Original subtitles

In 1914, German and British sailors believed their war

was going to be a great confrontation of huge battleships.

But only once was there a full clash of fleets.

The rest of the naval dominated by a new weapon, the submarine.

And submarine was terrible, really, they were small and so vulnerable.

It was a war of blockades and sinkings on a massive scale.

It brought disappointment and disaster before ultimate victory.

Above all, this sea war was about innovation and dazzling advances in

technology, from the skies above to the deep oceans below.

Now for the first time, it can be seen as it really happened, in colour.

Ever since the Battle of Trafalgar, the British navy had dominated the seas.

Pre-war displays like the Spithead Review showed its might.

I remember going to a review at Spithead where

the Spithead was full of ships of all sizes.

And it was a delight to be there because, as

children, we were all very excited about it.

Everywhere you went, you would see blue country in those days.

Britain, a small island, depended on trade and keeping its

trade routes open and safe, required control of the sea.

But in the decade leading up to World War I,

British naval supremacy had faced a new challenge.

Ever since he'd become Emperor of Germany in 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II had been

determined to build an overseas empire to rival other European nations.

To acquire this empire, he needed to build a navy.

The Kaiser's ambitions and Britain's determination to maintain

its lead at sea led to a hugely expensive naval arms race.

At its heart was a new type of battleship pioneered by

the British and named after the first to be built in 1905.

The Dreadnaught.

It was enormous and outgunned anything built before.

The Dreadnaught introduced two fundamental changes in battleship technology.

First, it replaced the main element of four heavy guns with an element of eight

or ten heavy guns and, secondly, gradually introduced high powered turbine

engines so it increased the speed of the fleet.

Essentially, it's a quantum leap in the performance of the battleship.

And for a period of eight years, you have a sustained building race in

which ever bigger and more powerful battleships are built in competition.

Admiral Lord Fisher, inventor of the Dreadnaught, claimed

it made every other class of battleship irrelevant.

The only issue is the number of Dreadnaughts.

No matter who tries to fight the Dreadnaught, the Dreadnaught gobbles them all up.

It's the Armadillo and the Ants.

The Armadillo puts out its tongue and licks up the ants.

By the time wars declared in August 1914, Germany

had built thirteen Dreadnaughts to Britain's 21.

Ordinary sailors on both sides now look forward

to putting their massive new weapons to the test.

There's great enthusiasm and recruits are clocking in daily.

If only the German fleet would come out, we would wipe them out in a few minutes.

Fred Bundy was a 15 year old cadet when war broke out.

I just knew that the kinds of somebody I didn't know what to know.

And if I had a chance I'd shoot him if I had a chance, you know.

As soon as he could, Fred Bundy joined up full-time.

I thought it was wonderful.

In a transfer instance, they would just have to run up top and get bullets at me

and things like that would join in the Navy.

And what ships had always been my ideal.

German sailors were just as excited.

In 1914, Seaman Richard Stumpf was waiting with the German high seas fleet.

Our joy and excitement were boundless and lasted late into the night.

The thing we had yearned for and feared had come true.

We had built our Navy so we could fight the false and treacherous English.

But the sheer expense and prestige of the

dread nought began to have a curious result.

No one could afford to lose one.

Admiral John Jellico, commander of the Grand Fleet based at Scarpa Flow,

was reluctant even to let his dread nought out of port.

Provided there is a chance of destroying some of the enemy's heady ships,

it is right and proper to run risks of our own.

But unless the chances are reasonably great,

I do not think that such risks should be run.

His main fear was that if he took his very expensive battle fleet to sea and he lost

a battle, he effectively might as he put it lose the war in an afternoon.

So he would get two fleets in their fleet anchorages or at their headquarters and

bases, which were mutually opposing each other and in

a sense stalemated each other by not even going to sea.

The caution was so great that it would be a full two years into the war before the

fleets of both sides engaged in a proper battle.

