The Great War in Numbers

The opening episode tells the story of the outbreak of war in 1914. In the decades since the last European War the world changed. In Europe and America industrialisation has created unprecedented wealth, for some. At the same time the Empires of Britain, France, Russia and Germany have carved up the globe. The British Empire is the largest the world has ever seen ruling over a quarter of the world's population. But despite their vast territories and immense wealth, the imperial powers are still not satisfied. When two shots are fired in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914, killing the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife, it pits Empire against Empire and engulfs the world in a conflict that will eventually claim 18 million lives.

By the beginning of 1915 the horrific killing power of machine guns and artillery had taught all sides that the only way to survive was to find shelter and dig in. Nowhere was this illustrated more dramatically than at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915, where a handful of German soldiers with machine guns held off a British force of 9,000 men. Eventually 25,000 miles of trenches would cut across Europe. With conventional weapons unable to provide a breakthrough, new technologies took the war into the sky and under the sea. Britain started the war with just 193 planes, but by the end British factories were producing over 30,000 new aircraft a year. Germany responded to the British naval blockade by unleashing their U-boats on allied shipping, but the sinking of the liner Lusitania with the loss of 1197 lives, 128 of them Americans, came close to bringing the US into the war.

By January 1916 the war had become a stalemate. Millions had died and yet no side had achieved a decisive breakthrough. Austria-Hungary tripled the size of its armies to five million men. Germany doubled its forces to seven million. And in Britain men were volunteering to fight at the rate of up to 33,000 a day. 1916's Descent into Hell began at the French fortress city of Verdun. Entire villages were wiped off the map and both sides suffered over 300,000 casualties. At sea the British and German fleets fought the greatest naval battle in history, off the Jutland peninsula in the North Sea. Thousands died, but again no side achieved a crushing victory. And on the Western Front the newly recruited Pals battalions led the attack at 7.30am on 1st July 1916. A day that has gone down as the blackest day in the history of the British Army.