True to life

@@Vizzini_ Russian soldiers should be told Putin is right behind them. "About 35 miles behind you in a palace."

@@patriceaqa288 35? More like 350

Potential addition: “What of we forget, sir?” “Not to worry, the mine will remember for you!”

@@patriceaqa288 lmao, uff clown

WW1 in a nutshell

"Would that be the plan to continue with total slaughter until everyone is dead except Field Marshall Haig, Lady Haig and their tortoise... Alan?"

Joseph Harrison Great Scott even you know it

Management in general

@@podemosurss8316 That line, my dear fellow, is in fact the core principle of the war.

I loved the barren featureless map even more

He probably lost an extra 2000 men trying to dig up the captured tiny patch while under fire so he can place it on his desk.

Yeah, but it was also outdated.

And it was planted there beforehand by Marschall Fritzmeyrs special "Blumen-Arrangeur"-unit as a strategic deception!

It's also not very accurate as the very land it supposedly maps doesn't have any grass on it and is curiously 2 inches lower than the land around it.

The worm is perhaps the only bright spot in the entire sorry saga.

Ok. I was wrong. I forgot that tortoise, Alan. Beh....

Agreed, that and “however, there is one small problem..” “That everyone gets slaughtered in the first 10 seconds.”

He actually survived, Blackadder pretended to die but he survived the battle

@@seliamila1005 It was originally intended, but later they decided not to include this scene. In my opinion it was great decicion.

Darling’s bloody face when he said that. 😄

He however didn't;).

84 British Generals including the 2nd in command of the whole British army were killed in the trenches - as long as you take Blackadder for what it is = a Comedy and Not History - that's fine but don't confuse fact with a fiction

I’m presuming that the other 885,058 British soldiers killed were below the rank of general 🤔

@@Round_07 No over 100 Generals, including the second in command of the British Army, were killed in action and NOT 35 miles away in a Chateaux

bbhhhhaaaa

Not bad description of No-Man's-Land actually.

probably wouldn't have made any difference which side of the map they used incompetent to the end ask the Anzacs lions led by donkeys

and cold as fuck. ukposts.info/have/v-deo/mqFom6GIbouc230.html

Other side, sir

Kid, if you say that World War I was just trench warfare you're clearly mistaken. WWI was way more hectic than shown above.I love how you act like you know what you're talking about but actually don't. You're young and dumb, I'm sure you've never learned more than the basics of WWI. It was extremely hectic and more than just trench warfare. Get it right before you act big

Huh? I know he was kidding, but are you? Anyway, one of the best places to learn about WWI is right here on YT. There's a channel called The Great War that is doing a week by week view of the war in real time... 100 years later. Great stuff, and very balanced.

My condolences if you lost family. If you don't mind a serious question amidst the mirth. Do you think the democratic vote of the people might have avoided the experience of WWI for the UK? Do you think worldwide democracy might reduce war in the future, increase, or make no difference?

Snot 486 Thank you for your return comments, and (the insightful) humorous quote. You are probably right. It was a hope. Writing earlier, I was reminded of Tolkien's thoughts that the common people (hobbits) don't care about amassing power only about their families, the simple pleasures, and living life in peace. If true, maybe utopia is a world ruled by "hobbits". During a good part of my early life I wondered if the world would ever find peace, or would it destroy itself up in some fashion. Remembering now that JFK, Reagan, and others used the Cold War to gain and hold elected political office doesn't inspire hope for peace. Maybe you are correct. Thanks.

There's an Austrian fellow by the name of von Hotzendorf you should meet. I have a feeling the two of you would get along spectacularly well.

“Our battles are directed, sir?”

"well, of course they are, Blackadder. they're directed according to the Grand Plan." "would that be the plan...to continue with total slaughter until everyone is dead except for Field Marshall Hague, Lady Hague, and their tortoise....Alan?" "Great Scott!!! even YOU know it! bolt all the doors! hammer large pieces of crooked wood against all the windows! this security leak is far worse than we'd imagined!"

@@urosasin8979 oh of course they are Blackadder directed according to the grand plan

@@sprinterofficial8457 Would that be the plan to continue with total slaughter until everyone's dead except Field Marshall Haig, Lady Haig, and their tortoise, Alan?

@@TheLemonDrop23 Great Scot, even you know it. AH AH bolt all the doors, have large pieces of crooked wood against all the windows, this security leak is far worse than we'd imagined

Most WW1 generals were like that. Look at Conrad Von Hötzendorf in the Carpathians or Falkenhayn in Verdrun, or Joffre in Champagne...

