Germany developed tanks with improved speed, range and radio communications, and put them at the centre of their new battle-plan – Blitzkrieg. ibid.
The German military developed a radical plan ... Chlorine could be used as a weapon. WWI: The First Modern War s1e2: Clouds of Death
Ypres: The chlorine gas cloud killed five thousand allied troops within minutes, and injured five thousand more. ibid.
Within months, both sides were using poison gas. ibid.
German forces prepared to retaliate with the most horrific weapon of mass destruction of the First World War – mustard gas. ibid.
To try and break the deadlock of the trenches, Germany decided to deploy a devastating new weapon, taking the war into the air. WWI: The First Modern War s1e3: Massive Air Attacks
The LZ4 was Zeppelin’s largest airship to date. 446 feet ... It had a top speed of 30mph. ibid.
Life in the trenches was primitive and miserable. ibid.
There were only 33 anti-aircraft guns in the whole of England at the time. ibid.
Like all early aircraft the BE2c was made of wood and canvas with a top speed of just 80 mph. ibid.
Type R Super Zeppelin 650 feet 60 mph ... Twice as many bombs as before. ibid.
The deliberate targeting of civilians with aerial bombing. ibid.
Both sides were desperate to develop new ways to win the War. With the world’s largest Navy the British have controlled the seas for more than two hundred years. But Germany believed a new weapon could finally end centuries of British naval supremacy. WWI: The First Modern War: Underwater Killers, H2 2014
The race was on to build a submersible warship. ibid.
The great liner [Lusitania] sank in just eighteen minutes, with nearly 2,000 souls on board. ibid.
The depth charge levelled the playing field. ibid.
They were as young as fourteen. Nearly a quarter of a million answered the call to arms in the First World War ... This is the story of five teenage Tommies. Teenage Tommies, BBC 2014
Soldiers were supposed to be nineteen to fight. ibid.
This is the incredible story of a group of Allied officers attempting the impossible: to break out from one of Germany's most brutal and secure prisoner of war camps. They spent nine frantic months digging a tunnel with improvised tools, facing asphyxiation and the threat of being buried alive. The First Great Escape, National Geographic 2015
The further the men dug the less oxygen there was to breathe. ibid.
Their daring and inventive escape remains an inspirational example of courage and persistence in the face of adversity. ibid.
During the First World War the Truth died every day alongside soldiers whose suffering was obscured by big words like Honour or Civilisation. Gallipoli: When Murdoch Went to War, BBC 2015
In the autumn of 1915 Keith Murdoch wrote a first-hand report on the Gallipoli campaign. This young Australian journalist described how a daring military adventure had gone disastrously wrong. And he didn’t pull his punches ibid.
A battle fought with words, ink and paper. ibid.
Keith Murdoch missed most of the Gallipoli campaign. ibid.
7th May 1915, World War I is less than a year old: America remains neutral. 12 miles off the coast of Ireland the world’s finest passenger liner [Lusitania] has entered the war zone. Lusitania: 18 Minutes That Changed the World, Channel 5 2015
At ten minutes past two, a single German torpedo strikes her hull. ibid.
Her seven decks accommodate over two thousand passengers. ibid.
Only six of forty-four lifeboats were successfully launched. ibid.
‘Pushing aside the bodies of drowned children and babies like lily-pads on a pond’. ibid. Diana Preston, author Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy
More than seven hundred people have been saved. ibid.
I had never seen so many dead men clumped together as what I saw then. And I thought to myself, The whole world’s dead; they’re all dead. I Was There: The Great War Interviews, Yesterday 2015
More than two hundred and fifty eye-witnesses were filmed for The Great War series. ibid.
We soldiers stabbed each other, strangled each other, went for each other like mad dogs. ibid. German survivor
You hear in the distance quite a mild pop as the gun fired five miles away, and then a humming sound as it approached you through the air growing louder and louder until it was like the roar of an aeroplane coming in to land on the tarmac. ibid. Charles Carrington
A man’s world: Women had no part in it; and when I went on leave, what one did was to escape out of the man’s world into a woman’s world. ibid. survivor
On 29th May 1916 Room 40 was able to advise the chief of war staff … that the German high seas fleet was about to put to sea … The British now had a huge opportunity to destroy the German fleet once and for all because of the code-breakers’ skill. Breaking the Codes, Movies4men 2016
Sassoon, Nothing of Importance: The book itself was of very great importance. Tt is the memoir of an officer who had served with Sassoon in the so-called Poets Battalion. War of Words: Soldier-Poets of the Somme, BBC 2016
Poetry and prose that still relays what this particular battle felt like. ibid.
Sassoon found himself lionised – he was a war hero. Something that would make his future criticisms of the conflict more telling. ibid.
It was just before 7.30 on the morning of 1st July 1916. Along a twenty-five-mile battlefront in northern France, British and French troops were about to embark on an offensive they’d been told would be a walkover, and would hasten the end of the First World War. Peter Barton, The Somme 1916 – From Both Sides of the Fence I: First Day – Erster Tag, BBC 2016
What exactly happened here and why? ibid.
For months the Germans had been intercepting British telephone conversations. ibid.
Haig became responsible for fifteen miles of battlefront. ibid.
‘If only they’d run, they would have overwhelmed us.’ ibid. German with machine gun
This shrewd use of terrain that explains why so many suffered and died here. ibid.
Barbed-wire … it’s really a weapon of mass destruction. ibid.
Internment … hundreds of allegations of Allied brutality. ibid.
It was habitual British underestimation of their German enemy that led to a tragic underestimation of the medical requirements – they were overwhelmed. ibid.
Here on the Somme in 1916 this low ridge was the most dangerous place on the planet. Then, it was a wilderness, a ribbon of precision engineered mutual annihilation. Peter Barton, The Somme 1916 – From Both Sides of the Fence II: Defence in Depth
The British resorted to brutal firepower – eliminate the woods and everything in them. ibid.
The mundane shell-hole was about to become the foundation of German resistance. ibid.
The Australian ordeal was far from over. ibid.
The bullet-proof cavalry was on its way. ibid.
As Autumn arrived, expectations had been dashed time after time by enemy resistance. The battlefield was now a killing zone. Peter Barton, The Somme 1916 – From Both Sides of the Fence III: End – Spiel
284 British and Empire soldiers to face the firing squad for casting away arms, cowardice or desertion during the war. ibid.
There was an equality of suffering. Let us leave it at that. ibid.
Eight miles north of the Scottish mainland lies the island of Hoy, the south-east corner of the Orkney Islands … In the early hours of July 30th 1914 ten soldiers from the Orkney garrison were dispatched here … To take immediate control of the telegraph station. David Hayman, War at Sea: Scotland’s Story, BBC 2016
For the Royal Navy this would be a war like never before. ibid.
A fighting force of forty thousand men. ibid.