WWI: The Centenary Collection: The Somme and Verdun (2014)
1h 36min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
World War One The Centenary Collection is a series of video titles released to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the start of World War One in the summer of 1914. These two programmes tell the story of two battles on the Western Front which have become infamous for the British and French armies respectively. Fought between July and November 1916, the Battle of the Somme is possibly the most famous of all the World War One battles and certainly one of the largest with over a million men killed or wounded by its conclusion. The first day remains the worst day in the history of the British Army with around 60,000 casualties sustained. By the end the Allied forces had penetrated around 6 miles into German occupied territory, the furthest since the earliest days of the war, but the cost had been extraordinarily high. The Battle of Verdun from February to November 1916 began with a German offensive against the French defences around the town of Verdun. Their plan was to suck the French in to a battle that would inflict such serious casualties that the French Army would never fully recover. In the end the German casualties were almost as great as those of the French and there was virtually no territorial gain for either side despite the huge losses. - Studio:
- Eagle Media
- Genres:
- Documentary