| Absolutely 100% agree. Carlin, doesn't describe himself as a historian, but he is an amazing story teller. I'm finishing the last episode right now. Among the topics he covered so far: - The murder of Franz Ferdinand and the mentality of the Serbian assassins. Carlin has a way of explaining how terribly coincidental everything was: the first assassin failing, the couple escaping and complaining at the police station about their treatment, the driver taking the wrong turn out of the city, the car backfiring near where a second assassin happened to be standing... - Carlin does a great job explaining the new German nationalism and the status quo before the war. He explains how carefully Bismarck made a web of diplomatic relations to protect Germany against a two-front war that his successors immediately tore down. - Stories of German efficiency in the initial invasion of Belgium and the exact moments when people realized that this was a different type of war. The French were still wearing white gloves and the Germans issued everyone gray khakis. - Descriptions of how naval warfare was changing and how most battleships, even those made just ten years ago, became obsolete. One great story is how the British original planned to use these now obsolete ships against the Turks in Gallipolli but the admirals were too hesitant to move quickly and risk the ships because they had an emotional connection to them! Most of those admirals served as junior officers on those ships! - How unspeakably terrible Verdun, the Somme, the Marne and Ypres were. Ypres, for example, Carlingoes into detail about men falling off of duckboards and drowning in the mud. Most of the time, the mud was so thick and the equipment so heavy that their platoon members couldn't help them or they'd risk drowning themselves. So they'd stay up at night, hearing the survivors slowly sink... There's so many other stories I can't remember. It's a 24 hour series. Can't recommend it enough. |
He's an excellent storyteller and really grips you with the details.