Fire!
For four years, from 1914 to 1918,
Europe seemed hellbent on self-destruction.
In 1914, the Germans attacked.
War spread...
..like the Grim Reaper wielding his scythe...
..all over the planet...
..but mostly in Russia, Belgium,
Italy, France, the Near East
and the Balkans.
The First World War was a massacre of humanity.
A monstrous crime.
Ten million people died.
In France alone, more than a quarter of all men in their twenties
were killed.
In 1915, an anonymous soldier
dares to film a burial brigade at work.
In 1916,
a survivor of the Battle of Verdun writes,
"Emotion itself has died."
Widows, orphans, desperate mothers
number in the millions.
But, on November 11th, 1918,
Madam Diaz in Bourges, France,
learns of the ceasefire.
The Armistice has just been signed.
Corporal Pierre Sellier, sounding his bugle,
is the first to signal an end to the fighting.
For 1,562 days,
they have waited for this moment.
They dig a makeshift grave for the last
of the war's artillery shells.
A billion shells have been fired.
The First World War cost
the equivalent of $6 trillion in all.
On the 11th of November, 1918,
these men and women dream of another
kind of world.
Fair and just.
Where their children will be happy.
One of the greatest minds of the 20th-century,
Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, writes,
"The war was over.
"But it wasn't over.
"We just didn't know it."
The soldiers of the British Empire,
the United States,
France and its colonies,
Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Serbia,
Romania, Russia
and so many other countries have defeated the German Empire,
the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire,
precursor of Turkey.
The war is over.
The crowds roar as their leaders proclaim that the side
of good has won.
Novelist Albert Simonin is witness
to the jubilation in the streets.
He writes,
"In the crowd, factory girls and fashionable ladies alike
"were caught up in the hugging
"with hands everywhere, on backsides and bodices, kissing on the lips."
Everyone believes it's the end of what they call
The War To End All Wars.
Private Louis Barthas writes,
"I was free.
"I had finally escaped the clutches of militarism
"for which I developed a hatred that I will instil
"in my children, my friends, my family.
"I will tell them that Fatherland, glory, military honour
"are but so many words intended to conceal the fact that war
"is unspeakably horrible,
"ugly and cruel."
Which of the great empires will survive?
The war that killed so many people has also fanned
yearnings for independence.
The British Empire has been rocked since 1916 by attacks in Ireland,
still part of the United Kingdom.
Irish rebels are forced to parade through the streets attached
to the British flag.
The defeated empires implode.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire and its many peoples seethe
with the fever of independence.
Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes...
..all want their own state
and are counting on American support.
The President of the United States,
Woodrow Wilson, has won the war
and now wants to win the peace.
He promises national independence,
proclaiming the right of peoples to self-determination.
Wilson wants to give everyone the right to choose their nation,
their borders, their government.
Empires collapse.
People revolt.
Kings flee.
Charles I, the Last Emperor of Austria-Hungary,
and his beautiful princess, Zita,
give up their palaces for a much less glorious exile.
In Turkey, Sultan Mehmed VI
submits to the dismemberment
of the Ottoman Empire
and, from its ruins,
the Arab world emerges.
Those who resisted return home as heroes.
In Belgium, the Soldier King, Albert I,
with Elisabeth, German-born but whose warwork
earned her the title of the Nurse Queen,
are acclaimed by their subjects.
King Albert introduces universal suffrage to men.
On this 11th day of November, 1918,
the Belgians erupt with joy
after four years of occupation.
They pay tribute to their liberators,
the Canadians, the principal victors
of the Hundred Days Offensive,
the last battle of the war which added two million wounded
and dead to the massacre.
The war seems to come to a sudden standstill.
In Flanders, Scots discover a German train with thousands
of stick hand grenades.
In the north of France,
the Germans have withdrawn,
leaving an apocalyptic scene behind.
They have methodically destroyed the factories and their machinery.
Life is reborn after the Armistice.
The numbers from that day
are memorable.
November 11th at 11am,
the 11th hour of the 11th day
of the 11th month.
But what is an armistice?
It's not peace.
Only a suspension of fighting while a treaty is being negotiated,
which promises to be difficult.
The novelist, Henri Falcone, writes to his fiancee,
"I fear that we are hardly more ready for peace
"than we were for war.
"We are entering the most critical period.
"Fortunately, we are the victors."
But do the Germans really feel defeated?
They must evacuate Belgium
and the north of France,
which they've occupied since 1914.
They retreat to the left bank of the Rhine,
abandoning even Alsace-Lorraine.
A few days later,
a symbolic demonstration is organised
in Paris's Place de la Concorde
by the far-right movement L'Action Francaise.
Soldiers who fought in the trenches
scatter dirt from Alsace
to honour its return to France.
In 1870, France had lost Alsace, along with part of Lorraine,
following a disastrous war with the German Empire.
In Alsace, once again, French veterans, defeated 50 years earlier,
demonstrate their loyalty to France.
FRENCH SINGING BEGINS
And schoolchildren,
in traditional costume, along with their mothers,
kiss the flag.
Not everyone shares this enthusiasm
at the return of the French.
The German government protected Catholics far better than
the anti-clerical French Republic...
..and many Alsations had appreciated
Germanic efficiency and order
during the last half century.
But no-one asks their opinion.
The President of the French Republic, Raymond Poincare,
is from Lorraine.
When, by late 1914, the death toll
had already exceeded anything
that France had ever known,
Poincare should have done everything in his power to halt
what would become the biggest butchery in history.
But all attempts at peace failed
because Germany would not give up Alsace-Lorraine.
And so the carnage continued.
The Germans returned to their country in strict order
and with a smile.
But they will find Germany deeply shaken.
