Battles of the First World War Podcast

Battles of the First World War Tours, part of the BFWWP, is excited to offer two WW1 battlefield tours for summer 2027:   Meuse-Argonne  July 01 - 07, 2027 A journey through the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest military operation conducted by the United States in its history.    Aisne-Marne  July 07 - 13, 2027 A journey through the Aisne-Marne Offensive, aka the 2nd Battle of the Marne, where the American Expeditionary Force served as part of the international force that stopped the Germans.    Contact the Battles of the First World War Tours team via email at [email protected].   Join us in walking in the footsteps of the Doughboys, and together we will honor their memory in an experience you will not forget.    Support the BFWWP on Patreon! BFWWP patrons receive early and ad-free access to all episodes, as well as access to other exclusive features.    Follow us on:   BlueSky   Instagram   FaceBook   and the BFWWP website: www.firstworldwarpodcast.com.    Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.    Please review the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes! :)  

New Ypres League member Christopher Sims joins the podcast to discuss his four decades of working for the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) as the Senior Cemetery Associate for World War I Flanders Field American Cemetery, in Waregem, Belgium. During his career with the ABMC, Christopher also authored a reference work titled "The Soldiers of the American Military Cemetery Flanders Field."    Join us for a conversation on preserving the memory of the American fallen in Flanders Fields.    ABMC's web page for Flanders Fields American Cemetery Find out more about the New Ypres League in this episode:   The New Ypres League with Roger Steward & Prof Mark Connelly   Please consider joining the New Ypres League and supporting remembrance efforts:   www.newypresleague.com The BFWWP is on Patreon! Give back to the podcast you enjoy.   Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.    Please review the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes! :)  

Lady Lucy French, great granddaughter of BEF commander Field Marshal Sir John French, Roger Steward, Chairman and co-founder of the New Ypres League, Ypres Battlefield Tours guide, and author, join the podcast to discuss the Ypres Day commemoration events scheduled for the weekend encompassing the 31st of October, 2026.  Please consider joining the New Ypres League and supporting remembrance efforts:   www.newypresleague.com If you're in Ypres, Belgium, contact Roger for tour details -   Ypres Battlefield Tours: www.ypresbattlefieldtours.be The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.    Please review the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes! :)  

Following the discussion of German plans for their next great offensive, we turn now to French and Allied plans to meet this next attack.    Allied Supreme Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch and French Army commander GEN Philippe Pétain intended to respond to this next attack differently: as soon as the Germans overextended themselves, a swift Allied counterattack would follow.    The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.   

***Technical note: My apologies on the audio reverb that may be heard in this episode.    A concise history revealing New Jersey's vital industrial, military, and civilian contributions to America's World War I effort.   During World War I, New Jersey played a prominent role in the manufacturing of war-related munitions, created the infrastructure necessary to train and mobilize troops, and supplied a portion of the manpower necessary to fight overseas.   Without the support of New Jersey's industrial base, the war effort of the United States may very well have failed. Contributions from New Jersey ranged from artillery rounds from Amatol, fuses from Bloomfield, shells from Lyndhurst, gun carriages (Singer), aircraft engines (Duesenberg), Handley Page Bombers from Elizabeth, and ship building (New York Shipbuilding and ELCO).   Over 140,000 New Jerseyans served during the war, and the state was home to 38 military installations by the end of the war, including Camp Dix. Troops from New Jersey included National Guard units activated and assigned to the 29th Division that trained at Camp McClellan, Alabama, and National Army soldiers (draftee) assigned to the 78th Division that trained at Camp Dix. New Jersey-based units from the 29th and 78th Infantry Divisions would fight in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Women, too, underwent training in New Jersey, in preparation to serve in the Army Signal Corps, while women from the state volunteered to serve with aid organizations including the Red Cross, and raised money for the war effort.   In the post-war years, over 160 monuments were constructed across New Jersey to memorialize the war dead and honor the veterans who served in the Great War, including several of the famous "Spirit of the American Doughboy" statues produced by E. M. Viquesney. New Jersey mothers and widows would travel in pilgrimages to the battlefields and cemeteries of France, such as the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, as well as to Brookwood cemetery in Great Britain to visit the graves of their loved ones in the 1930s as part of the Gold Star Mothers and Widows Pilgrimage.   This book will for the first time reveal the full extent of New Jersey's pivotal role in America's war effort during the Great War, and will shed light on prominent figures and their connections to New Jersey, such as Dr. Fred Albee, the father of bone grafting, Cecil Dorrian, the first American female War Reporter in World War I, Amabel Roberts, the first American nurse from New Jersey to die during the war in France, and Lillian Marx, who danced and sang in Newark during war support donation events.   Where to buy: https://www.brooklinebooks.com/9781955041478/the-war-to-end-all-wars/ The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.    Please review the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes! :)  

