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Did you remember to put your seatbelt in your backpack today because [Man wearing backpack crosses bridge]

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it's a time for a crash course in the history of the Western Front

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we'll keep our day job so in the summer of 1914 the German army whipped out its

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Schlieffen plan and made for France like a bunch of rednecks booking it to [Tanks driving along the beach]

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Walmart on a Saturday night while the Germans managed to reach Frances home

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improvement section they didn't get far enough to take Paris armed with

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brand-new drills the Germans proceeded to engage the French and the British in [Tanks racing on a beach]

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a race to the sea and sadly no this was not a reality TV competition instead the

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German and Franco-British armies kept trying to outflank each other with the

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end result being that no one won anything

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and there were trenches everywhere good thing the Amazing Race has a better [Man appears from a trench]

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grand prize right then came the Battle of Verdun also

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known as those 300 days in 1916 when the French and the Germans went back and

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forth and back and forth and back and forth then there was the Battle of the [Explosions appear in a field]

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Somme which didn't run on for as long as Verdun but did wind up killing more

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than a million people and it saw the British and French go six miles into

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German territory that's right 1 million casualties for 6 miles the

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Germans proceeded to hunker down on the Hindenburg Line a defensive position [Tanks approaching Hindenburg line]

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that they had to hold because well they were all out of soldiers they then had

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to face off against the Allies in Belgium during the summer and fall of

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1917 during the Battle of the 3rd Ypres most of the Allied leadership spent that

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same battle wondering why they were forging ahead against the Germans and

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losing guys left and right when the Americans were due to arrive oh... any day [Soldier running and explosion occurs]

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now finally in October 1917 American soldiers began to fight in World War one

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under the leadership of General Black Jack Pershing knowing that the arrival

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of the American Expeditionary Force on European shores meant the end was near [US Army in formation]

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the Germans fought to move forward along the Western Front during the spring of

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1918 they had men in they had mojo but by April the Germans knew they were [Tanks moving towards Germany]

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kaput World War one finally sputtered to a stop on November 11th 1918 after the

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Allies had pushed along the entire Western Front in the meuse-argonne

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offensive with the Germans in retreat and the Allies through the Hindenburg

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Line both sides sat down and signed the armistice that ended the fighting [Army officials signing the armistice]

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so to summarize the summary there was a lot of back-and-forth in blood and fire

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until the Americans showed up and dropped the mic and then everyone went [US Army celebrating]

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home oh and try not to think about the fact that thousands of soldiers were

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hurt or killed because their generals wouldn't let them stop fighting in the

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hours before the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month we shouldn't have

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mentioned it let's go back to that sweet mic drop yeah there we go... [Soldier drops mic]

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