But only Cavorna repeated the same mistake 11 times

@@geoffmelnick1472 are you sure he was at the right river?

Cadorna

Hi I'm Indy Nidel, welcome to the Great War.

I still think about this line every time I read an actual military map 😂

You should try out the trinity in Yes, Minister though

​@@raylake6611to be fair, I've watched both shows and hugely enjoyed both of them.

What about Tim McInnerny? Hugely underrated.

I love Jeeves and Wooster, I just had to buy the entire work

Dont forget Rik Mayall

We're in the stickiest situation since sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun.

It's the worst plan since Abraham Lincoln said "Oh I'm sick of kicking around the house tonight, let's go take in a show!"

Another gargantuan effort to move General Melchett's drinks cabinet 6 inches closer to Berlin

Funny note, JRR Tolkien convinced CS Lewis to dress as polar bears for an high society academic dinner

Magical tiny pause before Alan

Finally, a map where you get to walk into machinegun fire with ONLY a baton and revolver.

I wish they included little eastereggs about blackadder in bf1 tbh

@@dandydasyt4766 wouldn't want to face a machine gun without this

Would love to give a Squad Order followed by a General Melchett ‘eyyyy’.

I agree. My only quibble about the show is that I thought the dynamic between Blackadder, Baldrick and Percy worked much better in the first series where BA was kind of dense. They made Baldrick way too stupid in the last three shows, and BA a little too clever. And it really cut into the amount of physcom Rowan could pull out.

@Dalle Smalhals They did. They entered the war on 6th April 1917.

You should watch the whole series, the ending to this one is actually very sad for a comedy but brilliant

audience2 The sad part is, we (the US) refused to listen to the experiences of British, French, or even the Germans regarding the futility of trench warfare + mad dashes across no man’s land, and insisted the our “good ol’ boys” could do it better and more successfully than anyone else. Same sh!t, different uniform.

I think you're missing the point that these men's sacrifices were pointless and accomplished nothing. This was a war between the rich fought by the poor. As always.

@@Name-ps9fx We also refused to listen to common fucking sense which said we had absolutely no reason to be drawn into that meat grinder but our masters in Big Business said otherwise. The whole war was a fraud. Like 90% of all of them.

Its almost as funny as englands immigration control

You should have seen him on Top Gear: Bob!

Wibble.

***** ooooh fail I'm afraid

***** good recovery :-)

Not as hilarious as... "Bob"

Despair then your year nine history teacher knows as much about world war 1 as you do..........nothing. It’s so sad the idiotic things taught in history up to gcse. It’s, for the most part, complete and utter nonsense.

Your teacher should teach facts not propaganda.

@@audience2 How is a it propaganda? Its a bloody comedy show.

Can I ask what's the actual objection to the illustration here? Was WW1 actually instead very successful in terms of gaining land, is that what you're saying? Good way to be unconvincing is to fail to actually say what your issue is, but I'm curious to know nonetheless.

​@@Torthrodhel Don't worry he from an alternate universe where General Haig won the war by 1914.

All the while Blackadder is staring at George thinking “you fool you had an out and you wasted it.”

chf gbp That is WW1 in a nutshell

FUN FACT: The Gallipoli campaign, which was a huge disaster, was planned and executed by the "great war leader" Winston Churchill. The U.S and U.K didn't win WW2. The Soviet army did. British and American forces faced 8 divisions of the German army. The Soviets faced down over 200. Little history lesson.

@@jamesmcnamara2373 Gallipoli failed because the ANZAC's were landed in the wrong place and at the British end ,when the way was open and only lightly defended they did not move inland quick enough and waited 2 days,to late then the door was shut.The British and American's faced far more than eight division's.The Russian idea of attack was to use large amounts of artillery and keep sending in soldiers until the Germans ran out of bullets,which is why they lost about 11 million killed.

And the Dieppe landings in WWII.

@@terryharris1291 Not sure about the exact number of divisions, but I know that during the Western Allied invasion of Germany, the western allies sent 4,5 million troops (91 divisions). Whereas the german defenders had around 1 million. So about a quarter the number of the Western Allied invaders. During Operation Barbarossa however, the germans sent 3,8 million men, while the Soviets only had 2,9 million. Meaning: americans and british could only win by outnumbering the germans 4:1. Whereas the Soviets beat the german invaders, even though the germans outnumbered them. Let's face it: By the time the americans and the british got stuck in, they only had to deal with the numerically inferior left-overs. Hardly comparable to what the Russians had to face.

