Loading titles…
The four-part documentary series tells the full story of Belgium in the First World War from August 1914 to November 1918. The series deals with the war in all its aspects: civil, military, occupation, technical and medical developments, refugees, etc. It shows the impact of the…
1914. Europe lives in prosperity, but war is in the air. That war starts when the Austrian Crown Prince Franz-Ferdinand is killed in Sarajevo by a Serbian student. Germany chooses the side of Austria and wants to attack France. Belgium refuses free passage which causes Germany to invade Belgium in the early morning of August 4th 1914. The invasion happens very violent. Luik falls, Leuven burns. The Belgian Army retreats to the fortified Antwerp. When German 'Big Bertha's' destroy the forts around Antwerp, The Belgians have to retreat and abandon Antwerp. Behind the river Ijzer they will keep ground.
At the Yser the Belgian Army tries a last effort to stop the Germans. They only succeed when the Belgians open the locks in Nieuwpoort and flood the Yser estuary. The front is now locked down. The living conditions in the trenches are terrible. Diseases like Tyfus and Dysentery are killing almost as many as the German shootings do. In April 1915 the Germans use the first Gas Attack in history. Before the war is over, the battle of the Ypres Salient takes more than 500.000 victims. More than 1.5 million Belgians take refuge in the Netherlands, France and Great-Brittain. In Belgium the population can only survice with support of the National Food- and aidcommittee and the American Committee for Relief.
Around Verdun and the river Somme several 100.000 soldiers give their lives. In Belgium the people are living severely repressed by the German occupier. It is raining rules and ordinances. The Germans close the border with an electrical 'Dead Wire', which makes more than 1000 casualties. Belgium is plundered for the German War industry. In Brussels the Germans shoot the British nurse Edith Cavell. The language problems in the Belgian Army ask for more resistance with a lot of Flemish people. At the Western front solders die by the 1000's during useless offensives. The battle of Passchendaele gets stuck in the flemish mud. Again there are 10's of thousends of casualties
New weapons appear on the battlefield: planes, flamethrowers, tanks, U-boats! At the field hospitals, radiography and plastic surgery are introduced. In 1918 the American troops come to massively reinforce the allies. On the 11th of November 1918 the French and the Germans sign the truce. The Spanish Flue kills 40 to 70 million people worldwide. In Versaille the map of Europe is redesigned: 4 empires cease to exist. Belgium is destroyed. In Maritime Flanders the battlefields are being cleaned up and 1000's of casualties are being buried in more than 160 military graveyards.
host
"Löwengrube – Die Grandauers und ihre Zeit" is a German television series first aired between 1989 and 1992, created by Willy Purucker and directed by Rainer Wolffhardt. It is set in Munich and follows the lives of Ludwig Grandauer and his son Karl, both policemen, covering the years from 1897 to 1954. The TV show is based on Purucker's radio play series Die Grandauers und ihre Zeit (‘The Grandauers and their time’). The series’ main title "Löwengrube", meaning ‘Lions’ Den’, refers to the address of the Munich Police Headquarters inaugurated in 1913.
February 1916. World War I has been raging for two years and has killed over three million people, neither side gaining the upper hand. The Germans mobilize more artillery and men in Verdun than in any other offensive -- for three hundred days -- but the French hold out. Constructed from over five hundred hours of restored, colorized archival footage.
Colorized historical footage in ascending order of World War 1. Not only the relatively known Flanders and France battles, but also the generally unknown Italian-Austrian, German-Polish-Russian, Japanese-German, Ottoman Empire- Allied and African German Colonies, and other unknown or forgotten fronts and battles.
The story of three decades of war told through the eyes of various men who were its key players: Roosevelt, Hitler, Patton, Mussolini, Churchill, Tojo, DeGaulle and MacArthur. The series examines the two wars as one contiguous timeline starting in 1914 and concluding in 1945 with these unique individuals coming of age in World War I before ultimately calling the shots in World War II.
There are some things you don't learn in history class... The 'Bad Bad Belgium' series tells those stories that were deliberately deleted from the collective memory. From the Belgian involvement in the atomic bombs in the 1940s, through the controversial start of Flemish mass tourism in the 1960s, to the first Belgian ecstasy pill in the 1990s.