Their Kaiser, Wilhelm II,
who declared war on France in 1914,
has just abdicated and left for a comfortable exile
in the Netherlands.
His departure is one of the conditions of the Armistice
that, for Germany, is so humiliating.
Returning to their cities and villages,
German soldiers are met by cheering throngs.
They do not feel they have lost the war.
For them, the Armistice is a stab in the back.
A bitterness that Corporal Adolf Hitler will masterfully exploit.
The soldiers feel betrayed by the politicians who took power
and proclaimed Germany a republic,
as does the socialist, Philip Scheidemann.
The German Marxist revolutionary,
Rosa Luxemburg, proclaims,
"Bourgeois society calls itself order, peace and the legal state
"but it wades in blood.
"It is stained, dishonoured.
"The Russian Revolution saved the honour of international socialism."
In Russia,
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
have taken power and launched
the Red Terror in a bloody civil war
to eliminate the anti-Communists.
In their propaganda films,
the Bolsheviks show prisoners,
among them British, French and American soldiers,
who had come to Russia to fight alongside the anti-Communist forces.
Lenin denounces this foreign intervention in a rare recording.
Lenin's call rouses an entire
generation in Russia and in Europe.
In Hungary, the rumble of revolution is also swelling.
Ultraviolent communists The Lenin Fiuk, or Lenin Boys,
will, in a matter of weeks,
be responsible for nearly a thousand deaths.
Funded and organised by the Russians,
they are instructed to,
"make mincemeat of the counter-revolutionaries.
"Suffocate them in their own blood
"before they stifle the revolution."
An allied intervention will put an end to their murderous frenzy
and to their lives.
Toward the end of 1918, Central Europe is in flames.
After Russia and Hungary, Germany.
The Communists begin their attacks.
They call themselves the Spartacus League
after the rebel slaves of Ancient Rome.
Fighting against them are the Freikorps,
paramilitary groups, volunteers
recruited from the army who stamp out the Communist revolt
and execute its leaders,
including Rosa Luxemburg.
Some German families still feel nostalgia for the war.
But most want to return to peace and prosperity.
Yet what fate awaits their sons
20 years later at the Battle of Stalingrad
in the snows of Russia?
What fate awaits this Jewish family?
On December 1st 1918, the Allied forces,
in accordance with the Armistice Agreement,
entered Germany to occupy the entire region along the Rhine.
The Rhine is a natural border.
The valley of all invasions.
The very symbol of the confrontation between France and Germany.
Many Germans welcome the French troops with a sense of relief.
Anything is better than chaos.
But soon, resentment and hostility resurface.
Among these German children
is the future film director Max Ophuls.
In his memoirs, he recalls his feelings and his tears
at seeing the cruel brutality of the French soldiers.
Some African soldiers are accused of rape.
In 1940,
the Germans will exact cruel revenge on the French Colonial POWs
and Hitler will sterilise the children born of mixed race unions.
In the Allied occupation of 1918,
the Germans dislike the British Army, too,
including the Canadians, whose only wish is to return home.
The war years have seen the rise in Canadians
of a deep national sentiment against the British Empire
to which they still belong.
Feelings toward the 100,000 Americans stationed
on the banks of the Rhine are quite different.
Uncle Sam's troops, the Sammies, are much more popular.
One of them writes...
"We fought against the Krauts, the Sauerkrauts, as we call them."
"But they didn't invade the United States
"and New York had not come under siege.
"We had no desire for revenge.
"All we wanted was peace
"and a great many of us were of German origin."
As Christmas of 1918 approaches, a historic event is announced.
The arrival of the first President of the United States
ever to leave the Americas -
Woodrow Wilson.
Seen here with Franklin D Roosevelt,
then Under Secretary for the Navy and future President.
Wilson has come for the peace conference.
He arrives in Paris on December 14th 1918 with his wife, Edith -
the great-great-granddaughter of the Native American princess Pocahontas.
Paris offers him a triumphant welcome.
Wilson says,
"We shall build for you a good and prosperous world
"where all nations will enjoy the legacy of freedom
"for which France, America, England and Italy have so dearly paid."
The future Communist leader Marcel Cachin
writes in his newspaper, L'Humanite,
"Wilson connects deeply with the proletariat.
"He's the only politician to have discovered the language
"of goodwill and justice."
Wilson, a lawyer and former president of Princeton University,
was elected in 1912 as a Democrat,
then re-elected in 1916 thanks to the slogan,
"He kept us out of the war."
But only weeks into his second term,
he decides to send American forces into the conflict.
By January 1918,
Wilson has outlined a 14-point plan for negotiating peace.
It calls for a vast programme of economic and political liberalism
and the creation of an assembly of nations to prevent future wars.
In Paris, he will face another political legend...
The Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau.
After taking power during the worst period of the war,
Clemenceau led the conflict with an iron fist.
Nicknamed "The Tiger", he burns with only one desire -
to humiliate Germany and make the country pay reparations
for the ravages it inflicted on France.
The British and Americans fear this will mean financial ruin
for the defeated powers and push them towards
extremism, Bolshevism and civil war, like in Russia.
On January 3rd 1919,
Woodrow Wilson travels to Rome to visit the King of Italy,
Victor Emmanuel III.
The purpose of Wilson's European tour
is to win support for his doctrine.
His programme for world peace.
Above all, he wants to recognise
the right of peoples to self-determination.
Wilson is pleased by the enthusiasm of the Italians
when, in fact, they're cheering not for his programme,
but for the Allied victory.
Nationalist movements fear that Wilson's
right of self-determination could lead to a loss of territory.
One of their most fervent militants is the journalist Benito Mussolini.
The future dictator calls Wilson, "A bandit of international plutocracy."
