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00:00From the start of the First World War, Germany seized on Britain's greatest weakness,
00:27a vast empire, hard to defend, fatal to lose.
00:33The gamble was that Britain might risk everything to protect it,
00:36even victory on the Western Front.
00:45War for Europe meant war for the world.
00:57War for Europe
01:08War for Europe
01:14War for Europe
01:18It was Germany's idea to take the war beyond Europe, but it wasn't a bid for expansion, let alone world domination.
01:38The aim was to take the pressure off her armies in Europe by attacking the British Empire,
01:42hoping to divert Britain's troops, ships and resources to defend distant colonies.
01:52Britain also had no thought of a bigger empire.
01:55She just didn't want to lose the one she had.
01:59So while Germany wanted to open the war up around the globe, Britain was desperate to close it down.
02:04Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, realised the empire was Britain's Achilles' heel,
02:15and warned against letting Germany use it to distract Britain from her war effort.
02:22Forces must not be diverted to minor operations, to the prejudice of the concentration in the main theatre and the safety of the trade routes.
02:3115 years before, Germany had proclaimed herself an empire-builder.
02:41The Kaiser had taken his country into the 20th century as a German admiral, creating a global German navy.
02:53Weltpolitik was the big idea, a policy of overseas imperialism.
02:57The brainchild of his foreign secretary, Bernhard von Bülow.
03:04The days when the Germans left the earth to one neighbour, the sea to another, and kept only the heavens for themselves, are over.
03:13We don't want to put anyone in the shade, but we too demand our place in the sun.
03:19Germany had come late to the game of empires, but by 1900 she had Togoland, Cameroon, German South West Africa, now Namibia, and German East Africa, now Tanzania.
03:33Her flag flew over patches in the Pacific, New Guinea, Samoa, and Micronesia.
03:42She had a vital toehold in China, at Tsingtao, where she recalled her ships and brewed beer.
03:49Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz saw this as just the start.
03:55We are now standing only at the beginning of a new division of the globe.
04:06Germany alarmed the world with her imperial tub thumping.
04:10She eyed up Puerto Rico, and considered pouncing on the Panama Canal the minute it was completed.
04:15But the boldest of all the Kaiser schemes was Operational Plan 3.
04:26The East Coast is the heart of the United States, and this is where she is most vulnerable.
04:33New York will panic at the prospect of bombardment.
04:36By hitting her here, we can force America to negotiate.
04:39Germany's secret plans from 1903.
04:49To attack the eastern seaboard with 60 ships and 100,000 men.
04:53To shell Manhattan and capture Boston.
05:04The outlandish scheme was driven by the Kaiser's resentment of America's growing power in the Pacific.
05:10He believed in a militarist state, and increasingly hated what the West stood for.
05:18Service to mammon, greed, self-indulgence, land grabbing, lying, treachery, and not least murder.
05:29The Kaiser thought capitalism was vulnerable.
05:32That a strong enough attack on its international systems of trade, credit and insurance
05:36could bring the edifice tumbling down.
05:41Operational Plan 3 was dropped, but not the hostility towards capitalist empires.
05:56By 1912, Germany had traded in Weltpolitik for a more realistic policy.
06:00Now, her military machine prepared for a European, not a global war, and the army got the budget increase, not the navy.
06:12The first day of war found Germany's high seas fleet trapped by the mighty British navy in the North Sea.
06:18And all the German navy had to threaten the entire British empire was a scattered force of 17 cruisers linked by a wireless network to Berlin.
06:31There was the Königsberg of East Africa, the Gerber and the Breslau in the Mediterranean, the Dresden and the Karlsruhe in the West Indies, the Leipzig off the west coast of America.
06:50But the greatest concentration of cruisers was Admiral Graf von Spee's powerful East Asiatic Squadron based at Tsingtao in China.
07:09Tsingtao gave Germany a huge area of operations across the South China Sea and into the Pacific.
07:14Seizing it would cut the squadron's lifeline.
07:20Britain saw the urgency, but lacked the resources.
07:24So, two days into the war, she turned to her ally, Japan.
07:33Japan was a growing power.
07:36Britain's call for naval help suited her ambitions perfectly.
07:40Together, Britain and Japan would capture Tsingtao, vital German base and the Kaiser's pride and joy.
07:51It would shame me more to surrender Tsingtao to the Japanese than Berlin to the Russians.
