I'm indy neidell and this is another great war special
Episode of out of the trenches where I sit here in the chair of wisdom and answer your questions about the first world war
Jessica Chamberlain writes
question for the chair of wisdom
Should be a question for me, but I'll answer in the name of the chair of wisdom
Why didn't the Central powers declare war on Greece?
When it was allowing the british and the French to attack from their territory like at gallipoli and now at Salonika
Wouldn't this be considered aggression or at least supporting the enemy?
Well greece was not supporting them on purpose
[France] and Britain did not ask for permission
when they landed at Salonika
Or when they helped the serbs to corfu when they used lemnos to help with the Dardanelles campaign it just basically
did it the central powers knew this and
What would declaring war on greece get them I mean greece would then join its army with the allied forces there and give?
bulgaria the Ottoman Empire in [Austria-Hungary]
Austria-Hungary a new front to fight on and those countries had enough to worry [about] it
There's no reason to add a new enemy to the war for reasons Beyond its control
Like you know its neutrality being violated it would take huge political upheavals and machinations
Which we will cover in the regular episodes for greece to finally join the war in 1917
Even when bulgaria invaded greece before that and I'm not going to tell you when so only a partial spoiler
It was the allies who fought them not the greeks
That's probably an unsatisfying answer, but it's really too much in the future
And I don't actually want to spoil it because we're going to see so much with greece in the next couple years
[steam] Smith Gigi writes
I'm enjoying your series a lot and do have a query for you can you describe the iDeas and the flaws of the Pals battalions?
Right okay in case you don't know pals battalions [wear] battalions made up of Pals
Men from the same town or the same occupation in the British army that were promised
They could serve together [if] they joined up if they went to war
The main pro of that was that it helped with recruitment
[it] helped a [lot] initially that you knew you'd be serving with your friends the main con was that
entire Villages could lose their young male population in a single day like at the battle of the somme when the
Accrington Pals Battalion the people from Accrington took like [eighty-five] percent casualties [the] entire group of all those men in
20 minutes of battle and
Think how devastating that is to a small town to lose all of your young men so pals battalions. You know the cons
Really Outweigh the pros in the long run
Wulfgar Sing
From Patreon rights have you watched blackadder goes forth. Yes? I have many times
It's great
And if so how [accurate] is [it] in various aspects of the period especially someone like black adder?
Being an officer that is to say not from the usual background
Well, it's a comedy and an absurd comedy and though there was much about the war that was
absurd the leaders weren't as oh fish as colonel melchett for example the enlisted men weren't as stupid or
wide-eyed as [baldrick] and George those are exaggerations of
StereotyPical characteristics
but I think the show certainly captures the look and the ambience of the front now blackadder's character an
Officer was a career soldier he referred [to] previous campaigns in the colonies several times during the show and it's interesting to think
How much if at all his attitude towards the war or towards war in general?
Was reflected in real life I found on reddit
Something interesting which I'm going to quote so put it up here people have a tendency to attribute to black adder
Military history when what we should be attributing to that show is
Cultural history in some ways it sets what people think of the history of the first world war
But in many other ways it simply reflects it what people believed happen has as real a set of consequences
As what actually did happen?
Historians would be incredibly foolish to study one without the other
it's a great quote [and]
Johnny C. Mahajan, I'm massacring that I'm sorry and [I'm] [john] Ac mahajan. Sorry
how significant was
Africa's China's and India's contribution to the war effort both in troops and resources
Well the contribution was significant, India sent over a million troops that served on the western front and in mesopotamia
African colonial Troops were also significant
[I] mean first of all they they were used in [the] African theatres of war of course but
Northern African Troops were shipped to the western front very early in the war now [they] might not [have] been as well equipped as say
The French, but they had a reputation of being both
Barbaric and
exotic
Within the French army there were the zoo of troops which actually had served in other colonial wars before and they had these
uniforms that were influenced by traditional
African apparel
Colonial Moroccan and Algerian Troops were actually the first ones hit by gas on the western front
When the germans released gas at the second battle of ypres?
important thing is resources
Britain blockaded germany blockaded Northern North Sea access for Germany so drained them slowly
But steadily of things like leather
Food things that could not really be imported and but at the same time the the [auntaunt] got huge amounts of resources
itself from India and colonies in Africa
China
Sent labour Corps to the western [front] and it's really interesting but that's for another special
So I'm not going to talk about it today. You're actually going to have to wait for that
and
Actually, you're going to have to wait for everything because that's apparently all the time I have for [today]
If you'd like to see more about the second battle of ypres
Near for that episode check out our instagram for cool photos and all kinds of things like that don't forget to subscribe
See you next time