All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.15of26.We.Are.Betrayed.Sold.Lost.divx.mp3

The Western Front, January 1917.

The hopes of men lay frozen
in the grip of winter -

one of the coldest
in living memory.

A British war correspondent wrote,

"The snow gave a beauty, even
to no-man's land. Lying softly over
the tumbled ground of mine fields.

"So that all the ugliness
and destruction and death
was hidden under this canopy.

"The snowflakes
fluttered upon stark bodies there
and shrouded them tenderly.

"It was as though all the doves of
peace were flying down to fold

"their wings above the obscene things
of war."

The cold imposed
a defiant cheerfulness.

Keeping warm became
a major preoccupation.

We slept in our clothes
and our boots. We used to place
our top boots under our bodies,

because they used to be stiff in the
morning - one couldn't get them on.

The weather then
was very, very bitter.

The ground was frozen hard.
The hooves of a horse

or the tread of a man's boot
would linger for a month.

And when we received our rations,

the bread had to be sawn through,

because
you could see the ice in it.

The sinews of war
were paralysed by the cold.

Boilers of railway engines froze
solid, ships were trapped in ice,

vehicles slithered to a halt,
aircraft were grounded.

The guns still fired,
although accurate artillery
observation was often impossible.

"There was," wrote an onlooker,
"something suggestive of tragic
drama in this silent countryside,

"where millions of men
were waiting to kill each other."

At the beginning of 1917,
some 1,300,000 French men had
been killed or were dead of wounds,

or in prison, or missing.

A loss of nearly one life
for every minute of the war.

The French army
had forgotten how to smile.

An old soldier summed up
the French state of mind.

"They had lost the habit
of the sun.

"They even feared the moonlight.

"They had abandoned the red trousers
and kepi of 1914

"along with their illusions,
and had put on horizon blue.

"The blue of a horizon always
dirty, dull, and without hope."

Now the French soldiers were being
asked for yet one more effort.

They responded once again to
a promise which brought fresh hope.

General Robert Nivelle
assured his army...

"The rupture of the front
is possible in 24 to 48 hours,

"on condition it is with a single
stroke and by a sudden attack."

Nivelle was aiming at nothing less
than an outright victory.

As an army commander at Verdun,
his tactics had been brilliantly
successful on a small scale.

But this attack involved a million
men. It envisaged, in his words...

"The destruction of the principal
mass of the enemy armies
on the western theatre by a battle

"delivered with a
considerable numerical superiority.

"Breaking through the enemy's front
in such a way that the breakthrough
can be immediately exploited."

The plan was to return to the
French offensive doctrines of 1914.

It was a plan
with the simplicity of genius...

or lunacy.

General Nivelle was cultivated,
plausible, intensely ambitious.

He expressed himself ably.

But British military leaders, aware
now of the hazards of the Western
Front, were sceptical of his plan.

General Robertson, Chief
of the Imperial General Staff,
voiced their fears.

"To Haig and myself, the plan
seemed to have many fallacies.

"A breach in the enemy defences
on the scale contemplated couldn't
be affected within 48 hours."

Major Speirs, a liaison officer
who understood the French army,
had other misgivings.

"The French army had suffered
and fought too long.
It was tired to death.

"The light that had guided them
receded as they advanced down
the long, hopeless road of the war."

Verdun, Champagne, Ypres, Artois,
the Somme, the scarp -

they were all just synonymous
for suffering and death.

Behind the lines too,
the war had left deep scars.

The heart of France was beating
slower now, from loss of blood.

From the agony of cumulative grief
endured by so many parents,

so many wives, so many hundreds
of thousands of orphans.

The assembling French army's
new weapons and new tactics
now offered new hope.

The men were exhorted...

"Keep moving - the infantry must be
through the rear German positions
seven hours after zero hour."

And Nivelle insisted that...

"The stamp of violence,
of brutality and of rapidity,
must characterise your offensive."

Gradually the familiar round
of preparations gathered momentum.

As over a million men
moved into the assembly areas,

the spark of the Mons
was rekindled.

The Marseillaise was heard again on
the march, as it had been in 1914.

MARSEILLAISE PLAYS

From French West Africa had
come 35 battalions of Senegalese.

Men with fierce courage, but unused
to the cold of a northern winter.

From the distant Urals
and from Moscow had come
two brigades of Russian troops.

They received an ecstatic welcome.

Now in France, in March 1917,
they read in their newspapers
of a revolution in Russia.

The Tsar had abdicated.
There was talk of peace.

The Russian troops in France
were a source of disaffection.

They were divided among themselves.
When on leave in Paris, they saw
Russian revolutionary propaganda.