07:57On the 2nd of September, 1914, 60,000 Japanese troops landed up the coast, violating China's neutrality.
08:09They met up with 2,000 British and closed in on the German garrison of 4,500.
08:14It's unbearable.
08:18It's unbearable.
08:20All we can do is sit and wait for this bunch of monkeys to arrive.
08:24Every day they get a bit closer.
08:27No one expects to get home in one piece.
08:30No hope of reinforcements.
08:32The noose around our necks is getting tighter and tighter.
08:35For a solid week, the Japanese battered Tsingtao.
08:52On the 7th of November, they entered the town in triumph.
08:55Some Germans sneered at the token British force, forgetting the Japanese to do their dirty work.
09:05The brave British.
09:07They played no part in the capture of Tsingtao, but they joined in the victory parade.
09:13As they went by, we Germans were ordered to turn our backs on them.
09:18The English complained to the Japanese commander, but he simply said,
09:23Well, we can't repeat the whole procession just because of that.
09:32The capture of Tsingtao gave Japan a launch pad to pursue her empire building.
09:38Within weeks, she demanded territory and trading rights from China.
09:43Japan also seized all German possessions north of the equator.
09:48Australia and New Zealand were quick to steal those to the south.
09:56Much to America's frustration, Britain had empowered Japan in the Pacific.
10:03Key stage in a process that would lead, a quarter of a century later, to Pearl Harbor.
10:07Germany's loss of Tsingtao, far from neutralizing Spee's squadron, ensured its destructive power would be felt around the globe.
10:23The best German cruiser commanders, like Spee, were fearless mavericks whom the war turned into heroes.
10:32Superb sailors with the instincts of pirates.
10:35The Kaiser had given them full authority to make their own decisions in wartime.
10:42The heavy responsibility of the officer in command will be increased by the isolated position of his ship.
10:49But he must never show one moment of weakness.
10:53Above all, the officer must bear in mind that his chief duty is to damage the enemy as severely as possible.
11:00Spee now split his squadron.
11:06The light cruiser Emden, under Captain Carl von Müller, made for the Bay of Bengal.
11:12Spee in the Scharnhorst led his other ships across the Pacific.
11:16I'm quite homeless. I cannot reach Germany. I must plough the seas of the world, doing as much mischief as I can.
11:32At the Admiralty in London, Winston Churchill fretted about where Spee would show up next.
11:37The vastness of the Pacific and its multitude of islands offered him their shelter.
11:45And, once he had vanished, who should say where he would reappear?
11:49He was a cut flower in a vase, fair to see, yet bound to die.
11:55But, so long as he lived, all our enterprises lay under the shadow of a serious potential danger.
12:07Spee had a constant worry.
12:11Cruisers needed coal every eight or nine days or they'd be dead in the water.
12:17He made for neutral Chile, where he had coal waiting for him.
12:26On the 1st of November, 1914, he ran into a British fleet off Coronel.
12:37The battle which followed inspired a post-war feature film.
12:44The British commander was Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock, under orders from London.
12:51It appears that Gneisenau and Scharnhorst are working across to South America.
12:56Be prepared to meet them in company.
13:00Craddock had one ship that could outgun Spee's fleet, but she was slow and had been left behind.
13:05Now Craddock raced towards enemy ships better armed than his.
13:10He had ignored his own rule of thumb.
13:16A naval officer should never let his boat go faster than his brain.
13:22I immediately ordered Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to go full steam ahead.
13:26And within 15 minutes, I was racing against heavy seas at 20 knots and came to lie parallel with him.
13:41Craddock's ships were no match for Spee's.
13:43Good Hope and Monmouth were obviously in distress.
13:48Monmouth yawed off to starboard, burning furiously.
13:53There was a terrible explosion on Good Hope between her main mast and her after funnel.
13:57The gust of flames reached a height of over 200 feet, lighting up a cloud of debris that was flung still higher in the air.
14:031,600 British sailors were lost.
14:15It was Britain's worst naval defeat for 250 years.
14:19The global war was going Germany's way.
14:22It is only when you get to see and realize what India is, that she is the strength and the greatness of England.
14:39It is only then that you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward,
14:45cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves.
14:56Britain's empire and trading network was the single biggest resource she brought to the war.
15:03And India was at the heart of it.
15:08The cords were never tighter.
15:11All the more reason for Germany to want them cut.
15:15These slender lines on the map were now the focus of intense study in the British and German admiralty's in the chart rooms of warships.
