May 22, 2025 • 15 mins
Our resident historian, Dr. Ed Moore, offered the final installment of our series on "The Great War" which is now known as World War I.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
And here we go the third and final hour at
least today of the Morning Show with Preston Scott and Preston.
He's Jose. It is Thursday on the program, and it's
time for a little more history. And joining me on
the program is our resident historian, doctor Ed Morgan. Morning, sir,
how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm doing okay? How you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm just wonderful, absolutely absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, I miss senior to fay here having a call
in this morning, but always good to see you.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Better safe than sorry for the both of us were
at that we're at that, we're at that stage in life. Hey,
for the sake of those who might have missed an
earlier segment or two set the stage the United States
world War One? Quickly? How did we get drawn into it?
And what are the circumstances that led to its ending?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I guess we should go back to how that
start and why did Germany basically start World War One?
As we talked about last month, there were a lot
of wars in the late eighteen hundreds in and amongst
various countries in Europe fighting each other, and then the
United States obviously in eighteen ninety eight sought Spain. You've
(01:18):
got to remember that we were ending an era, almost
at the end of an era of lots of oligarchies
and royalty and czars and that kind of governance. So
it was not a real stable situation in Europe at first.
In August of nineteen fourteen, Germany decided to declare war
(01:39):
on Russia, so you would think it was just another
one on one kind of thing. But a few days later,
now we're going to also declare war on France. And
then they started ignoring what Russia by invading France, so
they were at technically at war with Russia, but not
really fighting Russia. At that point in time. They were
going to focus completely on France. They wanted to influence
(02:02):
all of Europe. Germany wanted and Austria, Hungary alliance wanted
to assert their power and influence all over the continent.
They invaded Belgium in order to attack France, thinking they
could push the British troops that were in France back
across the English Channel. Well, that invading Belgium brought England
(02:24):
fully into the war, so now you've got a bigger conflagation.
It's not I always founded a misnomer to call it
a world war. It is a world war because each
of those empires had people all the countries and areas
all over the world that they controlled. But the war
was a European war. That war was a European war,
(02:46):
unlike World War two that we'll talk about in another episode,
but it was a European war. That one side was Germany, Austria, Hungary,
the Ottoman Empire which essentially was Turkey and Bulgaria area
fighting against Russia, France, Britain, and then in nineteen eighteen
the United States. Italy interestingly was initially allied with the
(03:10):
German group, but then decided, now we're going to sit
this one out, and then later actually came in on
the side of the US and the Allies. Why did
Germany do it, They were largely surrounded, i think by
powerful countries and other armies, and they, i think probably
felt that it was a preemptive strike. We're going to
(03:33):
take care of the problems that might occur around us
and Boyle boy. It caused a war that we'll talk
another later about how many people died, but they were
basically about eight or ten events that led to the
end of World War Two. It started in nineteen fourteen
August and ended in nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen with the armistice,
(03:59):
and millions of people died because of arrogance, because of
desire to take land that was not theirs, very unfortunate
and circumstance.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Eleven Minutes past the Hour with doctor Ed Moore at
the The method of fighting a war in World War
One was it was this transitional time, right. It was.
It was the time from the Civil War and the
Spanish American War where you just lined up and and
you took your best shot, and then it became a
little more sophisticated. But it was kind of a hybrid,
(04:34):
wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, it was one of those weird circumstances around the battlefields.
There'd be horses and carts pulled by horses and mechanized
vehicles and all, you know, all kinds of there's some
great movies about that. There was a movie about just
about a horse that from World War One. Yep, it's
you know, they had a long line that we'll talk
(04:58):
about in a minute that kind of separated France from Germany.
And when I look at these things, I'd like to
think about what would happen. If the results had been different,
you know what would have occurred in the world, says
Germany had just attacked France only and France didn't have allies,
and Germany took France. What would Europe look like now
if the US hadn't gotten in the war, what would
(05:19):
have happened in Europe? And the events that led to
the end of the war, I think were really fascinating.
There was a telegram called the Zimmermann Telegram from the
Brits intercepted, and it was a telegram from the German
foreign secretary to his counterpart in Mexico. Now think of that.
They wanted Mexico to enter the war and attack the
(05:41):
United States from below as a German ally, and the
German promises were that they would be able to reclaim Texas,
New Mexico and Arizona and come back being part of Mexico.
And then they asked Mexico to enless Japan and the war.
So they were trying to use all these other countries
to further their aims. But it backfired on them because
(06:04):
the United States saw that was not pleased with that.
