German Soldier Describes Grim Reality of Life on Western Front (1914) // Diary of Rudolf Binding
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- čas přidán 7. 05. 2021
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Extracts taken from:
A Fatalist at War by Rudolf Binding - Translated by Ian F.D. Morrow (Allen & Unwin, 1929)
archive.org/details/fatalista...
Music from:
Epidemic Sound
Artlist.io
Image Credits:
German Soldiers By Rudolf Simon sen. / Lizenzinhaber: RudolfSimon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
German Soldiers By Bundesarchiv, Bild 104-0832 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Trench in Flanders By Ken Eckert - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
German Soldiers Lautie Daniel, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
We try to use copyright free images at all times. However if we have used any of your artwork or maps in error then please don't hesitate to contact and we’ll be more than happy to give the appropriate credit.
"The starlings ... whistle like rifle bullets. And as the bullets cannot have learned to whistle from the starlings one may safely presume the opposite."
That struck me too!
It’s just amazing how something so deeply horrifying can also be so humorous. Gallows humor is the one of the most interesting and endearing parts of humanity, to me.
Just like the freaking RPG birds in Afghanistan.
@@codybailey855: When one considers that the main purposes of birdsong are to define territory and to attract mates, birds mimicking RPGs takes bizarreness to a whole new level.
@@codybailey855 is that a real thing? How could there be enough rpg fire for them to learn?
His ability to see the lack of strategic planning in real time is astounding, especially so early in the war.
They where probably more open to it then we know. Remember alot of the generals fought in the Franco Prussian war I believe it was, or perhaps another war something was fought by Germans in the 1870s/80s. Regardless they where drilled and trained and had success already in another form of wat, they where the opitomy of stubborn but for not necessarily incompetent reasons just a situation of old dog new tricks. Regardless it's a tragedy. Plus modern war tactics where arguebly perfected by the Germans first. At least they had an effective strategy by the end. The allies, such aa WW2, had the huge advantage of outnumbering the central powers by a magnitude.
The makings of WW1 were very clear from the Civil War.
Fortified defensive positions reigned supreme. Frontal assaults could only be successful with a very high cost of human life. This was a big change from the Napeleonic and Revolutionary era, wherein a disciplined assaulting unit could crush their foes.
It's something Lee understood immediately, while the politically appointed Union generals - McClellan chief among the offenders - failed to grasp for years.
The US is a large expanse of land, however. That enabled generals like Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, Lee, and Jackson to excel at maneuver warfare. Bypassing the trap of trench warfare, using limited frontal assaults ('demonstrations') primarily as a means to keep the enemy honest and hold them in place.
Nor is it a mistake, the German response in WWII was the Blitzkrieg... itself a form of maneuver warfare specific to the technology available.
Were we to fight a war today, would there be a cohesive strategy by competent generals? Or merely copying what worked 75 years ago by incompetent political appointments?
Recent field results, as well as history generally, strongly suggests the latter.
The Europeans made it a point to not draw any lessons from the American Civil War because the belligerents were rustics and not proper professionals.
That was the Western Front, but things changed. The misconception is that trench warfare was the only mode and that is far from the truth. The Eastern Front was dynamic and German strategic planning led to a crushing defeat of the Russians at Tannenberg, which allowed the Germans to move seasoned soldiers to the Western Front. The Italian Front was also dynamic. In 1917, Rommel utilized infiltration tactics at Caporetto (defeat of Italy) to stunning effect where it was later used by the German Army in their 1918 Offensive on the Western Front. Rommel lost 6 dead and captured over 9000 Italians. This infiltration tactic was essentially blitzkrieg without tanks and involved bypassing resistance and exploiting weak points. During the Spring 1918 offensive on the Western Front, the Germans utilized elite, Strosstrupen (storm troopers) who were armed with flame throwers, light machine guns, high explosives, and artillery support to drive the allies up to 50 km back. Eventually, all armies adopted infiltration tactics...even to this day. It's an effective way to fight and makes tactical combat more like chess.
