100
Years Of WWI
(2014/History Channel/Lionsgate DVD Set)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Main Program: B-
The
History Channel takes a look back in time to the first World War,
when the industrial war supported the armies with a new kind of war
where war no longer depended on condition or the number of men in the
field, but machines, tanks, airplanes, submarines, machine guns and
chemical weapons. Technology and inventions which became later the
forefather of modern warfare. Now, few soldiers are now able to kill
masses of people all at once, taking war to a new level of terror and
destruction.
World
War I gave the world a taste of what WMDs could be. Machines to
overcome enemy fortifications and troops and bring victory. Each
side believing their new invention would bring the war to a quicker
end, but instead it created an arms race for creating better weapons
for mass destruction. Tanks to cross the battlefield and crush
soldiers in the trenches, submarines to sink ships without warning,
airplanes and the first dogfighters, chemicals to poison without
risking the troops. To bring a war to an end quicker meant finding
ways of killing your enemies faster and greater numbers in order to
scare/force them into surrendering. In that aspect war has not
changed, but even today we can see how those machines of war have
influenced our modern warfare and weapons.
As
they say, there are no rules in love and war. This program takes a
look into the weapons of World War I, using remaining footage of WWI,
letters left by soldiers, and historians paints a picture in how
tanks, air raids, and chemicals were first used in that war. Imagine
yourself on a battlefield and you see an giant steel machine come at
you for the first time and your guns did nothing, or a fog that
causes a painful death and you couldn't breathe. Instead of
thousands of lives sacrificed to gain a few yards, soon becomes
millions, but the true horror of World War I was not the number of
dead, but new ways of finding human genocide.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image and lossy Dolby Digital sound
are average and passable, but not as good as I would have liked, plus
there are no extras.
-
Ricky Chiang