As the dread nought stayed safely in their harbors, the rest of Britain's Navy set up

to starve Germany by blockading it and stopping its trade with the outside world.

The British, with their vastly bigger surface fleet of cruisers and destroyers,

quickly gained control of the North Sea.

They were able to intercept almost all merchant

shipping from neutral nations headed for German ports.

The mutual ship would go into a British port and their cargo

would simply be bought by the British for their own use.

So the neutrals weren't particularly disappointed, their voyage was cut short,

they got home sooner and they were paid in full.

So essentially nobody was upset apart from the Germans.

German sailors could only watch as naval superiority enabled Britain to stock up

for war while their own nation was made to suffer.

When one saw the amount of shipping converging on Britain, when one saw how

busily the enemy was engaged in importing from all quarters of the globe,

the materials that reinforced his strength in his

fight against us, one saw the writing on the war.

One weapon would revolutionise the war at sea,

the submarine, or U-boat as the Germans called it.

When war began the British Navy had more submarines than Germany.

Life on board was in stark contrast to the big battleships.

To me it was a Christophobia or whatever they call it.

I didn't like to be, well I could get out, I didn't like to be closed in.

And submarines were terrible really, they were small and so vulnerable.

It was all volunteers, reason to get a shit in a day extra.

And there wasn't many submarines so they didn't want a lot of men to volunteer.

But as it went further around we got more and they had to go in them.

I didn't want to go but they had to go.

But after we saw them after they were delighted, the submarine, they're all as

well and you see, you're left in an arm and stoker.

We both worked together because you could hit, you've

got to know what to do, you see, in the submarine.

The British used their submarines for patrols in support of the surface fleet.

The German U-boats would have a totally different purpose.

They became the lone hunters and they gave Germany

its one truly effective naval weapon for war.

Much of the U-boats lonely time in the ocean was still spent on the surface,

allowing moments of peace and calm.

After an excellent supper on the fresh fish given to us by our fishermen and the

fresh fish given to us by our fishermen friends, we were glad to clamber up on the

counting tower to enjoy the northern evening air and the cigar.

Gray and violet hues replaced the shining glow of sunset.

Underneath the water, as the U-boat went in

search of its prey, life became very different.

The atmosphere below was really beyond description

and appalling bursts of heat flung me backwards.

The thermometer stood at nearly 45 degrees Celsius.

The men were standing over the engines in the bare minimum of clothing and their

drawn gourmed faces smeared with oil and filth and looked like sculls.

In September 1914, this new underwater threat showed its murderous potential.

Three aging British battleships, the Abelkir, Högig and Cressi,

were sunk in a single day by one German U-boat.

A British midshipman wrote home with the remarkable story of his survival.

Dear Granny, I had a most thrilling experience.

We were woken by a terrific crash and the whole ship shook.

The Abelkir went down suddenly and we slid down her side into the water.

I swam to the Hög and was just going on board

when she was struck and sunk in three minutes.

I then she was struck.

I jumped off again.

I was picked up, having been three hours in the water.

1400 other sailors lost their lives.

The U-boat was able to sneak up on its target without being seen.

But when it came to merchant shipping, this unique quality

of surprise presented a legal and diplomatic problem.

Under international law, an attacking warship of any side was first required to

stop a merchant ship, board it and inspect its cargo.

If the cargo was found to be assisting the enemy, the attacker was required to allow

the merchant crew to leave their ship safely.

Only then could they blow it up.

Of course, stopping vessels and going through this rigmarole was inimical to the

advantage that the submarine had in attacking merchant shipping.

It was a sneaky weapon.

A damned un-English weapon had been called by one British commentator.

Frustrated U-boat commanders began to bend the rules, sinking merchant ships without

warning, but claiming that their targets were carrying munitions, or even that it

was the British doing the sinking, not them.

German propaganda films tried to convince the world that they were still sticking to

the law, even towing merchant crews to safety.

