The Most Pointless Battle of WW1? - Passchendaele 1917 (Documentary)
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For more than three long months in 1917, Allied and German soldiers fought tooth and nail over a battlefield churned into a sea of sucking mud and shellholes by the guns. Hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded, some of them drowning in the soupy ground — for Allied gains of just a few kilometers. So why did the Battle of Passchendaele happen at all, and was it the most pointless battle of the First World War?
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» SOURCES
Boff, Jonathan. Haig’s Enemy. Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front. OUP, 2018.
Fraser, Donald. The Journal of Private Fraser. CEF Books, 1998.
Hart, Peter. The Great War 1914-1918. Profile Books, 2013.
Jones, Spencer. “Ypres, Battles of.” In 1914-1918-online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online...
Jünger, Ernst. Storm of Steel. Penguin, 2004.
Ludendorff, Erich. My War Memories, 1914–1918. Hutchinson & Co, 1919.
Moore, Chris. “The General Who Wept.” In Historia. https://www.historiamag.com/the-gener....
New Zealand History, “New Zealand’s Blackest Day at Passchendaele.” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/new-zealand...
Sassoon, Siegfried. “Memorial Tablet.” 1918. https://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/c...
Sheffield, Gary. “Haig, Douglas.” 1914-1918-online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online....
Stevenson, David. 1914 1918. The History of the First World War. Penguin, 2013.
Warner, Philip. Passchendaele: The Story Behind the Tragic Victory of 1917. Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2005.
Wiest, Andrew. Haig: The Evolution of a Commander. Potomac Books, 2005.
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Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller
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Research by: Jesse Alexander, Leander Lerch
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Executive Producer: Florian Wittig
Channel Design: Yves Thimian
Contains licensed material by getty images, AP and Reuters
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