More Info About Alsace-Lorraine in WW1 I OUT OF THE ETHER (2023)

Introduction

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» WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES?
Videos: British Pathé
Pictures: Mostly Picture Alliance
Background Map:d-maps.com/carte.php
Literature (excerpt):
Gilbert, Martin. The First World War. A Complete History, Holt Paperbacks, 2004.
Hart, Peter. The Great War. A Combat History of the First World War, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hart, Peter. The Great War. 1914-1918, Profile Books, 2013.
Stone, Norman. World War One. A Short History, Penguin, 2008.
Keegan, John. The First World War, Vintage, 2000.
Hastings, Max. Catastrophe 1914. Europe Goes To War, Knopf, 2013.
Hirschfeld, Gerhard. Encyclopedia First World War, Schöningh Paderborn, 2004
Michalka, Wolfgang. The First World War. Effect, Perception, Analysis, Seehamer Verlag GmbH, 2000
Leonhard, Jorn. Pandora's Box: History of the First World War, C.H. Beck, 2014

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Content

I'm indy neidell- and this is another episode of out of the ether now out of the ether- is the format where I share some of the vast world war.

1 knowledge that experts all over the world in various aspects of the war have shared with me and the crew.

Now speaking of the crew, I'm not gonna, be doing the sharing today, because sitting with me is Marcus.

Lincoln Marcus is the other actual historian on our little crew and he fact checks my scripts and he also does research and writing for some of the specials and his master thesis was about the battle for Hartman's viola, cop, so Marcus, first of all, say hello to everyone out there, hello, there, old, friends and okay.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about the whole thesis and Hartman's viola viola cough? What made you interested in in the battle in the first place sure my pleasure I'm fascinated with the battle for admins Filatov.

For a long time now, it's I grew up in Freiburg.

My hometown is like an hour drive away from an actual battlefield, which is pretty quite a unique situation for a German city to be- and you know it's, the Battle of the bosk was probably on the doorsteps of the German Empire at the time now it's actually a German of Iceland and the headquarter of Hans Gator, general Hans kada was actually in Freiburg and yeah.

It's quite interesting because people, especially in Germany, think of the Great War, as in Belgium and in France and to the north, but it's kind of unique for that place to be that close to Germany actually and it's kind of a my interest sparked and yes, so, it's kind of, if you read in the local history, especially you hear about the local people just going to the the mountaintops and see on the horizon, the explosions oh and the clatter of the battle.

You have French reconnaissance planes flying over the city and local soldiers marching out of the barracks to the Bosque's mountains, and that itself is quite a unique situation.

What we got interested in the battle itself is like the impact it has on German French relations and especially with elseis Lorraine.

That's for the Great War.

This is the big topic both for France and Germany, the recapture or the defiance in Alsace Lorraine.

So your thesis was not only about the fighting in the bus, which, of course, we talked about in regular episodes and that all the stuff in Alsace glory, but also about how memory, how historical memory evolves right exactly and we have to see in the anniversary about a hundred years ago the memory changes of the Great War.

You must remember rightly after the Armistice tourists, came to those places.

That's horrendous straight after just two weeks, not even close.

You had like the plans for Mishler.

They brought out those travelling guides.

People could go and see the benefits.

It brought the first edition in 1917 for tourists who see the old places and go to it in the middle of the fighting exactly exactly, and they re printing that now two year anniversary, that's kind of interesting how people just went up there and wanted to see the actual battlefield, but at the same time politicians came and wanted to build a memory to it memorial places.

You know for once, of course, to commemorate extreme loss of life there, but thirty thousand people died.

There is a tiny, it's a tiny area.

It's a few mountaintops, but the blood loss was immensely overdone Verdun.

Some people called it a little bit down because it is actually it was.

My my thesis was around the invisible fortress because the whole mountain was turned into a fortress kind of, and soldiers lay around like ten meters away from each other in the first places, it's really that close to each other and yeah and they in the 1920s they kind of had three places and they wanted to build memorials.

What's on the old French site, where they had the artillery the French, they build a huge Cemetery.

The interesting thing is not only for the French, but since it was an artillery war, most of the time they had just the Unknown Soldier, they didn't know, we have the scatter skeletons, we don't know from which side, so we all bury them and then, in a big big, what to say a crypt I write, write a Tripta and the other one too big crosses on the mountaintop itself, which was no-man's land that was like it was blasted away and people thought the magazine like it stimulants get.

Absolutely you can see you today.

You can see all the shell craters and every words it's it's immense and this third one which was actually the most impressive one, is- and we talked about it in the episode about 150 - the Red Devil yeah, who actually captured the place in the Christmas battle, but got annihilated wife to the man yeah, my famous last, and it's actually the story, it's a lot of famous, lasts and and at that area, because it's so close to each other one.

They build actually a huge bronze relief of those soldiers.

You know with the guests like here the going up to the mountaintop yeah.

The most interesting thing is that it's built on the side of the German side and it's looking towards the Rhine.

Okay, it's like you, know, I, guess you're, not only we we did.

You know Germany.

We got you one yeah, yeah, okay, but at the same time, so like it like a fret, you know we're still here with we deepest yeah watch out.

Germany, don't do it again, but yeah, it's actually impressive.

You can see all the old dugouts, the bunkers, the trenches.

You can still go in most of them because you know German engineering, it's built to last, but it's actually quite impressive for a good point.

Okay, but the story doesn't really end here.

No as history progresses, ironically, the Germans come back so boilers, the Empire, Strikes, Back, more or less and Hitler actually blow up the memorial and say he did blow up the bronze relief and certain make sense, no threat to me.

Oh yeah.

No, but it was actually the interesting part is that they got up there with a propaganda machine.

Everything and turned him whole new memorial around and a cross around yeah physically turned it around and mornings, meaning more like not literally, but today said no, it was not like not a memorial of conquest, but over the finalists and see the thing is, unlike even deepest where the Germans had to more or less get out.

Okay, the washer in the boss.

They didn't know that was like in 1980 war, they got the orders get out, they orderly march down, yeah and I was shooting out, and so the propaganda machine of the Nazis said here see we were undefeated in the field.

That was our stand.

We stood here, we defied defied the French and now we're back and now we're back and now it's ours again, and that was actually a huge thing began for the for the whole region is this: we can't forget that the whole alsace-lorraine richness very different, and it's not actually France or German, but very autonomous in a carrot range hands to something it's very important for the history itself, yes yeah and nowadays, nowadays, a hundred years later, it was not really surprised to the French that back in 2014, the French president Hollande and the German president Guk actually met there to come and commemorate the outbreak of the first world war.

Even though the first fighting really was like December 1914 early 1915, the whole mountain or the mountain ranges, there kind of stand for the whole war in its you know, in the bloody back and forth in the people forget what they're actually fighting for and so and so on.

It's kind of like for the futility of it all it kind of stands out and yeah, it's pretty much label the new museum in 2000, 2017 and I can only encourage everyone.

If you're in the region go up there, it's a bit, you know you have to climb up a mountain more or less, but you know soldiers could do it.

I guess do we.

So it's it's like a thousand meter high at the highest, but it's still it's still impressive.

So if, if you like to walk on actually what about one battlefield, that's very good preserved I can only recommend it yeah.

Well Marcus.

Thank you very much, and you know he's always here when I'm here so I see him a lot.

We have beer sometimes and if you'd like know this, if you'd like to see the episode, the special episode about the battle for Alsace Lorraine, which is based on his research, you can click right here for that and if you have not subscribed, you really owe it to yourself and to poor Marcus to subscribe as soon as possible.

We'll see you next time put your hand up there.

You go.