The Great War

Memory, Perceptions and 10 Contested Questions

By: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Narrated by: full cast

Endgame. The Hundred Days offensive brought an end to the stalemate in the trenches and saw the collapse of the Central Powers. Should the allies have occupied Germany at the end of the War, and if they had, could they have prevented WW2?

• Other Voices, Other Battles.
Could the Entente powers have survived at the front without the assistance of troops and workers from colonised nations?
• God and Country
The Great War was a test of faith like no other before or since. What part did religion play in the war, and what impact did the conflict have on belief? Was Christian Europe a casualty of war?
• The View from Berlin
Did Germany engineer the war for its own territorial ambitions, or was it a victim of the complicated diplomatic web that bound it to an unstable Hapsburg empire?
• The Pen and the Sword
In his analyses of Great War literature, literary historian Paul Fussell argues that irony was the predominant literary response to the horrors of war. How important is this literature to the way we remember the war today?
• Hell and Healing
Industrial warfare forced doctors and nurses to find new ways to treat the wounded, maimed and psychologically damaged. What insights did the war give us into human suffering, and how have future generations benefited from this?
• The Enemy Within
Anarchist, syndicalist, Marxist, Christian pacifists, nationalists, women's groups and intellectuals all opposed the war and conscription. So were the soldiers at the front let down by some of the people at home?
• Sideshows
Entente commanders believed that the war would be decided on the Western Front and that everything else was a “sideshow”, but the Great War also raged in Italy, Austria, Palestine, Turkey, and New Guinea. How important were these theatres of war to the outcome of the conflict?
• Lions and Donkeys
How accurate is the view that the General Staff in WW1 were bumbling incompetents, out of touch with the reality of the trenches and unable to comprehend the destructive power of industrial warfare?
• The Contested Beginning
After 100 years the causes and origins of WW1 are as contested as ever – why?

©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (P)2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Series producers: Gary Bryson and Annabelle Quince. Co-producer: Julie Browning. Sound engineer: Mark Don. Theme music produced and recorded for Radio National by Russell