they could catch it in port...
@@laurencefraser Well the USA was no fool lol. Japanese military doctrine in the 20s and 30s was what they perceived as an inevitable showdown with the U.S.A. That is a major reason Japan industrialized Manchuria to such an extent, rather than keep all industries in Japan like any other colonial power. it was meant to be far away enough from any possible U.S bombers from the Philippines. In a way that part of their plan worked, the US bombed Japan, not so much Manchuria.
23:38: Since many centuries the military used trenches for siege warfare. So, yes, they were very elaborated by the time of WW I. Later an answer to such a warfare were tanks.
A spade is like a shovel. I shovel is made for moving stuff and a spade is designed for digging x
4:00 The 19th century was also an anomaly of peace. We should remember it didn't last. We should strive for it lasting but not assume it will.
An so begins the arc of 'Przemsyl'.
27:48 The "soldier" in the poster is His Excellency, Field Marshall, The Right Honourable, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, Knight of the Order of the Garter, Knight of the Order of St Patrick, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, Member of the Order of Merit, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire.
Oh yes, and Secretary of State for War in 1914. Nearly forgot.
Was he a man? Or a cypher? Nobody knows. More letters than an alphabet. More balls than a snooker hall. More blood on his hands than a million surgeons. More medals on his coat than actual coat.
There is a statue dedicated to the Chorley pals at the entrance to the flat iron car park near the town hall in Chorley. I was quite surprised to see that book pop up on little old Chorley
a spade is just another word for a shovel
Nah, you should always call a spade a spade. ;)
A spade is a bit like a shovel. A shovel is generally used to move lose stuff like snow, gravel, sand, loose earth and is curved up at the sides to keep the stuff on the blade. A spade is a flatter bladed tool for digging down into firm earth or clay. Infantry spades (entrenching tools) are often made in the traditional spade shape with a bit of a point on the blade so they cut into the ground better. This is where the 'spade' shape on playing cards came from.
25:45 That and that few of these officers have actually seen war. Oh and there has been a population boom since the last European war, the number of men fighting now is so much greater that the officers have lost all sense of scope.
Spades and shovels are more or less interchangeable over here. In the military nowadays they are called entrenchin tools. So dispute over.
The soldier on the poster was Lord Kitchener. He was a field Marshall who had been given the task of recruiting a new army. Initially it was calling for volunteers, later conscription was introduced. Corporal Jones in Dad's Army often mentions him, as Kitchener led an expedition into the Sudan to teach the locals a lesson after the killing of General Gordon in Khartoum. Jones was supposedly in the Sudan. Kitchener drowned in 1916 when the cruiser he was travelling on was torpedoed and sunk.
I think the objective ended up being to get across no-mans land after bombardment and capture the other side's trenches.
After the German retreat from Paris it's unclear to me whether they actually went to to the top of the ridge. He suggests that at first but later says they had many in front of the ridge.
The ridge was in occupied territory, the Germans held positions in front of the ridge which meant that their artillery was positioned atop and just behind the ridge, overlooking the entire battlefield, giving them observational and therefore fire superiority over the enemy lines, and their own in the event of the enemy breaking into their trench lines.
The spade is named after the playing card suit, which is a similar shape. It is also the more commonly used term for a shovel in Europe, although they are technically different digging tools.
Spades are not named after the suit, their name comes directly from the Old English word "spadu" which means "digging tool". The playing card suit name comes from the Italian "spada" meaning "sword", which is what the spade suit's shape actually derives from.
Your comments about trench warfare are largely spot on. This was a different kind of war to what they had been accustomed to. The old generals were not understanding that the rules had changed. Enfilade machine gun nests along the trench lines. Enfilade means that the nests were angled at 45 degrees so that anyone moving forward was bound to get hit. These 100 metre gaps between opposing trenches were covered in barbed wire and mines. Every time the generals ordered the assault it resulted in mass casualties. Soldiers got cut down by machine guns, blown up by mines and sometimes hit by artillery shells. Millions of hapless men destroyed for a few square feet of land. Typhoid and dysentery were rife amongst the soldiers. Many died from infected wounds. The only cover the men had were shell craters. It was industrialised carnage. Then invention of the tank was actually a blessing because it brought an end to trench warfare, though the new tanks in the Great War were not very effective.