In early 1915, this farce came to an end.

The Kaiser and his commanders decided to kill them.

The war on the western front was now bogged down in the stalemate of the trenches.

The Germans were getting nowhere against the British and French on land.

The only way forward was to cut Britain off from the trade which kept it alive.

On February the 22nd, Germany declared unrestricted U-boat warfare.

U-boats would fire on merchant shipping headed for Allied ports without warning.

Unrestricted submarine warfare.

There's a case of what else can we do.

Let's try this.

Maybe this will work.

There's a sense of desperation.

It's also, I think, the German Navy saying, we're

not doing what we thought we were going to do.

We're not fighting this great battle with dreadnoughts.

But if we don't do something, all those soldiers on the western front will say,

why are we fighting and dying?

The Navy's doing nothing.

For the U-boat crews, there was relief and celebration.

At last, it arrived.

Unrestricted U-boat warfare began.

We'd lost a burden we had carried since the day the war broke out.

In three months, the U-boats sank 115 ships.

But then, one U-boat went too far.

On May the 7th, 1915, the Qunard liner, the Lusitania,

said sail for Britain from the United States.

Alice Drury, Nanny, for an American family, was looking

after the baby when the first German torpedo struck.

I just picked up the shore and the baby with it.

Stuart was also in the cabin and he was crying, I don't want to be drowned.

I don't want to be drowned.

And I crossed over to him and said, hang on to me whatever happens.

And he did.

The other nurse called down to me, what shall I do?

I said, you look after the baby.

I never saw her or bunny ever again.

Over 1,200 people drowned in the Lusitania.

It gives the British a real advantage, which they exploit very effectively.

British propaganda in this war is going to be one of the major weapons.

And the principal target is the opinion of the United States.

The Lusitania is a godsend to the British.

It's quite the most stupid thing the Germans could have done.

The torpedoing and sinking of the Lusitania evinces a disregard of opinions

of the world in general and all this country in particular, only compatible

with the assumption that blood lirst has toppled reason from its throne.

Much of the outrage fell on the Kaiser himself.

Now, that was wicked.

Oh, it should never have happened because if he'd have been

a good man, he'd have said, well, it's full of also villains.

What do I want with sinking that?

Let the thing go where it wants to go.

That would have been my sentiment.

But if it wasn't his, it was just to form

something which would shock the English people.

You know, we're not playing games.

This is real now.

The outcry over the Lusitania persuaded Germany

to return to complying with international law.

But the frustration soon built up again.

In November 1915, the German commander-in-chief

noted, a U-boat cannot spare the cruise of steamers.

The shipping world can be warned that the lives

of the steamers' cruise will be endangered.

This will be one good reason why all shipping trade

with England should cease within a short space of time.

The gravity of the situation demands that we should free ourselves of scouples.

In February 1916, unrestricted U-boat warfare returned.

So did the disgust.

Submarines cannot be used against merchantmen, as the last few weeks have

shown, without inevitable violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity.

Our commerce was subject to attack by an unseen enemy, to be sunk by a torpedo

before any signal for help to be sent, or any escape could be attempted.

Liners, tramps, fishing craft, men, women,

children were all at the mercy of an unseen enemy.

In spring 1916, fearing that America would be provoked into entering the war,

Germany called off its second unrestricted U-boat campaign.

During it, the U-boats had sunk 212 ships.

While the British blockade and Germany's U-boats dominated the war in the Atlantic

and the North Sea, the British Navy had also been engaged in a very different and

disastrous campaign, 1500 miles to the east.

When war broke up, the man in charge of Britain's Navy

was the first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.

With the trench warfare on the western front getting nowhere, Churchill believed

the Navy provided another way to win the war.

His plan was to attack Germany's ally, Turkey.

Winston Churchill decides that an attack on Turkey through the Dardanell Straits

will knock Turkey out of the war, allow Britain to supply Russia with

weapons, and will help to defeat Germany by knocking away her supports.

