Season 1
Synopsis
Apocalypse: World War I (2014), Season 1 is a five-part documentary you can watch online on iFILM — the whole arc of the Great War laid out year by year, from the Sarajevo gunshot of June 28, 1914 to the armistice of November 11, 1918.
The episodes climb in order. First the summer of 1914: Germany pours into Belgium and reaches the gates of Paris. Then the Marne and Tannenberg, Italy and Turkey and Bulgaria joining the fight, the trenches dug in for years. The season refuses to stay in Flanders. It travels to the Italian Alps, the Balkans, the eastern front, the Atlantic blockade, and the revolution that toppled the Tsar. The fifth chapter closes on 1918 — Brest-Litovsk, Russia walking out of the war, and the American reinforcements that finally tipped it. Franz Ferdinand, Nicholas II, Churchill, Wilson, the flying ace Manfred von Richthofen all pass through the frame.
The draw is the footage: over 500 hours of archival film, colorized and given sound. Color hands a century-old reel back its horror, the kind black-and-white quietly softens. Good for viewers who want the war whole, not boiled down to two famous battles. Stream Apocalypse: World War I Season 1 online on iFILM.
5 episodes
S1·E1Fury
On June 28, 1914, the murder of an obscure Austrian-Hungarian archduke in Sarajevo triggers the most terrible conflict that the world has known. Germany invades Belgium, and in September is already at the gates of Paris. Will she win the war so quickly?
S1·E2Fear
The French poilus stop in extremis the German advance at the Battle of the Marne. On the eastern front, the Germans stopped the Russians at Tannenberg. In France, after numerous murderous assaults, the belligerents bury themselves in the trenches: the soldiers of the French and British colonies come to lend a helping hand to their colonizers and the war becomes world.
S1·E3Hell
1916. The war rages in Europe and extends from the trenches of France to the sands of the East, passing by the mountains of Italy or the Balkans. The conflict became industrial and millions of shells fell on the battlefields: Verdun and the Somme are the most deadly examples. How to stop this madness ?
S1·E4Rage
1917. People are fed up with war. In the rear the revolts rumble, like that which overthrows the Tsar in Russia; On the front the mutinies multiplied, like that of Chemin des Dames in France. In the Atlantic, the ravages of German submarines will drag Americans into the war. In Belgium, it is the hecatomb of the battle of Passchendaele for thousands of soldiers of the British Empire.
S1·E5Deliverance
The Allies seem lost. The Italians are defeated at Caporetto, and Russia now Bolshevik emerges from the war. But the American reinforcements were decisive, and the victory finally came to the Allies: they were, however, incapable of negotiating an honorable peace, and the Treaty of Versailles carried the seeds of the Second World War.
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