A spade is still part of every soldiers kit. It is a small shovel/entrenching tool, used to dig a single or multiple man trench, prior to the entrenching spade a soldier would use their bayonet or bare hands to dig in. In previous Wars the trench and redoubt construction was left to the Engineering Corps, however both sides had not expected the style of warfare to have changed so quickly in such a short space of time. The reason the British were in such bad shape was that the Germans held the high ground and could see everything they were doing, leaving them in very open and exposed positions, which made them easy targets for rifles, machine guns and artillery.
The Generals were still in the mindset of almost the Napoleonic or American Civil Wars, and had not calculated the damage a machine gun firing 800 rounds per minute or shrapnel artillery shells could do to men in the caught in the open.
Lord Kitchener's ugly backstabbing face on a poster. Yes you nicked it of us, your welcome :).
The first intricate trench system was used by that British smart arse Major General Arthur Wellesley (later Lord Wellington) outside Lisbon, the Lines of Torres Vedras. By October 1810, the first of three lines were ready. Containing 126 works (small forts) had been completed and were manned by 29,750 men with 247 heavy guns. Marshal Masséna smashed his 65,000 strong Army against the defences, and because of the the scorched earth policy as well, he lost 25,000 men dead, no more French Army of Portugal.
P.S. The first hand grenades were actually used by China, but they were to see a much more effective role in the west when Wellington used them in large numbers to break up the French Columns in Portugal and Spain. All they were back then was a hollow Iron ball filled with gunpowder, you lit the fuse and threw it, all the time hoping they had made the fuse correctly. It was the Industrial Revolution that helped the British made weapons be more reliable owing to the more uniformed abilities machines tend to have over humans. Sadly this proved horrific in 1914.
"Your Country Needs You". The man is Lord Kitchener.
Spades were small shovels or entrenching tools to enable soldiers to dig in
Hello SoGal and Roger. He needs that dough boy helmet now.
26:00 yes.
As a kid I was taught to dig with an ex-military trenching tool as it was better at the job than a spade (US word shovel I am surprised to find from this). I watched a film where the German infantry used them in close quarter trench fighting and I heard it said that in WW1 they killed more people than bayonets, used like tomahawks or battle axes.
I later used a similar tool in Spain to dig holes for a lemon and an orange tree, only to forget my bearings in the heat and fall down the first hole, which must have happened to men in battle too.
32:40 I have kept saying this, but WW2 tactics were developed in WW1 trial and error by the British Empire troops and generals, first having to build mass armies they were unused to, then the new world adaptability of the Commonwealth generals and troops helped with new thinking and British industry being transformed to a war footing to build new weapons. US historians tend to focus on troops used en masse and US numbers reinforcing the French in large scale offensives. I will have to wait until 1918 and watch through a lot of those errors to see what this series says, but some of the UK losses were inevitable as the army had to get used to modern war before it could start to beat the German army that as was said took many years to get this good, once the small UK professional army was in essence totally depleted by attrition.
To your answer your question about casualties: Yes. Infantry tactics were mostly primitive in 1914. As the war developed new tactics of infiltration, fire and movement, squad support weapons and such like, would develop - most of which are still used today - but in 1914 such tactics were seldom used, even when known, since they required special training to learn them.
Not sure if i told you before but my dad was in WW1 as a sergeant .I am 73 and my dad was just over 50 when i was born in 1948. I have a small piece of paper with his number and regiment the Lancashire Fusiliers .I was six when dad died so he told me nothing about the war and only a little to my older brother.I did learn that dad was gassed ,which likely contributed to the lung cancer which killed him eventually, plus the heavy smoking . I believe it quite rare for someone today saying their father was in WW1 and not their Grandfather.
A spade is a hand tool designed for digging. A shovel is a hand tool designed for moving loose material and not for digging
A spade is a flat shovel for digging. You have spades in the US. I used to buy them at Lowes and Home Depot.
Spade = Shovel, Spade having a different blade, one of a flatter, boarder nature, perfect in creating straightedge trenches,
Man turns into the Mole
Spades are usually used as gardening tools for digging up dirt blocks
@@AXIOLOGITÌS Which is funny, because it is Spade in Danish/Norwegian/Swedish, and like the English word it derives from Germanic
Spades used in military are compact foldable shovels that you can carry on your belt/back.
Your question about spades cought me totally off guard. Growing up helping parents in the garden i assumed everyone would know what a spade is.
Normal garden spades are like a small shovel who's head isn't angled off much, and the handle is shorter and has a transversaly mounted endgrip: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spade.jpg
Military field spades like the central powers had are around half a meter in length over all, have no transversaly endgrip, and a smaller head. But usually sharpened edges, so they can be used as melee weapons.