Wilson returns to Paris on January 18th 1919
for the peace conference that will formally end the First World War,
found a new European order,
and establish new international rules.
Even though 27 nations are represented,
only Wilson and the other victors of the war count.
The Big Four of the era.
France's Clemenceau, who shuns the cameras.
Britain's Lloyd George, who seeks them out.
As does Italy's Orlando.
For six months, they will discuss
the terms of the treaties imposed on the vanquished -
the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire,
none of which have been invited to the negotiating table.
But the Germans trust Wilson.
His doctrine strikes them as moderate
and should allow them to preserve the territory of their homeland.
The Germans fear Clemenceau most of all.
He is obsessed about the security of his borders
and his more populous and more productive German neighbour.
After six months of discussions,
representatives of all countries that fought in the war
are summoned to the Palace of Versailles.
This is no random date.
It's a grim anniversary.
Exactly five years earlier, on June 28th 1914, in Sarajevo,
the Crown Prince of Austria was assassinated.
That event triggered the First World War.
The setting is itself symbolic, and not only for the French.
It was here in 1871,
after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War,
that the German Empire was proclaimed
and the world witnessed the emergence of Germany's power.
The desire for revenge also explains Clemenceau's decision
to order four "gueules cassees", or mutilated faces,
to stand at the entrance as the German delegates arrive.
The Germans report at three o'clock.
They are given only a few minutes to sign.
In the centre of the Hall Of Mirrors,
on this table, the treaty is laid.
The German army will be slashed to 100,000 men
and stripped of aviation support and heavy artillery.
Germany will lose its colonies and its naval fleet will be reduced.
Above all, it will have to pay reparations.
A colossal sum for the time - 132 billion gold marks.
Germany loses 10% of its territory.
To contain it in the east,
the Allies want to resurrect Poland, partitioned in the 18th century,
and give Poland access to the Baltic Sea,
thereby dividing Germany in two.
A dangerous absurdity that will make lasting peace impossible.
It is 3.15.
The Treaty of Versailles has just been signed.
The Big Four will now greet the international press.
Only weeks before, Wilson had cautioned,
"Our greatest error would be to give Germany powerful reasons
"for wishing, one day, to take revenge.
"Excessive demands would most certainly sow the seeds of war."
Clemenceau thinks otherwise.
He declares with confidence, "Germany will pay."
But he is tired. He adds,
"Waging war was easier than making peace."
The truth is that the scale of the disaster
provoked a kind of shock.
One of the great minds of the time, Paul Valery, writes in 1919...
"We civilisations know now that we are mortal.
"We had heard tell of vanished worlds,
"empires gone down with all their men and all their machines.
"But these disasters were none of our affair.
"And now, we see that the abyss of history
"is deep enough to hold us all.
"We are aware that a civilisation is as fragile as a human life."
July 14th, 1919.
Bastille Day.
This year is a celebration of victory but also of the crushing
humiliation of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.
It is also a bittersweet celebration for the widows of France.
Many survivors have trouble turning the page.
In a letter, censored by military postal authorities,
a soldier writes,
"You don't celebrate when millions are dead."
But, just six months after the war,
Clemenceau orders a grand parade
on Paris's magnificent Champs-Elysees
of all the armies that fought
for four long years.
To cover the event,
the leading American magazine of the time,
Outlook, sends its best journalist,
Elbert Baldwin.
He writes,
"The ample sidewalks are densely crowded.
"People are on stepladders and balconies and roofs. A cannon booms,
"its echo taken up by the cheering thousands."
"Here comes Joffre, the victor of the Marne,
"Foch, the commander in chief of the Allied Forces
"and the leader of the American troops, Pershing,
"with a severe military air.
"In the crowd, someone shouts, "Smile!"
"And the Belgians smiled.
"They're more relaxed.
"But the British received the most applause, especially the Scots.
"And the people scream when they see the Japanese, the Greeks, the Poles,
"the tanned Portuguese,
"the nervous Serbs.
"But where are the Russians?
"Not the Bolsheviks, but the ally that sacrificed
"two million men to make this day possible?
"And now here comes Petain on his white horse.
"I did not imagine him so young, the hero of Verdun."
A renowned author, Robert De Fleur,
writes in the daily paper Le Figaro,
"All these uniforms, from every country, were dyed the same colour.
"That of blood.
"The mutilated, whose arms and legs were left behind,
"hobble in their glory.
"After this procession, glorifying the victors,
"what has become of the real losers?
"The eight million invalids from
"every warring country who lost limbs
"being gassed...
"..shell-shocked...
"..blinded?
"And what of the men whose teeth,
"noses, eyes were obliterated
"by the shells?"
A Swiss Red Cross nurse, Henriette Remi, recalls,
"Never in my life had I seen anything so atrocious.
"Immersed in a disgusting stench were some 20 monsters,
"men who no longer had anything human about them,
"with mutilated debris for faces."
Henriette Remi is present as one of these wounded men
meets his young son, who screams in terror at the sight of him.
'He weeps, saying, "I am so horrible.
'"To have once been a man and now to be only this.
'"A terror to my child. A burden for my wife.
'"A disgrace to humanity.
'"Let me die."'
He later commits suicide.
And this man,
who was married in 1914, the day before he left for the Front.
He writes,
"The image reflected in the mirror scares me.
"I scream in despair.
"No mouth, but a maw.
"And from my gaping maw comes only the gruntings
"of a wild beast."
"The war left us nothing but cemeteries and ruins," writes
Marcel Cappy, one of the women who, for four years, had replaced
the men who worked in munitions factories.
French women demand, in vain, the right to vote
already granted to British women.
Worse, they are fired from factories to make room
for the returning soldiers.
"But at least," they implore, "let peace return once and for all."
