All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.11of26.Hell.Cannot.Be.So.Terrible.divx.mp3

January 1916 -
the second winter of the war.

On the Western Front, the Germans
were preparing a new offensive.

Its code name was Gericht -
judgment.

An offensive needs supplies.

This was just one
of ten new railway lines that
the Germans were edging forward -

scalpels
cutting into the heart of France.

A few miles away to the west,

ten miles behind the French line,
lay their objective -

Verdun.

Verdun was the great fortress whose
name had, for centuries, not ceased
to haunt Germanic imaginations.

It was the great advanced citadel
of France, the principal bastion
of her eastern frontier,

whose fall - resounding throughout
Europe - would efface the victories
of the Marne and the Yser.

In 1914, before the Battle
of the Marne, it had stood
like a rock against German assault.

Had it fallen, Paris - even
the war - might have been lost.

It was the hinge and pivot of the
whole Allied line, jutting like
an elbow into the German positions.

On the map, Verdun's defences
looked formidable.

Between the town and
the front line, ten miles north,

were a ring of forts -
some 20 large and 40 small ones.

Strongest of them all,
cornerstone of the whole system,

was Douaumont.

Forts like these
had been built to be impregnable.

But Verdun was one of the weakest
points in the whole Allied line.

The previous summer, the French
had begun removing the forts' guns.

By now - January 1916 -
over 200 guns had been removed from
the forts for mobile use elsewhere,

together with a vast amount
of ammunition.

There is no evidence that Germany
knew how weak the forts were.

The decision to attack was taken
for other reasons and by one man -

General Erich von Falkenhayn,
Chief of the German General Staff.

In December 1915,
he had written to the Kaiser,

"The strain in France
has about reached breaking point.

"A mass breakthrough - which is
in any case beyond our means -
is unnecessary.

"Within our reach,
there are objectives

"for the retention of which
the French would be compelled
to throw in every man they have.

"If they do so, the forces
of France will bleed to death."

Falkenhayn's directive to the staff
of the German Fifth Army,

spoke only of "an offensive in
the direction of Verdun". There was
no mention of capturing the city.

But Crown Prince William, the
Kaiser's eldest son, who commanded
the Fifth Army, had other ideas.

"The objective is to capture
the fortress of Verdun
by precipitate methods."

This discrepancy in interpretation
cost Germany dear.

140,000 men were assembling
for the attack.

Entire villages were evacuated
to make room for them.

Most impressive of all were
the guns - the guns that were
to do the "bleeding white".

The guns came from as far away
as Russia and the Balkans -

siege mortars, naval guns,
quick-firing guns, field guns,
mine-throwers. 1,200 guns in all.

And to supply this fearsome
armoury - 1,300 munition trains,

2,500,000 shells.

With the greatest secrecy,
the build-up continued
through the damp days of January.

Alarm about Verdun's defences
had at last penetrated general
headquarters at Chantilly.

The French Minister of War,
General Gallieni,

wrote to the commander-in-chief,

"Reports have reached me indicating
that in the Verdun region the line
of trenches has not been completed.

"Should the enemy break through,

"not only would your responsibility
be involved but also
that of the entire government."

Joffre replied,

"Nothing justifies the fears
which you express in your dispatch."

German planes patrolled the
forward area, waiting to pounce on
any French reconnaissance planes.

They had complete air superiority.

They had assembled the greatest
concentration of air power
ever employed in war so far -

168 planes at Verdun and a large
number of observation balloons.
Even Joffre became apprehensive.

"Our Minister to Denmark
telegraphed that a German offensive
was being talked about.

"This was confirmed by news from
Switzerland of the concentration of
400,000 men in the Verdun region."

A regiment of engineers was sent
to strengthen the defences on the
east bank. Time was running out.

German deserters were crossing the
lines in growing numbers with tales
that all leave had been cancelled,

that something terrible
was about to happen.

Men, and still more men,
marching towards Verdun.

They were old hands, these men,
old hands of 25 or 30 -

many already wounded in action -
toughened by two years of war.

Westphalians
from Munster and Dusseldorf,

men from Hesse, descendants of
those who had fought as mercenaries
against Napoleon - and FOR him,

Brandenburgers from Berlin - one of
the elite units of the German army,

three of the crack army corps
of the German army - 72 battalions.

