The Battle of Passchendaele

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history it dot com slash subscribe.

In the summer of 1917, young men from cities and towns and villages across Britain and its massive empire found themselves waiting, as soldiers are wont to do, in trenches around the city of Ypres in Belgium. There was a massive attack in the offing, and these young men would fight, and many would die, as soldiers are wont to do. Some carried postcards from home, pictures of loved ones, small cake baked by a mother or sister. The men joked with one another, they lit cigarettes in the drizzle, they sure tried not to think about what the next whistle would mean.

The battle that followed was the third battle of Ypres. We call it Passchendale today. It opened on the morning of the 31st of July 1917, when British and Imperial forces, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and others, with support from the French, attacked the German army. The main assault went in after about two weeks of bombardment, more than four million shells were fired. It's very difficult for me to describe the landscape that they advanced over, and it's hard sometimes to even call it landscape.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (48 minutes, 8,402 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.