Could You Survive as a German Soldier in World War One?

They said it would be over in a few weeks They said we would march through Paris They never said it would be anything like this Kaiser Hindenburg Ludendorf They are all liars Early September 19 194 The German advance had arrived within 30 Mi of the French capital executing a modified version of the schen plan designed to rapidly attack France through neutral Belgium before turning south to encircle the French army on the border, the Germans had made significant advances into enemy territory, but after a series of successful counteroffensives by of the British and French forces, the Germans were forced to retreat and eventually dug north of the River Ann, this marked the end of mobile warfare and an introduction to the stalemate in this episode.

I will join the Imperial German Army on the Western Front, where you will find out if conditions were different from those on the opposite side of No Man's Land. They would have had viable electric toilets. A stark contrast to the allies. How ingenious new strategies would shape your experience on the battlefield. The specialized miners would then dig tunnels up to 12M long and determine your chances of survival. The first troops they attacked thought it was a smoke screen. You can fight these tanks. You can stop these tanks. Keep firm. You can defeat these things. So the question is:

could

you

survive

the trenches? a

german

soldier

during the first

world

war the defeat of the

german

army in the first battle of man in the late summer of 1914 crushed any hope of a march on the french capital the schen plan had failed and the decision was made to dig a line solid approximately 50 km north of where they had arrived in early September in the following months, once the German positions were established, both the German and Franco-British armies would continually attempt to outflank each other by moving ever closer to the North Sea. . to the sea, as it became known, extended the front lines from the Belgian coast at Newport to the Swiss border in Germany, conscription had been the norm since long before the war in 1914, civilians were expected to serve a minimum of 2 or 3 years in training and active South from the age of 20, after this they would return to civilian life, but they

could

be reconnaissance scpt in case of a war until the age of 45 maintaining such a large group of trained men like the German army. had the ability to rapidly mobilize and expand its size in the first year of the war, within 12 days it had grown from 800,000 to 3.5 million men equipped with a basic uniform rifle and a halberd, the iconic leather spiked helmet used in the first two years of In the war he was ready to enter the front to protect the Fatherland, so Dicky Here I am, the iron youth of the Kaiser of Germany, how accurate would it be to say that at this point in the war 1914 German volunteers are full of optimism? and enthusiasm, right?

Of course. The Germans can't wait to get to the front. They're going to be afraid that everything will be finished for Christmas too soon. They absolutely want to be in front. We are full of enthusiasm as are our recruits and in 1914 they would have been dressed and what I am wearing now, tell me a little about the uniform I am wearing right now. Well, what you have is Early War. German uniform, so if we start from the bottom here we have the Jack Boots very different from those worn by the British. The British wear booties with putties, there are no putties here, okay, and then going up, we have this grade.

The suit was the one they wore in the 19th century, well yes, what you essentially have there is a uniform from the Napoleonic Wars that has been updated, it's more of a gray color fi a few years before the First World War. The Germans still wear blue uniforms like the French, uh, the French, um, at the beginning of World War I, they wear these, this, this glorious, this glorious uniform, that would be, you know, it wouldn't be out of place in New York. catwalk um so they wear these bright red pants, these red pants, this beautiful blue tunic and the KY Rouge, as well as the Red Hat, we've also gotten more up to date here in the German Army, we have a gray uniform that matches much better you mentioned what the French wore on their heads, I mean the elephant in the room, here's this helmet, here, the pickle halberd, why the hell did the German

soldier

s wear a big old Spike on top of their helmets in the beginning from the war? the war well, it is not like many people think, you know that the Germans did not charge against the enemy like that with their Spike um the pickle helber or to give it its official German name the Spitzer ladder helmet the leather helmet with the spike or the spike the idea Behind the point at the top is a cavalry with sabers approaching you and they push you with the saber, which will cause it to fly down the side and straighten itself into a rolled up blanket.

We would have here, so it still is and it comes from this kind of influence of the Prussian army, right? Still, it still is. Going back to the 19th century, cavalry charges. You absolutely don't see many of them as the war goes on, but at the beginning of the war maybe yes, I mean, yes, it is, but we also think of this as a helmet. very German if you look at what the British Army wears in the 1880s, in the 1890s they wear the National Service helmet. which is a felt helmet and also has a spike on the top, so we copied the Germans in that style too and talked to each other about the rest of my equipment, how is this different from the British?