Now a dedicated pacifist, Marcel Cappy writes,
"The so-called peace treaties are, in reality, sources of conflict
"inspired by revenge.
"They make injustice a doctrine and have plunged Europe into chaos.
"The Treaty of Versailles is an absurdity."
The Treaty of Versailles will be
the foundation of the vengeful
speeches given by Hitler,
filmed here for the first time in 1919 at a far right demonstration.
At this point, he is merely an anti-Bolshevik informant
for the army, but he knows how to use this deeply-flawed peace treaty
to his advantage.
He will write, "Versailles was a disgrace
"and this dictated peace is an incredible plundering
"of our people.
"France, the mortal enemy of our people,
"is strangling us ruthlessly."
Hitler looks around him and sees only misery.
He says, "Let the shame and rage that lies within 60 million Germans
"become a torrent of flame."
The Treaty of Versailles requires Germans
to surrender all their weapons
for which they receive compensation.
They see their planes and their artillery destroyed
by order of the Allies.
German military leaders share in this sense of humiliation.
Now commanding a reduced army,
they will transform it into an elite fighting force to wreak revenge
on France and Britain.
They will fail in their attempts to seize power...
..but will pressure successive governments until they find
in Hitler the ideal man for their plan.
By 1919, the swastika begins to appear on helmets.
One of these officers, Ernst Junger, writes,
"The war is not the end
"but the beginning of violence."
Lieutenant Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz says,
"When they told us the war was over,
"we laughed because we ARE war.
"Its flame continues to burn in us."
Respectable society in Germany supports the army
and will support Hitler...
..industrialists who manufactured thousands of machine guns
and millions of uniforms
form a new, moneyed elite.
Berliners invent a word for them,
Rathke.
"Those who rake in money."
They live surrounded by extreme poverty.
They are intoxicated with cynicism.
In France, the trenches are empty and the birds have begun
to sing again.
But the Allied armies are still struggling,
two years later, to demobilise nine million men.
Censorship of military mail continues until all men
have returned to civilian life.
A letter intercepted from one of these forgotten men reads,
"Why won't they set us free?
"We're sick of this.
"Now that the war is over,
"let those of us who saved you return to our families...
"..and wives will be reunited with their men."
Just like the most famous singer of the day, Mistinguett.
SINGING IN FRENCH
Five million demobilised French soldiers are entitled to a civilian
suit of clothes, but supplies run short.
Attempts to dye uniforms are considered ridiculous
and so an allowance of about $50 is paid to each man.
Many are farmers who return to their fields
but factory workers in all countries have a harder time finding work.
Women have been forced out of their wartime jobs
but arms production has been slashed, too.
Industrialists cannot transform their businesses overnight.
Demobilisation is hardest of all for the Australians
and New Zealanders,
known as the Anzacs.
They linger in filthy transit camps.
Soldiers from distant continents and their disillusioned officers
now have nothing to kill but time.
They create strange shows,
like this skit about death.
After eluding it in the trenches,
they are now stalked by death from the Spanish flu,
the global epidemic thought to have originated in Spain.
In fact, it is an especially virulent bird flu that kills
over 20 million people,
more than the war itself.
Returning soldiers face many challenges.
Bill Sutherland of Toronto writes to his mother,
"I hope you will not condemn me for marrying a girl whose
"father was German.
"Rosa is a very kind and earnest girl
"who has been very kind to me.
"Please, don't condemn her before you see her."
Lieutenant Arthur Lapointe of the famous Van Doos,
the mainly French Canadian 22nd Regiment,
returns home to Quebec.
He writes, "I feel my heart overflowing with joy for this land
"that I never thought I would see again."
Some members of his family have died of the flu.
His neighbour lost her husband in the Battle of Vimy in 1917.
Repatriation ends.
A special commission reports,
"Most of the men come back from the war in a kind of
"mental lethargy.
"They were so long subjected to military discipline, fed, dressed
"and accustomed to obeying orders
"that they have lost their autonomy."
The Canadian Military Hospitals Commission confidently states,
"What every disabled soldier must know
"is that the word "impossible" is not in our dictionary.
"The success he will have later in his work depends on the energy
"and perseverance he shows during his rehabilitation."
478,000 Americans also leave France.
But not before being disinfected and cleansed of all parasites
picked up in the trenches and other dangerous places,
like brothels.
But it's the Spanish flu that especially worries doctors.
African-American troops are particularly uneasy.
In France, they didn't encounter racism.
But now they're heading home to the segregation of the Deep South
and the growing violence spearheaded by the sinister and secretive
Ku Klux Klan.
On the cotton plantations,
life has changed little since slavery
and children sing an old spiritual later sung by Louis Armstrong.
THE WOMAN SINGS
THE CHILDREN SING
# Oh, nobody knows the trouble I've seen
# Nobody knows but Jesus
# Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
# Glory
# Hallelujah. #
Subtitles by Red Bee Media
February 1919. In New York, the return of African-American soldiers
is a celebration.
Their band leader James Reese Europe recalls...
"Hoorah's were shouted from window's, from roofs,
"from the street.
"As the regiment moved along,
"they were joined by mothers,
"sweethearts and brothers."
The 369th Regiment was nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters.
The French had pulled them from their deployment
on the loading docks and rail lines to fight alongside them.
And they had fought heroically.
One of the great activists of their cause
Marcus Garvey proclaims,
"We believe the Negro
"should not be deprived of any of those rights or privileges
"common to other human beings."
President Wilson, however, believes in the segregation
of blacks from whites.
At the same time, outside the US, he defends the right
of peoples to self-determination.
Back in the US, he embarks on a long tour
to mobilise public opinion in favour of the Treaty of Versailles.
Wilson knows that, in Washington, the Senate remains deeply reluctant.
