The Great War in Numbers — Season 1, Episode 5: Total War
Documentary, War & Politics • 45 min • 1 season, 6 episodes • ★ 7.7/10
Episode synopsis
Episode five tells how, after 1916 and the hell of the Somme and Verdun, the imperial powers redoubled their efforts to crush their enemies. In Germany the new commander in chief, Paul von Hindenburg, and his deputy, Erich Ludendorff, demanded that German industry doubled its output of shells, to 11 million a month, and treble production of machine guns, artillery and aircraft. To meet these new targets Germany needed three-million more workers. Those who were too young or too old to fight had to work in the munitions factories. More than a million PoWs would be put to work, hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of occupied Belgium, France and Russia would become forced labourers. Sixty-five thousand of these men would be used to build a massive new line of fortifications along the Western Front, the Hindenburg Line. The Hindenburg Line was built in almost total secrecy. The Allies were stunned.
About The Great War in Numbers
The Great War in Numbers tells the complete story of World War I - from outbreak to conclusion - and the fragile peace that followed. It was a war unlike any other before it, with a number of firsts along the way. Seventy-milliion men were mobilised to fight around the world, from the trenches of the Western Front to the Middle East and Africa.