Internet /YouTube Websites on Great War - Part 29
Note: CEF Study Group member websites denoted with asterisk " * "
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The power of the Internet, video production techniques and now YouTube are creating a completing different genre for the study and exchange of information between "students" of the Great War. Here is a sampling of some of the work being done. Some of it is professional and borrowed from commercial broadcasts, however, a significant number are privately executed and represents a completely new medium to record, explain and transmit information on the Great War.
There are two (2) key opportunities in the utilization of YouTube. Firstly, we can continue to collect and catalogue what others are producing and publishing. Secondly, and especially for the education of the younger generations, we could begin to produce our own series of videos on a wide range of topics regarding the Canadian Expeditionary Force and all of the other military units and nationalities engaged in the Great War. I look forward to seeing something of both over the next several years.
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War in the Trenches - John Merriman | European Civilization, 1648-1945 - Yale University
"Lecture Description - With the failure of Germany's offensive strategy, WWI became a war of defense, in which trenches played a major role. The use of trenches and barbed wire, coupled with the deployment of new, more deadly forms of artillery, created extremely bloody stalemate situations. The hopelessness of this arrangement resulted in a number of mutinies on the French side, motivated neither by defeatism nor by ideology, but rather by the sheer horror of trench warfare. Due to the unprecedented scale of casualties, WWI impressed itself irresistibly upon the cultural imagination of the combatant nations." [Recommended by Clive Maier - GWF][CEF Study Group - Oct 2010]
http://academicearth.org/lectures/war-in-the-trenches
The Coming of the Great War - John Merriman | European Civilization, 1648-1945 - Yale University
"Lecture Description - If the early years of the twentieth century were marked by a general consensus that a major war was impending, no similar consensus existed concerning the likely form that war would take. Not only the carnage of World War I, but also the nature of its alliances would have been difficult to imagine. Indeed, in 1900 many people would have predicted conflict, rather than collaboration, between France and Britain. The reasons for the eventual entente between France and Britain and France and Russia consist principally in economic and geopolitical motivations. Cultural identity also played a role, particularly in relations between France and Germany. The territory of Alsace-Lorraine formed a crucible for the questions of nationalism and imaginary identity that would be contested in the Great War. ." [Recommended by Clive Maier - GWF][CEF Study Group - Oct 2010]
http://academicearth.org/lectures/coming-of-great-war
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Guest Lecture by Jay Winters) Yale University
"Lecture Description - As a result of World War I, Europe had a different understanding of war in the twentieth century than the United States. One of the most important ways in which the First World War was experienced on the continent and in Britain was through commemoration. By means of both mass-media technologies and older memorial forms, sites of memory offered opportunities for personal as well as political reconciliation with the unprecedented consequences of the war. The influence of these sites is still felt today, in a united Europe, as the importance of armies has diminished in favor of social welfare programs. [Recommended by Clive Maier - GWF][CEF Study Group - Oct 2010]
http://academicearth.org/lectures/wwi-memorials-jay-winters
Trench Warfare - John Merriman | European Civilization, 1648-1945 - Yale University
"Lecture Description - The sacred union that united France's political parties during World War I contributed to a resilient morale on the home front. Germany's invasion of France, and the conflict over Alsace-Lorraine in particular, contributed to French concern over atrocities and the national investment in the war effort. New weapons and other fighting technologies, coupled with the widespread use of trenches, made fighting tremendously difficult and gruesome on all fronts." [Recommended by Clive Maier - GWF][CEF Study Group - Oct 2010]
http://academicearth.org/lectures/trench-warfare
The Home Front - John Merriman | European Civilization, 1648-1945 - Yale University
"Lecture Description - 1917 is a critical moment in World War I, as the Bolsheviks seize power in Russia and Woodrow Wilson leads the U.S. into war on the side of the Allied powers. Although morale held steady on the home front in France, there were multiple mutinies and strikes as the war progressed. These mutinies were not in favor of German victory; rather, they were in protest of corruption at home, in the form of incompetence and profiteering. Literary and historical records of World War I bear witness to the difficulty faced by soldiers in reentering civilian life after returning home." [Recommended by Clive Maier - GWF][CEF Study Group - Oct 2010]
http://academicearth.org/lectures/the-home-front
