World War I in Colour (2)

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[edit] General Information

War Documentary hosted by Kenneth Branagh, published by Channel 5 in 2003 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

World War I in Colour is a Channel 5 documentary series made with the cooperation of the Imperial War Museum, featuring all aspects of the land, sea and air war covered in separate programmes. Up until now, World War 1 had always been seen as a war that happened in black & white, but that was not the reality. It was the first war to see the development of the fighter plane, the introduction of poison gas, the inventions of the tank and the flame thrower and the wide use of machine guns and heavy artillery, which caused such mass destruction. On July 28, 1914 First World War broke out. It was a war that would reap millions of victims, changing the map and fundamentally influence the political power factor. Several of the global world powers were involved in this military conflict that took place between 1914 and 1918. On one side were Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers), and later Turkey and Bulgaria and on the other hand, France, Russia and Britain (the Triple Entente), together with Serbia, and later Japan, Italy, Romania and the 1917 United States and further a number of other countries. Over 70 million people participated in the War harvested more than 15 million victims, making it one of history's deadliest conflicts. The background was a series of events and increased military activity escalated tensions between the two major blocs of allies. The shots in Sarajevo June 28, 1914 is a single event that is strongly associated with the outbreak of WWI. This documentary provides an historical overview and all materials are carefully processed and converted to color. Using rare archive footage from sources around the World, including Britain's own Imperial War Museum, this 6 part series has been painstakingly colourised using the latest computer-aided technology to bring the first world war to colour, as experienced by those who fought and endured it. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh, this landmark series brings a unique perspective to the events of 1914-1918 which saw 65 million men take arms against one another and a world thrown into chaos. 3BM Television and Nugus/Martin Production for Five

[edit] Catastrophe

"Not a tree stands. Not a square foot of surface has escaped mutilation.There is nothing but the mud and the gaping shell holes; a chaotic wilderness of shell holes, rim overlapping rim, and, in the bottom of many, the bodies of the dead..." CAPTAIN ROWLAND FIELDING
WWI WAS ON A SCALE NEVER KNOWN OR IMAGINED BEFORE...
The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Serb in Sarajevo, started a spiral into war which engulfed most of Europe, and then the world.
The Austrians invaded Serbia which led to tension between Germany and Russia, the two leaders of the Germanic and Slav empires. When Germany launched a pre-emptive attack on France the conflict escalated to include Britain and Russia. By the end of 1914, the stage was set for almost four years of bloody stalemate and trench warfare on the Western Front, and a sweeping and ultimately decisive war in the east.
This first episode, Catastrophe, looks at the fact that between 1914 and 1918, 65 million men took up arms. Ten million were killed and 20 million were emotionally and physically incapacitated. The war ushered in new terminologies, new and massive weapons and a scale of artillery barrages never before imagined.

[edit] Slaughter in the Trenches

"If any man tells you he went over the top and wasn't scared, he's a damn liar." HARRY PATCH: DUKE OF CORNWALL'S LIGHT INFANTRY. BORN 1898
THESE YEARS WOULD PRODUCE A NEW AND DEADLY EXPRESSION - "GOING OVER THE TOP"
Invading German Army forces face the British and French allies in the trenches. The French halt the German advance at the Battle of the Marne, initiating four years of trench warfare. After the German failed offensive on the Western Front in autumn 1914, both sides were bogged down in an unbroken line of trenches from the borders of Switzerland to the coast of the North Sea.
For more than three years, the commanders on the Western Front tried to find ways of breaking the stalemate. By the beginning of 1918, the Front had only moved a few miles and millions had been killed.
However Russia had been knocked out of the war and the United States had come in on the Allied side. The Germans knew that if they couldn't win the war in the West swiftly in the spring of 1918, they were doomed.

[edit] Blood in the Air

"A glorious death! Fight on and fly on to the last drop of blood and the last drop of petrol... a death for a knight." BARON MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN
MILITARY COMMANDERS BEGAN TO REALISE THAT FLIGHT MIGHT BE USEFUL FOR WAR.
When World War I began, powered flight was barely ten years old, but all the major combatant armies had small air forces mainly used for reconnaissance and artillery spotting.
Soon pilots were taking up pistols and rifles to attack the enemy and within months machine guns mounted to fire through an aircraft's propellers had been invented, and the first fighters were born. This new warfare was to prove just as deadly as the trenches, where pilots flew into battle with as little as five hours flying experience, with an average life expectancy of 11 days in 1914.
For the next three years they grappled over the Western Front in massive dogfights. By 1918 many theorists were arguing that air power would be the decisive factor in any future conflict.

[edit] Killers of the Sea

"The Lusitania is a godsend to the British. It's quite the most stupid thing the Germans could have done." PROFESSOR ANDREW LAMBERT, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON
THIS SEA WAR WAS ABOUT INNOVATION AND DAZZLING ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY
Naval rivalry between the empires of Britain and Germany had played a major factor in the build up to World War I. By August 1914 Germany and Britain were building massive and expensive warships – the dreadnoughts. Despite expectations, fear of losing their ships meant that both fleets stayed in port for the first two years, and when the great naval battle did come - at Jutland in 1916 - it was indecisive.
The British swiftly put a stranglehold on all German overseas trade, and gradually began to starve the country. Britain's survival depended on keeping her trade routes open, and for this reason Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare on merchant shipping, using a new and as yet untried weapon - the submarine.
The early success of their U-boats was offset by the side effect of bringing the United States into the war against Germany, a move which ensured Germany's ultimate defeat.

