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U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos
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U.S. History 1877-Present 6: Battles of WWI 55 Views
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Description:
Today we'll learn about how Pershing pershing—er pushing American troops out of the trenches and into enemy lines was a pretty bad idea. Especially when you could just...walk around the enemy line instead. Have we mentioned how inexperienced the American forces were?
Transcript
- 00:04
Some people aren't so familiar with how awful World War 1 was
- 00:08
the reason for this ignorance in many ways is that World War two was even [Teacher discussing World War One]
- 00:12
bigger and badder than its prequel but it may also be because World War one
- 00:17
battles always have such pretty french name the some eat play the mildness they
- 00:23
are den well how bad could they have been with names like that well answer
Full Transcript
- 00:27
very very bad all those lovely names translate to total carnage and they sent [Gravestones appear]
- 00:33
shivers down the spines of the survivors and families of the dead one of these
- 00:37
deceptively lovely sounding battles was named the meuse-argonne offensive of
- 00:44
1918 also called the Battle of the Argonne forest first Americans as with
- 00:49
all the big battles of World War one the battle was a regular bloodbath because [Soldiers lying in trenches]
- 00:53
it was an attempt to break out of the trenches and actually get the war moving
- 00:56
again it's kind of like a you know a laxative but for warfare and again like
- 01:01
all the worst battles of the war and the last season of a show that's past its [Soldiers in trench and sponge bob appears]
- 01:05
prime it seemed to go on forever lasting from September 26 to November 11th 1918
- 01:11
the battle only ended because the war ended otherwise it would likely have
- 01:15
gone on for months like the Battle of some in 1916 but the Mao was unlike the
- 01:20
other big battles of the war in one way American soldiers fought in it in fact [Germany looking at France shivering]
- 01:25
it was largest battle in US military history up to that point bigger even
- 01:29
than the enormous clashes of the Civil War so yay well 1.2 million Americans [Soldiers firing rifles]
- 01:37
took part in the Mao and 26,000 died there another innovation was that the
- 01:43
battle introduced a new kind of automatic rifle right up to the end of [Automatic rifle appears]
- 01:46
the war both sides were dedicated to finding a way to kill more of each other
- 01:50
the joys of innovation here's how the battle played out the Allies decided to
- 01:54
make a big push against the Germans and overrun their line forcing them out of [Allies rush to Germans]
- 01:58
their trenches Allied forces had tried this before but this time Americans had
- 02:02
their back or the Germans were sweating it because they just didn't have the
- 02:06
extra German soldiers to match the 1.2 million
- 02:09
new American the Allies left the Western Front in three directions the u.s. went
- 02:14
south the British and Belgians went east into Belgium and the British and French
- 02:18
went north across the way to France as the Allies advanced into German occupied [Allies appear in Germany]
- 02:23
territory one group of Americans led by General John J Pershing were held up by
- 02:29
fierce German resistance in the Argonne forest Co Pershing was impatient with
- 02:34
what he saw as over caution on the part of the French and British he figured
- 02:38
that Americans moving quickly on foot with rifles could do more damage to the
- 02:41
enemy than pointless artillery bombardment didn't Pershing know it's
- 02:45
not safe to run with guns or is that scissors either way whatever Pershing's [Athlete running with gun]
- 02:49
planted turned out to be a bad idea he sent groups of infantry into the forest [Us infantry run into forest]
- 02:55
to meet the Germans head-on and over and over and over again German artillery
- 02:59
inflicted high casualties on them the battle bogged down and 120,000 American [Dead soldiers appear]
- 03:04
soldiers were killed or wounded as the stalemate dragged on for six weeks but
- 03:09
last the Americans were able to achieve a breakthrough not by breaking through
- 03:12
the forest and the German line but by going around them it had taken the u.s. Soldiers sneaking]
- 03:17
for six weeks to travel 10 miles but once they did they met up with other
- 03:22
Allied forces and continued their merry unmarry way east into Germany well on
- 03:29
November 9th the German government said enough is enough
- 03:33
they realized they could no longer defend their homeland Germany's people
- 03:36
and soldiers were starving its allies were overrun or out of the war and its
- 03:41
troops for mutinying rather than taking part in what could [Troops pointing guns at their own army]
- 03:45
only be suicide missions against a much larger force and hard to blame them next
- 03:50
thing anybody knew Kaiser Wilhelm was ousted from power by his own people and
- 03:54
Germany declared itself a republic well the new government agreed to an
- 03:58
armistice two days later on November 11th 1918 and the war officially ended [Armistice agreement in newspaper article]
- 04:02
in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles at which point the whole world took a deep
- 04:07
breath and gave one big Versailles of relief [Earth takes big sigh]
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