The story behind an often erroneously captioned photograph of the First World War, and remembering the man in it.    The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.   

This episode will visit the German strategic situation in June 1918 and the resulting plans for their next offensive, which would be called "Friedensturm:" the Peace Offensive. The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.   

A short exploration of the American poet Archibald MacLeish's connection to the First World War, and his poem "The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak." The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak   Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?   They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.   They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.   They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.   They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.   They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.   They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say: it is you who must say this.   They say, We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.   We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us. The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.    Please review the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes! :)  

Authors Paul Friedland and Robert Hornick join us on the podcast to discuss their thoroughly researched, well-argued and thrilling biography of a now-forgotten German spy during WW1.    One of the most notorious German spies of the twentieth century, Lothar Witzke lived a life that reads like a thriller. Convicted of espionage in 1918, he was the only German spy sentenced to death by the United States during World War I. After the war, he was pardoned by President Calvin Coolidge, only to be later accused of responsibility for one of the most spectacular acts of sabotage in US history: the Black Tom munitions depot explosion.   After being repatriated to Germany, Witzke lived in Latin America and China as a German expat and later joined the Nazi party. He ran espionage squads in Great Britain during World War II and became a prominent businessman in Hamburg after the war. He was killed in Hamburg in 1962, possibly by an East German agent as payback for suspected double agent work on behalf of the British.   With Citizen of the Shadows, the first full biography of Witzke, Paul Friedland and Robert Hornick trace Witzke's morally complicated life and show readers how an infamous spy thrived in the interwar years and after. They probe his trial, conviction, and pardon, and analyze whether Witzke was really involved in the Black Tom explosion. In doing so, the authors uncover that many of the details of Witzke's life—long assumed to be true—were lies.   Where to buy: https://utpress.org/9798895270332/citizen-of-the-shadows/   The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.    Please review the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes! :)

In 2022, just as the world began to open after the isolation of a global pandemic, Briana Gervat set out to walk the length of the Western Front. Beginning at the border that France shares with Switzerland she went into the wild in search of hope and in search of peace. For 500 miles, she climbed over the mountains of the Vosges, through the battle-scarred landscapes of Verdun, the Marne, and the Somme, all the way to the North Sea in Belgium. It was not only a journey of thirty-six days, but a journey through a history that we have learned nothing from, only how better to repeat it.   Join us for a discussion of travel, France, WW1 history, and the feeling of connection and renewal that travel brings.    Where to buy: https://a.co/d/06vEtvyk   Briana Gervat's website: https://www.theperegrinepilgrim.com/   The BFWWP is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattlesoftheFirstWorldWarPodcast.    Any questions, comments or concerns please contact me through the website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Follow us on BlueSky at @WW1podcast.bsky.social:   https://bsky.app/profile/ww1podcast.bsky.social   and the BFWWP website, www.firstworldwarpodcast.com. Email me directly at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns.    Please review the Battles of the First World War Podcast on iTunes! :)