The second of four episodes on the Great War in 1916 examines Russian planning for a new offensive and the German sinking of the passenger ferry Sussex.
Goyescas (Piano Suite)
Composed in 1911 by Enrique Granados. Public domain.
Performed by Ruben Lorenzo, and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 license. Source.
This 2005 photograph of one of the battlefields at Verdun reveals how the scars of the artillery bombardments still show on the landscape a century later.
The year 1916 begins with a new German offensive on the French fortifications at Verdun.
Pictures at an Exhibition
Composed in 1874 by Modest Mussorgsky; orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel. Public domain.
Performed by The Skidmore College Orchestra. Public domain recording. Source.
This week’s episode catches us up on developments on the Italian front, the Caucasus front, and the Mesopotamian front, where a British force was besieged and forced to surrender, but even as that was unfolding, the British and the French were negotiating a secret agreement on how to divide the post-war Middle East.
“The Roast Beef of Old England”
Composed in 1731 by Richard Leveridge. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Marine Band. Public domain recording. Source.
The Capture of Kars
Composed in 1880 by Modest Mussorgsky. Public domain.
Performed by The University of Chicago Orchestra, directed by Barbara Schubert, and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Source.
Overture to La Forza del Destino (“The Force of Destiny”)
Composed in 1862 by Giuseppe Verdi. Public domain.
Performed by The University of Chicago Orchestra, directed by Barbara Schubert, and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Source.
Cover of the February 23, 1916 edition of The Fatherland, a pro-German magazine published in the US by George Sylvester Viereck. Note the suggestion that Japan also has imperial ambitions in North America.
In Mexico, the constitutionalist forces loyal to Venustiano Carranza oust the conventionalists from Mexico City and Pancho Villa is forced to retreat to his base in Chihuahua. German intelligence agents in the US fund the pro-German magazine The Fatherland as they plot to draw the US into the conflict in Mexico. With Victoriano Huerta in prison, the Germans offer support to Pancho Villa. Villa also believes US intervention in the Mexican Revolution to be in his interests, and he provokes the Americans by attacking Columbus, New Mexico.
Ochos Valses Poéticos
Composed in 1900 by Enrique Granados. Public domain.
Performed by Edson Lopes and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 license. Source.
Vaslav Nijinsky visits Charles Chaplin on the set of Chaplin’s current production, Easy Street, in January 1917.
The United States experienced an economic boom during the Great War. The motion picture industry grew rapidly, and the most famous name in cinema was Charles Chaplin. Vaslav Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes tour the US, and Nijinsky visited Chaplin’s studio. (See photo above. Nijinsky and Chaplin were both 27 years old when this picture was taken.)
Music from Sam Fox Moving Picture Music Volume 1
by J.S. Zemecnik. Published in 1913. Public domain.
Performed by Richard Frolich and the Texas Radio Theatre Company and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 license. Source and source.
Eighteen-year old Lieutenant John Kipling was one of the more than 8,000 British soldiers who died at the Battle of Loos.
In the autumn of 1915, the Allies attempt an offensive on the Western Front, partly in an effort to take pressure off the Russians. The offensive attempted to put into practice new strategies for offensive combat that the French and British were developing, but the Germans were also developing new strategies.
Listen:
Danse macabre
Composed in 1874 by Camille Saint-Saëns. Public domain.
Performed by the University of Chicago Orchestra and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Source.
“La Marseillaise”
Composed in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Navy Band. Public domain recording. Source.
There will be no new episode of The History of the Twentieth Century this week, owing to the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the USA. The podcast will return next week with episode 117: “What are the French Doing?”
Although there was a great deal of political resistance to conscription in the United Kingdom, declining numbers of new volunteers forced Parliament to enact mandatory service. Meanwhile, all the Great Powers are experiencing manpower shortages and increasing pressures on their economies, caused by the demands of the Great War.
“Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile!”
Composed by George Asaf and Felix Powell in 1915. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.
“Your King and Country Want You”
Composed by Paul Rubens in 1914. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.
Pancho Villa sits in the gilded presidential chair in the National Palace, Mexico City, on December 7, 1914. The man on the right (with a sombrero on his lap) is Emiliano Zapata. Zapata was offered his own turn in the chair, but declined.
The revolutionaries in Mexico ousted the dictator Victoriano Huerta, but then fell into fighting among themselves. Huerta, meanwhile, schemes with the Germans to take back the Mexican presidency, while the US government tries to stop him.
In this deep space image from the Hubble Space Telescope, every object you see is a galaxy. In the center is a massive cluster of galaxies. The arcs around the cluster are images of a galaxy behind the cluster. The cluster bends space, which distorts the galaxy’s image into multiple curved arcs, in the same way that an imperfection in a pane of glass might. Here is clear proof of Einstein’s theory; proof that was unavailable in 1915.
After ten years of further work, Albert Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity, which changes our understanding of the very nature of reality.
Symphony No. 8 in F
Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1812. Public domain.
Performed on recorder by Papalin, and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 license. Source.