He knows that voters of German origin are furious
about the clauses of the Treaty that they find insulting,
unfair to their former homeland.
Wilson also knows that the Senate is hostile to the founding covenant
of the League of Nations.
It imposes a mutual defence pact on member states.
This could potentially lead to a new American military intervention,
which nobody wants.
Wilson tries to hold back the tide. He says,
"Failure to back the League of Nations
"would break the heart of the world."
Wilson works to the point of exhaustion
and suffers a stroke that leaves him paralysed and mute.
What will the US Senate do?
If it rejects the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations,
will peace be possible?
While awaiting ratification by the Americans,
Europe's most urgent priority is rebuilding.
Belgium and Serbia are severely damaged.
But in France, the destruction is far worse.
The north and east of France are devastated.
Stefan Zweig writes,
"All the livid steeds of the Apocalypse have reared up.
"Revolution and famine, terror, epidemics and, above all else,
"that arch plague - nationalism -
"which has poisoned our European culture."
The war destroyed one third of France's wealth.
The numbers are staggering...
..of villages wiped off the map...
..of unexploded shells and land mines...
..of fields contaminated with toxic gas.
The Earth must be cleansed of this ocean of poisons.
A long and dangerous task,
as these farmers in Picardy show,
whose fields are littered with shells they must dispose of.
LOUD EXPLOSIONS
In spite of everything, they resume their lives,
as they always have in centuries past.
The French order German prisoners of war to de-mine the country,
in violation of the Geneva Convention,
the international agreement that protects captured forces.
There are still 300,000 of these unfortunate men in France.
Interned at the horrible Souilly camp near Verdun,
the German soldier Hellmuth Korth writes...
"I have the impression I'm considered a criminal.
"Every hour it becomes clearer,
"the cynicism of the French and their hatred of us.
"They now want us to pay."
22,105 prisoners die in the ruins
or simply from hunger.
But the French suffer too.
In the markets, the price of beans and potatoes is four times higher
than before the war.
Rich Americans come to the aid of the French,
like the heiress of a large bank, Anne Morgan,
who, along with Dr Anne Murray Dike,
founded this first NGO...
..the American Committee for Devastated France.
They replant forests destroyed by shells.
They transform a chateau into a dispensary.
Anne Morgan writes to her mother,
"Our work is a joy.
"We are useful here.
"These people lived under the German occupation.
"Their only food was beetroot that is fed to cows.
"They sleep at night on bare floors in the bitter cold.
"They are now coming back to life."
Six million orphans are adrift in Europe.
These Polish children,
who miraculously survived the many battles in their homeland,
are welcomed to the United States.
In Paris, the sparring orphans of Montmartre
are spared from misery as the French government makes them
wards of the state until they reach adulthood.
Russia has untold numbers of orphans...
..especially after the Civil War.
The victory of the Communists in 1922 brings the Gulags,
the concentration camps of Lenin and then Stalin.
And so, more orphans are thrown into the streets,
becoming "blatnoys" - little criminals.
Britain has its own urgent problem of orphaned delinquents.
The solution is radical.
A one-way ticket on the first ship to the farms
in the wide-open spaces of Western Canada.
In Ottawa, Member of Parliament JS Woodsworth points out,
"We are turning children into cheap labourers."
Today, one in ten Canadians
is a descendent of these displaced children.
In a similar vein, the UK begins exporting young women
who now cannot find husbands.
These so-called surplus women
from the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps
are headed to Australia.
THEY CHEER
How will the survivors mourn?
One of Lithuania's greatest poets Oscar Milosz expresses
what the parents, widows and children feel
walking through the endless rows of graves marked
by the cross, Star of David or crescent moon.
He says, "Ah, the dead,
"the dead, the dead,
"are at least less dead than I."
Many families seek to repatriate their dead,
to be able to visit their loved one's grave in the local cemetery.
But, first, the remains must be dug up.
Special units of the American Army
are filmed carrying out this grim task.
230,000 bodies are returned to their families.
In France,
where most of the military cemeteries are located,
there remain to this day
the graves of 700,000 French and colonial soldiers...
..750,000 German soldiers...
..300,000 British soldiers,
including 60,000 Canadians, and 34,000 Americans.
Everywhere, people try desperately to get in touch
with the spirits of the dead.
Spiritualism has been very popular since the 19th century.
The High Priest of spiritualism at the time is a certain Leon Denis.
He writes, "Innumerable legions of souls hover over us,
"eager to communicate.
"Those who died in battle seek only to manifest themselves
"to their loved ones on Earth."
Sadly, these seances are just another swindle.
To remember the dead, honour them,
and unite the people in their memory,
every country, every city, every village
must have a memorial.
They can celebrate heroism in combat, pacifism
or dignified strength.
Like this bronze caribou, a tribute to 814 men from Newfoundland,
then part of the British Empire, who died serving in the war
and who had no known grave.
Around the world, sculptors work day and night
to fill the thousands of orders for war memorials.
King George V and his sons, the future sovereigns,
begin the first ceremony honouring the unknown soldier.
In this coffin lie the remains of an unidentified body
chosen at random to commemorate the 500,000 missing and unburied
and all from the British Empire who died.
The French had learned a month earlier
that the ceremony was being organised.
The government had not planned a similar commemoration
and the press was indignant.
A leftist Member of Parliament recorded a vengeful speech,
one of the first filmed with sound.
France's unknown soldier lies beneath the Arc de Triomphe...
..with an eternal flame over his grave.
Many other countries also adopt this powerful symbol.
In Belgium, the Soldier King Albert I
turns the dedication into a ceremony of unity for his people.
The ceremony for the unknown American soldier
is attended by Marshall Ferdinand Foch,
the Supreme Allied Commander at the end of the war.
