All language subtitles for BBC.The.First.World.War.03of10.Global.War.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.Forum_[eng]

From the start of the
First World War,

Germany seized on Britain's greatest
weakness - a vast empire,

hard to defend, fatal to lose.

The gamble was that Britain might
risk everything to protect it,

even victory on the Western Front.

War for Europe meant war
for the world.

It was Germany's idea to take the
war beyond Europe,

but it wasn't a bid for expansion,
let alone world domination.

The aim was to take the pressure
off her armies in Europe

by attacking the British Empire,

hoping to divert Britain's
troops, ships and resources

to defend distant colonies.

Britain also had no thought
of a bigger Empire.

She just didn't want to lose
the one she had.

So while Germany wanted to open the
war up around the globe,

Britain was desperate to close
it down.

Maurice Hankey, secretary of the
Committee of Imperial Defence,

realised the Empire was
Britain's Achilles heel,

and warned against Germany using it

to distract Britain from her
war effort.

Forces must not be diverted to minor
operations

to the prejudice of the concentration
in the main theatre

and the safety of the trade routes.

15 years before,

Germany had proclaimed herself an
empire-builder.

The Kaiser had taken his country
into the 20th century

as a German admiral creating a
global German navy.

Weltpolitik was the big idea.

a policy of overseas imperialism,

the brainchild of his Foreign
Secretary Bernhard von Bulow.

VON BULOW: The days when the Germans
left the earth to one neighbour,

the sea to another and kept only the
heavens for themselves, are over.

We don't want to put anyone
in the shade.

But we, too, demand
our place in the sun.

Germany had come late
to the game of Empires,

but by 1900 she had Togoland,
Cameroon, German Southwest Africa,

now Namibia, and German East Africa,
now Tanzania.

Her flag flew over patches
in the Pacific - New Guinea,

Samoa and Micronesia.

She had a toe-hold in China
at Tsingtao,

where she re-coaled her ships
and brewed beer.

Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz
saw this as just the start.

We are now standing only at the
beginning of a new division

of the globe.

Germany alarmed the world with her
imperial tub-thumping.

She eyed up Puerto Rico,
and considered pouncing on

the Panama Canal the minute it was
completed.

But the boldest of all the Kaiser's
schemes was Operational Plan III.

The East Coast is the heart of
the US

and this is where she is most
vulnerable.

New York will panic at the prospect
of bombardment.

By hitting her here we can force
America to negotiate.

Germany's secret plans from 1903 -
to attack the Eastern seaboard

with 60 ships and 100,000 men,

to shell Manhattan and capture
Boston.

The outlandish scheme was driven
by the Kaiser's resentment

of America's growing power
in the Pacific.

He believed in a militarist state

and increasingly hated
what the West stood for.

Service to Mammon, greed,
self-indulgence, land-grabbing,

lying, treachery
and not least murder.

The Kaiser thought capitalism was
vulnerable,

that a strong enough attack on its
international systems of trade,

credit and insurance could bring the
edifice tumbling down.

Operational Plan III was dropped,

but not the hostility
towards capitalist empires.

By 1912, Germany had traded in
Weltpolitik

for a more realistic policy.

Now her military machine prepared
for a European, not a global war,

and the army got the budget
increase, not the navy.

The first day of war found Germany's
High Seas Fleet trapped

by the mighty British Navy
in the North Sea.

And all the German Navy had to
threaten the entire British Empire

was a scattered force of 17 cruisers

linked by a wireless network
to Berlin.

There was the Koenigsberg
off East Africa,

the Goeben and the Breslau
in the Mediterranean,

the Dresden and Karlsruhe
in the West Indies,

the Leipzig off the west coast of
America,

but the greatest concentration
of cruisers

was Admiral Graf von Spee's
powerful East Asiatic Squadron,

based at Tsingtao in China.

Tsingtao gave Germany a huge area of
operations,

across the South China Sea,
and into the Pacific.

Seizing it would cut
the Squadron's lifeline.

Britain saw the urgency,
but lacked the resources.

So, two days into the war,
she turned to her ally Japan.