If you remember we were we had just been down
on the Mexican border. My grandfather was one of the
troops from Florida that went down there, chasing Ponto Villa
all around in Mexico. The relations between the US and
Mexico were strained at that point in time. Germany tried
to take advantage of that. The second item was unrestricted
(06:27):
submarine warfare that Germany began in nineteen fifteen because they
declared all the waters around Great Britain to be war zones,
and in doing that they were trying to limit supplies,
particularly from the United States to England. So I started
sinking ships that were some of them were chartered in
the US and some in other countries. One of which was,
(06:48):
if you recall, was the Lusitania. It was a Cunard
line that had been a passenger line, big herald of
it being the fastest way to get across the Atlanta
from nineteen oh four to nineteen fourteen, but it started
carrying troops and supplies and other equipment in addition to passengers.
(07:10):
Just regular President Scott on the boat having a holiday
in the middle of a war. Kind of unusual. When
they sank the Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, right
off of Old head on May May of fifteen, Tuesday
at nineteen fifteen, almost twelve hundred people died in that
boat being sunk right off the coast of Ireland, a
big uproar in the United States that helped to add
(07:33):
the war for in our country. A third item would
be the Russian Revolution that occurred. Russia was in the
war against Germany and then had a revolution on their own,
going on the Bolshevik Revolution that occurred in Marsh of
nineteen seventeen. They deposed this cizar, created a communist and
(07:53):
socialist government, offered peace proposals, and Ukraine decided Russia wanted
out of the world, that the people who now were
running Rossia just didn't want to be bothered with it.
Here you talk now with Russia and Ukraine at war, well,
the Ukrainian Province of Russia. They proclaimed themselves to be
an independent state allied with Germany, and Germany tried to
(08:16):
occupy that area, but they got so busy on the
Western Front they really couldn't control it at all. So
now Russia and Ukraine and those areas aren't really engaged
anymore in World War One. So there's a lot of
changing players and people that were happening here. January nineteenth eighteen,
You and I did a show on this about the
(08:37):
flu planned pandemic. We just went through one of those,
which it was called the Spanish Flu. Started really in
the United States. I think it was a military base
in Kansas. But when we started sending people over to Europe,
we brought disease with US an estimated fifty to one
hundred million people. They really didn't have good count on
that died from that flu. Troop movements all across Europe
(09:01):
spread it rapidly. That caused a lot of walls and
fighting in some places, bigger fighting in other places, and
people being sick all over the place.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Our history segment today with doctor ed Moore, a little
more history World War One, the Great War as it
was called. Then, doctor Moore, how did we end this battle?
How did it come to a close.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
There was a Spring offensive in March of nineteen eighteen
that Germany did. They decided they were really going to
hit France hard to push Great Britain back across the channel.
Over five hundred thousand troops died in that Spring offensive
between the Allies and the German side. Then there was
a rebellion of Austria. Hungary had a military rebellion that
(09:50):
screwed them all up. They were really interested in going
down to the Balkans, but most of their military was
comprised of Filoleens and Serbians and Czechs and Ruthenians. There
were sort of conscripts. They didn't really have people who
really wanted to be in the war. There was one
hundred days offensive in August of nineteen eighteen. US is
(10:10):
now in. We're pushing hard. We pushed German back, pushing
back across the Hindenburg Line, which collapsed and had opened
up the underbelly there of Germany. It gave the Allies
momentum to move hard, and that the Russians at the
same time were attacking that had what was called the
(10:32):
Brussolava offenses. That really we totally weakened the Austro Hungary
forces and Germany now had to fight on two fronts.
The Russolava Offensive said over half a million people died
in that spring offensis. Over a million troops like one
point two million troops died between the Russian sides and
the German side, huge casualties. Most of the fighting taking
(10:56):
place again in northwest Ukraine. It brings us to today
and the problem we still have. Then Germany had a
revolution in the middle of a war. The people kind
of overthrew the imperial government formed a republic. So Kaiser
Wilhelm was second was forced to create a He tried
to create a constitutional monarchy. The United States said no way,
(11:19):
We're not negotiating with the Kaiser, so he exiled and
moved in the Netherlands, and that created the Weimar Republic.