(I did conscript time in austria 99'-00' and our field spades, apart from having a folding mechanism for the spadehead, looked almost like the M1910 Version of Austria-Hungary. So we still used the same design the Wehrmacht used during WW2. And i remember the words of our NCO well: In close quaters fighting, the spade is the best choice of all the things you are issued. It has prooven it's usefullness in two world wars!)
Austro-Hungarian field spade of WW1: www.google.com/search?q=austro+hungarian+ww1+spade&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwizk6mIqITzAhUKzKQKHQBEBPAQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=austro+hungarian+ww1+spade&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1DRzANY8uMDYNjqA2gAcAB4AIABmgGIAYkEkgEDMC40mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=WaZDYfOCG4qYkwWAiJGADw&bih=876&biw=1759
A spade is a pointed shovel, it's what the suit in a deck of cards is based on. You stab the ground, and lever it back to dig and lift earth. A shovel on the other hand, is only meant for moving loose piles of dirt.
A spade is indeed a sharp small shovel designed to be easily carried around by troops. They were also affective in melee and were used by troops when raiding enemy trenches.
The Pals were recruited with the promise that they would serve with their mates. It was done on the (correct) assumption that soldiers would both be more willing to enlist, and fight harder if they were doing so alongside their friends. No fault there. Unfortunately, it also meant that if one unit was in the first attack on an objective, all the men killed would come from the same area, and die together, too. This may not have been bad for them, but it had its effect on civilian morale. Where I live there was a road called “the bravest street in the world”. One hundred and sixty one men from one small road, Chapel Street, Altrincham, joined up in World War One, and twenty nine were killed.
About the Hindenburg airship. It was a civilian passenger airship. Airships work by the gas in their balloons being lighter than the air around them, and the two lightest gasses are hydrogen (molecules made of two hydrogen atoms) and helium (a single, chemically non-reactive, helium atom). The problem with using helium, besides that it's rare, is that it will leak through almost anything. Hydrogen, on the other hand, can be easily made by electrolysis of water, so it's significantly cheaper. The problem with hydrogen is that it is very flammable, and the Hindenburg was destroyed when it was visiting the US in the 1937 and the hydrogen in its gas envelope caught fire with 35 lives lost. Since then, airships have used helium, because the safety has been judged worth the additional cost.
My wife's grandmother was engaged to a lad from the Accrington Pals regiment..He never came back. Neither did most of his pals. A town (like many others) stripped of their young men..
@Ray Martin. Mike Harding did a song about them.
Today is Battle of Britain day. AUKUS agreement just been broadcast over here. Another date for history.
You might like to investigate the story of Captain Wilfred Salter Owen who was killed 5 days before the Great War's end in Ormes, Northern France. He is now recognised as the greatest 'war poet' in the English language, greatly influenced by Shakespeare and Keats. A very brave man (as many were) he had a war long communication in letters with his mother and describes a gas attack in the famous poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est', meaning, 'it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country', Owen referred to this idea as 'the age old lie', a controversial view at the time.
War on the African lake Victoria:
The largest ship on Lake Victoria in Africa was built in Germany, but screws are used instead of rivets. Then the ship was dismantled again into its individual parts and brought to the east coast of Africa by ship. Then the individual parts were taken by Africans on foot hundreds of kilometers to Lake Victoria, where the ship was puzzled together in an improvised shipyard.
Speaking of which: in WW1 the ship was cannonized and war was fought. The ship was sunk 3 times, but always in flat places. Then you just cut out an inner wall somewhere and sealed the ship again and made it float again. Then the war on Lake Victoria could continue. Unfortunately, the Germans then lost the ship to the English, so they no longer had a "fleet" on the lake and had to give up.
The ship is still sailing on the lake today, nobody has brought an equally large one there.
I imagine Blackadder Goes Forth has been recommended to you. It's basically the ultimate take on the futility of the Great War.
A shovel is for shovelling, aspade is for digging.
Later the small spade or trencning tool wwould be sharpend for killing.
There’s a ohrase some Brits use - perhaps a bit self importantly:
“I call a spade a bloody shovel”.
The pointing man was Lord Kitchener.
I am learning a lot from these videos.
