All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.25of26.The.Iron.Thrones.Are.Falling.divx.mp3

In the spring of 1918,

the empire of Austria-Hungary,
sprawled across the heart of Europe,

faced the prospect of ruin.

This war had begun as Austria's
quarrel, with gaiety and cheers

as the soldiers of the Hapsburg
Empire marched to battle in 1914.

The first enemy was Serbia,

the impudent Slav kingdom
over the border.

The crushing of Serbia would be a
warning to all under Austrian rule

whose national ambitions
were coming to the boil.

But war with Serbia
meant war with Russia.

Harsh realities soon dispelled
the Hapsburg dream.

In 1914, when the Austrian armies
marched to aid their German allies

against Russian invasion,
they met with disaster.

Counting the fearful Austrian
losses in the battles of 1914,

cynical Germans said,
"We are fettered to a corpse."

Yet somehow, the corpse revived.

Defending bitterly
in the Carpathian Mountains

in the icy grip of winter,
the Austrians held off the Russians.

In 1915, Austrians and Germans

hurled the Russians out of Galicia.

At last,
with German and Bulgarian help,

the Austrians defeated the Serbs
and overran their country.

HEAVY GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

It was also in 1915 that Austria
found herself with another enemy.

Italy, after long hesitation,

and tempted by promises of
territorial gains after the war,

joined the Allies.

The Italian prime minister

called this policy "Sacro Egoismo",
sacred egoism.

For the first time in history,
the outposts of two great armies

faced each other
across the Alpine peaks.

WIND WHISTLES

Here, in a region
of eternal ice and snow,

of fierce storms and avalanches,

the Austrians held
the commanding heights.

TWO-WAY GUNFIRE

Food, munitions,
everything the armies needed

had to be supplied by cable railway
or by patient mules.

General Cadorna,
the Italian chief of staff,

threw his troops against
the eastern frontier.

His objective
was the port of Trieste.

The way to Trieste,
across the River Isonzo,

was blocked by three high plateaus.

Again and again, the Italians
attacked these rocky hillsides,

where every shell burst flung out deadly
fragments of stone as well as iron.

"It was a battlefield,"
wrote Hindenburg,

"equal in desolation and horror
to the Western Front.

"Indeed, in many respects worse."

By 1916, Austria
was gravely weakened.

In the summer of that year,

another Russian offensive,
under General Brusilov,

smashed through the front
in Galicia.

Over 400,000 Austrians
were taken prisoner.

Once again, it was only German help
that stemmed the tide.

At the end of 1916,
the emperor Franz Josef died.

There was great mourning in Vienna

all over the place,
in all classes of the population.

Everybody felt a personal loss.

When, a few days after,

the funeral of the emperor took
place, the streets were filled.

The houses, the shops, even some
lampposts were draped in black.

We looked at the funeral
with a sort of personal grief.

The Kaiser came to pay his respects.

The kings of Bulgaria, Bavaria
and Saxony, the German crown prince,

the heir to the Turkish throne
and the crown prince of Sweden

all escorted the dead emperor
on his journey to the family tomb.

It was the end of an era.

The new emperor, Karl, faced the ruin
war had brought on his once great empire.

To preserve its crumbling facade
from final collapse,

he entered into secret negotiations
with the French,

which came to nothing. The German
ambassador in Vienna reported:

"The longer the war lasts,
the stronger the simple question,

"'Will Austria-Hungary be able
to carry on the fight?'

"Her resources and troops
are nearly exhausted.

"Depression is increased
by the economic situation.

"The people of Vienna are starving,

"and are driven to despair by long
queueing which brings no results.

"We are running the danger that
the Hapsburg monarchy will sicken

"and Germany will share
in its downfall."

The harsh realities of the war

had bound the Hapsburg empire
to Germany. Ludendorff decided:

"The Austrian-Hungarian armies
needed stiffening by German troops

"to prevent the collapse
of Austria-Hungary.

"To send Germans for
purely defensive purposes

does not correspond to
our serious situation.

"The Austrian command must know it's
necessary to take the offensive."

Seven Austrian and eight German
divisions, under a German general,

were assembled in the mountains

in the northern reaches
of the Isonzo.

Their objective was to break out
into the Venetian plain.

EXPLOSION BOOMS

On October 24th, 1917,

a heavy bombardment
by gas and high explosive shell

drenched the Italian positions
on the Isonzo.

The Italian trenches,
dugouts and shelters

were overwhelmed
in a hurricane of fire.

All communications were destroyed.

In snow and sleet showers,

the Austro-German army advanced
14 miles through the mountains.

Many Italians were terrified
when German troops appeared.

One glance at the Pickelhaube
coming over the hill was enough.

By the end of the first day,
the enemy had crossed the Isonzo,

captured the village of Caporetto
and taken 30,000 prisoners.