What we have? Well essentially I'm not a fan of this gear, it's very hard to put on, it always falls apart, it's very different to the British gear, essentially what we have here, our ammo bags here for the loads, you have 60 rounds in this one. side and 60 rounds on this side, so you have 12 in total, compare that to the 150 that the older Brit uses. If you turn for just a second, give us a 12. You've got a water bottle back there. You have something called a bread bag here for your rations and your personal bits and on the fire side here you also have your bayonet.

Okay, it's much thicker than the British one. Yes, it's called. It's called The Butcher Blade Bayonet. Basically because it has the same profile as a blade that butchers would use. There were other versions. There was a Pioneer version that had a toothache in the back and was supposed to be used as a Pioneer tool for pioneers. to cut wood, but we really continued with the propaganda for that look at the horrendous German bayonets designed solely to worsen wounds and of course, Dicky, you mentioned the 792 ammunition when we got to what they would have been fed. in the Maza G 98 yes, a basic rifle for all German soldiers, yes, and that is why this rifle is interesting because the bolt action and the action are replicated all over the

world

.

It is a very popular rifle, works excellently in warfare, but may not be ideal for trench warfare. Alright? If you look at its total length and then add one of these things here, yeah, I just saw that. Okay, if you're fighting your way through a trench system like this, this is a very long weapon, so what does it have in Firepower. and you know that it lacks reliability in mobility, yes, absolutely, if you compare it with the Le Enfield short charger, which is much better suited to these trench conditions, but also another thing that is not very suitable is the way you shoot it , the bolt comes out from the side. yes I noticed it right, so with the lean field the bolt is cocked with this one, if you raise it up to the shoulder and bring it back you will hit yourself in the face, so you will have to lower it away from your face to Reload it with Le Enfield , you can continue cycling the bolts and shooting continuously until you run out of ammunition.

Another disadvantage of the German's main gun was that its ammunition capacity could only hold five rounds in its chamber. Mace was seen. as an inferior rifle compared to its British counterpart which could hold a 10-round magazine, but the bolt-action rifle was certainly not the only weapon the German Army had in its arsenal at this time of the 1914 war,5 regardless of type. of weapons that the Germans have. defending yourself or storming enemy trenches, okay, so they have a variety of different hand grenades, um, ranging from things like the cougal, which is a big bomb-shaped bomb, which is more of a defensive grenade that you throw a fortification, you drop it because it's so big you can't really get away from the shrapnel radius.

You have things like the disc grenade that you throw well like a disc, uh, terrible design because it has detonators on the side that has to land for it to detonate you have a very small grenade um an anti-personnel grenade called an egg grenade the Ein hands Granata that looks like an egg like that is called an egg grenade um possibly one of The most famous grenades that the Germans have is something called a stick grenade or a steel hand grenade. Okay, you have a big long piece of wood and the grenade on the end has a porcelain ball on the end.

You take that out. and you pull a string that goes up the handle and then detonates within a few seconds. You have leverage on your side so you can throw it much further, of course, yeah, yeah, and that's what they're using throughout the whole process. The whole war, right? And you almost see a similar version during the second world, very, very similar, yes, and besides rifles and grenades, of course, they have this Beast here, the mg08, now this really is the nightmare of the British. army, isn't it? Yes, it is an excellent machine gun. It has the same caliber of 792 rounds that the Mouser fires.

You can use it in several different ways. You can use it offensively and defensively. What the Germans would do is set up their barbed wire up top and that would funnel the tomies and the French into killing zones in front of these machine guns when they have this thing firing what kind of rate of fire do we do this, we're talking 450 rounds One minute Wow, in terms of portability, how do you need a crew behind, who would be designated as the machine gunner? Yes, obviously, you would have a crew to fire it, you have your main machine gun, you are the person who fires it. but you will also have others feeding the bullets here and to keep it working you must also keep it filled with water.

This machine gun is water cooled. It's okay if you shoot a machine gun without it being water. cooled or air cooled it's going to overheat, so over here you can see you have a huge fat jacket that's going to fill with water when you fire the machine gun, the barrel is going to heat up right in the water. Here you will prevent it from getting so hot which is also very similar to the Vicor machine gun and you mentioned the mobility of this weapon. You can set it up on its bipod and you can also move the direction.