Japan was a growing power,

Britain's call for naval help
suited her ambitions perfectly.

Together, Britain and Japan
would capture Tsingtao,

vital German base, and the Kaiser's
pride and joy.

It would shame me more to surrender
Tsingtao to the Japanese

than Berlin to the Russians.

On 2nd September 1914, 60,000
Japanese troops landed up the coast,

violating China's neutrality.

They met up with 2,000 British,

and closed in on the German garrison
of 4,500.

It's unbearable.

All we can do is sit and wait for
this bunch of monkeys to arrive.

Every day, they get a bit closer.

No-one expects to get home in one
piece. No hope of reinforcements.

The noose around our necks is
getting tighter and tighter.

For a solid week, the Japanese
battered Tsingtao.

On 7th November, they entered the
town in triumph.

Some Germans sneered at the token
British force,

for getting the Japanese to do their
dirty work.

The brave British!

They played no part
in the capture of Tsingtao

but they joined in
the victory parade.

As they went by, we Germans were
ordered to turn our backs on them.

The English complained to the
Japanese commander

but he said, "We can't repeat the
procession just because of that."

The capture of Tsingtao gave Japan a
launch pad

to pursue her empire building.

Within weeks she demanded territory
and trading rights from China.

Japan also seized all German
possessions north of the Equator.

Australia and New Zealand were quick
to steal those to the south.

Much to America's frustration,

Britain had empowered Japan
in the Pacific.

Key stage in a process

that would lead, a quarter of
a century later, to Pearl Harbor.

Germany's loss of Tsingtao, far
from neutralising Spee's squadron,

ensured its destructive power
would be felt around the globe.

The best German cruiser commanders,
like Spee, were fearless mavericks

whom the war turned into heroes.

Superb sailors, with the instincts
of pirates.

The Kaiser had given them full
authority

to make their own decisions in
wartime.

The heavy responsibility of the
officer in command will be increased

by the isolated position
of his ship.

But he must never show
one moment of weakness.

Above all, the officer must bear in
mind that his chief duty

is to damage the enemy as severely
as possible.

Spee now split his squadron.

The light cruiser Emden,
under Captain Karl von Mueller,

made for the Bay of Bengal.

Spee, in the Scharnhorst, led his
other ships across the Pacific.

I'm quite homeless,
I cannot reach Germany.

I must plough the seas of the world
doing as much mischief as I can.

At the Admiralty in London,

Winston Churchill fretted about
where Spee would show up next.

The vastness of the Pacific and its
multitude of islands

offered him their shelter

And once he had vanished, who should
say where he would reappear?

He was a cut flower in a vase,

fair to see, yet bound to die.

But, so long as he lived, all our
enterprises lay under the shadow

of a serious potential danger.

Spee had a constant worry.

Cruisers needed coal every eight
or nine days

or they'd be dead in the water.

He made for neutral Chile where he
had coal waiting for him.

On 1st November 1914, he ran
into a British fleet off Coronel.

The battle which followed inspired a
post-war feature film.

The British commander was
Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock,

under orders from London.

It appears that Gneisenau and
Scharnhorst are working across

to South America.
Be prepared to meet them in company.

Cradock had one ship that could
outgun Spee's fleet,

but she was slow and had been left
behind.

Now Cradock raced towards enemy
ships better armed than his.

He had ignored his own rule
of thumb.

CRADOCK: A naval officer should never
let his boat

go faster than his brain.

SPEE: I immediately ordered
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau

to go full steam ahead, and within
15 minutes

I was racing against heavy seas at
20 knots

and came to lie parallel
with him.

Cradock's ships were no match for
Spee's.

Good Hope and Monmouth were
obviously in distress.

Monmouth yawed off to starboard,
burning furiously.

There was a terrible explosion on
Good Hope

between her main mast and
after funnel.

The gust of flames reached a
height of over 200 feet,

lighting up a cloud of debris that
was flung still higher in the air.

1,600 British sailors were lost.

It was Britain's worst naval defeat
for 250 years.

The global war was going
Germany's way.