@@APsupportsTerrorism The way that Armenia got whipped by Azerbaijan in their recent war, with Armenia copying what worked 75 years ago and Azerbaijan explaining at quite low cost that shit don't work no more is pointing the way to future war.
The really terrible thing is that this is an early war account, they still had 4 more years of suffering.
Indeed. And what he describes is already explaining perfectly how terrible this war was and how pointless any advancement could be and how any move has to be payed in blood.
Yeah. I'm crying my eyes out. Bastards.
Makes me wonder how much more we have left to go in this pandemic
The sections used actually come from many different parts of the book. For example, the "The starlings ... whistle like rifle bullets. And as the bullets cannot have learned to whistle from the starlings one may safely presume the opposite." part came from his 1915 Easter writings.
@@strictlylethalthere’s no way you tried to compare covid to this
"But...it [war] is a silent teacher. And he who learns...becomes silent too." 💔
Rudolf Binding: War is a nightmare.
Ernest Junger: Alright lads, just got back from being shot 5 times, let's rock
A storm of Steel would be great material for this channel, as would Poilu. I also recall interesting diaries from I believe the perspective of a German field kitchen cook and a French stretcher bearer, both from the early days of the war but I can't remember the names.
Ernst Junger was wired differently. Dan Carlin (yes, I'm aware he's not a historian) did a little talk about him at one point, to the effect of: "The man was made for war." I don't think he *enjoyed* it, but I do think he understood it differently than many of the men around him. It's clear from his writing that he was just as effected by the horrors of it all as other men. He grieved lost friends, he was paralyzed by fear, he lost his head on more than one occasion from the terror. His description of what it was like to be shelled is referenced frequently for a reason. But there's something else going on, too, when you read it, which I have trouble putting my finger on. He seems to be awed by his experiences. Drawn to it the way one might be drawn to watching a wildfire consume a town, from a distance. Yet, he was also in the middle of it at the same time. The closest thing I can think of that touches on a similar note is the film The Thin Red Line (1998). That film contains the line "One man looks at a dying bird and sees nothing but unanswered pain. Another man looks at that same bird... Feels the glory, knows there's something shining through it." I think Junger was the second man.
Storm of steel is amazing read I
just reread it this week. Ernst Junger was a superhuman man
@@-ZETA- Junger had a concept baked into him. It is called Duty.
@Zeta I’ve noticed that Carlin and others like Liulevicius mischaracterize Ernst Jünger; it’s as if they read a completely different Storm of Steel than what Jünger wrote.
They appear unable to divorce themselves from a postmodern “American” mindset and thus are incapable of comprehending a stoic 19th-Century Prussian mindset.
I can't help but wonder: did the birds really start chirping like bullets, or had the War already driven everyone so mad that bullets and shells were all they could hear?
starlings, like many birds of that family (Sturnidae which includes mynahs), imitate
noises in their surroundings, to the point that you cannot tell if it is a bird or the real thing.
Could be both. Also, plenty of birds can easily imitate both human speech, other birds' songs and all sort of mechanical sounds.
Starlings mimic, I think the author was being matter of fact.
Mockingbird imitates a car alarm...
czcams.com/video/_Zd6Iy4JuGk/video.html
@@kidmohair8151 theres a starling near my house that loves to imitate buzzards. It always disappoints me when I realise I'm not going to see one
Pashcendale … the utterance of this city’s name gave me chills. The man lived through that battle. Truly amazing he survived. Some suffered much for little time, some suffered little over much time. Which is worse, I do not know.
That was just the *first*...
He was describing the first Battle not the more deadly battles later in the war
Think of all the scientists, doctors, inventors, engineers, writers, and artists died I'm WWI and WWII. Truly two generations of Europe were erased, it amazing it even lasted seventy years after the wars ended.