Left us from the Soviet Union. That communism wasn't just
in Russia. There were a lot of them throughout Europe
and they formed a significant part of the coalitions that
(11:40):
created the Weimar Republic and created problems. Key elements and
ending the war really were the extreme economic burdens. They
were running out of money and supplies. There were huge
impacts of defeat on Germany in creation of the Weimar
Republic and why it was weak, and huge social tensions
(12:01):
between the general population and the former aristocratic elites. Royalty
was on its way out. It was done really the
mainland of Europe, and communism and socialism were attractive tonics
for the downtroten. So those movements grow there was actually
a group called the Spartacust Group, which was the German
(12:24):
Communist Party called it was from the Spartacus League. I
kip picture in Kirk Douglas running around Germany, but I'm
not sure why it was put down. That socialist rebellion
was put down by the corp Brey Corps excuse me,
which was a paramilitary groups. Really a lot of uniform
(12:46):
stilled soldiers in Germany post war, but we had limited
them to only one hundred thousand troops total after the
end of the war, so Germany was very shaky. In
November nineteen eighteen, the Armiscist was signed to the Victor
Goes to Spoils. The treaty defined German borders. Germany lost
(13:07):
lots of territory. They had to pay war reparations one
hundred and thirty two billion gold marks, which crippled, totally
crippled their economy. They were forced to take responsibility for
the entire war, had the humiliation of loss plus the
economic burdens. They were respons held responsible for the entire
loss and damage, all of which you're thinking this is
(13:28):
at the end of the teens heading into the roaring twenties. Well,
the roaring didn't happen so much there. Cabaret the movie
kind of captured what the social life was at that point,
and that led to the depression. In nineteen twenty nine,
there was a worldwide depression, so a lot of the
current or issues of post World War One. You could
(13:50):
see the planet the seeds planted from how World War
One ended and how the world treated Germany. It led
to the rise of Hitler and the rise of German
social movement social movement, and there was a new world
order in the nineteen twenties. It was the end of
royalty and czars in the beginning of republic governments, but
(14:13):
with strong socialist ingredients in those republic governments that are
still there. So when we see split elections and things
going on in various countries across Europe, it's been that
way since the end of World War One. The cost
of war was huge and the huge burden on the economies,
but people survived, except for the millions and millions of
(14:37):
people that died because of ambition and desire to take
land that was not theirs.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Always good to visit with you, ad, Thanks for the
history lesson and feel better and we'll talk again.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Next month, you too, thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Thank you. Doctor Ed Moore with us a little more
history on the Morning Show with Preston Scott
And here we go the third and final hour at
least today of the Morning Show with Preston Scott and Preston.
He's Jose. It is Thursday on the program, and it's
time for a little more history. And joining me on
the program is our resident historian, doctor Ed Morgan. Morning, sir,
how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm doing okay? How you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm just wonderful, absolutely absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, I miss senior to fay here having a call
in this morning, but always good to see you.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Better safe than sorry for the both of us were
at that we're at that, we're at that stage in life. Hey,
for the sake of those who might have missed an
earlier segment or two set the stage the United States
world War One? Quickly? How did we get drawn into it?
And what are the circumstances that led to its ending?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I guess we should go back to how that
start and why did Germany basically start World War One?
As we talked about last month, there were a lot
of wars in the late eighteen hundreds in and amongst
various countries in Europe fighting each other, and then the
United States obviously in eighteen ninety eight sought Spain. You've
(01:18):
got to remember that we were ending an era, almost
at the end of an era of lots of oligarchies
and royalty and czars and that kind of governance. So
it was not a real stable situation in Europe at first.
In August of nineteen fourteen, Germany decided to declare war
(01:39):
on Russia, so you would think it was just another
one on one kind of thing. But a few days later,
now we're going to also declare war on France. And
then they started ignoring what Russia by invading France, so
they were at technically at war with Russia, but not
really fighting Russia. At that point in time. They were
going to focus completely on France. They wanted to influence
(02:02):
all of Europe. Germany wanted and Austria, Hungary alliance wanted
to assert their power and influence all over the continent.
They invaded Belgium in order to attack France, thinking they
could push the British troops that were in France back
across the English Channel. Well, that invading Belgium brought England
(02:24):
fully into the war, so now you've got a bigger conflagation.