It is only when you get to see
and realise what India is,

that she is the strength
and the greatness of England,

it is only then that you feel that
every nerve a man may strain,

every energy he may put forward,

cannot be devoted to a
nobler purpose

than keeping tight the cords
that hold India to ourselves.

Britain's Empire and trading network

was the single biggest resource
she brought to the war.

And India was at the heart of it.

The cords were never tighter.

All the more reason for Germany to
want them cut.

These slender lines on the map were
now the focus of intense study

in the British and German
admiralties

and chartrooms of warships.

Fingers traced shipping lanes -
through the Suez Canal,

around South Africa's Cape.

Minds pondered how to protect them,
how to sever them.

One of the sharpest minds was on the
bridge of the German cruiser Emden.

A month after she left
Admiral Spee's squadron,

Captain Karl von Mueller steered her
into the Bay of Bengal.

In 1932, the Germans made a feature
film about his odyssey.

He had an indescribable power
over the entire crew.

He never gave orders,
he just expressed a wish.

From the moment he took command of
the ship, he never left the bridge.

This is where he stood, slept,
sat, studied the maps.

This is where he wanted to be - stand
or fall.

The Emden sometimes rigged a dummy
funnel

to look like a British cruiser.

A large steamer appeared dead ahead

and, thinking we were an English
man-of-war,

was so overjoyed at our presence,
that she hoisted a huge British flag.

I'd like to have seen her captain's
face when we hoisted our flag

and invited him most graciously
to tarry with us awhile.

Captain Mueller became famous
for taking crew and passengers

safely onto the Emden,
before sinking their ship.

BELL RINGS

We always allowed them time to
collect and take with them

their personal possessions.

They usually devoted most of this
time to making certain

that their precious supply of whisky
was not wasted on the fishes.

Mueller regularly released
his grateful captives.

Such was the Emden's impact, that
the British Admiralty later drew up

this chart to track her movements.

Mueller even had the audacity

to steam into the Indian port of
Madras,

as a crew member recorded
in his diary.

22nd September 1914.

9.30pm.

The Emden sneaks closer,
then fires 125 shots.

Some hit boats in the harbour.

Huge columns of fire rise
above the oil tanks.

The coastal defences open fire,
but they all fall short.

23rd September.

We are now 100 miles away.

We can still see the fires
at Madras.

In the City of London, freight rates
and shipping insurance rocketed.

At one point, the whole British
trade fleet in the Bay of Bengal

was kept in harbour,

rather than fall prey to dashing
Captain Mueller.

Germany's rogue cruisers

were starting to harm Britain's
war effort

Three transports are delayed
in Calcutta through fear of Emden.

This involves delaying transport of
artillery and cavalry.

The Cabinet took a strong view.

The extirpation of these pests
is a most important subject.

While the Emden ran the British
ragged

at one end of the Indian Ocean,

25 Royal Navy warships hunted
the cruiser Koenigsberg

at the other, off the coast of
Germany's East African colony.

She had raided Zanzibar and sunk a
British light cruiser

from her secret hideout in the
Rufiji delta.

The frustrated British decided to
strangle all her possible bases,

starting with the port of Tanga.

On 2nd November 1914,
the British steamed into this bay.

In the global war, Imperial Powers
got others to do their fighting.

Most of the British troops
were Indian.

Their arrival was closely watched
by Thomas Plantan,

a 16-year-old African
fighting for the Germans.

The approaching British ships
had all their lights blazing

and seemed to be making no attempt
to conceal their presence.

We were in position with machine
guns, waiting in ambush for them,

and many of them were killed when
they started to come ashore.

A lot of them were killed before they
even got out of the water.

Thomas Plantan was one of 2,500 men
under German commander

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

The British thought taking Tanga
would be a pushover,

but they reckoned without Lettow.

He was a professional Prussian
soldier, hard as nails, charismatic.

He was a remarkable soldier, but
stubborn and single-minded

to a degree I have fortunately
never experienced before.

His most remarkable quality was the
reckless energy

with which he pursued goals.

This was often covered up
by his persuasive charm,

which he could switch on
if he wanted to.

On the ship to Africa, von Lettow
had met Karen Blixen,

who later wrote Out of Africa.

