17. War in the Trenches

European Civilization, 1648-1945 (HIST 202) With the failure of Germany's offensive strategy, WWI became a war of defense, in which trenches played a major role. The use of trenches and barbed wire, coupled with the deployment of new, more deadly forms of artillery, created extremely bloody stalemate situations. The hopelessness of this arrangement resulted in a number of mutinies on the French side, motivated neither by defeatism nor by ideology, but rather by the sheer horror of trench warfare. Due to the unprecedented scale of casualties, WWI impressed itself irresistibly upon the cultural imagination of the combatant nations. 00:00 - Chapter 1. The Failure of the Schlieffen Plan: The Battle of the Marne 05:47 - Chapter 2. Trench Warfare 13:51 - Chapter 3. The Legacy of the Great War 22:20 - Chapter 4. The French Mutinies of 1917 34:18 - Chapter 5: The Turning Point in 1917: The Russian Revolution and American Involvement 41:52 - Chapter 6: The Scale of Destruction Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses This course was recorded in Fall 2008.