Seems that was the goal of these wars. Death.
And in-between the two wars they had the Spanish flu, and that further ravaged an already heavily decimated generation. Can't imagine the despair that the people of this time must have felt.
A myth, the vast majority survived 90pc British, 85pc French & 83pc German
This man is 47 years old and serving at the front....When I, myself, was being shot at, I was in my early 20s....I'm 47 now too, and I can tell you, I've now got an entirely different approach to ensuring my own safety!
I regularly wake up from worrying dreams where I'm back in the Army, but at my current age and perspective, and we're loading up gear to deploy, or flopped on our rucksacks at some airfield before dawn, waiting for the helicopters....And I'm like, "Oh boy.....I'm not sure this is a great idea anymore".
Gives some perspective, it really does. Thanks for sharing!
Holy crap! Me too! Only, I’m 37 now, and my brother (who also served) is there with me. But it’s like he never left, and I’m just getting back over there. Stuff I used to do regularly seems down right stupid now! “Are we really back doing this same shit!?😂
You might have missed it, but at 0:21it says that he commanded a squadron of dragoons (wikipedia says hussars). So he was a relatively junior field grade officer of cavalry....at the front and in the shit.
It generally never is a good idea!
It made me remember the time I read All Quiet on the Western Front, and how i was sobbering by the end. War is trully a fascinating and terrible insight of human nature.
Just thinking of WW1 can start tears. There are many instances of what might be called Hell on earth, but the magnitude and duration of "The Great War" is beyond my comprehension.
I think All Quiet on the Western Front should be required reading in high school .... or must youth now be protected from all revelations of reality?
@@Psychol-Snooper it is beyond the comprehension of anyone who has not been part of it. It is weird to think that the next generation of those countries fought another war in the same areas, with not much less blood spilled. Although that war was much less pointless, as Nazi-Germany couldn't be allowed to win that war. But WW1 was as pointless as a war could be.
@@rb3872 Well, philosophically that can be said of any part of human experience. Part of why I've studied history since I was a small child is because I could project myself into the various aspects of events, from the leaders down to the peasants, and prisoners. From the men awaiting the German assault at Bastogne, or the Japanese soldiers acting as human landmines scattered all over the Pacific. From Andersonville to Auschwitz... it all feels at a somewhat human scale. My life experiences make most events seem real...
But the thought of endless waves of boys being marched into what amounts to a perpetually exploding grave of putrid viscera... it's just too unreal.
JRR Tolkien served in WW1 and lost all of his civilian friends... how is that a thing?
What's sobbering? Sobbing while sobering? Please don't drink alcohol when you're sad, it always makes it worse.
This young man’s writing is so eloquent. Wow
That young man was 47yrs old.
Probably an officer as he had an trumpeter
And without modern standardized education to teach him 'nuanced thinking' and vocabulary. Shocking right!
@@brianshockledge3241 You can be 47 and young at heart.
The German language tends to be flowery and poetic to english speakers and he was likely educated.
First person period documents are the best.
WW1 ones are hard to get through, but they need to be honored by reading them
More people need to listen to accounts like this. War is all too often glorified these days.
War has always been glorified though
War is sweet to those who haven't experienced it.
war is always glorified by those that profits from it and by those that never have been in a war zone.
@@DaviRenania Not by those who experience it first hand.
@@lysimachosdiadochos7203 Mostly but not entirely true. Lots of examples of it from generals especially from Napoleonic eras. Like the famous RELee qoute from when he saw all those union troops charge up a hill only to all die and said something like "its a good thing war is so horrible for otherwise we might be enamored of it." Meaning that the glory of war was compelling even for those surrounded by its horror. Of course with modern warfare, I think that mostly went out the window. Unless you were Patton.
To be fair though this glorification of war is much more honest, because it is focused on the courage of individual soldiers and not some imaginary idea of war's 'noble' purpose.
Your narration is always so calming..
