If you have eight hours to spare and are interested in learning the truth (or as close to it as modern historians can get to it) about World War One, I'd recommend watching the PBS documentary The Great War: 1914-1918. The United States version was given a different subtitle "And the Shaping of the Twentieth Century" which was very apt. The eight-part miniseries showed how nothing was the same after the war, leading the path to modern society and modern warfare. Also, in the American version, there was a different narrator (but how I would have loved to have heard Judi Dench instead!) Salome Jens's voice was quite irritating, and I'm sure Miss Dench would have been much more soothing.
However, there are lots of other voices you'll get to hear. It's a lot of fun to perk up your ears and try to guess who they are. The regulars are Jurgen Prochnow, Michael York (but don't listen for an Englishman...), Leslie Caron, Ian Richardson, Jeremy Irons, Ralph Fiennes, Tim Pigott-Smith, Martin Landau, Malcom McDowell, Liam Neeson, Jeroen Krabbé, Kai Wulff, Rupert Graves, and David Keith. Those who lent their voices to only one or two episodes are Hellen Mirren, Natasha Richardson, Helena Bonham Carter, Rene Auberjonois, Louis Gossett Jr., Timothy Bottoms, Nastassja Kinski, Imogen Stubbs, Jean Stapleton, Jane Leeves, Ned Beatty, Martin Sheen, and countless others. This is an A+ production that was an incredible labor of love for all involved. I couldn't believe the amount of footage that was available (and in good enough quality to use). Although this series mirrors the format of the great Ken Burns documentaries, with historians being interviewed, most of the visuals you'll see in The Great War is actual video footage from the war or the homefront. It's incredible.
It's also incredible to learn the truth that you weren't taught in school. Neither my mother, I, nor my nieces were taught the true nature of the start of WWI. We were taught that Germany was always a bully who wanted to take over the world, and so they started two world wars. That's not what happened! They were merely allies who got roped in, just like all the other countries. The documentary also explained the start of the anti-German propaganda that started during the war, which was really shocking. The series itself still suffered from a bit of lasting western bias; in one notable case, the narrator declared that the French suffered a devastating loss of 400,000 lives after one battle. "German losses were similar." Well, then if they were similar, why wouldn't the narrator declare that both sides suffered devastating losses? Still, my admiration goes out to the creators of this documentary to daring to expose the truth.
True historians might be bored, but the average person will undoubtedly be riveted and shocked. I tried recommending it to my brother by enticing him with a few facts I'd learned. Instead of being surprised as I'd been, he merely finished the stories for me and added even more historical tidbits that even the documentary didn't include! But he's a genius. For the rest of us, we can learn a lot by watching The Great War.
