The Western Front, a 400-plus-mile stretch of land weaving through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea, was the decisive front during World War One. Despite the global nature of the conflict, much of the world remembers the scars of the Great War through the lens of these battles. Images of decimated trees, deep set trenches and sliding mud have endured in public consciousness, particularly due to their prevalence in literary and film depictions of the war. The horrors that were endured there are almost unimaginable today. The Western Front simmered incessantly with low-level violence, producing daily causalities that were compounded by ‘wastage’ losses due to disease or the environment. Rats were everywhere, spreading disease and feeding on food scraps or the remains of men. Bodies of dead soldiers that could be retrieved would be buried in or near the trenches – often, they were left where they were. In the run up to the close of the World War One centenary, Dan Snow travels to France and Belgium to visit some of the key battles of this harrowing conflict; from the tunnels of the Vimy Ridge, to the moving memorials at Newfoundland Park and the sweeping expanses of the Ypres salient.
Up Next in World War One
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The Aftermath of World War One
Today Dan is joined by Margaret MacMillan, professor at St. Antony's College at Oxford University and author of Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War. Together they discuss the effects WWI had on the world, and how Europe began to rebuild in the years that fol...
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1916
Last year audiences around the world were astounded by Sam Mendes' incredible World War One epic, 1917. This autumn, Dan Snow was invited to take a look at a recreated World War One trench network in the UK, built by military historian Taff Gillingham. In homage to 1917, we decided to film this w...
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Untold Stories of World War One
Dan Snow introduces four projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council over the last four years, highlighing underexplored aspects of First World War history, from German wartime photography to miltary training in Northern Ireland.