They took a vote as to whether
they should join in the offensive
at all. They decided to fight.

It was not a good omen.

The Germans too
had had a hard winter.

They occupied haphazard trench
lines that they were cast in by the
ebbing tide of the Somme battles.

Hindenburg
told the German chancellor...

"The military position
can scarcely be worse than it is."

Hindenburg's lieutenant,
Ludendorff, predicted that if
one of the allies did not collapse,

Germany's defeat was inevitable.

The probability of the allies
breaking though in the west had
worried Ludendorff since the Somme.

Through winter he had been building
a strong system of fortifications,

running from Arras in the north
to Soisson in the south.

The Hindenburg line overlapped
the sector which Nivelle
was proposing to attack.

It was not yet finished in February
1917, but under pressure from local
British attacks in the north,

and with expectation of the French
offensive, Ludendorff ordered
a withdrawal to the new line.

In some places,
30 miles behind the original front.

"The decision to retreat was not
reached without a painful struggle.

"It implied a confession of weakness
that was bound to raise the morale
of the enemy and lower our own."

One night we were not shelled,
and we wondered what had happened.

Then we heard the old Hun,
as we called him, was pulling out.

He'd gone.

And then we saw the cavalry come up.

The Bengal Lancers trotted past -
a wonderful sight.

Rumours all around were, "Is he
going? Is he packing up to go home?"

Bit by bit we followed, our patrols
went out - they had good rear guard
action that they'd laid in advance.

At last we got onto green fields,
and roads that weren't shelled.

All was virgin country,
and we could gallop on the downs,

we could see the hares
and see the larks.

After the months and months
of utter brownness and chaos
and everything going back into ruin,

to see that open country again
was marvellous.

The German withdrawal
was accompanied by an orgy
of calculated destruction.

Bridges were blown, roads mined,
tracts of countryside flooded.

Fruit trees in full bloom
senselessly felled,

wells poisoned, household objects
booby-trapped.

"Whole villages had been
torn down by hand, evidently
at the cost of immense labour.

"It was as if the whole countryside
had fallen into the hands of demons

"who had vented their lust for
destruction on these dwellings.

"As the people grasped the fact
that the Germans had really gone,

"they crowded round us,
tears of joy and gratitude
running down their cheeks.

"Many just wanted to touch us,
to make sure that we were real.

"Hardest to bear were the
inquiries - the piteous questions
about relatives and friends.

"Their questions evoked unbearably
the vision of wooden crosses.

"Hundreds of thousands
of little wooden crosses scattered
from Switzerland to the North Sea."

The Allied advance towards the
Hindenburg line was painfully slow.

The weather was atrocious, and the
troops, accustomed to static trench
warfare, moved as one man put it...

"Like an army of moles suddenly
ordered to disport themselves
in the light of day."

In France, as indeed in Britain,
the German retreat
was hailed as a great victory,

and Nivelle claimed the laurels.

"Had I been able to command
the German armies,

"I couldn't have given them orders
more favourable to my plan."

Haig, whose army was to attack
at Arras in support of Nivelle's
offensive, took a different view.

"The advisability of launching
Nivelle's battle grows daily less.

"The enemy has organised the area
in the rear of the threatened front
to enable his troops to slip away.

"His object seems to be to
disorganise our offensive by causing
our attacks to be made in the air."

Nivelle himself obstinately refused
to admit that the German withdrawal
had altered anything.

"I don't fear numbers.
The greater the numbers,
the greater the victory."

"He was like a man under a spell,"
wrote a British liaison officer.

The German defences were wiped out
in his imagination and he could see
himself galloping in open country.

Grave doubts
now beset Nivelle's own generals.

Petain, Franchet d'Esperey,
Micheler - their misgivings
were shared by the politicians.

Like Painleve, the new Minister of
War, and Ribot, the Prime Minister.

But the politicians did not dare
dismiss the commander in chief on
the very eve of a great offensive.

Already the British bombardment
at Arras had begun.

Among the men of Haig's armies,
hopes ran high.

They had a premonition
that this time all would go well.

On the eve of the attack, a
trench raiding party was sent over

to discover how effective
the bombardment had proved.

It reported that the first
and second German lines
were not recognisable as trenches.

German prisoners spoke
of "a symphony of hell."

A symphony which had shattered
every pain of glass in Douay -
15 miles behind their lines.

They knew the Canadians were
about to try to retake Vimy Ridge.

"You Canadians may reach
the top of it," said one prisoner,

"But you'll be taken back to Canada
in a rowing boat."

On the dawn of Easter Monday, April
9th, the gunfire suddenly stopped.

Then, "Fire!"

