First World War Lectures/Presentations/Discussions on YouTube

[The Ibis]

Douglas Haig Fellowship Lecture - Haig's Right Hand Man

 

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Published on Feb 1, 2018

Lieutenant General Sir Herbert Lawrence, Chief of Staff of the British Army in 1918, remains one of the forgotten figures of the First World War. In his lecture, Paul Harris will argue that Lawrence made a major contribution to Allied victory. He will draw upon new research to shed light on the role and character of the man described by the Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig as his ‘right arm’.

 

 

[Derek Black]

2 hours ago, The Ibis said:

Douglas Haig Fellowship Lecture - Haig's Right Hand Man

Thanks for posting that.
I really enjoyed that one.

 

Derek.

[The Ibis]

Roskill Lecture 2018: Margaret MacMillan — Reflecting on the Great War Today

 

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Published on Feb 7, 2018

Historian Margaret MacMillan reflects on the meaning and significance of the Great War from the perspective of today: what it meant to Western civilization and to the world more broadly, and how we remember and commemorate it in our own time.

Margaret MacMillan is the Professor of History at the University of Toronto and the former Warden of St Antony’s College. Her books include Women of the Raj (1988, 2007); Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (2001) for which she was the first woman to win the Samuel Johnson Prize; Nixon in China: Six Days that Changed the World; The Uses and Abuses of History (2008); and Extraordinary Canadians: Stephen Leacock (2009). Her most recent book is The War that Ended Peace. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Senior Fellow of Massey College, University of Toronto, Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto and of St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, and sits on the boards of the Mosaic Institute and the editorial boards of International History and First World War Studies. She also is a Trustee of the Rhodes Trust and has just been announced as the Reith Lecturer for 2018.

She has honorary degrees from the University of King’s College, the Royal Military College, the University of Western Ontario, Ryerson University, Toronto, Huron University College of the University of Western Ontario, the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto. In 2006 Professor MacMillan was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 2015 became a Companion, also becoming a CH in the 2018 Honours List.

Find out more: www.chu.cam.ac.uk/news/2018/feb/2/roskill-lecture-2018/

 

[The Ibis]

Trench Humour in World War One

 

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Published on Feb 8, 2018

Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR), Magna Carta Institute and the Isambard Centre for History and Heritage Present Trench Humour in World War One – 1 February 2017.

In this video, Jerry Palmer analyses the type of humour associated with the trench warfare of World War One, a type of humour sometimes called ‘black humour’.

The same phrase is used in French, and in German, it is called ‘gallows humour’. It is a well-known feature of writings about World War One, both at the time and subsequently. We see various examples, from all three languages.

Two elements of the theory of humour provide a basis for Jerry’s analysis: incongruity, and the situation of utterance; the interaction between these two in discourse-based theories of humour is well known. Arguably, the black humour of the trenches stretches the perception of incongruity to the limits of commonplace recognition, largely because the context of utterance is beyond the scope of most people’s experience (then and now).

The analysis focuses primarily on the question of the comprehensibility of this humour once it is taken out of the context in which it was originally made. Jerry Palmer is the former Professor of Communications at London Metropolitan University and Visiting Professor of Sociology at City University. Originally trained in languages and literature, he is the author of 6 books on various aspects of the mass media and popular culture. Two of these are on comedy and humour: The Logic of the Absurd (British Film Institute, 1987) and Taking Humour Seriously (Routledge, 1994); he also contributed to the collection Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour, edited by Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). He is currently preparing a book on soldiers’ memoirs of World War One in Britain, France, and Germany, from which this talk is taken.

 

 

[The Ibis]

Achieving the Impossible? by Professor Elaine McFarland

 

 

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Published on Mar 29, 2018

General Aylmer Hunter-Weston is one of the most reviled generals of the First World War. In this lecture, Professor Elaine McFarland takes a fresh look at General Hunter-Weston, specifically his service at Gallipoli, and asks if his reputation is fully deserved.

 

 

 

[The Ibis]

The Breakthrough that never was - 1915 - Robert Foley 

 

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Published on Mar 29, 2018

In this talk, Dr Robert T Foley discusses German Plans for an Offensive in 1915 "The Breakthrough that never was".

 

 

[hazelclark]

I have been really enjoying these thank you. 

Hazel C

[The Ibis]

My pleasure.

 

Here is a new one from Gary Sheffield:  Morale and Combat Motivation of British and Anzac Troops at Gallipoli

 

 

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Published on Apr 23, 2018

How well did the morale of soldiers at Gallipoli bear up when fighting in the appalling conditions of the Gallipoli campaign? Did they fight for King and Empire, for their mates, for home, or for what? And what motivated them to go over the top onto enemy fire?