15:26Fingers traced the vital shipping lanes through the Suez Canal, around South Africa's Cape.
15:33Mines pondered how to protect them, how to sever them.
15:40And one of the sharpest mines was on the bridge of the German cruiser Emden.
15:43A month after she left Admiral Schwes' squadron, Captain Carl von Müller steered her into the Bay of Bengal.
15:52In 1932, the Germans made a feature film about his odyssey.
15:57He had an indescribable power over the entire crew.
16:08He never gave orders, he just expressed a wish.
16:11From the moment he took command of the ship, he never left the bridge again.
16:15This is where he stood, slept, sat, studied the maps.
16:20This is where he wanted to be, stand or fall.
16:23The Emden sometimes rigged a dummy funnel to look like a British cruiser.
16:32A large steamer appeared dead ahead, and thinking we were an English man of war, was so overjoyed at our presence that she hoisted a huge British flag.
16:46I'd like to have seen the look on her captain's face when we hoisted our flag, and invited him most graciously to tarry with us a while.
16:54Captain Müller became famous for taking all crew and passengers safely onto the Emden, before sinking their ship.
17:07We always allowed them time to collect and take with them their personal possessions.
17:12They usually devoted most of this time to making certain that their precious supply of whisky was not wasted on the fishes.
17:19Muller regularly released his grateful captives.
17:28Such was the Emden's impact that the British Admiralty later drew up this chart to track her movements.
17:38Muller even had the audacity to steam into the Indian port of Madras, as a crew member recorded in his diary.
17:44The 22nd of September 1914, 9.30pm. The Emden sneaks closer and fires 125 shots. Some hit boats in the harbour.
17:59Huge columns of fire rise above the oil tanks. The coastal defences open fire, but they all fall short.
18:0523rd of September. We are now 100 miles away. We can still see the fires at Madras.
18:14In the city of London, freight rates and shipping insurance rocketed.
18:25At one point, the entire British trade fleet in the Bay of Bengal was kept in harbour, rather than fall prey to dashing Captain Müller.
18:34Germany's rogue cruisers were starting to harm Britain's war effort.
18:43Three transports are delayed in Calcutta through fear of Emden.
18:49This involves delaying transport of artillery and cavalry.
18:54The cabinet took a strong view.
18:56The extirpation of these pests is a most important subject.
18:59While the Emden ran the British ragged at one end of the Indian Ocean, 25 Royal Navy warships hunted the cruiser Königsberg at the other, off the coast of Germany's East African colony.
19:13She had raided Zanzibar and sunk a British light cruiser from her secret hideout in the refugee delta.
19:19The frustrated British decided to strangle all her possible bases, starting with the port of Tanga.
19:34On the 2nd of November, 1914, the British steamed into this bay.
19:39In the global war, imperial powers got others to do their fighting.
19:44Most of the British troops were Indian.
19:46Their arrival was closely watched by Thomas Planton, a 16-year-old African fighting for the Germans.
19:58The approaching British ships had all their lights blazing and seemed to be making no attempt to conceal their presence.
20:06We were in position with machine guns, waiting in ambush for them, and many of them were killed when they started to come ashore.
20:13A lot of them were killed before they even got out of the water.
20:22Thomas Planton was one of two and a half thousand men under German commander Paul von Letov Vorbeck.
20:27The British thought taking Tanga would be a pushover, but they reckoned without Letov.
20:36He was a professional Prussian soldier, hard as nails, charismatic.
20:41Von Letov was a remarkable soldier, but stubborn and single-minded to a degree I have fortunately never experienced before.
20:50His most remarkable quality was the reckless energy with which he pursued his goals.
20:54This was often covered up by his persuasive charm, which he could switch on if he wanted to.
21:00On the ship to Africa, von Letov had met Karen Blixen, who would later write out of Africa.
21:09He clearly turned on the charm for her.
21:12A German officer, von Letov, who belongs to a very old Mecklenburger family, has been such a friend to me.
21:19You should hear how they talk about him out here, as the greatest genius of the age.
21:29Despite losing men during the landing, the British now threatened Tanga.
21:34Governor Schnee ordered Letov to evacuate the town rather than see it destroyed.
21:40But Letov had come to Africa to fight.
21:42It was crucial to prevent the enemy from gaining a foothold in Tanga, thus giving him a base from which to advance north.
21:52I couldn't let the governor's order to spare Tanga take precedence over this priority.
