It's the summer of 1915 and the war in France has become a stalemate. The British and French are stuck in their trenches, like the Germans on the other side of No Man's Land. There was always death and danger but during quiet periods, a German in the trenches some dozen yards away might play popular English tunes on a cornet -- "There's a Long, Long Trail Awinding." The British might shout back, asking for another.
But not elsewhere. In the east, as one Russian general put it, "Our armies are drowning in their own blood." In one single thrust by the Germans, the Russians lost about three million men. That's more than the population of Chicago. The civilians, many of them illiterate farmers who had known deprivation before, now suffered in earnest. The Tsar's approval rating slumped.
In the south, the front ended in the mountains north of Italy and Italy, seeing that the Austrian army was busy elsewhere, declared war on the Axis hoping to gain territory. It was an entirely different terrain, with Austrian troops situated on all the important observation points, giving them magnificent views of the movements of the Italian Army below. The Italian general flung his men against these positions two times in succession, and tens of thousands were blown to bits by artillery, with no gain.
The Serbian Army was forced to retreat when the Bulgarians attacked their flank without a declaration of war. The Bulgarians and Serbs had hated each other since the Balkan Wars. A contingent of British and French troops landed in Greece but were hindered by the government in their attempt to aid the Serbs. In retreat, many of the Serbian soldiers simply starved to death and the nation itself lost one sixth of its population. The Germans and Austrians seemed to be winning everywhere.
I'm struck again by how seamlessly the narrative and the images, many of them unfamiliar, are blended together. It's a very carefully constructed series.