I've never heard "I call a spade a bloody shovel". "I call a spade a spade" I have heard many times and use myself. :/
@@djjonesy1519 I had a flatmate who said it
@@martincook9795 Yeah interesting. Clearly the phrase is out there, but I've never heard it before :) Both seem to come from the same figurative expression, but for me the spade a shovel doesn't make the same sense of meaning of "telling it like it is". A bit like "I don't beat around the bush" also means similar. Interesting anyways. Same with learning in another comment that it (Spade) was sometime used as a slur/racist term. That kinda overtook the real meaning of spade and killed it off US wise as the actual object. Which explains why SoGal didn't correlate the name spade the same as we/I would as being just another garden tool for digging. Just that a shovel is more for digging and shovel for loose material.
@@djjonesy1519 Calling a spade a shovel means you going to be blunt in what you say. Very common saying in North of England.
@@karenblackadder1183 Yeah thanks. I get it. I've just never heard it before or perhaps have, but not noticed the difference before. I'm from Manchester too so I would have thought I'd of heard it before. Anyways, always good to learn a new thing. Cheers :)
A note about the professional British army at the time. When the Germans first came into contact with the British Army, they reported high numbers of machine guns. The British were so highly trained they were shooting at a rate that seemed impossible to the Germans.
the cost in lives of the battles is very high firstly because of the amount of firepower new technologies had brought. 1 machinegun could fire as many rounds as 200 soldiers and artillery now used explosive shells (as opposed to metal cannonballs in the napoleonic wars) that could kill anyone in radius of 50 to a 100 meters (150 - 300 feets) who wasn't in cover.
You pair that with armies that were many, many times larger than ever before and that still used mass infantry charges and you get these casualties numbers.
Hence the advantage of trenches: soldiers were somewhat protected from artillery, couldn't be shot at and yet would still be able to shoot at the enemy when he attacked. But the goal of trench warfare is ultimately to beak through the enemies trench system, not just stay there.
Another thing you have to consider is that a casualty is not necessarily a dead soldier. A soldier wounded enough to be out of action (for example a lost leg) can still be counted as a casualty.
Slowly, but surely, you are witnessing the legend himself, Conrad von Hötzendorf...
You seriously need to watch the whole series of Blackadder Goes Forth!!
A note on the footage:
You see a ron of post 1916 footage with a vastly different uniform on all sides.
While you can't see the different "horizon blue" of the French uniforms or the tiny details on the German and British ones you *do* see the steel helmets.
Those where not there in the '14 campaign with the French and the Austrians wearing Kepis, the British and the Russians Peaked Caps and the Germans the Pickelhaube, a leather helmet that offered no protection or ofthen the plain field cap, a brimmless peakes cap.
Of course non of these protect against airbust shells, not relevant for an open field battle brcause you get shredded by artillery from any angle... but in a *trench* danger only comes from the top.
It's also part of the dehumanization, look at a soldier in '14, hes, well, a soldier, a human, now look at a French soldiee from Verdun or late war German stormtroopers... they are vagueley insectoid un-human monstrosities, no eyes visible, no faces, just marks, no head, just steel wielding short guns and brutal clubs with wire wrapped around them... they are hellish creatures in a hellscape...
Best eegards
Raoul G. Kunz
There is an Anti-War/Musical about WW1, it`s called (Oh! What a Lovely War, 1969) which has an interesting way of portraying the terrible events. Both Diplomatically, on the Home Front & in the warfare. It is almost 2 1/2 hrs long though, so your time constraints might prevent you. But, I think, it would be worth your attention, it also includes the songs of the front. As well as the the frontline Soldiers gallows humour.
As Edmund Blackadder said in Blackadder goes Forth, “The British Empire covers a quarter of the globe whereas the German Empire consists of one sausage factory in Tanganyika” [E. Africa now Tanzania] 😂
Hey you missed the German colony and Beer factory at Tsingtau, rapidly conquered by the Japanese and then taken over by the Chinese. the owners change but everybody keeps the Tsingtau brewery open.
@@voiceofraisin3778 Well Ben Elton and Richard Curtis did. Blackadder is a comedy 😅
New artillery and machine guns used effectively turned warfare into a numbers game with enough machine guns you could make place's effectively impossible to attack without taking horrendous losses .
Shovels are for digging into loose dirt, spades are for digging into compacted dirt.
After the carnage that had unfolded in the opening weeks of the war, digging in was the only possible option. Both sides were exhausted from being on the march for weeks on end, and with the shortage of munitions on the Entente side - neither side could have possibly effected a breakthrough, and if they had they would have lacked the energy and resources to exploit it - that will be shown over the last few months of 1914, and early 1915.