This is the Crow Chief Plenty Coups,
who, only 30 years earlier, had allied with the American Army
in the tragic Indian wars against the Sioux Nation.
At Arlington National Cemetery near Washington,
Plenty Coups presents the unknown soldier with a coup stick,
a warrior's weapon of bravery.
Foch tells the former Commander of American forces in France
General Pershing,
"I want to see the tribes of the Wild West."
In North Dakota, he meets the Crow Nation's mortal enemy,
the Sioux Chief, Red Tomahawk.
A welcoming committee gives him a fur coat and a peace pipe.
CHANTING
General Foch is given the name Charging Thunder.
In Washington, President Wilson,
severely weakened by his stroke,
is devastated by a defeat in Congress.
The United States refuses to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.
The vote reflects American public opinion,
which is deeply isolationist.
The American people no longer want to get involved
in the affairs of others, nor go to war again.
JAZZ MUSIC
Typical of this 1920s generation, here is how Zelda Fitzgerald,
the young wife of novelist F Scott Fitzgerald,
describes her peers.
"The flapper awakes from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism,
"bobs her hair, puts on her choicest pair of earrings,
"and a great deal of audacity and rouge and goes into battle.
"She flirts because it is fun to flirt,
"and wears a one-piece bathing suit because she has a good figure,
"and she refuses to be bored, chiefly because she isn't boring.
"She is conscious that the things she does are the things
"she's always wanted to do."
But happiness is fragile.
By refusing to sign the Treaty of Versailles, the United States
has jeopardised Wilson's other dream, of the League of Nations.
The League, however, has already been established in the country
of neutrality, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva.
But without America, will this precursor of the United Nations,
assembled from most of the world's countries,
be able to keep the peace?
The various treaties that follow the Treaty of Versailles
will set off endless conflicts.
The treaties of St Germain in 1919 and Trianon in 1920 will break up
the Austro-Hungarian Empire by creating new nation states
such as a smaller Austria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia,
and also reshape Hungary and Romania.
The famous right of peoples to self-determination
has not really been respected.
Germans are now in Poland and Czechoslovakia,
Hungarians in Romania, Croatians in Yugoslavia.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire had held together all these people
in relative peace.
Similarly, the Ottoman Empire had prevented various Arab tribes
from tearing each other apart.
But at the Treaty of Sevres, August 10th, 1920,
the Ottoman Empire,
severely punished for having supported Germany,
is stripped down to the Turkey of today,
minus the Greek enclave of the city of Smyrna.
The map of the Middle East is redrawn by Britain and France.
The French want to expand their colonial territories by taking
control of Syria and Lebanon.
The British create new countries - Trans-Jordan, now Jordan,
Palestine,
and crucially, Iraq, giving themselves control
of oil production.
Wilson had supported the creation of a Kurdish state and,
for a few months, it did exist before disappearing,
swept away by the Turks.
In Palestine, the Romans had driven the Jews out of Jerusalem
2,000 years earlier.
The Arabs, now 600,000 strong, are less than welcoming
to Jewish Zionists who have been fleeing to the promised land
since the late 19th century to escape persecution
in Central Europe and Russia.
During the war, the British, like the famous Colonel TE Lawrence,
seen here at the Treaty of Sevres talks, made many promises
to the Arabs in exchange for their support against the Turks,
one being to halt Jewish immigration.
But Lawrence of Arabia had been manipulated
and the promises made will not be kept.
The British authorised the creation of a Jewish homeland that,
three decades later, would become the state of Israel.
Its first president, Chaim Weizmann, calls for emigration.
He says, "We must make Palestine as Jewish as England is English
"and America is American."
It is the beginning of war without end.
In 1920, in a defeated Turkey, in Constantinople, now Istanbul,
the situation is tense.
The Allies still occupy both the city and part of the country,
which is unacceptable to the Nationalists and leads to a
large scale insurrection.
At its head is General Mustafa Kemal, who in 1916 had resisted
a British and French landing in Turkey.
This revered officer refuses to accept the Treaty of Sevres
and the loss of the city of Smyrna.
He says, "If we give in to all the Allied demands,
"it will be impossible to curb their greedy intentions."
Mustafa Kemal raises an army of volunteers then fights the Allies
and Greeks for two years to recover the territory they occupy.
On September 9th, 1922,
his army enters the last stronghold occupied by the Greeks - Smyrna.
The city is set on fire.
The Turks want to drive out not only the Greeks
but also all non-Muslim minorities,
especially the Armenians.
Only a lucky few are able to escape and embark for exile in Europe.
In Geneva, the League of Nations, though it has failed to put an end
to war and slaughter,
nonetheless succeeds at rescuing millions of people,
thanks to an extraordinary man, Fridtjof Nansen,
a Norwegian polar explorer who became the High Commissioner
for Refugees and who will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He creates the Nansen passport...
..a precious document for all those who are stateless,
like the painter Marc Chagall and the composer Igor Stravinsky.
It enables them to cross borders.
Nine million men, women and children become peace refugees.
Many of them want to leave for the United States.
They all end up at the port of Cherbourg in the north of France,
which becomes a bottleneck.
The French build the famous Hotel Atlantique, a transit centre
for emigrants with its own medical and administrative services.
And the long voyage can begin.
America has always welcomed the world's castaways,
such as the Irish, the Italians, the Jews.
On the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty,
created by the French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi,
are engraved the words of the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus,
"Give me your tired, your poor,
"your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
"the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
In Montreal, 30,000 Jews demonstrate to draw attention
to the fate of those left behind in Ukraine.
100,000 Jews were murdered,
trapped in the civil war between the White Russians, the czarists,
and the Reds, the communists.