The Italian second army was smashed
and in headlong retreat.

It was impossible for us

even to think of abandoning
these positions

that had cost hundreds of thousands
of lives.

To leave our dead there...
we just couldn't believe it.

Still, still we had to withdraw.

An attempt was made to stand on
the Tagliamento River, 30 miles back.

But the enemy crossed
by a half-destroyed bridge.

The Italians went back again,

400,000 men along roads
blocked by refugees.

One of the most tiresome things
from a military point of view

was the Austrian motorcyclists and
their sidecars with light machine guns

that used to appear from nowhere
and disappear into nowhere

after machine-gunning a convoy
or a crowd of refugees.

And...we, we felt the whole time

a kind of...shame

that we had been defeated.

Through the exhausted and beaten
army, word passed round.

"Andiamo a casa".
"We're going home."

By 1917, the majority of Italian
soldiers were weary of the war.

An English officer wrote:

"They were desperately tired,
physically and spiritually.

"Their food was continually reduced.

"They had to march to the trenches
and back heavily laden.

"They were at the mercy of brutal
commanders who maintained discipline

"by means of bestial punishment.

"They got a few days' leave
once a year,

"two postcards a week to write home,

"no amusements, no relaxation,
no rest."

On the Piave River,
a mere 15 miles from Venice,

Cadorna managed to rally his troops.

"We have taken
the inflexible decision

"to defend here the honour of Italy.

"The Italian nation commands us
to die,

"and not to yield."

On the Piave,
after a retreat of 70 miles,

the Italians held the enemy at bay.

In under three weeks,
they had lost 400,000 men,

of whom 360,000 were either
prisoners or deserters.

The approach of the war
to within 15 miles of Venice

has produced inevitable changes.

The Ducal Palace is no more than
a skeleton, boarded up and emptied.

Shops are selling off their goods.

Venetians who have stayed
hope for the best.

The Grand Canal, with its shuttered
palaces, has a mournful, noble air.

Most of the gondolas are gone.

Five British and six French
divisions were sent to Italy.

The arrival of the British was
observed by historian GM Trevelyan:

"The anxiety overhanging that month
seemed lifted as they marched by.

"I believe the Italians, civil and
military, were as cheered as I was.

"Looking on such men, it seemed
impossible that we could be beaten."

General Cadorna now gave way
to the younger General Armando Diaz.

Under his command, the Italian army
made an astonishing recovery.

The change in the heart of
the country was no less remarkable.

Armchair defeatists were silenced,
peacemongers put to shame.

In the face of a common danger,

the Italian people
at last found unity.

To the Austrian army, Caporetto
brought much-needed relief,

and the booty of huge food stores.

It drew together its many races,

Austro, German, Magyars, Yugoslavs,

Czechs, Rumanians and Poles.

BAND PLAYS

Morale improved.

For a while, the troops could relax,
on full stomachs.

But at home,
there was no such unity.

In winter, 1917, mutual dislikes
of different races in the empire

were intensified
by unequal food distribution.

Vienna was starving, while
Budapest had something to spare.

The harvest was a failure,
the administration chaotic.

The rations became smaller
and smaller as the war went on.

And the black market flourished,
fairly officially.

The quality of the food was terrible.

Bread, for instance,
gave many people some eczema.

Potatoes were very short too.

It was bitterly cold.
The electricity was cut.

The gas was cut.

The children were really underfed,
because they had very little milk.

We had to be very careful
to have a drop for everyone.

In May 1918, the Emperor Karl
was summoned by the Kaiser.

His secret peace moves
had been made public by the French.

His duplicity towards
his German ally stood revealed.

Now the Germans demanded that
the Austrians attack again in Italy

in support of their own offensive
in France.

This time,
there would be no German help.

Reluctantly, Karl had to agree.

The key to the whole Italian line
on the Piave was the Monte Grappa,

5,000 feet high
and dominating the plain below.

It had become a symbol of Italian
resistance in the previous winter.

On 15th June,
the whirlwind burst on the Grappa.

"Within five hours,
our defences were smashed,

"three key positions were lost,

"the Austrians looked down
on Bassano.

"But the soldiers at Grappa,
worn out and decimated,

"dashed forward
to the counterattack.

"In 24 hours, all was over,

"and we could think of the Piave
as inviolate."

Elsewhere, Austrian attacks
made some headway

against two British divisions
in the Asiago Plateau.

Further east, they crossed
the Piave on a 15-mile front.

But the attacks
were spread over too wide a front.

The Austrians were short
of ammunition, transport and food.

Worst of all,
the Piave now rose in flood.

Within three days, counterattacks
threw them back across the river

with the loss of 150,000 men.

On the sea, too, Austria
had suffered a grievous blow.

Two Italian boats on patrol
in the Adriatic

torpedoed the dreadnought
Szent Istvan,

one of the most powerful ships
in the Austrian navy.