"The British guns broke out again,

"into such a fire as had yet been
seen on no battlefield on Earth.

"It was the first hour of the Somme
repeated but a hundred-fold worse.

"As our men went over the parapet
the heaven above them
was a canopy of shrieking steel."

As the barrage passed, the Germans
on Vimy Ridge saw khaki figures
in flat steel helmets

swarming in every direction.

These were the Canadians attacking
one of the strongest positions
on the Western Front.

We had to thread our way amongst
the shell holes because the ridge
itself had been so pounded.

The German trenches were almost
obliterated. They were mere ditches.

We carried on there - the first
objective was the German main line,

then we went on
to the eastern crest of the ridge.

When we reached the top of the ridge
a remarkable sight was unfolded.

We saw before our eyes

all the German occupied villages
around Mons - the mining villages
with the slag heaps and mine shafts.

And you could even see beyond Mons.
They didn't seem to be affected
at all. They still seemed intact.

This was the promised land and the
Canadian soldiers were the first
to see it since the days of 1915,

when the French
had held part of the heights.

It was to remain a promised land.

For though the British advanced
five miles in places on the first
day, capturing 13,000 prisoners,

they hadn't the means or experience
to follow up this feat of arms.

The British diversionary attack
had fulfilled its purpose.

It had pinned down German reserves.

But the German positions facing the
French on the hills of the Aisne
were a great natural strength,

and were organised in depths
to a distance of five miles.

And the Germans knew the date, even
the hour, of the French attack.

GERMAN ACCENT:
Minutes before the French attack,
the German batteries opened up.

and the fire was so tremendous
that hardly any French soldiers
went over the top.

After a while,
the Germans sent patrols

to find out what happened.

And there they found
the French trenches deserted,

except for the wounded
and the dead.

Full of dead.

To the assaulting French infantry,
the attack was a nightmare.

FRENCH ACCENT:
And we could see that everything
in the German line was in order -

the machine guns,
the men, and everything, and...

But even in some places
the barbed wire was there in place.

Was hopeless.

The deeper they penetrated, the
more the guns took toll of them.

The Senegalese, their faces
grey with cold, were even unable
to load their rifles.

Caught between German machine guns
and their own artillery fire,
they fled the field.

The Russian brigades
also suffered cruelly.

French tanks in action for the
first time, bogged down in the mud.

The French air force
was grounded by the weather.

The wounded returned from the
front, swamping medical services.

On these muddy heights under
the drenching sleet and rain,

the French attacks faltered,
stopped, and wearily faced
the inevitable counterattack.

Losses mounted, hope faded.

"It's all up," they said.
"We shall never do it."

At French army headquarters,
as the reports came in,

an American man observed their
effect on some French politicians.

"All day they were telephoning
the government in Paris,

"that the army was being massacred
and demanding they stop the attack."

It couldn't be stopped. The Germans
counter-attacked immediately.

At the end of the first day's
fighting, French casualties
totalled 90,000 men.

At the end of a fortnight, 120,000.

At the end of three weeks,
over 180,000.

The Germans lost 160,000 men,

of whom 40,000 were taken prisoner,
and a few miles of ground.

But the real balance was not
to be struck in gains and losses,
but in hope unfulfilled.

In the bitter sense of betrayal
felt by a million French soldiers.

"We've just taken part in one of
the most glaring crimes of the war.

"We are betrayed, sold, lost.

"We've learnt nothing -
it's a return to 1915.

"They give us citations and crosses,
but we'd rather chuck them back
at the high command.

"Let those war-to-the-end merchants
come up here and see for themselves.

"Our commanders are incapable
of leading us to victory.

"Peace ought to be made
straight away."

They had had enough. The army
of the Marne, of Champagne,
Artois, Verdun, the Somme.

This army which had expended itself
with valour for three years,

which had lost about one and a half
million men - killed or prisoners -
at last its proud spirit broke.

They had had enough.

Back in Paris, beneath
the surface bustle of a great city,
all was speculation and doubt.

But the hospital trains,
steaming into the Gare du Nord,
told their own truths.

Rumours fed by parliamentary
deputies and fanned by defeatists,

spread their sly contagion
through the summer days.

In every cafe, in every bistro,
in every concierge's lodge,
at every street corner,

the casualty figures were trebled,
quadrupled.

Rumours and evasions,
disillusion and defeatism,

everything that France stood for
seemed to be threatened.

Soon after I visited Paris
I observed for myself

that things weren't too well,
even in the civilian population.

I saw, for instance...

a strike,

of the girls in the big
milliner shops - the dressmakers.

