Four DVDs, ten episodes of roughly 50 minutes each, based on a book by Hew Strachan. IMDB entry about it. This is less daunting at a mere four DVDs compared to ten DVDs for "The Second World War" which I received at the same time. I'm hoping to watch that next.

This pounded home a well known adage: "war is hell." And possibly never as much as the First World War. It started with an assassination that should have only affected a couple countries ... And ironically the person assassinated (Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary) was a reformer who wanted similar things to the assassin (Gavrilo Princip), although from the other side of the dispute. This was a disagreement between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and their unhappy subjects the Serbians. But the Germans leapt in on the side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the French and British felt compelled to take up the defence, and soon not only the whole of Europe but most of Asia was embroiled in the battle. It spread across a couple continents in a couple months, and then dragged in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and eventually the U.S. (and even, indirectly, Mexico).

Aside from mentioning that planes actually mattered for the first time in this war, and mentioning the Red Baron and his squadron for a couple minutes in the second last(?) episode, flying was essentially ignored - much to my disappointment (it's a primary interest of mine).

The whole thing is fascinating: how an assassination in a crumbling empire by a member of a small oppressed group started a war that consumed the entire world - a war that ended up being about Germany versus the rest of Europe. It's also brutally depressing: a couple million people killed (more even than the Second World War), and the map of Europe completely rewritten as three different empires collapsed (Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire). And worse: as the narrator was quick to point out at the end of the movie, Germany was forced to pay reparations (which they mostly didn't pay) and was never defeated on German soil - which led to bitterness and patriotism that only twenty years later led to the Second World War.