Their wait was a fearful one.

On February 11,
the day before the attack,

Verdun's treacherous climate
came to the aid of the French.
The attack was postponed,

giving the French time to settle in
two newly arrived divisions.

These men, like the Germans,
were veterans - young men
grown old before their time.

"Poilus", the French public
called them - the hairy ones.

It was a nickname they disliked.

Few of them fought any longer
for such noble aims as the recovery
of Alsace and Lorraine.

They fought for the remaining land
of France.

And so they waited -
34 battalions of them, 30,000 men,

ill-prepared,
outnumbered by over two to one
and by much more in guns.

"The hour is near. In our wood,
the front trenches will be taken
in the first minutes.

"My poor battalion,
spared until now."

The dawn, February 21st.

20 miles behind the German lines,

a Krupp's 15-inch naval gun
raised its barrel from its netting.

GUN BLASTS

For three hours, the German
heavy guns ranged on Verdun itself.

At 7am, the bombardment switched
to the French lines -

one heavy battery
to every 150 yards of trench -

and to the roads
leading up to them.

Gun after gun joined in -

1,000 in all - all firing
onto six miles of the French front.

To the French, cowering in the
woods of the east bank, the air
seemed solid with fragments.

"The shells appear like great
ghosts, axing the trunks, mangling
the branches into hanging shreds."

The crude iron of the shells
shattered into huge, ragged chunks

that sometimes
two men would be unable to lift.

Men were squashed, cut in two
or divided from top to bottom,

blown into showers, bellies
turned inside out and scattered,

skulls forced bodily into the
chest as if by a blow with a club.

"Here and there in the front line
were a few men who had escaped.

"In all our minds, we had
the same thought - that everyone
to right and left had been killed."

A German airman reported:

"It's done. We can pass.
There's nothing living any more."

A young Hessian scribbled
a last note to his mother -

"There's going to be a battle here
the likes of which
the world has never seen."

SHOT FROM HAND-GUN
The Germans had eight miles to go.

Their fighting patrols slipped
forward like a dentist's probe.

"They moved slowly,
not in a straight line,

"as if they were picking their way.

"Nothing could have looked
less like an assault.

"Some of the Germans had containers
strapped to their backs.

"They seemed like labourers
going to spray the vines."

Flame-throwers -

the Germans were trying out
their new weapon on the French.

Tongues of burning oil
propelled by compressed nitrogen

turned men into flaming torches.

On the second day came the
assault troops to exploit the gaps
found by the fighting patrols.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

By the fourth day, the Germans
were through into open country.

The whole of the second French line
had crumbled. For the first time
on the Western Front since 1914,

they scented a breakthrough. Few
trenches faced them, not much
barbed wire. Open country ahead.

They had taken 10,000 prisoners.

"They give one the impression
of complete breakdown and complain
loudly of their senior commanders."

Even Joffre was shaken
out of his accustomed calm.

"I wished, more than at any time,
I could be in two places at once.

"I felt that the decisions
I was taking at Chantilly,
far from the scene of the action,

"risked being invalidated
before they could be carried out.

"I would have liked to be at Verdun
but my duty unquestionably
was to be at my headquarters."

The Kaiser was certain
that Verdun was about to fall.

He came up to watch the kill
through a well-protected periscope.

Would the front hold? By nightfall
on February 25th, only the forts
and a few brave men barred the way.

Fort Douaumont -

its tortoise hump
dominated the battlefield.

The men of the 24th Brandenburg
regiment, back from their victory
over the Serbs in the Balkans,

had no orders to capture Douaumont.

Their objective lay short of it.

But their regimental motto
was "Do more than your duty",

and in front of them
lay the fort of Douaumont.

It drew them on like a magnet.

Unknown to each other, small groups
entered at various points -

a handful of men against
a fort of concrete and steel.

The Germans were astounded to find
the fort was garrisoned
by 56 elderly Territorial Gunners.

A handful of men
were manning the guns.

The rest were sheltering in
the cellars from the bombardment.

Fort Douaumont, the world's most
powerful stronghold, had fallen
without a shot being fired.