It is not like this? It is a very versatile weapon. It is not fixed in one position. You can upload it here and then you can move the machine gun to where you need it. It's incredibly advanced for the moment, isn't it? Yes, it's where the machine guns came in. I suppose in the future, and you can imagine, this thing responsible for so many British casualties must have been absolutely devastated not only to be on the receiving end but to be the one who fired this weapon. The lethality of the German machine gun was enhanced by The design of the trenches in which they were located contrasted with the British trenches.

German lines were often more sophisticated and elaborate, dug at least 12 feet deep into high ground and reinforced with concrete and steel beams. Specially designed pillboxes were built to protect keys. machine gun positions against enemy fire and artillery bombardment more willing to stand still and defend territory they had already captured the German army designed their nets with greater attention to detail when possible built in a zigzag shape to limit damage from the shell explosions and built with adequate drainage systems to prevent flooding and it was not only the key mortar and communications positions that were well fortified, some of the homes far from the front line were dug 50 feet underground reinforced with concrete These could potentially have housed hundreds of beds, they would have had electric toilets, a stark contrast to the open-air trenches of the Allies and this would have given the soldiers peace of mind and confidence, a relative safe haven in which they could enjoy a rest. downtime, singing songs, playing games and, of course, enjoying your portions.

When the war began, the standard daily ration for German troops included some bread, egg or field biscuits known as hard kaks, preserved meat, often in the form of airast or pea sausage, potatoes and vegetables, all for soak with a little coffee mixed with sugar. They were also provided with two cigars and two cigarettes, while beer and wine were provided to the Bavarian army troops. The German high command considered alcohol dangerous because it made soldiers coarse and stupid. The iron portiondelivered to the troops in the field consisted of three daily servings of 250 g of field biscuit 200 g of corned beef or 170 g of bacon 150 g of canned vegetables 25 g of coffee and 25 g of salt the amount of meat in the ration steadily declined as the war progressed, by 1917 meat was present in only a third of meals, even potatoes, were in short supply by 1918.

Meat had completely disappeared from the Russians, leading many soldiers Germans behind the lines supplemented their diet by buying or trading with a civilian population of the occupied territories, while the Russians were still relatively generous in the early years of the war and the soldiers were sheltered in these underground bunkers, morale was high within the Kaiser's army and you can understand why you would have almost felt invincible here until you heard With the word gas in 1915, at the Battle of EA, the German army ushered in a new era of chemical warfare on April 22 at 5:00 pm. A wave of asphyxiating gas released from cylinders embedded in the ground by specialized German troops suffocated the Allied line at the northern edge of the EA salient, causing panic and a struggle to

survive

a new form of weapon, chlorine gas, which irritated lung tissue. and caused suffocation.

The potentially fatal effect forced two French colonial divisions north of Era to abandon their positions, creating a 5m gap in the Allied line defending the city. A panicked rabble of turos and tsars with gray faces and bulging eyes clutching their throats and choking as they ran. many of them fell dead and lay on the ground with convulsed limbs and features distorted by death, but as always during World War I, when a new weapon was used against the enemy, it was likely to be used against you as well, so What a dick, the Germans. They are the first to launch a lethal poison gas attack in Yepa in 1915, but it doesn't take long for the Allies to return the favor, that's right.

The favor returned at the Battle of L in 1915, so later that year, but What the Germans have been doing is April 22, 1915 at a place called Big Shooter which is just down the road from here. The Germans have dug up hundreds of pre-filled cylinders containing chlorine gas and they are placing them right outside the trenches, no, they place them next to the fire step and they excavate them up to hundreds of these cylinders and then what they do is they run a rubber hose from the top of the cylinder to No Man's Land, pointing towards the uh. on British and Allied lines, okay, okay, and tell me what the early warning signs of a gas attack are.

Does it depend on the different types of gas? Are we seeing something? Have we smelled something? What are the first warning signs that Germans can notice? Well, the first thing you see is like a smoke screen spreading over no man's land, that's why they chose chlorine gas because it's heavier than air. You don't want to choose a gas that is lighter than CU, it will just float away. into the atmosphere, so you need to have something that's heavier than air so it can roll, and the first troops they launched into thought it was a smoke screen, okay?