It's not I always founded a misnomer to call it
a world war. It is a world war because each
of those empires had people all the countries and areas
all over the world that they controlled. But the war
was a European war. That war was a European war,
(02:46):
unlike World War two that we'll talk about in another episode,
but it was a European war. That one side was Germany, Austria, Hungary,
the Ottoman Empire which essentially was Turkey and Bulgaria area
fighting against Russia, France, Britain, and then in nineteen eighteen
the United States. Italy interestingly was initially allied with the
(03:10):
German group, but then decided, now we're going to sit
this one out, and then later actually came in on
the side of the US and the Allies. Why did
Germany do it, They were largely surrounded, i think by
powerful countries and other armies, and they, i think probably
felt that it was a preemptive strike. We're going to
(03:33):
take care of the problems that might occur around us
and Boyle boy. It caused a war that we'll talk
another later about how many people died, but they were
basically about eight or ten events that led to the
end of World War Two. It started in nineteen fourteen
August and ended in nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen with the armistice,
(03:59):
and millions of people died because of arrogance, because of
desire to take land that was not theirs, very unfortunate
and circumstance.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Eleven Minutes past the Hour with doctor Ed Moore at
the The method of fighting a war in World War
One was it was this transitional time, right. It was.
It was the time from the Civil War and the
Spanish American War where you just lined up and and
you took your best shot, and then it became a
little more sophisticated. But it was kind of a hybrid,
(04:34):
wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, it was one of those weird circumstances around the battlefields.
There'd be horses and carts pulled by horses and mechanized
vehicles and all, you know, all kinds of there's some
great movies about that. There was a movie about just
about a horse that from World War One. Yep, it's
you know, they had a long line that we'll talk
(04:58):
about in a minute that kind of separated France from Germany.
And when I look at these things, I'd like to
think about what would happen. If the results had been different,
you know what would have occurred in the world, says
Germany had just attacked France only and France didn't have allies,
and Germany took France. What would Europe look like now
if the US hadn't gotten in the war, what would
(05:19):
have happened in Europe? And the events that led to
the end of the war, I think were really fascinating.
There was a telegram called the Zimmermann Telegram from the
Brits intercepted, and it was a telegram from the German
foreign secretary to his counterpart in Mexico. Now think of that.
They wanted Mexico to enter the war and attack the
(05:41):
United States from below as a German ally, and the
German promises were that they would be able to reclaim Texas,
New Mexico and Arizona and come back being part of Mexico.
And then they asked Mexico to enless Japan and the war.
So they were trying to use all these other countries
to further their aims. But it backfired on them because
(06:04):
the United States saw that was not pleased with that.
If you remember we were we had just been down
on the Mexican border. My grandfather was one of the
troops from Florida that went down there, chasing Ponto Villa
all around in Mexico. The relations between the US and
Mexico were strained at that point in time. Germany tried
to take advantage of that. The second item was unrestricted
(06:27):
submarine warfare that Germany began in nineteen fifteen because they
declared all the waters around Great Britain to be war zones,
and in doing that they were trying to limit supplies,
particularly from the United States to England. So I started
sinking ships that were some of them were chartered in
the US and some in other countries. One of which was,
(06:48):
if you recall, was the Lusitania. It was a Cunard
line that had been a passenger line, big herald of
it being the fastest way to get across the Atlanta
from nineteen oh four to nineteen fourteen, but it started
carrying troops and supplies and other equipment in addition to passengers.
(07:10):
Just regular President Scott on the boat having a holiday
in the middle of a war. Kind of unusual. When
they sank the Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, right
off of Old head on May May of fifteen, Tuesday
at nineteen fifteen, almost twelve hundred people died in that
boat being sunk right off the coast of Ireland, a
big uproar in the United States that helped to add
(07:33):
the war for in our country. A third item would
be the Russian Revolution that occurred. Russia was in the
war against Germany and then had a revolution on their own,
going on the Bolshevik Revolution that occurred in Marsh of
nineteen seventeen. They deposed this cizar, created a communist and
(07:53):
socialist government, offered peace proposals, and Ukraine decided Russia wanted
out of the world, that the people who now were
running Rossia just didn't want to be bothered with it.
Here you talk now with Russia and Ukraine at war, well,
the Ukrainian Province of Russia. They proclaimed themselves to be
an independent state allied with Germany, and Germany tried to
(08:16):
occupy that area, but they got so busy on the
Western Front they really couldn't control it at all. So
now Russia and Ukraine and those areas aren't really engaged
anymore in World War One. So there's a lot of
changing players and people that were happening here. January nineteenth eighteen,
You and I did a show on this about the
(08:37):
flu planned pandemic. We just went through one of those,
which it was called the Spanish Flu. Started really in
the United States. I think it was a military base
in Kansas. But when we started sending people over to Europe,
we brought disease with US an estimated fifty to one
hundred million people. They really didn't have good count on
that died from that flu. Troop movements all across Europe
(09:01):
spread it rapidly. That caused a lot of walls and
fighting in some places, bigger fighting in other places, and
people being sick all over the place.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Our history segment today with doctor ed Moore, a little
more history World War One, the Great War as it
was called. Then, doctor Moore, how did we end this battle?