So the object is a grand strategic manoeuvre

to win the war by attacking somewhere else.

In February 1915, British and French ships began to

bombard the Turkish force which guarded the Dardanelles.

The old pre-dreadnought battleships were in for a nasty surprise.

The Turks had managed to lay a line of mines, just where their allied fleet,

the French and British pre-duddlers would be manoeuvring.

The result was, three pre-duddlers sunk, hundreds

of lines lost, and a huge blow to British prestige.

The Allied sailors realised they were sitting ducks.

We went into the jaws of death today, but went to

God's mercy, where a turn without loss of life.

Although the majority of the sailors didn't think it was God's mercy,

they put it down to having three bats on board the ship.

Minesweepers tried to clear the minefield.

They had limited success, but eventually the forts were silenced.

Then on April 25th, British, French, Australian and New Zealand soldiers,

known as Anzacs, landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

I felt a distinct feeling of fear and uncertainty as I realised that many of the

soldiers on board these ships were for certain death.

I pictured in my mind hundreds being shot down before they reached the shore,

and then mown down long before they could leave the beaches.

Mown down long before they could leave the beaches and reach the Turks' positions.

The Turks were excellent defensive fighters, brilliantly led.

Both the German and the Turkish officers were superb.

The British, the Allied campankers of French were there

in large numbers as well, the French, British, the Anzacs.

They didn't really have a chance.

The land operation turned into a disaster.

In eight months, the Allies suffered 250,000 casualties.

Of these, 110,000 died.

In January 1916, the troops were evacuated.

Churchill was forced to leave the Admiralty.

After the failure of the Gallipoli Offensive, Britain and her allies will

never again try a major overseas offensive in this war.

It's the last big amphibious operation.

Means that the fighting will be confined to the European mainland, and all the

initiatives will now be fought out on land.

Unlike the army, it seemed the Navy's war would be a quiet one.

Watchfulness, blockade, and the peculiarities of life on board.

You couldn't carry enough water to let everybody have a bath, so we'd have a bath.

We'd have a bowl, a water, and then throw it over yourself like a bird.

But the officers had a wand, and the injured commander would paint a black mark

so far so the young officer didn't go too much in the bathroom.

There was the monotonous daily cycle of being on watch, resting, back on watch

again, and the one traditional consolation.

You had a bugler, it would sound up spirits, and then you'd go along and get

the total rum then, because we always had rum right through the first war, you know.

And then you had your dinner, and that all had to be washed up.

But it was a dirty, sticky arrangement in those days,

and can I say that every ship in the first world war...

Yeah, even on the battleships, you still got cockroaches and all that kind of thing.

So that you lived with the cockroaches, you didn't...

Well, as far as I was concerned, I used to think,

well, their life was more pure than what our life was.

In 1916, the daily routine was rudely, if briefly, interrupted.

Having called off the second unrestricted U-bird campaign, Germany needed a new

naval tactic, and appointed a new aggressive

fleet commander, Admiral Reinhard von Sheer.

The war on the Western Front was entering its bloodiest phase yet.

Since February, German and French soldiers had been fighting over the border town of

Verdun, each side suffering 350,000 casualties.

German naval commanders knew they couldn't just sit

back and watch their soldiers being slaughtered.

They had to do something.

Admiral von Sheer came up with an ambush plan

to destroy part of the British Grand Fleet.

It is possible, using mainly film of naval

exercises, to reconstruct how events unfolded.

von Sheer's idea was to send our German battle cruisers

from their ports of Kiel and Wilhelms Havern...

to patrol off the coast of Norway and tempt the British battle cruiser fleet of

Admiral Sir David Beatty out from its base at Recythe.

von Sheer would then send in German dreadnorts to destroy them before the main

body of the British fleet under Sir John Jellico could arrive from Scarpa Flow.