After four years of fighting, the Reds, the Bolsheviks,
eventually prevail
because they are even more ruthless than their opponents.
Russia becomes the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR.
A massive portion of the planet becomes communist.
The USSR's entire economy has collapsed.
The harvest had been requisitioned to feed the troops.
Its first great famine, in 1922, leaves five million dead.
Humanitarian aid pours in from all over the world.
A member of the American Relief Administration,
who will save thousands of lives, William Shafroth, recounts,
"People have been reduced to eating weeds mixed with ground bones,
"tree bark and clay,
"as well as horses, dogs, cats, rats
"and the straw from roofs.
"I see emaciated little skeletons
"with gaunt faces and toothpick legs.
"Every day, a dozen of them die.
"The stench is nauseating."
RUSSIAN FOLK MUSIC PLAYS
At the end of the Civil War,
1.5 million Russians escape the country.
400,000 White Russians settle in Nice on the French Riviera,
or Paris, in well-to-do neighbourhoods.
Those who have escaped with their fortunes can live like kings
and, indeed, they do.
RUSSIAN FOLK MUSIC CONTINUES
Prince Yusupov - one of the assassins of Rasputin,
the shadowy adviser of Tsar Nicholas II - writes,
"How can one not feel confident in Paris, which knows
well how to lift a stranger's spirits with a smile?"
WOMAN LAUGHS
The Prince has a lover,
the young Grand Duke Dmitri, who is, himself,
living with the already-famous fashion designer Coco Chanel.
When she decides to launch her perfume, Chanel No. 5,
Dmitri convinces her to adopt, for its bottle,
the shape of the vodka flasks used by Russian officers.
But it's not just the rich aristocrats who remain steeped
in their devotion to the last tsar.
Yusupov notes in his memoirs,
"Everywhere one sees Russian businesses
"springing up - restaurants, shops,
"new Orthodox churches, with their schools
"and retirement homes."
Paris is becoming a natural destination for immigrants.
MEN HARMONISE
The tsar's generals and former officers of the Imperial Guard
have no skills beyond the military,
but they can drive
and, so, become taxi drivers.
They will long be part of Parisian folklore.
The last will retire in 1970, at the age of 92.
MEN CONTINUE TO HARMONISE
White Russians, like this taxi driver,
watch, with concern, the spread of Soviet influence in the world.
CHANTS
Exorbitant wartime spending has led to deep social tensions.
People everywhere are joining Communist parties,
with their vision of common prosperity,
in London, Berlin,
New York, Milan and Rome.
CROWD SING IN ITALIAN
The Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci returns from Moscow
and takes his place as an early Marxist theoretician.
He says, "To live is to be partisan."
Opposing the communists, war veterans initially band together
behind a fiery poet, a war hero,
Gabriele D'Annunzio.
He has denounced the Treaty of Versailles because,
in redrawing the map of Europe, the Allies have handed to Yugoslavia
territories populated by Italians,
including Dalmatia and the city of Fiume.
MILITARY MARCH AND SINGING
Gabriele D'Annunzio laments,
"Our victory has been mutilated."
MARCH AND SINGING CONTINUE
He launches his militia, proclaiming,
"Italy, your hour has come.
"Wonderful years.
"I hear the thunder of eagles which, with their talons,
"tear up the night."
CROWD CHEERS
Gabriele D'Annunzio was able to seize the city of Fiume.
CROWD CHEERS
The regular army drives him out, but respectfully.
For the communist Gramsci, this tragicomedy is yet another sign
of the decadence of the bourgeois state.
He says, "The old world is dying.
"The new world struggles to be born
"and, in this twilight,
"monsters suddenly appear."
That monster is Benito Mussolini.
His wife, Rachele, writes,
"His eyes were phosphorescent,
"his gaze piercing.
"His pupils seemed to flash lightning.
"He knew that his eyes held incredible power over everyone."
Mussolini began his career as a socialist journalist.
He became a nationalist during the war.
In 1919, he created the fascist movement
named after his Fasci di Combattimento -
fighting squads.
Mussolini rides on the prestige of Gabriele D'Annunzio,
copying everything - the black shirts, the Roman salute,
the raised dagger,
and the cry, "A noi, a noi!" -
"To us, to us!"
But Gabriele D'Annunzio had 2,500 men in 1919.
Mussolini has 300,000 in 1922.
With his populist slogans, Mussolini unites veterans,
war invalids,
the unemployed,
the middle class,
and even the feeble-minded,
who have trouble making the fascist salute.
And all the underclass, who, after their street fights,
write on their bandages,
"Me ne frego" -
"I don't care."
Mussolini promises to restore social order.
He gives his squads a weapon,
a wooden cane, to beat the communists
and set fire to the houses of the people.
Mussolini says,
"I will restore discipline in the factories."
Which pleases the big industrialists,
like Agnelli, the founder of Fiat,
and Pirelli, the tyre manufacturer.
ITALIAN FOLK MUSIC PLAYS
Mussolini organises, on October 28th 1922,
a show of force, pompously called
the March On Rome.
MUSIC: The Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore by Guiseppe Verdi
He, himself, arrives in comfort, on the train from Milan.
ANVIL CHORUS CONTINUES
He has exchanged his black shirt for a suit and tie,
meant to be more statesman-like
in the midst of his fascist henchmen.
King Victor Emmanuel III hands him the reins of power,
much to the misfortune of the Italian people.
Supported by the church, Mussolini makes clever use of propaganda
and fills concentration camps with his opponents,
ushering in an authoritarian anti-communist regime.
In 1923, German veterans also unite
around their wartime leader, General Ludendorff,
who now supports the leader of the Nazi Party -
Adolf Hitler.
Hitler says,
"Our people are subject to such misery
"that, if we do not act now,
"they will join the communists."