Awesome videos. Absolutely love the povs of the soldiers and people who lived through such things
I as well, at least it is true that man has no control... even over his own will.
@@hyperboreanarchives7299 YES!!!!!!
That was an amazing piece. I found the book from the library now because of you. thanks for introducing it. 👍
Wow, he seen a lot of war in his lifetime. I long for the day when wars are no more.
I don't think that day is ever gonna come. As long as there are 2 people on this earth, there will be conflict. Whether it will be international conflicts, civil conflicts, or gangs bleeding eachother white.
@@MHG2000DK this, there will always be disagreements that will be raised to conflict, may they be small or large.
@@MHG2000DK wait til humanity colonises Mars, and new generations grow their own Martian identity: interplanetary conflict
That day will never come. Humanity lives off of war, one way or another.
We will fight amongst ourselves until the day we meet an alien race. Then we will make war upon them, and either they shall destroy us or we shall destroy them.
Another great video from this channel. As always, a thumbs up from me. Very thought provoking account
Would love to see you do more WWI content. Great job, keep up the fantastic work
Only the horrors of trench warfare could make one wish for the horrors on World War Two. The fact that the War to end all Wars is described by the survivors on every side in the same macabre notes by those survivors who still could speak of what they saw is a testament to the magnitude of what happened.
Indeed, and yet the bankers still pushed for yet another world war. They couldn't just let Germany regrow her industry and arrest a Rothschild after all... all modern wars are banker wars in the end. They are the sole benefactors.
@@hyperboreanarchives7299 not the sole, unfortunately.
@@hyperboreanarchives7299 What kind of crack you on mate? Germany was very heavily expanionist which is why it started in the first place, appeasement never works dumbass.
@@Jonathan-fb1kj lol, the war started between Austro-Hungary and Serbia.
Try again kiddo.
@@mrs.hancock4124 As a german it makes me sad to read your comment. I’ve never read something more wrong and terrible. Spreading this shit to explain the past in the narrative you like is just terrible.
Thank you - I enjoy this channel and especially that you keep it to the truth. Also, so grateful for the letters left behind.
Incredible beautiful, in a soul-wrenching kind of way. Thanks for reading it aloud with such emotion, I wish I could like more and subscribe more, unfortunately I have no funds to donate to such a brilliant channel. Thanks again.
Perfect combination of entrancing text & brilliant narration - this guy could do a great full-length Pepys
Very good! 👏🏼😎 An extremely well-made video, this!
Perfect example of humans destroying themselves. The efforts taken for sheer destruction is unfathomable. Could you imagine what could of been achieved if they all worked together?
Thanks for sharing this..
Fascinating, thank you 👍🏻👍🏻
For these 15 minutes listening..... you had my full attention Sir.
Excellent video
I was waiting for this.
Eloquently said! Thank you
I want this guy to narrate my letters from the Middle East.
“This place fucking sucks ass so much. It’s not even the heat, you get used to that. It’s the fact that I can’t even have a beer once in a while. You don’t even get the mental treat of seeing a hot woman every once in a while. Ever if there were some here it would be difficult to see the in this blinding brightness. What maniac builds a city colored white in the hottest, brightest hell hole on earth?”
Best comment I've ever seen xD
Finally got a notification from this channel.
Glad I did !
Love hearing this sort of thing 😂
Horrible though it may be.😲
Thanks for doing these! I'd really be interested in more long form content, if there's some primary sources that have bigger stories to tell than 15 minute digestible tube bites.
Great footage
Voices of the Past-
I can't figure out why you don't have millions of subscribers considering the quality of this content.
This might be the most fascinating channel on CZcams.
Excellent reading - as usual and pointed graphics perfectly underscored the account. *I think I'm finally something of a fatalists too,* but I still put some merit into human agency - perhaps itself creating our collective _fate._
This war and the US Civil War frightened me as a kid. It was too real, the old b&w photos etc., as opposed to more romantic paintings I enjoyed of Waterloo and American Revolution. I was in my 20s, before getting into these two wars... and soaking up all I could find.