But Jellico did use from an intercepted radio signal that the Germans were up to

something and decided to anticipate them by taking his grand fleet to see.

At Scarpa Flow, sailors geared up for the battle they'd been awaiting for two years.

The CNC hoisted a momentous signal and raised

steam and rapport when ready to proceed.

Everybody seemed to have a premonition that the day had really arrived.

There was an almost electric atmosphere of expectation and suppressed excitement as

officers and men went about the work of preparing the sea.

On the same night, Beatty's fleet set sail from Recythe.

Imagine darling if you can, a fine though starless

night and twelve great ships steaming out of the fourth.

No lights visible and not a sound to be heard but the squish of the waves.

Watching German new boats did not realize

that the whole British fleet was now at sea.

von Scheer went ahead with his plan.

On May 31, 1916, the main German fleet set sail.

The sun rose magnificently covered the sea with its golden rays and soon showed us

the picture of the whole high sea's fleet proceeding

to meet the enemy, always a wonderful sight.

The two fleets were heading towards one another across the North Sea.

At midday, one of Beatty's commanders spotted the Germans.

Urgent.

Two cruisers, probably hostile, bearing south-south-east.

The Germans then spotted the British.

Suddenly I saw some big ships, black monsters,

six broad-beamed giants steaming in two columns.

The two fleets closed at a combined speed of 50 miles an hour.

The place was filled with dust and smoke and as hot as an oven.

At last we were hammering the horn after two years of weary waiting and watching.

The battle of Jutlin was underway.

The first phase turned into a British disaster.

Unfortunately for Beatty, his ships don't shoot very well.

They have disadvantages of light and weather, but they haven't done enough training.

And the German battle cruisers very quickly achieved five-pours superiority.

And two of his ships, the Queen Mary, in the Indifada, will

blow up and sink with the loss of almost all their crew.

A tremendous explosion occurred which must have blown the bowels to atoms.

Then another explosion.

I sank a considerable distance and on reaching the surface

could see only wreckage and oil floating on the surface.

I was standing beside to David Beatty and we

turned round to see the unpleasant spectacle.

He turned to me and said, there seems to be

something wrong with our bloody ships today.

The problem was not the ships, but the way in

which Beatty and his squadron were using them.

Speed was everything.

So every safety precaution that was introduced, you know, doors that had to be

opened and passages were closed off, were broken.

So that a hit on the gun turret would lead to an explosion and flash travelling down

into the magazine, where 120 tons of high explosive were waiting to go off.

The consequences were simply devastating and they just blew up.

And that's exactly what happened to the Indifada and the Queen Mary.

His ships badly hit, Beatty headed north to try to find Jellico's Grand Fleet.

Von Sheer went after him.

Within hours the Germans found themselves facing the entire British Grand Fleet.

That I suggest to you was a tremendous moment in anybody's life.

I remember thinking to myself, well we've lost a lot and we're going to lose more.

But we don't mind losing this and that as long as the two fleets meet.

The main battle of Jutland began.

This time the British Navy proved its superiority.

The Germans lost one dreadnought, four light cruisers and five destroyers.

But the British also lost another battle cruiser, the Invincible.

Of over one thousand men on board, only six survived.

The crew of a neighbouring ship, the Indomitable, watched as it went down.

We young Indomitable officers had particularly poignant feelings.

Since the day before we sailed, the junior officers of Invincible had come aboard us.

And a merry and ride as evening was had by all.

Now every one of those was a sleep in the deep.

In fading light, accurate firing became ever more difficult.

But both fleets continued to bombard each other.

The light was perhaps even more weird and awe-inspiring than the day.

Every now and then a tremendous explosion was heard, and

great flames a hundred feet high shot up into the sky.

This sort of thing went on all night till early dawn.

In the darkness, the German fleet ran for home and escaped unseen.

By the morning of the 1st of June, the Germans were

nearing the safety of Kiel and Wilhelm's Harren.