The disaster hastened the end
of Austrian hopes.

In the Balkans, Germany's ally
Bulgaria stood on the defensive.

Bulgaria had entered the war
for territorial gain from Serbia.

In 1915, as the Germans
and Austrians invaded Serbia,

Bulgaria struck at her flank.

The Serbs begged for Allied help,

but how could they help this
landlocked, isolated country

in the heart
of the Balkan mountains?

Only with the aid of Serbia's ally,
Greece.

At the invitation of the Greek
prime minister, Venizelos,

British and French troops
landed at Salonika.

The force owed its existence
more to diplomatic necessities

than to the foresight
of the military.

The expedition was launched
not to defeat the enemy,

but to rescue the remains
of the Serbian army,

and prevent the whole of the Balkans
from becoming an Austro-German area.

But on the very day
the Allies landed,

Venizelos was dismissed
by the pro-German King Constantine.

The king declared that Greece
would stay neutral.

The Allies were too late
to help Serbia.

They found themselves in a neutral
country teeming with German spies.

In the bare hills north of Salonika,
they entrenched in a vast camp,

known ironically as the "Birdcage".

Here they waited for the Bulgarians
and Germans to advance.

But they did not come.

All we prayed for and hoped for was,

"Let us have some fights. Let us get
into there. Let us do something."

We joined the army
to fight for the old country,

not to flounder about
and dig trenches.

As the troops in the Birdcage
made roads,

reinforcements poured into Salonika,

British, French, Italians,
Russians, Serbians.

It was maybe the most crowded city
in the world, and the most polyglot.

Sailors from half a dozen navies,
Turks, Albanians and Greeks,

Balkan peasants in their rough
frieze dresses, native soldiers,

Algerians, Indians, Ammonites
and Senegalese.

Salonika's cafes, cabarets, cinemas
and music halls did a roaring trade.

There were never enough for
the many strangers within the city.

For nine months, the Allies waited.

There was mistrust
of Greek intentions,

mistrust between the Allies,

mistrust of the French commander,
General Sarrail.

At last, in the early summer
of 1916,

the armies advanced north
towards the distant mountains.

HORSE NEIGHS

The Bulgarians and Germans
had had time to prepare.

They held all heights
in great strength.

No matter where you were,
you were under observation.

All they had to do was look down.
We couldn't move by daylight at all.

In the heat, the trench lines
spread across the Balkan peninsula

from the Aegean to Albania
on the Adriatic.

The sun beat down
on the stony, treeless heights

on the swampy plains.

The temperature rose to 114 degrees.

The British troops
had no sun helmets.

A director of medical services in
Egypt thought they were unnecessary.

With the heat came
the mosquitoes,

but there were not enough mosquito
nets, not enough quinine.

In summer 1916, in every battalion,
men went down by the hundred.

Medical services were overwhelmed.

The difficulties of evacuating
this flood of sick men were extreme.

In 1916, there were 30,000 cases
of malaria. In 1917, 63,000.

In 1918, 67,000.

It was then when you had an attack
of malaria

and you had, as a result,
a chronic fit of depression,

that it was hardest
to keep one's reason.

Long hours in the line,
in one's lonely dugout,

as one sat there, and thought,

"Will I ever see home again,
and the people I love?"

That was the most dangerous moment
for any man to have to face,

and some poor chaps couldn't face it,
and shot themselves.

The British army felt abandoned,
forgotten.

We are far out of the limelight.

People ask,
"What is the Salonika army doing?"

Lloyd George wrote:

"Our Balkan force was a miserable
Cinderella among the Allied armies.

"The British War Office
never loved it.

"The campaign was a wretched story
of neglect, delay,

"and official bungling
of essential supplies."

Winter brought a new enemy - cold.

Day and night, armies on both sides

were exposed to the full blast
of the blinding sleet, the icy wind.

The temperature fell to 35 degrees
below freezing.

Men went down by the score
with frostbite.

The German high commands remained
on the defensive,

and let Bulgarians hold the line.

It was more advantageous to
know that 300,000 of the enemy

were being chained to
that distant region

than to drive them from
the Balkan peninsula

and thence to the
French theatre of war.

The Germans had other
preoccupations in the Balkans.

In 1916, Rumania declared war
on the central powers,

and Bulgaria found herself with
an enemy on her northern frontier.

But Rumanian ambitions exceeded
their powers.

"The trouble is, we are such babies,
so unlearned in the art of war",

wrote the queen of Rumania.

She set an example befitting
a granddaughter of Queen Victoria,

distributing sweets, cigarettes,
little crosses and holy pictures.

But crosses and holy pictures
were not enough.

The Rumanian army was
pitifully equipped and badly led.

In the north-west, German
and Austrian alpine troops

came through the mountains
to the central plain.