He clearly turned on the charm
for her.

A German officer, who belongs to a
very old Mecklenburger family,

has been such a friend to me.

You should hear how they talk
about him out here.

As the greatest genius of the age.

Despite losing men
during the landing,

the British now threatened Tanga.

Governor Schnee ordered Lettow
to evacuate the town

rather than see it destroyed,

but Lettow had come to Africa
to fight.

LETTOW: It was crucial to prevent the
enemy from gaining a foothold

in Tanga, thus giving him a base from
which to advance north.

I couldn't let the Governor's order
to spare Tanga

take precedence over this priority.

Lettow recced the British positions
himself on his bicycle.

He also called in reinforcements.

Three companies of German troops
came by rail to Tanga.

Here, on 4th November 1914,

they met the British Indian
soldiers, raw and poorly trained.

British intelligence officer Richard
Meinertzhagen

watched the ensuing rout.

Half the 13th Rajputs turned at once,
broke into a rabble and bolted.

I could not believe my eyes.

They were all jabbering like
terrified monkeys

and were clearly not for it at any
price.

Everyone in the dense forest, friend
and foe, was mixed up together,

shouting in all sorts of languages.

The enemy ran off in wild
disorder

and our machine guns mowed down
whole companies to the last man.

von Lettow was based here at the
German hospital.

After two days of heavy fighting,

the British sent Richard
Meinertzhagen

to the German HQ to negotiate
a surrender.

The Germans were kindness itself

and gave me an excellent breakfast,
which I sorely needed.

We discussed the fight freely as
though it had been a football match.

It seemed odd that I should be having
a meal today

with people whom I was trying
to kill yesterday.

It seemed so wrong and made me wonder
whether this really was war

or whether we'd all made
a ghastly mistake.

The German officers were all
hard-looking, keen and fit.

They treated this war as some new
form of sport.

The British failed to take Tanga
and suffered 700 casualties.

Lettow lost just 65.

Germany hailed him as a hero.

A German David is fighting alone

against the British Goliath
in Africa.

If we cannot fight by his side,

at least we must make sure that he is
well supplied

with shot for his sling.

But the British blockade of Germany

prevented reinforcements reaching
Lettow.

Further east, across the Indian
Ocean,

Mueller was still causing havoc.

He'd sunk two warships and captured
23 merchant ships.

On 9th November 1914, the Emden
anchored at the Cocos Islands

to destroy the British wireless
station.

But the radio operator spotted the
Emden's bogus fourth funnel

and put out a call for help.

The Australian cruiser Sydney
picked up the message

and ended the Emden's maverick
career.

Captain Mueller was taken prisoner.

He and the other survivors were
well looked after.

Dear loved ones,
I'm well and healthy.

The British were very friendly.

They took loads of photos of us

and asked for our addresses
to send us the snaps.

Yours, Walter.

Now Admiral Graf von Spee's luck
also ran out.

Britain took the risk of detaching
two of her latest battle cruisers

from the crucial North Sea blockade
of Germany to deal with him.

On 8th December 1914,

German Commander Hans Pochhammer
sighted their huge masts

as they re-coaled in Port Stanley
on the Falkland Islands.

He realised the Germans were
out-gunned and out-paced.

We choked a little at the neck, our
throats contracted and stiffened,

for that meant
a life and death grapple,

or rather a fight ending in
honourable death.

The German fleet tried to get away,

but the British battle-cruisers
were too fast.

At 1.25pm Spee turned to face them.

But the British were careful to stay
out of range of his guns,

firing their own from 16,000 yards.

Lieutenant Harry Bennett on HMS
Canopus watched what happened

and painted these watercolours.

At 4.17pm, the Scharnhorst went down
with Admiral von Spee and all hands.

At 6.02pm, the Gneisenau sank
with most of its crew,

including Spee's younger son
Heinrich.

His other son Otto was
on the doomed Nurnberg.

The sight was one of fearful awe.

She turned over and sank with a
graceful gliding motion,

as would a tumbler pressed over
in a bowl of water.