Same xD

ajsb1986 only as China as everyone will run out of manpower before I do

Alber Un it took time but my 2000 division strong army, armed with basic sticks and potatoes managed to swamp the Japanese by 1947. With over 50 million casualties I finally won. As for factories I had previously invaded other Chinese states and when other China surrendered to Japan and became a puppet I just invaded the puppet while it had no units. However I agree the Soviet Union is the master of mass productions units

Preston Zhukov russia

Preston Zhukov I was once a liberated Ukraine (for some reason) I think and both germany and russia were running at me as I was their last practical opponent. They threw wave after wave after wave. They lost so many ten millions of men just pushing against my defences. I lost eventually but what am I supposed to do with such little Recruitible population?

I can only imagine what a show featuring Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie would cost today.

The hard part would be picking a suitable time period to set it in. It would have to be post-war 20th century, and there's only so much you can do with that.

There have been wars since. The Falklands, for example.

CSxDeity Err, No. You just failed your British Citizenship Test.

Wasn't actually in reply to you, my fault.

Captain Darling to you Blackadder!

Blackadder was exactly right.

Worth pointing out, that Generals were not born into that rank. They had served as field offices in previous wars, such as the Boer war, earlier as junior offices in conflicts such as Sudan.

"Wtf"? There's no "wtf" about it. Darling is his name. He is Captain Darling. What's your name? Corp[oral Dimwit-Moron?

@@Bodragon I think he means Captain Darling's reaction being to look confused

There was no large scale trench warfare in WW2

Andi Rain My great-grandfather came home. Same condition. Still, spending a month in a trench is not necesseraly trench warfare. The fronts were moving. Sure, trenches were used, but it was faar from a standing war.

Andi Rain That is very true. The russian sollution to any tactical challenge was to throw more men at it. Any generals who had epxerience, were executed by Stalin before the war, so the ones who remained were the untalented "Zerg Rushers".

This is comedy based on a pop history interpretation of WW1. It's supposed to be funny, not accurate. In reality, all armies were CONSTANTLY trying new tactics, weapons and methods throughout WW1.

Andi Rain Soviet archives were secret, therefore they weren't used for propaganda and they're considered to be very accurate.

WWII Channel “The other side, sir.”

Field Marshall Haig (Butcher Haig) was resposible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men.

They mentioned field Marshal Haig a couple of times in the video, I think Melchett is based on Lord Kitchener and other commanding officers behind the battle field in general

Didn't Haig also deride machine guns as"ridiculous and un-military?"

Philip Croft and wtf was haig supposed to do? Noone else had any better ideas. And the tanks he was referring to were in fact no substitute for cavalry. Cavalry were there to exploit a breakthrough. Tanks at that time were NOT designed to exploit. They were designed to break through the lines. They were designed to capture trenches, and support infantry. The blitzkreig concept of tank warfare came about many years later.

Dellacondan True, I did some research on the battle of Cambrai and the tanks of their time were very limited in what they could do. Part of their job was to clear barbed wire so horses could get through to pursue the enemy. Still, it's fun to look down on the leaders of the past.

There hasn't been an English Army for approximately 400 years

He must have been so incredibly shocked to have encountered the South Wales Borderers, The Black Watch and the 36th Ulster Division in the 'English' army.

As a student of the Great War, I concur. Anyone familiar with the Haig plan can see the humour and utter ridiculousness of trench warfare.

@@rb8649Sad you were confused by the original post.

Butt hurt, jocks, tacffs and paddy alert 😱

Very similar theme to Catch-22: Black adder's unique free-minded sanity is what keeps him wanting to run away from the enemy, while everyone else wants him to run towards them

And there is the ending, the most brilliant, sad, depressing, perfect endings ever in the history of television.

@@greebj outdated tactics that worked in previous wars but not in ww1 where machine guns exist

@@cov9290 the major European powers have been crushing colonial up rising rather Then fighting countries with equal strength. What is funny though is Germany (well Prussia) had fought other major European powers a couple decades earlier and had won because the general, general moltke had realized that a lot of old tactics like a head on charge were useless because modern guns. that you should split your soldiers into small groups and outflank your enemy, Decentralize your command structure so your army doesn’t become bureaucratic. and other things that generals in the First World War including moltke’s nephew seemed to totally forget lol

if you consider this accurate the only one stupid here is you and the fellows who think like you , of which there are many in this comment section

My favourite line.

