For the past three weekends, plus the Veterans' Day holiday, I've been doing my Weekend Historical Videos feature. Since this is a four-day weekend, it's only appropriate to double down, or more. There are a couple of hours or more of video below.
My Veterans' Day post dealt with videos from World War I in the Middle East, which is by and large our first real video record of the region: the armies on both sides took black and white, soundless, jerky video of some of the major events. There's more surviving footage than I posted there, though, and to give you something to do during my four days of absence (barring something big), I've decided to do a big video dump here. Some of these are as short as a minute, some more than an hour. Unlike the Veterans' Day post, these have no real connection to Thanksgiving, unless I make the really atrocious pun that they all involve Turkey in some way. But I would never stoop so low as to do that. So here goes:
Lawrence of Arabia
A collector has posted a video of what he originally thought was all the known video of T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia")(but see below), with, perhaps inevitably, the theme from the David Lean film as background. Since Lawrence is the first thing most Westerners think of when they think of the Great War and the Middle East, let's start here. (two minutes, 33 seconds):
He subsequently found a bit over one minute more:
Gallipoli
The British assault on the Dardanelles made a certain sense as long as it was a naval campaign, but when the Navy stalled and they decided to land ground troops, it became a great debacle. It ended Winston Churchill's career in the Admiralty and guaranteed he was never heard from again., (Well, almost.) The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) bore the brunt of the bloodshed, and ANZAC day is still their patriotic remembrance, as is blaming pommy bastards. So here's an early, silent, Aussie documentary about Gallipoli, restored by Kiwi Director Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame, with actual footage from the disastrous Dardanelles campaign, especially the ANZAC forces (just under three minutes):
And, from the other side, Turkish film footage of the Gallipoli campaign, with no narrative:
Mesopotamia and the Rest
A BBC documentary narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave, on the Mesopotamian campaign, though starting with a general introduction to the War in the Middle East generally and ending with the Palestine campaign. (Redgrave uses the pronunciation that was still official BBC into the 1970s at least: pronouncing "Sinai" as "SINE-ee-ai" for no visible reason. It's not pronounced that way in any language, including English, except by the BBC, and even they seem to have dropped it.) Mesopotamia, or Iraq, which the soldiers charmingly dubbed "Messpot," was a huge hemorrhage for the British Indian troops fighting there, though now largely forgotten. Some day I want to write something about General Townshend at Kut, a delusional man who surrendered the largest British Army (though largely Indian) to surrender between Yorktown (1781) and Singapore (1942). In prison, he convinced himself that he ended the war with Turkey, and bragged of this in his memoir. He was wrong.
The documentary includes the Allenby campaign as well. (Many of the same clips and even some of the interviews were in the BBC piece I ran on Veteran's Day, in the latter part. The BBC recycles, apparently.) It's in four parts, 10 minutes each; total about 40 minutes.
Atatürk
A documentary on Kemal Atatürk in (sonorous, somewhat stentorian) English, but Turkish made and sponsored. While it does go into the 1920s and 1930s, the bulk of it deals with the war and the Greek-Turkish war which followed it, so I think it qualifies. Kemal was the only Turkish military commander to perform really well in the war (at Gallipoli, no less). Be warned. This is pure Kemalist/Turkish nationalist propaganda, but with lots of old video and stills in it. But take it with a grain of salt: the video accompanying the (poorly supported by the Royal Navy) naval attempt to run the Dardanelles, leading to the Gallipoli disaster, looks more like Jutland to me than the outmoded ships Britain actually used. If they'd had those dreadnoughts at Gallipoli, the Ottomans would have given up Constantinople and there might not have been a Russian Revolution. Then again, some documentary maker probably thought, ships are ships.
If you're Greek, Armenian, British, or possibly anything other than Turkish, it will seem heavy-handed at times, but watch it for the video. (Long: an hour and 21 minutes.)
Mesopotamia and the Rest
A BBC documentary narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave, on the Mesopotamian campaign, though starting with a general introduction to the War in the Middle East generally and ending with the Palestine campaign. (Redgrave uses the pronunciation that was still official BBC into the 1970s at least: pronouncing "Sinai" as "SINE-ee-ai" for no visible reason. It's not pronounced that way in any language, including English, except by the BBC, and even they seem to have dropped it.) Mesopotamia, or Iraq, which the soldiers charmingly dubbed "Messpot," was a huge hemorrhage for the British Indian troops fighting there, though now largely forgotten. Some day I want to write something about General Townshend at Kut, a delusional man who surrendered the largest British Army (though largely Indian) to surrender between Yorktown (1781) and Singapore (1942). In prison, he convinced himself that he ended the war with Turkey, and bragged of this in his memoir. He was wrong.
The documentary includes the Allenby campaign as well. (Many of the same clips and even some of the interviews were in the BBC piece I ran on Veteran's Day, in the latter part. The BBC recycles, apparently.) It's in four parts, 10 minutes each; total about 40 minutes.
Atatürk
A documentary on Kemal Atatürk in (sonorous, somewhat stentorian) English, but Turkish made and sponsored. While it does go into the 1920s and 1930s, the bulk of it deals with the war and the Greek-Turkish war which followed it, so I think it qualifies. Kemal was the only Turkish military commander to perform really well in the war (at Gallipoli, no less). Be warned. This is pure Kemalist/Turkish nationalist propaganda, but with lots of old video and stills in it. But take it with a grain of salt: the video accompanying the (poorly supported by the Royal Navy) naval attempt to run the Dardanelles, leading to the Gallipoli disaster, looks more like Jutland to me than the outmoded ships Britain actually used. If they'd had those dreadnoughts at Gallipoli, the Ottomans would have given up Constantinople and there might not have been a Russian Revolution. Then again, some documentary maker probably thought, ships are ships.
If you're Greek, Armenian, British, or possibly anything other than Turkish, it will seem heavy-handed at times, but watch it for the video. (Long: an hour and 21 minutes.)
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