In Germany, there was jubilation
and the Crown Prince himself
decorated the victors,

the brave Brandenburgers.

But in France, not surprisingly,
the disaster of Douaumont was
played right down by French GHQ.

Crowds of worshippers in Paris on
that Sunday morning, February 27th,

were to find their newspapers
full of evasions.

An official communique spoke of "a
fierce struggle at Fort Douaumont,

"which is an advanced outpost
of the old defences of Verdun.

"The position, carried by the enemy
after several fruitless assaults
which cost them heavy losses,

"has since been reached and passed
by our troops."

Evasions of this sort made matters
worse and rumours went around
that Verdun itself was lost.

In Verdun, confusion reigned.

"Run like hell, but no panic!" one
French officer was heard to shout.

The Germans were five miles away.

There was one ridge between them
and the city. Could Verdun be held?

De Castelnau thought it could be
and, to carry out his will,
he had persuaded Joffre

to appoint General Petain
as commander of the Verdun army.

Petain had begun the war
as a colonel due for retirement.

Now he was an army commander.

Soldiers had heard about Petain -
that he cared for his troops

and was frugal with men's lives.

As the badly needed reinforcements
moved up, the word went round -

"Petain's in charge.
All will be well."

"Conserve your strength.
The counter-offensive will follow,"
Petain told his commanders.

But only the most precarious
of lifelines

connected Verdun
to the rest of France.

The only rail link
was a narrow-gauge railway

built to supply
a peace-time garrison.

Alongside,
there was one second-class road.

It ran into Verdun from Bar le Duc,
50 miles to the south.

The road was only 20ft wide,
just wide enough for two vehicles.

The trucks that bumped along it had
been commandeered from all over
France - more than 3,000 of them.

"It was like some gigantic serpent
which never stopped and never
ended," said one American observer.

By a miracle of organisation,
the road was kept open.

In this critical week
at the end of February,

25,000 tons of supplies
and 190,000 men passed along it -

6,000 vehicles a day,
one every 14 seconds,

for hours on end.

In the months ahead, two-thirds
of the entire French army
were to pass up this road,

bound for the Calvary of Verdun.

A French writer named the road
"la Voie Sacree" - the Sacred Way.

In the lengthening days of March,

the Germans extended their attacks
to the west bank of the Meuse

and to a hill named "Mort Homme" -
Dead Man.

Nearly 250,000 men were now
involved in Falkenhayn's adventure.

The blood-letting
was getting out of hand.

"Our blinded, wounded,
crawling and shouting soldiers

"kept falling on top of us and died
while splashing us with their blood.

"It was a living hell."

"Verdun is terrible because
a man is fighting with a sensation
of striking out at empty air.

"Oh, how I envy those
who can charge with a bayonet

"instead of waiting
to be buried by a shell!"

By the end of March,
after 40 days' fighting,

the Germans had lost 80,000 men,
the French a few thousand more.

The casualty gap was narrow.

Villages had disappeared...
woods had disappeared.

The battlefield
was a lunar landscape.

These days of Verdun were foul.

Several times they have raised
before our eyes the veil of hell.

Our mission was to be crushed.
Divisions followed each other.
They had no other role

but to set up each day, before
the enemy, a wall of corpses.
Trenches were mere ditches.

For days you never saw
the enemy - just endless shells.

You ate beside the dead.

You drank beside the dead.

You relieved yourself beside
the dead. You slept beside the dead.

Often you had no sleep
for over a week.

Those who sleep in beds will read
in papers that the line has held.

How can they imagine what
that simple word, "held", means?

Men often went for days
without food.

The ration parties were frequently
killed on the six-mile slog through
the mud to the front positions.

Out of the line, the rations
weren't much to write home about.

Stringy and greasy tinned beef,
known as monkey,
salted cod and rubbery macaroni.

Indeed, only a few months before,
the sardonic humour of
the French soldier had been roused

by a propaganda leaflet, circulated
by HQ. "Our soldiers have
always enjoyed two meals a day.

"They are much better fed than the
Germans." The soldiers disagreed.

200,000 had written to protest.

At least the rations were free

and so was the wine ration -
"pinard", the rough red wine
beloved by the French soldier.