22:01Letov wrecked the British positions himself on his bicycle.
22:05He also called in reinforcements.
22:14Three companies of German troops came by rail to Tanga.
22:18Here, on the 4th of November, 1914, they met the British Indian soldiers, raw and poorly trained.
22:25British intelligence officer Richard Minotshagen watched the ensuing route.
22:35Half the 13th Rajputs turned at once, broke into a rabble and bolted.
22:40I could not believe my eyes.
22:42They were all jabbering like terrified monkeys and were clearly not for it at any price.
22:46Everyone in the dense forest, friend and foe, was mixed up together, shouting in all sorts of languages.
22:56The enemy ran off in wild disorder, and our machine guns mowed down whole companies to the last man.
23:05Von Letov was based here, at the German hospital.
23:08After two days of heavy fighting, the British sent Richard Minotshagen to negotiate a surrender.
23:22The Germans were kindness itself, and gave me a most excellent breakfast, which I sorely needed.
23:28We discussed the fight freely, as though it had been a football match.
23:32It seemed so odd that I should be having a meal today, with people whom I was trying to kill yesterday.
23:41It seemed so wrong, and made me wonder whether this really was war, or whether we'd all made a ghastly mistake.
23:51The German officers were all hard-looking, keen and fit.
23:55They treated this war as some new form of sport.
24:02The British failed to take tanga, and suffered 700 casualties.
24:07Letov lost just 65.
24:10Germany hailed him as a hero.
24:13A German David is fighting alone against the British Goliath in Africa.
24:20If we cannot fight by his side, at least we must make sure that he is well supplied with shot for his sling.
24:28But the British blockade of Germany prevented reinforcements reaching Letov.
24:38Further east, across the Indian Ocean, Muller was still causing havoc.
24:43He'd sunk two warships, and captured 23 merchant ships.
24:47On the 9th of November, 1914, the Emden anchored at the Cocos Islands to destroy the British wireless station.
24:58But the radio operator spotted the Emden's bogus fourth funnel, and put out a call for help.
25:04The Australian cruiser, Sydney, picked up the message, and ended the Emden's maverick career.
25:11Captain Muller was taken prisoner. He and the other survivors were well looked after.
25:26Dear loved ones, I'm well and healthy.
25:31The British were very friendly.
25:34They took loads of photos of us, and asked for our addresses to send us the snaps.
25:39Yours, Walter.
25:40Now, Admiral Graf von Spee's luck also ran out.
25:50Britain took the risk of detaching two of her latest battlecruisers from the crucial North Sea blockade of Germany to deal with him.
25:57On the 8th of December, 1914, German commander Hans Poghammer sighted their huge masts as they recoiled in Port Stanley on the Falkland Islands.
26:12He realized the Germans were outgunned and outpaced.
26:16We choked a little at the neck. Our throats contracted and stiffened.
26:21For that meant a life and death grapple, or rather a fight ending in honorable death.
26:28The German fleet tried to get away, but the British battlecruisers were too fast.
26:34At 1.25pm, Spee turned to face them.
26:39But the British were careful to stay out of range of his guns, firing their own from 16,000 yards.
26:44Lieutenant Harry Bennett on HMS Canopus watched what happened and painted these watercolours.
26:59At 4.17pm, the Scharnhorst went down with Admiral von Spee and all hands.
27:12At 6.02pm, the Gneisenau sank with most of its crew, including Spee's younger son Heinrich.
27:18His other son Otto was on the doomed Nuremberg.
27:27The sight was one of fearful awe.
27:29She turned over and sank with a graceful gliding motion, as would a tumbler pressed over in a bowl of water.
27:37Those who went down in her were game to the end.
27:40For we saw a party of her men standing on the quarterdeck, waving the German ensign as she sank.
27:45And so they went down into their watery grave.
27:54The Battle of the Falklands heralded the end of Germany's cruiser campaign.
27:58Her global war would increasingly have to be fought on land.
28:02Again, her commanders would stretch slim resources to lead the British Empire a dance.
28:15The Suez Canal presented a rare opportunity for Germany to harass the British Empire.
28:30A crucial British sea lane, vulnerable to attack by land forces.
28:34But Germany couldn't spare any men from the Western Front.
28:41So Berlin turned to Ottoman Turkey, her ally since November 1914.
28:57The Turkish 4th Army was stationed in Palestine, just 150 miles from the Suez Canal.