To find answers to these questions, in this lecture, leading British military historian Professor Gary Sheffield looks at the experiences of Australian, British and New Zealand troops, in and out of battle. Based on extensive original research in archives in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, this lecture goes beyond the Anzac myth and dismissive views of British troops. It employs a mixture of sociology, and military and social history not only to examine morale at Gallipoli, but also to make some broader points about citizen armies in the two world wars.

 

 

 

[Derek Black]

I too enjoy these.

Please keep posting them.

 

Cheers,

Derek.

[ShirlD]

Just finished listening to Keith Jeffery and British Intelligence and the First World War.

Thank you for these, I plan on listening to a whole lot more!

Shirley

[The Ibis]

Glad you're enjoying them.  Here is one from 2017: Mapping the Great War

 

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Published on Jul 20, 2017

A cartographic specialist and a military historian discuss maps and mapping during World War I.

Speaker Biography: Ryan Moore is a cartographic specialist in the Library's geography and map division. He has written blogs and articles for the Library of Congress and the Washington Map Society about World War I maps.

Speaker Biography: Peter Doyle is a military historian and terrain analyst. He is the author of "Battle Story: Gallipoli 1915" and has lectured cadets at West Point. He is a member of the British Commission of Military History and secretary of the Parliamentary All Party War Graves and Battlefield Heritage Group.

 

 

[The Ibis]

Reconnaissance on the Eastern Front in WWI

 

 

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Published on Nov 14, 2017

About the lecture:

This event on "Reconnaissance on the Eastern Front in WWI" was the seventh annual General Walter Jajko Kosciuszko Chair Military Lecture, sponsored by the Center for Intermarium Studies and the Kosciuszko Chair of Polish Studies. It took place at The Institute of World Politics on October 10, 2017.

About the speaker:

Andrew Harris is an active duty US Army Military Intelligence Officer, serving as an Executive Officer for the Intelligence and Security Command Headquarters, and an Alumnus of the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington, DC. His previous assignments include two deployments to Afghanistan as an Infantry Platoon Leader and an Assistant Brigade Intelligence Officer, and service as the Battalion Intelligence Officer for the 1st Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

 

 

 

 

[The Ibis]

THE FORTRESS: THE DAWN OF TOTAL WAR IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE, 1914-15 by Alexander Watson.
 

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For a few critical months early in the First World War, the fate of Eastern and Central Europe rested on one fortress-town. The city of Przemyśl, encircled by a ring of forts and home to 45,000 Poles, Ukrainians and Jews, blocked the path westwards of Europe’s largest military force: the mighty Russian Army. The six-month struggle to break the Fortress would forge a new form of ‘total war’, characterised by ethnic conflict, brutality and radical ideology, which would shape the twentieth century.

This talk takes listeners on a tour through a city under siege from mid-September 1914 until 22 March 1915, when food ran out and the Habsburg garrison capitulated. It has two core themes. First, the research offers an intimate study of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian army. Austrian Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians and even some Serbs and Italians defended the Fortress. Through their military orders, diaries and jokes this study explores their cooperation, suffering and endurance. Second, the talk examines the dynamics of ‘total war’ on the Eastern Front. It argues that here traditional siege warfare melded with new nationalising ideologies to produce radical violence remarkably early. Ethnic cleansing, civilian participation in hostilities and the use of food as a weapon – all phenomena which would eviscerate the region in subsequent decades – emerged already in 1914. At a time when East-Central Europe’s centrality to the continent’s history is being recognised and Vladimir Putin is resurrecting century-old imperial Russian ambitions in Ukraine, the story of how Europe and Russia clashed at Przemyśl has an unsettling relevance.

 

 

Edited 25 May , 2018 by The Ibis

[BFBSM]

Hamel: The Orchestrated Battle, 4 July 1918

 

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Streamed live on May 23, 2018The battle of Hamel was the first major British offensive operation since the battle of Cambrai, the first major action of the Australian Corps under the command of General Sir John Monash, and the first time infantry, artillery, tanks, and aircraft were closely integrated in combat. It was also the first time the Australians fought side by side with the Americans. Memorial historian Dr Aaron Pegram discusses these aspects of the battle and its significance to the fighting on the Western Front. Maps from this presentation can be viewed on the event page: https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/events/H...

 

 

https://youtu.be/53ksc_YyvSY

[hazelclark]

Sounds interesting. 

Thanks,

H

[TGM]

West Indies at War

Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago, by Savant Films, 2015.