Those who went down
were game to the end,

for we saw a party of her men
standing on the quarterdeck

waving the German ensign as she sank,

and so they went down
into their watery grave.

The Battle of the Falklands

heralded the end of Germany's
cruiser campaign.

Her global war would increasingly
have to be fought on land.

Again, her commanders would stretch
slim resources

to lead the British Empire a dance.

The Suez Canal presented
a rare opportunity

for Germany to harass
the British Empire,

a crucial British sea-lane
vulnerable to attack by land forces.

But Germany couldn't spare any men
from the Western Front,

so Berlin turned to Ottoman Turkey,
her ally since November 1914.

The Turkish 4th Army was stationed
in Palestine,

just 150 miles from the Suez Canal.

The Turks agreed to help capture
Suez, assigning these 19,000 troops.

They saw it as the first stage in
their re-conquest

of Egypt and Libya.

We marched at night
and only by moonlight.

My heart was filled with a deep
melancholy,

mingled with great hope of success,

at the sound of the song,
The Red Flag Flies Over Cairo

to the accompaniment of which the
advancing battalions forged ahead

over the endless waste of desert,

feebly illuminated by the pale gleam
of the waxing moon.

The Turks had to transport
howitzers, floating pontoons,

food and water across the Sinai
Desert,

and didn't lose a single man.

In the early hours of 3rd February
1915 they reached the Suez Canal.

The German colonel who had planned
the operation

now watched it go horribly wrong.

A sentry noticed our attack and
fired.

The shots created panic.

The English then blasted the banks
with machine-gun fire.

The Turks found the Canal
defended by nine British warships

and 30,000 Indian troops,
dug in to defensive positions.

The Ottoman troops
suffered 1,200 casualties.

The survivors retreated
across the desert.

The attack had failed,

but Africa was now a battleground
in Germany's global war.

She had three bases of operations -
the Cameroons, German East Africa,

where Lettow was still at large,

and German Southwest Africa, with
its ports and wireless stations.

Luckily for Britain, she had a
colony right next door.

Unluckily, it was the one whose
loyalty she could least rely on.

The Union of South Africa was
racially diverse -

blacks, Boers and British settlers.

Just 15 years before,

Britain had fought a long, bloody
war against the Boers.

Many still had little love
for Britain.

Their loyalty could not
be counted on.

As one commander told South Africa's
Prime Minister, Louis Botha...

My men are ready, whom do we fight -
the English or the Germans?

But South Africa was ideally
situated

to launch an attack on German
Southwest Africa.

British Colonial Secretary
Lewis Harcourt took the gamble.

If your ministers desire

and feel themselves able to seize
such part of German Southwest Africa

as will give them the command of
the wireless stations there,

we should feel this was a great
and urgent Imperial service.

South Africa's government readily
agreed

because it had mini-imperial
ambitions of its own.

It wanted to seize German Southwest
for itself.

On 14th September 1914,

South African forces crossed the
Orange river into German Southwest.

But the Germans were one jump ahead,
as the South Africans found out

when they paused at the watering
hole of Sandfontein.

MACHINE GUN FIRE

SHELLS EXPLODE

The South Africans were beaten,
but there was worse to come.

Part of South Africa now rose up
in armed rebellion.

Commanding the forces in the
Northern Cape was Manie Maritz.

Fearless and uncompromising,

Maritz had fought a vicious
guerrilla campaign

against Britain in the Boer War.

His sympathies lay
entirely with Germany.

MARITZ: I received a telegram
ordering me to take a large commando

into German Southwest Africa.

I was determined not to fight on
behalf of the British Empire,

and my officers and troops
were in full accord with me.

In October 1914, Manie Maritz
crossed the Orange River

into German territory at Schuit
Drift to enlist German support.

Two days later, Maritz addressed
his troops under this tree.

Now, men, we don't want to be ruled
by the Jews

and the financiers of England.

General Beyers, General de Wet
and myself have decided

to form an independent
South African Republic,

and have entered into an agreement

with the Governor of German
Southwest Africa.

They will provide us with arms and
ammunition, guns.

On this step depends the freedom
of the masses of the country.

