This is a collection of rare WWI footage. In the video, you’ll see German soldiers march through the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, confident that the war will be short and they will be victorious.
They say goodbye to their loved ones and board trains, bound for the front. It’s a sad sight since very few of these men will ever return home.
Also of note, at 1:18 in the footage you’ll see the Feldherrnhalle in Munich where, roughly a decade later, Hitler’s Beer Hall coup would come to a dramatic end.
This attempted coup, known as the ‘Beer Hall Putsch,’ landed Hitler and his close allies in jail for a number of years. From jail, Hitler wrote his infamous book ‘Mein Kampf’ – or ‘My Struggle’ – in which he refined his extreme political ideas.
Hitler himself is known to have fought in the First World War as a young man. He was a message runner in the trenches, and was decorated for bravery.
The loss of territory and economic trouble Germany faced after its defeat in World War One is widely considered one of the major factors which fueled the rise of extreme nationalism in Germany in the 1930s.
Once out of jail, Hitler and his cronies whipped up this dissatisfaction to bring themselves to power, ultimately bringing about the Second World War.
Visit the front lines in color, see the trenches as the WWI soldiers saw them and witness the destruction caused by intense artillery fire.
This amazing footage brings color into a world we have only known in black and white, making the men appear more real and less of a distant memory.
https://youtu.be/CErUTpuDbd8