While the Allies were nearing panic as the Germans approached Paris, Marshal Foch quickly realised the German intent and that the Schlieffen plan was unravelling. In a master piece of military diplomacy he persuaded Filed Marshal French to join the Attack on the exposed flank of the Germans as it wheeled to the east of Paris. The battle was indeed a miracle, with the British playing a key part alongside the French in halting the German advance and driving them back behind the next river – The Aisne, where the Allied attack crossed the river and up onto the open ridges of the Chemin des Dames. The Germans held firm and Field Marshal French ordered the BEF to dig-in as a temporary measure but the line moved but little here in the next four years.With neither army able to make headway against modern small arms, the machine gun and quick firing artillery in a conventional frontal battle, the armies raced to redeploy into the uncontested ground north to the sea.

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieute...

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to...

The story of the Trotta family during the rise and fall of the Austrian-Hungary empire. Based upon t...

An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI...

In northern Finland in the fall of 1916, Saima Niva rescues a man drifting in the river, who turns o...

A young American soldier, rendered in pseudocoma from an artillery shell from WWI, recalls his life ...

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is the...

Four battle-weary American soldiers under fire reflect on the women they left behind.

Professor Niall Ferguson argues that Britain's decision to enter the First World War was a catastrop...
A family suffers greatly during the First World War.

England, early 20th century. The future writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)...

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his...

In 1917 when the British forces are bogged down in front of the Turkish and German lines in Palestin...

The Gallipoli campaign of World War I was so controversial & devastating, it changed the face of bat...

Sergeant Michael Dunne fights in the 10th Battalion, AKA The "Fighting Tenth" with the 1st Canadian ...

Documentary to mark the WI's centenary. Lucy Worsley goes beyond the stereotypes of jam and Jerusale...

The story of how newspapers were distributed during the Blitz, stressing the importance of an accura...

At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated wi...

Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipo...