Although World War I is probably my second favorite historical subject (behind you can probably guess what), its early history and how it all began is thoroughly convoluted and pretty confusing. Because of this, along with the fact that such an important event is already documented countless times, I won't really bother explaining the nuances of various political events leading up to the war's outbreak. Instead, I'm going to focus on what I liked and found interesting about this film, and will be making some use of The Great War as a comparison. The latter is a series that ran on British television around the same time this film was made, and is essentially World at War but for ww1: it features a lot of war footage, a narration explaining the significance of onscreen events, and even interviews with former servicemen. When compared with this series, The Guns of August is almost too simplistic. It goes over the events leading up to the war in great detail, but after the first few months, just jumps ahead way too fast, almost like they were obligated to cover the whole war but didn't really have time. Fritz Weaver, who was cast in a particularly excellent episode of Combat (with Vic Morrow) a few years after this, narrates the film. The film does a good job of conveying how ww1, contrary to public opinion, was not unavoidable. European powers and monarchs would be given many chances to peacefully defuse a situation that lead to disaster, but because of repeated exchanges of ultimatums, over 8 million people had to die. As you've probably heard already, the event usually credited with starting world war 1 was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo in 1914. Ferdinand was the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a very old and ailing state that would generally perform poorly during the conflict. Ignoring pleas from his advisors not to take the trip (for fear of his safety), he rode in an open topped car through the streets with his wife, Sophie. As Ferdinand's convoy stalled on a side street in the city after making a wrong turn, a young man named Gavrilo Princip, nervously fingering a semi-auto handgun in his pocket, made his move. He stepped out of the crowd of admirers and fired two shots point blank into Ferdinand and his wife, but was seized by cops before he could kill himself. Within minutes, the archduke and his wife were dead; peace in Europe died with them. Following this, austria-hungary bullied the Serbian government into accepting a very harsh and demanding ultimatum, in which austria-hungary basically demanded war. Although serbia accepted the terms, austria-hungary declares war anyway. The huge Russian Empire to the east, under Tsar Nicholas II, honors its pact with serbia to act as a vanguard for all Slavic peoples and declares war on austria-hungary. From here, things spiral out of control and alliances and promises of military assistance force european nations to rapidly declare war on one another. The film goes over how despite russia's seemingly endless reserves of manpower, they attacked german positions in East Prussia (now Poland) and lost nearly half an entire army thanks to german forces commanded by Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. One of the russian commanders involved shot himself. In the west, France and its generals determine the easiest way to subdue germany (if they are attacked by them) is to immediately cross the Rhine with a huge army and capture Berlin. The germans on the other hand favor the Schlieffen Plan: a tactic that involved the german military invading french territory via neutral Belgium, getting behind Paris, and then swinging down and to the left in order to capture it. As germany puts the plan into action, they let the belgian public know that their only concern should be to step out of the way and let them take over their country. By stating their intentions, the germans feel any destruction they cause is justifiable. Belgium gives up its neutral status and fights germany, but is quickly overwhelmed and has its huge forts blasted to pieces. As punishment for destroying their own railroads and other facilities to slow the germans down as much as possible, german forces engage in an extended period of complete sadism against belgian civilians, killing the young, the sick, and whoever else opposes them. Ironically, the sheer brutality the germans display, meant to shock the world into giving up to them, backfires on them. French forces manage to stop the german advance in the famous Battle of the Marne, and both sides are soon forced into trench warfare: a very static type of fighting where the factions dig trenches and are separated from each other by a desolate stretch of land. Trench warfare is largely to blame for ww1's reputation as a total bloodbath, as men attempting to attack enemy positions in huge waves would often be killed in mere seconds by machine gun fire. Neither side can make progress, and neither one gives in. This is a general overview of what went on during the first few weeks of the world's costliest war (up until that time). Other people have been saying this film is propaganda, as Weaver's narration kind of makes you feel pity towards Princip and his actions that ultimately caused the war. A subject as massive as world war 1 is simply too big to explain in only 100 minutes, so they had to no doubt cut a lot of things. What The Guns of August offers however is still extremely important to see, such as footage of the carnage at Verdun, in which the french and germans battered each other for almost an entire year until almost a million were dead, or scenes of Lenin giving a speech to russia's mistreated underclass. As someone who avidly reads history, I've seen these types of things many times, but some of the footage is new to me. Either way, The Guns of August is an important part of history in and of itself, as it shows how europe (and eventually most of the world) was sucked into a terrible symphony of destruction that nobody was prepared for.