[edit] Mayhem on the Eastern Front

"Between the trenches are any amount of dead and decomposing bodies of our own men and Turks lying on the heather. The smell is awful." CAPTAIN GUY NIGHTINGALE
THE WAR ON THE EASTERN FRONT WOULD RESHAPE THE MAP OF EUROPE FOREVER
The second great battlefront of World War I was on Germany's eastern border. There the armies of three great empires - Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary - clashed in a series of titanic struggles which were to change the face of Europe forever.
It was a war of movement, with sweeping offensives, involving millions of men, ebbing and flowing around isolated fortresses. Despite massive bloodshed, the huge Russian army held out until a popular uprising deposed Nicholas Il, and the Germans and Austrians finally achieved victory. Against the Germans, 50,000 Russians were killed or wounded at the battle of Tannenberg. German Generals Hindenberg and Erich von Ludendorff, spurred on by their easy victories against the Russians, dreamed of an extended German empire to the East.
Lenin sets the October Revolution in motion. Russia collapsed into turmoil, but the end of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires followed soon afterwards.

[edit] Victory and Despair

"The First World War was certainly tragic, but it wasn't futile. In the First World War the Allies achieved a great negative victory; they prevented the domination of Europe by militaristic Germany." DR. GARY SHEFFIELD, KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
THIS IS THE STORY OF 1918 - THE YEAR THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
1918 opened with Russia's collapse meaning that Germany had a brief window of opportunity to win the war in the West before the strength of the new American armies made the Allies unbeatable. On the Western Front 2 million British and 3 million French were captured, wounded or killed – over a few miles of French and Belgian mud. In March 1918, the Allies hung on grimly during a massive German offensive. General von Ludendorff attacked along a 64-mile front which was to be the greatest attack yet seen in modern industrialized warfare. The Germans advanced 20 miles in 14 days, and von Ludendorff set his sights on Paris and victory. But then in July the Allies began a series of rolling offensives, led largely by the British and American armies. They pushed the exhausted Germans back, until defeat was inevitable. But tragically for the future, the Germans were able to agree an armistice while their armies were still on occupied territory. They marched home apparently unbeaten - and the myth of the 'stab in the back' by corrupt politicians was born. A myth which, when combined with the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, was to propel Adolf Hitler to power only fifteen years later...

[edit] Tactics and Strategy

WWI saw the introduction of technical innovation and industrial weapons manufacture on an unprecedented scale. Poison gas, fighter aircraft, heavy bombers, railway guns and heavy duty mines all took their toll of millions of Europe's armies.
The invention and use of the tools of war: Machine Guns, Constant Artillery bombardment, Barbed Wire, Tanks, Aircraft, Submarines, Flamethrowers, Grenades, High Explosive... All came down to the suffering of individual soldiers, it becomes painfully obvious why World War One happened the way it did... The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 35 million.
As well as mechanical innovation, there was a gradual development of tactics and strategy which have been painstakingly researched and explained in this special programme using state of the art computer graphics in order to explain how the scientists and military commanders attempted to break the stalemate of the Western Front.
Shock troops, underground mining, strategic bombing and the introduction of the tank all played their part in revolutionising the form which the war took over 4 years, so that by 1918, a total transformation had taken place in fighting methodology. This programme shows how these great changes took place.

[edit] Making the Series

A 15-minute behind-the-scenes feature with the team of producer Philip Nugus and director Jonathan Martin discussing the production, including justification of colourisation.
Nugus Martin Productions provided original black and white footage from the series "The Century of Warfare" and Sony Pictures Entertainment project managed West Wing Inc. to carry out the colourisation process. Using the very latest computer-aided technology colour was introduced to the entire action to show World War 1 as it was seen by those who fought it.
Production company 3BM added interviews from veterans and narration by Kenneth Branagh, to tell the story of the was as it has never been seen before bringing a unique perspective to the events of 1914- to 1918 which saw 65 million men take arms against one another.
Managing director of Nugus Martin, Philip Nugus: "'The Century of Warfare' contains approximately 75 percent of material which we selected and transferred from original nitrate film which had never previously been seen on television. We have been waiting ten years for colourisation technologies to reach the required standard to match our programmes."

[edit] Screenshots

[edit] Technical Specs

Video Codec: x264 CABAC High@L4
Video Bitrate: 2 500 Kbps
Video Resolution: 702x574
Display Aspect Ratio: 1.739
Frames Per Second: 25.000 fps
Audio Codec: AC3
Audio Bitrate: 224 kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: english
RunTime Per Part: 47 min 3 s - 51 min 15 s
Number Of Parts: 8
Part Size: 292 MB - 999 MB
Source: DVD
Encoded by: DocFreak08