 

West Indies at War - Part 1

West Indies at War - Part 2

West Indies at War - Part 3

West Indies at War - Part 4

[The Ibis]

The Sinews of Alliance: The Diplomacy of Finance in the First World War by Jennifer Siegel

 

 

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Published on May 8, 2018

Financial underwriting of allies and partners by both blocks in the First World War was not just a means to pay for manpower and matériel—it was a fundamental component of intra-alliance relations. The lecture will explore credit as a critical tool of wartime diplomacy in a conflict marked by desperate attempts on both sides to keep their precarious alliances intact. Jennifer Siegel joined the Ohio State University Department of History in the fall of 2003. She received her B.A. and her Ph.D. from Yale University. Dr. Siegel specializes in modern European diplomatic and military history, with a focus on the British, French and Russian Empires. She is the author of For Peace and Money: French and British Finance in the Service of Tsars and Commissars (Oxford, 2014) and Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (I.B. Tauris, 2002), which won the 2003 AAASS Barbara Jelavich Prize. She has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on intelligence history, financial history, and diplomacy, co-edited Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limits of Intelligence in International Society (Praeger, 2005), and has served as a frequent book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Before joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dr. Siegel taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University, Yale, and Bennington College.

 

 

 

[Derek Black]

 

[The Ibis]

Russia's Women Soldiers of the Great War - Laurie Stoff

 

 

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Published on Aug 10, 2018

Laurie Stoff, Principal Lecturer and Honors Faculty Fellow, Arizona State University

During the First World War, thousands of Russian women donned military uniforms and set out to defend their nation in battle. They entered the armed forces first as individuals, the majority disguised as men. Then, in 1917, they entered the both the Russian army and navy as part of entire all-female military formations. Women have participated in war since the beginning of history, but in Russia during the First World War, the experience was exceptional. By 1917, the numbers of women who became soldiers exceeded 6,000, an unprecedented number. Moreover, the creation of separate all-female military formations in 1917 indicated a completely new method of utilizing women in war. Never before had a government organized women for active combat duty. The stories of these women soldiers are important to understand more fully the war, the revolution, and the nature of Russian society during this transitional time in its history.

Lecture presented during the 15th Annual Truman Library Teachers' Conference at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum

 

 

 

[The Ibis]

Here is one by the excellent David Stevenson: The Ending of World War I: The Road to 11 November:

 

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Streamed live on Nov 7, 2018

This lecture re-examines how the First World War ended. Why did Germany request a ceasefire and why did the Allies and America grant one?

A lecture by Professor David Stevenson, London School of Economics
07 November 2018 6pm (UK time)
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-an...

This lecture will re-examine how the First World War ended, anticipating the centenary commemorations in 2018. It will discuss both why Germany requested a ceasefire, and why the Allies and America granted one. It will argue that the German army was near collapse, and that Germany was not defeated by a ‘stab in the back’ at home. None the less, the Allies had good reasons not to press on to Berlin.

 

 

[kenf48]

Brilliant. Keep them coming

 

Ken

[The Ibis]

The Origins and Effects of Trench Stalemate by Nicholas Murray. This isn't really a program for specialists, but if you are looking for a solid introduction to the subject, its well worth it.

 

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Published on Aug 10, 2018

Nicholas Murray, U.S. Naval War College

This presentation will explain what caused the stalemate, why trenches posed such a particularly difficult problem, what the knock on effects in terms of society and the home front were, and how the warring parties attempted to deal with the issue

Lecture presented during the 15th Annual Truman Library Teachers' Conference at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum

 

 

[The Ibis]

The Limits of Modern Warfare by John Deak.

 

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Published on Dec 11, 2018

Days before the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I, John Deak, a visiting associate professor of European history at Notre Dame, presented “The Limits of Modern Warfare: Stalemate, Technology, and the Isonzo Front in the First World War” to the Pennsylvania College of Technology community as part of the school's Technology & Society Colloquia Series. Deak shared his research into an area about which most Americans know little – the dozen battles between the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies near the Isonzo River – and illustrated how technology factors into the seemingly eternal desire to subdue one’s enemies. Deak's visit was arranged through a collaboration between Penn College and the Notre Dame Club of Greater Williamsport.

 

 

[The Ibis]

Mending the Wounded by Sanders Marble

 

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Streamed live on Jan 16, 2019

The world was faced with unimaginable injury during WWI. Medical leaders and politicians around the globe created policies to help heal and rehabilitate the wounded. In the years following 1918, the U.S. Army expanded their focus on medicine to build infrastructure and recruit specialists to support veteran care, forever changing American medical practice. Join Dr. Sanders Marble, Senior Historian at U.S. Army Office of Medical History, for a discussion on these efforts and how they transformed healing both inside and outside the military.

 

 

 

[The Ibis]

Here is one by Gary Sheffield: The Great War: Its End and Effects

 

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Published on Jan 22, 2019

15 January 2019, "Britain and the First World War: Was it worth it?": A lecture by Gary Sheffield, Professor of War Studies, University of Wolverhampton. The lecture was sponsored by Christ Church Cathedral and the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, Oxford.