Archdukes, Cynicism, and World War I: Crash Course World History #36

2012-09-27

[public] 5.24M views, 61.1K likes, 1.57K dislikes audio only

In which John Green teaches you about the war that was supposed to end all wars. Instead, it solved nothing and set the stage for the world to be back at war just a couple of decades later. As an added bonus, World War I changed the way people look at the world, and normalized cynicism and irony. John will teach you how the assassination of an Austrian Archduke kicked off a new kind of war that involved more nations and more people than any war that came before. New technology like machine guns, airplanes, tanks, and poison gas made killing more efficient than ever. Trench warfare and modern weapons led to battles in which tens of thousands of soldiers were killed in a day, with no ground gained for either side. World War I washed away the last vestiges of 19th-century Romanticism and paved the way for the 20th-century modernism that we all know and find to be cold and off-putting. While there may not be much upside to WWI, at least it inspired George M. Cohan to write the awesome song, "Over There."

Chapters:

Introduction: The Great War 00:00

Causes of World War I 0:45

Who is to blame for starting WWI? 2:17

Trench Warfare 3:11

Combatants From Around the World 3:42

Casualties of World War I 4:05

Soldiers' Sentiments During the WWI 5:35

An Open Letter to Alcohol 7:37

Outcomes of WWI 8:24

Credits 11:07

Resources:

Over There by George M. Cohan, performed by Bill Murray: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbggEGUaE28

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman: https://bit.ly/37lYqoK

Interested in learning more? Check out these other Crash Course videos about WWI:

How World War I Started: Crash Course World History #209: /youtube/video/Cd2ch4XV84s

Who Started World War I: Crash Course World History #210: /youtube/video/_pFCpKtwCkI

America in World War I: Crash Course US History #30: /youtube/video/y59wErqg4Xg

The Roads to World War I: Crash Course European History #32: /youtube/video/KGlmlSTn-eM

World War I Battlefields: Crash Course European History #33: /youtube/video/IIiDULrXaqQ

WWI's Civilians, the Homefront, and an Uneasy Peace: Crash Course European History #34: /youtube/video/dPXNZkGYJHM

Post-World War I Recovery: Crash Course European History #36: /youtube/video/xzWL2XPBHMk

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