Britain's request for help
had brought her dominion

to the brink of civil war.

In London, the Colonial Secretary
Lewis Harcourt feared

the break-up of the
Union of South Africa.

He secretly ordered 30,000
Australian soldiers

diverted to the Cape to smother
the rebellion.

Safety of the Union is first and
paramount consideration.

We attach no importance to German
Southwest Africa in comparison.

The Australians weren't needed.

In the winter of 1914, loyal South
Africans defeated the Boer rebels.

This is rare film of 50 of them
being led to trial in Cape Town.

But they never caught Manie Maritz.

By July 1915, South Africa cornered
the Germans,

forced their surrender,
and annexed their colony.

And Britain had more work
for South Africa,

north this time, to deal
once and for all with von Lettow.

London turned to South Africa's
Defence Minister

to lead the campaign - Jannie Smuts.

Smuts, too, had fought
in the Boer War,

but was now passionately
pro-British.

More a statesman than a soldier,

Smuts made an indifferent general
of conventional forces.

And he was up against Lettow.

British officer Richard
Meinertzhagen

was now Smuts's intelligence
officer.

Smuts is quite determined
to avoid a stand-up fight.

He told me he could not go back to
South Africa with the nickname

"Butcher Smuts".

If von Lettow is clever and Smuts not
clever enough,

there's going to be trouble.

Lettow was clever.

Here, at his headquarters at Moshi
railway station,

he thought through the idea
of depriving Britain of manpower

in Europe, by opening up the war
in Africa.

The question was, could we, with our
small forces, prevent

considerable numbers of the enemy
from intervening in Europe,

or inflict substantial damage
on their armaments and troops?

I strongly believed that we could.

By August 1916, Lettow had become
expert at his cat-and-mouse game.

Von Lettow is slippery and is not
going to be caught by a manoeuvre.

He knows the country
better than we do.

I think we're in for
an expensive hide-and-seek,

and von Lettow will still be
cuckooing

somewhere in tropical Africa when the
cease-fire goes.

Smuts has cost Britain many hundreds
of lives and many millions of pounds.

Lettow ran his force of up to 15,000
soldiers, mostly black,

on scrounging and improvisation.

No supplies from Germany
reached him after March 1916,

but he made a little go a long way,

as Ludwig Deppe, one of his medical
officers, noted.

When there was no ammunition,

Lettow would try to produce his own
cartridges.

If the men asked the commander for
weapons or clothes

they were told, "Take it from the
enemy".

Lettow made war at cost price.

He would have been justified

in displaying this war at a country
fair with a for-sale sign,

"Cheapest War in the World."

Jannie Smuts had five times Lettow's
force, and resources to match.

But the further he went into German
East Africa,

the more stretched his
supply lines.

And he reckoned without the killer
tsetse fly.

The life expectancy for his
50,000 horses was just four weeks.

Torrential rain, mud, dust and
boiling heat

further slowed his progress.

Intelligence was sketchy,
maps inadequate.

Telephone cable often had to be
raised to eight metres

to avoid damage by giraffes.

This is like warfare
of bygone days.

We come along where no road had ever
been,

where probably white man had
never trod before.

The river is in flood
and we can't get across.

On the other side the German patrols
are watching us,

but the crocodile hold the peace
between us very successfully.

Lettow played with Smuts, refusing
to fight, slipping away,

luring him deeper into Africa.

As they went, they spread the war's
grief and destruction,

dragging in more and more
of the people of Africa.

This war was being carried
on the backs of black Africans.

For the Lettow campaign alone,

the British recruited over a million
black porters.

One in five died,
from malnutrition and disease,

Death rates comparable with those
on the Western Front.

They endured their ordeal quietly.

They only had duties
and hardly any rights.

They tumbled into the splashing mud
with their heavy loads

and were then ruthlessly forced
to move on and catch up.

Oh the Lindi Road was dusty

And the Lindi Road was long

But the chap what did the hardest
graft

Who could not do but wrong

Was the Kavirondo Porter

with 'is Kavirondo song

It was, "Come here, Porter!"

It was, "Omera, hya! Git!"

