Key Battles of World War One
26 episodes listed below
PRESS PLAY
World War One is the watershed moment in modern history. The Western World before it was one of aristocrats, empires, colonies, and optimism for a future of unending progress. After four years of hellish trench warfare, shell fire, 10 million combat deaths, and another 10 million civilian deaths, the world that emerged in 1918 was irrevocably changed. Nation-states came out of the rubble, along with a push for universal rights. New technologies emerged, such as tanks and fighter planes. But something was lost permanently in the Great War: a sense of optimism in mankind. In this series, history professors Scott Rank and James...
The Armistice isn't a victory lap; Scott and James show you how thinly stretched the Allies were.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A movie-centered introduction to James Early's American history podcast, with World War I's human cost kept close.
James Early's new podcast is introduced through a brisk, wider claim about American history: wars made the United States independent, held it together, expanded its reach, and helped turn it into a global power.
A measured look at power, exile, and survival after World War I reshaped leaders and vanished states.
Rather than retelling World War I through battles and treaties, this episode looks at what came after for the people who had led armies, governments, and collapsing states.
A brisk, map-focused review of how Versailles redrew Germany and Poland after World War One.
The war is over, but this episode treats the peace as something more unsettled than a closing chapter. It centers the Treaty of Versailles as one of World War One's defining consequences, with enough detail to show why the settlement mattered: 440 articles, a reduced Germany,…
A brisk account of the Allied advance, sharpened by exhaustion, urgency, and the Somme comparison.
The late-1918 fighting comes through as a race against exhaustion. British and French offensives have taken a heavy toll, the Allies are pushing through the outer works of the Hindenburg Line, and the American drive from St.
A clear look at how battlefield deception shaped the 1918 fight at Megiddo.
Megiddo moves the series off the Western Front and into the 1918 Battle of Megiddo, where British planning faced an Ottoman army already weakened by desertion, sickness, and shortages.
A wide-angle capstone on how World War I remade borders, identities, and the postwar order.
This episode moves beyond battle history into the postwar order World War I left behind. It focuses on the borders, identities, and political arrangements that followed the fighting, and it does so with a broad human and geopolitical view.
Outnumbered units, remembered under fire.
Battle maps, war films, and patient context.
War news, tested against military reality.
Antique European history, read aloud.
This final episode of the Key Battles of World War One series explores the far-reaching legacies of the war, including economic shifts like America's rise as a financial superpower, geographic changes with new nation-states, and social impacts such as women's rights.
Scott announces James Early’s new podcast, Key Battles of American History, which examines United States history through warfare from the nation’s founding to the present.
Key Battles of World War One examines what happened to leaders after World War I, including David Lloyd George's continued British political career and Winston Churchill's return to the premiership.
James and Scott examine the January 18, 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where 27 nations and 10,000 attendees negotiated five treaties for Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.
Scott and James examine the 100 Days offensives, beginning with the Allied manpower crisis after France lost three million men and Britain lost two million by the end of 1917.
James and Scott examine the 1918 Battle of Megiddo, a campaign shaped by Edmund Allenby's mobile warfare, British deception, Arab forces under Faisal, and Ottoman communications failures.
Key Battles of World War One examines Germany's 1918 Spring Offensives, beginning with Operation Michael on March 21 and 6,000 German guns.
The episode examines why the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, after the Zimmerman Telegram and submarine sinkings.
Key Battles of World War One examines the 1917 Third Battle of Ypres, where Flanders mud swallowed men, horses, tanks, and artillery.
Key Battles of World War One examines how the Russian Revolutions of 1917 followed military disasters, urban hardship, and the collapse of Nicholas II's authority.