Bucharest, the capital,
fell without a struggle.

In the south, Field
Marshal Mackensen,

with a mixed force of Germans,
Bulgarians and Turks,

had pushed up the Danube
towards its mouth

and captured the Black Sea port
of Constanza.

Three-quarters of the country
had been overrun.

The following year,
the Rumanians sued for peace.

The Rumanian catastrophe completed
the tale of unrelieved failure

for the Allies in the Balkans.

They now resorted to political
weapons. The majority of Greeks

weren't pro-Ally or pro-German.
They just wanted to be left alone.

But it didn't suit the Allies
for Greece to remain neutral.

By political and military pressure,

including a landing at Athens, King
Constantine was forced to abdicate.

Venizelos was returned as premier

and Greece was induced to declare
war on the Central Powers.

"The conversion of the Greek army from
a source of danger to a powerful ally

"changed the aspect of
things in the Balkans

and made a renewed
offensive possible."

From Corfu
came other reinforcements -

100,000 Serbians who had escaped
from their country in 1915.

They were dedicated to avenge
that terrible defeat.

As Lloyd George put it, they were
"ravening to be up and at the foe".

Now mighty events elsewhere
impinged on the Macedonian front.

Germany's defeats in the west had
weakened Bulgaria's will to resist.

Her peasant soldiers had lived for too
long on garlic soup and maize bread.

They'd suffered too long in the
mountains without boots or coats.

There was no longer a German army
to stiffen their morale.

They began to slip away from
the front to their neglected farms.

On 15 September 1918,
the Allied bombardment roared out

and the mountains echoed
with its thunder.

SHELL FIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

Fire of battle spread quickly from
west to east as French, Serbians,

Italians,

Greeks and British attacked
the walls of rock that faced them.

The main attack was made
by the French and Serbians

over mountains, in
places, 7,000ft high.

Within a week, the Serbian army,
inspired by the sight of their homeland,

had stormed through the mountains
to the valleys beyond.

Now they were retracing the path of their
bitter retreat three long years before.

Veles, Skopje,

Uskub, Nis -

the towns of Serbia returned,
one after another, into their hands.

ACCORDION PLAYS FOLK TUNE

The Bulgarian commander in chief
frantically called on the Germans

for reinforcements.

Hindenburg replied -

"As Your Excellency is aware,
Germany is now engaged

"in a most terrific struggle
on the Western Front.

"All our forces will be
required for that purpose."

Only a small nucleus of German
troops remained in Bulgaria

- not enough to rally
the demoralized Bulgarians.

"It was impossible to stop their career,
even though the pursuing enemy were weak.

"The moment the
enemy approached,

the Bulgarians fired a few rounds
and then left their lines."

The Bulgarians fell back, leaving
behind the debris of a broken army.

"The situation
was fast becoming unbelievable.

"We were on the point of
rolling up the whole line.

Central Europe was
before our eyes."

On 29 September,
a fortnight after the first assault,

Bulgaria capitulated.

The first of Germany's allies
had cracked.

"The iron thrones are falling,"
one Englishman wrote.

The way lay open
to Constantinople in the east,

to the Hapsburg Empire in the north.

In Austria-Hungary, social discontent
had reached a revolutionary pitch,

as it had done in Russia.

Mutinies had broken out
among the Slovenes,

Czechs, Hungarians,
Bosnians and Slovakians.

Bad news from the Western Front
fanned them.

The Austrians asked - "If Germany
can't put up a defence,

why don't they end
the fighting?"

Austrian dependence on Germany

was coming full circle.

Endurance was near breaking point.
One soldier wrote to his mother -

"The life is unworthy
of any human being.

"I ask myself how the older men

and young boys in their front
positions endure this life.

"Insufficient food.
Tattered uniforms.

"No possibility of
keeping oneself clean.

I feel convinced that we
can't go on like this."

On 16 October, the troops learned
that the emperor had proclaimed

a federal constitution giving full
autonomy to the empire's nations.

It was too late. One by one,
they cast off the Hapsburg yoke.

First the Czechoslovaks,
then the Yugoslavs and Hungarians

proclaimed themselves
as independent states

- the empire was
splitting asunder.

After four years,

the shot at Sarajevo had at last
achieved its true purpose.

On 24 October, the anniversary
of Caporetto, the Allies attacked

in Italy.

EXPLOSIONS OF SHELLS

For two days, the Austrians hung on
tenaciously in the mountains

and along the line of the Piave.

But on the 27th, the Allies
broke through the river front.

CONTINUOUS MACHINE-GUNFIRE

Three days later,
cavalry and armoured cars

reached Vittorio Veneto,
the Austrian headquarters.

The retreat had turned into a rout.

Now, at last,
Austrian resistance was at an end.

Her dream of empire was in ruins.

Her imperial eagle
was at the point of death.