29:02The Turks agreed to help capture Suez, assigning these 19,000 troops.
29:13They saw it as the first stage in their own reconquest of Egypt and Libya.
29:24We marched at night and only by moonlight.
29:27My heart was filled with a deep melancholy, mingled with great hope of success.
29:33At the sound of the song, the red flag flies over Cairo,
29:37to the accompaniment of which the advancing battalions forged ahead over the endless waste of desert,
29:43feebly illuminated by the pale gleam of the waxing moon.
29:47The Turks had to transport howitzers, floating pontoons, food and water across the Sinai desert,
29:58and didn't lose a single man.
29:59In the early hours of the 3rd of February 1915, they reached the Suez Canal.
30:08The German colonel, who had planned the operation, now watched it go horribly wrong.
30:13A sentry noticed our attack and fired. The shocks created panel.
30:21The English then blasted the banks with machine gun fire.
30:24The Turks found the canal defended by nine British warships and 30,000 Indian troops dug into defensive positions.
30:42The Ottoman troops suffered 1,200 casualties.
30:45The survivors retreated across the desert.
30:54The attack had failed, but Africa was now a battleground in Germany's global war.
31:01She had three bases of operations.
31:04The Cameroons, Germany East Africa, where Letov was still at large,
31:08and German Southwest Africa, with its ports and wireless stations.
31:11Luckily for Britain, she had a colony right next door.
31:17Unluckily, it was the one whose loyalty she could least rely on.
31:25The Union of South Africa was racially diverse.
31:29Blacks, Boers and British settlers.
31:34Just 15 years before, Britain had fought a long bloody war against the Boers.
31:38Many still had little love for Britain.
31:42Their loyalty could not be counted on.
31:45As one commander told South Africa's Prime Minister, Louis Botha.
31:49My men are ready.
31:51Whom do we fight? The English or the Germans?
31:54But South Africa was ideally situated to launch an attack on German Southwest Africa.
32:00British Colonial Secretary, Louis Harcourt, took the gamble.
32:03If your ministers desire and feel themselves able to seize such part of German Southwest Africa,
32:16as will give them the command of the wireless stations there,
32:19we should feel this was a great and urgent imperial service.
32:22South Africa's government readily agreed because it had many imperial ambitions of its own.
32:30It wanted to seize German Southwest for itself.
32:33On the 14th of September 1914, South African forces crossed the Orange River into German Southwest.
32:50But the Germans were one jump ahead as the South Africans found out when they paused at the watering hole of Sandfontein.
32:56The South Africans were beaten, but there was worse to come.
33:24Part of South Africa now rose up in armed rebellion.
33:41Commanding the forces in the Northern Cape was Marni Moritz.
33:46Fearless and uncompromising, Moritz had fought a vicious guerrilla campaign against Britain in the Boer War.
33:52His sympathies lay entirely with Germany.
33:59I received a telegram ordering me to take a large commando into German Southwest Africa.
34:05I was determined not to fight on behalf of the British Empire and my officers and troops were in full accord with me.
34:11In October 1914, Marni Moritz crossed the Orange River into German territory at Squit Drift to enlist German support.
34:21Two days later, Moritz addressed his troops under this tree.
34:35Now men, we don't want to be ruled by the Jews and the financiers of England.
34:49General Bayers, General Bayers, General DeWitt and myself have decided to form an independent South African Republic and have entered into an agreement with the Governor of German Southwest Africa.
35:02They will provide us with arms and ammunition, guns.
35:09On this step depends the freedom of the masses of the country.
35:14Britain's request for help had brought her dominion to the brink of civil war.
35:25In London, the colonial secretary, Lewis Harcourt, feared the breakup of the Union of South Africa.
35:31He secretly ordered 30,000 Australian soldiers diverted to the Cape to smother the rebellion.
35:39Safety of the Union is first and paramount consideration.
35:44We attach no importance to German Southwest Africa in comparison.
35:52The Australians weren't needed.
35:54In the winter of 1914, the loyal South Africans defeated the Boer rebels.
35:59This is rare film of 50 of them being led to trial in Cape Town.
36:04But they never caught Marni Moritz.
36:10By July 1915, South Africa cornered the Germans, forced their surrender and annexed their colony.
36:21And Britain had more work for South Africa, north this time, to deal once and for all with von Letov.
36:29London turned to South Africa's defence minister to lead the campaign, Yanni Smuts.
