The centennial of the outbreak of World War I is here and while many Americans may shrug, the rest of the world knows better. The war that began in the summer of 1914 destroyed three empires and undermined two more, triggered the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Fascism and Nazism, led directly to World War 2 and the Holocaust, and set conditions for the troubles that continue to plague the Middle East. Oh, and it elevated the U.S. to world power status, enmeshing Americans in the problems of faraway places.
The Great War, as it was once called, has seldom been documented as compellingly as in “The First World War: The Complete Series.” Out on DVD, the Military Channel program stands like a giant amidst the multitude of mediocre documentaries proliferating on cable in recent years. For one thing, there are no cheesy historical reenactments or bad sub-Matrix computer images. The format revolves around now and then—places from the war zones as they look today and archival footage, much of it seldom (if ever) seen. Who thinks of German troops in spiked helmets, clowning and mugging the camera as they marched to the front? Startling images such as those are among the treats.
The opening scene is shot in a park outside Belgrade where families picnic in the grass. Narrator Jonathan Lewis informs us that the park was where the assassin who started World War I, Gavril Princip, went for target practice. He was known as a poor shot, teased by his fellow gun club students, but with the help of a secret society within the Serbian military, Princip killed the heir to the Austrian throne in an event that sparked the conflagration.
“The First World War” goes deeper than most TV documentaries into the events of the summer of 1914 precipitating history’s costliest war as measured by casualties. An anarchist bent on “destroying the present system through terrorism,” Princip was used by extreme nationalists for their own ends. The Serbian ambassador in Vienna tried to warn the victim, the Archduke Ferdinand, but was ignored. Ferdinand was a reformer whose plans might have transformed the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a viable multi-ethnic society, but he was careless with his own security and traveled around dangerous Sarajevo in an open car with few guards. In life Ferdinand was a champion of peace, in death he became an excuse for war.
Anyone interested in “The First World War” will want to read David Reynolds’ largely excellent if occasionally imprecise analysis in The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century. Reynolds, a Cambridge University historian, is focused on the war’s outcomes, which include the Irish uprising that partitioned the island, and the reconstructing of Continental Europe’s boundaries, drawn as much on the battlefield as around the peace conference table. Reynolds also touches on the ways the war is remembered through poetry (especially in Britain) and other literature, as well as motion pictures. Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli (1981) defined the way Australians think about their country’s history; in the UK, entire generations perceive the conflict as presented by the ambitious BBC TV documentary “The Great War” (1964), despite the controversy it stirred among historians for its sympathetic portrayal of the country’s military leaders.