We went back to the harbour to receive hot coffee and food.

Like many of my comrades, I did not want them.

We laid down on the floor in a corner of the ship.

We did not care where we were and went to sleep.

We hadn't slept for 48 hours.

Jutland is just about the most controversial naval battle of all time.

Everybody says they won.

The Kaiser the next day said, the magic of Trafalgar is broken.

We've beaten the British.

On Sheer in his official report said, we must never do this again.

They'll wipe us out.

And that was the truth.

The Germans knew they were lucky to get home with

almost all of their ships and almost all of their men.

As in Germany, the British presented the Battle of Jutland as a great naval victory.

The Jellico knew that his losses had been substantially greater than the Germans,

both in terms of ships and lives.

He did however still control the North Sea.

For the German Navy.

For the German Navy.

It was back to square one.

There was still stalemate on the Western Front.

The British had launched their offensive at the Somme, suffering 600,000 casualties.

But the Somme had drained German blood too.

With its surface fleet bottled up in port, the only way the German Navy could help

was by returning to unrestricted U-boat warfare.

In February 1917, the fateful decision was made.

In the United States, the impact was dramatic.

A few months before, Woodrow Wilson had been re-elected American President,

telling his people that they could no longer isolate

themselves from the turmoil across the Atlantic.

There is much more involved in this election than domestic issues,

and much more involved in the world's situation than our people realize.

Democracy hangs in the balance, and its fate not only here, but throughout the world.

After the German declaration of unrestricted U-boat warfare, Wilson,

emboldened by his electoral mandate, gave Germany a final warning.

The Germans took no notice, an increased production of U-boats.

They now had 110 at sea.

If we are not finally to be bled to death, full use must be made of the U-boat as a

means of war, so as to destroy England's vital nerve.

During February and March 1917, U-boats succeeded in sinking no fewer than 500 ships.

The number of neutral merchant ships arriving in

British and Allied ports fell by three quarters.

Some U-boat skippers began to achieve staggering totals of ships sung.

As they returned to port after successful forays, they became national heroes,

rather like the aces of the air war.

The Germans used the full range of propaganda tricks

to emphasize the heroic status of the U-boat captains.

They started to fly flags.

They showed emblems of the numbers of ships they'd sunk.

They created newsreels.

They made them into celluloid heroes.

Had this small grey vessel which just submerged beneath

the waves accomplished all these things, was it possible?

Was it conceivable that such a small and insignificant vessel could disrupt the

mission of an entire great and powerful fleet?

How I envy the men in her crew.

The U-boat's success led to food rationing in Britain.

Even the troops on the western front were asked to tighten their belts.

1917 was a low point for the Allies, but America was edging ever closer to war.

The present German submarine warfare against

commerce is a warfare against all mankind.

It is a war against all nations.

The world must be made safe for democracy.

On April the 6th, United States finally declared war on Germany.

The British welcomed their new allies with open arms.

There was no foreign feeling about them, not a sign of jealousy.

No impatience from receiving orders from a foreign admiral.

They were single-minded in their endeavors to do their utmost for the common cause.

And in consequence, they proved to be a most valuable asset to the Allies.

But even with the Americans on board, the Allies

still had to find some way of defeating the U-boats.

As Germany's U-boats continued to mall Allied shipping, one tactic was to pack

merchant ships into convoys escorted by warships.

But that was purely for defense.

To attack U-boats, they first had to be found.

Airships began to be used to spot U-boats, which

still had to spend most of their time on the surface.

The airships had a 1,500-mile range and could fly for nearly 50 hours at a time.

Flying boats and float planes were armed with torpedoes, bombs and machine guns.

All ways of attacking U-boats lying on the surface.

We were attacked by an aeroplane.

He had slung up unseen in the bright sunshine and notified his arrival with a

load of bombs, which could easily have cost us our lives.