How did it come to a close.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
There was a Spring offensive in March of nineteen eighteen
that Germany did. They decided they were really going to
hit France hard to push Great Britain back across the channel.
Over five hundred thousand troops died in that Spring offensive
between the Allies and the German side. Then there was
a rebellion of Austria. Hungary had a military rebellion that
(09:50):
screwed them all up. They were really interested in going
down to the Balkans, but most of their military was
comprised of Filoleens and Serbians and Czechs and Ruthenians. There
were sort of conscripts. They didn't really have people who
really wanted to be in the war. There was one
hundred days offensive in August of nineteen eighteen. US is
(10:10):
now in. We're pushing hard. We pushed German back, pushing
back across the Hindenburg Line, which collapsed and had opened
up the underbelly there of Germany. It gave the Allies
momentum to move hard, and that the Russians at the
same time were attacking that had what was called the
(10:32):
Brussolava offenses. That really we totally weakened the Austro Hungary
forces and Germany now had to fight on two fronts.
The Russolava Offensive said over half a million people died
in that spring offensis. Over a million troops like one
point two million troops died between the Russian sides and
the German side, huge casualties. Most of the fighting taking
(10:56):
place again in northwest Ukraine. It brings us to today
and the problem we still have. Then Germany had a
revolution in the middle of a war. The people kind
of overthrew the imperial government formed a republic. So Kaiser
Wilhelm was second was forced to create a He tried
to create a constitutional monarchy. The United States said no way,
(11:19):
We're not negotiating with the Kaiser, so he exiled and
moved in the Netherlands, and that created the Weimar Republic.
Left us from the Soviet Union. That communism wasn't just
in Russia. There were a lot of them throughout Europe
and they formed a significant part of the coalitions that
(11:40):
created the Weimar Republic and created problems. Key elements and
ending the war really were the extreme economic burdens. They
were running out of money and supplies. There were huge
impacts of defeat on Germany in creation of the Weimar
Republic and why it was weak, and huge social tensions
(12:01):
between the general population and the former aristocratic elites. Royalty
was on its way out. It was done really the
mainland of Europe, and communism and socialism were attractive tonics
for the downtroten. So those movements grow there was actually
a group called the Spartacust Group, which was the German
(12:24):
Communist Party called it was from the Spartacus League. I
kip picture in Kirk Douglas running around Germany, but I'm
not sure why it was put down. That socialist rebellion
was put down by the corp Brey Corps excuse me,
which was a paramilitary groups. Really a lot of uniform
(12:46):
stilled soldiers in Germany post war, but we had limited
them to only one hundred thousand troops total after the
end of the war, so Germany was very shaky. In
November nineteen eighteen, the Armiscist was signed to the Victor
Goes to Spoils. The treaty defined German borders. Germany lost
(13:07):
lots of territory. They had to pay war reparations one
hundred and thirty two billion gold marks, which crippled, totally
crippled their economy. They were forced to take responsibility for
the entire war, had the humiliation of loss plus the
economic burdens. They were respons held responsible for the entire
loss and damage, all of which you're thinking this is
(13:28):
at the end of the teens heading into the roaring twenties. Well,
the roaring didn't happen so much there. Cabaret the movie
kind of captured what the social life was at that point,
and that led to the depression. In nineteen twenty nine,
there was a worldwide depression, so a lot of the
current or issues of post World War One. You could
(13:50):
see the planet the seeds planted from how World War
One ended and how the world treated Germany. It led
to the rise of Hitler and the rise of German
social movement social movement, and there was a new world
order in the nineteen twenties. It was the end of
royalty and czars in the beginning of republic governments, but
(14:13):
with strong socialist ingredients in those republic governments that are
still there. So when we see split elections and things
going on in various countries across Europe, it's been that
way since the end of World War One. The cost
of war was huge and the huge burden on the economies,
but people survived, except for the millions and millions of
(14:37):
people that died because of ambition and desire to take
land that was not theirs.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Always good to visit with you, ad, Thanks for the
history lesson and feel better and we'll talk again.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Next month, you too, thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Thank you. Doctor Ed Moore with us a little more
history on the Morning Show with Preston Scott
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