They were called,
rather pathetically I thought, "Les
Petites Mains" - The Small Hands.

And what they were striking for
was one sou an hour more -

a ha'penny.

I saw these girls processing down
some of the main thoroughfares,

and a lot of men on leave
joined them.

That showed there was something.
There was unrest, disquiet.

Still more alarming stories
now began to filter into Paris
from the zone of the armies.

Anxious about all these rumours
concerning mutinies,

I decided to go up
and see for myself.

I arrived in part of the country
near Soisson, which I know well,

and there I was met
with the most amazing sight.

Regiment after regiment
was in open mutiny.

By which I meant there were degrees
of mutiny.

In many units,

the officers were confined
to a section of the village -

had no authority at all -

and the men had established posts,

and I wasn't in the least molested.

I asked what was going on...

...got rather evasive answers,
but in the main found that the line
taken by the men was...

...that they were prepared
to occupy the line,
but they weren't prepared to fight.

The French army
had endured too much for too long.

The agony of Verdun, lack of leave,
miserable rest camps and canteens,
harsh discipline, low pay,

and now the awful disillusionment
of Nivelle's attack.

It was not that they had failed
to win a victory, it was that
the victory itself was not enough.

It had not produced
the expected ending of the war.

The soldiers went on strike.

All through May and into June,
the mutinies multiplied.

More and more regiments out
of the line refused to obey orders,

refused to take part in attacks
or even return to the front.

54 divisions were affected,
yet there was little violence.

For the most part, men
drifted away into the woods, tried
to commandeer trains to Paris,

or just sat tight in their camps
or billets,

until, weary of inaction, they
gave themselves up to loyal troops.

Russian brigades set up councils
and disarmed their officers.

They had to be shelled into
submission by French artillery. But
at the front, the line held firm.

The men's attitude was,
"We'll never advance, but we won't
let the Bosch advance either."

"No-one believed any longer
in a decision by force of arms,"
wrote an officer at French GHQ.

"It is an army without faith."

A choice had now to be made between
ruin and reason. Reason prevailed.

Nivelle was dismissed and France
turned, as she had done in the
worst days of Verdun, to Petain -

a man who understood men.

General Petain was
put in charge of the French army,

and he re-established morale
in a matter of months.

I saw him doing so,
some of the time.

He visited, in a very short time,
every division in the French army,

insisting that every single company
should be represented
by at least one trustworthy man.

He spoke to them ALL
and they realised he felt for them,

appreciated what they'd endured,

and was determined that
they shouldn't be submitted to
such unnecessary suffering again.

Petain listened to the grievances
of his troops and acted swiftly.

Every man who could be spared
was pulled out of the line.

Decent rest camps were built
with facilities for recreation.

A leave system was introduced which
allowed men home every four months,

provided trains to get them there
and even canteens for the journey.

The troops began to feel at last
that somebody cared for them,

that they mattered as individuals.

But military discipline
demanded harsher measures as well.

Petain reported
to the Minister of War...

"It is necessary to make examples in
every regiment that has mutinied."

Over 400 death sentences
were imposed. Many were commuted,

but 55 ringleaders were taken out
to face a firing squad.

55 executions...

Those were the official figures.

But it is likely that more were
shot after summary courts martial.

How many will never be known.

The secret of the mutinies was kept
with extraordinary success.

When I reported to the war office
there were mutinies
in the French army,

the Chief Imperial General Staff
expressed the utmost astonishment
at this...

...because he said
he'd heard nothing of it.

It did seem astonishing that we had
60 highly qualified officers,

attached
to the French headquarters,

and over a period of weeks,

the French had managed
to conceal any trouble from them.

In a way, perhaps it was fortunate
because the Germans
hadn't heard either.

If the Germans had,
the war would have been over.

When Major Speirs' report
was received, he was ordered back
to 10 Downing Street.

Lloyd George said to me,

"Is the French army
going to get over this?"

And I said, "I believe it is.

"They've had a frightful time.

"But now Petain's in charge,
and he's a wonderful leader
and the men have got faith in him,

"I believe they will get over it."

France did get over it, but her
convalescence was painful and slow.

In the meantime her armies were
in no state to prosecute the war.

It was a time of crisis for the
allies - the Russians were talking
of signing a separate peace.

The Italians wanted reinforcements.

On the Western Front, the British
Army was left to bear the burden.

In the words of Lloyd George,
"It was the one allied army

"which could be relied upon
for any enterprise, however
hazardous and arduous it might be."

Yet one bright beacon illuminated
these dark and desperate days.

On April 6th 1917,
the United States of America
had declared war on Germany.

Now despite all the
disillusionment of two and a half
years, there was hope again.