I'm Indy nidel welcome to the Great
[Music]
War you guys have written us a lot of
questions since we started doing this
show about the war and about things that
we might not have discussed in the
episode and today's little special is
for me to answer some of your questions
unboxing John asks are those insane
different tracks Railways still in use
this is a really good question because I
didn't actually know the answer to this
question so I looked it up and even just
checking Wikipedia for Austrian Railways
I saw that all of Austria's neighboring
countries now use the same gauge
Railways as Austria but I did notice
that Hungary and the Ukraine have
different gauges from each other still
now the Narrow Gauge Railways that we
talked about in Bosnia and in Serbia
that were you know such a big mess
during World War I were all pretty much
closed or replaced by the end of the
1970s but still for like 50 years they
were pretty much using them fraud asks
why did Portugal join the war at all did
they get anything out of it Portugal
officially joined the war when Germany
declared war on her in May 1916 but even
though she was neutral she had been
pretty up in the air since the outbreak
of hostilities in 1914 mainly because of
the Portuguese colonies mosam Beek and
Angola in Africa they their border was
with German Southwest Africa and the
Germans wanted to use that border to
bring you know material to the German
troops to fight the English and Portugal
was opposed to this and one big reason
was that Britain was Portugal's most
important market and also the uboat
Warfare off the English Coast was
messing with Portuguese shipping so
Portugal had several reasons to be down
on Germany now eventually uh in 1916
Portugal intered three dozen German and
Austrian ships in Lisbon upon British
request and Germany responded by
declaring war so about 7,000 Portuguese
troops died in the war and as to your
question what they got out of the whole
thing was the port of Kango which is now
part of Tanzania however something you
did not ask but something I will tell
you anyway is that this was a great move
for Britain as she could now use the
Portuguese Atlantic Islands like madira
and the cape verie Islands as bases to
fight German raids of commercial
shipping in the Atlantic that's the
short version you have to wait a few
years to get the long one flesh asks was
Paris ever leveled nope never leveled
Paris was bombed first by German
Zeppelins in the early part of the war
and then at the end of the war by the
big Bera guns and then the Paris guns
but compared to most of northern France
you know during the in the war zones
Paris got off lightly in fact much more
damage was done to Paris in the Franco
Prussian War back in 1870 now the Paris
guns in 1870 shelled Paris from 120 km
away though not effectively at all and
here's a little piece of trivia the
shells from the Paris guns were the
first man-made objects to reach the
stratosphere true story Arbiter 567 asks
are these actual films or later
Recreation
is the sound added these are the actual
films we use we have an agreement with
the British path film archives to use
their original war footage for our
series and you can check out their War
archive channel right here now the sound
has been added later since it was
another 15 years before films could be
recorded with sound timid one asks why
wouldn't the French take a machine gun
into account not just the French it was
the British too when Hyrum Maxim
developed his first machine gun he
offered it to the British and they
didn't want it and partly because it was
not a proper weapon see the Romantic War
mentality was still really evident in
the early weeks of the war you wore
bright colors you waved a sa and you you
marched on mass to a big marching band
you know that's what war was and it
sounds insane now marching TOS machine
guns but there you have it When The War
Began the Germans had around 12,000
machine guns the British and French had
maybe a few hundred derivatives but to
be fair in their colonial battles which
were the only kind the British or the
French had fought for two generations
they had never needed machine guns they
they didn't get Modern War at all the
British didn't even create a machine gun
core till October
1915 the French battle plan at the
outbreak of the war had a big basis in
fighting spirit and offensive Mobility
so much so that capable guys like
General lonzarich were dismissed for
being too cautious but the French just
didn't realize that defensive technology
on the field was now way ahead of
offensive technology and machine guns
were pretty much entirely defensive
until late in the war when they could
make more portable models FM Lamar asks
will we look into Colonial conflicts for
example the German raids on neutral
Portuguese and Belgian colonies in
Africa in
1914
yes yes all right well that was all for
today I hope you guys enjoyed that and
you learned something I had a lot of fun
answering those questions so please keep
the questions coming you can write them
in the comment section below and every
few weeks we'll pick a bunch of them and
I'll sit here in my comfy chair and I'll
answer them and until that time follow
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The Great
War