Posted: 10/14/2008 12:29:00 PM EDT
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www.passchendaelethemovie.com/html/trailer_lg.html Ok so they had to throw in a damned loved story, but still, I can't wait to see it! One of the proudest moment in the history of Canada! Arthur Currie FTMFW!  Better trailer www.passchendaelethemovie.com/html/tv2_lg.html |
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Sounds cool! It's good to see movies about WWI being made again. It's sad that most poeple nowadays would have no inkling of the importance off the word Passchendaele or even the word Ypres... Nowadays we want to cut and run because we've suffered 4000 deaths in 6 years of combat. |
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Ahh... clicking on this thread gave me the yearnngs to hear some Maiden... www.youtube.com/watch?v=c20-fm_WNew |
Indeed, it's sad. |
I hope so. It seems like with all the technology we have available now, it wouldn't be hard to come up with computer-generated mass frontal attacks on trenches, with period aircraft and such. Also, I have noticed a LOT better attention being paid to correct uniforms and equipment in the last 10 years. I think SPR really raised the bar for that. |
| Lost Battalion, from a few years back, was good for a basic cable movie.. |
Also the Canadian Film industry has grown in size and sophistication enough so they could pull this off. |
You beat me to it. Heh. |
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The 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres or simply Third Ypres, was one of the major battles of World War I, in which British, ANZAC, Canadian and South African units engaged the Imperial German Army. The battle was fought for control of the village of Passchendaele (Passendale in modern Dutch spelling, now part of the community of Zonnebeke) near the town of Ypres (Ieper in Dutch) in West Flanders, Belgium. The plan was to drive a hole in the German lines, advance to the Belgian coast and capture the German submarine bases there. Creating a decisive corridor in a crucial area of the front would take pressure off the French forces. After the Nivelle Offensive the French Army was suffering from low morale, causing mutinies and misconduct on a scale that threatened the field-worthiness of entire divisions. Despite spells of good weather during the battle lasting long enough to dry out the land, Passchendaele has become synonymous with the misery of fighting in thick mud. Most of the battle took place on reclaimed marshland, swampy even without rain. The heavy preparatory bombardment by the British tore up the surface of the land, and rainy periods from August onwards produced an impassable terrain of deep liquid mud, in which an unknown number of soldiers drowned. Even the newly-developed tanks bogged down. The Germans were well-entrenched, with mutually-supporting pillboxes which the initial bombardment had not destroyed. After three months of fierce fighting the Canadian Corps took Passchendaele on 6 November 1917, ending the battle, but in the meantime the Allied Powers had sustained almost half a million casualties and the Germans just over a quarter of a million. The Allies had captured a mere five miles (8 km) of new front at a cost of 140,000 lives, a ratio of roughly 2 inches, or about 5 cm, gained per dead soldier. Compounding this staggeringly Pyrrhic figure was the fact that the area was not even considered particularly valuable from a strategic standpoint; in March 1918 — a mere 4 months later — the Allies abandoned to the Germans every inch of territory gained at such cost at Passchendaele in order to free several divisions to cover more strategically valuable terrain during the German Lys Offensive towards Ypres. Passchendaele was the last gasp of the "one more push" philosophy which posited that the stalemate of attritional trench warfare could be broken by brute offensive action against fixed positions. The enormous and tactically meaningless casualty levels — coupled with the horrendous conditions in which the battle was fought — damaged Field-Marshal Douglas Haig's reputation and made it emblematic of the horror of industrialised attrition warfare. |
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While I must ackowledge the personal devotion to duty and bravery of individuals on all sides, I am hard-pressed to put forth one single positive thing that came out of WWI. Historians in the far future might consider it the beginning of the end of Western civilization. Look at what resulted from the unprecedented carnage: A loss of almost an entire Generation of young males. What these young men, or at least some of them might have accomplished will never be known. Was some Einstein or Pasteur or some other genius among them? We will never be able to say, likewise we will never be able to say what was lost to the world. Might some of these men have sired some future genius? Again, the loss to hmanity is incalculable. The rise of Communism and Fascism are direct results of the Great War, and neither can be considered anything but disasters for humanity as a whole. The problems caused by the socialist mind-set are with us today, and are a grave threat, still. The bankruptcy of the British Empire, for all its' faults, must also be considered as a tragedy. While the British undoubtedly exploited their colonies, they also introduced at least some colonials to more modern ways of doing things. The Brits, on the whole, had the best virtues of the Romans, while at the same time they had few of the Roman's vices. Possibly he most insidious and devastating effect of WW I is the undermining of the faith in the peoples of the Western world in the idea of the inevitability of the march of progress, both physical, social, and religious. The countries most heavily involved were most affected by this loss of confidence in themselves and the basic institutions of Western civilization; We here in the US only felt these things to a much smaller degree, and that is most likely the biggest difference between us and the Europeans. No, I can't say that any good came out of the Great War. Would to God it had never have happened. |
| Iron Maiden made a song about the battle! Here UP THE IRONS! |
I blame the horrors of passchendaele squarely on the backwards thinking ways of the british and french top brass, specially Haig. The brits have always been handicapped by their miltary leaders. Good men on the ground paid the price. |