Does it depend on the type of gas? Does chlorine gas look like phosine? gas, so chlorine gas is kind of a yellowish green color, um, in the poem Dolce of Decor EST by Wilfred Owen, he talks about seeing under a sea of ​​green and that's the attack of the gas, the chlorine gas fos that comes after and it has the The same type has the same type of action as chlorine, but it is invisible, you can't see it, oh boy, and let's say you are unlucky enough to be in the trenches when the enemy launches a gas attack, let's say in the Battle of L, what is this gas doing to the soldiers?

Where do you know that chlorine comes from swimming pools? The pools smell like AB. Doesn't it get into your eyes? Then it stings you. That's because there is a very small amount of chlorine in a huge amount. of water if you are in a gas cloud, you are in a lot of chlorine, it will get into your eyes, it will mix with the water in your eyes and form hydrochloric acid to react with the water. absolutely correct and it burns your eyes chemically burns your eyes you are breathing and it burns your L can leave you with something called gas whisper means you may not be able to speak properly again you will breathe it down into your lungs and your lungs will try to defend themselves by excreting liquid, so the gas that comes in starts to dissolve your lungs and you will start coughing with your lungs and it is a horrendous way.

If you want to know more about this, read Wilfred Owens. poem we adulterate the cor Misa is a very, very grim and realistic account of a gas attack, gas, fast, guys, an ecstasy or a clumsy adjustment of the helmets clumsy just in time, but someone was still screaming, stumbling and staggering like a man in fire or faint lime through the misty pains and the thick green light as under a green sea I saw him drowning in all my dreams before my helpless sight he rushes towards me dripping suffocation drowning sadiki let's say the worst has happened the British They have released chlorine gas that is now dissipating in the trenches, the gong has rung, what do we do then, how do we protect ourselves?

So the first kind of form of protection was to wear tissues or socks and urinate on them, and your urine has a lot of ammonia in it. The ammonia will neutralize the chlorine very well. It's actually okay, so that's what you hear, it was the Canadians who were the first to pee on their hands, so it really worked, it's not a myth, it really worked, it wasn't terribly effective, but it worked and it's better. than not having that and I mean what happens if you can't go for a Wei when the gas attack goes off, every trench would have a urine bucket in case you needed it to put it in and literally put it. over your face like this and I guess maybe it was used by soldiers in the first year 195 and then they developed some equipment, so what they did, the British went through a whole range of gas masks from things like something It's called a respirator black veil, which is like a pad and is soaked in something called hypo solution.

Hypo solution is a very strong type of liquid with a vinegar smell. It is used in film photography, so if you have ever smelled it, it is a very distinctive smell. You won't forget that smell, but these pads are soaked in a hypoallergenic solution, they sit like this on your face and you don't know it and then you have to protect your eyes so they take your glasses off and then they start coming off. we put out a variety of different fume hoods, as they call them, and the pH hood, the P, starts with the hiccup hood, which is still soaked in a hiccup solution, but this will protect it from the chlorine, so the germans now know that "We are protected against chlorine gas so they have to use a different gas and the gas they use is frosene so we need a completely different respirator or gas mask to protect us from that and here it is Where does this come in, okay?" What we have here, of course, is the pH, the phenohexine helmet, sometimes it's called a tube helmet because in here there's a little tube that you put in your mouth like this and you put a helmet on top of it and then you breathe through the fabric and then through the valve channel, this is the type of gas mask Wilfred Owen talks about in his poem DOL Decor.

He talks about adjusting the clunky helmets just in time and he talks about this Mas gas, the pH hood, so this is what the British are using a very basic type of design that the Germans have, so they start again with pads soaked in chemicals to then neutralize the gas, but very, very quickly they move on to a suitable type of gas mask and the one they already have. I caught you here, there's something that's inside the can and you take it out and it's almost like you think of a gas mask, okay, you have glasses to protect your eyes, you have a filter, yeah, this.