Pinard made up a little
for the miserable pay -

five sous a day -
nearly tuppence ha'penny.

Pinard - which gave a man courage
to forget the present.

For the only real enemy now
was the battle itself.

The horror of that battle tarnished
the face of every soldier at
Verdun - French and German alike.

By the end of April -
after 70 days' fighting -

the Germans had lost 120,000 men.

The French had lost 133,000.

General Petain's reinforcements
poured endlessly up the Sacred Way.

"My heart leaped as I saw our young
men of 20 going into the furnace
of Verdun. Jolted in their trucks

"or bowed by the weight of
their equipment, they encourage
one another with jokes and songs."

THEY SING

"But when they came out
of the battle,

"what a pitiful sight they were.

"Their expressions seemed frozen
by a vision of terror.

"They sagged beneath the weight
of horrifying memories.

"It seemed as if these mute faces
were crying something terrible -

"the unbelievable horror
of their martyrdom."

Petain's demands for troops
displeased Joffre.

"Had I yielded to all his
demands for reinforcements,

"the whole French army would
have been absorbed in the battle.

"He was well aware that I was trying
to collect the largest number of
divisions for the Somme offensive."

In May, Petain was succeeded by
Gen Robert Nivelle - an out-and-out
apostle of the offensive -

a man of boundless ambition
and self-confidence.

Nivelle was told that he could
expect no more fresh troops.

"No matter. We have the formula,"
he said. The formula
included his right-hand man -

the toughest general in the whole
French army - Charles Mangin.

Mangin's motto was
"Fight to the limit".

The French had by now gained air
superiority over the battlefield.

Aerial tactics were becoming
more and more sophisticated.

Both sides sent their greatest aces
to Verdun.

The Germans had Oswald Boelcke

and Von Richthofen - the deadliest
of them all - was blooded here.

The French threw in their famous
Storks Group, including such
legendary figures as Guynemer...

Navarre.

In May, the French fighter
squadrons swept over Verdun.

It was a heartening sight
to the French infantry.

German observation balloons were
sitting targets to aerial rockets

the French were using
for the first time.

Now it was the French turn
to attack.

How many have died like this -
without glory, taken by surprise
on their first day?

They have given their life
and nobody even knew their name.

Hell cannot be so terrible as this.
Humanity is mad. It must be mad
to do what it is doing.

One begins to ask oneself,
"Where is victory?" And whether it
might not lie in any kind of peace,

which would at least save the
race. An artery of French blood
was cut on February 21st,

and it flows incessantly
in large spurts.

Paris - 150 miles from Verdun -

another country, another world.
Paris - still gay, still pleasure-
seeking after two years of war.

Music halls were full every night.
Tipperary and The Roses of Picardy
were imported by the British.

The theatres, closed in 1914,
had reopened.

Mistinguett danced to huge crowds.

The actress Sarah Bernhardt,
even with one leg now amputated,
still graced the boards -

the personification of France
herself - mutilated but undaunted.

Civilian France in the early summer
of 1916 had not yet felt the full
pinch of war. Coal was short,

but food still plentiful. By law
there was one meatless day a week,

but few, except the poor,
took any notice. The cost of living
had gone up one-fifth since 1914,

but wages had risen, too. Factory
workers could earn 15 francs
a day - nearly 12 shillings -

60 times more
than the French soldier.

French soldiers, when they were
lucky to get leave, felt themselves
strangers in their own land.

Life is good.
One can understand these people
resigning themselves to the war.

It's consoling to know that if one
perishes in the barbed wire,

they will not be too much affected
by the loss.

Paris was full of embusques -
shirkers - and the armchair
warriors and the profiteers,

who had made a packet out of war.
I met a lot of them on my last
leave - the fat shining swine!

They take their aperitifs
and read their papers -

that's the only way they have of
knowing what's going on in the war.

So many lies have been spread
about us

that I have many times seen the
troops tear up the newspapers.

Phrases like, "Our gallant
wounded!" - armchair descriptions

of the enthusiastic ardour of
combat - cant like this enraged
the men who knew what it was like.

They were getting tired
of meddlers.