I am so lucky to be born and life in a time of peace.
keep kidding yourself noob
But for how long ???
Peace of the Strong
peace at gunpoint is what that means, so not peace at all
Fragile peace
I keep coming back to this video every so often. Not sure why, i suppose it is to try and understand.
The opening is so accurate and so poignanly Expressed!
Truly heartbreaking and such insightful thoughts.
Rudolf gave us an idea of the horrors faced by young men on both sides, and of the stupidity that put them there to die.
You tube, so wonderful to have the vivid description of dead and rotting soldiers and horses from the so gruesome and horrific battles of the Great War only to be immediately followed by home chef commercials showing pasta and spaghetti sauce dishes to tantalize your taste buds. Come on can you be serious? What kind of person feels hungry after that detailed depiction of war?
I would love to see a German describe the eastern front of ww2
thats what you think
Seconded. Another event that basically requires primary source to even begin to really understand.
Try "Blood Red Snow" by Günther Koschonek.. The Audio book is here on CZcams.
Would be something like "Piles and piles of Russian bodies..."
You would have to find a survivor first
I would love to hear a German account of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
Very thought provoking words
If there is more to his journals I’d love to hear them.
Wow, 15 whole minutes? Awesome!
Well written and well spoken.
I always love the amazing footage!
He was a wordsmith of the first class that young German. Many thanks for the insight.
This war is mostly overshadowed by the war that came after in 1939-45. This war was the first truly mechanized war with accurate deadly artillery, planes, tanks, machine guns, flame throwers, gas warfare, and every other method of killing one can fathom. I highly recommend a film remade from the 1930's called All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) gives a very good detail of day to day life on the Western Front.
*man-tears were shed*
Wow. Just wow
He was 47 when the war broke out, gives more perspective than an 18 year old.
Such a great writer!!!!
"War is Hell" William Tecumseh Sherman sure had it right. Nice vidoe.
I would like to hear more of these.
Please do Storm of Steel or Poilu next!!!
Anyone ever read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque? A truly classic novel written from the perspective of a German soldier. Or failing that one of the movie versions. 1928 or 1979.
For anyone interested, he was probably 45 or 46 at the time of this letter, and he survived the war, dying just before the outbreak of WW2.
A small mercy perhaps.
The true tragedy, of course, is that a generation later his entire society, and not just its soldiers, would see the horrors of war in wholesale destruction, hatred of everyone, and suicidal war all brought about by one of his former fellow veterans.
Did Stalin and Churchill fight in The Great War?
@@VonHohlochzenburg
hitler started the war by continuing to invade other countries
@@VonHohlochzenburg
Both fought in the war.. Churchill was coordinating the siege of Gallipoli peninsula and Stalin was conscripted in 1916 before going on to lead troops in the Russian Civil War taking place in the latter years of the war.
@@iBloodxHunter Churchill also served as an officer on the Western Front
The Western Front was mainly a four year artillery battle. Being killed by shellfire; high explosive and shell fragments was the main cause of wounding and death (other than illness like typhus). There were machine gun nests, barbed wire entanglements and poison and caustic agent gas attacks, but these were not the main killers.
Heart rending.
The First World War is unimaginable. Nothing fills me with such indescribible sorrow,
Keeping history alive...👍👍👍
For all the sadness, despair and irony of these and other soldiers writings, soldiers of WW1 were amongst the first volunteers in 1939!
It was such a brutal war we don't hear much about in the US. Thanks for posting.
This German sounds like a well thought out and compassionate individual.
More commercials than the discovery channel, didn't think.that was possible.
Great
Anybody out there know of a way to tie a serial number from a period rifle to an individual? Is this possible? I know it's the 6th Bavarian reserve regiment. Any help 🙏
Very powerful
WW1: the war that nobody, inarguably, should have ever turned up for.
