"Great War Diaries" is an amazing series. Using a combination of diaries, letters, high quality stock footage (in most WWI documentaries it's in terrible condition), amazing modern computer graphics and live re-creations, they tell the story of WWI on the individual level. Instead of focusing on battles and strategies, the show focuses on the people--folks at home as well as soldiers and how they viewed the war as well as how it affected them. Also, unlike many documentaries, it focuses on peoples from many nations and on various sides-- humanizing them and their struggles.
In this first episode, it begins just before the war and in the early days of the fighting. Interestingly, it doesn't talk about the causes or global aspects until after it shows several peoples' lives-- Russian and German. What follows are accounts by a wide variety of folks--a French child, Serbians, Brits and many others.
As with all the shows, it's amazingly well made and well worth seeing--but also much more depressing than most documentaries of the war since it puts a face on the dead and their grieving families. Exceptional and well worth seeing, though you might just want to have a box of Kleenex nearby.
In this first episode, it begins just before the war and in the early days of the fighting. Interestingly, it doesn't talk about the causes or global aspects until after it shows several peoples' lives-- Russian and German. What follows are accounts by a wide variety of folks--a French child, Serbians, Brits and many others.
As with all the shows, it's amazingly well made and well worth seeing--but also much more depressing than most documentaries of the war since it puts a face on the dead and their grieving families. Exceptional and well worth seeing, though you might just want to have a box of Kleenex nearby.