Satire isn't the only reason people should learn history, I would hope...

Asserius -- Good point. Perhaps I should have said that being able to enjoy something like this is another benefit of knowing history.

''Someone who knew nothing about the Great War would not get the humor of these clips.'' And assume that it was a true reflection of life.

It perpetuates a lot of the lazy myths that have made it into mainstream perceptions of the war from the 1960s onwards and which are often assumed to be factual. It's hilarious satire but the satire reinforces preconceptions as well as creating caricatures.

Andi Rain It's lazy because it is accepted without question or investigation. Devoid of fact. Your answer actually proves the point. If you are not quite so lazy, here are a FEW of the myths. Tactics and technology evolved throughout the war in different ways to cope with the deadlock and defence advantage. The idea that the western front never moved by more than four miles for four years (sometimes still found in school history books) is a myth based on simplification. As is the idea that the same tactics were followed from start to finish until nobody was left to fight on one side through attrition. The idea that generals sat many miles from the action and had no idea what the war really meant is a myth. Some 60 odd Britsh generals were killed in action. Colonels were always expected to lead with their men and their numbers were naturally higher. Overall the casualty rate of officers was higher than for lower ranks. The notion that the upper class was sending the working class to death owes more to the left wing precepts of the Oh What A Lovely War generation than it does to history. The idea that Haig was an incompetent butcher owes as much to saving Lloyd George's reputation as it does to destroying Haig's. Haig's failure in 1916 / 17 needs to be balanced against his success in fostering changes to tactics and being central to the success and eventual victory of 1918. Total war with modern industrialised mass armies in Europe was new and all participants were searching for solutions. Take the 1916 Somme battles for example. The main problem for battle direction was technology. Artillery power should indeed have destroyed the wire. The experience on the Russian demonstrated it as Russian front line positions were often annihilated by German artillery and led to horrendous defeats. Many of the British shells were supplied as shrapnel which was for anti personnel and had no effect on wire. Many shells did not explode at all. German estimates were 25% plus duds. Once an attack had started the generals were blind as new telephone cables had to be laid across a devasted battlefield. Messages were taken by runners through crowded trenches or by pigeon. Breakthoughs could not be exploited because of the length of time it took to react. The British tactical solution was the development of all arms co-operation of infantry, artillery (the creeping barrage and no advances out of artillery range) and aircraft for modest advances made progressively. It came to full fruition in 1918. These myths treat the Germans as passive or invisible. They were not. The Somme defeat owes as much to German tactical innovation as British technological weakness. They invented zonal defence in place of linear defence. The myth that the war was won when the number of allies simply outnumbered that of the central powers through the arrival of the Americans. The US numbers made little difference in 1918 though they WOULD have done if the war had lasted into 1919. Their main contribution was to encourage Ludendorf to launch his sprig 1918 offensive when he should have been planning a fighting withdrawal. There are many more but that belongs to real history as opposed to popular perception fostered by mass media entertainment.

yeah same

Haha ....black adder at its best !!

One oft he funniest parts IMO

It's such a stupid joke, but Stephen Fry's brash acting makes it work.

To die for King, God and Fatherland is the greatest honor and the most sublime moment in the life of any loyal citizen!

also, the last scene is the only take they did of it: the director wanted to re-shoot it, but the cast refused (well done to them). [el'sda2].

Aquatic therapy

Aquatic therapy

Aquatic therapy

WHERE DID YOU GET THIS???

Damn the Hun has stolen are plans and posted them on this infernal device. Well it's back to the drawing board old chaps. Suggestions?

It was largely because of haig it was a cock up. Rawlinson wanted to systemtcially destroy each line of defence, storm it, then do it all over again. Haig wanted to do a large offensive that would smash the German lines and sweep onto open fields. Haig got his way, a way the French had already tried and it lead to heavy losses with fighting defending into the type of combat that rawlinson wanted to pursue from the get go as he, like the French, realised that it was the only way to make steady gains while also minimising losses as much as they could.

