History Channel - For King and Empire Canadas Soldiers in the Great War (2001) Part 6 Shadows of the Great War

With military historian Norm Christie as our guide, we explore the battlefields, cemeteries and monuments of the First World War. The men who fought tell their stories, and we discover how the naive, amateur soldiers of 1914 became, by 1918, perhaps the most feared, efficient and deadly Allied fighting machine on the Western Front the “Canadian Corps.” FOR KING AND EMPIRE tells the stories of ordinary Canadians who fought extraordinary battles during the First World War. Six episodes represent a turning point in the Great War Ypres, the Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele, the Battles of the Last Hundred Days, and the Legacy of the War. By depicting walking tours of each battleground, For King and Empire explores the significance of the battle and what was at risk, the initial strategies and what actually transpired. In six harrowing hours rife with veteran testimonies and battlescarred films, Canadian historian Norm Christie tours WWI battlefields on foot, including Ypres, The Somme and the once blood-soaked Vimy Ridge to relive the horrors of what was known as The Great War. Canadian regiments played key roles in pivotal moments, and this well-researched series functions both to record the memories of the living and, perhaps, raise the ghosts of some of the ten million souls lost in the terrible trenches. Based on the series of books “For King and Empire” by Norm Christie.

A Breakthrough Entertainment Inc. Production in Association with History Television, Bell Broadcast, Knowledge Network and ACCESS - The Education Station.

Part 6 Shadows of the Great War

This episode looks at the aftermath of the war; the building of the cemeteries, the unveiling of Vimy Ridge in 1936, the plight of the returned veterans both in Canada and Germany, and finally the most hideous legacy of the Great War, the start of the Second World War, and the lessons of war must be learned again. Shadows of the Great War relates how when the war ends on November 11, 1918, the world rejoices, but 10 million soldiers are dead and 20 million maimed.. Along the old Western Front, during the 1920s men turn to the gruesome task of exhuming and reburying hundreds of thousands of bodies. While Canadians in the 1920s and 30s argue over the cost of building memorials to their soldiers, in Germany one veteran, embittered by defeat, creates a new mass movement. His name is Adolf Hitler, and his party - the Nazi Party. In 1939, Canada is once again at war and many of the men who fought the First War live to see their sons die in the Second. In our travels along the Western Front, we will have voyaged into the past, discovering what remains of those men - who fought For King and Empire.

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