Those "beer" barrels are Port casks.
António de Andrade's accounts of Tibet, written in 1624 and 1626.
This is so grime ! I had a relative who was in the First World War, who's name was Tom . He later became a miner . He used to tell of seeing bodies stacked 6 or 7 feet high . No one believed him . In the mine he was known as Tom the liar, but it was true !
If you watch the documentary they shall not grow old (I think) about soldiers in either world war 1 or 2 not sure. One of the soldiers who survived the war talks about coming home and telling his family of how horrific war was and how badly organised his army was and his family wouldn't believe him and called him a liar so he stopped talking about it completely, heartbreaking really
How, despite all this horror, WW2 still happend is beyond my ability to understand...
World War 2 on the horizon was plausible enough that even officials at the time called the treaty of Versailles as much as a "some years ceasefire".
I recommend to just watch a few documentaries on the matter, since every thing factoring into it is beyond the scope of a comment. It does have a lot to do with the harsh terms of the treaty of Versailles and an antiquated perspective of the victor and the vanquished that just isn't viable to create lasting peace.
If the Second World War could not be averted just 20 years after this apocalypse, I have zero confidence that we will be able to tackle the looming climate change disaster.
The German didn't think he was beaten. It took another war to take the fight out of them. I think if the US had stayed out of it the peace would have been negotiated rather than a dictat forced on Germany. Maybe things would have been different. Impossible to say.
I always think what it must be like back then, to know that the rotting corpses of enemies were just young men like yourself, and that if things were different, you'd probably make fast friends drinking in a pub together.
Blaise Pascal once stated:
"Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?"
They should've taken the rulers out to the guillotine. The people have the power. They just don't realize it.
@@coolbreeze2.0-mortemadfasc13 Then again, people are stupid. George Orwell and Thomas Hobbes were correct on one thing: humanity is not nice to each other...
I had sold a ww1 german helmet a few years ago. Much smaller than you would think
here we go' round the prickly pear
prickly pear , prickly pear
here we go' round the prickly pear
at five o'clock in the morning
He'd have been 47 in 1914. Wow!
At least on area of France was declared uninhabitable and could no longer be farmed because so much arsenic from exploded artillery shells was injected into the soil. Small chapels have been built for visitors.
Everyone be on the lookout for the other half of that horse.
My Paternal Grandfather was on the Western Front. He was a member of the 371st Regiment of US Colored Infantry🇺🇸
This can be said about life itself. You can never go back.
How anyone survived all that desease vermon infested carnage is beyond me
If war dosnt make you stop and be silent. I dunno what will.
Wow
War is a wretched thing
Is he saying that the Starlings mimicked the sound of bullets?
@@waveygravey9347 is there any audio recording of this phenomenon?
"A man can harmonize with the forces of time, he can stand in contrast to them. That is secondary. It can show at any point how it has grown. In doing so, he proves his freedom - physically, mentally, morally, and above all in danger. How he stays true to himself: that is his problem."
World War I was the greatest tragedy to ever hit humanity
either that or monotheism but methinks Genghis Khan would beg to differ anyway.
@@kittytrail dont bring God into mans folly.
@@kittytrail because things were so much better with warring polytheistic kingdoms and empires huh?
@@kittytrail monotheism is better change my mind
@@andrewdock7288 lmao
There should be a law urging the politicians and monarchs who declare wars, to be marching to the first battle in the first row - naked and unarmed along with their children.
The last time that happened, the enemy managed to bankrupt a kingdom just paying the ransom. There is a reason why kings were stopped from going to the frontlines...
Grim account. When humanity is driven mad.
Wars blow up all the cool stuff
Yep. Wars and fanatics.
Wars a RACKET.
Smedly Butler
The Money changers made huge profits from this war
Absolutely. Every war is a bankster's war.
Money (changers) indeed.
Smedley*