@@thescottishanimeguy9946 And it was the French Pressure to relieve the forces fighting at Verdun that Haig was forced to attack on a large scale

WW1 in general was such a cluster. Absolutely unnecessary European war of "pride" and ego. It was too late by the time everyone realized how the industrial revolution had so changed warfare.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Somme was by no means the biggest cock-up in British history. Let me ask this, what would you have done differently? Without foreknowledge I find it hard to believe you would come up with a better idea

@@tomasdawe9379 I'm not a military strategist, then again nor were many of the senior people in the Army at the time - they were just over privileged people who were in their roles because of nepotism, background, attendance at a certain school - and in a lot of cases many had bought their commissions. If I was a trained military strategist I'm sure I could have come up with something better than demanding the soldiers climb out of their trenches and walk towards the heavily armed enemy. It was kind of inevitable and obvious that they would just be shot to pieces in huge numbers.

you should watch the end episode of this season - the last scene is very sad .... especially if you have seen the proceeding ones . It builds up to a pinnacle .... You do actually think WW1 was lunacy. Another good BUT tragic film to watch is "gallipoli" with a young mel gibson ..it's about the Australians during world war 1 and again the lunacy of trench warfare

I hindsight the stupidity of WW1 is hilarious for us who don't have die in trenches.

The "myth " that men were sent to just die on the battlefields of the First World War, especially in Europe, specifically on the Western Front, is unfortunately more true than not. The "GREAT WAR" was considered modern warfare at that time and was undeniably a new style of fighting that many of its leaders, officers and politicians were unprepared for. The concept of full blown trench warfare was unprecidented and a number of these "leaders" were simply outdated, ill-prepared, or just plain lacking in their approach to fighting trench-based, industrialised, siege warfare. Some of the operations and tactics used are quite sickening in retrospect and others blatantly just slaughter fests. There were many inept commanders on both sides that really, if you look it at, had a lot of blood on their hands. Names like "the butcher of the Somme" aren't just coincidence. I think the characters of this show are a perfect fictional example of these "leaders". That's not to say every person of a higher rank was inept in their command or indifferent to their soldier's lives, and in fact there were many competent leaders and even heroes on both sides, but the fact remains that the blunders committed were of an atrocious level in a war so unfathomably taxing in human lives. The final episode of this series actually is quote poignant, and if nothing else serves as a reminder of those that came before us and gave everything they had, in a war that could be seen as really quite pointless. Who wins at a time like that? I personally think the series tries to convey this message - the absurdity of war. And war is absurd.

Also, if you don't get the humour of this show you probably shouldn't be watching it

They're not trying to make ww1 funny, they are making light of a historical event which was so serious the notion of making fun of it is in itself funny. Humour is hard to grasp.

How is that Ukrainian counter offensive going.

​@@robshepherd3782 the first russian defense line has been breached and ukraine already took more territory then russia took in their offensive in Bakhmut and vuhledar. This comment was written 4 days after the start of the offensive. Opsec is currently in place so I don't realy care ether, I will just wait for the results as soon as it no longer endangers ukrainian soldiers to talk about it.

@@jakobc.2558 In your head maybe but in reality they have simply died.

@@jakobc.2558 I hope the total collapse of Ukrainian military strength causes a total collapse of your mind.

@@robshepherd3782”you see, the counteroffensive was made up by the matrix and the reality is russia won in 3 days, as projected.”

Best of luck in finding a tortoise named Alan

Twas a parrot, not a turtle.

Sou1defiler it's simply the best name for a tortoise

I have a tortoise named Field Marshal Haig

I shall have a carrier pigeon named Speckled Jim

You forgot the best part. Unload the general and he'll just demand they stay on the beaches on a heaven sent day where the hills were empty. The Australians and New Zealend men had one chance to possibly knock the Ottomans out ofthe war and it was wasted

For the people behind this they were still thinking back into those romantic glory days of war while not seeing the changing times with machine guns, poison gas and airplanes. Also if those old generals saw the warfare now lets just say it would make this WWI look like a picnic. I mean with machine guns having portable versions and carried along, missiles and other weapons that weren't available then or now modified for times now.

Retep Ramit Yes. What a twat Churchill was.

It would be great if people got their history form history books and not movies.

+Jonathan Williams I feel like I see you everywhere.

+Dermot Jordan By Jeeves I could not agree more!

The character knows exactly what is going on, he keeps face to show his bravery and set a good example. He finds it easier to treat it like a rugby match. If Blackadder thought he did not know what he was getting himself in for he would have pushed him to go.

Oh dear! Stop trying to analyse it and just accept it as brilliantly-written and performed comedy.