36:36Smuts too had fought in the Boer war, but was now passionately pro-British.
36:42More a statesman than a soldier, Smuts made an indifferent general of conventional forces.
36:47And he was up against Letov.
36:53British officer Richard Meinetshagen was now Smuts' intelligence officer.
36:58Smuts is quite determined to avoid a stand-up fight.
37:03He told me he could not afford to go back to South Africa with the nickname Butcher Smuts.
37:07If von Letov is clever and Smuts not clever enough, there's going to be trouble.
37:16Letov was clever.
37:17Here, at his headquarters at Moshi railway station, he thought through the idea of depriving Britain of manpower in Europe by opening up the war in Africa.
37:28The question was, could we, with our small forces, prevent considerable numbers of the enemy from intervening in Europe, or inflict substantial damage on their armaments and troops?
37:42I strongly believed that we could.
37:44By August 1916, Letov had become expert at his cat-and-mouse game.
38:01Von Letov is slippery and is not going to be caught by manoeuvre.
38:05He knows the country better than we do.
38:06I think we're in for an expensive hide-and-seek, and von Letov will still be cuckooing somewhere in tropical Africa when the ceasefire goes.
38:17Smuts has cost Britain many hundreds of lives and many millions of pounds.
38:28Letov ran his force of up to 15,000 soldiers, mostly black, on scrounging and improvisation.
38:34No supplies from Germany reached him after March 1916, but he made a little go a long way, as Ludwig Depper, one of his medical officers, noted.
38:47When there was no ammunition, Letov would try to produce his own cartridges.
38:52If the men asked the commander for weapons or clothes, they were told, take it from the enemy.
38:58Letov made war at cost price.
39:00You'd have been justified in displaying this war at a country fair with a for sale sign, cheapest war in the world.
39:07Yanni Smuts had five times Letov's force and resources to match.
39:19But the further he went into German East Africa, the more stretched his supply lines.
39:29And he reckoned without the killer tsetse fly.
39:32The life expectancy for his 50,000 horses was just four weeks.
39:35Torrential rain, mud, dust and boiling heat further slowed his progress.
39:49Intelligence was sketchy, maps inadequate.
39:54Telephone cable often had to be raised to eight metres to avoid damage by giraffes.
39:58This is like warfare of bygone days.
40:04We come along where no road had ever been, where probably white man had never trod before.
40:11The river is in flood and we can't get across.
40:14On the other side, the German patrols are watching us, but the crocodile hold the peace between us very successfully.
40:29Letov played with Smuts, refusing to fight, slipping away, luring him deeper into Africa.
40:35As they went, they spread the war's grief and destruction, dragging in more and more of the people of Africa.
40:54This war was being carried on the backs of black Africans.
40:57For the let-off campaign alone, the British recruited over a million black porters.
41:12One in five died from malnutrition and disease.
41:16Death rates comparable with those on the Western Front.
41:21They endured their ordeal quietly.
41:23They only had duties and hardly any rights.
41:28They tumbled into the splashing mud with their heavy loads,
41:31and were then ruthlessly forced to move on and catch up.
41:39Oh, the Lindy road was dusty, and the Lindy road was long.
41:44But the chap what did the hardest graft, who could not do but wrong,
41:48was the Cavarondo porter, with his Cavarondo song.
41:51It was, Come here, porter.
41:54It was, Emera, here, gip.
41:56And Emera didn't grumble.
41:58He simply did his bit.
41:59What smut saves on the battlefield, he loses in hospital.
42:02For it is Africa and the climate we're really fighting, not the Germans.
42:05Out of 20,000 South Africans, over half were invalided home by the beginning of 1917.
42:06They were replaced by black troops from Nigeria and Ghana.
42:07Recruitment of blacks soared in the country.
42:08They were replaced by black troops from Nigeria and Ghana.
42:09Recruitment of blacks soared in the country.
42:10They were replaced by black troops from Nigeria and Ghana.
42:11Recruitment of blacks soared in East Africa as well.
42:12Over the course of the war, the King's Africans splashed with the war,
42:18the South Africans were replaced by the South Africans.
42:20But, the South Africans were replaced by the South Africans.
42:22Out of 20,000 South Africans,
42:24over half were invalided home by the beginning of 1917.
42:30They were replaced by black troops from Nigeria and Ghana.
42:35Recruitment of blacks soared in East Africa as well.
42:39Over the course of the war,
42:41the king's African rifles rose from 3,000 men to 35,000.