Heroics were all very well for the
cartoonists. Sentimentality might
bring comfort to the folks at home,

but this glorification sickened the
men who had faced death at Verdun,

and the newspapers of the world
agreed.

"As ye shall sow, so shall ye
reap," read this American cartoon.

The Crown Prince, too,
came in for his share of blame.

"Father, we must have a higher pile
of bodies at Verdun!" read the
caption to this, in the Daily Mail.

But Crown Prince William no longer
believed the city could be taken.

I was absolutely opposed
to continuing the attack.
I was now convinced,

after the stubborn to-and-fro
contest for every foot of ground,

that a decisive success at Verdun
could only be assured
at the price of heavy sacrifices

out of all proportion to the
desired gains. Yet, I had to obey
the orders of general headquarters.

And as May drew to a close,
a new attack was ordered.

Sledgehammer blows to blast in
the gateway to the fortress...
once and for all.

On June 1st, a glorious summer day,
the Germans attacked yet again.

The two nations were now locked
firmly in their mortal duel.

All Germanism had gone into
the meticulous preparation, the
armament, the skilful planning,

the sheer courage of the attack.

All French nature had gone into
the lack of preparation,

the casual assurance, the panics
and the brave resistance.

To Lloyd George, the British
Minister of Munitions, Verdun
seemed, "One of the most gigantic,

"tenacious, grim, futile

"and bloody fights

"ever waged in the history of war.

"On those heights, Gaul and Teuton
fought out a racial feud,

"which had existed
for thousands of years.

"But the concentrated fury of ages

"raged and tore, shattered

"and killed
in one intensive struggle,

"which has no parallel

"in the history of human savagery!"

The battle was no longer an episode
that spent itself in blood
and fire -

it was a thing that dug itself in
remorselessly.

Week after week,

they breathed in
the smell of a tormented world -

a smell like that of a planet
in the process
of being reduced to ashes.

Most of them
had given up all hope of surviving.

I saw a man drinking
from a scum-covered green marsh...

where a dead man lay -

his black face downward
in the water, lying on his stomach

and swollen as if he'd not stopped
filling himself with water for days.

Having despaired of living
amid such horror, we begged God
not to have us killed -

the transition is too atrocious -
but just to let us be dead.

We have but one desire - the end.

French morale wavered.

Petain signalled to Joffre
about the Anglo-French offensive
on the Somme in August:

"A tactical success by the English
would not compensate
for the loss of this city.

"Its capture would be an inestimable
success for the Germans.
Verdun must not fall."

Joffre issued an order of the day.
"Soldiers of Verdun,

"upon your heroic resistance
still depends our future victory.

"I make one more appeal
to your courage,

"your ardour, your spirit
of sacrifice, your love of country.

"Hold fast
and strive with all your might

"to shatter the last desperate
efforts of an enemy now at bay."

MUSIC: The French National Anthem

The turning point
came on June 23rd.

The Germans penetrated to within
two-and-a-half miles of Verdun.

It was a moment of supreme crisis.

Petain warned GHQ
that he might have to withdraw
from the east bank.

General Nivelle issued
a dramatic order of the day.

It ended with words which were
to ring round the world:

"You will not let them pass."

The Germans did NOT pass.
They had shot their bolt.

They had no more to spare.

Three divisions had been taken away
from the Crown Prince

to bolster up the Austrians
against a Russian attack.

And on June 24th, the French troops
heard the first rumble of the
British bombardment on the Somme.

Joffre's plan for a combined Allied
offensive was coming to pass.

"We will bleed France to death,"
Falkenhayn had said.

337,000 Germans fell at Verdun.

The President of France had said,

"If Verdun is saved,
how shall we ever be able to forget
at what a price?"

The price was 362,000 Frenchmen
killed, wounded or missing.

Small wonder that one Frenchman
had written before he was killed,

"They will not be able to make us
do it again another day.

"That would be to misunderstand
what it cost us.

"They will have to resort to those
who have not lived out these days."

"Among these motionless bodies,

"two things moving.

"One crawls, crying,
towards the ditch -

"a man with his legs shattered,

"the sole survivor.

"And in the other direction,
a small barrel of wine

"rolls slowly down the road,

"stopping against a dead body."