[Aptorian]

Just learned of this channel. It's like porn for war and history nerds.

The Great War uploads a new episode every week that summarizes what happened in that week during the first world war exactly a hundred years ago. It seems to switch between big events and small events, important changes and small almost personal clashes.

Their research seems very exhaustive and they have a comprehensive list of sources and credits.

They did a prelude to the war trilogy intro:



This is the most current episode as of this weekend:



They've been doing this for two years straight and plan to continue making weekly videos until the end of 2018.

This post has been edited by Apt: 30 October 2016 - 07:01 PM

[HoosierDaddy]

I've watched this channel before. WW1 is so fucking depressing.

No more.

[Cause]

Will check it out! I dont think I need a week by week acount but I have always been fascinated by WW1.

The Sheer lunacy of WW1 is mind boggling. The first truly modern war in which the weapons were generations ahead of the tactics.

[worry]

Truly an example of a sequel being better than the original.

[Morgoth]

Cause, on 30 October 2016 - 07:36 PM, said:

Will check it out! I dont think I need a week by week acount but I have always been fascinated by WW1.

The Sheer lunacy of WW1 is mind boggling. The first truly modern war in which the weapons were generations ahead of the tactics.

Well, yes and no. Both the French and the German armies had adapted their tactics to fit the modern weaponry (though the Russians, Austrians and so forth mainly had not). The issue more than anything was the belief that artillery would be more efficient than it was. Also barbed wire.

The really crazy stories are mostly mythical, like the Polish cavalry charges and so forth.

[Cause]

I dont know Morgoth, even the development of stormtroopers and infiltration tactics and the like failed to make a meaningfull contribution to the war. The new tactics proved able to penerate and defeat a section of the trench line but even than they had no way of exploiting the breach fast enough. It truly was a war of absolute attrition. I believe attrition was the official German strategy as early as 1916. Even the late battles of the war, the 3rd pattles of Ypres or the battle of cambrai (which arguably began the end of the war) failed to make signfificant breakthroughs and caused approximatly equal casulties on both sides.

I am fascinated by the war because when I try to picture myself in the war, I both can and can't understand how people could have been willing to commit to going over the top or how generals could sacrifice so many lives for so little if any gain.

Thanks to this channel I discovered a very interesting side to WW1 that I had somehow never picked up on before. Fritz Harber before converting to christianity was Jewsih. His chemical process was instrumental for making ammonia which was essential for Germanies muntions manufacturing. He was also the farther of Germanies chemical warfare efforts and he developed Zyklon A which eventually became Zyklon B which killed was used in the Holocaust. In the grand scheme of history this does not really mean anything but I still find it a fascinating foornote of history. Also fascinated me that mmirroring this on the other side, Chaim Wiesman another jew developed the process to manufacture Acetone which mas needed by the british for their munitions manufacturing. Weizman turned this discovery into significant political capital to foster the creation of Israel.

Which reminds me (I leanrt this from a documentary) of my other favourite WW1 story. To help collapse Tzarist russia in WW1 the germans sentLenin into russia. Which by the time WW2 rolled around may have seriously bit them in the ass as it gave rise to soviet russia and left stalin in charge.

worry, on 30 October 2016 - 08:35 PM, said:

Truly an example of a sequel being better than the original.

Couldn't have been so bad if we got a sequel! Then again we often have trouble finding new ideas, I hear producers are thinking of rebooting the cold war

This post has been edited by Cause: 02 November 2016 - 05:31 PM

[worry]

It's like T1 and T2. Good original, great sequel, and each a watershed moment in the tapestry of mechanized death orgies.