Until the very end of the War, the Germans were no better, although they did manage to almost pull off a last-minute victory with very innovative tactics near the end. Looking back, the Generals in the US Civil War, with a couple of exceptions, weren't know as innovators, either. The main issue in both conflicts was that weaponry developments temporarily gave the defense a great advantage as against the offense, and the Generals, in some cases, had not the wit to see it, and had not the tools to overcome it if they did. |
For WW1 reading, might I recommend.... The First Day on the Somme by Martin Middlebrook. One of the best single history books I've read. In 24 hours of combat, the British lost 60,000 men. 60,000. With almost 20,000 KIA. And for that loss, they gained less than 4,000 yards. Very little of that was held at the end of the day.  The First World War by John Keegan. Keegan is, without a doubt, the greatest history writer alive today. |
Thanks for that synopsis. I knew little about this battle. Tis sad that so much was lost for nothing gained. Can't comprehend the attitude in positions of command when events like this unfold. Because of their stubborn disposition and lack of willingness to pursue other paths, many men's lives were lost. |
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There is an absolutely amazing book about the battles of Passchendaele by Lyn MacDonald, with the title "They Called it Passchendaele" - here on amazon I've read it several times, and am always horrified and fascinated by the descriptions. MacDonald managed to find a lot of people who were there and kept diaries, so for each piece of the battles described, there are eye-witness accounts from differents participants and locations - all organized with a map at the beginning of each chapter. A number of years ago I was able to find a British army trench map of the area around Ypres, and it is fascinating to read the eye-witness accounts of people who were in the battles, and to be able to track the stories that are being told on an actual trench map from the time. |
Ditto... great song |
Those innovative tactics were learned from the Russians, actually.... For some damned foolish reason until 1918 it was customary to attack enemy strongpoints. Fools. |
They had an article on this in last months issue of Skirmish. Looks flippin' brilliant!
The unnamed German officer got it bang to rights. "Never have I seen such lions led by such lambs". |
I'd take brit soldiers under canadian command any time. I'd also refuse any attempt to place canadian soldiers under brtish command |
Excellent points, but I think the war, and at least some of the effects you blame on the war, were (to the extent that they can be separated) due more to the bankruptcy of some institutions basic to Western civilization at that time. First, the war itself was essentially the result of medieval dynastic posturing. The combatants were, with the exception of France, all empires with rivalries dating back centuries. Even France was only 40-odd years out of its last stint as an empire, and its republicanism took nothing away from its hatred of the German Reich. Further, every single one of those nations was still locked in a medieval fixation on taking a little more territory from its neighbors. Competition in Europe was still seen as a zero-sum game, with territory as the marker of success. No nation could advance without taking something from another. Hence Germany's fulminations about the other nations denying Germany its 'place in the sun;' hence France's boiling hatred over the loss of the Alsace; hence Russia's constant coveting of Constantinople; hence Austria-Hungary's determination to cling grimly to it's Balkan territories; hence the constant colonial struggles in Africa; hence the Ottoman Empire's adherence to Germany as a forlorn attempt to regain mostly Slavic Balkan territories. The war itself was devastating, but look at the possible results before the peace was signed. Four imperial dynasties were gone - the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Osmanli. All over Europe and the rest of the world people were looking towards the US for leadership and guidance, hoping for freedom and a way out of the medieval politics and dynastic posturing that got them into this mess, and they thought they had that leadership after reading Wilson's 14 Points. Unfortunately, Wilson said 'self-determination,' but forgot to add 'when we let you have it;' and said 'open covenants of peace,' but then sprung the Treaty of Versailles on the Central Powers. At the end of the war, there was hope that the whole thing hadn't been in vain. But then the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and the Middle East was carved up between European powers, and Asia was basically ignored to the delight of the Japanese, and Central Europe was left to its own devices. So people ready to embrance liberty were abandoned to socialism and fascism; colonialism was maintained by a Europe which was trying to pretend it hadn't just been disemboweled; and Wilson's insistence on the League of Nations pushed the US into isolation when it had the chance to lead, not as policeman, but simply by example. Don't get me wrong - Western civilization has one of the greatest traditions of liberty in the world. Sadly, it didn't live up to that tradition in Versailles; the treaty was just more of the same medieval mindset bent on advancing yourself at the expense of your rival by taking some land. But now the colonialism was propagated by a Europe which made it painfully obvious that they were using their colonies primarily to prop up their rebuilding efforts after a war which had exhausted their own resources and ability to provide anything of worth to the colonies. Even worse, subjugating people who fought as your allies isn't the best way to show how much you value freedom. The sacrifices made in the Great War could have resulted in perhaps the greatest advance of liberty in the history of the world. Instead, the settlement of the Great War essentially set the stage for, most spectacularly, the rise of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan; WWII; the Holocaust; the Vietnam War; and Islamic terrorism. Pardon the typos. I'm working fast since I have to go in to work tonight 
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The concept of "Rolling Barrage" was developed by the Russians on the Eastern Front during the "Great War". As was the concept of the "Storm Trooper". Ludendorf took those Ideas he learned fighting against the Russians with him when he and Bismark left the Russian front and perfected them on the Western Front. And appleid those concepts during the German Spring Offensive of 1918(Operation Micheal). |