And Omera didn't grumble

He simply did his bit.

What Smuts saves on the battlefield
he loses in hospital

for it is Africa and the climate
we're really fighting,

not the Germans.

Out of 20,000 South Africans,

over half were invalided home
by the beginning of 1917.

They were replaced by black troops
from Nigeria and Ghana.

Recruitment of blacks soared
in East Africa as well.

Over the course of the war,

the King's African Rifles
rose from 3,000 men to 35,000.

Fololiyani Longwe spoke for many
black soldiers.

Think of yourself buried in a hole

with only your head and hands
outside,

holding a gun, death smelling all
over the place.

Listen to the sound of exploding
bombs and machine guns,

smoke all over and the vegetation
burnt and, of course, deforested.

Watch your relatives getting
killed, crying, finally dead.

These things we did,
experienced and saw.

Lettow survived undefeated to the
very end,

marching triumphantly through Berlin
in 1919.

The British never caught him,

even though they turned it into an
African war,

and set an army on his tail.

But Britain and France had such
reserves of manpower

in their colonies, that from 1914
they shipped them to Europe.

Remarkable French colour photographs

of the world that came to serve
on the Western Front.

French General Charles Mangin
had calculated

that France could raise up to
300,000 from her empire for Europe.

No-one believed him.

But in fact they mobilised
double that number.

Black troops have precisely those
qualities which are demanded

in the long struggles of modern war -
endurance, tenacity,

the instinct for combat,
the absence of nervousness

and an incomparable power of shock.

Not only do they enjoy danger,
a life of adventure,

but they are also essentially
disciplinable.

People started hiding and running
away from the camp.

There were all kinds of illnesses,
even psychological illness.

People didn't know where they were
going

or even why they were fighting.

There were rumours that we would
never come back,

that we are going
to be sold as slaves.

India provided Britain with
1.75 million men in the war.

They'd been thrown into some of the
toughest fighting from the start.

One Indian wrote to a friend...

The war is a calamity
on three worlds,

and has caused me to cross the seas
and live here.

The cold is so great that it cannot
be described.

We have not seen the sun
for four months.

Thus we are sacrificed.

I have neither sleep by night
nor ease by day.

There can never have been
such a war before,

nor will there ever be again.

Some men, like Jason Jingo,

used to the habitual racism
of colonial rule,

returned home with greater
self-esteem.

We had liked our time in France.

It was our first experience of living
in a society without a colour bar.

We were different from the other
people at home.

Our behaviour, as we showed the
South Africans,

was something more than
they'd expected from a native.

We had copied the manners
and customs of the Europeans,

and not only copied, we lived them.

But it wasn't the same Africa Jason
Jingo and the other survivors

came back to after the war.

The empires which once carved it up

had now turned parts of it
into a wasteland,

as German medic Ludwig Deppe
realised.

Behind us we leave destroyed fields,

and, for the immediate future,
starvation.

We are no longer the agents
of civilisation.

Our path is marked by death,
plundering and deserted villages.

It would be years before
African Nationalism took off,

but a few had begun the journey.

In 1914 John Chilembwe challenged
the basis of the war,

and Africa's place in it...

..and his words would haunt colonial
officials for years to come.

Let the rich men, bankers,
titled men, storekeepers,

farmers and landlords go to war
and get shot.

Instead, the poor Africans who have
nothing to own in this present world,

who in death leave only a long line
of widows and orphans

in utter want and dire distress,

are invited to die for a cause
which is not theirs.

Germany had fought a remarkable
global war,

but it cost her, her cruisers,

her wireless network and all her
colonies.

Yet Germany had forced Britain and
France to call on their Empires

and lean on their allies.

In the process these flexed their
muscles

and formed empires of their own.

The First World War
saw the last scramble for Africa.

And the ideas the Kaiser had so
hated - land-grabbing,

avarice and capitalism
had, in fact, been spread wider.

For the moment, imperialism looked
more successful

than it had ever been.

In the next episode
of The First World War,

the call goes out for jihad,
holy war in the Middle East,

the nightmare of Gallipoli and the
agony of the Armenian people.