Blackadder was be both a comedy and a social commentary, that is what made it so good, I think they wanted people to analyze it.

How could he not know? Go over the top and more than likely get killed or fuck off in the car with Melchett and watch the results come in. Get real.

I doubt it. The dim-witted aristocrat is a Blackadder stock character. In Blackadder 1 and 2 it was Lord Percy, in Blackadder 3 it was Prince Regent George.

Just wondering ... what other languages do you understand/speak?

Hi I speak french, english, serbian and greek very well. And I do believe that English comedy is the best

I sometimes think that too.... ....and then I see things like Home Movies, Dr. Katz, Metalocalypse, Archer, Kids in the Hall (Canadian), The Amazing World of Gumball (perhaps an internatiional effort?), Gravity Falls....and so many others. But there is probably a disproportionate number of great British comedies comparatively, it's just not "THE BEST" in my opinion. I can't pick a "best".

Thomas Norgate I'm British and find what you have said to be very Un-British. We are a modest people who don't bang on about how great we are (that's America's job)

Reb Brown We're the kindest, most modest people in the world.

1 why not? 1 NAME: Brian Blessed! ♥

@@dallesamllhals9161 Not even Brian Blessed's voice could save the first series. And without his voice there's not much of an actor there.

@@redsquirrel1086 BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! (in a loud and booming voice) ;-P

Was he a relation to that famous Hairdresser Vidal Sassoon ?

good old Siegfried

Sassoon, Owen, Rosenberg summed up WWI for me... Nothing conveyed the voice from the Western Front than those war poets who had a first hand experience of the war and who could feel and think and write about it...

And that's what's so brilliant about it.

*snailed*?

Of course, this walking slowly at the enemy by the British would be preceded by a several days artillery bombardment. The British felt that there would be little left of the German lines after such a bombardment. They were wrong, of course. But by the end of the war, the British infantry were advancing right behind rolling artillery barrages, often times behind tanks, which was extremely effective. The British were rolling back the Hun with fewer casualties than the Americans or the French.

Well after all this is set around the era in the war of the Battle of the Somme which is one of the textbook examples of a horribly executed battle with unnecessary casualties

I agree. But it wasn't really that the generals were really dumb. It's just that technology had overtaken tactics. It wasn't til near the end of the war that new tactics were developed.

If you take the 'Oh What a Lovely War' school of history at face value, then yes.

yeah, this put the final nail in the coffin of germany when they started to regain ground. destroyed moral when they began overrunning supply dumps of stuff they hadnt seen in years

Kirothe Avenger​ that book actually mentions that- the full british supply dumps. By taking the equipment the Germans were using thr old method of military logistics- "fleeing forward," that is, moving forward and taking the enemy and local supplies. WW1 represented the first real shift to modern logistics were supplies are almost completely brought from home in constant supply trains (supply trains have always existed but represented a reletivly small portion of mostly critical supply- armament and horse feed) The germans could take the supply dumps, but then what? That will run out. They couldnt get their own supplies from german trains over the trenches to french land because the equipment and infrastructure wasnt there. i highly recomend the book "supplying war," you may enjoy it.

Communications too. Half the time when ground was taken the echelon didn't know whether the attack was a success and to send in supplies to hold it or not, while the guys in the newly created salient, having met their orders had to wait for new ones to know what to do next and thus were extremely vulnerable to counterattack. Both issues were solved by General Monash's innovative integration of tanks with infantry; using armoured vehicles to spearhead an assault and then move back behind the lines once the infantry had taken up forward defensive positions in order to bring up food, water and ammunition, and to facilitate communication with command. This played a huge role in breaking the stalemate.

Martin van Creveld had some interesting points. Made me understand renaissance and pre-Napoleonic warfare much better.

***** Sounds about right Not my idea- from the book i mentioned

Or staging another forty aircraft at an airfield for the eighth time after seven prior occurrences where the site and almost every single airframe on it got plastered by accurate artillery.

OR THE NINETEENTH TIME THE ACTUAL FUCK

@@lurkingcarrier8736 I'm pretty sure it's over 20 now, but at this point i've lost count.

@@biggiec8224 Who the fuck trained Russian strategic officers, Luigi Cadorna?

Marshal Melchettski of the Russian High command.

How could you possibly know that, Private? It's top-secret information..

Lol

Hammer large pieces of crooked wood........

John Clark I know it's genius isn't it...little lines like that just make it so funny

+rob sim Baahh.see you in Berlin for coffee & CAKES.