To find U-boats beneath the sea, the Allies used a new device, the hydrophone.

It was a microphone placed under water to

detect the sound of a U-boat's electric motors.

It was then possible to work out at what depth the submarine was lying.

That brought into play another new weapon, the depth charge.

Mines launched from ships and said to explode at a particular depth.

A depth charge burst with a frightful explosion.

Our hopes grew fainter as the risk of being crushed or blown up increased.

We worked on and on, if only to distract our mines

from the imminent doom at the bottom of the sea.

Another British idea was the Dover Barrage, a barrier of nets and mines

designed to stop U-boats coming through the channel.

Mine fields began to spread right across the North Sea.

In 1918, the Allies laid 70,000 mines to stop U-boats getting into the Atlantic.

It is a very unpleasant feeling when the boat

grazes against the mooring cable of a mine.

And death bumps and crashes against the hull.

Clearing mines was a nasty, dangerous job.

Occasionally U-boats managed to lay mines near British ports.

Once recovered, they could be individually diffused.

Out at sea, the minesweeper, initially converted fishing trawlers, came into service.

Ask any man who served at sea between 1914 and 1918, which was the most perilous

monotonous and bitterly uncomfortable work of the war afloat.

The reply, nine times out of ten, will be the work of the minesweepers.

Cables were used to cut mines from their mooring.

They were then destroyed with rifle fire.

One ingenious invention was the U-boat decoy called the Q-ship.

There was not a sign of life aboard.

We rose to the surface.

Suddenly the ship came to life.

Hidden potholes sprang open.

The stern gun was manned.

Other guns were unmasked and poured a devastating fire over us.

Finally, the British tried closing the U-boat havens on the Belgian coast.

Strange-looking craft, little more than platforms for large 15-inch guns,

were sent to bombard German batteries, protecting the U-boat harbors.

In April 1918, the port of Zibrugas attacked.

Three old ships were deliberately sunk across the entrance

to the harbor to try to block U-boats getting in or out.

During the operation, the British cruiser,

vindictive, was badly damaged and lucky to get heard.

By early 1918, this combined technology had the U-boat threat under control.

American troops could now be transported safely across the Atlantic to Europe.

The sheer weight of numbers was bound to tell.

But the British had also won the naval war of

blockade, partly by their acceptance of rationing.

Meat, butter and margarine became luxuries.

Potatoes, the staple diet.

Brashning was something Germany never introduced, and it meant that by the end,

food and supplies were running out.

Total war is all about the most efficient use of all your national resources.

In the First World War, the Germans were seriously

inefficient in their use of their resources.

They mobilized all of their agricultural workers out of the countryside,

into the army, and then used them in battle.

They didn't replace them.

This meant agricultural productivity collapsed.

They didn't mobilize female labor.

They didn't mobilize, to any large extent, any other available labor resource.

So agricultural production collapses.

This means they need to import food.

The British blockade means they can't import food.

So very steadily, the Germans find their rations being cut.

And from a diet rich in animal fats, they end up living on turnips.

The naval war had begun with the Dreadnought race, and by its end,

the array of American and British battleships

seemed to symbolize Allied victory at sea.

But this was not the real naval conflict.

The all-big gun battleship was, in a sense, a lineal descendant of Nelson's day.

The idea of throwing a huge weight of metal over

the greatest distance and destroying the enemy.

And during the First World War, that notion of big fleets, big national

fleets, meeting and clashing and deciding the outcome

of a war was really shown to be completely false.

War had changed.

All that glamour had gone.

It was now about logistics, survival, protection

of trade and defeating the enemy that way.

There was a final irony for the Dreadnought.

On the 10th of June, 1918, the Austrians put their star

Dreadnought, the Scent Istvan, out to sea in the Adriatic.

It was immediately hit by two Italian motor torpedo boats.

It took just three and a half hours to sink.

Astonishingly, only 89 men died.

But the demise of the battleship was there for all to see.