The Allies will assist Hitler through a series of blunders...
..like the Belgian and French occupation
of Germany's Ruhr mining region...
..where coal is seized in forced reparations,
which leads to an economic crisis
and staggering inflation.
With banknotes being printed as fast as possible,
the currency depreciates at an unimaginable rate.
A loaf of bread costs 460 billion marks.
A 13-year-old German girl, Irma Lang, recounts,
"When our father comes home with the day's wages,
"we rush right out to spend it,
otherwise, in no time, it would be worthless.
TRAIN HORN SOUNDS
Between the Germans of the Ruhr
and the French and Belgian occupiers,
tension is rising.
On March the 10th, 1923, a French officer strikes German onlookers
who failed to remove their hats for the funeral cortege
of a victim of an attack.
Amidst such instability,
Hitler tries to seize power
on November the 9th, 1923.
But the army and police remain loyal to the German Republic
and the putsch fails.
Hitler is imprisoned... CELL DOOR CLANKS
..for now.
Stefan Zweig speaks for many when he writes,
"In this year, 1923,
"the swastikas have disappeared.
"The storm troopers and the name of Adolf Hitler
"have all fallen into oblivion."
But Zweig is terribly wrong.
From his cell, Hitler will prepare his revenge.
He writes his book, Mein Kampf - My Struggle,
a screed against the Treaty of Versailles and France.
The totalitarian menace is real.
In Spain, General Primo de Rivera, also inspired by Mussolini,
seizes power on September 23, 1923, and establishes a dictatorship.
This military coup d'etat delights an ambitious officer -
Francisco Franco.
Noted for his discipline and ferocity, Franco, at 33,
will become the youngest general in Europe
and the next dictator of Spain.
In 1921, he is one of the leaders of the Spanish Foreign Legion,
responsible for maintaining order in the Rif,
an area of Morocco controlled by Spain.
The French dominate the rest of the country.
During the World War, in the iron mines of the region,
Moroccans were forced to work beyond exhaustion
to supply French munitions factories.
The Moroccan people rebel against this exploitation.
A Nationalist leader emerges in the Arab world -
his name is Abd el-Krim.
He's a well-read scholar, about 50 years old.
He has successfully unified the Berber tribes around him.
He begins by inflicting a crushing defeat on the Spanish
at the Battle of Annual on July 21, 1921.
20,000 Spaniards are defeated by the Rif tribesmen -
13,000 of them are killed or wounded.
The survivors retreat in chaos.
The French intervene to fight alongside the Spaniards.
Is this the beginning of the end of colonisation?
The Rif War foreshadows all the horrors of the future.
Here, a Moroccan soldier has beheaded his rebel brother.
There is an escalation of atrocities on both sides.
The French and Spanish use every weapon in their arsenal,
including aerial attacks.
Some bombs are loaded with the same horrific mustard gas
used by the Germans in 1917.
Landing their forces behind enemy lines, and advancing with tanks,
they finally defeat Abd el-Krim.
He surrenders to the French on May 27th, 1926.
His surrender is filmed for movie house newsreels,
which seek to reassure viewers, proclaiming,
"His elderly father and his family
"placed themselves under the protection of the victors."
The Rif War will become the inspiration for every subsequent
war of decolonisation in Africa and around the world.
It also marks a decisive turning point.
From now on, the world will be structured around
a new fault line.
People had lost their religious bearings
and their identity during the war.
They will find new meaning, a new project, a vocation
in political engagement.
Fascist fever rises everywhere, like here, in Britain.
Communist fever also rises everywhere, even in New York.
The United States tries to expel its communists.
They will be given a one-way ticket to the homeland of socialism,
on this boat renamed
the Soviet Ark.
Bye!
In addition to the Red Scare,
Americans are dealing with prohibition.
By banning alcohol, conservatives hope
to impose morality on a society at full war.
And so begins the wild pursuit of smugglers
of every type of alcohol
distilled in Canada or at home.
American police resort to all the means at their disposal
to destroy the contraband.
Prohibition is a boon for the Italian-American Mafia,
now strengthening its grip on America.
Al Capone takes centre stage in the history of gangsterism.
Americans are giddy with life.
The rhythms of jazz give rise to new dances,
like the Charleston.
They want to forget everything.
They don't want to have to think any more.
The American writer John Dos Passos predicts,
"The 20th century will be American.
"American thought will dominate it.
"American progress will give it colour and direction.
"The regeneration of the world, physical as well as moral,
"has begun and revolutions never move backwards."
Jazz has crossed the Atlantic.
In Paris, Josephine Baker sets the tone.
When the French writer Jean Cocteau first sees her, he exclaims,
"Eroticism has just found its style."
These are the Roaring '20s of Montmartre and Montparnasse.
Ernest Hemingway's Paris memoir A Movable Feast
will be his last book.
He writes,
"Living in Paris is like having a great treasure given to you."
In Berlin, too, the rhythms of the Charleston echo everywhere.
Stefan Zweig writes in his book, The World Of Yesterday,
"As the value of money dwindled, all other values began to crumble.
"It was a time of high ecstasy,
"a singular mixture of unrest and fanaticism."
Everything that was extravagant and uncontrollable
experienced a golden age.
In the madness of these post-war years,
some want to feel alive, to bury once and for all
the memory of disaster and death.
Others will wait for Hitler to put an end to the Treaty of Versailles
by rearming Germany.
Financial crises will weaken democracies
and another World War,
which once seemed unthinkable, then a distinct threat,
could become inevitable.
And yet, after November 11th, 1918,
people everywhere proved their tremendous capacity
to start living again.
Will they know how to fight to ensure that the next war
will finally be the last?
And will they be able to keep the peace?
Subtitles by Red Bee Media