It's as funny as it is because it's true

katey1dog That is his point. it's sad, depressing even that it is true and it isn't a joke.

Lions led by donkeys.

considering that there are no surviving participants of WW1 I think its alright to have alought about one of the most retarded affairs Europe started 100 years ago

a_slight_veneer_of_privacy well, Blackadder is an officer and so is George. They are satirizing the generals, who did not do any fighting.

This is actually not accurate I think. There were people who had figured them out, like Rommel. It was just that he wasn't being listened to. There were no trench battles, at least not long lasting ones, in Italy. And that was largely due to Rommel using advanced infantry tactics and various trickeries and shenanigans to roll up lines and things like that. For some reason though the Germans don't seem to have cared much how he won those battles. They just wanted to give him medals for it. And of course in Britain there was Lidell Hart, although I don't think he actually wrote much until the 1920s. He might have done, but if he did it wasn't widely read or known I think. But he reached many of the same conclusions the Germans did a little earlier. Well, some of the Germans I should probably say. No one on the western front seemed to have given it much thought on either side of the front. And when you think about the fact that any organized mass production and deployment of tanks, even primitive as they were back then, might have won the war in a week at any point pf its duration it really sinks in what a senseless waste it all was. But the Brits only used theirs for reconnoisance in ones and twos. Not even sure what the Germans did with theirs if they even had any. Hurl mustard gas and things I suppose. I guess it's just hindsight though. It's just weird that no one thought to at least try it and see what would happen, particularly when what they were doing obviously wasn't working.

12th time.

@@aegisghost 15th?

We're up to 15 times now.

And it just happened again....

We are at 16th, my dudes.

Probably THE finest. Some of the Monty Python stuff was equally genius.

The second series was pretty good but far less poignant.

a great example of the attitude of a lot of people sent to that war i feel truly believed it was for their country and the world, the war to end all wars, horrible they were sold this lie the wrong people died in this war thats for sure

Glasgow2k6 More sad than funny. This is the last episode. George has finally had the scales fall from his eyes and realized the lives of the common soldier mean NOTHING to the higher ups; the full scope of how apathetic they were to the suffering they caused. George was naive, and something of a fool. But more than believing in the cause of the War, he believed he had no right to ask the men to do that he was unwilling to. He was lying to the General about his enthusiastic intentions, because he knew otherwise he'd have ordered him to the back lines or convinced him to do so by appealing to his simple nature. He knew every man there was probably going to die in a charge, and he hadn't really tried to stop it when he could have. So he tied his fate to Black Adder's.

Uttam Paudel Also it's a testament that Hugh went on to be the best actor out of all of them. His speech where he says 'I don't want to die' and is finally realising the inevitability of his fate whilst still sprinkling in some humour is masterfully written but also played 👌 PERFECTLY by Hugh. British comedy has never been done better since

Great Stalin, even you know it!

"You know our plan? Off to gulag with you!" "But sir, all of our recruits come from gulag." "Yes. Back to front line, mobik!"

​@@salt_factory7566 Stalin didn't do that. Nor does modern Russia, nor anyone in the world as of now.

​@@jackbaxter2223 What the fuck are you on bro 💀 Prisoners made 10% of the Red Army at best

@@throwfascistsintopits3062 Uh...

Well you gave the soldiers trenchfoot and all thst so you should know

Yes . A war fought with outdated tactics

But far more loveable, somehow... what a charismatic human Stephen Fry is...

The irony being Melchett is just monumentally stupid & not actually evil...😉

@@darania1 only thing worst than evil is stupidity

The beauty of British satire.

+Andi “CRIMSON” Rain Hitler only attacked that city to get at Stalin, so I read, was some brutal Street fighting there.

+Andi “CRIMSON” Rain absolutely, a blood bath. Impossible to even imagine the horror. Stalin wasn't far behind Hitler in the genocidal stakes.

TheGodParticle At the start of the war yes.

But we already know that. I can imagine the themes behind these sketches here being the imaginings and private doodles of newspaper cartoonists of the day, who would have irked or rebuked the generals in a most effective public way by employing a caricature using drawn lines, the picture worth a thousand truthful words, in the national newspapers. But why dent or damage the morale of troops in that way? is perhaps the viable excuse to repress such criticism. Is that moral or ethical, though? Maybe cartoonists in Britain, during WW1, did have a 'field day': I need to investigate.