It's different, isn't it? So you have in here, you have activated carbon in here and that would filter the gases and the carbon in this respirator to prevent the chlorine from reacting with the oxygen and the water, yes, it filters the gas out of the air so that you can have clean air to go through. you breathe again if you look at a civilian gas mask from World War II, very similar in design, eyepiece with filter and way of putting it on, yes. How would you put it? Let's talk about how quickly you would have to put it in if gas is already entering the trench.

How much time do you have? Seconds, literally seconds. Okay, what do you do if the gas starts coming? instantly stop breathing and don't go because then you inhale a huge amount, you stop breathing, you close your eyes, you turn your back on the accelerator and you're literally going to put it in front of you like this and in your face like this, right? and blowing to try to expel any gas that has entered the gas mask, so it is designed so that it can be put on extremely quickly in the event of a gas attack. You have a few seconds to do it and is it true huh? in 1915 or it may be a myth, Hitler was involved in some kind of gas attack, well he could have been, the current thinking is, we hear that Hitler was blinded in a gas attack and which was possible, absolutely it is possible , but the most recent thought.

It's just that it was psychological blindness that he got, it was almost certainly a German gas that gassed him well, and you mentioned that it happens to the British, the French and the Germans, you have to make sure that the weather conditions are correct before starting to launch gas attacks is absolutely essential, so when the Germans launched their first gas attack on April 22, 1915, they intended to launch it first in the morning, but the wind blows in the direction wrong, so they have to leave it. gas attack until the afternoon so what you want is a constant straight breeze, not too fast because otherwise the gas will fly straight towards your enemy and it won't be effective, it will disappear immediately, so in a strange way .

I need, you need almost like it feels weird to say this, but you need the Goldilocks area with a little bit of wind blowing in the right direction, ideally no rain and that's when it's going to wreak havoc on the enemy trenches that you mentioned, rain, I mean right now. It wouldn't be a good time for a gas attack because the gas will disappear from the air. If he goes back to being Misty, he'll disappear from the air and be ineffective and of course that's what happens to the British in the battle of losing when they throw, uh, when they return the favor to the Germans, he hits them back in the faces and hits them right back at their own side, so I guess it's a bit of an own goal to avoid catastrophic results when using gas in changing weather conditions.

The German army began filling artillery shells with gas. Agents in liquid form in glass bottles were placed inside the projectile, which would break upon contact and the liquid would evaporate. The shells were color coded in a system pioneered by the Germans. The Green Cross projectiles contained the pulmonary agents chlorophosphine and D-phosphine, this was just one of the many ways in which armies were adapting and warfare was evolving based on trial and error, while the gas instilled fear in the enemy. As it hovered toward them just above the surface, beneath the surface, a completely different kind of war was being waged.

Mining experienced a particular resurgence throughout World War I when army engineers sought to break the stalemate by digging beneath no man's land and placing large quantities of explosives beneath enemy trenches underground. The war began on Christmas Day 1914 in the tag sector of the Western Front with shafts like these sunk into the ground, specialist miners descended through these and sometimes dug tunnels up to 12 thousand long. They could also be trying to dig under enemy tunnels coming the other way and blow them up. Unfortunately for the German army, it was the British who dealt one of the biggest blows of the underground war on June 7, 1917, marking the beginning of a new offensive located in the town of Messine in West Flanders, with 19 mines. were positioned below the front lines of the German Fourth Army the night before the attack, General Charles Harrington, Chief of Staff of the Second Army, commented to the press, Gentlemen, I don't know if tomorrow we will make history, but in any case we will change geography at exactly 3:10 a.m.

There was a tremendous explosion to our left. It was the explosion of a mine that was the signal for everything to begin. The next second there was a roar like I had never heard before. I heard something like that before or after and I hope I never hear something like that again. It was caused by the explosion of another 18 mines. An estimated 1 million pounds of ammonal and gun cotton explosives exploded below the German line in one of man's largest non-nuclear mines. Explosions made in history Reports that explosions could be heard across London by Prime Minister David Lloyd George have since been refuted and the number of German soldiers killed was nowhere near the supposed 10,000, but mine explosions accompanied byThe artillery barges had achieved the desired effect of completely destroying the German positions and causing complete chaos among the infantry units on the ground;

Every year new weapons and strategies were tested to try to break the stalemate of static trench warfare with most of the time the same result. Thousands of dead in exchange for small territorial gains and little movement on the front lines. Hope for a breakthrough now rested on a new mobile superweapon at the Battle of Flor's Corselet during the Summa Offensive of 1916. Douglas Hag's giant alien steel machines had been for the first time. once rolled across No Man's Land as ominous as they may have seemed, however, many Mark 1 tanks were initially disabled by becoming trapped on rough terrain, breaking down with engine failure, or being easily attacked by precise German artillery fire savagely in Accurate and varied German descriptions of the Mark one. tank in 1916 also suggests that few soldiers had directly encountered the machines and, if they had, long-range artillery fire had disabled them.

