This episode begins in November, 1916, entering the third winter of the war. The battles for Verdun and the Somme, where the British introduce the tank, are about finished. Nobody has won and everyone has lost.
If there's a single sociopolitical lesson to be gotten from this series, it's made clear by this time. It's much easier to get into a war than it is to stop one. They tend to begin in a spirit of fervent, and even joyous jingoism, rather like fans cheering the entrance of their high school football team. It take a year or two and a few million deaths, of material and spiritual sacrifice, for the fans and players to realize there is no ball.
The combatants were becoming exhausted and were wondering about "peace." Britain, an island, after all, depended in shipping for many of its goods. But by 1916 the number of German U-boats had doubled, while the tonnage imports had fallen by a third. Ship building couldn't keep pace with the losses at sea. There was, as yet, no effective protection from submarine attacks.
The surface fleets of British and German battleships fought an engagement off Jutland. The Royal Navy got the worst of it, which was no help to morale. Nor was the Irish rebellion, quickly put down but a drain on the Army and an added source of tension.
The draft was introduced in Britain but it was of minimal use. Most of the fit men who were available had already joined. There were still about three million men between the ages of eighteen and forty three, but 2.6 million of them were in protected industries, building ships, tanks, weapons, ammunition. Other nations were hardly better off.
In this episode, with the weakening of emperors and hereditary monarchies, we can glimpse for the first time the shape of a new geopolitical pattern, an altering of the map of Europe, but not yet the adumbration of the war that was to follow twenty years later.
If there's a single sociopolitical lesson to be gotten from this series, it's made clear by this time. It's much easier to get into a war than it is to stop one. They tend to begin in a spirit of fervent, and even joyous jingoism, rather like fans cheering the entrance of their high school football team. It take a year or two and a few million deaths, of material and spiritual sacrifice, for the fans and players to realize there is no ball.
The combatants were becoming exhausted and were wondering about "peace." Britain, an island, after all, depended in shipping for many of its goods. But by 1916 the number of German U-boats had doubled, while the tonnage imports had fallen by a third. Ship building couldn't keep pace with the losses at sea. There was, as yet, no effective protection from submarine attacks.
The surface fleets of British and German battleships fought an engagement off Jutland. The Royal Navy got the worst of it, which was no help to morale. Nor was the Irish rebellion, quickly put down but a drain on the Army and an added source of tension.
The draft was introduced in Britain but it was of minimal use. Most of the fit men who were available had already joined. There were still about three million men between the ages of eighteen and forty three, but 2.6 million of them were in protected industries, building ships, tanks, weapons, ammunition. Other nations were hardly better off.
In this episode, with the weakening of emperors and hereditary monarchies, we can glimpse for the first time the shape of a new geopolitical pattern, an altering of the map of Europe, but not yet the adumbration of the war that was to follow twenty years later.