Even for the regular soldier, digging in was the best option. If they had not done so they would have been cut to pieces by artillery and machine gun fire - mainly artillery to which they could make no response.
In some cases the Entene soldiers and Germans would be digging opposite each other at the same time without either side shooting at each other, to try and shelter from the artillery fire.
A spade is a combat shovel. Well, technically a spade is the actual digging tool, while a shovel is more intended to move dirt.
'combat' haha no my friend it just a short version of a shovel. that's why children's beach equipment is called a 'shovel and spade' in shops etc. you can buy them from B&Q its just a tool of garden equipment.
Spade = Shovel. They can also be sharpened to use as weapons
Excellent stuff. Thank you x
you shoulda been around in the 70's: Vietnam, Lebanon. Cultural Revolution. I remember watchin the First Gulf War, live on TV, and wondering at the images at the time in 91. It bears remembering that in the Yugoslavian war, the capital Sarajevo, had been host to the Olympics only a few short years before. I have lived through more conflict than I can name, and i've been payin attention.
There has never been a time in world history where somewhere in the world someone is not in armed conflict.
27:50: I think, it's Lord Kitchener.
6:16 I'm often struck by just how prescient some of the leaders were at the end of the war. They realised that there was much left unresolved by the Treaty of Versailles. Consider the following:
"This war, like the next war, is a war to end war."
--David Lloyd George, British PM, 1916-22
"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years."
--Ferdinand Foch, French general
There are others but I can't quite remember them.
15:33 "There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.... Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."
--Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929
20:10 I think he means they were overlooked by, but weren't directly in the line of fire of, the German Army. The original "trenches" they dug for themselves were little more than foxholes they could use to keep their heads down.
21:44 That's where we get the term "shell shock", ie. PTSD. The psychological toll that constant shelling, day and night, took on the soldiers was horrific.
22:09 aka an entrenching tool in this context. It's a kind of shovel with a shortened handle and a flattened, usually squared-off or pointed blade.
Wat caused so many casualties is both the confrontation of war doctrine vs new tech and the insane numbers of soldiers involved that surpassed what was done until then by a factor of 4 at least... When you cumulate those two things, you can only get catastrophic results.
The advert is different in US, the UK one states that "Our country needs you", the Uncle Sam one state "I want YOU!" which it quite different.
To understand the WHY of the Trench warfare, to continue the viewer's analogy to video games, the armies, baffled by their losses early on behaved like noobs in a online video game, they camped, trying to catch their breaths. Something that won't really happen in WW2 because those new toys that were tanks and aircrafts were well understood even if constantly evolving to a greater standard. Trench is the result of shell shock basically and it also worsen the shellshock too.
12:19: The drawing shows Emperor Wilhelm I. (+ 1888), the older Fieldmarshall Helmut von Moltke (+ 1891), the uncle of the Fieldmarshall von Moltke from 1914, and Otto von Bismarck (+ 1898). All of them were dead for a long time in 1914. The older Moltke was the Prussian Fieldmarshall, who defeated Denmark in 1864, Austria and her southern german allies in 1866 and France in 1870/71. When Wilhelm II. fired him as Chancellor, Bismarck warned him, that there will be a great war destroying the old powers. He predicted it nearly to the day. By the way: Will you comment a video about Bismarck?
I've always said that the Great War was the biggest family squabble in history
I've seen quite a few of these, the first time round. However its much more fun when it feels that we are watching it all together. (sorry Indy )
Big part of problem at this stage is battles normally you break the enemy so they run, then you send Cavalry to run down the enemy now out of formation. The problem is rifles can kill Cavalry fast now thanks to bolt action vs musket reload times, making the Cavalry unable to accomplish this properly.
So instead of fast units running down fleeing infantry, you get infantry on foot chasing infantry also on foot. Which makes it really hard to run down the enemy and 'defeat them' before over extending your supply lines and becoming vulnerable to counter attack.
A spade is a small shovel made for soldiers
The soldier is Field Marshall Kitchener
28:00 The american one says "I want YOU, for the US army"
There are double blessed villages that hold no death's in both world wars
If you study the siege of Vickburg and Petersburg in the American Civil War you will se the power of the spade in that war - which normally was quite a war of movement.
Definitely do the 'pals' vids.
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!!
The bloke on the British poster is Lord Kitchener of Sudan and Khartoum fame.
Pals battalions.
Friends together
Joined up together
Trained together
Fought together
Died together
🙏
The poster depicts Lord Kitchener