Before they could make a direct hit in the penultimate year of the war, when As the Allies increasingly used tanks along the Western Front, German soldiers became more familiar with the metal monsters, but still struggled with how to deal with them. I shot myself. but I was also able to attack him only when his Mind was shot, he turned around and exposed his flank. A lant from the mg car bought a machine gun and shot him from close range; it took almost 2,000 shots before. The Beast caught fire, evidently it had not yet been decided what was the best method to combat the new threat, but in 1917 only the ordinary infantryman had a new arsenal of weapons and equipment to choose from, so Dicky 1917 comes to his end and we still have a stal M on the western front, but that is not for lack of new equipment and weaponry being introduced.

Tell me how a German soldier is different in 1918 compared to 1914? Well, we have some differences, okay? We have a puncture at the bottom here. Jack boots are now available, we now have booties and putties like the British have worn since the start of the war and very often even things like raw material shortages in Germany. Okay, we can't get the L tall boots anymore, so we'll do it now. Also what we have is a new type of simplified tunic, a less Victorian one, yes, more up-to-date, more up-to-date, equipment. it has changed slightly, so it has changed color, but the big difference is in your head, gone is that pickle haror or the ler Spitzer helmet, what we have now is the star helmet from 1916, yes, a very different design , It is not like this? much better design than the British helmet uh bro shrap, you have protection on the back of your head, yeah, back here, it also protects your face over here.

It is a much higher quality steel than the British helmet uh, Bro, also if If you compare this shape with modern combat helmets, such as the Verus helmet that the British arm now uses, it is much more of that shape, so the Germans They had to have a good idea and it's a good design, yes, it's uncomfortable on the head, but that's how it is. I'm sure it would have saved many more lives than the pickle halberd and it's not just the equipment that's changing. New types of weapons are slowly being introduced, towards the end of the war, aren't they?

As the war drags on, we're seeing more and more innovative weapons being used, so things like the flamethrower that it comes in, um, but also, certainly, at the end of the war, we're seeing submachine guns being used. for the first time, of course, yes, you see. They are rare, but you see the photos of German soldiers in 1918. They have the mp8, the machine gun along with the newly introduced mp8, other unconventional tools and equipment including the sapen paner or bulletproof vest used by machine gunners in exposed positions and the elephant mask, as the British called it, used by snipers to raise their heads safely above the parapets, although cleverly designed, none of these innovations were to help the Germans combat their latest threat and, therefore, Of course, the Germans face a new threat.

They, the tank, what are they doing other than just firing their machine guns to fight these metal monsters in the last two years of the war? Okay, so what they're doing is knocking down AR arery on these slow moving ones. Tanks remember this is not a fast tank, they only have a top speed of 4mph and therefore you can attack them with your own artillery. They are using anti-aircraft guns. 20mm anti-aircraft guns to shoot directly at them and of course, Of course, the Germans are also capturing these vehicles, yes, so the Germans capture quite a few British tanks and send them behind their lines.

They have the workshop where they recondition and reuse them. They make some changes to them. Changes to the Arman that sort of thing and then they release them again against their original owners and they've also developed a new monster of a rifle, look at this, holy moly, it's not bad, how big is it? Yeah, so this is it, I guess. kind of a custom tank rifle, yeah, so the Germans introduced this, essentially what it is is a larger scale Mouser rifle, it's shooting this stuff here, okay, wow, this is a 13.2mm bullet, essentially, It's about the same size as a 50 caliber bullet seen in brownie machine guns in WWII B, well I can't even imagine trying to shoot this thing.

