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The First World War

Jonathan Lewis

Alan Clements

The First World War: Episode 8: Revolution

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Episode 8: Revolution

Revolution

BBC Four - The First World War, Revolution

How governments, fearing unrest at home, set about fomenting revolution among the enemy.

Ten-part series based on the book by Hew Strachan. This episode examines how governments, worried about unrest at home, set about fomenting revolution among the enemy.

Increasingly, governments faced the risk of their men mutinying, morale cracking and civilians rising up in strikes and civil disobedience. As governments worried about containing unrest at home, they set agents working to foment revolution among the enemy. Britain sponsored the Arab revolt through Lawrence of Arabia, Germany backed Irish independence with arms for the Easter Rising and funded Lenin's Russian coup d'etat in 1917. 

Revolution became a weapon of war, hitting the enemy from within. When Lenin pulled Russia out of the war, it vindicated all Germany's efforts to use subversion, releasing half a million German soldiers for the Western Front.

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Ten-part series which tells the story of the First World War as never before.

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