42:45Fololiani Longwe spoke for many black soldiers.
42:53Think of yourself buried in a hole
42:55with only your head and hands outside,
42:58holding a gun, death smelling all over the place.
43:03Listen to the sound of exploding bombs and machine guns.
43:07Smoke all over and the vegetation burnt,
43:10and of course, deforested.
43:13Watch your relatives getting killed, crying, finally dead.
43:18These things we did, experienced and saw.
43:24Letov survived undefeated to the very end,
43:27marching triumphantly through Berlin in 1919.
43:32The British never caught him,
43:34even though they turned it into an African war
43:36and set an army on his tail.
43:43But Britain and France had such reserves of manpower in their colonies
43:47that from 1914 they shipped them to Europe.
43:54Remarkable French colour photographs of the world
43:56that came to serve on the Western Front.
43:58French General Charles Mangin had calculated that France could raise up to 300,000
44:12from her empire for Europe.
44:13No one believed him.
44:15But, in fact, they mobilised double that number.
44:26Black troops have precisely those qualities
44:29which are demanded in the long struggles of modern war.
44:32Endurance, tenacity, the instinct for combat,
44:36the absence of nervousness,
44:38and an incomparable power of shock.
44:41Not only do they enjoy danger, a life of adventure,
44:45but they are also essentially disciplinable.
44:49people started hiding and running away from the camp.
44:58There were all kinds of illnesses,
45:00even psychological illness.
45:02People didn't know where they were going
45:04or even why they were fighting.
45:06There were rumours that we would never come back,
45:08that we are going to be sold as slaves.
45:11India provided Britain with one and three-quarter million men in the war.
45:21They'd been thrown into some of the toughest fighting from the start.
45:32One Indian wrote to a friend.
45:36The war is a calamity on three worlds
45:39and has caused me to cross the seas and live here.
45:42The cold is so great that it cannot be described.
45:46We have not seen the sun for four months.
45:49Thus we are sacrificed.
45:52I have neither sleep by night nor ease by day.
45:56There can never have been such a war before.
45:59Nor will there ever be again.
46:01Some men, like Jason Jingo,
46:08used to the habitual racism of colonial rule,
46:12returned home with greater self-esteem.
46:23We had liked our time in France.
46:25It was our first experience of living in a society without a colour bar.
46:30We were different from the other people at home.
46:33Our behaviour, as we showed the South Africans,
46:36was something more than they'd expected from a native.
46:39We had copied the manners and customs of the Europeans.
46:43And not only copied, we lived them.
46:45We lived them.
46:52But it wasn't the same Africa Jason Jingo
46:54and the other survivors came back to after the war.
47:02The empires which once carved it up
47:05had now turned parts of it into a wasteland,
47:08as German medic Ludwig Deppe realised.
47:11Behind us, we leave destroyed fields,
47:17and for the immediate future, starvation.
47:20We are no longer the agents of civilisation.
47:23Our path is marked by death, plundering, and deserted villages.
47:28It would be years before African nationalism took off,
47:40but a few had begun the journey.
47:45In 1914, John Chilembwe challenged the basis of the war
47:49and Africa's place in it.
47:52And his words would haunt colonial officials for years to come.
47:55Let the rich men, bankers, titled men, storekeepers, farmers, and landlords,
48:06go to war and get short.
48:08Instead, the poor Africans, who have nothing to own in this present world,
48:13who in death leave only a long line of widows and orphans
48:17in utter want and dire distress,
48:19are invited to die for a cause which is not theirs.
48:22Germany had fought a remarkable global war.
48:36But it cost her her cruisers, her wireless network, and all her colonies.
48:41Yet Germany had forced Britain and France to call on their empires and lean on their allies.
48:52In the process, these flexed their muscles and formed empires of their own.
48:56The First World War saw the last scramble for Africa.
49:09And the ideas the Kaiser had so hated, land grabbing, avarice, and capitalism,
49:14had in fact been spread wider.
49:15For the moment, imperialism looked more successful than it had ever been.
49:24In the next episode of the First World War, the call goes out for jihad, holy war in the Middle East,
49:38the nightmare of Gallipoli, and the agony of the Armenian people.
49:43invasion people.
49:48One.
49:53One...
49:55God.
49:56One.
49:58One...
50:01One.
50:02Two.
50:04Two.
50:06Two.
50:07Five.
50:09Two.
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