No I don't think they are leaning towards this, they probably have to shoot from the ground, yes you could. You couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't shoot this thing, um, standing up, you have to have it upside down, you would have someone shooting it, but you would also have a spotter next to you looking for any objective target that has a chance to charge it. you're opening the pot that way, bringing it back in and every time you're putting a round in like that and feeding it in that way and pushing it in and I can't even imagine the backlash on this.

The rifle must have been absolutely extraordinary, so the Germans are developing all these types of weapons, they still use artillery, as you said, you mentioned flat weapons, they are trying to fight these tanks physically, but they also have to fight them psychologically, absolutely, If that. What you have in the German lines is this fear of tanks, and it's not how you imagine it, a fear of fleeing and getting away from them, it's a whole state of mind, I guess. The commanders say that you can fight these tanks, you can stop them, you just have to defend your position and you have to fight them and they are not infallible, there are weaknesses in them and if you stand your ground, you can defeat them. things that it's almost like trying to overcome is like a mental block in a way, isn't it?

Yes, once you get over the fear of the unknown, you know you get used to these things. There are ways like you said, they are slow. They can be eliminated by artillery. These weapons are slowly being introduced, although they are rare, so there is hope. Basically, that's what these commanders are trying to say. The big problem for the Germans is the number of tanks the British are putting in now. The battlefield is fine, it's all very well to have weapons like this, but can you fight? You know, hundreds of tanks joined together in an attack, not really in the early winter of 1917, any German soldier who had not overcome fear would be in for a surprise.

Less than 500 Markv tanks were deployed to capture the town of Corre in the No department, an important supply center for the German Hindenberg Line. In 1917, German soldiers would have been more familiar with the sight of some tanks advancing towards them. That fear, but in with BR, the large number of them accompanied by 1,000 guns, eight infantry and cavalry divisions, would have scared even the toughest men with insufficient anti-tank capability within their regular infantry units, the Germans would suffer territorial losses. significant. the precedent for the months to come, despite various attempts to combat the new Allied super weapon, the tide of the war had turned with increasing firepower, both in the form of tanks that were now virtually bulletproof much more mobile artillery and aircraft along with greater manpower, the introduction of the United States into the Western Theater in 1918, the German Army was facing imminent collapse, battered, bruised and, frankly, on its last legs. legs for many soldiers returning from the front, the terror of combat never diminished, although the statistics are still confusing.

At least one historian estimates that more than 20% of all soldiers suffered from Shell Shock, the name coined in the early 20th century by doctor Charles Myers for combat post-traumatic stress disorder at the time when it was believed to be the result of a physical injury to the nervous system during combat. After a heavy bombardment or shell attack, it became evident that the men who had not been directly exposed to that type of fire were just as traumatized. This was a new disease that had never been seen on this scale before. The condition was not well understood from a medical and psychological point of view.

My head seemed to be burning inside and I felt like it was on fire, I have been told that I am suffering from severe shock and nerves and my sense of hearing has also suffered. I don't know if I can continue serving. Don't know. My ears already feel good. I can constantly hear the sound of TRL foer, although there is almost no gunfire here at night. I dream the most horrible things and when I wake up I feel dizzy. I will wait a while and if there is no improvement. I will have to see the doctor again in Germany.

Shell shock was not considered an acceptable diagnosis. In contrast, those who suffered psychological trauma were simply considered hysterical. In fact, some military leaders in the Homeland thought that emotional collapse was also unworthy of the combatant. Therefore, as unpatriotic, those who were suffering mentally were simply removed from the front line to ensure that they did not contaminate the morale of the soldiers around them, after a regime of harsh treatment, they will rarely return to the trenches, in Instead, they will be put to work on the home front. But those in command of Germany's armed forces were not spared the humiliation of their ostracized community of post-traumatic stress disorder patients on June 28, 1919.

World leaders gathered in Versailles to sign what was It would become one of the most controversial peace treaties in history. The terms of the treaty. seen as too punitive by many Germans, it would later fuel nationalist sentiments and contribute to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party the wounds of the Great War would barely heal before young Germans were called up again to the ranks we are St and we walk in Long thank you To watch this video on the History Hit YouTube channel, you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great movies coming out, or if you're a real history fan, check out our dedicated hit special History ChannelHistory. you're going to love television