Episode list

During the early 20the century belle Epoque, after a century of relatively peaceful social progress, nobody in Europe, with its intensely intermarried dynasties, imagined the continent was heading for an arguably unprecedented inferno, although the constellation of defensive alliances was a recipe for the Great War. The Sarejevo murder by a Serbian nationalist of the Austrian heir to the imperial throne sparkled a series war declarations opposing the German-Hansburg axis to an Anglo-Franco-Russian-based coalition. The quick victory everybody expected within months eluded the Germans, who got bogged down in northern France after diverting two armies to the eastern front too soon sabotaged their sole change to hit on Paris, so the Marne defeat led to trenches along an endless front, where industrialized warfare of unseen apocalyptic horror and diabolizing the opponent institutionalized the continent's suicide.

Despite superior artillery to deal quickly with allied forts, the German offensive is quickly bogged down roughly over the French borders, while the czar resorts to scorched earth retreat. The Western front is transformed into a long hell of opposing trenches, sites of endless bombardments and bloody assaults, producing millions of victims, often dying or crippled, and the arsenal of industrialized horror grows, extending to toxic gasses and aircraft. The home front suffers, deprived of unprecedented supplies needed for the front, war production with women filling in, millions of POWs, bombardments by zeppelin, naval blockades. Despite propaganda and moral boosts, the years of increasing suffering spells revolutions, which will bring down the Russian empire first, ultimately Germany and Austria-Hungary too.

As the years progressed, the body count rose unprecedented, also among citizens as never before in an unprecedented, industrialized total warfare concept, from more destructive weapons, blockades, disease, while the whole society was thoroughly disrupted, with underpaid women and prisoners doing enlisted men's work. The often traumatic experiences, on the front or as POW, would forge major military and/or political actors from both sides in Word War II, which sprung from the Great War due to the effects of the ill-considered Versailles peace treaties. Revolutions resulting from war misery contributed to its end, first Russia's collapse in revolt against the czar ad next Communist takeover, finally German troops and people ending the imperial government and installing a republic to negotiate peace.